by Jason Snell
Other views of Apple Vision Pro
Some first-hand experiences with Apple Vision Pro that are worth your time:
Federico Viticci at MacStories:
I’m going to be direct with this story. My 30-minute demo with Vision Pro last week was the most mind-blowing moment of my 14-year career covering Apple and technology. I left the demo speechless, and it took me a few days to articulate how it felt. How I felt.
It’s not just that I was impressed by it, because obviously I was. It’s that, quite simply, I was part of the future for 30 minutes – I was in it – and then I had to take it off. And once you get a taste of the future, going back to the present feels… incomplete.
I spent 30 minutes on the verge of the future. I have a few moments I want to relive.
Developer David Smith:
Apple has an ambitious view on what the baseline user experience for this device must be and then built a device which is able to meet those expectations. As a result it is more expensive than many folks would like or expect, but that price is justified by the user experience it can deliver. In this case a lesser/cheaper version of this product would likely cross a point where it becomes pointless. If you can’t perfectly recreate reality in minute detail and responsively let the user navigate their new world, the whole product feels meaningless. It has to be this good in order to be useful at all, so the price is high.
Myke Hurley on the Cortex Podcast:
This was the blending of AR and VR in a way that I’ve not experienced before. I don’t think anyone else can do it. You feel like this dinosaur’s in the room with you, because it looks like the dinosaur is in the room with you. We don’t need to make you feel like you’re in this VR experience, completely immersed in this lava field, because we’re able to show you this blending of these two things.
It was unbelievable. The quality of the visuals was so good. This is one of those things I will remember, that feeling of that dinosaur trying to bite me—it was just mind-blowing. And then they sit me down, and they’re like, “we’re done now,” and I take it off and I was speechless. I was flabbergasted. Then they take you out [and tell you to] ask questions to this person from the product team. And [I said], I have no questions. I’m not even in the real world. I realized halfway through the conversation that I left my backpack in that room, because I just stood up and left it there. I was on another planet at that moment….
It was magical. They’ve nailed it. This thing costs $3500, and if they put out a card machine I’d buy it. I’m in. I cannot wait for this thing. I’ve now tasted the future and I can’t shake it.
Or if you’d prefer a more cynical take, Wired published a thing literally slugged “apple-vision-pro-doomed.”