The Apple Vision Pro launch seems to have brought a lot of of interest, which is to be expected when Apple does, well, anything.
They even came up with their own marketing-infused grammar, they want people to say Apple Vision Pro, never the Apple Vision Pro.
Some of the discourse has veered into worries about people wearing visors while driving, luckily those are just a handful of attention seekers.
Technical Analysis
First of all, how is it built? iFixit to the rescue:
It would seem that finally the screen resolution and clarity are sufficient for the “lots of virtual screens” use case. Last year Karl Guttag evaluated the angular resolution of the Apple Vision Pro as between 35 and 40 PPD (pixels per degree). In the above iFixit video it’s measured at 34 PPD, so that was spot on.
Basically if you are at all interested in the optics side of thing, just read everything Guttag writes: https://kguttag.com/tag/apple-vision-pro/
Also check out the Ars Technica review.
On the development side, Unity support is now out of beta, but it is only available for Pro users ($1800/year). So for most developers the choice is between the native Apple SDKs and WebXR. The latter enables us to develop once, and run on every device, so it is clearly superior.
There has also been some debate on Spatial Video, namely whether it is simply a stereoscopic image, or if there is some parallax magic. As always with immersive video, Hugh Hou has the last word:
Another important issue with the Apple Vision Pro are the optical inserts, Eric Cheng wrote a status of optical accommodation in the whole industry.
Mainstream Reviews
Casey Neistat’s failure to activate travel mode was very funny, but it was not a very good review, so we’re not going to link it.
Joanna Stern tried some interesting “spatial” uses. In particular the multiple timers are a classic Ambient Computing idea.
The Verge’s review is great at emphasizing all the ways in which the Apple Vision Pro pushes the limits of our current computing environment.
Stratechery, Daring Fireball, Wait But Why, Hypergrid on VR Gentrification, Road to VR,
Personas demo:
MKBHD did a four-parter:
Apps
The fundamental distinction is between “windowed” apps, that are limited on a virtual screen, and actual VR apps. The beauty of Reality Kit is the ability of having spatially-aware elements in apps that still work with passthrough.
Soul Spire, Shortcut Buttons, Now Playing,
Aro.work: A webXR workspace
Everyone seems very enthusiastic about Juno, a third party YouTube client. The whole thing reminds me of Windows Phone.
From Road to VR: 8 Great Vision Pro Apps to Download First
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