Tag: Review

UPDATED! A Review of the Apple Vision Pro at the Three-Week Mark: What Apps and Experiences I Have Used the Most (and what Matthew Ball Thinks of the AVP After Six Months)

UPDATE 10:37 p.m.: I actually wriote this review in two parts, and reading it back, I can see now it reads a bit disjointedly for that reason, so I am including a separator between the two parts to make it clearer. Also, I had misnamed the Encounter Dinosaurs experience, an error which I have now corrected. Thanks!

I have also added a link to a blogpost by metaverse blogger Matthew Ball, with his opinions after using the Apple Vision Pro for six months.

Since I received my prescription lenses for my Apple Vision Pro on July 29th, I am nearing the end of my third week using the device almost every day, usually for an hour or two each day. The prescription lenses are magnetically attached to the AVP, so I can very easily remove them if and when I decide to start giving demonstrations of the Apple Vision Pro to other people!

I’m still getting used to the device myself, and I want to make sure that I am comfortable enough with it before I start giving demos to other people. Also, I will be reviewing documentation that other AVP users have already written up (like this example), so I can make sure that I give demos in such a way that I (and the person who receives a demo!) don’t accidentally damage my very expensive device!

For example, you have to remember to tell new users not to pick up the device by the facial shield, because it (like my prescription lenses) is only magnetically attached to the actual, glass-and-metal Apple Vision Pro itself, and it will detach when you pick it up by that! You have to remember to pick it up by holding onto the edges of the actual, curved-glass-and-metal device itself. I’m probably going to have to write up detailed, step-by-step instructions, so that any staff who work in the University of Manitoba’s future virtual reality lab will be able to help university faculty, staff, and students have their first AVP experience!

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention: I am so blown away by what I experienced these past three weeks (more details below), that I am 100% certain that, in addition to the Vive Pro 2 and Meta Quest 3, I will be asking the Libraries to purchase an Apple Vision Pro to make available to faculty, staff, and students at my university, to use for teaching, learning, and research purposes. In three short weeks, I have become an Apple Vision Pro evangelist! Come hell or high water, we are getting one. It’s just that good. I will repeat what I said in an earlier blogpost, written during my first week of using my Apple Vision Pro:

The Apple Vision Pro makes every single VR headset I have used to date feel like one of those red plastic View-Masters I used to play with as a kid in the 1960s. The “screen door” effect so evident in earlier VR headsets (where you can see individual pixels, making everything slightly blurry) is COMPLETELY, UTTERLY gone.

In fact, the Apple Vision Pro is such a leap forward in terms of technology, that it is going to be hard to go back to the once-formerly-state-of-the-art displays of the Meta Quest 3, and especially the Vive Pro 2, afterwards!

Anyway, let’s get back to the reason I wanted to write this blogpost: I wanted to talk about some of the apps and experiences I have had in my new Apple Vision Pro over the past three weeks, as well as give some more first impressions of the device itself.

Apple has lavished its usual slavish attention to style and construction on the Apple Vision Pro headset. It is beautiful to look at as well as to use! The front is one piece of custom curved glass, attached to a sleek, rounded metal frame, and it is the smallest VR headset that I have ever tried on (not as small as the Bigscreen Beyond, which I wrote about previously here, but then again, I have never tried that device).

Having worn other, bulkier, VR headsets, I found that the Apple Vision Pro sits higher on my cheeks, which feels strange at first, but you quickly get used to it. The AVP has many internal sensors and cameras, and it is smart enough to warn you when you are wearing the device too high or too low on your face, so you can adjust it accordingly for the best experience. Also, when you give somebody else a demonstration using the built-in guest mode, it automatically calculates the correct interpupillary distance (IPD; i.e. the distance between the pupils of your left and right eyes) so that you have an optimal view. (When giving demos on the Vive Pro 2 and Meta Quest 3 VR headsets, I now have a special app on my work iPad Pro 11 to measure someone’s IPD so I can dial in the correct value before they put on the headset.)

