More from Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro
While many people are excitedly entering Apple’s spatial computing future, some Vision Pro early adopters have already packed the devices up and sent them back for a refund. Reasons we’ve heard include eye fatigue, few useful apps available so far, and a lack of window / workspace persistence.
If you bought one on day one, the return window is closing now, so let us know if you’re deciding to keep your headset and why.
Assuming you’re going to keep your Vision Pro headset for a while, Apple has highlighted some of the spatial games already available that are optimized for its headset’s eye, hand, and voice controls.
They include What the Golf, Super Fruit Ninja, Synth Riders, and Lego Builder’s Journey (shown below), as well as some upcoming titles, like Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City, Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, and Spire Blast.
If you get the USB-C-having developer strap for the Apple Vision Pro, you get more than the swole Lightning-esque connectors the headset already has, according to 9to5Mac.
Developers report that all of the pieces are detectable for a Thunderbolt connection; it’s just that Apple is limiting it to the 480Mbps max of USB 2.0.
The latest visionOS 1.0.3 update adds the option to erase the data from the Vision Pro and reset the device if you forget your passcode, as spotted by MacRumors. You could previously only reset the device by bringing it to an Apple store, making it a bit inconvenient.
It’s worth noting that Activation Lock will still be enabled when the device is reset, so if a thief gets ahold of the headset, they’ll still need your Apple ID to set it up.
Immersive Wire spoke to Vision Pro developers and found that apps like JigSpace, which was included in Apple’s press materials, got over 14,000 installs in the span of a week. Other apps have struggled to get past a 1,000-download threshold.
It obviously helps to be featured by Apple, but Immersive Wire reports some developers attribute lower download numbers to a lack of discoverability on the App Store. Developers say search capabilities need improvement, and the top 10 app lists should be easier to find.
So Mark Gurman wrote in the subscriber version of his Bloomberg Power On newsletter today. Not that we should expect any different. The iPhone, Mac, iPad, and Apple Watch all get their big updates at about the same time.
Historically, that means a September visionOS 2.0 release. Also historically, Apple will crow about Vision Pro features it just can’t wait for you to experience at this year’s WWDC.
Some members of the Vision Pro team inside Apple think that, like the iPhone and Apple Watch before it, the headset won’t hit its stride until its fourth iteration, according to Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter for Bloomberg.
That makes sense — as impressive as the Vision Pro might be already, it’s still a first-generation product with first-generation problems.
Now that people have Apple’s headset, there are so many funny videos and interesting thoughts about it floating around out there, but there’s almost no mention of the goofy low-res eyes on the front that are supposed to make other people feel like you’re looking at them. Did this just not work? I’m dying to know what you all think.
Sharp HealthCare in San Diego got a shipment of 30 Vision Pro headsets to explore how they can be used in healthcare, including as a potential way for anesthesiologists to monitor a patient’s vitals:
One idea is to put those readouts into the headset and have them appear around an anesthetized patient’s head if the headset was set to use its outward-facing cameras to pass through a view of the real world, allowing information to be overlaid on top.
I’m not sure how I would feel waking up to my anesthesiologist with a Vision Pro on their face.
[San Diego Union-Tribune]
This is clearly the worst way to play a Game Boy Advance game in VR, but I think the excellent passthrough video of the Vision Pro could make for some very cool nostalgic emulation.
At the moment, I can’t shake the mental image of a Virtual Boy with Bluetooth controller support I can put my face into. Of course, this is in a fantasy world where Apple allows emulators on the Vision Pro App Store.
Apple’s motion sickness support page tells you how to minimize possible nausea and other symptoms while using the Vision Pro. The company even offers a little label to tell you when an app or “Apple Immersive Media” has “larger amounts of motion.”
And this is it. This is how you know.
Is a glassy tech product launch complete without a destructive JerryRigEverything video?
He highlights a big difference between Apple’s smartphones and the Vision Pro: The front cover succumbs to scratches at a Mohs hardness level of 3 (The iPhone 15 Pro’s glass screen scratches at 6). That’s because, as iFixit also pointed out over the weekend, the Vision Pro’s glass sits under a plastic layer.
Apple doesn’t seem to have posted this ad in any of the usual channels — one X user says they spotted it on Snapchat.
Anyway, this person had a good idea picking Napoleon to watch, considering its 2-hour-and-38-minute runtime is more or less the same as the the Vision Pro battery pack’s.
Its size befits the price of what it comes with: Apple’s $299 Developer Strap for the Vision Pro.
The tool (which is actually engraved if you look closely enough) is used to disconnect the Developer Strap from the headset, in case users want to swap to using a Dual Loop Band or Single Knit Band instead.
iFixit’s Charlie Sorrel wrote up a deeper dive blog to complement the teardown video the repair experts published yesterday. This is the most detailed photography of the Vision Pro’s bits and bobs we’ve seen online so far.
iFixit says it has “more detail on the lens system and silicon coming in a few days.”
Of course there are plenty of videos circulating showing people “using” Apple’s headset while driving and walking — it’s an easy bit to snag views with!
As Luke Miani’s video here shows, you’ll only walk through your apps if you try, and Travel mode, which is meant for use on flights, is not a solution. It’s evident in other videos, like Casey Neistat’s, that Vision Pro wearers have to stop moving to use its apps.
Although the unboxing and “what it’s like” videos aren’t really reviews, Brownlee’s latest video — the actual review — is more of a closing chapter of a trilogy chronicling his thoughts on Apple’s very fancy headset.
This moment says a lot about the quality of the passthrough video — not just visual fidelity, but latency also:
I also had a moment where I was using the Vision Pro for a while and I had my Mac and some other monitors around me, and then I took it off and then I went and did something, and then I came back and before I put the headset back on I looked up at the wall to where I thought a window was going to be.
Portrait mode images aren’t 3D — iPhones use depth mapping to determine where everything is in space, then they use machine learning to apply simulated bokeh (that is, the blur that optical lenses give you when focusing on a subject).
iPhone camera app maker Halide explains how the Vision Pro’s “spatial” photos, which use the Vision Pro’s “stereoscopic 3D camera system,” aren’t that.
