Vision Pro - page 2

Vision Pro is years ahead of its time. Apple’s AR headset lets us see today what using an average computer a decade in the future will be like.

In 2034, being surrounded by physical screens will seem charmingly obsolete. Virtual displays of any size generated by an AR headset from Apple (or its rivals) will take the place of displays connected to our computers, phones, watches, etc. And that’s only the start.

You can experience the coming revolution now because Vision Pro is another example of Apple giving us a glimpse of the future.

I’ve had a lot of fun playing Void-X, a modern arcade shooter game. If you’ve ever emptied a whole pocketful of quarters into Galaga or Zaxxon, then you’ll love playing it, too. And you’ll like it even more if you play Void-X on Vision Pro. (You can play the tame on iPhone and iPad, too.)

The two-week return window for my Vision Pro is fast approaching, so I need to make my keep it/toss it decision in a matter of days. And I desperately want to keep it.

Many publications (including Cult of Mac) are reporting on the mass of people selling their Vision Pros after the two-week return window. A lot of it, I think, is for the drama — Apple is taking a big swing on a brand-new product, people aren’t keeping it, instant controversy. (I bet a lot of these people bought their headsets to produce content on the buzzy device and never planned on keeping it, no matter how good it was.)

Well, here’s the other side of the coin. My Vision Pro has fit into my life perfectly. I use it for hours every day. But justifying the purpose is a financial stretch.

You’d think readers of a website called Cult of Mac would be into Apple products. But a straw poll of Cult of Mac Today readers found a whopping 76% of respondents plan to return their Vision Pro to Apple.

The eye-popping number comes as droves of Vision Pro early adopters say they plan to take advantage of Apple’s generous return policy. Discomfort, the headset’s high price and the lack of a clear use case for the isolating device top the list of reasons cited by disaffected Vision Pro owners.

Control Center in Vision Pro works very differently than on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac. But as with Apple’s other platforms, you can customize the Vision Pro Control Center to make it far more useful.

The first few days after I got my Vision Pro, I found Control Center to be intensely irritating. It constantly appeared in my field of view, bugging me like a hair in my mouth or a piece of popcorn in my teeth.

Luckily, with just a few changes, you can make Control Center way less annoying.

TikTok just outraced some of its biggest rivals by releasing a native Vision Pro application. The short video service that’s become a global phenomenon can now be enjoyed on Apple’s AR headset thanks to the TikTok Vision Pro app.

The head of development for the new app says the company “redesigned the entire TikTok experience.”

Three games designed for visionOS spatial experiences through the new Vision Pro headset will soon join a dozen existing such titles, plus another 250 compatible games already in Apple Arcade, Apple said Thursday.

The company highlighted all the fun Vision Pro users can have, including descriptions of the upcoming versions of Alto’s Odyssey, Gibbon and Spire Blast for Vision Pro.

If you get a Vision Pro, you’ll soon need to learn how to charge up that battery. Apple only promises two hours of battery life on its revolutionary headset. Although real-world usage is pushing closer to three, if you want your spatial computing to be untethered, you’ll need to charge the Vision Pro battery often.

Here’s how to do it — along with some tips that will keep you (and your data) safe.

The Vision Pro’s virtual, floating-in-the-air keyboard has been nearly universally condemned. There’s no way around it: Typing on Vision Pro sucks.

But people said the same thing about the original iPhone, which ditched a physical keyboard compared to the BlackBerry. And these days, physical keyboards for your iPhone are more of a novelty than a standard accessory that everybody buys.

So to get to the bottom of exactly how bad the Vision Pro keyboard is, I took a bunch of different typing tests across a bunch of different keyboards. And the results I found were incredibly surprising. I accidentally discovered the best way to input text in Vision Pro.

Check out our latest YouTube video or keep reading to see what happened.

Many early adopters seem set on returning their Apple Vision Pro headsets. As the 14-day return window approaches for people who bought the device on launch day, an avalanche of posts on X and other social media channels point to a wave of Vision Pro returns.

Apparently, it’s not just Mark Zuckerberg who thinks Apple’s expensive headset isn’t worth the money. There appears to be a mass exodus of early adopters who ponied up the cash for Apple’s pricey headset. They cite three main reasons for returning Vision Pro. But is the situation really as bad as it seems?

It’s possible to share your screen in your Vision Pro so that other people can see what you’re seeing, too. This is especially helpful in Vision Pro Guest Mode, to help you guide newbies through the unfamiliar headset.

Vision Pro is an exciting new product, but it can be isolating. The incredible experiences it enables aren’t social. However, you can AirPlay your screen to a nearby Apple TV, iPad, Mac or iPhone.

Here’s how.

You can easily fix Apple Vision Pro eye tracking and hand tracking if your headset starts to act up. You’ll want to follow the steps below if the device stops accurately tracking your gaze or your hand gestures.

As you probably know, hand tracking and eye tracking are essential to using Vision Pro. When they don’t work as well as possible, it’s incredibly frustrating. I know, because sometimes the headset’s sensors have a hard time tracking my eyes up and down. It’s like using an iPad stylus on a touchscreen that’s slightly uncalibrated.

The quick methods below can fix some Vision Pro eye- and hand-tracking problems for you.  You can approach trigger a reset three different ways — by pressing a button on the headset, going into Settings or asking Siri for help — all with the same ultimate result. (In my experience, this is one situation in which Siri excels.)