When you place your order for an AVP from the Apple website (or, if you were to purchase one in your local Apple Store), you will have to use a FaceID-enabled iPhone or iPad to do a scan of your face to determine the correct size of facial shield. The facial shield is highly customized to your face and your needs. For example, because I need prescription lenses, the facial shield has to be somewhat deeper to accommodate them (if I were to wear soft contact lenses instead to correct my vision, then I would need to purchase a separate, less deep facial shield, and my field of view would be a little bit wider than it would be with the prescription lenses).

Which brings me to something that I wish was better: the field of view. While I have found that the up-and-down field of view to be pretty good, I was less impressed with the side-to-side field of view. In particular, when recording spatial videos, it is disappointing when playing them back to see just how constrained they are. While they do offer you a wider-screen, “immersive” playback option for spatial videos, that, too, has its limitations, as the video tends to blur at the edges, instead of the crisp edges you would see when watching the video in a regular (small) window. But I have no doubt that this aspect of the technology will improve over time.

There are actually two different kinds of 3D videos that you can play in the Apple Vision Pro: spatial videos and immersive videos. The videos you can record and share using the Apple Vision Pro or a later-model iPhone (iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max models with iOS 17.2 or later) are called spatial videos; that is, you can clearly see the 3D effect, but it is not immersive. Immersive videos are recorded using more expensive equipoment, and the results are truly spectacular—you watch the video, and you feel like you are actually present!

In fact, one of the apps I signed up for is a monthly subscription service called Explore POV (Point of View), where I can download and play high-quality immersive videos, recorded in 180-degree 3D 16K resolution. The creators visit various locations around the world, and record either one long video scene, or an edited series of scenes in one video. For example, one Explore POV video is simply the videographer walking along a beach in New Zealand, watching the surf pound onto the sand under a blue sky. When you watch it, it actually is so realistic that it feels as if you are actually there—and when you lift your hand and look at it, it is superimposed on the video! Here is the Explore POV website if you want to learn more, and here’s a recent video by the creator himself:

Separate from spatial and immersive videos are the Apple Vision Pro’s built-in 360-degree Environments, which you can turn on and adjust using a knob on the upper-right of the AVP. Turn the knob all the way clockwise, and it completely replaces your space with a selected virtual-reality Environment. Turn it all the way counter-clockwise, you are in full augmented-reality mode, where your icons and app windows hover in and over your physical environment. You can also adjust the knob to somewhere in the middle, where your central view has an Environment, which fades away at the edges to your real world. It’s one of those things which is hard to describe but easy to experience, but Apple Vision Pro Environments in themselves are so well-done and so realistic, that I consider them, alone, to be a “killer app” for the Apple Vision Pro! Quite often, I will simply close all my apps and just sit and meditate (or listen to tunes from my Apple Music library) while sitting peacefully in front of Mount Hood, or halfway up Haleakalā volcano in Hawaii, watching the sun set behind the clouds.

Given this ability to surround you in various realistic environments, it is perhaps not surprising that one of the many use cases for the Apple Vision Pro is as a device to assist in calming, centering, and meditation. There are already numerous spatial meditation apps in the Apple Vision Pro Store, but the one that I have found myself using the most is called Tripp. Tripp’s main menu has five sections (Focus, Calm, Breathe, Ascend, and Sleep) where you can select from many different kinds of guided meditations, or mix and match pieces to create a customized meditation. The Ascend section features a truly psychedelic mini-documentary on the life journey of Ram Dass, the American psychologist and popularizer of Eastern spirituality and yoga, which everybody should try out, at least once!

And, of course, there is already a lot of video content to enjoy in the Apple TV+ app and the Disney+ app, including a small but growing selection of 3D videos. There is a short but extremely well-done app called Encounter Dinosaurs which really should be something anyone who tries on an Apple Vision Pro should experience! It’s definitely a showcase for the cutting-edge capabilities of the technology, where you feel you can almost reach out and touch a real, living dinosaur! Always a good demo.

