The Apple Vision Pro review

25:10So they get spatial audio. They get lower latency. They get 48 kilohertz. Like you just want to use those. Also feels like the right. You don't want big headphones with these. Like you don't need more weight on your head as you're wearing Vision Pro. Yeah. Okay. But no notes. You're a guy who cares deeply about this stuff. You're good with spatial audio. You're happy about this. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure if I had more time and sleep, I would have notes on the audio. But no, no notes. Everyone has just been sneaking up on you for several days now. But again, there's not again, because there's not a lot of AR experiences or even VR experiences, that thing hasn't happened.

25:44It's just Windows are playing audio at you. I was on a FaceTime call with Joanna and Marquez so we could look at personas and boy. And they their PS3 characters sounded like they were talking to me from where they were, which is cool. Part of that is really cool. All right. One more. And then we're going to take a break. And then we're going to get into some of the like how you use this thing stuff. Battery life. Is it good? Irrelevant. That's my answer. It's fine. It's two and a half hours. We haven't had a chance to do a battery rundown. I'm not even sure that I would want to subject anyone to do a battery rundown.

26:17And that's what I mean by it's irrelevant. If you are in this thing for two and a half hours, boy, are you going to feel it. I personally cannot imagine a situation where you want to be in it for that long. I know Joanna wore it for like 20 hours straight. I don't know what the actual number is. because as we are recording this, I've not read her review, but when I had talked to her on that FaceTime call, she'd been wearing it for five hours. I'm very worried. I love her to pieces. She's one of the very closest friends. I'm so worried about her. I just can't imagine a situation where you want to hit the battery life.

26:51And then because it is so stationary, it feels like it'll be close to power. Now, the one situation where I could see it being a problem is a plane, but then you're sitting, so you can just plug in a battery. You'll be fine. Can you hot swap the batteries? That's a question we've gotten a bunch. You cannot hot swap the batteries. The batteries are, it's a mechanical twist connector. It's very satisfying. It's like a big cyber decky twist connector, you know, and it lights up. The battery has a motion sensor. So when you pick it up, the light glows green or orange. It's very Apple. There's no button to tell you the battery status.

27:21It has a motion sensor. Sure. At$34.99, you can do anything. So it just picks up and glows. But you can't hot swap it from the headset itself. You can just plug another battery into it over USB-C. All right. Let's take a quick break. And then we're going to come back and talk about a bunch of the ways you actually use this thing. We'll be right back.

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29:23Either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free.

30:00Terms and conditions apply. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote.

30:37Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high-quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

31:15All right, we're back. next one on my list i think we should get into the like life inside of the headset thing and i feel like there are two big parts of the how you use this thing that really sort of define whether this thing is going to work or not i guess the the first one is is the eye tracking so eye tracking is it good it's as good as anyone has ever shipped eye tracking i'm just gonna start playing that for myself at the beginning of every one of these answers which version of toby does it really like perfectly replicated. That's Toby with two eyes. It is the best eye tracking that anyone has ever shipped.

31:52It's not good enough. I'm just going to keep coming back to this and it's going to be frustrating. Until you use it, it's the best, the first time you use it. Until you use it, it's hard even for me to explain what I'm talking about. The first time you put it on, so many of us have had that demo, it's magic. You look at stuff, it highlights you click your fingers together if you get it wrong like oh you just have to get used to it right like that's the experience that you have in that first demo the idea is basically like where your eyes focus is a cursor is sort of the way to think about it right and you're sort of moving that cursor around with your gaze and you look at a button in order to be able to click on that button right is that like is that a reasonable way to think about the metaphor there yeah you know how the iPad cursor kind of snaps it's that okay right so you just sort of like if buttons are big and you look in a general area they will highlight oh I see okay fascinating thing about this is one I think vision OS is designed for eye tracking that is slightly more precise than it actually is like that's how it feels it probably isn't it's probably designed to be exactly as it's Apple right meaning like the buttons are like a little too small and a little too close together yeah I'll just give you one super dumb example the keyboard is like ridiculous It's just a fully ridiculous.

