The Verge Reviews Apple Vision Pro

January 30, 2024 2:24 PM

Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not is a very lengthy review of the newest Apple device from The Verge, and it is longer than you expect, and reading it I felt like it answered nearly all the questions I had in my head. I'm not going to rush out and buy one, but this is a really in-depth description of what using one in a real way is like.
posted by hippybear (100 comments total)

I suppose eventually stuff like this will be contact lenses or an implant but for now it looks like a Power Glove for your face, and while it is indeed bad relatively few people love it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:36 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

being one of the lucky few actually having been a VR developer in the 90s, the previous iterations of VR stuff didn't really appeal to me since I knew the ergonomic factors of VR were the hard nuts to crack – you've got to get it perfect or don't even try, really.
posted by torokunai at 2:38 PM on January 30

It sounds like an incredible piece of equipment. I'd be thinking about getting one if there was something compellingly unique you could do with it.
posted by figurant at 2:42 PM on January 30

Reading the review, it really seems like a truly amazing device that maybe doesn't quite do anything to justify its existence except for a few tiny niche things.

Now, Apple has made an entire globe-dominating company out of designing amazing devices that don't really do anything quite well when they first appear. I was using a Macintosh when it first appeared, and while it was miraculous, it was also a continual exercise in frustration because of what it couldn't do.

When they get this down to where it's glasses and not a headset? That's when everything changes.
posted by hippybear at 2:48 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

You can use Excel and Webex and Slack in the Vision Pro

:-|
posted by crime online at 2:48 PM on January 30 [35 favorites]

Washington Post also has some thoughts on a topic not mentioned in the Verge article: Apple’s new Vision Pro is a privacy mess waiting to happen.
posted by nickmark at 2:53 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]

Ungated WaPo article.

Please think about these things when you're posting articles for sources with locks on them. It's okay to post the source, but it is so so very easy to find an archived version to include.
posted by hippybear at 2:55 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]

Every time someone on my Facebook feed has brought up the Vision Pro, I've asked if I could wear it over my eyeglasses. No one was able to tell me, but this article cleared it up. The answer is no, and I would have to buy special new prescription lenses that screw into the device. The worst of all possible options, really.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:57 PM on January 30 [15 favorites]

Wall Street Journal takes Apple Vision Pro skiing at Camelback resort …. Like actually skiing, downhill. They closed a green run to make it happen
posted by inflatablekiwi at 2:57 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

The lenses don't screw in, they are magnetically attached. And they are about $150 for the pair, which is a lot less than I was expecting considering that Zeiss is sourcing them.
posted by hippybear at 2:58 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]

Apple, as a company, is mega rich. They got rich by making the iPod, the iPhone, and then the App Store. Because Apple, the company, is mega rich, a lot of rich people put money into Apple. The rich people expect Apple to keep making more things so that everybody gets richer, in a case of “line goes up”.

However, there are no more market segments to conquer. Well, there’s cars, but they’re complex and annoyingly regulated by governments. There’s AI, but it can’t reduced to a sellable unit (although some ex-Apple alumni are showing designs). And there’s VR/AR, which existed in the 90s and has been revived so that Apple can create a stunning new product that will make rich people more money.

I’m pretty sure Apple have released this headset owing to shareholder pressure, rather than any pressing need. Internal sales forecasts for the helmet thing are incredibly low, use cases are slim (do you like watching tv, but by yourself?) and the price entry point is formidable. Sure, like Nilay says, maybe there could be a great version of this down the line. But right now, this version is to get you ready for the next big marketplace, not to be a useful device.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:58 PM on January 30 [7 favorites]

One thing that is very convincing is taking spatial videos on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and watching them in 3D on the Vision Pro. I took some videos of my daughter at the zoo and around Christmas time, and like any dad, I could probably watch them over and over again forever. They play back in a sort of ghostly white haze, and the overall effect is incredibly bittersweet — you can relive a brief memory, but you’re alone in the headset and can’t share it with anyone else.

Well, if nothing else, Apple has successfully delivered on the sci-fi trope of a character re-watching home movies of lost/estranged family in VR (see, e.g., Strange Days and The Peripheral streaming series).
posted by jedicus at 3:05 PM on January 30 [23 favorites]

It’s also a very expensive TV that doesn’t have HDMI inputs, so you’re limited to Apple’s gaming library, which feels deeply unfair. And unlike any other TV in your life, the Vision Pro can literally DRM your eyes — if you’re watching a movie in the Apple TV app or Disney Plus and go to take a screen capture, the content blacks out.

Well that's not dystopian at all. I can sorta get preventing outright video recording, but a screenshot? That's nonsense.
posted by jedicus at 3:13 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]

>lenses that screw into the device. The worst of all possible options

"magnetically attach" I gather. Plus the focal plane is 1.4m out from your eyes, which is between reader and distance prescriptions for the most part.

Being in my 50s I've got some degree of presbyopia, but can still read stuff pretty good at 1.4m.
posted by torokunai at 3:13 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

If they included HDMI inputs, then you couldn't use it underwater.
posted by mittens at 3:20 PM on January 30 [6 favorites]

I honestly can’t believe they released this thing. It’s half-baked, sure, but it’s also deeply, deeply, dorky, in a way that Apple products really haven’t been, and certainly not since their incredible run that began with the iMac.