And, speaking of demos, I finally gave my first demonstration of the Apple Vision Pro to another person, my brother. And this is where I have to say, things did not go so well.

I had difficulties in getting mirroring to work (that is, being able to cast what the other person was seeing in the AVP to another device, such as a MacOS desktop, iPad, or iPhone). Once I got that working, then I was able to set it up so that I could help talk my brother through how to use the Apple Vision Pro—only to forget that I had to turn mirroring off before he could watch any content on Apple TV+ and Disney+ apps! (At least he got to try out Encounter Dinosaurs.)

All in all, trying to give a demo to another user via the AVP’s Guest Mode was highly frustrating. Perhaps I have been too quick to judge the usefulness of the Apple Vision Pro for a multi-user environment like the virtual reality lab that I am currently working on setting up for my university library system. We’ll see what happens as I give other people their first taste of the device.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I have also made five or six forays into InSpaze, the Apple Vision Pro’s premier social app, and had some wonderful conversations with people from around the world! I will save that report for a later blogpost on my blog. In the meantime, you can read what I wrote earlier about InSpaze here (before I got my hot little hands on my own Apple Vision Prto!).

UPDATE 10:30 p.m.: I just discovered that Matthew Ball (whom I have written about before on this blog) has written up a blogpost titled 9 Takeaways from the Vision Pro after 6 months, so I have linked to it from my blog. I very much appreciate Matthew’s take on things, and I wanted to share what he said with you as well, as a sort of counterpoint to my own, obviously more limited, thoughts and impressions. (By the way, I agree 100% with Matthew’s take on the EyeSight feature of the AVP. While it’s cool, I also feel it’s a bit gimmicky.)

I agree with Matthew Ball; the Apple Vision Pro’s EyeSight feature (where you can see the user’s eyes while they are wearing the AVP, as shown here) is a cool gimmick, but, in my opinion, not really necessary.

Watching Disney on Haleakalā: First Impressions of the Apple Vision Pro, After Using It for One Week

Late last Monday afternoon, my prescription lenses for my new Apple Vision Pro arrived via UPS, and I was finally able to set up my AVP and download apps from the App Store (mostly educational and workplace stuff, because I’m not a gamer, and this is not a gaming headset). Here are some of my first impressions of the device, after using it for one week (and from the perspective of someone who plans to use it both as a productivity tool at work, and to consume media at home). Because I am a social VR blogger, I will also add some thoughts about the AVP and its potential applications to the metaverse.

But before I do that, I wanted to share with you what happened when I showed up at my local Apple Store on July 12th, 2024, to pick up Apple Vision Pro. As part of the process, they scanned my eyeglasses and fit a demonstration unit with the appropriate prescription lenses, so I could go through a one-hour walk-through with a store associate, who was monitoring what I could see in my AVP on a small iPad (see image, right). My first reaction when I was handed the demo unit at the Apple Store at Polo Park was: wow, it’s so small! It is a surprisingly compact unit. Compared to every other virtual reality headset I have worn, I find the device sits higher up on my cheeks, which takes a bit of getting used to at first (the Apple Vision Pro automatically determines the correct interpupillary distance/IPD, and will tell you if you need to adjust the headset up or down to get the best view).

There are only two buttons on the Apple Vision Pro: the first button is on the upper right, which you can use to pull up the apps/people/environments menus, and adjust how much of the environments you see (more on that below), and a second button on the upper left, which you use to start recording 3D video or to take a 3D photograph of what you see (you also double-click it to confirm any purchases you make in the device; it then scans your retinas to confirm that it’s you). That’s it: just two buttons! The rest of navigation is handled by eye gaze and hand gestures. You look at an app icon, and it subtly brightens; you then tap together your index finger and thumb, and select it to open the app. It is simple and intuitive, but I have found that my 60-year-old gaze has a tendency to wander a little bit, so I am still making some mistakes in my first week. I assume I will become a seasoned pro at navigation over time!