33:10They needed to have a keyboard and it's there, but there's no way they want you to use that keyboard for any Siri's text input. The keys are too close together. So you're sitting there trying to look from one letter to another, and you're just like, I hate this. And then you just give up, and you dictate to Siri, or you connect a regular keyboard and use that keyboard. There's no way you should use that keyboard. And part of it is that it is just fundamentally ridiculous. Part of it is that the buttons are too close together. And you will sit there trying to look from the E to the R and the system just like won't let you.

33:41And I've never looked at a letter as hard as I've tried to look at a letter. Like I'm looking at it, man. And brain is saying like R, R, R. Yeah. And sometimes the easiest thing to do is to look completely away and try again. Right. And maybe the thing is like, you know, I can't quantify it. Maybe it's 99 % accurate. But that 1 % just like ends it. But it doesn't like wiggle. like toby would sometimes kind of wiggle it wouldn't quite register your eye it's the best eye tracking that has ever been shipped this is what i'm saying this is the best anyone has ever done it without question it's the best anyone's ever done it and you know a keyboard on a computer is a hundred percent precise right you push a button that button is pushed every single time multi-touch iphone is actually not a hundred percent precise there's a lot of algorithmic work happening to make a touchscreen appear to be 100 % precise.

34:35Like a lot of work has happened over the past decade to make those touchscreens feel even more precise. But they appear to you to be 100 % precise. And when they are not, like when autocorrect fails, which is an experience everyone has, you are utterly frustrated, right? When a touchscreen goes dead and you're jabbing at a button, it doesn't do anything. That's awful. Right, that's the worst. But most of the time, a touchscreen appears to be 100%, like direct input control. your eyes are bad. Like you are just constantly looking at stuff that you don't want to look at. Right. Or like you're looking at the biggest thing instead of the play button is the biggest thing in a video player.

35:13And I constantly want to push the plus 10 seconds. But my eyes are like, look at how big that play button is. And so I'm just looking at the wrong thing. And that is, it's the best anyone's ever done it. And it went, Addy's line was it works until it doesn't. Right. My version of that is it feels like magic until it is not. Yeah. And it's just a binary. So this connects to hand tracking, which I think is your next question probably. The hand tracking is exactly the same way. It's magic until it is not. And particularly where it's not is when it can't see your hands. Which, like, I'm just sitting at a table right now.

35:45If I just had my hands on my lap, it couldn't see my hands. This is a ridiculous complaint. The hand tracking system needs to see your hands. No other computer stops working if it can't see your hands. Like if you want this to be a primary computing device like your hand It has to be able to see your hands if I if you're just standing up and your hands are by your sides And if you're like me they kind of like fall behind you stops working and so like it's the best it's ever been shipped without question It is the best that's ever been shipped. It just hits the wall of reality Which is the thing is not actually your eyes and your hands are not actually controlling this device cameras are watching your hands and your eyes interpreting them and turning that into input and that interpretation has real limits so like to keep it fully functional at all times you have to kind of like keep your hands up at all times no it's a pretty big bubble around you so like if you are it's basically like if you sliced your body in half it's the plane of the body in front of you like all the way around so uh if you're sitting on a couch and your hand over the side of the couch it mostly works if you are anywhere anywhere i can see your hands basically but if you if it's really dark and you are lying down and the ir floodlights in the front can't sort of like reach down and see your hands and light them up the cameras can't see your hands so they can't use it's like you're just going to find all of these places where like if you are meant to wear this thing all the time they will come up more than you think but in most uses it feels like magic right it's this line it is absolutely magic until it is not oh and then the other thing that's funny uh is that it is always using your hands as input this is what i was about to ask about like have you had to train yourself to be aware of your eyes and hands in ways that you wouldn't be otherwise like you anyone who has ever watched the verge cast on youtube knows neil i never ever ever stops moving his hands you touch the mics you're moving around you're gesturing at stuff you're pointing at things you're you're like are you like aware of these parts of your body in new ways after using these devices?

37:47Yes. In particular, you have to sit still. When I write scripts for a decoder or for video reviews like this, I talk as I write to make sure I can read what I'm writing and it sounds good and flows. And I move my hands when I talk, and I was just scrolling all over the place by accident, just whipping windows around for no reason, just clicking on stuff. And I was like, oh, I got to keep my hands still. Some people do not speak with their hands. This is a very personalized complaint. But if you do, you're going to notice. You have to sit still unless you want to do something. And then the other thing is that you have to get used to the control being linked to your eyes.

