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My son is 19 months old. I’m pretty sure that, by the time he’s 20, he won’t have a smartphone.
Now that I’ve spent meaningful time actually using Apple’s brand-new Vision Pro headset (as opposed to commenting on it from the sidelines), I’m even more convinced of this.
People are, apparently, returning Vision Pro in droves. It’s too heavy, too reflective, too weird, and bereft of use cases. Apple is doomed. Steve Jobs would never have done this. Etcetera.
As I sit here with this massive contraption strapped to my face while I type away on my Mac keyboard and watch as the words arrive on a huge, detached display floating just above a scenic lake, there’s only one thing I’m personally worried about.
It’s really hard to drink my coffee.
Vision Pro isn’t meant for now
I’ve not seen anyone mention this publicly about Vision Pro. We’ve heard about how heavy the device is and how beta-like some of the features feel, but there’s a much bigger problem I’m experiencing.
Writing and coffee go hand in hand for me. My first job of the day, every day, is to sit in my kitchen and write. Without coffee, I’m not entirely sure it’s possible to extract the words from my head.
It’s during those early hours when the biggest hint that Vision Pro isn’t meant for today rears its head in the most unexpected of ways.
It’s nigh-on impossible to drink a cup of coffee with Vision Pro strapped to your face, unless you don’t mind bashing your mug against the bottom of the front display. And I’d rather avoid that, personally, given how much this bloody thing cost me.
To drink a cup of coffee while wearing Vision Pro, you have two options – either tilt your head back, rest the mug against your chin and move your head and the mug back at the same rate to force the flow of beverage into your mouth, or momentarily lift Vision Pro from the bridge of your nose to allow for cup clearance.
Both options look stupid and result in you spilling coffee everywhere – which brings me to the biggest challenges Apple faces to make Vision Pro a mass market product.
6 ways to make Vision Pro an everyday product
The pedantic side of me says that I should be referring to visionOS today, rather than Vision Pro. The latter is, after all, just the first product in what one assumes will be a long line of devices adopting the operating system that Apple ultimately wants us all to use.
Regardless, it is literally all I have to work with for now, so stay with me.
This is what Apple needs to do with Vision Pro.
1. Make it less weird
The ‘here’s me walking around my town doing normal stuff while wearing Vision Pro’ thing has been done to death.
I won’t be doing it.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is borderline suicidal. Vision Pro severely limits your peripheral vision, and the camera system that pipes the outside world into the two displays in front of your eyes doesn’t deliver a high enough quality image to make this a good idea.
Secondly, it looks really stupid. I know VR headsets have been around for many years, but their use has always – and quite rightly – been consigned to the home or within commercial settings. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen anyone walking around in public wearing a VR headset.
This is because it looks really stupid.
Society isn’t ready for people walking around wearing Vision Pro in public. I don’t think it ever will be. And, contrary to what you might believe if you continue to consume content from people undertaking everyday tasks while wearing this thing, I don’t think Apple is ready for us to do that, either.
The team behind Vision Pro, and, I’m sure, Tim Cook himself, know that the headset needs to be de-weirded before it ever becomes remotely socially acceptable.
2. Make it lighter
Much has been said and written about the weight of Vision Pro. During my unboxing and first experience video, you’ll note how genuinely surprised I am by this unfortunate trade-off. But that’s what it is – a trade-off for, in Cook’s words, receiving tomorrow’s technology today.
There is, clearly, so much stuff packed into this thing. The fact the battery has been turned into a separate device (and one which is just as surprisingly heavy, by the way) says it all. They couldn’t fit it in. There is, presumably, not an ounce of wasted space inside Vision Pro.
The more you use Vision Pro, the more you get used to its heft. I’m also finding that the fit is gradually improving as I experiment with the band placement. But this really isn’t for everyone; I would totally understand if the weight of Vision Pro is one of the main reasons for those reported returns.
3. Integrate it with the iPhone
There is, basically, zero integration between Vision Pro and the iPhone. So, if something happens on your iPhone and you need to reference it, you have to momentarily detach yourself from visionOS land and re-enter reality.
There are two ways to do this – you either look at your iPhone ‘through’ Vision Pro, or take the headset off to interact with your phone. The first option simply doesn’t work, I’m afraid – Vision Pro’s camera system seems to really struggle with relaying displays from other devices, and your iPhone is incredibly hard to decipher because of this.
Removing Vision Pro momentarily isn’t ideal, either, because you’ll have spent a decent amount of time adjusting it for the best fit, and it feels like a bit of a faff to start that process again.
Even if visionOS is intended to replace iOS one day (which I personally think is the end goal here) the lack of integration with Apple’s most important operating system is frustrating. Mirroring the display in some way would be useful, or offering some kind of access to the stuff on my iPhone via Vision Pro’s user interface would work wonders.