The Apple Vision Pro has what it calls environments, which are high-quality, 360-degree virtual spaces which can be used as a backdrop to your other activities in the headset, or if you just want to pause and take in the scenery. I personally think that they really are the hidden killer app of the AVP! In a message I shared with some of my friends in Second Life, I said:

As I’ve mentioned before, I got my first virtual reality headset (an Oculus Rift) back in 2017, and I’ve tried out numerous VR headsets since then: Valve Index, Vive Pro 2, Meta Quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, etc. In fact, I’m currently working on a project to set up a VR/AR lab for faculty, staff, and students at my university library system, for them to use in their teaching, learning, and research…

The Apple Vision Pro makes every single VR headset I have used to date feel like one of those red plastic View-Masters I used to play with as a kid in the 1960s. The “screen door” effect so evident in earlier VR headsets (where you can see individual pixels, making everything slightly blurry) is COMPLETELY, UTTERLY gone.

I sat at the lakeshore at Mount Hood, surrounded by forest, and listened to the rain fall gently onto the lake, causing tiny ripples in the water, watching the clouds gently cross the sky above the mountain.

It felt REAL.

I. WAS. THERE.

I almost started crying.

The following YouTube video created by another AVP user illustrates how these environments work, and takes you to two of them: a view high up on the Haleakalā volcano in Hawaii, and a wintertime scene in Yosemite National Park in California:

This video also illustrates how you can adjust the selected environment. As I said to some of my work colleagues when showing them the device, “See this knob on the upper right of the Apple Vision Pro? If I turn this knob clockwise all the way, I am rejecting your reality and replacing it with a different one.” Likewise, if I turn the same knob counter-clockwise all the way, the environment disappears, and I can see everything around me. If you wish, you can work away on an email or a spreadsheet while completely surrounded by the peaks of Yosemite!

At the moment there are only seven environments available in the AVP, but you have a choice of daytime or nighttime for all of them, so really, it’s 14 environments (you also have four “moods,” which superimpose a tint and some background sounds over your real environment). Last night, I re-subscribed to Disney+, and I watched the first 30 minutes of the 3D movie Wish on a large, theatre-quality screen while sitting on top of Haleakalā, under a full moon and a sky full of stars. (While the amount of 3D content in Disney+ is still small, it is still early days, and I have no doubt that more is in the pipeline over at the Disney industrial complex!)

But I got the Apple Vision Pro for more than just to watch movies and TV shows; I also plan to use it at work! All I have to do is take off my glasses and put it on, and when I stare at my MacBook Pro, it automatically asks if I want to connect! When I do, I have a large, beautiful screen hovering in midair above my MacBook Pro, which I can reposition and resize as I prefer. The screen is crystal clear, and text is sharp and very readable. I believe that I would easily be able to make the switch from my dual desktop monitors to the Apple Vision Pro!

Using my Apple Vision Pro with my MacBook Pro was a breeze!

By the way, there already is social VR in the Apple Vision Pro. There’s a promising program called InSpaze, which I have already downloaded and installed on my device, where you can meet up and interact with other AVP users (I wrote about it before on my blog here). Here’s a 15-minute YouTube video I had shared in my previous blogpost, to give you an idea of what InSpaze is all about, and how it works:

As part of the setting-up process for the Apple Vision Pro, you take off the headset and hold it in front of your face like a camera, to record yourself looking from side to side, up and down, closed-mouth and open-mouth smiling, raising your eyebrows, etc. These scans are then used to create a highly realistic-looking virtual recreation of your head, upon which I promptly slapped a pair of virtual eyeglasses to look more like me in real life! This recreation is called a Persona, and it can be used in places like Microsoft Teams—and InSpaze!