38:21And that is not how you use a computer. How many times have you looked at something on screen and just banged around the arrow keys to get around without looking at the arrow keys? Constantly. All the time. On the Vision Pro, you have to go look. Right. Right? And that's just like the simplest example. On a phone where, you know, there's a little bit more collapse between what you're looking at in the controls. How many times have I opened Lightroom and like moved a slider back and forth while looking at the photo to see how the brightness is changing or whatever? On the Vision Pro, you got to look at that brightness slider.

38:49Weird. Weird. Does it feel like that friction could ever go away for you? Like at some point you could see yourself doing it more naturally and it's just you've had five days with it? Yeah, I've had five days with it. You know, I've asked Apple about this particular thing. This is a big philosophical, needy design question, right? Like, should the control of the thing be directly linked to what you're looking at, or should those things be disconnected? And so, you know, obviously, I'm asking this. I'm just wandering the streets being like, what is the central nature of input? This is what I love.

39:19I love it. I love talking about this stuff. And they're like, one, you get used to it. And two, that it's not the only input on the system, right? You can connect a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. You can use Siri to do all this stuff. Like we want to expand the range of computing inputs beyond the mouse and the keyboard. And after five days or six days, I'm kind of like, well, the mouse and keyboard are historically undefeated. So good luck. I agree that the one that's missing there is like, I think there's a way of looking at the Vision Pro that is sort of an amalgamation of all of the technology Apple has ever built to do anything all in one device.

39:54And the one that it feels like it's missing is multi-touch. Like it's, it's surprising to me given all of the stuff in here that there isn't a way to reach out and touch the buttons on the keyboard to type. You can't, you can punch one finger at a time. Oh, you can. Oh, okay. You can't multi-touch. Okay. Right. So it can register big movements of the hands. I want to like big is the wrong word. So you can type on it like a typewriter kind of. Yeah. You can, you can hand pack on a, and then you look silly and it's slow and it's not a hundred percent accurate. And like I said that, but you can do that, right?

40:25Like we don't have optic ID set up on ours because other people like the video team is constantly using it and kind of light it up and all this stuff. And so everyone puts it on and they punch the code into. Oh, interesting. Okay. Right. Instead of doing the thing because it's just a big phone keypad. What looks like a phone keypad shows up in front of you and you're like boop, boop, boop, boop. And it's like very funny to watch everyone do this every time they put it on. Okay. So that is a fallback option at least makes me feel a little bit better about this. I do think there is a thing that the eye tracking, it just adds another step to everything you want to do.

40:58The example I always give to people is like your muscle memory knows where all the app icons are on your phone. So like if you had to think about looking at an app every single time you wanted to open it, it would be annoying. And it's just your fingers learn where things are in a way that is useless to you on the Vision Pro. Yeah, you have to be looking at things. I'll give you another example. Actually, the multi-touch example is a really good one. So a Quest, right? of controllers and every VR company loves being like you're a DJ now. They just love it. Then, you know, in my 20s I was like, I'm going to be a DJ.

41:30Feels right. We all go through this period. We all had that moment. And in all subsequent decades, Eli has said those things. Yeah, I'm still a DJ. I'm playing tonight at Soundbar. So in the Quest, you have controllers in your hands and you look at Tribe XR, which is the DJ app on the Quest and it's floating in space and you reach out and it shows your hands. It doesn't show the controllers. and you push the button and it looks like you're grabbing the fader. And then after a while, your brain kind of remaps. You're like, oh, I'm actually grabbing this fader. I'm actually twisting this knob. And your hands are doing some controller stuff, right?

42:00They're just like gripping or pushing the trigger button. But your brain just kind of like remaps to that thing. Vision Pro doesn't have that. It's got taps. So you look at a knob and you tap your fingers and drag it the same way you do anything else. And it's like, oh, I'm not. But there's no connection between me physically interacting with this floating deck in DJ, which is the Vision Pro version of this, the way that in Tribe XR. It's like I've got a controller. I'm pushing buttons on the controller. And because something tactile is happening to my hands that looks like something tactile is happening over here, like my brain is just like rewiring to be convinced that that is actually happening.

