First Impression of Apple Vision Pro

A few days ago, I could try Apple Vision Pro myself. I had a fantastic experience with Kevin, who guided me through the demo at Grand Central Terminal.

After putting on the device, light would initially leak in from the sides, causing some reflections similar to when wearing glasses.¹ With some repositioning and turning the Fit Dial of the Solo Knit Band clockwise again to tighten it more, the occasional flares mostly disappeared.

At first, the headset felt just a little front-heavy, but it was very comfortable during the entire demo, even with this strap. Only the power cord dangling on my shoulder — at times — annoyingly slightly distracted from the experience.

Finding the Digital Crown took some getting used to and didn’t start to feel natural after multiple attempts.

Calibration did not take long, and eye tracking seemed very accurate afterwards. Then, looking at the surroundings, they immediately felt very blurry to me, while the interface didn’t. This was likely due to pretty dim lighting.

Photos was the first focus of the demo in terms of applications. While “projecting” a photo onto a big canvas and looking at it is nice, looking at panoramas and spatial videos is where Apple Vision Pro starts to shine. However, moving people looked like they were flickering to me. In my eyes, there was no obviously noticeable difference between spatial clips shot on iPhone or Vision Pro. The demoed 3D movie² did not have as much of a spatial effect as the videos.

Almost all gestures were intuitively learnable. I did have trouble moving windows “away” from me, however. I was surprised to learn that the scrolling animation abruptly stops when not pinching one’s fingers anymore. There is no inertia when scrolling. I would have loved to quickly veer off script to access my website, not least to grasp how typing works. But unfortunately, the demo didn’t include any of it.

The immersive features are the most impressive by far. Be it the Environments — I was shown the beautiful Mount Hood scene with its rippling lake water — or the amazing 180-degree (8K) 3D videos with spatial audio.³ Speaking of which, it’s remarkable how being immersed distracted from the bustling Grand Central Terminal. I even perceived much less noise.
But I’m not sure of how people sometimes ghostly appear when nearby. There is, I think, some room for improvement in its implementation.

Overall, given its price, there is not enough value in Apple Vision Pro to me yet. But I see huge potential, especially for sports. If possible, immersive sports telecasts would be a killer application.