However, I chickened out before I even entered my first InSpaze room. Why? Well, as you know, I have visited a great many social VR experiences over the years, and written about them extensively on this blog. I mean, the tagline of my blog is “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse,” right? 😉 But, in every one of them to date, I have always hidden behind an avatar of one kind or another. Even if it was an avatar that I had styled to look like me (e.g. in the Meta Quest 3), it was a highly stylized, cartoon version of me. In InSpaze, you do have the option of selecting a cartoon avatar, but it feels somehow like cheating, when you already have a highly realistic-looking Persona of your head and shoulders that you can use. In other words, I hesitated in entering my first InSpaze room because I’m not used to sharing my actual, sixty-year-old face with other people in social VR! (I’ll eventually get there; you know I wouldn’t miss the experience for the world!)

To sum up, the Apple Vision Pro feels like magic, and I am particularly impressed with how sharp, crisp, and clear the visuals are in the device. It’s so good that you can easily forget that it’s not real! This feels very much like I got an early invite to the future, and I am particularly excited about the metaverse possibilities. In my message to my Second Life friends, I also said:

F#$%ing AMAZING tech. If you live near an Apple Store, I highly recommend you pop in for a hands-on demo. Expensive as hell, but in my opinion, worth every penny.

I just had a glimpse of the future, and lemme tellya, the future is gonna be interesting! Ready Player One is coming sooner than you think (both the good parts and the bad parts, in my opinion).

But if you can just slip on a headset and BE somewhere, anywhere, like it was reality, instead of just staring at a flat screen and wishing you were somehow there inside it, inhabiting your avatar—that magic we sometimes experience in Second Life—the people and companies who (successfully) make THAT magic happen in this new world are gonna get rich. Mark my words.

This is just a first impressions blogpost, a sort of mini-review; I have no doubt that I will write more about this amazing device in the weeks to come. I will also be working with the business office at my local Apple Store, to see if I can add an Apple Vision Pro to the mix of VR/AR headsets we will be offering in the virtual reality lab project I am currently working on for my university library system. I want as many faculty, staff, and students as possible to try out the Apple Vision Pro, and get them thinking about how this technology can be used to further their teaching, learning, and research!

The Meta Quest 3 VR Headset: A Hands-On Review of Meta’s Latest Wireless Virtual Reality Headset

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: I first started writing this blogpost in November 2023, but I haven’t had a chance to finish it until now! It is one of a huge backlog (over thirty) of half-finished blog posts, which I hope to complete and publish soon. So please stay tuned!

Also, with this blogpost, I have created a new blog post category called Review, which I will now be using to mark any hardware and software reviews I write from now on, here on the RyanSchultz.com blog.

As a librarian at my university, I am a member of the faculty union, along with the professors and instructors. One of the benefits we receive is a certain sum of money every year, travel and expense (T&E) funds, to be used to pay for our professional memberships, registration for and travel to and from conferences, books and journal subscriptions—and computer equipment! And so it was, that I used part of my T&E funds this year to purchase Meta’s latest wireless VR headset, the Meta Quest 3, which was just announced Sept. 27th, 2023 at the Meta Connect event (which I wrote about on my blog here).

Now, while I absolutely reserve the right to snark about some aspects of the Meta Connect event itself (Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton as AI chatbots? Really?!??), I still do believe that Meta makes great virtual reality hardware! And so I ordered a Meta Quest 3 (512 GB model), plus an Elite Strap with Battery, and a carrying case to lug it all around in.

This will be a test unit, which I will evaluate to see how well it would fit into the selection of hardware which will form part of a virtual reality lab for my university library system (more info here), of which I am a member of the committee helping to steer the project.

As I unpack and set up the Meta Quest 3, I will be comparing it with my previous experience with the Meta Quest 2. You can read my review of the Quest 2 here: A Hands-On Review of the Meta Quest 2 (256 GB Model, Elite Strap with Battery)

These boxes are getting smaller all the time!

My first impression: Wow, these boxes are getting smaller and lighter every time! And: Wow, those hand controllers look tiny. Anyway, wasting no time, I started unboxing.

