More from Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro
Sam Kohl of Apple Track tweeted a picture of a cracked Vision Pro soon after west coast Apple Stores opened, and now you can see how it got that way.
Bumping into a wall, or even dropping it directly on the glass from head height didn’t immediately break the cover glass. The fall that shattered the glass came from a ceiling height of about 10 - 12 feet, directly onto the headset’s immense and expensive glass front, and the headset still mostly worked.
The dongle that we spotted in videos during WWDC 2023 lets you connect the Vision Pro headset via USB-C to a Mac, which will come in handy when creating graphics-intensive visionOS apps and games.
As MacRumors and Daring Fireball point out, it’s only available to devs with a paid account, and Apple will use these to do diagnostics and troubleshooting.
The Vision Pro is out today, and Apple’s latest ad for the device shows what it might be like to interact with the headset for the first time.
Apple is taking reservations now from its website. But if you can’t wait that long, Apple stores are offering demos of the Vision Pro on a first come, first served basis today and over the weekend.
Tim Cook already made an appearance at the Apple store on Fifth Ave in New York, where he greeted customers lined up to buy or try the headset.
...minus the included head strap, I guess.
Vision Pro. $3,499. Launches today, maybe you’ve heard of it?
And as some have noticed, the “cube” Apple Store at Fifth Avenue has added a special neon display for the launch, and Tim Cook tweeted out this picture of the completed sign.
At $3,499 with reservations for custom fitting and demos, the Vision Pro debut may not have the crowd activity of other launches, even if it does have over 600 apps, but we’ll see what happens.
That’s one of the YouTube comments on this short video diving into the $199 travel case for Apple’s Vision Pro, and it seems pretty accurate. Of course, considering what it might cost to fix a headset if it breaks, it could be a worthwhile accessory.
You know you wanted to see it, now we have it thanks to a new Vanity Fair interview with Apple’s CEO which prominently includes images of him wearing the headset, (which we didn’t see at its launch).
“I watched the third season of [Ted] Lasso on my ceiling and it was unbelievable!” said Cook.
$3,499, justified.
Our friend Marques Brownlee posted an Apple Vision Pro unboxing yesterday, but now he’s back with an overview of what exactly the headset can do.
He gets into how to set up the (somewhat unsettling) personas for use in apps like FaceTime, which involves scanning your face and then adjusting lighting, skin tone, and brightness. You can even choose to add a pair of digital glasses. Brownlee doesn’t show what a persona might look like with eyewear, but judging by how the avatars are looking so far, I bet it would be pretty silly.
Our review of Apple’s Vision Pro included an...interesting avatar call with Wall Street Journal tech reporter (and Verge alum) Joanna Stern, whose review you can watch and/or read right here.
Was it necessary for her to try to wear Apple’s spatial computing headset for 24 hours, even on the ski slope? Yes. Yes, it was.
The Vision Pro is not an easy thing to review, or explain, or score. But Nilay had to do all those things. So about 24 hours before the whole thing went live, we sat Nilay down in the studio to hash this thing out once and for all. What is the Vision Pro good at? What’s it for? Why is it so expensive? What’s the deal with the eyes? And most importantly... is it good?
With the Vision Pro set to ship starting on February 2nd, Apple uploaded a TV spot for the headset to its YouTube channel. Tim Cook presented this ad at the end of his WWDC 2023 keynote presentation, and it appears to be mostly the same, all these months later.
In June we dug through it to find out everywhere Apple imagines you’ll use its $3,499 headset, but you can watch it again right here,
Developer Finn Voorhees tested the Castaway: Spatial HDMI Monitor beta by playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder within visionOS using a USB capture card hooked up to an iPad. However, the developers of Halide/Orion have said the APIs necessary to connect their app to Vision Pro aren’t available yet.
Voorhees writes, “Going back and forth with app store review” in hopes of having it in the App Store in time for the Vision Pro launch February 2nd.
9to5Mac reported this morning that despite Apple Vision Pro preorders still being set for March shipping, the Apple Store website showed a February 3rd pickup date.
When I checked, I saw a February 3rd in-store pickup and March 3rd ship date. On a second try, there were no pickups available, with estimated shipping between February 20th – 27th.
Part of the online ordering process involves a Face ID-like head scan using your iPhone to size the Vision Pro head strap, but as some complained in a MacRumors thread, multiple scans can produce multiple results.
Not to fear, though. Apple retail employees were told they can swap straps for online customers who get the wrong size, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Or iPad, Mac, or any AirPlay-enabled device, including smart TVs. According to Apple’s website, the Vision Pro will support 720p AirPlay mirroring, however earlier on Friday, it said it would support 1080p AirPlay.
Correction, Friday, January 19th, 2023, 8:11PM ET: The description on Apple’s website changed after this post was originally published, and it has been updated to note the new resolution listed.
Apple’s uploaded a full guided tour of the Vision Pro onto YouTube. I had an in-person demo earlier this week, and this video is sort of like a speed-run of many of the things that I saw. (I also got to see the butterfly land on my finger.) Granted, this is an even more controlled setting but you get a sense of the interface and some of the things you can do.
That said, it doesn’t really convey what screens or spatial photos truly look like — nor does it address the physicality of the headset itself.
