I did the demo as well. It was both cooler than expected and much worse than expected all at once.
First of all, it truly was very uncomfortable with single band; I thought this might have been overblown, but my nose hurt within minutes despite adjusting and realigning several times, and it still never fit great and had some minor light leakage. But after 15 minutes I had a ton of sinus pain that stuck with me an hour after I got the thing off, and I only had it on maybe 20 minutes. Very disappointed they shipped it as is from this alone given how fundamental it is to the experience. It’s clearly too heavy right now for a simple single band experience.
Second of all, the immersive experiences, particularly the sports, animals and theater really were wow moments. They looked great and you really do feel like you’re in a massive theater. Sound placement is also very impressive.
Third, the pass through was not great even in a bright Apple Store. This part was massively oversold. The blur, the graininess, the quirks; it’s better than the rest, but still pretty lousy, and the immersion knob was less granular than I expected. That said, how well the windows stick to their environments was impressive.
Lastly, the most impressive thing to me wa also the most frustrating: eye tracking and hand gestures. This is the part of Apple Vision Pro that excited me the most and most clearly felt like the future. Being able to look at things and click I think is quite powerful, and as it improves in future generations, this input method will be very cool, with some major caveats.
Typing was a nightmare, not because it was hard to fuss out a word on the keyboard one by one but when you made a mistake and have to look at what you’re typing and then look down to select and type, you realize how misguided some aspects of that interface are fundamentally. Similar to Touch Bar on MacBook Pros, having to look down to know what you’re hitting is rough. I’d hope and imagine you could move the keyboard so it’s easier to see both, but given how many areas you can be interacting with things, that interface method was shockingly bad.
Final Verdict: Very cool in a few ways, and also very bad in some difficult to overcome ways. As impressive as some experiences are, this product clearly isn’t ready for prime time, and I suspect there will be a lot of frustrated users. There’s some big fundamentals about the experience that need work, yet the eye tracking really did feel like the first glimpse into the future. As a tech enthusiast, it’s tough not to want one to explore the future, and it’s certainly more interesting to explore than a first gen Apple Watch was, but it’s also $3500 for what feels more like an alpha stage product than even beta. I’m not sure a next-gen will solve core issues at this point. Gen 3-4 should get lighter, more comfortable and capable, but Apple hasn’t shown great ability to rethink and improve software lately, and that’s going to be a big problem here.
First of all, it truly was very uncomfortable with single band; I thought this might have been overblown, but my nose hurt within minutes despite adjusting and realigning several times, and it still never fit great and had some minor light leakage. But after 15 minutes I had a ton of sinus pain that stuck with me an hour after I got the thing off, and I only had it on maybe 20 minutes. Very disappointed they shipped it as is from this alone given how fundamental it is to the experience. It’s clearly too heavy right now for a simple single band experience.
Second of all, the immersive experiences, particularly the sports, animals and theater really were wow moments. They looked great and you really do feel like you’re in a massive theater. Sound placement is also very impressive.
Third, the pass through was not great even in a bright Apple Store. This part was massively oversold. The blur, the graininess, the quirks; it’s better than the rest, but still pretty lousy, and the immersion knob was less granular than I expected. That said, how well the windows stick to their environments was impressive.
Lastly, the most impressive thing to me wa also the most frustrating: eye tracking and hand gestures. This is the part of Apple Vision Pro that excited me the most and most clearly felt like the future. Being able to look at things and click I think is quite powerful, and as it improves in future generations, this input method will be very cool, with some major caveats.
Typing was a nightmare, not because it was hard to fuss out a word on the keyboard one by one but when you made a mistake and have to look at what you’re typing and then look down to select and type, you realize how misguided some aspects of that interface are fundamentally. Similar to Touch Bar on MacBook Pros, having to look down to know what you’re hitting is rough. I’d hope and imagine you could move the keyboard so it’s easier to see both, but given how many areas you can be interacting with things, that interface method was shockingly bad.
Final Verdict: Very cool in a few ways, and also very bad in some difficult to overcome ways. As impressive as some experiences are, this product clearly isn’t ready for prime time, and I suspect there will be a lot of frustrated users. There’s some big fundamentals about the experience that need work, yet the eye tracking really did feel like the first glimpse into the future. As a tech enthusiast, it’s tough not to want one to explore the future, and it’s certainly more interesting to explore than a first gen Apple Watch was, but it’s also $3500 for what feels more like an alpha stage product than even beta. I’m not sure a next-gen will solve core issues at this point. Gen 3-4 should get lighter, more comfortable and capable, but Apple hasn’t shown great ability to rethink and improve software lately, and that’s going to be a big problem here.