Inside the Meta Quest 3 box (with the default strap)

I scanned the QR code on the inside of the Meta Quest 2 box, and this is the first thing it showed me on my iPhone:

Regular readers of my blog will remember my distaste for Meta’s level of consumer surveillance, so I immediately hit the Don’t Share button! I think Meta is already vacuuming up an alarming amount of my personal data as it is!

Since I already had the Oculus app installed on my work iPhone from when I set up my Meta Quest 2, the QR code didn’t really do much of anything. I was somewhat irritated that there wasn’t a paper set of step-by-step instructions to set up the Quest 3, so I did a little searching and found this webpage, which gave me a helpful video and some tips on how to get started.

The head strap that comes with the Meta Quest 3, while serviceable, really doesn’t help to redistribute the front-heavy headset (the Quest 3 weighs about the same as the Quest 2, although it is noticeably thinner). So one of the first things I did was unpack the Elite Strap with Battery, and replace the default strap. In addition to prolonging the use of the Quest 3 for another couple of hours, the rigid strap design reduces pressure on the face, and evenly distributes the total weight for a more comfortable fit (which also contributes to longer use).

The Elite Strap has a knob at the back to adjust to fit your head, and you can also use it to make it more compact to fit into the solid-feeling carrying case:

You can use the knob at the back of the Elite Strap with Battery to make the Meta Quest 3 headset small enough to fit into the carrying case, which makes it easier to take it with you!

One thing I was less than happy with is the charging cable, which is incredibly short! Meta, would it have killed you to include a longer charging cable? Don’t be so cheap!

The charging cable is waaay too short!

While at first I thought the hand controllers on the Quest 3 were much smaller than its predecessor, in fact they are approximately the same size. They’re only missing the “loop” at the top, which has been replaced by improvements to the tracking system overall. (I have enabled, but not yet tested out, hand tracking, that is, using hand gestures instead of the hand controllers.)

The hand controllers on the Meta Quest 3 (right) seem smaller than the Meta Quest 2, but that’s only because the top “loop” has been removed.

UPDATE March 2nd, 2024: I must confess that I haven’t had as much of an opportunity recently to put the Meta Quest 3 through its paces, but I did pack it into my carry-on bag when I flew to Alberta to spend last Christmas with the rest of my family, and I did give several family members a taste of virtual reality using this device, putting them into a loft apartment world in VRChat. (My usual go-to for giving people their first VR experience, a favourite tropical beach world in VRChat, called Deep Blue, unfortunately only works with a high-end tethered PVCR headset like the Valve Index of Vive Pro 2.) The Meta Quest 3 is, in my opinion, the perfect portable device for giving people an introduction to the world of virtual reality!

Also, you can use a fibre-optic Quest Link Cable (available for purchase through the Meta website for CA$109.99) to turn the standalone Meta Quest 3 into a PCVR headset, by attaching it to a high-end Windows PC with a good graphics card.

I did want to comment on what an improvement the visuals are in the Meta Quest 3 compared to its predecessor, the Meta Quest 2. The so-called “screendoor” effect (where it’s possible to determine the gaps between pixels in your headset view) has been greatly reduced, and it really improves graphics, and makes things like reading text much easier. But where there’s really a noticeable improvement between the Quest 2 and 3 is in the full-colour pass-through! According to Meta:

With full-color Passthrough, Quest 3 and Quest Pro provide you with a more perceptually comfortable, high-fidelity, real-time representation of the physical world around you. These advancements in Passthrough aren’t just to improve the VR experience you currently know, but is also fundamental to new and upcoming features that allow you to interact directly with the physical world while in-VR. Activities supported by full-color Passthrough include:

  • Using mixed reality apps that combine and use items from both your physical and virtual world.
  • Using a physical keyboard and other objects on your physical desk.
  • Interacting with other people in the same room as a part of a collaborative experience, like having a meeting in [Meta Horizon] Workrooms.