42:38Now, can I DJ in any of these apps? No. Absolutely not. But the Vision Pro is like because you're just tapping your fingers together. It's like you're clicking. The difference is very much between, I would give you the difference, feels very much like the difference between a touchscreen and a mouse. Where a touchscreen feels like you're directly controlling some pixels and a mouse is like, I'm clicking on stuff. Okay, so sort of like when you're on a touchscreen and you're trying to play like a Nintendo game on your phone, it feels like garbage. But then younger people are just used to phone screens.

43:10And so they don't hate it as much. They can play Fortnite and stuff. Yeah, I watch Max plays Minecraft on her iPad. I'm like, how are you doing this? Yeah. So she'll have a great time. Yeah. So maybe the younger people are going to live fully in headsets and they're going to be fine. But it's that control dynamic is you will feel it in a way that, again, it is the best that has ever been done. Is it good enough? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it can ever be. It has to be 50 times better. By the way, can I say this thing? Please. Because I haven't given this a score yet. So we're going to spend all night debating the score.

43:41I think shipping a$3 ,500 computer whose default input method is not 100 % consistent. That's a full point. Yes. That's a full point, right? A hundred percent. And one out of every hundred times you hit a key, it just made up a different key to do. You would not like that keyboard. Yeah. Right. And there's all these other affordances and whatever, but that feels like a full point. Yeah. Anytime I review an e-ink device, I have to knock off a point because it's not going to work all the time. That's brutal. You type three letters and then four seconds later, it types two of them and then something else.

44:14Okay, let's get to the two main use cases that I think we and others have identified for this thing so far. And you should add to this list if there are any obvious big ones that I'm missing. But the first one is using it essentially as a monitor for your computer, as a thing to attach to a Mac and do stuff with. Is it good? Yeah, that's really good. Caveats. One, it's really good. Especially if you have a laptop, you push the button. The thing that I really enjoyed doing was putting the virtual display over where my Mac display had been, my MacBook display had been, and then making it really big.

44:49So then you're like, I have a 50-inch MacBook Pro. I'm going to use Lightroom. It's cool. That is just cool. So it's like you have your Mac on your desk and then a giant-ass TV-sized monitor in front of you. Right, but where the MacBook display is. can you do the thing from your mac where you have like a bunch of windows spread around the room or whatever can i put mac apps in all those places or is that just vision pro apps you get one single mac display you can't have multiple mac displays which i know a lot of people want to do which you can do to much less good effect with quest headsets right like there are apps in the quest that just let you have multiple monitors i assume there will be those apps for the vision pro but by default and with all of the cool iCloud stuff that you want, which is really important, it's one display.

45:35And by the way, the cool iCloud stuff, magic. You know, this is like an iPad on your face. Like, it's a very easy way to understand what's happening here. And the cool iPad stuff that continuity can do is amazing in this context. So you're using a Mac in this window and then you just scroll the mouse on the Mac trackpad over and it turns into a Vision Pro cursor. You copy from the Mac in this window and you paste it in the Vision Pro app over here and it just works. Very cool. All right, so that's that one. And then the other one is basically using it as a TV entertainment system. This is the one I think Alex and I are both the most theoretically excited about that feels like it could be the most immediately useful for people.

46:10Is it a good TV? Super good. Very good. I watched way more of Top Gun Maverick than I want to. And by the way, I watched it on the treadmill at 2.7 miles an hour, just walking up a hill very slowly. I did not try to run. I was like, I'm not. I don't know about this. But I was like, can I take a slow walk watching a movie on the best TV I can get near a treadmill? And the answer was unequivocally yes. Very cool. It does this really cool thing when you put it in environments where the light from the TV reflects on the mountain. It's just all very cool. The caveat I will give you is it supports 3D.

