Introduction:
This is the Vision Pro, and Apple doesn’t really want you to buy it.
Almost every tech product that has ever come out,
you know that the company has first thought,
what’s the selling point?
Either a key problem that it’s fixing,
or just a clear reason that you would want to buy one.
And so almost consistently,
when you get a first generation product in a new category,
it’s still going to have those key selling features,
because they’re necessary for it to be a success.
But then it’s also going to be incredibly rough around the edges,
because the company has prioritised those,
as opposed to making sure that all the little granular things are right.
This apple vision pro review will be helpful for you
🌀 The Vision Pro Is Different
But with the Vision Pro,
maybe the biggest product in the company’s entire history,
I think it’s kind of the opposite.
I mean, Apple are masters of marketing.
You know how they carefully curate the sprinkle of new features
that each and every new iPhone comes with,
to make sure that you’re always wanting to keep moving up that ladder.
If this company wanted to,
they could absolutely sell you on this product.
But I don’t think they’re trying to.
💰 Price Tag, No Killer App
The Vision Pro released in the US only,
with a high price tag,
it has no real killer app,
it has no blockbuster augmented reality game.
And instead of those headline features,
it actually focuses instead on doing all those little things really well.
The things that far fewer people are going to notice,
and far fewer people are going to buy it for.
I have given the link to buy it at the last
👨💻 Made for Developers?
Why?
Well, I think the only reason Apple has made this product is for developers.
That they’re placing a bet that the future of consumer tech
is veering towards headsets.
And so by making one absolutely banging piece of hardware
that sells devs on this vision of the future,
and by banking on the high confidence
that people already have in Apple products succeeding,
it’s going to make those devs start scurrying to build apps for this platform.
🥇 First Mover Advantage
Potentially even making it the default VR platform,
before most of its competitors have even properly taken a stab at it.
That said, we’re now a month into launch,
I’ve been using this for work, for play, for travel,
and this product scares me.
Both in terms of its monstrous,
and I mean monstrous potential,
but also with its consequences.
👍 The Good Starts Here
So let’s start with the good.
Like, I know that a lot of people are saying that FaceTime is weird.
The way this headset scans your face and creates this avatar for you
feels creepy and uncanny valley,
and I don’t completely disagree with that.
📊 Creepy but Impressive
During this apple vision pro review there is bad thing But in my mind, it’s not a bad thing.
See, if you plotted a graph of the realism of a character
against how acceptable they look,
you’ll get this.
People are completely okay with something that’s distinctly unrealistic.
It actually becomes even better when that character gets more detailed
and the animations improve.
But then, as soon as you hit a certain point
of being close to real but not quite,
we hate it.
It’s creepy.
It feels possessed.
🧑💼 Not Ready for Mom
And if I had to pinpoint where the Apple Vision Pro avatars currently sit,
it is around here.
So as far as actually using this to join a business meeting
or FaceTime your mum,
I don’t think she’ll be best pleased.
I think she’ll tell you to
take that blooming helmet off for us.
But as a showcase of progress,
I think this is a big deal.
That on this graph, we’ve pretty much leapfrogged all the way from here to here.
🤯 Way Ahead of the Competition
This is so far ahead of even last year’s metaverse avatars
that it genuinely makes them look like a prank.
And yes, we are at an uncomfortable stage right now,
but we had to get here at some point on the way to true realism.
So why not get it over with with a US-only Gen 1 product?
🎥 Video Calling Revolution
And also, it is really freeing now
that you can actually video call someone
without needing to get dressed up,
without needing to hold anything,
or find a surface to prop your phone up with.
And knowing that they can hear you with genuinely studio quality audio,
it sounds better than this mic here,
and see you front and centre at all times.
It’s meant that I’ve been able to talk to people while cooking,
while packing bags,
while walking on the street.
👀 The Eyesight Feature
And I feel the same way about this whole eyesight feature.
You know the way that other people can see your eyes through the headset?
Right now, it does not achieve its objective
of making it less socially awkward to film in front of people.
I’m wearing one of these around London,
on planes, in Ubers, coffee shops.
I’ve never had as much side-eye in my entire life.
You can tell that every single person you walk past
is trying their absolute hardest to not turn and stare at you,
but also that that’s exactly what they want to do.
🤯 Public Reaction and Social Awkwardness
I’ve had people call me all sorts of things,
like, take off that headset, you…
I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
But the point is, right now,
you look like a donut wearing this in public.