I look forward to spending more time in my Meta Quest 3 over the next few months, exploring various apps and platforms, and I will report back more often on how things are going!

The Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s Gamble on High-End Virtual Reality (and Why I Want One)

Brian Tong wearing the Apple Vision Pro (a still capture from his Apple Vision Pro unboxing video)

As I mentioned in passing in my last blogpost, I am eager to get my hot little hands on the latest Holy Grail in the world of virtual reality/augmented reality/mixed reality/extended reality (VR/AR/MR/XR): the Apple Vision Pro wireless headset, which began shipping to American consumers on February 2nd, 2024.

Alas, there is no word yet on when we non-Americans will be able to order this device, although at least one VR YouTuber, Brian Tong, has heard (via his unofficial, internal sources) that Apple is planning to expand access to the U.K. and Canada next, perhaps shortly before or during the 2024 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which is usually held the first or second week of June.

Brian’s YouTube channel has been full of many helpful videos about the Apple Vision Pro, including this unboxing video of a pre-release version, where he unpacked the various components in the Apple Vision Pro package like a giddy schoolkid on Christmas morning:

In an interesting move, Apple refers to this device as spatial computing, avoiding any mention of virtual reality, mixed reality, or any of the other terms which have usually been tossed around while talking about other headsets. Also, I find it quite telling that nowhere will you find mention of the now-often-maligned concept of the metaverse, especially after being embraced by numerous crypto/NFT projects which went nowhere, plus Facebook’s much-ballyhooed rebrand into Meta landing with a bit of a dull thud and a shrug among consumers. As fellow metaverse blogger Wagner James Au wrote on his blog last week:

With Meta’s latest earnings report published this week, we find out the company has now burned invested $42 billion on building the Metaverse, with little to show for that: Its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds has less than an estimated 500,000 monthly active users, while sales of its Quest VR headset line (a metaverse peripheral) remain steadfastly small.

While Wagner is certainly more pessimistic about virtual reality than I am, it’s clear that VR headsets are not exactly flying off shelves, especially when compared to the blockbuster sales of cellphones, tablets, and gaming consoles. Andrew Williams of Forbes reported last October:

Meta has sold more than 20 million headsets to date, 18 million of which were the Meta Quest 2.

The Quest 3’s predecessor was highly successful, considering VR isn’t really a mainstream proposition in the way standard game consoles are. But the market has not expanded in the way Meta clearly hoped.

Back in May, the Washington Post reported a significant proportion of Quest users were letting the headset gather dust after just a few weeks.

The somewhat tepid success of most VR/AR/MR/XR/metaverse ventures to date are clearly reasons why Apple has focused, in its usual savvy marketing campaign, on the fact that the Apple Vision Pro is intended to be a wearable personal computer (essentially, an iPad for your face). Apple has announced in a Feb. 1st news release that over 600 new apps built specifically for the Vision Pro were available to American consumers at launch, plus “more than 1 million compatible apps available on the App Store to deliver a wide array of breakthrough experiences.”

The Vision Pro the first completely new category of device launched by Apple since the Apple Watch in 2015, and many people (myself included) have been keen to see what Apple, with its history of launching well-designed products, would come up with. As I often say on my blog, A rising tide lifts all boats, and Apple’s entry into this market has the potential to shake things up quite a bit, especially since they have taken pretty much the opposite tack from Meta, by focusing on an expensive, ultra-high-end device as their first product.

And yes, I do mean expensive. On the U.S. Apple Vision Pro website, the three main models of the Vision Pro are for sale:

  • 256 GB of storage (starting at US$3,499);
  • 512 GB (starting at US$3,699); and
  • 1 TB (terabyte, or 1,024 GB; starting at US$3,899).

So the one-terabyte Apple Vision Pro of my fondest dreams and darkest desires comes out to $5,259.17 in Canadian dollars—and that’s before sales taxes!