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company’s mixed-reality headset beats Vision Pro in almost every way, despite the fact that it costs far less than Apple’s device. In a short video posted Tuesday on Instagram, Zuckerberg called the Meta Quest headset the “better product, period.”

While he praised the Vision Pro’s high-resolution displays, he said he thinks Apple made a lot of compromises on its $3,499 headset.

Whether to add new features or squash bugs, Apple releases Vision Pro updates from time to time. (The latest one, visionOS 1.0.3, arrived Monday. It eliminates a major headache that plagued Vision Pro owners who forgot their devices’ passcodes.) Luckily, downloading and installing visionOS updates is easy once you know how.

In fact, installing Vision Pro software updates proves very similar to the process for updating an iPhone, iPad or Mac. We’ll show you how it’s done — and also how to get visionOS beta updates. If you want to take a chance on betas, you can test upcoming Vision Pro features before they officially arrive.

If you’re addicted to your Vision Pro, with your apps floating around you all the time, you’ll have to cook yourself dinner at some point. After all, you may not be able to afford to eat out after buying one. Cooking with Vision Pro offers some fun surprises, but it’s not all gravy.

There are obvious upsides. Placing timers around your kitchen and having easy access to a recipe floating nearby seem incredibly convenient rather than fiddling with your iPhone. This is what I was most excited to try out.

But the downsides snuck up on me. I had a hard time reading my measuring spoons, nor could I tell apart my sugar from my flour. But worst of all, trying to lick the cookie dough off a large whisk without smearing the Vision Pro proved impossible.

Check out our YouTube video or keep reading below.

Apple released visionOS 1.0.3 to users of the Vision Pro on Monday. It’s the first to go out since the launch, and is primarily a bug-fix patch.

That said, the new version deals with a problem that previously sent some users to an Apple retail store looking for technical assistance.

Apple insiders think the Vision Pro is at least four generations away from reaching its “ideal form.” Apple still needs to do a lot of work behind the scenes before the headset can potentially become as popular as an iPhone or Mac.

While the first-gen headset has issues, it is an impressive first try from Apple.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: After spending a few days with Apple’s headset, Erfon and Griffin are ready to unleash their initial Vision Pro reviews. They’ve got some gushing praise, some mild concerns and some unmitigated gripes.

Also on The CultCast:

• A sad Vision Pro “demo” shows why you should never try the headset with your glasses on. Book a real Apple demo instead!
• The technology in Apple’s headset is astonishing. So are the immersive experiences. But is all that enough to justify the price?
• Griffin talks about doing actual work while wearing Vision Pro.
• Erfon reveals his grand plan for a new podcast called CultCast Off Topic.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

People have been spotted wearing Apple’s Vision Pro headset at gyms. I was curious whether they had unlocked a secret killer feature or whether they were bearing through aches and pains just to show off. What’s it really like working out wearing a Vision Pro?

To find out, I hopped on a treadmill, lifted some weights and did some crunches while wearing the headset to discover the pros and cons of wearing a Vision Pro while working out. Check out our latest YouTube video to see what it’s like first-person.

The overall experience proved unsurprisingly mixed — with one very surprising drawback.

Making a FaceTime call in Vision Pro is a bit more involved than on iPhone or Mac. After all, you have a computer strapped onto your face, which is not typical with other devices.

Step 0, of course, is setting up your Persona — the dynamic, digital version of yourself that Vision Pro uses for FaceTime calls. If you didn’t create a Persona during the Vision Pro setup process, or your Persona looks less fantastic than you’d like, we wrote a separate explainer for you:  How to create your Persona in Vision Pro (or make it better).

Once your Persona is set, here’s how to FaceTime in Vision Pro.

You can take a screenshot or a screen recording on Vision Pro, just like on an iPhone or a Mac. The screenshot is saved as an image file, and is easy to view in Photos or share.

Here’s how to take screenshots in Vsion Pro.

Apple offers a $199 Travel Case as an accessory for its new Vision Pro spatial computing headset, but Waterfield Designs just came out with a much smaller and more portable one — the Vision Pro Shield Case.

The first production run of WaterField’s cool new case is already sold out, but you can order it now and it will ship on February 29, the company said.

 Apple Vision Pro is controlled by just five simple gestures you do with your hands. The Vision Pro gestures even work in the dark!

If you’re going to try on someone’s Vision Pro, or you’re lucky enough to buy one yourself, here’s how to use what Apple calls “the most advanced personal electronics device ever.”

While Vision Pro takes a physical form resembling ski goggles, the whole idea is that, unlike with a MacBook or iPhone, you don’t have a screen, keyboard, mouse or trackpad to interact with. It’s an invisible computer. Apple has a bunch of breakthrough gestures to make it work — here’s how to use them.

Can you get real work done inside a Vision Pro? Yes — although it comes with many asterisks.

It’s closely correlated to how much work you can do entirely on the web without specialized apps, although the virtual Mac display can smooth that down a bit. Surprisingly, typing in Vision Pro is great.

Working on Vision Pro has its annoyances, quirks and limitations, but I think Apple has built a very solid foundation here for a version-one product.

Check out our video or keep reading below.

Spatial photos and videos look incredibly lifelike in full 3D while wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset. But how do you take photos with Vision Pro? It might be confusing at first since there’s no Camera app in the headset. Instead, Vision Pro uses a new Capture app.

But don’t worry. Any photos or videos you take with Vision Pro will sync to your Photos library. And they’re fully compatible with your other Apple devices, although you’ll only see them there in a boring two dimensions, like it’s still 2023. Yawn.