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.
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.
After announcing in December that it had deprecated Windows Mixed Reality, Microsoft has released a new Insider Preview Build (26052) without the feature.
The company writes in a blog post that Windows Mixed Reality headsets won’t work from this build onward, including for SteamVR and SteamVR Beta. Users can still use mixed reality headsets with Steam until November 2026 if they don’t update from Windows 11 version 23H2. “This deprecation does not impact HoloLens,” the company added.
[Windows Insider Blog]
Last year, Brilliant Labs brought AI to your existing eyewear with its $299 Monocle clip-on, and now it’s announced the Frame AI glasses, an open-source, hackable micro Python-based platform with a micro OLED display, front-facing camera, and more.
There’s a Noa app to connect it with AI services from OpenAI and Perplexity (like Rabbit’s R1 AI device).
Preorders are open now in black, gray, or clear, with the first glasses due to ship on April 15th.
In addition to our detailed review, The Verge video team brought in Vox Media employees from different areas of the company to experience the Apple Vision Pro for the very first time.
See their reactions, including mine, right here. Let’s just say there were a lot of “whoa(s).”
MacRumors reports that Apple’s 3D face scans have been updated after the latest visionOS 1.1 developer update. The feature is still labelled as a “Beta,” but the update prompts users to recapture their Persona for “the latest appearance updates.”
Oh, and the update also lets you reset your face computer if you forget your passcode, which wasn’t originally possible.
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.
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.
Honestly? Apart from leftover residue, not bad, from the look of it in this pic shared by iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens.
Hopefully, that front screen still working means you can forego the $799 front glass replacement cost if you didn’t pony up for two years of AppleCare Plus.
9to5Mac pointed out the caveat in a new support page Apple published yesterday. The company lists the Magic Trackpad as supported, but makes no mention of the Magic Mouse, so presumably that’s lumped in with Bluetooth mice.
Also, while “most Bluetooth keyboards” will work, Apple says its own older, removable-battery-powered keyboards and trackpads are incompatible with the 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.
When I saw how the app Shortcut Buttons lets you put virtual buttons around your home to trigger smart home devices using Apple’s Vision Pro, I was (almost) sold.
This is a use case for the $3,500 head computer I can really get behind (you know, once it doesn’t cost $3,500). The lack of new interfaces for the smart home is something I complain about a lot. This might shut me up for a bit.
Check out Matthew Cassinelli’s rundown of how the $8 app works.
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.
7
Verge Score
The Apple Vision Pro is the best headset anyone’s ever made — and that’s the problem.
$60 million sounds like a lot, but how much can it really buy you these days?
The extra money should allow Xreal to make up to 2 million AR headsets in 2025, per Bloomberg. Its latest, the Air 2 Ultra, ships in March.
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,
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.
In an interview with Venturebeat, Ross Rosenberg claims that Apple can’t match the level of precision that Magic Leap’s tech can provide:
“What Apple has shown, as I’m sure you’ve seen, is much more about watching a streaming movie or a Facetime call, where you don’t need nearly as much accuracy. That’s a very different space.”
The augmented reality company was recently granted $590 million in additional debt relief funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as Apple readies its Vision Pro headset for launch on February 2nd.