And that’s probably partly because the eyes need to be brighter
and the outer plastic area gets lots of reflections.
But I do think that the main thing is just the fact that it’s new.
The idea of this is not currently considered acceptable. may hope that you will not boring to this apple vision pro review
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🧠 Smart but New Idea
But as an actual concept,
I do think that eyesight is a super intelligent solution
to the problem of others being completely unaware of what you’re looking at.
Like, yeah, it’s kind of a waste of battery.
And yeah, you could just stick some LEDs on the outside,
a green one to let people know that you can see them
and a red one to let them know you’re recording.
But this does at least make those interactions
feel a little bit more human-like.
At least, you know, as much as they can
when you’ve got a screen between you.
🕶️ The Basics: Virtual Reality Done Right
Now, at its core, the Apple Vision Pro is a virtual reality headset.
It’s not dissimilar to products like the MetaQuest.
But for me, at least,
it does do more of the fundamentals right than anyone else.
It’s cushioned, but airy.
It doesn’t get clammy or sweaty.
Yes, the headset is heavy.
And I do think Apple should have added in the option
for some sort of rigid strap
like basically every VR headset comes with
just to take off some of the clamping force
from the front of your face.
🎥 Visual Perfection and Realism
And yes, if you pay attention to it,
you of course can tell that this whole pass-through thing
is a video feed that you’re watching
as opposed to your real eyes seeing the real world
with the motion blur and the grain
and the occasional sign flickering and the dynamic range.
And of course, the headset’s camera stabilization
not being as good as the stabilization of your own eyes.
But no one has done it better than this.
The resolution, the latency, the color science,
so much work has had to go into this,
and it’s a lot harder than it seems.
🎬 Video and Immersion Done Right
It’s like shooting a video all the time,
but with higher stakes
because all of a sudden,
you can’t have sudden changes in exposure.
The perspective has to match that of your eyes.
There needs to be none of the distortion
that you would normally get
with wide camera lenses like this.
And also there can’t be a delay
between when things happen and when you see them.
And Apple has done all of those things
in a proficient enough way
that in most lighting conditions,
your brain can just tune it out
and genuinely convince yourself of the illusion
that you are placing digital objects
into your real world.
🖼️ Beautiful User Interface
And that is a massive achievement.
And that is complemented by the fact
that the user interface is beautiful.
Icons, for example, are completely flat
until you look at them
and then the various different layers separate
and you get depth.
There’s no dark or light mode.
It is all about glass here,
which makes it even more immersive
because you’re seeing bits of your room
or your sky or your scene behind your apps.
🌗 Shadows, Hands, and Realism
Oh, and the shadows.
I love the shadows,
how the windows cast a little bit of darkness on the floor,
how letters cast darkness on your walls.
And the hand occlusion is absolutely phenomenal.
Most headsets like this,
they can place objects
within the room that you’re sitting in,
but that illusion breaks
the second you lift your hands up
because your hands will appear behind the window
that the headset is trying to make you think
is sitting in front of your face.
✋ Real-Time Hand Tracking
But this scans your hands in real time at all times
such that anytime you eclipse a window,
it cuts out a little bit of that window
around your hands
so that your hands still appear like they’re in front.
It isn’t perfect,
but it’s good enough
so that as long as you’re not staring at your hands,
the illusion is maintained.
Using the Apple Vision Pro
is kind of like that pipe dream
we’ve always had of using transparent phones.
📱 Interaction and Control
All the perks of that,
how unbelievably cool it feels,
but none of the cons,
like the fact that you can’t see your apps properly
or reflections interfering with everything.
Oh, and the interaction model,
the way that your eyes are used to highlight things
and your hands to select them.
I think this is going to get copied a lot.
I think it’s going to become the industry standard
so quickly that in a few years time,
it will just be,
well, of course, this is how headsets work.
👁️ Privacy and Eye Tracking
And while, of course,
the idea of big tech companies
monitoring your eye movements is particularly scary,
it feels like Apple has well addressed this issue.
Essentially, the eye tracking
happens on one layer of software
that exists completely on device.
So let’s say you’re on TikTok
and you’re looking around.
TikTok does not see these hover effects.
They do not see the room you’re sitting in
and there’s no way for them to access your persona.
All that stuff runs offline
and your Vision Pro only tells the app
the minimum amount it needs to know how to function.
BUY IT NOW
Apple vision pro review done