Apple Vision Pro reviewed (not by me)

Interesting to watch (or read, if you prefer) Nilay Patel’s take on the Apple Vision Pro. (Text version|Youtube video)

I’m never in a million years going be paying Apple for one of my own at those prices, but it’s still good to see what the Vision Pro looks like in use. One day there’ll be a Vision Air or Vision Mini and it’s good to have some sense of the roots of the product class.¹

Interesting to hear Patel note that the way the device uses where you’re looking to focus actions makes you permanently conscious of what exactly you’re looking at. I cant help but wonder whether Apple will introduce some sort of ‘neutral’ mode and associated gesture that temporarily disables the direction-of-vision-equals-selection functionality so that the user won’t be in danger of activating stuff that they only want to gaze upon.

I’d imagine that in the absence of Stage Manager or Expose within months there’ll be umpteen utilities to enhance window management on the Vision Pro. It’ll be so tempting to fill your virtual desktop with overlapping windows that they mean to come back to one day. Users will either need iron self-discipline or a really capable window manager.² I’m already capable of having way too many tabs open in Safari: I dread to think what I could do with that entire 3D virtual desktop to play with.

The bottom line is that it’s a hell of a version 1 of the product.

Look back to 40 year-old reviews of the Apple Mac for another Apple computing platform that was overpriced and underpowered at launch. Give Apple a decade or so to see what turns up next. They have deep enough pockets to persevere with the visionOS/Vision Pro combo, so I might yet be hankering after a Vision Air or Vision Mini or whatever because I’m desperate to escape the constraints of my laptop’s desktop monitor.³

[Via Tao Of Mac]