46:44It supports high frame rate. It's the only consumer device that supports high frame rate 3D. So you can watch Avatar wave water at 48 frames per second in 3D. I don't know if that's good. It's just like that's what James Cameron wants like you you can you can live that life I watched five minutes that and I was sick. Oh wow, and I you know like I'm pretty good at VR like I do I play Gran Turismo VR VR motion does not drive me too crazy This was like we were too much and I had to take it off immediately So I would just be careful and there are no guardrails anywhere in vision OS to tell you be careful The one that I've seen is if you take a spatial like a first-person video and there's a lot of motion in it it will detect that there's a lot of motion and be like be careful watching this one it does not say be careful watching avatar wave water interesting but if your own video it'll sometimes say be careful you should always be careful watching the way of water no matter the circumstances should always be careful uh but yeah the tv stuff is good the thing that i will two caveats there one you're alone there's no you even if like three of you have a vision pro together you can't sync them up so you can't look at the same thing at the same time i mean you can manually sync them up which is sad if you find yourself with like three people wearing a vision pro counting to three to hit the play button on avatar like just buy a tv it's like the thing on a plane where you you try and hit play on both screens at the same time it's good stuff yeah so like there but there's no in in os syncing of that stuff so you can i'll watch the same thing which is weird right movie or somewhat social experiences and then two you can't screen record what you're seeing Like Disney will just DRM that shit out.

48:17And I was like, this sucks. Like that's me being like, oh, this sucks. Like a huge part of the experience of watching shows right now is like sharing clips of social media or whatever. And you can't. Weird. And then it's your eyes, right? You're like, I'm seeing this. Look at how cool the light on the mountains is. I can't show it to you because of copyright restrictions. Weird. I'm sorry for laughing. That is weird. It's weird. It's weird to be like, oh, like Bob Iger has DRM'd my eyes. I don't like that. Very Black Mirror feeling. Like, I just keep thinking that the episode where she, like, gets her husband out of the way or boyfriend or whatever.

48:53And it just feels like this headset's really equipped for that. But not in a pleasant way. It's weird, man. Yeah, it's weird. Are there any, like, big picture use cases other than those two? Those are the two people seem to mostly ask us about and also have been kind of imagining since this thing first launched. Is there anything that, like, leaps out to you as equally big to those two things? No. To be perfectly blunt, and I think the Mac thing is, I want to see how people actually react to it. Yeah. Like, it's cool, and it was really cool, but 2560 by 1440 is not enough. Like, my 16-inch MacBook Pro is more resolution than that, right?

49:27So it's cool to have a big, like, editing in Lightroom huge is great, but then the sort of reality of the resolution is actually, you're going to find yourself fighting it. And then, you know, TV, like, some of that stuff is really cool. But, again, I was watching the playoffs last night. There's no Fox Sports app to screen in 4K. and I was watching YouTube TV, 720p Fox, huge stuff. It's like, ew. Yeah. Ew. There. There's a part of me, and I'm just a shameless plug for the TV that I'm convincing myself was not an extraordinarily splurged purchase. You can go buy an ISO LED for far less money, and then you'll have a really nice TV that you can take pictures of if you want to share something.

50:08But then Bob Iger will come to your house. he's like look i'm not busy enough uh i need you to stop doing that just cuts the cord off um all right one more before we take a break and then we're going to do some listener questions and we're going to get out of here the vision pro is it good the vision pro is the best version of this thing that anyone has ever made okay which to to apple's credit has basically been what it has been saying about this all along right like the answer to why is this thing 3500 is because it is the best one of these we can make. Yes, without question. It is the best version of this headset that anyone has ever made.

50:42It is unquestionably still a VR headset. And as a primary computing device, I do not think VR headsets are it. Maybe this thing just proves that point to a lot of people, right? It is weird to be alone using a computer the way that this thing makes you alone. We haven't even talked about the front display, right? The big thing about this that is supposed to make you not feel alone is the front display showing your eyes to other people. You can't see them most of the time. It's super dim, and that glass is really reflective, and mostly people are like, am I supposed to be seeing something? You're like, it's my eyes.

51:14They're like, ah! I was like, is that actually maybe a good thing that you can't see it most of the time? They don't look good. They totally look like CGI. It's a super low-res display in there. I've seen the part in a briefing. It's just a grid of pixels, like a sports stadium screen or something. or the sphere. God bless the sphere. Here's a question. Would you rather live in the Vision Pro or live in the sphere? And the answer is the sphere. Okay. Sphere is a little more expensive, but you know, it's okay. But it's really dim. You can't really see the eyes. You're never making anything that actually looks like eye contact.