It truly is the bean counter’s company now.
posted by rhymedirective at 3:27 PM on January 30 [5 favorites]

I use VR and AR professionally. We’ve ordered one. It actually seems pretty fantastic for our needs but it seems insane that this is expected to be a consumer device. Like if Ferrari advertised one of their cars for use as a shopping cart.
posted by q*ben at 3:31 PM on January 30 [12 favorites]

I can sorta get preventing outright video recording, but a screenshot? That's nonsense.

This is old news really. Try and take a screenshot of a paused film on the Netflix app using an iPad: it won’t let you. It’s been this way for years and I imagine most of the mainstream content providers take advantage of the same functionality.

You can still take a screenshot of apps in the browse mode upon swiping up, I’ve found (for no reason whatsoever).
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:34 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]

I mean, that's nonsense, too, but it seems like really taking it a step further to impose DRM in an augmented reality device.
posted by jedicus at 3:58 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

You can't even take a screenshot of DRMed content in macOS or Windows anymore, including in any major browser, thanks to HDCP. Try taking a screenshot of YouTube TV or Netflix in the browser and you'll just get a browser window with a black rectangle in the middle.
posted by waxpancake at 4:02 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

Like, there will be a Limewire for Vision Pro?

Let people see the screenshots! FFS!
posted by hippybear at 4:02 PM on January 30

I need chorrected vision for VR. I have the magnetic pop-in lenses for the PSVR2. They work okay, but if you are sharing it with others, having to pop them in and out is a chore. Would be fine if not sharing I guess. Still, I thought PSVR2 was overpriced...
posted by meehawl at 4:25 PM on January 30

this review is the absolute definition of damning with faint praise, good lord
posted by Sebmojo at 5:21 PM on January 30

They don't need to sell a lot of them now. They need to get developers excited.
Cost of Xerox Alto, 1979: $32,000
Cost of Apple Lisa, 1983: $10,000
Cost of Apple Mac, 1984: $2,500

Granted, Moore's law has slowed down somewhat, and physical components don't follow that curve, but things will look different in 4-5 years. Either they'll be a $500 model just like this one, or it will still cost $2500, but be much more wearer-friendly.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:29 PM on January 30 [7 favorites]

I look forward to trying one of these out with the in-store demo once they start selling them in this country, being duly impressed by the technology, and then not even considering buying one for several years, minimum.

By all accounts, it's kind of what happens if you decide to build the best possible VR/AR headset you can, with technology as it exists, with money as no object. As the technology matures, I suspect it'll become a lot less clunky and compromised in its vision — I'm curious to see what the "iPhone 5" of this winds up looking like, and what happens when they add a non-Pro version to the lineup. What parts of it will they consider non-necessary to the experience? Does this first-generation model indicate a baseline below which they refuse to compromise, and future "pro" models just improve from there? What does the $1,000 version of this product look like, down the line?

Much like the original Macintosh, it's a fascinating technology, even if maybe it doesn't immediately cry out what it's good for, but I'm very interested to see where things go from here. And, hell, adjusted for inflation, that $2,500 Macintosh in 1984 cost twice as much as the $3,500 Vision Pro does 40 years later, and it's a much more capable device overall, heh.
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:37 PM on January 30 [5 favorites]

It has been very interesting seeing Apple kind of try to walk the tightrope of "it's basically an early adopter dev kit" without actually saying so, though the pricing, limited availability (bottlenecked, I have heard, from the fact that Sony can only make so many of those displays per year), and weirdly quiet rollout. For now, it's basically a hobbyist toy for almost all non-dev use cases I think, but on the other hand I have purchased far too many manual espresso makers over the years to begrudge someone spending money they can afford on a hobby, hahaha
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:40 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

The reporting on the privacy implications of this device (or rather the lack there of) must be driving some Google Glass developers up the wall. All the write ups I've seen are either like this one where they don't mention it at all or they mumble something in the last few paragraphs that some people might have problems with the cameras pointed at them. The Glass reporting almost universally fronted the privacy concerns.

Personally I hope Apple has a run away hit with this technology. I wont buy their version but look forward to wearing a competitors to be at least socially neutral.
posted by Mitheral at 6:08 PM on January 30

I wonder if part of the difference with the privacy implications is that the Vision seems very squarely positioned as "it's basically like a computer you'd use in a single place, except that the display fills the room" rather than "wear this all day long through every single social interaction" — akin to how, as I think Gruber put it, this is a VR-type headset designed to be used seated rather than standing
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:18 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]

I am incredibly in the tank for Apple products and I’ve got some disposable income, so in a way I’m grateful that having amblyopia means I don’t have stereoscopic vision.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:38 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

> You can't even take a screenshot of DRMed content in macOS or Windows anymore

i was taken aback by this statement but then i don't watch any sort of content that would protected in such a way, and i take tons of screenshots.

what do they think we're gonna do, screenshot every frame then remux it into a new 🏴‍☠️ video?
posted by glonous keming at 6:38 PM on January 30 [5 favorites]

what do they think we're gonna do, screenshot every frame then remux it into a new 🏴‍☠️ video?

