CUPERTINO, Calif. — Wearing Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, you might be totally immersed in a virtual world you operate simply by moving your eyes and fingers.
But one question remained for us both: Why would you want to use one on a regular basis? We wouldn’t — but it’s early days for Apple’s biggest new product in nearly a decade.
The Vision Pro, which goes on sale next year, heralds the beginning of a new generation in personal technology, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a presentation at the company’s annual WWDC showcase. Yet rivals Google, Microsoft, Meta and others have all tried — and failed — to sufficiently answer the “what’s it good for” question with their own virtual reality and augmented reality devices. This technology, so far, has been a solution in search of a problem.
Apple’s “what’s it good for” answer boils down to: This is an improved reality, not some other-world “metaverse.” The Vision Pro layers apps, movies, scenic vistas and other experiences on top of a representation of the world in front of you. In our demo, we walked around a room and interacted with other people while we wore the headset.
That’s a smart pitch, but it presumes Apple has overcome some major hurdles, including comfort, motion sickness, and human-computer interface challenges that have made existing devices hard to enjoy for more than short bursts. That’s why we were both so curious to strap in for a bit.
Your results may vary
Even after just 30 minutes, it became apparent Apple had tackled one of these issues with great elegance: controlling the device. Sensors inside it track the location of your eyes. So simply by moving our eyes and flicking our fingers, we could select virtual menus and move things around — no awkward controller involved. It’s as intuitive as the first time we used a touch-screen phone.
Other aspects, though, clearly need more work. The digital avatars that represent Vision Pro users during FaceTime calls looked unnatural and had mismatched lip movement and erratic blinking at times. (That’s definitely not better than a phone-based video call.) Neither of us found the so-called pass-through representation of the real world to be particularly crisp — though it didn’t suffer from lag, which would have been a dealbreaker.
And we noticed some aspects of the experience were as different as the shapes of our faces. Before each of our demos, Apple customized the internal lenses to replace our glasses as well as other aspects of the device’s fit. Still, one of us found the screen looked a bit dull, perhaps because the test unit had a gap around the nose that let a bit of the (much brighter) light of the real room flow inside. That didn’t happen to the other. (Apple says it will be able to better customize the seal of the device when it goes on sale.)
After half an hour, one of us found the device warm and heavy enough to want to take off. The other, who used it during a cooler time of day, found it hefty but acceptable. That’s an indication of the challenge Apple faces with its first product where the realities of your body and surroundings can so dramatically affect the experience.
What Apple says you’ll do in a Vision Pro: Work and watch
So how will Apple get us to think differently about wearing a face computer? Its product launch focused most of its attention on two use cases: work and entertainment.
The initial spotlight on work is surprising for Apple, whose core business is consumers, but perhaps reflects the reality of the device’s price, which makes it out of reach for the vast majority of families.
Inside the headset, you can surround yourself with apps, project your Mac screen, and take FaceTime calls with that little avatar of yourself. You operate apps with your hands — flick your hand to scroll up and pinch to select. You can switch apps just by moving your eyes.
In Apple’s demo, we spent most of our time looking at buttons and menu items on screen, pinching our thumbs and index fingers together to select them. To scroll through videos in an app, we pinched and dragged like we were pulling a thread. This was all a lot less awkward than it sounds, and our interactions were more or less error free after a few minutes.
But what would make you choose this over your Mac? And what’s it going to be like typing? A virtual keyboard one of us tried was painful: You had to set your gaze at each letter and then tap your finger to select. (Apple says you’re supposed to be able to type with two hands on an imaginary keyboard, but he couldn’t get that to work.) You can also operate it with a real-world bluetooth keyboard, but we weren’t able to try it.
Another question mark is using the device while walking around, even though you can see your immediate surroundings. During a walkabout demonstration, we worried about bumping into the real wall because we couldn’t quite tell where it was.
Apple’s second big use for the Vision Pro is entertainment. We watched clips of movies in a visually and sonically immersive space — a private showing in a top-end theater. Perhaps the best use Apple suggested for the device: Using it on an airplane to block out all the annoyances of flying. But none of what we saw in our demos, such as clips of a concert and a basketball game, felt new compared to what we’ve seen on VR devices since 2015.
And more questions remain: Would you feel comfortable wearing this for all three hours and 14 minutes of “Titanic?” In an improvement over its rivals, Apple moved the battery pack to a separate tethered brick, so you don’t have to wear it on your face. But the headset still weighs a bit more than a pound — not so much less than the roughly 1.5 pounds of Meta’s Quest Pro.
For entertainment use, however, Apple appears to have made inroads in another issue that has held back VR technology: feeling isolated and vulnerable because you’re cut off from the world. There’s a physical dial that lets the user bring their immediate surroundings in and out of view. And when someone physically approaches you while you’re wearing the Vision Pro, they materialize into view so you’re not taken off guard.
One of the most standout experiences of trying on the headset wasn’t actually a pillar of Apple’s launch presentation: capturing so-called spatial photos and video in 3D. It feels special in a way we’re not always used to from new gadgets.
These images and video, which you can take with a press of a button on the headset, feel firmly rooted in space — people can move into the foreground and back out of it, while immersive audio plays in the background. They offer a sense of time and place that 2D content just can’t, and it’s the closest thing we’ve seen so far to a killer app for the Vision Pro.
Yet it also highlights one more magic trick Apple must master: making wearing a face computer during these precious moments not feel awkward for everyone involved.