51:48Like it's just, that's not happening. So it's like, you're just alone in there. And like the stuff that I think is really cool. Like yesterday I was walking around the cafe of our office, which is huge. And I just had windows all over the place in there. Just windows for days, It's just like over tables floating in space. I was just walking around looking at stuff. And I was like, this rules. And no one else could experience that with me. Like other people just saw me looking around pointing at nothing. I just think there's something lonely about that. Like really intensely lonely. And I would rather not have that experience.

52:20And so I think VR is great. I'm a VR headset user. I love playing Gran Turismo in VR. I love Supernatural. Like there's single use applications, mostly gaming, that make a lot of sense to like have a focused, lonely experience. For using an iPad? I don't know. Like half the time I'm like, look at this on my screen to someone else. And that is really hard to do. So it is the best version of this that has ever been made. But I went through and looked at every Tim Cook quote about VR and AR for the past decade. And his complaint about it always has been VR is isolating. And like I'm here at the end with holding the thing.

52:55I'm like, yep, VR is pretty isolating. Yeah. I mean, the big question I think we're going to spend a lot of time talking about and covering over the next few years, really, is the Vision Pro the end of that arc in which we realize that's not where we're headed? Or is it sort of overlapping the end of that arc, but is actually the beginning of the next thing? And I think Apple wants you to believe it's the beginning of the next thing, but what it built looks more like the end of the VR arc. And so I think which it turns out to be is going to be really interesting over time. We can end here. There's a real danger reviewing a first-generation Apple product.

53:28Yes. I feel it, right? Like nobody looks back on a first-generation Quest review and is like, they got it wrong. Like a first-generation Apple product, especially when you're in a tiny group of reviewers, people look back on it and they're like, you got it wrong. And I know this is a risk to say, but I'm going to say this. This feels like it will convince a lot of people that some of these technologies are dead ends, right? Like you can try as hard as you want. You can be one of the richest companies in the world. You can put all of that capability in. And there's a lot of this thing that feels like Apple made it because only Apple can make it.

53:58Right. Like the giant's just looking for a fight and found one. Great. I think that's so cool. Like I have no qualms with that. Go get it. But that means if you look at this device, you're like, oh, pass through VR does not actually substitute for the goal, which is optical AR, where you're just looking through a pair of glasses and the computer's putting stuff over reality. Like that's the goal. You got to get to there. And this thing, there's no path from here to there. And I don't know. Like, that's my big take from this thing is, like, it feels like Apple needed to build a simulator of the computing experiences it wanted to build.

54:31And if it talks about it that way, it might be a little more charitable. But their ad is, like, people are just, like, doing laundry in it. It's like, no, this is not that thing. Okay. All right. Well, by the time you're hearing this, Nealize Review is live. The video is live. Go watch it. Go read it. We're going to take a break, and then we're going to come back, and we're going to do five minutes of quick questions, and then we're going to get out of here. Bear back.

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58:00All right, we're back. So I have a big list of questions. Thanks to everybody who called and emailed and posted with questions. We've answered a bunch of them already, which is great. So we're just going to blow through a bunch of the ones we didn't do already. The first one is a hotline question from Joe. Hi, my name is Joe. And about the Apple Vision Pro, what does the thing smell like while you're wearing it? Neelai, we got this question so many times. I cannot tell you. How does it smell? I need to know. I don't know why people ask this question. Here's my situation. AirPods Max out of the box had a smell because they were like manufactured in China and then shipped over here and like they whatever particular process on the fabric i think has a smell so there's like a tiny whiff of that smell immediately went away will they smell after you sweat in them for a while i don't know yet don't know yet um i do know i had a little zit on my face with a video review and i wore a little bit of concealer and it got on the headband and i asked joanna about this and she's like that's covered in my review too interesting but here's my question do you want to wear a computer that messes up your hair every time you use it wrong do you want to wear a computer that messes up your makeup every time you use it is a different bigger question uh yeah and that stuff might smell yeah like once you cake this thing full of sweat and makeup okay all right that's a good one next a question from matt and we talked about this a little bit but i i and it seems like the answer so far is we'll see but he asks is there any gaming use case beyond playing on a virtual screen with an xbox controller that it seems like you can just do now right like you can play games kind of from a mac or in theory from game pass through safari or whatever, but is there any other gaming stuff you've seen that sparked something in you?