I haven't used it in ages, but I think this might be literally how Handbrake works if you're ripping a DVD?
posted by hippybear at 6:41 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]

Cost of Xerox Alto, 1979: $32,000
Cost of Apple Lisa, 1983: $10,000
Cost of Apple Mac, 1984: $2,500

That's not even adjusting for inflation. The cost of the original Macintosh in 2024 (well, December 2023) dollars? $7,488.92. You could buy a really nicely kitted out car for the cost of that Lisa. As has been noted recently, the Macintosh has just celebrated its 40th anniversary. What's that in human years?

I didn't think much of Patel's review; he seems pretty concerned that it might mess up his hair. I'm not going to buy this thing any time in the next year, probably--I tend not to buy 1.0 of anything--but I'll be very interested to see how quickly and how much it changes in the next year or so.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:55 PM on January 30 [4 favorites]

A minor nit, but I hate that they're continuing the trend of using the everyday Spanish word "Persona" for user/profile/avatar whatever. There's no good way to translate it back into Spanish so if this takes off we're stuck mispronouncing Persona with a gringo accent.
posted by signal at 7:21 PM on January 30

the everyday Spanish word "Persona"

Oh dear, wait until Latin hears that Spanish has coopted this word!

Oh, no, wait, it might be from Greek. Let's not tell them.

Oh, no way! It comes from Etruscan? [Wikipedia] Wow! Wait until the Spanish hear about this!
posted by hippybear at 7:26 PM on January 30 [6 favorites]

The killer feature for me (that I don't trust yet) is the external monitor capabilities. You take a little Macbook and then project to a large screen (or two?) within the AVP. If that's crisp-- crisp enough to be a direct competitor to a real screen, crisp enough to sit on a lounge chair with youe laptop and code/surf/blah without annoyance-- I'd be tempted to put the money down. If anyone's likely to get the lens and screen tech together for that level of quality, it's gonna be Apple, whether it's this Gen1 or we need to wait fofr Gen3 is the question. The hardware integration means it's probably not simply a compressed video stream from your laptop, it's hopefully more like a RDP session, I didn't see any kind of artefacts that suggested compression.

The Oculus, which I have gathering dust, just wasn't even close to having text being crisp enough. Kinda waiting on a review that takes that 'so you're a coder-- could you /really/ use this as a workstation' kinda thing. It would literally save me the cost of building a home office.

The video I've seen, which seems to be a kinda recording from the device itself is a bit-- questionable, it feels like casting your macbook to a large Apple TV 6ft away, maybe (hopefully?) the foveated rendering (spending energy rendering in high quality only what you're looking at) from in-device recording doesn't quite put justice to the real life use, but I guess we'll see.
posted by Static Vagabond at 7:40 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

The video I've seen, which seems to be a kinda recording from the device itself is a bit-- questionable, it feels like casting your macbook to a large Apple TV 6ft away

It is an Apple device that has engineered what is reported to be a very elegant solution to a problem that nobody has yet had.
posted by hippybear at 7:43 PM on January 30

Gruber's review suggests that the in-headset displays are sharp enough that he has simply never noticed individual pixels, at all, but I have also heard elsewhere that the focal plane of the headset is such that it might be more comfortable to treat it as a "physically" larger 4K display somewhat further away from yourself, than one up close. Sounds like it's pretty usable, though, if you want a technically-more-portable option to have a large display for a travel computer.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:56 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

Daring fireball review: I’ve used the original PlayStation 5 VR headset, HTC Vive Pro, and own a Meta Quest 3. Vision Pro’s display quality makes both of those headsets seem like they’re from a different era. Vision Pro is in a different ballpark, playing a different game. In terms of resolution, Vision Pro is astonishing. I do not see pixels, ever. I see text as crisply as I do in real life. It’s very comfortable to read. (Although very weird, still, one week in, to have, say, a Safari window that appears 6 or 7 feet tall). But I can already imagine a better Vision headset display. I can already imagine lower latency between the camera footage and the displays in front of my eyes. I can already imagine greater dynamic range, like when looking out a window during daytime from inside a dim room.

That's pretty damn glowing-- though my internal cynic whispers that Gruber doesn't have great vision, he's talked about his eyes before-- so with a sizable grain of salt that's interesting. I think that idea-- the 6ft tall Safari screen, is the bit that my head doesn't quite get. If I simply stream my laptop to my TV, that's a *very* different experience compared to my monitor 2ft away, even if the relative (with distance) sizes are the pretty similar. What happens if instead of a 6ft Safari window, you brought it closer and made it a 18" tall Safari window-- is that still readable? The images I've seen, the Safari text is always pretty kindle-for-the-olds kinda sized.

I guess I just need to enact my 'persuade an architect' plan, and get my hands on one that way :)
posted by Static Vagabond at 8:27 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

I note design heritage from the gallery of Newton Taped On Face
posted by MonsieurPEB at 8:38 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

I note design heritage from the gallery of Newton Taped On Face

And I think mentioning the Newton here is apt. Because is this just a really fucking expensive Newton? That potential lurks, but there's a lot of other potential there.

I think the crippling part of the Newton is it was never more than a sophisticated Rolodex for many. This is a bit more than that, but is it enough more?

Actuality, the main question is can they iterate it quickly enough to make it something everyday people want to use? When Macintosh debuted it was out of reach for most.