Many mainstream media and tech news reviewers prepared print and video reviews of the Apple Vision Pro, using pre-release review units provided by the company. These reviews were embargoed until the official release of the headset in early February, when they landed in a big media splash (Apple has deep pockets to spend on advertising, and has always done excellent marketing for their products).

Brian Tong, the YouTuber whom I mentioned earlier, has put out a very user-friendly, comprehensive one-hour review video:

Nilay Patel of The Verge put out the following half-hour video as part of its extensive print review of the Apple Vision Pro, which did not shy away from talking about what he saw as some problems with the device, describing it succinctly as “magic…until it’s not.”

Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal (archived version) took a slightly more unusual, whimsical approach to her review of the Apple Vision Pro. Joanna wore the review unit for a full day, even taking it to out to a ski chalet and wearing it out on skis, on a closed-off bunny hill! (Something definitely not recommended, by the way; DO NOT DO THIS.) Here’s her ten-minute video, which also shows her wearing the Vision Pro while preparing a recipe, and even setting up multiple timers hovering over the different pots on her stovetop:

And yes, one of the many features of the Apple Vision Pro is that you can set up displays anywhere, as demonstrated by in this mind-bending one-minute YouTube video by Himels Tech, as he walks around his house showing off his set-up:

There are many other reviews out there, but these four video reviews between them cover pretty much all the bases, so if you watch all of them, you’re up to speed!

The eye-watering price is not the only hurdle to be overcome by whoever wants to possess one of these Holy Grail devices! Unlike every other VR headset I have purchased, I will not be able to wear my glasses underneath the face-fitting, ski-goggle-like design. So I have two options: to get soft contact lenses (which I have not worn for a couple of decades), or to buy magnetically-attached prescription lens inserts from Apple’s partner, Zeiss. According to an Apple Support article:

To purchase ZEISS Optical Inserts for Apple Vision Pro, you need a legible comprehensive prescription. Here’s the information your comprehensive prescription should contain:

Your distance correction and near correction needs, indicated separately but on the same prescription sheet. This is known as the full manifest refraction. 

An expiration date, which should not be expired.

Your date of birth, your full name, and your prescriber’s license number and signature.

Intermediate distance, task distance, or computer distance should not be part of that prescription, and contact lens prescriptions are not accepted. If you’re not sure if your prescription is comprehensive, consult an eye care provider and reference the description in this article.

ZEISS Optical Inserts are available for the vast majority of corrections, including for customers who normally use progressive or bifocal lenses. A very small percentage of people have a prism value added to their glasses prescription. At this time, ZEISS cannot manufacture ZEISS Optical Inserts based on a prescription containing prism value. If you have a prism value, it is labeled on your prescription and noted separately from sphere, cylinder, axis, and ADD values. If you’re not sure if your prescription includes prism, consult with an eye care provider.

Depending on your prescription, your vision needs might not be met through ZEISS Optical Inserts.

Annoyingly, there doesn’t seem to be any publicly-available chart to give the ranges of presecription lenses which they will support, instead asking you to fill out a form with your prescription details, and promising that they’ll get back to you as quickly as possible:

So it looks as though I am going to have to go see my eye doctor first, then submit my prescription, then cross my fingers that they will support my combination of nearsightedness and astigmatism (not to mention my need for progressive lenses!). Honestly, it all sounds rather discouraging and disheartening.

But perhaps my apprehension about the Vision Pro not working for my elderly eyes is misplaced, because even blind people are finding the device to be useful! Check out this mind-blowing YouTube Shorts video by James Rath, who tests out some of the accessibility features and settings, James says that he can actually see more clearly with the Vision Pro, than without! This device could open up a whole new use case for the visually impaired.

So, yes, I am very eager to get my hands on an Apple Vision Pro sometime this year! I don’t want to wait; I want to experience this envelope-pushing product as soon as possible. I haven’t been this excited about a headset since the Oculus Rift back in 2016. So please stay tuned as I report on my odyssey to acquire the new Holy Grail of spatial computing!