59:35No, I mean, the games are all iPad games in 3D. I played What? The Golf, which is really fun. It's in 3D, right? It's a 3D game inherently. You're just looking at a 2D thing. They just built it so it's virtual and you pull back and let go. There's nothing like NFL Pro Era or any of these big VR games. They are to come. I'm told they are to come, but nothing yet. That's actually a good segue to another question that we got from Kyle, who says, I want to know what iPad ports are like and if there's any jankiness with them both in how they work and the general UI. Basically, like apps that are just iPad apps that they check the checkbox to say, put it on the Vision Pro.

1:00:10What have you seen so far? I think it is very telling that Apple shipped a bunch of its own apps as iPad apps. Fascinating. iPad apps are designed for your fingers. And so the eye tracking is even more frustrating in iPad apps because all the targets are even smaller. They work. There's no not working, right? They work, but you will realize, like, oh, the same way that putting a mouse and keyboard experience on a touchscreen can be frustrating. I was just going to say, like, have you ever attached a mouse or one of the keyboard attachments on the iPad with the trackpad? It's like it feels cool and also like it was clearly not designed for that.

1:00:45Yeah. And, you know, if you have a – they sent me a Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad. I have those connected a lot. You can just, like – that all looks like iPadOS. It's all the same stuff. So, yeah, they're totally usable. There's no particular weirdness there, except if you're using hand and eye tracking, you will quickly discover that the apps are designed for not that. And sometimes that shows up. I think it's like barely a criticism. Like, it's just obvious what's happening. It's better than like when all the iPhone apps came to iPad and it was very clearly like just the iPhone app big. Oh, yeah.

1:01:13That's a good comparison. It's way, way, way better than that. Okay. Okay, good. All right. I have another hotline question. Another one, believe it or not, that we got multiple times from Ray. Hey, this is Ray. And this is a question about the Vision Pro. I wonder what happens if you look in a mirror with the Vision Pro on. Would it phase you in like it does with other people? Or would it recognize that you're wearing the Vision Pro and not do it? And what happens if you turn on the fake eyes? Would it consider you a person that can fade into? Thanks. This is one of the first things I tried. Why do you think I was in the bathroom?

1:01:48You look crazy. Because I was trying to see my own eyes, right? So, yeah, it does show you your own eyes. But I can't tell if it is because it thinks you're another person or if it knows that you're looking at yourself, which is like a weird. Does a computer know I'm looking at myself? It's like that's another two hours. Yeah, we don't have time for that today. But it like nothing horrible happened. Like you're still here. You looked in a mirror. You're still here. I was like, man, these eyes kind of suck. Okay, cool. We got a question from Andy basically asking about multiple user support. Questions about OS and software, adjustments for the hardware.

1:02:22Is this a device you can functionally share with other people? No, absolutely not. The only affordance is something called guest mode, where you say, put this in guest mode, and then it lets you limit what apps whoever wears a headset can use next. And then it lets you limit whatever apps whoever's wearing a headset can use. And that's it. That's what you get. And then you're supposed to give it to someone else. They do a tiny little bit of setup just to align the displays. They don't even do the hand tracking setup. And that's it. And so then it's like, you can only use Safari. and they give it back to you and you log in and you're good to go.

1:02:53But there's no multiple user accounts, nothing. This thing is an iPad. The same way that an iPad doesn't have multiple user support, this doesn't have it. Did that feel like it heightened that lonely experience for you? Yeah, this is my computer. Like you give it to someone else, you're like, you can just use my computer now. It's weird. Yeah. Okay. By the way, a particularly weird thing about that is, you know, there's optic ID. So someone else should not be able to unlock your computer. But again, because other people are using it for captures and all this stuff to make our video, other people can just be my persona.

