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On 12th July 2024, Vision Pro was finally launched in the UK. This was five months after the headset made its debut in the US and five months after yours truly imported it into the UK.
The most common question I’m asked about Vision Pro is: “Are you still using it?” and my answer has always been “Occasionally”. Although, I’ll admit, over the last few weeks, Apple’s headset has spent an embarrassingly long time in the gear cabinet at my studio.
The good news is that, following the launch of Vision Pro in the UK, I can finally use it properly. And that led me to ask my audience a very important question – with surprising results.
But, first…
Finally unlocking Vision Pro
Importing Vision Pro from the US into the UK wasn’t for the faint-hearted. The ordering process was fraught, a physical delivery address was required in the United States, and the device itself was region-locked.
The latter challenge didn’t render Vision Pro in the UK useless. I could still use my Apple ID with it, but if I wanted to venture into the App Store, I had to use a US Apple ID and, if I wanted to purchase anything within the store, I needed a credit card associated with an American postal address. Oh, and the Apple TV app didn’t work at all. It was a right old faff, basically, which meant I only used Vision Pro for one specific use case – connecting it to my MacBook and extending the display into visionOS.
Truth be told, I completely forgot about the 12th July UK launch date for Vision Pro (we were extremely busy ok?!) but when I came to my senses a couple of days later, I immediately slapped it onto my face and headed for the App Store.
It worked. With my UK Apple ID.
I leapt into the Apple TV app. That worked, too.
I quietly breathed a sigh of relief. There was a part of me that had always wondered if my US Vision Pro unit was somehow region-locked forever – thankfully, that isn’t the case.
The App Store in visionOS is a curious experience. There are, as you’d expect, a bunch of apps and games that are made specifically for Vision Pro. It’s a collection of names you recognise and others you absolutely won’t. There’s some big stuff in there, too (Microsoft Word on Vision Pro, anyone?) and games with trailers that demand you pinch the ‘Get’ button.
However, the majority of the store appears to consist of Vision Pro-compatible apps and games which started life on either the iPhone or iPad. They’re not particularly easy to spot – Apple has been smart enough to artificially increase the number of apps available for Vision Pro by providing tiny labels and innocuous wording that all but hides the fact they’re not designed natively for visionOS. That’s fine. It’s early days, after all, and the market for Vision Pro developers is tiny.
I tried gaming, immediately. It’s fun. Not quite as fun as the Meta Quest stuff I tried earlier this year, but I enjoyed flying through space and catching melodies with my hands in the Guitar Hero-esque Synth Riders. Like everything in Vision Pro, it’s a solitary experience, but undeniably impressive, immersive, and addictive.
Next, I tried out the new Immersive Video content on Apple TV.
Wowzers trousers.
In Apple’s words, Immersive Video is “a remarkable storytelling format that leverages 3D video recorded in 8K with a 180-degree field of view and Spatial Audio to transport viewers to the centre of the action”. It does this, jaw-droppingly. I stood in the studio with Alicia Keys as she smashed out songs with her band (and felt immensely uncomfortable as she appeared to look straight at me as she walked around the piano), joined a high-wire walker as she gently made her way between two peaks, and transported myself back to a prehistoric world full of dinosaurs.
Just like most Vision Pro experiences, it’s impossible to explain what Immersive Video is like unless you try it, but I can confirm it feels like the future of viewing content. There’s just enough separation between reality and what you’re watching to remove any sense of danger or feeling of being a creepy stalker, but the line drawn between those two worlds is stunningly thin. There is, apparently, lots more Immersive Video content on the way later this year, and I can’t wait to experience it.
Asking my audience about Vision Pro
With this fresh perspective of Vision Pro still burning through my eyeballs, I decided to ask my YouTube audience if they wanted me to make some more content about the headset.
Of the 52 comments I’ve received thus far, most of them have told me not to bother.
“Vision Pro is a no.”
“Nah thanks.
“No doubt it’s technically brilliant. It seems such a lonely isolated experience and one that will never sell millions of units unless it’s sold for a fraction of the current costs.”
“Not something a regular consumer needs.”
“Oh please, no.”
“No… dead product.”
There were positive replies among the barrage of “don’t bother” stuff. Some wanted me to explore the App Store, reveal what my friends and family thought about it, and give more insight into how it performs as an entertainment device. But they were in the minority – most people who responded made it clear that investing my and my team’s time in Vision Pro content at the moment would be a bad idea.
That’s a shame. It also begs a big question.
When will Vision Pro be popular again?
I want Vision Pro to climb up the interest graph online again. This is for two reasons. Firstly, I want to continue recouping the investment I made in the device itself. Secondly, I still find it a fascinating device.
Trust me, when you’re a tech reviewer, looking beyond smartphones, iPads, laptops, and fitness devices is essential if you want to remain sane. I want to explore the future of computing. I want to dig further into what Apple presumably thinks is going to one day replace the Mac and, possibly, the iPhone.
But if the audience interest isn’t there, I’m afraid it doesn’t make sense to do this publicly.
Our SEO (search engine optimisation) research backs this up. I asked my SEO expert, Dylan, to run some numbers on Vision Pro in a bid to suss out if it was worth writing anything about it for our website.
“I don’t believe it’s worth a longer-term site content investment given the current demand around the product,” he explained. “Intent for this content was massive around its announcement and release in Dec/Jan/Feb, but I wouldn’t consider the topic evergreen.”
He knows his onions, which is why this will probably be my last blog post on Vision Pro for a while.
Something needs to happen to make it an in-vogue product once again. I think three potential scenarios might force that to happen:
- the visionOS 2 release later this year (I’m looking forward to this);
- a competing product launch (Meta Connect 2024 in September could be a contender); or
- the launch of the much-rumoured lower-cost visionOS headset.
I’ll cover visionOS 2 later this year because there are some genuinely interesting updates in there, but my hunch is that for Vision Pro to truly enter the national consciousness, we need that ‘cheaper’ version. I have a feeling that’s some way off, though!
Before you go
Some images courtesy of Apple.
