Hands on & hands free - Apple Vision Pro Special

It's not new-news to say that the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) has most definitely made an impact in the consumer tech world. We've seen people wear them in Apple Stores, out on the street, on trains and planes, with one guy even wearing it in his wedding photos — I can't imagine that will age very well!

But, despite the hype and drama surrounding it, what is it actually like to use, how good is it really, and is it the breakthrough product we've been waiting for?

Earlier this month I got the opportunity to try out the AVP for myself and understand just what is going on and how it feels.

Presentation:

The headset is shipped in a typically Apple-style white matt-finish box, with lots of lovely pull-off seals — you know the ones that make you feel special. And you can't fault Apple for this, they do packaging very well.

However, if you want to carry the AVP around with you, you'll need the several-hundred Dollar Travel Case. Which, I'm sorry looks a little odd, as its covered in only what can be described as an annoying sleeping bag material that puffs up when pressed - it's most probably a clever device to protect the actual product inside, but you can't help feeling "This doesn't quite feel as 'premium' as the rest of the unit."

But anyway, it's not about what's on the outside, it's what's on the inside that counts. [Other travel cases are available]

The Main Unit

You have to say that Apple do aluminium and glass very very well. The unit itself is gorgeous with smooth lines. Beautiful finish that glistening shiny front paired with the clever weave material all goes into a fantastic looking machine.

On the front of the unit when you catch it in the right light, you can see the sensor array around the curved edges and closer to inspection you can see the angled speakers that deliver really amazing sound.

One thing to note is that the AVP is heavily reliant on magnet technology to keep everything in place, and one careless slip can dislodge a whole bunch of things that you kind of need in place for it to work, so little word of warning is treat it carefully.

To wear the AVP, you need to carefully handle both the main unit and the head strap, similar to wearing a pair of goggles or a ski mask (not Ideal to be honest if you have a shaved head like me). Simple turn of the adjustment wheel tightens up the head strap and the main unit onto face pretty quickly and with a few minor adjustments you can find a nice position for to sit. Then you are ready to rock.

Displays and arrays

This area is surely where the rubber hits the road. We've been told a lot about the magical display and the lens technology required to wrap all those pixels around your field of view, and along with that comes the tracking capabilities. My experience of both, I have to say, was 'mixed'.

When it comes to the eye-tracking, it's nearly perfect —It probably is perfect. I couldn't catch it out, and it seems highly intuitive, and once you understand that if you look at something, make the tap gesture with your fingers, that thing is then selected, you get used to it very very quickly. It's not a steep learning curve at all, so a huge tick to Apple for getting that right. For it [AVP] to know where you're looking, push full rendering capacity to that area of the screen, then change it to a different area of the screen, depending on where you look —I think Apple has done an amazing job, and the display with rendered items is crisp.

However, for some reason, I think we're always gonna have a problem with camera pass-through screens. When I first put the Apple Vision Pro on I gave an audible, "Oh!" I'm afraid to say it wasn't a good "oh" it was a slightly disappointed one. Maybe it was because of the lighting, maybe it's because I was expecting perfection following the marketing hype, but you could certainly see a lot of pixels, and the colour matching compared to the real world was 'off'. But, this is the first generation of a brand-new product from Apple, if this is their entry-level, I think it promises a lot for where they're going to go with it in the next couple of generations.

Put on an go

Having said all of that, I think the thing that really stands out is actually something that nobody will ever really see - that is, you can put this device on and just start going about your business, selecting apps interacting with surfaces, with hardly any set up at all. The room mapping scene and understanding seems automatic – that's because it probably is.

The fact that it comes without any controllers speaks to Apple's confidence in hand tracking, which is second to none, and one of the best examples I've seen so far – again, trying to break it - I couldn't find an example where it wasn't working, which means it's a really sophisticated implementation.

As ever, though, it's the applications that are written for it, which I think will be the true test, but whether this kind of device lives on or, will it be a different form factor, which is ultimately adopted by the mainstream i.e. not goggles?

The 'Gubbins'

The Apple Vision Pro is really carrying some heavy weight hardware underneath the shiny surface. The two chips responsible for processing sensor information and then driving the display corresponding to each minute movement of the wearer is probably currently unmatched. When I say 'Gubbins' this is what I mean, all the clever stuff that goes on inside.

But, one piece of hardware that sits outside of the actual headset is the tethered battery which, with its polished aluminium cover seems to easily slide into a pocket and the clever design of the attachment mechanism means that it's naturally oriented to go over your ear and down your back. I didn't find that I was catching it on my arm, or that it restricted my movement anyway, whilst wearing the device. I think it's a clever implementation of how to get power to the device without adding an extra weight onto your head and neck.

It did make me wonder whether some of the computing power could've been housed in the external battery pack unit, making the headset possibly a bit lighter, but then the Trader suppose is latency with not just power but information going through a wire back-and-forth from a computing pack to the headset – something mind you, Magic Leap 2 seems to do pretty well.

So what about the future?

Do I see a time where we're all wearing these type of goggles? Answer: No. —or at least I hope not for the sake of humanity🤣.

I think we must keep in mind why you were doing these things, and what advancements and enhancements they can really make to our lives, but that these devices must not interrupt the reason that we invented them in the first place that is to help us better communicate with each other.

So where do we go? This is just a speculation, but I would imagine the more traditional glasses-type form factor ultimately win out versus the goggles.

Having said that there are countless short-term uses (short periods of time), where putting on a headset would be a huge advantage, especially in the field of training, up-skilling, or task enhancements. This type of technology would give you as an individual, a particular advantage. So I think the future is neither all-in or all-out on these devices, but instead, let's choose the right moments to use this technology, and know when we don't really need it.

There's a very dystopian AI generated video which shows people on a train or wearing goggles and you have to ask yourself if you were the only person not wearing them, wouldn't you be the most free?

-end of line.

Thank you once again, somehow you scrolled this far!

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Have a wonderful few weeks and I hope to see you here again for a review of Mar. 2024!

Dan.