The incredible thing which was absent from their announcement of the Vision Pro by Apple was the next step in the company’s computing voyage. No, the Vision Pro is not a virtual reality device to be used for gaming or a horrendous huge display to be worn on the head. The Vision Pro is just the first major step by Apple into the world where the real and the digital are mixed, and with that, the company is wagering immensely on such a tomorrow.
Design-wise, this is one of those products that do not even need to be taken out of the box to be admired. Apple surely made the great choices combining laminated glass with recycled aluminum in terms of both looks and feel, and the two headbands—the Solo Knit Band and the Dual Loop Band—plus swappable light seals are shipped to you by Apple. The Dual Loop Band is most likely what you see in pictures, however, one side of the knitted band looks more streamlined. The 600-650 grams of the headset only rest on the face of an individual; thus, the reason most people use the dual band for comfort. Special prescription inserts from Zeiss will have to be used if you wear glasses. They cost separately but drastically improve clarity. Getting on with the work looks very much like a move from the Apple series: put the battery in, get the device and all of a sudden app icons appear in the middle of your living room. External cameras facilitate passthrough video which allows for interaction with the outside world.
The only difficult thing is that you have to fit it yourself correctly. Face-scanning technology of Apple is not always accurate, and if at all, it is slightly off, you will know it. Improper adjustment or bad seal can turn the beautiful almost-4K display into something more like a grainy 720p screen, and the next time you know, the place you feel the pressure is building. To be clear and comfortable depends on those little things which, at times, could make starting usage an annoyance.
Once you’re in, though, it really does feel like science fiction come to life. The Vision Pro runs on visionOS, which relies on your eyes, hands, and voice to control everything. Look at an icon, pinch your fingers, and it opens. Grab a window by the edge and drag it across the room. When it all works, it’s like living in a scene from Minority Report. But the sorcery is not perfect. Eye tracking occasionally picks the wrong thing, the virtual keyboard is cumbersome, and typing with no Bluetooth keyboard is agonizingly slow. Even using one, bugs occur—such as the software keyboard popping up at random or your cursor jumping to the wrong location. The system takes a lot of cues from iOS and macOS, so it feels comfortable, but sometimes it seems like Apple attempted to force a 2D interface on a 3D environment.
The hardware within the Vision Pro is genuinely impressive. It contains tons of cameras and sensors, and twin micro-OLED screens that, them, output 23 million pixels with no gaps to see. The displays go up to 100Hz with deep colors and inky blacks, and the passthrough sight of the actual world appears crisp. The LiDAR sensor allows virtual objects to interact plausibly with actual surfaces, even shadows on your desktop. Spatial audio creates another aspect, adapting sound to your head shape and room so voices and effects sound like they’re coming from specific locations in the vicinity.
For work, the headset is surprisingly good. You can toss apps around your environment, project the screen of your MacBook out in front of you, and work with your keyboard and trackpad as normal. Some already use this as a main setup for a desk. But there are boundaries. The virtual keyboard is slowing you down, apps such as Excel or Word are bare-bones versions, and you can’t even, in actuality, use your hands to touch the Mac screen in front of you, which doesn’t feel like it should be a missed opportunity.
Entertainment is where the Vision Pro truly excels. Watching a film feels like having your own personal cinema, complete with realistic lighting and giant virtual screens. Immersive settings, such as a desert night sky or a white mountain environment, make it even more of a movie. Space videos and documentaries place you in the midst of action in a manner that flat screens cannot. Games are not as big an attraction at the moment. A few use the hardware creatively, but the selection is limited, and streaming from a console is marred by lag and resolution problems.
The app landscape is expanding but remains with gaps. Apple boasts of supporting millions of iPhone and iPad apps, yet few merely exist as floating windows. There are more than 2,500 apps created specifically for the headset, but some major brands are still absent—such as YouTube, Spotify, and Slack. Apps of many feel they’re just touching the surface of what spatial computing can achieve.
All of this has real-world tradeoffs. The Vision Pro is heavy, and after half an hour, you’ll feel it pressing into your face. The external battery only lasts about two hours unless it’s plugged in, which makes using it on the go awkward. Bugs and glitches pop up often, from drifting eye tracking to disappearing windows, and sometimes the only solution is a reboot. Add to that the eye-watering cost of $3,500 before you even begin to tack on upgrades or accessories. For that amount of money, you could purchase a brand-new MacBook and iPhone as a package.
Beneath those shortfalls, however, there is something undeniable about the Vision Pro. When everything comes together—fit, hardware, and software—it feels like you’re looking ahead to what’s next. You can work on floating screens, view movies on what amounts to a personal IMAX, and communicate with people in ways that feel remarkably lifelike. It’s not ready to take the place of your laptop or phone, and it’s hardly flawless, but it’s a strong start toward a new way of conceptualizing computers.
Right now, the Vision Pro is for early adopters and enthusiasts, not the everyday user. But it’s also one of the most daring and ambitious devices Apple has ever made. It may not be the future just yet, but it’s the clearest vision we’ve seen of where things are heading.