I really want this tech to turn into something I could wear across a day and have it help me in my life in ways I can't even imagine right now. But this version... is not that.
posted by hippybear at 8:42 PM on January 30

really the killer app for this thing is that the video lag introduced by the external eyes display keeps the sinister superpsychologists of the far future from reading your mind by tracking your facial expressions.

okay i swear that the six people this is funny to all find it hilarious, just totally hilarious
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:59 PM on January 30 [8 favorites]

The privacy article by the Washington Post is absolute garbage. Cameras are now ubiquitous in public spaces. You walk down the street and doorbell cameras, other security cameras and public cctv are going to capture you probably a dozen times before you get four blocks. Go into any office or store and you are on camera. In retail stores the cameras are sending data to computers that try to figure out who you are and what you looked at buying, and what you didn’t consider, or if you are stealing. And how many places has Washington Post owner and Amazon guy Jeff Bezos managed to stick his Alexa listening devices — that’s where your privacy went.
posted by interogative mood at 9:03 PM on January 30 [5 favorites]

> Oh, no way! It comes from Etruscan?

“possibly from etruscan” is how linguists say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:26 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

I mean you gotta get some sort of New Apple Product clickbait scandal, and speculation about "it contains cameras" works as well as anything else to get clicks about a product that won't be anywhere near mainstream for years to come, if ever
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:33 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

b l p, you just need 5 more.
posted by inexorably_forward at 10:02 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

I have never owned a VR/AR headset, but I am very interested in getting one. Apple Vision Pro looks like a very promising product, and this is one of the few times I am glad for the uber wealthy: let them be the early adopters and drive sales so that there are new and improved models down the road. Hopefully better and cheaper.

VR is just so niche, sitting with that thing on your face for hours on end. Even if they could be made comfortable (currently not possible, apparently), people just feel kind of dorky with them on after the novelty has worn off. And there's no real need for it, day to day for the vast majority of people.

I still think of Google Glass. Not what it actually was, but what it sort of promised: a pair of glasses that could overlay all manner of things. You wouldn't feel like a dork and you could just keep them on all the time. To me that's the future; when Apple or whoever makes truly wearable AR a reality, then I'm on board.
posted by zardoz at 10:32 PM on January 30

Most of you aren’t the target market. I’m not sure Apple even knows what the target market here is going to be. You have to remember that Apple has a massive market valuation and a ton of cash. What this means is that they can afford to experiment with things where a failure is just a write-off, where for other companies a similar failure could turn out the lights. Apple doesn’t expect to sell a ton of these - yet. The pricing is them saying “this is a really cool device with a lot of potential but it’s not ready for the masses right now.” In the meantime, they’re doing a lot of the work needed to make this sort of thing a future big seller, and developing a lot of technologies that will transfer across their other product lines. They’re getting some revenue from it on these early adopter sales, and more importantly, more units out in the wild + a diverse user base = the kind of testing that they can’t replicate within the company. They can afford to take this kind of approach. They have customers who are willing to shell out the money to be on the leading edge and they might as well leverage that. I’m not sure how far this project ends up going because they need to figure out what a mass-market user case will look like.
posted by azpenguin at 11:06 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm absolutely fascinated to see what the Vision Amateur winds up looking like. Is this v1.0 a statement of everything they consider necessary to the platform, or will a mass-market-priced model remove features like, say, the external display?
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:09 PM on January 30

I already had the novel in mind just due to the shared subject matter, but the second photo in the review reminded me of the cover of the first edition of Virtual Light.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 11:30 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]

The River Ivel: However, there are no more market segments to conquer. Well, there’s cars, but they’re complex and annoyingly regulated by governments.

I'd ride Apple Mass Transit:
+ Takes ordinary thing that works elsewhere and pitches it as a revolutionary product
+ Huge price premium must be worth something
+ The 24+ hour queues to be an early adopter of each annual update
+ You just can't get dates if you're using green-dot mass transit, your routes must be blue-dot
- Unpredictable changes on annual updates
- Huge price premium must be worth something ... to stockholders
- Planned obsolescence so you should have moved from Catalina to Big Sur to Monterey to Ventura to Sonoma already
- First releases get the big queues but first updates get the promised new features, working-ish
- Updates can obliterate regular travel flows and provide no alternative
- History of being misused for nation-state security activity
posted by k3ninho at 1:17 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]

This will be either really good for watching porn, or really terrible. That this primary driver of tech uptake isn't even mentioned in this article (or the WaPo one about data privacy) is ... interesting.
posted by chavenet at 1:45 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

We go from buttons, to touchscreens, to AR/virtual environments... this is just one more step towards everyone becoming a brain in a jar.

Even if they could fit all this tech into a pair of normal glasses I still wouldn't rush out to buy it. Screens and keyboards are fine.
posted by mokey at 2:48 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

As a fan of watching corporations lose lots of money, this is very exciting.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 3:40 AM on January 31 [8 favorites]

The Oculus, which I have gathering dust, just wasn't even close to having text being crisp enough

Have you tried the Quest 3? It's not fantastic, but with my vision (pretty good distance, slight astigmatism, slight presbyopia), screens look plenty crisp for reading, pretty much edge-to-edge. Supposedly it's a tick or two better than the more-expensive Quest Pro. I wouldn't want to code in it all day -- I find games don't make me feel wonky, but something about the 3D effect of windows floating in space does -- but if you're okay with basically-1080p, it's really not bad.

