The Vision Pro

Unpopular opinion: the Vision Pro isn't all that great yet.

Strike One

I picked mine up last Friday and will be returning it ASAP. While I was excited about the options for entertainment in Vision Pro, like the immersive theatre mode to watch movies or multi-cast sporting events, to me, the killer use case was always going to be productivity.

I work on my laptop on the couch a fair amount, as that's usually the spot I'm in when working on Sentitrac outside of my LinkedIn hours. From what I had heard about the Vision Pro, it sounded like I would be able to sit on the couch with my wife, watch TV together, and have my laptop screen floating next to the TV screen so I could work at the same time without straining my neck looking down at my laptop.

The Vision Pro does technically make this possible, there are more caveats than I was anticipating. It started when I did my fit test in the store on Friday -- and boy, am I happy I decided to do so. The initial light seal the face scan had selected for me let in a bunch of light along the bottom near my nose. We went through 3-4 light seals before discovering the right combination: the original light seal size (21W for me) but with a W+ cushion, which helped to block out more of the light. There is still a small light gap, though, and Apple employees told me that this was the best it got for some. Ok, not ideal; strike one.

Strike Two

I then got home and set it up while sitting on my couch, and I was wowed by the way the device set up hand and eye tracking. The setup was seamless, but then I wanted to try a demo: log into Disney+ and see what the Mandalorian looks like in their immersive view. I took my phone out to pull up 1Password but couldn't actually read what was on my phone.

I strained for a minute at first, trying to read my phone through the passthrough display, given the expectation that I'd be able to see through properly! I quickly had to give up and move the headset up/down so I could see my phone clearly, remember a few characters, and then type them with the terrible virtual keyboard (and hope I didn't delete any characters as I did so). Not only was I unable to see my phone with passthrough, I had to make virtual displays quite large to be able to read them. Within a few minutes, I started getting a headache. Strike two.

Strike Three

Next, I wanted to try what was supposed to be my killer use case: productivity. The initial keynote showed display sharing magically happening when looking at a Mac within the field of view: look at your laptop, and out pops a virtual display of your Mac you can then drag around!

Unfortunately, this isn't how it works, at least not consistently. In my testing, once or twice, there's been a "Connect to Mac" hovering button above my laptop screen, but most of the time, I had to go to the command center to start this. It took me a few minutes to figure this out the first time, which was frustrating.

Then, once I got to try the Mac Virtual Display, the only way I could avoid everything being blurry was to make the screen HUGE. Not only did this not allow me to put my virtual laptop screen next to the TV when the screen was large enough for me to read, but it was so bright it immediately worsened my headache! There supposedly is a way to reduce this brightness, but I found nothing that lowered it to where I wanted it. Strike three!

Conclusion

As a media consumption device, the Vision Pro is quite impressive; there's no doubt about that. For productivity use cases, though, which is why I spent $3500+, it's just not there yet. It may be related to my eyes since my right eye is definitely stronger than my left, and the Vision Pro is perhaps assuming stereoscopic vision. I don't wear glasses, though, and I even tried the single eye tracking mode on my stronger eye, to no avail.

I'm sad to be writing this because I was so excited about what would be possible with the Vision Pro, but it's still early days for AR. As a VR headset, the Vision Pro is sharper than any other headset I've ever worn, but I was really pumped about the AR capabilities, which left me wanting. If you're looking to use the Vision Pro for productivity, maybe try it in the store first to make sure the problems I had don't affect you when you purchase such an expensive gadget!