Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro

I’m not the one making this very big claim. That’d be Hugo Barra, former VP of Android and head of Oculus. Go check out his in-depth blog about his Vision Pro experience. It’s a great read overall, but this bit stood out:

Intentionally making the Vision Pro optics blurry is a clever move by Apple because it results in way smoother graphics across the board by hiding the screen door effect (which in practice means that you won’t see pixelation artifacts).

I’ve been hopping between both headsets and... I see what he’s saying!

There’s a new Vision Pro update out, and visionOS 1.1 supposedly improves everybody’s favorite feature, Personas. But I think it’s still the stuff of nightmares. I FaceTimed my friend, and according to her: I still look too sleepy, my mouth moves more, and my eyes are better but not quite right.

“It looks more like you, but it’s still not you.” What do y’all think?

The visionOS 1.1 release candidate that’s now available to developers includes some upgrades to the Personas avatars, such as improved rendering of eyes, mouth representation, and hair and makeup appearance.

MacRumors points out that this release also has updates for the virtual keyboard, Mac Virtual Display, mobile device management, and more. With the iOS 17.4 update close to a public launch, Apple also put out release candidates for tvOS, macOS, watchOS, and Xcode.

Joanna Stern writes in The Wall Street Journal that Apple’s face computer isn’t so great for work, but serves well as an escape from day-to-day life. You know, like a VR headset.

Still, even if the Vision Pro isn’t always magic, she finds it handy for focusing “on a single task, like writing a column.”

It’s about codecs and resolution. 4K-and-up videos only use either YouTube’s VP9 codec or the royalty-free AV1. Christian Selig, developer of the Juno YouTube app, writes that 360 video of the former can’t work because it requires Apple’s blessing. And the Vision Pro’s M2 chip has no AV1 hardware decoder, so that’s out, too.

Why not 1080p, he asks? Because it looks like doo-doo.

If you miss the kitchen TV, then this Television app for Apple’s headset has got your back. You’re able to watch videos (even spatial ones, if you like) on a whole bunch of different 3D models of TVs, from a portable CRT to a Samsung Frame lookalike.

I want to watch iCarly on a big bulky silver 2000s console.

Holonautic co-founder and developer Dennys Kuhnert says he is “both disappointed and impressed” by the Vision Pro’s performance and showed off this comparison of the two headsets with a real-time visualization tool.

As he wrote in another post, “The quality and accuracy is fantastic but the lag with passthrough hands feels currently higher than on Quest 3. Could be explained by AVP’s very low passthrough latency... ~11ms vs ~35ms for Q3.”

Apple doesn’t sell a stand for the Vision Pro, so developer Christian Selig took it upon himself to create one — just like the unofficial YouTube app he made for the headset, too.

This stand allows the headset to hang vertically, making it take up a bit less space on your desk as opposed to some other storage options out there. Selig has uploaded all the design files onto MakerWorld, so you can 3D print the stand for yourself.

I keep a pretty bushy mustache, and it seems to prevent the headset’s downward-facing cameras from seeing and translating what my mouth is doing to my Persona’s real-time expressions during a Vision Pro FaceTime call. Apparently, I’m not alone.

In fairness, Persona is still a beta feature. Maybe visionOS 1.1 will save my friends from this horror show.

While many people are excitedly entering Apple’s spatial computing future, some Vision Pro early adopters have already packed the devices up and sent them back for a refund. Reasons we’ve heard include eye fatigue, few useful apps available so far, and a lack of window / workspace persistence.

If you bought one on day one, the return window is closing now, so let us know if you’re deciding to keep your headset and why.

Assuming you’re going to keep your Vision Pro headset for a while, Apple has highlighted some of the spatial games already available that are optimized for its headset’s eye, hand, and voice controls.

They include What the Golf, Super Fruit Ninja, Synth Riders, and Lego Builder’s Journey (shown below), as well as some upcoming titles, like Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City, Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, and Spire Blast.

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.

The latest visionOS 1.0.3 update adds the option to erase the data from the Vision Pro and reset the device if you forget your passcode, as spotted by MacRumors. You could previously only reset the device by bringing it to an Apple store, making it a bit inconvenient.

It’s worth noting that Activation Lock will still be enabled when the device is reset, so if a thief gets ahold of the headset, they’ll still need your Apple ID to set it up.

Immersive Wire spoke to Vision Pro developers and found that apps like JigSpace, which was included in Apple’s press materials, got over 14,000 installs in the span of a week. Other apps have struggled to get past a 1,000-download threshold.

It obviously helps to be featured by Apple, but Immersive Wire reports some developers attribute lower download numbers to a lack of discoverability on the App Store. Developers say search capabilities need improvement, and the top 10 app lists should be easier to find.

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.

Now that people have Apple’s headset, there are so many funny videos and interesting thoughts about it floating around out there, but there’s almost no mention of the goofy low-res eyes on the front that are supposed to make other people feel like you’re looking at them. Did this just not work? I’m dying to know what you all think.