I'm curious to see what the "iPhone 5" of this winds up looking like

This is the real question. This iteration is pretty much a dev kit, moreso than the OG iPhone. It's a question of how long it takes to get the technology fully-baked. 5 years sounds like forever in the market today, though, and I wonder if Apple will actually keep with this until it Just Works, or get spooked by the public's general lack of interest in VR / AR in the meantime.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:48 AM on January 31

Cameras are now ubiquitous in public spaces. You walk down the street and doorbell cameras, other security cameras and public cctv are going to capture you probably a dozen times before you get four blocks. Go into any office or store and you are on camera.

I can go to work, get groceries and visit my friend all week long without ever walking directly in front of someone's front door, and the average front door is still quite unlikely to have a camera. I know I'm on camera at work and the shops, but also if any of that video ever became public I would be able to come down pretty hard if they didn't have a legitimate reason for it.

The rise in camera prevalence is no reason to just throw up your hands and say "anyone can be filmed at any time and we should all stop worrying about it".
posted by Audreynachrome at 5:56 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]

About the glasses thing. How do I get a prescription that would let me use this? I wear progressives. Where is the focal plane? What do I ask my optometrist?
posted by Wetterschneider at 6:07 AM on January 31

About the glasses thing. How do I get a prescription that would let me use this? I wear progressives. Where is the focal plane? What do I ask my optometrist?

Apparently you get your prescription from your eye doctor and hand it off to Apple which will tag Zeiss who will then get in touch about your $150 prescription inserts.
posted by hippybear at 6:14 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]

What this means is that they can afford to experiment with things where a failure is just a write-off, where for other companies a similar failure could turn out the lights.

This hasn't really been Apple's MO though and it's indicative of larger problems with the company where investors can pressure Apple leadership to release something that they know isn't ready.

Is this truly Apple's vision for "spatial computing" or AR or whatever you want to call it? Assuredly not and Tim Cook even said as much repeatedly over the years.

Vision Pro, in conception, is much more akin to the Newton than anything Apple has released since.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:18 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

The same questions persist with Apple Vision Pro, as with Oculus Rift, Google Glass, etc.:

- Is there any need for an inferface with a visor or helmet style form factor that can be used outside its input /output function? Can it serve any other use outside of its firmware, and for how long?

- Beyond CAD/CAM operations extensible to a researcher, engineer, or other specialist, what other uses are of interest to potential clients/users, other than gaming, social media, entertainment, and/or serving as a kiosk otherwise requiring said visor/helmet?

- How much of the visor's time, depending on function, would be tied to services requiring a subscription (ie, viewing media, playing certain games, or using the visor as part of a gallery exhibit, or theme ride in a larger setting), and how much time would it fufill doing other things in a way that would justify a solid return of interest beyond proof of concept?

- If the visor was designed in part for exploring haptic interaction, but as something more mainstream than an accessibility device, why not focus on other ways of utilizing a room, as with developing transponders for sensing decibel levels that would be harmful to someone without noise cancellation tech or soundproofing? Or optical sensors which could adjust artificial light for energy conservation, or reducing eyestrain?
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:37 AM on January 31

I've now watched three videos on the Vision Pro and the consensus seems to be that it's amazing, but not great.

The number one issue seems to be that none of the things it does well are enough of an improvement over whatever they're trying to replace to be worth the discomfort of wearing warm, heavy ski goggles for hours.

I've been consistently wrong with my predictions on Apple products ("why is Apple getting into phones? who would want a giant iphone with no keyboard? nobody wants a watch you have to plugin every night"), so I'll say that everyone in the world will buy two of these.
posted by justkevin at 7:54 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]

It is an Apple device that has engineered what is reported to be a very elegant solution to a problem that nobody has yet had.

Apple has a way of making me want almost every new product they make, and this is no exception, but I don't see any need for it.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:04 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

I hate that they're continuing the trend of using the everyday Spanish word "Persona" for user/profile/avatar whatever

"Persona" as a modern usage to describe a face/mask presented to the world goes back to Jung. He didn't get it from Spanish.
posted by praemunire at 8:11 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]

I didn't say he (or anybody) got it from Spanish. I'm just annoyed that they're using it like that.
posted by signal at 9:55 AM on January 31

Can't wait until we're all sitting around the living room with these, like a Stålenhag print.
posted by peachfiber at 10:41 AM on January 31

One of Gruber’s points is that he has a $5000 TV, which I’m reasonably sure he’s got hooked up to an expensive sound system. The Vision Pro, by that measure, is a better and cheaper alternative with the downside of not being able to share that experience (unless you can network these things together? I have no idea how that would sync together but maybe?)

