Originally published at: Apple Vision Pro Arrives 2 February 2024 - TidBITS
Apple has announced that pre-orders for its Vision Pro “spatial computer” will open on 19 January 2024, with the headset shipping two weeks later. Will you be ordering one?
I have zero interest in the device. The social implications which you so eloquently discussed in this post as well as last year’s are deeply disturbing to me, despite my respect for Apple’s evident technical excellence in its design and manufacture. It will be interesting to see what develops, but like you, I am happy with my current setups.
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No, but I have an (Oculus) Quest 2, a much cheaper and more primitive version of the idea, and I did find it interesting and could see how it could evolve into something useful instead of mostly a toy. Has anyone here tried the (Meta) Quest 3, which I think came out a couple months ago?
I won’t be buying Apple Vision in part because I have not seen a coherent description of what it does and what its limits are, but mainly because I doubt it’s cost effective for any way I could use a display. What I find most fascinating is Apple’s offer of prescription lenses to use with it. Other “Augmented reality” headsets are prone to causing eyestrain after people wear them for around a half-hour. If Apple can overcome that limit, it would be impressive, but I’m skeptical that eyestrain could be overcome that easily.
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No. IMHO if anything, we need more direct realtime human-to-human interaction with fewer devices in between, not more. I’ll catch a demo some day. I fully expect to be impressed with the tech. And still, I’ll have no need. Much less so at $3500 base price plus 2x $149. 
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OTOH, the Polishing Cloth is included. So that’s a whopping $19 savings right there.
Who knows, next rev they might even include a set of free wheels too. 
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I’m going to order one: I have to revise my “Apple Interface Mysteries” book from Take Control (takecontrolbooks.com/mysteries…), and Apple’s going all-in on its spatial computing user experience—I don’t want to write about it if I haven’t experienced it in regular use myself. So, I have real business reason to indulge myself.
There’s also a chance Adam may ask me to write up my impressions of the device after I have used it for a while.
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I’ve questioned Apple in the past, and they’ve usually proved me wrong. (For example, I thought the idea of them opening their own physical Apple Stores was going to be a total bust.) But yeah, the Vision Pro seems like a total dud to me.
More to the point: it feels like a “Cro Magnon Man” kind of thing… like a missing link between what we have today and what we will actually use 5 or 10 years from now (as powerful as Vision Pro but in the form factor of sunglasses).
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No. I can think of a lot of ways that $4000 could provide a larger benefit to society.
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It may not be the early iteration, but I would like to experience one to see what it brings to the table. I plan on getting one sometime, but, like new medications, will wait for some saturation in the market and wait for feedback and glitches from the real world.
I definitely want one! From NZ’s Roaring 40s I cycle New York’s Hudson River Greenway daily (in FulGaz) via an iPad Pro slung over the back of a chair. I very much would prefer the more immersive experience offered by the Vision Pro.
Apple may buy Peloton — it’s thought not, but there are a lot of indoor cyclists ‘out there’! 
Well, think of the original iPhone… tiny, limited to one carrier, 3G maximum, no API so no third-party apps… great things from expensive devices can and do grow. Let’s hope it’s the case for this device.
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So for you it will be a tax deducible business expense, reducing its real cost substantially.
Maybe I will buy one and stick it in the closet for 30 years or so. Just imagine what an “Unopened, original distribution, Apple Vision Pro” might go for in 2054.
Well, maybe my heirs will when they discover it in the closet as they are cleaning out things.
“And people thought it would never sell!”
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I’ll see how difficult it’ll be to get one (they may be in such limited quantities they’ll sell out in minutes), but I’ll probably try to get one just to be a “first adopter.” (I write about tech and like to muse about the future, so experiencing this is of great interest for me, even if it is expensive and not particularly practical/useful.)
While I am intrigued by the “work” possibilities, which make it more than a gimmick or game device like other headsets, I’m not sure how comfortable wearing a headset for hours would actually be. That said, everything I’ve read from people who tried one say that it’s a remarkable experience and that you need to try it yourself before judging.
But I do agree that for 99% of the public, this 1.0 edition is skippable. Future ones will be cheaper and more capable. The early adopters are developers and tech geeks.
Also: I wonder just how shareable these will be. This seems like the ideal tech to demo to family and friends, so early adopters should be the ones promoting this, but since it requires custom fitting to the face, face id for access, prescription lenses for eyeglass wearers, etc., it seems it might tricky/impossible to just let your friend borrow and try it out while they’re visiting. That could make this a much harder/slower sell.
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I’m not buying one anytime soon, but only because of money. I’d love to have one. I think (though not worth $4000), a compelling use case is watching movies on my back in bed. The TV in my house is usually taken up with shows I have no interest in, and the alternate screens I have available are too small for satisfactory TV viewing.
More than that, though, this seems like a whole new world of computing. Apple seems to have nailed VR/AR in a way no one else has, and an entirely new universe is about to open up.
I’ll look forward to checking one out.
But that’ll be it.
David above noted that it’s an interim device on the way to something, like actual glasses. Those would interest me greatly. To be perfectly honest “Siri, where are my damn glasses” would be a major sell. To be fair to Apple I think they’ve always been driven more by AR than VR. But clearly there’s stuff to learn, claim, own in this space before that becomes a realistic proposition.
I’ve never found VR compelling since first trying it over thirty years ago at a trade show in London, “the future of education” was their pitch.
Socially I have concerns too, the actual planet needs attention and folks are dividing into isolated tribes online that are, well, baffled by each other when they meet in RL. Don’t think VR and its isolated nature helps either of those.
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I won’t be ordering one right away, but I’m lobbying my workplace to get one so I can try it. If the devices become more affordable, I could imagine buying one for myself.
I find people are commenting from a narrow personal use/device aspect for Vision Pro. People are talking about playing games, watching movies, using at home, doing FaceTime calls and so forth. They also endlessly complain about the price.
I envisage Vision Pro in more industrial, services professional work environments.
A few examples to illustrate my contention. An electrician needing to wire a complex switching system could use Vision Pro to identify parts and paths, and to progress through the job. A person training to be a surgeon and using Vision Pro to learn correct procedures, to adjust techniques for abnormal conditions, and to follow proven workflow in the operating theatre. A chemical scientist in a laboratory using Vision Pro to follow different solutions and ideas in developing drugs, etc. A golf professional using Vision Pro to correct trainees in their driving and putting. A builder using Vision Pro to follow precise plans and instructions to construct a complicated structure. An intelligence agent using Vision Pro to shift through information and data using a 3D model. It’s easy to keep going with more examples.
There’s a serious teaching hospital near me in Australia that is already looking to team up Vision Pro with its haptic surgery simulator to turn out better trained and more competent junior surgeons.
For these types of industrial and professional uses, the cost of Vision Pro sets is no barrier. I see great opportunities for app developers to build serious mainstream Vision Pro applications.
In the early days of the iPad, most apps developed were basically toy apps. But iPad apps got serious and we see high level use of iPads in aircraft, in the military, in hospitals, and many other uses and operations. So I believe that the apps for Vision Pro will go the same way and Vision Pro will make its mark.
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Is there anything like this for medical diagnostic imaging yet? This seems like it ought to improve both efficiency and effectiveness for interpreting CT scans, MRI, and PET scans. The cost of some VisionPro units is trivial if they would help detect problems earlier and/or allow an expensive professional to do more work in less time.
Craig