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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

My #1 use case for the AVP I ordered is productivity followed by consumption. If I can get my MBP as a large 4K screen in the AVP and I'm productive in it then I can do away with my 3-4 monitor setup I have at 2 locations and open up the places I can work productively to nearly anywhere.

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BTW, I bet HN would love a candid review from someone trying the AVP out for this purpose after they've worked with it a while. (I know I would.)

Just sayin' in case you want to document your experience for those of us who are curious. :)

I have no doubt HN will be inundated with AVP posts like this but if I don’t see anyone beat me to it I’ll dust off my blog and post something after I’ve given it a try. I love my Apple products but I won’t hang on to a $4K paperweight if it doesn’t meet my expectations.

I wrote up my thoughts on it here https://joshstrange.com/2024/02/03/apple-vision-pro-first-im...

It's too heavy for prolonged use so although the work features are very interesting this seems to kill it as a replacement for a multi monitor setup.

Ehh, you can get used to almost anything. People complained about the weight of the AirPods Max but there are plenty of people who use them all the time/all day. I think any discomfort with be temporarily and worth "powering through", or at least that's my hope. I'm probably going to be wearing my 8hrs a day as soon as I get it and if it doesn't work or if the productivity isn't worth it (and/or the consumption isn't breathtaking) I'll consider returning it for sure.

IMO you need to try it first. Headsets are too personal for a “one to rule them all” model.

The Quest Pro is one of the most comfortable headsets that I’ve ever used and it weighs 100g more than the Apple Vision Pro

It's not the weight, it's the balance. The MQ3 plus the elite strap weighs more than the AVP by quite a bit and I did some 5+ hours days playing Asgard's Wrath 2 over the Christmas break easily though I did take breaks to recharge myself and the headset.

My Quest 2 and 3 were also both balanced with a battery in the back. Neither of them felt as great as the Pro. I feel that the main difference is the halo form factor instead of ski goggles hugging your face tight. Of course, this preference isn’t universal since some people hate the halo style.

I feel that like with meta headsets, Vision Pro’s comfort problem will be sold by 3rd party straps

I seriously question this each time this is brought up.

I needed multiple monitors when we had 1024x768 and smaller. I now code on a dqhd that could fit 10 of those old monitors. I still use 2 other displays. Why? Reference. Nothing will be faster than the flick of your eyes to the alternate display. When constructing optimal copy pasta it’s impossible to beat.

But the obvious use case to augment a large mirrored macbook screen is native vision apps (safari, etc.) with windows open to the documentation / references that you'd naturally have on other screens.

Generally there's 1-2 apps that are native MacOS apps that I require when developing, and the rest could easily be independent windows of safari, slack, teams, whatever to supplement the main screen.

Ideally we would have a large curved screen or support for multiple virtual monitors in AVP but for now it looks like we just get 1. It will be a change but with window management utilities (like Magnet and friends) I don't think I'll have a huge issue tiling my windows on just 1 monitor. I use 3x2K monitors now so 4K (that I can make whatever size I want) should cover my needs.

Also, like the sibling comment says, I plan on seeing if I can pull some of the apps I run out of the virtual display and use the iPad apps instead. Copy/Paste/Drag support will make or break that for me though as I don't plan on accepting anything but exactly what I can do on my computer. But maybe iMessage, Slack, and Discord (and definitely Home Assistant) can run their iPad native apps instead of needing to be on my virtual display. Heck, maybe I just fall back to the desktop if I need to. I'm also not sure yet what the story is on using a wireless keyboard/mouse/trackpad with your laptop, as in can I use it in AVP or is it only for use on my virtual monitor? Maybe continuity comes into play there? It should if it doesn't already.

You can't get an 4k screen in AVP. It's only 3.3k per eye. It will be closerto 1080p

Everything says it’s over 4K per eye and that you can have a 4K virtual monitor. Where are you getting your numbers? I can’t find anyone saying 3.3K per eye and 1080p screen.

Even Apple don't say that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36265316

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/142kz7x/app...

So 3660 pixels horizontal (already smaller than 3840 pixels for 4k), and that's for full field of view.

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