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By Tyler Chin
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Early last June, Apple announced the Apple Vision Pro, its first-ever VR headset (or “spatial computer,” as the brand prefers to call it), which essentially functions as a wearable MacBook. Unlike its peers like the Meta Quest 3 which have taken off amongst gamers, Apple’s take on VR focuses less on entertainment and more on productivity and communication. It’s a powerhouse wearable that lets you tap into entire worlds and programs just by looking at them and pinching your fingers. We were able to test drive the Apple Vision Pro, which is available for preorders starting today, and found it to be a helluva good time—with some important caveats.
Apple
Vision Pro
Apple
Apple’s main point of promotion for Vision Pro is its potential to revolutionize the way we work. As the logo likes to point out, it’s necessarily a laptop. The most exciting new features of the device are the intuitive controls that scan your eyes and hands. so you can use them as sliders. If you need to click on an app, look directly at it and the button will light up so you know it’s selected. To click on it, press your index finger and thumb simultaneously, as if it were the Double-tap function on newer Apple Watches and one of the earbuds’ cameras will record what your hands are doing. Other gestures include pinching and swiping your hand to scroll down a web page. I would have sounded a lot like Leonard Bernstein performing an orchestra.
In the same way that you have other screens and monitors in your painting setup, Vision Pro allows you to open tabs in your painting area, which for headphones means that your 360-degree area is necessarily a cluttered window. You can have Slack open on your right, a spreadsheet displayed directly in front of you, Spotify on the left, your fantasy football league stats behind you, iMessage at your feet, and crossword puzzles above your head.
Moving apps using only your eyes and hands is pretty nifty and if it doesn’t increase your productivity by two hundred times, then you’re probably not using Apple Vision Pro properly. An Apple spokesperson told us that it anticipates staff will use the device in shared offices to improve multitasking (similar to a typical multi-monitor setup). There’s even a collaboration mode that allows you to work on projects together with other Vision Pro users, I haven’t had a chance to check it out.
However, as with learning how to use a touch screen, there is a learning curve. There have been a few occasions where my hands were crossed in my lap and the clicking motion did not register with the device. But until the end of the demo, I had learned to consciously keep my hands apart so that the device responds to my movements, and it would be pretty easy to adapt to that if you’re not a general Luddite.
If Apple had not presented a transparent demo about the Vision Pro, there would have been no point in releasing it. Fortunately, this one delivers on its promises. The polished glass visor comes with a micro-OLED display that creates incredibly beautiful and accurate photo and video projections. Part of the demo showed us images and videos from the iPhone to enjoy the crisp quality of the screen. For anyone who has ever taken a panoramic photo with their phone and wondered why do it, Vision Pro is where you can fully appreciate immersive images. It allows you to scan the entire view, almost as if you’ve returned to the moment you captured the photo.
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Everything you see on the display is projected onto your real-world environment, too. It’s almost like Vision Pro is a personal home theater projector that only you can see. The virtual reality of it all is quite impressive, especially when life-sized objects are coming your way. At one point in the demonstration, I gave the app JigSpace a spin, in which a life-sized 3D rendering of an Alfa Romeo F1 crash landed right next to me. At some points I forgot the car wasn’t actually real and didn’t have to worry about ramming my shin into the tire. Hell, even an interactive dinosaur experience had me ducking out of the way as if an extinct behemoth were actually charging at me.
Even more impressive is the Apple Vision Pro’s ability to visually reconfigure the environment around you. Press a crown on the side of the helmet to touch up your immediate landscape and update your 360-degree view with a completely different location. That means you can reach Haleakala on Maui in an instant, and imaginary settings like Avengers Tower or the Star Wars desert planet of Tatooine in an instant.
Like any smart immersive technology feature (ANC, for example), there also deserves to be controls that allow you to continue interacting as a human being in the world. Like adaptive audio, Apple has also taken the time to incorporate built-in images that make other people in your scene appear IRL in your view, so you can see them even when you interact with the device.
Another cool feature of Vision Pro is its EyeSight demo, which essentially captures how its observers look (real-time eye movements and all) and projects them onto the front of the device to make it a little less impactful for someone to have a vision. conversation with you when you wear the helmet. It wasn’t part of my demo, but I was able to interact with an Apple spokesperson whose EyeSight demo made me feel like I knew what his entire face looked like, despite being 50% covered by futuristic glasses. I swear. It’s not as scary as the promotional photographs make it out to be, I hope you don’t get into the habit of having full conversations with other people while you’re immersed in another world (just take your helmet off, please).
One notable downside of using the Apple Vision Pro is the bulky design. Compared to my regular glasses, which clock in at less than an ounce, this device weighs a full pound (the equivalent of wearing a soccer ball on your face). It comes with two optional bands to help secure it to your head. The Solo Knit one wraps around the back of your dome and tightens via a nifty dial, but the lack of over-the-head support certainly feels cumbersome, as if you were donning a heavy pair of ski goggles.
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We imagine most people will opt for the Dual Loop band, though, which straps on over and behind the head like an N95 for a comfier, more balanced fit. The only downside to it is that it’s slightly less secure, with only a velcro band to adjust the sizing. It’s comfortable for about the first 10 minutes, but like my regular glasses, I found I constantly needed to adjust the headset on my face. After about 25 minutes, I felt like I had done a full neck workout. Since a big part of the VR experience will be screening 3D movies, I couldn’t help but wonder how most users will tolerate the weight of the headset for a full hour (let alone a three-hour long Avatar screening).
The Vision Pro’s battery life also drains after just two hours before you want to plug it back into an outlet. This can be expected, as its competitor Meta Quest 3 has a similar runtime of two hours, but restricted if you’re doing anything that requires going beyond your plug or laptop. Still, if you’re using it for work (more on that below) and its state is still, it can stay plugged in without much interruption as it charges via USB. -C and can be connected directly to your laptop.
The battery hangs from a cable in the earbuds, which isn’t a big deal, but it’s still a bit bulky for an Apple product. To keep it out of the way, I put it in my pocket, with only a few turns where the thread wrapped around my arm and interrupted my movements.
Even in the short time I spent with Apple Vision Pro, a quick immersion into the world of virtual truth was a real delight. For the work-from-home audience in particular, there are plenty of benefits to look forward to, but it’s yet to be noted how this will feasibly work in a real workplace setup. Hopefully, the logo can also make the helmet more comfortable to wear on the inevitable next-gen Vision Pros.
If you’re wondering whether it’s worth it to buy two monitors or just a fully loaded RV for a whopping $3,499 (that’s the value of two MacBooks), the answer is probably to buy those damn monitors. The novelty of a somewhat laptop will probably wear off quickly, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be fun to use, at least if you can tolerate the weight of the headphones. And in the age of dumb technology, Vision Pro at least makes you feel like we’re headed in the right direction with our VR technology.
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Apple
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