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On 12th July, you’ll be able to officially buy Vision Pro in the UK. In fact, you can pre-order it now if you fancy throwing caution to the wind and grabbing Apple’s headset without trying it first.
For those who do want to experience spatial computing before laying down a boatload of cash on Vision Pro, the opportunity to strap the device to their face and undertake a guided tour of visionOS will also be possible at – I presume – most UK Apple Stores from next Friday.
This is exciting – particularly for yours truly, who decided to import Vision Pro from the US back in February and who has, consequently, had to deal with a diluted visionOS experience thanks to the incompatibility with UK-based Apple IDs. I have everything crossed that there’s no kind of regional hardware lock on my unit, thus enabling me to unlock the full experience on the 12th when I can finally sign in with my UK Apple ID and enjoy everything Vision Pro has to offer.
However, we have a little more than a week to go before you can get your hands on one in the UK, and I’d like to offer a few words of advice before you spend any money on what Apple hopes is going to be the future of computing.
It’s bloody expensive
Vision Pro in the UK starts at £3,499 for the 256GB model (the one I have). The most you can spend on it is £3,899 for the 1TB edition, plus £149 for prescription ZEISS Optical Inserts if you need them.
This is a lot of money for most people. It certainly is for me. My imported Vision Pro set my business back around £3,600 after tax and import duty, which isn’t bad, considering the exchange rate hit we continue to suffer for tech products over here in the UK. It was still a hard pill to swallow, regardless.
Buying Vision Pro was a calculated business decision for Mark Ellis Media. Like any review unit we buy, it’s designed to turn a profit by being the subject of content that attracts ad and sponsor revenue. Vision Pro has just about paid for itself in that regard, but it hasn’t been easy. Interest in Apple’s headset was tepid when I eventually got involved, and it has fallen off a cliff over the last three months.
If you’re buying Vision Pro as a consumer, it probably feels like a much more expensive purchase. There’s no way you can get that money back; no ad revenue or sponsorship income is going to replenish your bank account once Vision Pro has been unboxed and strapped to your face. Trust me, no matter how impressed you are with it, Vision Pro is going to always feel like one of the most expensive things you’ve ever bought.
Everyone will want a go
They will, sorry. Your mum, your best mate, the guy at the office who is tech-obsessed and has caught wind of the fact you are, too (he’s always making coffee at the same time as you, isn’t he?). Then there’s your niece who desperately wants to play with the dinosaurs she keeps hearing about. You can’t let her down, can you?
I’ve demoed Vision Pro to most of my immediate family but have strategically kept it out of sight for every other visitor to our home. This isn’t because I’m scared they’ll break my huge business investment (ok, that fear is there, I admit) – it’s because the demo process is teeth-itchingly long-winded and frustrating.
Apple has implemented a guest mode for this process, and although it helps with the initial eye configuration for anyone who wants a go on your Vision Pro, it can be a bit temperamental, and you still need to walk the wearer through visionOS and its control surface.
Vision Pro is, by its nature, a surreal, otherworldly experience which demands input methods none of us has used previously. Imagine talking someone through that stuff when you can’t see what they can see (regardless of how intuitive it is). It’s painful – although admittedly wonderful when they finally ‘get’ it.
Unless you can successfully hide your Vision Pro from everyone you know, you need to be ready for multiple demo requests.
The WOW factor wears off
I’m afraid this is Vision Pro’s biggest Achilles heel, although it isn’t one of which Apple should be ashamed; it’s part and parcel of such a nascent computing experience.
I don’t care if you’re a huge Apple fan or one of their biggest detractors – the ‘wow’ factor that is induced by your first experience of visionOS is inescapable.
There are several reasons for this. The first is the eye tracking user interface navigation which is utterly bonkers and mesmerisingly intuitive. You look at stuff and the system responds by highlighting wherever you’ve focused your gaze. Want to open that app? Just look at it – and then, pinch with your thumb and forefinger (the latter is surprisingly intuitive, too). Bosh – you’re in, and you’ve just experienced the next generation of Apple UI control.
Then, you head into one of the immersive environments. Whether it’s out in the wilderness of Joshua Tree National Park, at the foot of Yosemite, or stranded on the moon, the combination of the volumetric environment and Spatial Audio atmosphere will force a “woah…” out of anyone’s mouth. Trust me.
The same goes for the ability to ‘place’ an F1 car in your living room, full-sized and with the ability to pull bits of it apart to reveal the inner workings.
There are loads of examples of Vision Pro ‘wow’ moments, but all of them live a relatively short shelf life. The awe of the immersive environments wears off relatively quickly, even if their usefulness extends beyond simply gazing around at your make-believe surroundings (more on that later).
For some of you, this won’t matter, and you’ll expect it to be the case, but for anyone who wants those ‘wow’ moments to last, I’m afraid you’re in for a relatively short happy ownership experience.
It’s heavy
I won’t labour the point here because, again, it’s part and parcel of jumping on board with visionOS so early, but Vision Pro is heavy and rather uncomfortable.
It doesn’t get any lighter, either.
It has one killer app
I often wonder if Apple has known all along that the killer app for Vision Pro has nothing to do with the apps you can run natively within visionOS and that it is, in fact, the integration with your MacBook.
If you weren’t aware, you can extend your MacBook’s display output into visionOS as a window within that operating system. This allows you to free yourself of the confines of your MacBook display and instead interact with macOS on a huge 4K display that can be resized way beyond the largest available MacBook display and placed anywhere within your volumetric environment.
I find it genuinely useful when I’m away from my studio and don’t have access to my two external monitors. Editing video on the 14-inch MacBook Pro can be a pain in the backside due to the limited screen estate, but when placed inside visionOS, I gain all the space I need. What’s more, I can immerse myself in one of the aforementioned environments while working in Final Cut Pro on my MacBook, which is brilliant for retaining focus. I do the same thing for writing, too, and the positive impact on my productivity is significant.
There will be other killer apps for Vision Pro, and I’m sure there are edge cases for killer native apps in commercial use and for other creative endeavours, but for the vast majority of people who buy Vision Pro, I think the integration with the Mac is where the lasting appeal resides.
Final thought
Before I sign off, I want to note that there isn’t a single negative point above which would ever lead me to suggest that Vision Pro is a failure. I’ve seen certain other tech commentators do just that, and I hold entirely the opposite opinion.
Vision Pro is Apple’s first demonstration of how it thinks we should interact with our digital worlds in the future. It’s expensive, and cumbersome, and you’ll probably struggle to find a lasting use case for it. As others have noted, it feels like a developer unit that has been made available to the general public. But it is what it is, and if you’re thinking about buying one, you need to be ready for all of the above.
Good luck!