I’m intrigued but I’m not feeling like I need to be an early adopter this time around. Maybe if they decide to release the “Vision Air”.
posted by Eikonaut at 12:05 PM on January 31

Surely...the Vision Airy?
posted by praemunire at 12:35 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]

the consensus seems to be that it's amazing, but not great.

oh this is a phenomenal turn of phrase
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:29 PM on January 31 [5 favorites]

I'm really excited for everyday AR. Popular Mechanics put out this somewhat breathless review of three smart glasses (I'm interested for their 3D display capabilities). While not the technological whiz that the Apple product is they are both massively more affordable and a lot less dorky.
posted by Mitheral at 3:54 PM on January 31

I too am excited for everyday AR. Not sure what it will end up being like, but I would love it.
posted by hippybear at 4:04 PM on January 31

When Apple launches a new thing, I often find myself re-reading reactions (here and elsewhere) to other new Apple product category launches (iPhone, iPad (also here), watch). Edifying to reflect on what seemed notable at the time (positively or negatively) and how that turned out (or didn't), with the benefit of hindsight.
posted by brentajones at 6:06 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think if anything the AVP kind of suffers from releasing after the Bigscreen VR, which probably gives a better example of what the future of headsets might look like. On the other hand, can you get all of the computing technology you need into a headset that small? One of BigScreen's challenges is that it's pretty much just a display, as I understand it - no eye tracking, no internal motion tracking at all, it's dependent on SteamVR tracking pedestals and external computing. And while I'm not sure I'd disagree with having the actual computing hardware on my waist with the battery pack, eye tracking and head tracking are kind of fundamental to AVP.

And even still, it sort of feels like a solution in search of a problem for most fields? Some things I can absolutely see being energized by all-day stereoscopic display, but it's overkill for spreadsheet and change management wrangling, y'know? That said, in the future as a $1500-ish headset that offloads compute and power to a laptop? Mmmaybe.
posted by Kyol at 7:58 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]

honestly, given the frankly absurd performance of the M-series chips, I don't think Apple's Vision line will ever need to offload compute — look at what the iPhones can already do nowadays, without even having access to active cooling. Like, they just added hardware ray tracing support to the iPhone Pro this year.
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:04 PM on January 31

Apple developed at least one new custom chip for this device, too. Now that they're doing their own silicon, they're just baking to order, and they've been doing really remarkable things, truly.
posted by hippybear at 8:13 PM on January 31

What interests me most is the immersive sports that gets a brief mention in passing — if they could passably emulate being near the field of play then that alone would sell these things. A mediocre superbowl seat costs quite a bit more than one of these things. Once that’s actually “in the box” as this review puts it, I’m in.
posted by dbx at 3:29 AM on February 1 [3 favorites]

> What interests me most is the immersive sports that gets a brief mention in passing — if they could passably emulate being near the field of play then that alone would sell these things. A mediocre superbowl seat costs quite a bit more than one of these things. Once that’s actually “in the box” as this review puts it, I’m in.

Apple put out a new press release today that's pretty light on specifics but does devote a few paragraphs to sports.

A quote from a PGA Tour person: “PGA TOUR Vision, the first golf app developed for Apple Vision Pro, takes fans inside the ropes and directly onto the greens of the world’s most iconic courses, from Pebble Beach to TPC Sawgrass, no matter where they are.”

And "MLB immerses users in a ballpark with a view from home plate and stats from each pitch. Red Bull TV displays 3D maps of races paired with high-quality video and immersive environments."
posted by brentajones at 8:25 AM on February 1

I can't wait to get my hands on this when I find one in a thrift store in the year 2045
posted by oulipian at 10:08 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

And right, I get that the compute core on modern Apple hardware is absolutely tiny and relatively cool, but compute is still always going to be a heat producer that might not ever really have a place on one's face, especially if you're already tethered to a cord one way or another. Is the design better going for cordless but maybe underpowered, maybe uncomfortably warm, maybe too short-lived? Or once you accept that a cord is necessary, even if only a personal one (as opposed to tethering to a desktop or a wall outlet), maybe it's worth offloading both power and compute to your hip? Or does that make the linking cable too thick, because you still need a lot of bandwidth for the displays? It's a challenge, and I'm not sure that Apple has necessarily cracked it the right way in this generation.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible the heat issues are early adopter/reviewer problems, and in actual day to day use you're never actually going to be running the CPU at 100% long enough to matter. On the other other hand, I suspect headset weight is always going to be a concern, and the gulf between a 600-ish gram Vision Pro and a 127 gram Bigscreen is a challenge - how much can be pared off immediately for v2, and how much is inherent in the system as part of the optics and frame?

I'm enthusiastic for the future, even if I kind of roll my eyes at the present. I mean, I'd love to have one to play with to see how well they've cracked the nausea problem (my $200 Lenovo Windows Mixed Reality headset is fun, but both uncomfortable and nauseating!), but not, y'know, $3500 worth.
posted by Kyol at 1:21 PM on February 1

I wonder how much of the weight is caused by the frankly goofy looking front display? It looks like the front is one giant piece of glass. If you replace that with a pair of googly eyes, you wouldn't look much worse and it would be a lot lighter.
posted by Eddie Mars at 1:27 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

And also there's a part of me that kind of goes... wait, am I paying $1,500-2,000-ish for a macbook pro's motherboard that I can only ever use strapped to my face, and wouldn't it be nice if the compute and display were two separate devices so I wasn't replacing $1,500-$2,0000 worth of display every time an upgrade is necessary? But that was sort of my grumble about the 5k iMacs, too.

And for all I know there are engineering reasons that makes it necessary to be tightly integrated. But it also kind of makes you wonder how much lower the price floor for the hardware could ever possibly be, if you think of it as a MBP and a studio display with unique packaging constraints.
posted by Kyol at 3:02 PM on February 1

so I wasn't replacing $1,500-$2,0000 worth of display every time an upgrade is necessary? But that was sort of my grumble about the 5k iMacs, too.

