My wife still makes fun of me when I'm working at home with Vision Pro - I wouldn't wear it out in public. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41836437
I tested the device in an Apple Store and was blown away by the experience. Such an amazing tool to explore, enjoy and relax.
The work part though? I had the same feeling as with the iPad early on. I need a keyboard and a mouse to be productive.
I wonder how soon will Maya or CATIA offer good enough integration. Maybe they already offer it at the high end.
There was even a Youtuber that got annoyed of the black screen on the Macbook when doing this that he removed the screen from a Macbook altogether[0].
Both my iPad Pro and my Vision Pro have a keyboard and trackpad:
- The iPad Pro of course uses the excellent Magic Keyboard.
- The Vision Pro uses an Apple keyboard w/o numpad side by side with the Magic Trackpad, in a custom tray to hold both. (Make sure that your carryon's front pocket can hold the full tray.)
For sure if I thought I could only do work on a MacBook not an iPad Pro (what most people seem to think, insisting iPad is a consumption device), then I definitely couldn't work on a Vision Pro.
But once you've figured out how to code (e.g. VSCode using blink code, or Koder, Working Copy, Textastic, etc.), do graphic design (e.g. Affinity suite), or run Office on an iPad (Teams, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel), the Vision Pro does those too but with "all the app windows at once" (ofc, iPad Pro 13" makes excellent use of Stage Manager for window groups).
All that said, I haven't felt a burden to pull AVP out on the plane.
iPad Pro 13" HDR with AirPods Pro USB-C using Spatial Audio that anchors to your iPad screen seem more than enough. Especially since you can share audio with a seat mate who also has AirPods, and both watch the same movie together.
Not often talked about: for doing real work, do consider a fresh glasses prescription and the Zeiss add-ins. To keep windows rectangular instead of trapezoid, insist you're under 40 regardless of your age, otherwise Zeiss do a stealth "progressive" that warps window sizes.
I want to replace my macbook, I don't want to replace my ipad. I can't work properly on my ipad unless i'm using it as a dumb terminal. And at the price point of a macbook that's what it should be replacing.
People may point out that i can use it to mirror my macbook screen.. but now i'm paying 2x to replace a screen. I think this is a primary misplay in he vision pro strategy.
Give me a windowing system that lets me place windows, not in a little box that is essentially a virtual monitor, but wherever i want in my immediate vicinity. Let me put my goland/ide window front and center, let me put a terminal to the left, and my music player above.. whatever.
I'd take a vision pro with much of the compute hardware stripped out but that I can tether to a macbook via usbc/thunderbolt as well.. just not an ipad strapped to my face.
https://support.apple.com/guide/airpods/control-spatial-audi...
Apple Music marks Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio separately. They are not the same experience for the listener. They do work well together.
Since we only have two ears, a degree of our surround cue comes from where the sounds are when we move our heads.
Apple's "motion tracking in space" spatial audio implementation taps into that to an uncanny degree, because your own motion is not simulated. Real motion in real space results in a real sound difference from the sound model that, you're right, is simulating how that motion should sound relative to the origin.
As a listener, you start to forget the sound isn't centered out there on the anchor point, and then you start thinking the surround sounds are really surrounding you...
Here are two different explainers:
- https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/18/apples-spatial-au...
- https://www.gearpatrol.com/tech/apple-spatial-audio-vs-dolby...
Note that I disagree with the second explainer's final section that surround sound speakers like Sonos are the same "spatial audio" as the motion tracking sound modeling Apple is doing.
I agree with the first explainer that Apple's Spatial Audio is a system that takes advantage of the gyroscopes and sensors in the listening device and headphones to, yes, “simulate” a 3D listening space that stays static as you move your head.
The SimulaVR guys (who are working on a competitor to the Vision Pro) had the exact same opinion (https://simulavr.com/blog/chassis-adjustments-and-apv-reacti...):
> From our perspective, we still think the main problem with the AVP is that it only supports native iPad apps (at least for 2D apps) [...] The AVP does allow you to tether to another Mac, but this relegates its usability to that of a "laptop aid" rather than a "laptop replacement". [...] We want to do this for the engineers and knowledge workers who need the extra capabilities in VR, and for the people who want to completely replace their laptop, rather than their tablets!