My guess is that we’ll start to see such interoperability arrive over the next couple of years, but it feels like quite a big miss already.
4. Make it easier to pick up
I’ve seen very few people talk about this, too.
Vision Pro is incredibly difficult to pick up. It’s so tricky, in fact, that Apple has had to offer detailed instructions for doing so.
“Loosen the head band. Pick up Apple Vision Pro with two hands—one holding the frame and the other holding the head band. Don’t pick it up by the Light Seal, as the Light Seal attaches magnetically and could detach.”
I don’t think Apple does this for any of its other products, but when you get your hands on Vision Pro, you realise why that instruction is so clearly noted in the beautifully crafted accompanying manual.
I still haven’t mastered it. Unearth Vision Pro from its front cover (which itself feels like a horrendously trepidatious undertaking given the glossy outer display) and you’re then faced with the job of holding the device without dropping it to the floor as the Light Seal ejects from its magnetic grasp.
This results in you treating Vision Pro as though it were your mother-in-law’s ashes. One false move and your entire world will fall apart. Whether or not this feeling will dissipate as your time with Vision Pro increases is anyone’s guess but it’s yet another reason this thing just isn’t meant for the masses.
5. Offer more than ‘wow’
Last night, I placed an Alpha Romeo F1 car in our living room. I was able to resize it, turn it around, and use my hands to remove body panels and peer into the inner workings of the car.
The night before, I watched as a butterfly darted around the room and landed gently on the palm of my hand. This was before the world in front of me split in two and revealed a Jurassic landscape complete with dinosaurs who were seemingly aware of my presence and intent on entering my hotel room.
Vision Pro is full of ‘wow’ moments. The first time you fully immerse yourself in one of the ‘Environments’ is genuinely breathtaking. Taking tentative steps forward to look over a cliff face or marvel at the gentle pitter-patter of rain on the surface of Trillium Lake at Mount Hood are experiences you won’t find on the iPhone, Mac or iPad.
They have use cases, too. The F1 car experience was delivered by JigSpace, a visionOS app that enables digital models to be placed within Vision Pro’s spatial environment. It has use cases for training, research, and education, all of which seem totally justified.
The Environments in visionOS are also superb for productivity. I’m the sort of person who has to close himself off from the rest of the world to get my best work done, and the ability to write my latest blog post on the moon (no, really) is quite something. Just keep in mind that you have to be a stellar touch typist to make this possible.
This isn’t enough, though. Just like anything initially impressive in life, the ‘wow’ moment delivered by Vision Pro soon settles and becomes normality. That’s where a platform like visionOS needs to really demonstrate its worth, and judging by the feedback from some of those returning the headset, there just aren’t enough ‘killer apps’ for it at the moment.
6. Reduce the price
Vision Pro is a very expensive piece of kit. However, when you get your hands on it and experience both the build quality and the stuff of which it’s capable, you’d be hard-pressed to suggest that Apple should be knocking these out for £350.
No matter your opinion on Apple’s pricing strategy, you do get a lot for your money, in most instances. Calling Vision Pro ‘good value for money’ feels rather aloof, but I’m not surprised it starts at $3,499; it feels like an expensive, exclusive experience at the moment.
Despite this, the price means that access to visionOS is out of reach for most people. Even if you’ve got a decent amount of disposable income, justifying such a purchase in a world where everything is more expensive is extremely tricky. Unless you’re a tech reviewer, obviously.
This is the single biggest limiting factor for Vision Pro. Only a select few will buy this first version, until it hits the second-hand market at volume. For Apple to sell visionOS at scale, the pricing needs to come down to iPhone levels.
Will we ever get there?
I genuinely don’t know. Apple has already put so much into visionOS and Vision Pro – that is abundantly clear when you strap that thing to your face. The amount of investment – both in terms of time and R&D expense – that has gone into this is unthinkable for mere mortals like myself.
What concerns me is just how far Vision Pro is from being a normal, consumer-friendly, socially-acceptable device. At a rough guess, I’d say we’re at least seven or eight years from that being the case – maybe a decade.
It will only make sense, after all, once it looks like a regular pair of glasses. I think that’s where Apple is headed with this. The question is whether or not the time required to reach that end goal is too long.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
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2 Comments
Gee, a straw would be a simple remedy.
VR is a bit like 4 channel hifi or 3D cinema. It requires a change from the casual way we normally consume, in those examples, music or movies. They resurface every few years, don’t really catch on and fade away again. It’s telling that at CES, VR hardly featured this year, when last year it was the Next Big Thing. Not for me – not at that price anyway.