Never fear, the 5K iiMacs will probably never appear again. They haven't designed any Apple silicon to deal with the ridiculousness that is a 5K display rather than some iteration of 1080. Snazzy Labs did a really excellent video talking about this [15m], which is delightfully educational about why this was ridiculous to begin with and why it likely won't be reappearing.

I'm just waiting for the sweet spot for my next iMac purchase, as I'm dragging this 5K iMac as far into the future as I can.
posted by hippybear at 3:30 PM on February 1

what's weird is that they have the 4.5K 24" iMacs, and they have the 5K and 6K first-party (expensive but nice) external displays — it does seem though like their answer to "5K iMac pls :) :) :)" is basically "Why Not Just™ buy a Mac Mini and a 5K display :) :) :)" which, admittedly, does probably have better longevity, since you could replace the computer part after several years without having to replace the display
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:37 PM on February 1

And yet, the price point.... So much more!
posted by hippybear at 4:42 PM on February 1

yeah, definitely significantly more expensive up front, but buying a new Mac Mini in five years or whatever is much cheaper than buying a new iMac, at least
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:01 PM on February 1

Yeah, my spouse's employer sent her one of the 5k LG screens and damn if it isn't gorgeous and I can immediately tell it's better than a 4k display scaled to QHD as soon as I sit down at it. But it only has the one Thunderbolt input, so if I wanted to use it on my MacBook Air and Mini, I'd have to... What, swap the connector back and forth? Like a caveman? And worse, swapping all my USB accessories every time, too? Ugh.

Although it looks like maybe Sabrent has a "you've already decided that money is no object" option available for connecting two Thunderbolt computers to one Thunderbolt display. I suppose if you're already in for $1299 for the LG 5k display, what's another $299? Or maybe, the $999 Samsung Viewfinity S9 5k screen, which at least has two inputs, neither of which is HDMI.
posted by Kyol at 6:40 PM on February 1

> They haven't designed any Apple silicon to deal with the ridiculousness that is a 5K display rather than some iteration of 1080.

Every AS SoC supports the 5k and 6k monitors. The only thing lacking from some of them is 8k support. The Snazzy Labs video does mention the limited PPI range so 5k needs to be about 27" and 6k around 32".

It also says "you'd need an M3 Pro or higher" to run 6k, but this is an error. The M1 MacBook Air supports the Pro Display XDR. I use this config, though my Air has 16GB and I'm not editing 4k video (though I do use Final Cut Pro for 1080p video). Crazy to use a $5k monitor with a $1200 laptop? Sure, but I bought it during work-at-home, at 25% off and I also use it with an M2 Pro or M3 Max laptop for work stuff, too.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 9:39 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

And while I was poking around looking for UVC-C capture clients, it turns out that there's a ridiculous seeming chain of software that will let you stream a UVC-C capture from your Mac into your Apple Vision Pro, so you can play your NES in your Apple Vision Pro. Truly, what a time we live in.
posted by Kyol at 10:02 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]

Popping a virtual display up in the headset makes my 55" TV in the background look like a 9" 512x384 Mac screen LOL

My 50yo eyes can't focus all that well within ~1 foot but the focal plane is far enough out that that's not a problem at all.

This is more a sitting-in-a-recliner device than an active walk-around VR headset.

The pupil tracking is interesting and new technology. Certainly the future.

This is what the HoloLens wanted to be when it grew up.

Pretty cool that I can have a 100% immersive headset on but still type on my 2020 MacBook, and even cut.& paste from it into the VR world. Still a bit dodgy but very high tech!

Apple tried their best, but I don't think this will be a mass-market success this decade. The very words Head Mounted Display is still the fatal flaw with the technology.

But I am trying to see if this first-get HMD can compete with a friend's very spendy 12' JVC D-ILA home theater projector setup, for one-person use of course. I would like more eye relief for extended viewing I think, like 3m out instead of the current ~1.4m.
posted by torokunai at 11:53 PM on February 2 [4 favorites]

Watched Yesterday on Amazon Prime just now. Have been wanting to see it . . . used my AirPod Pro thingies but I'd rather be able to AirPlay the video to my home sound system, haven't figured out how to do that yet.

I am finding I like to lay back on my couch looking up at round 30°from horizontal with the screen about 15' wide floating way up near the ceiling. So comfy. So couch-potato-ey.

If I ever get a physical 12' screen projection system I'm doing to mount it like that LOL.

This technology will be an absolute godsend for people with motor difficulties, if Apple like makes it possible to click with one's lips or something instead of the finger-tap gesture.

Zero apps available in the AppStore right now, sigh. Shoulda been working on my own these 6 months . . . . .
posted by torokunai at 8:26 PM on February 4

> click with one's lips or something

this vision of a corporate cyberpunk utopia with people walking around wearing googly-eyed ski goggles while constantly making kissy-faces into the air has been severely undersold
posted by glonous keming at 4:16 AM on February 5 [1 favorite]

> This technology will be an absolute godsend for people with motor difficulties, if Apple like makes it possible to click with one's lips or something instead of the finger-tap gesture.