1:03:22like they can make facetime calls with my head it's like it's not at all how it's designed it's just the reality of how we are using it today which is wild yeah talk about the personas for a sec because that was something we got a couple of questions about too this idea that if i make a facetime call or i go on google meet or whatever wearing this that it's not showing a camera version of me it's showing like my avatar yeah what's the verdict on personas uh i will say what Marquez said when we did our FaceTime call for the video. This is very impressive and also bad. They're bad. If I shut up in a meeting with a persona, I personally feel like that would be insulting.

1:03:58So the persona just replaces the front-facing camera. That's how you should think about it. Apps don't know it's happening. They don't see it. They call for the front camera, and they get your persona. Oh, so the Vision Pro just reports to whatever app you're doing. This is what the webcam is seeing. This is what the webcam is seeing, which is fascinating. A great hack. Like, brilliant, right? And then, you know, you do the scan and sees your face. They look like PS3 characters. Like, I was talking to Marquez and Joanna on that call, and I was like, Marquez, this looks like you're about to give me an item that will help me fight the boss.

1:04:28Like, that's how it looks. You know, like, welcome to my store. Like, in any game that you might play. They're uncanny. It's weird that they have decided that everyone has the same tongue. Like, you don't scan your tongue, but you stick your tongue out, you have a tongue. Weird. Just weird. Like, someone at Apple is like, do a tongue model. We'll just use it for everybody. to a tongue. Like someone had that job, right? Just a Gene Simmons tongue for everyone. Yeah, it's like you can't get different tongues. You're always wearing the same clothes. It looks like you've just had the worst Botox ever.

1:04:58I took a call with our creative director, Will Joel, to look at some design stuff. And he's like, I'm so used to looking at your face on these calls. Because you're looking at something and your face betrays more than you've ever seen. And he's like, I can't. This is not useful for me. so yeah i apple it's in beta there's a reason it's in beta there's a reason they haven't shown it to anyone like it's not good yeah like there's a long way to go and it's like you know for i keep saying it has to be 50 better i can see how this can get 50 better it's very obvious okay fair enough um all right two more then we'll then we're out of here uh from jesse what is it like looking at real world displays through pass-through tvs pcs phones smart watches etc fine but blurry okay Yeah, it's fine but blurry.

1:05:44Fair enough. I can just use my phone, but it's blurry. And last one from Arun Raj who asks, is the digital crown really useful to gradually transition between VR and AR? I don't see any point where a person has to be in between the two modes. They could have just switched back and forth. So using it, you will quickly discover there's a lot of times you want to be in between the two modes because if you put windows out in space and they're like going through walls or things, it screws their brain. So you're like, here's a portal into depth. Like here's a portal into a big desert landscape. And so instead of walls in front of me, there's like depth.

1:06:17And now I can put windows into that depth while I still have the room around me and I can look around. So that is very useful. It is an inherent, right, is a big compromise over like should this be AR, right? That's like I'm creating a virtual environment to solve the problem of AR in this moment. And then you want to, you know, you have full remote check on the moon. But like that halfway setting, I ended up using a lot more just to create that depth for the OS. all right neil i you have to go uh you have now 26 hours to change your mind about everything send more questions we'll we'll do more of these i know people are gonna have infinite questions oh for sure and we yeah we're gonna we're gonna cover this a bunch we'll talk about it more on friday show we'll we have a lot to do and i think especially as we start to see more apps we're gonna talk a lot about this so yeah i think we have a lot of developers have to basically make this product work for sure yeah so call the hotline 866 version one one email us vergecast It's theverge.com.

1:07:09We'll put Neelai's review in the video in the show notes. Neelai and Alex, thank you both. Thank you. Yeah.

1:07:18All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to Neelai and Alex for being here. Thanks to Neelai for braving all of these days and his deep vulnerable state and coming on and talking about the Vision Pro. It's the sacrifices we make, everybody. Also, thanks to everybody who sent in questions via the hotline or email or on threads. They were all great. And please, like Neelai said, keep them coming. We're going to keep talking about this thing for a while. We'll also put links to Neelai's review and the video in the show notes, but we are covering the Vision Pro in every way we can think of.

1:07:48So keep it locked on TheVerge.com. Lots coming this week. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poore. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about new web browsers, much more Vision Pro stuff, and everything else happening in tech. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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