Thoughts on Apple Vision Pro
Is AVR good? Will it make people enthusiastic for virtual and augmented reality again? Does it actually answer any of these questions? Waterstons Innovation: The Dots
Recently I (Alex) was lucky to have a play with Apple Vision Pro. Our wonderful friends over at PROTO in Gateshead have one that they brought back from the US earlier in the year. What was it like, I hear you cry. Well… read on and find out.
What is this? This is The Dots, our newsletter about exciting things we find in the world of innovation. We imagine innovation as connecting the dots; putting together a jigsaw. Our puzzle pieces are the pieces of interesting information we absorb in the world, our partners and their products. This newsletter is about these dots we find and connect.
The hardware
It’s clearly an Apple product. It’s beautifully made and everything about it just works. The velcro-esque headstrap is mystifyingly soft and easy to detach but keeps the whole caboodle, which is even more surprisingly heavy than I was expecting, safe and sound atop your noggin. The metal is cool to the touch, the joy wheel has that trademark haptic satisfaction and the headset is narrower than I imagined it was going to be.
But that weight is an issue. It rests heavily on your cheeks and the bridge of your nose in a way that doesn’t feel quite right. The lack of counter balancing battery on the back means that all the weights is on the front of your face and when you go to readjust it the device screams at you that you need to move it back down so it can see your eyes.
I cannot imagine wearing this for any length of time. I did maybe twenty minutes with it and frankly that was enough. One thing of note though, is how cool the kit is on your face. I can’t wear an Oculus headset without my eyeballs themselves starting to sweat but this wasn’t a problem with the AVR. I don’t know how they manage it but there’s some air conditioning in there somewhere!
The software
Yet again it’s clearly an Apple product. The interface is deeply intuitive - you just pick stuff up and move it around, you look at things and pinch to interact, it took me no time at all to get used to navigating, opening and closing apps, pressing buttons and so on.
The introductory dinosaur demo you can use to see what the hardware is capable of is remarkable. It’s one of those things that just instantly blows your mind. A window just opens in space and there are dinosaurs through it, stomping about the landscape all while you can still see your office. The moment I reached out to stroke the dinosaur’s nose and it reacted just as you’d expect a dinosaur to was one of those classic Apple moments.
After the initial wonder abates though there’s really not a lot to do. I scanned about through the available applications and ended up dropping the Curiosity rover into the room behind me (side note, that thing is HUGE). Spinning it around and pointing at parts to learn what they do was fun but again that feeling of wonder disappears pretty quickly.
There are some funny little annoyances too. To press buttons or move sliders in the UI you just look at them and pinch your fingers. For the most part that works great but after a while you realise that when you do things on your computer on your phone you actually use a lot of muscle memory and you don’t tend to look at things that often. The best example of this happened as I stood in the middle of the solar system watching the planets slowly drift past. I wanted everything to speed up so I opened up the menu looked at the time scale slider and dragged it but I had no idea whether the number I’d selected was good or not because I was no longer looking at the solar system gliding by, I was looking at a slider. These feel like issues that will be resolved in time with better hand control and gestures but for now they are definite limitations.
The future
Despite the frustrations, the lankiness and the weight of the device, Apple Vision Pro truly feels like a glimpse of the future. I can absolutely see myself leaving virtual screens and panels lying around in the world and coming back to them later. The prospect of sitting on the sofa, looking at the blank wall and a TV appearing is incredibly enticing. I can actually see the benefit of walking across a factory floor and screens opening up above all the machinery showing maintenance and running info as I go past them.
When Apple, or anyone else, gets hardware like this down into a smaller form factor that sits on your face like a pair of regular specs then I believe the world will really change and maybe not all for the best. I can also imagine walking down the street and being bombarded with 3D adverts blasting out of every shop front like some cheap cyberpunk nightmare.
I was left with an odd sensation as I walked away from PROTO. I want to own Apple Vision Pro but I don’t know why. I think it’s maybe because I desperately want to recapture those initial moments of wonder in the joy of watching someone else put it on for the first time.
You might have missed it…
Every year Northumbrian Water run an Innovation Festival. With the vibe and style of a music festival the event is a wonder to participate in and it’s entirely free and open to the public!
You can register here if you haven’t already. Andrew and Alex will be there this year stirring up the sprint projects with their very own brand of mischief.