I haven't tried these, but the accessibility features have dwell control which lets you interact with something by looking at it longer, as well as sound control, which assigns certain actions to sounds.
posted by brentajones at 6:27 AM on February 5

So the thing I haven't been able to figure out from the reviews - is this a single user device like iPhones and iPads, or is there some mechanism for multi user logins like a MacBook? I mean I'm assuming the former, but since you can easily swap out lens corrections and the light seal and cushions, it's not _entirely_ unreasonable to think that Optic ID could log in different users...

I mean, I'm sure it doesn't, but for $3500, it'd be nice if I could share it with my spouse, y'know? I suppose we just make a shared icloud login, add it to the family, and roll that way.
posted by Kyol at 8:15 AM on February 5 [1 favorite]

> So the thing I haven't been able to figure out from the reviews - is this a single user device like iPhones and iPads, or is there some mechanism for multi user logins like a MacBook?

So far, it's single user. There's no ability for logging in someone else.

There is a "guest mode" that lets other folks try it out. The owner can decide what apps to allow access to, and can mirror the view to another AirPlay-capable device (allowing for a "guided tour" type experience). The owner enables guest mode, and then you have five minutes for the guest to put it on (allowing time to change the headband, light seal if necessary, remove prescription/reader inserts, etc.). Once the guest is wearing it, as far as I can tell there's no time limit or anything like that, but once they remove it, guest mode is over and would need to be reenabled by the owner.

CNET has a video demo of guest mode.

It's also possible to set it up without the eyeball ID or a passcode, so presumably then anyone could use it with the logged-in Apple ID account. There are some features disabled without a passcode, like Personas.
posted by brentajones at 8:23 AM on February 5

I forgot to mention, once the guest puts on the goggles they go through a short calibration. This is the same as the calibration for the owner, but the owner only needs to do it once and it's saved. Guest mode takes you through it every time (since as far as the headset knows, it could be a different person every time). It's not a long or onerous process, but it is slightly inconvenient if you're only sharing it between two people. Sharing it with no passcode or a shared passcode you may or may not need to recalibrate it manually when switching between users (but you definitely need to change the settings if there's a change in the lens inserts needed).
posted by brentajones at 8:28 AM on February 5

If you are ìn the US and have an apple store handy Apple is booking half hour demos. Apparently setup is an approximately 10 minute process for a guest user though no indication how much he of that may be short circuited for a repeat guest user.
posted by Mitheral at 4:10 PM on February 5

The point at which this device doesn't need corrective lens inserts is the day this device becomes something that can really begin to work properly.

I know the end point that Tim Cook is looking toward is full, actual AR, where you're seeing the real world and there's a computer overlay happening. Cook is really wanting this to be eyeglasses form factor in the end.

But I can't even go in and get a demo, my eyesight is so bad, unless I spend $150 for inserts first. That seems a bit... yeah.
posted by hippybear at 6:05 PM on February 5

My spouse scheduled a demo - it asks you if you need vision correction, whether you wear contacts or glasses, then tells you to bring in your glasses so they can read the prescription and pick the right insert out of their inventory for the demo. Apparently it even asks about monovision contacts, so you might be in luck. I mean, I'm not sure how well the device can read my progressive + astigmatism lenses, but it hasn't been a problem yet at my ophthalmologist's office either so I guess the technology exists? I'll probably bring in my slightly out of date pair of contacts in just in case.

The "book a demo" page has a link to a Zeiss page that can check whether your prescription is covered by Zeiss, although that doesn't answer if it's covered by the store inventory for demo purposes.
posted by Kyol at 9:06 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]

I said: This will be either really good for watching porn, or really terrible.
I read: ‘$3,500 Chastity Belt’: Early Apple Vision Pro Adopters Alarmed to Learn VR Porn Doesn't Work
posted by chavenet at 9:30 AM on February 6

So, a few things I've seen float past as headlines related to this device:

The original OS had no way to reset a forgotten password. The first patch for the OS has fixed this problem. It will also enable corporate device management.

In the "duh, of course" department, one of the earliest art-creation tools lets you project a virtual image on top of a physical canvas for tracing, like old opaque projectors, etc.

iFixit begins what will be apparently a series of videos with their Vision Pro Teardown [6m]
posted by hippybear at 11:54 AM on February 6

So I just got back from my demo and - yeah, it was neat, and much better than both the Windows Mixed Reality headset and the PSVR headset that I have - no nausea, no congested feeling from an overly tight nose light seal, all very nice. They have a lensometer right next to the demo station and they get your lenses and the demo unit squared away in a few minutes. Unfortunately they don't know what the lensometer thinks your prescription was, so you can't go "ah it got close to but not exactly my prescription, that's why things might have looked the way they did", but I suppose there's some HIPAA limit there that they don't want to risk collecting actual health data in a medical sense. But I had a bit of color fringing around the edges and some judder in the camera feed while moving my head left and right. Probably something I'd get used to within an hour or so, I barely notice the color fringing on my daily wear glasses unless if I really go looking for it.

But the actual unit? Yeah, it's neat. But $3500 would buy me several hobbies worth of neat stuff, and I can't come up with any good way of justifying it as more than a hobby. I'm still excited to see where it goes in the future, though.
posted by Kyol at 12:37 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]

“The Four Black Eggs Of The Apocalypse,” Rusty Foster, Today in Tabs, 06 February 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 5:16 PM on February 6