Thirty minutes with a Vision Pro

I mainly use computers to type things into rectangles. A Vision Pro has limited utility for this, unless I’ve misunderstood it. To find out, I booked into the demos you can now do in the UK.

My reaction:

It’s smaller and lighter than I expected. I didn’t really notice it while wearing, but when I took it off my face did feel warm.

The on-screen keyboard is unusable. I can imagine, at a stretch, getting adept at it, but there’s no chance in 30 minutes. I mean, it’s impressive the way the keys move as you type in mid-air, but I had to work very hard and stare at the keys to get above 50% chance of the right press.  I tried to edit a Keynote, and it was insanely hard work.

I would be interesting in trying it with a physical keyboard or laptop attached, which is apparently a thing.

The “wallpaper” is remarkable. They have a special name for it which I can’t remember: you dim out the room and you have a 360 degree “background”. For me, it was a lake shore. I suspect my breathing slowed and my heart rate dropped. I would have been happy just sitting in that for 30 minutes. This part of the demo has stuck with me.

All the video, photo, entertainment demo stuff is superb — but’d you expect that. Immersive, as they say. Yup, tick tick tick, it’s all good. But not social, and I don’t think I’d ever use it.

I miss peripheral vision. In those incredible videos I found myself having to twist my head around, scanning, to take everything in. In real life, my peripheral vision would have directed me to what was going on. Thinking back on the experience, this is the most disappointing part.

It’s a lot of fun, pretty interesting, but possibly only for a demo at the moment.