Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip
apple.com
apple.com
If they'd focused on maximizing the device's usefulness instead of its revenue stream, maybe things would have worked out better.
To a first approximation, Apple is a manufacturer of locked-down handheld entertainment appliances whose primary function is to psychologically condition children into siphoning off money from their inattentive parents. There's no reason to suspect their vision for the AVP to diverge significantly from this user story.
I've not seen a professional desktop operating system show you adverts and click bait during worktime before and I am not impressed.
I'm taking it as an alarm bell that I should get out as soon as I can. For me and what I do, macOS or Linux are my platforms of choice.
Even billionaires get burnout.
> how does windows and Linux waste your time?
Windows is deep down the enshittification curve.
My Linux-using coworkers seem to spend a lot of time wiping things and switching distros. I'm very happy with it for servers, but not for desktop.
- 15 minute boot-up times
- Complete lack of power management ( close your laptop screen )
- Random forced updates
Personally I find a Mac to be a better development environment than Windows even for Microsoft tech like the dotnet stack.
That word right there means that we can both be correct, because I personally find MacOS to be frustrating for Dev compared to every other alternative. Great for creativity, but not so much for productivity.
But the caveat to my statement is that _everything_ added to their ecosystem to business reasons is useless and counterproductive. For example I can plug my Android phone into a Windows machine (two different companies inb4 someone uses flawed logic) and it just works. If I plug my Android phone into my Macbook it doesn't work at all...but an iPhone does! ;)
They only very recently got decent-ish Window management, basic snapping that Linux/Windows has had for at least a decade or longer. And even then their implementation is "pretty" but slow to respond. It's like just expand and snap the fucking window for fuck's sake.
In terms of the "development environment" they enjoy having had the OS built on top of FreeBSD (which yes, they have contributed to - bet Apple management hated that).
To me it's a machine that gets stuff done; they could literally strip the thing down to the bare minimum, removing all of the "magical wonderful Apple stuff with cutesy fancy sounding names" and I couldn't give a shit.
"Retina" screen? Fuck offff Apple.
This is both true and completely irrelevant, because the point of the above comment is that Apple is not in the business of catering to this use case.
Look at the annual revenues: $225 billion from iPhone/iPad, $100 billion from "services" (which Apple mostly characterizes as "app store stuff"), $40 billion from accessories (watch, airpods, etc), $30 billion from desktops. The Mac segment comes out to 7.9% of their overall revenue. And this number is shrinking in both the absolute and relative sense, as "services" continues to grow and as Mac units shipped peaked in 2022.
Even without that, calling a $30B business an "insignificant historical afterthought" is a bit of an exaggeration, no?
This is both entirely true and still manages to miss the point. Yes, Apple keeps the Mac around exclusively to accommodate the creation of iOS apps. No, they are not financially incentivized to create new categories of hardware that cater toward productivity when instead they could lock them down and milk that cow for all it's worth via the app store tax.
That doesn't mean MacOS is good, though.
As a film maker and editor I'm enormously more productive on my dual screen (used) M1 Max Studio machine than I was on a variety of PC setups with high end GPUs. Even just the missing overhead of not having to keep graphic drives and constant Windows updates is great. Reliable renders were never a thing on Windows. The time lost doing things again because window had some strange colour issue, render crash, font issue and on and on was ludicrous.
The idea of having to use Windows for daily productivity sends a shiver down my spine.
Software is definitely more debatable.
Any other hardware is a non-starter.
When you say something like "whose primary function is to psychologically condition children into siphoning off money from their inattentive parents", it's rhetorically effective. It paints a vivid picture. It encourages your readers to have a certain attitude towards the company you're talking about.
In other words, that bit of what you wrote was load-bearing. It served a purpose for you. That means that it isn't exempt from criticism. We should reject conversational norms according to which it's OK to throw in these little barbs but not OK to object when someone points out that what you're saying is flatly false.
"My goat-fucking opponent wants to raise your taxes and use the revenue to subsidize tobacco companies. You should vote against him." "Excuse me, I am absolutely not a goat-fucker. How dare you?" "Look how he avoids the central argument about his policies!"
As to the "actual argument": no, actually, that clearly isn't your actual argument, or at least if it is then your argument is unsound.
You can't get from "Macs are <10% of Apple's revenue"[1] to any prediction about what Apple will do with the Vision Pro. For that, you need to (1) classify it as "like an iPhone or iPad" rather than "like a Mac" -- which I agree is a reasonable classification, though you haven't bothered to argue for it at all and it is at least a bit debatable -- and then (2) look at what sort of thing Apple does with its iPhones and iPads. This bit you have done, kinda ... and this bit is exactly the bit where you said something obviously false. "whose primary function is to psychologically condition children into siphoning off money from their inattentive parents", remember? That is, or claims to be, a description of what sort of thing Apple want their devices to do. It's exactly the sort of thing that's directly relevant to supporting what you say about what features we should expect them to give the Vision Pro and its software. And, once again, it's plainly false.
[1] Perfectly true, though "an insignificant historical afterthought" is obviously false -- once again, you're festooning what you say is your "actual argument" with little untruths that make the "actual argument" feel stronger, and I wish you wouldn't -- and, also "historical afterthought" is kinda nonsensical, no? Being a historical relic and being an afterthought are opposite and incompatible varieties of insignificance.
There absolutely is an argument to be made along the lines that the VP is kinda like an iPad, and despite their impressive hardware capabilities iPads are designed for entertainment much more than for getting useful work done, and so we should also expect the VP's software to pass up opportunities to make the device useful for serious purposes in favour of making it an entertainment-consumption device. You could totally have done that. It would have been pretty similar to what you wrote. It would have been rather a persuasive argument. But it amused you to go way the hell over the top and say that Apple's non-Mac devices are mostly intended to manipulate children into wasting their parents' money and, once again, that's obviously not true and you put it right where the core of your "actual argument" should have been.
I'm aware that I'm making rather a big deal of a small lie. But this sort of thing is everywhere in online discourse at the moment, and I am getting extremely fed up of it. It's never enough to make a reasonable argument; it's always necessary to throw in all these playing-to-the-gallery jabs, which no doubt get you a bunch of likes and retweets and other forms of Meaningless Internet Points. It's yet another form of the optimizing-for-engagement that is eating our societies alive, and the HN crowd is supposed to be smarter than that, and I wish we would all collectively Do Better, damn it.
By what measure? As I understand it, more Macs sell now than in any other point in history.
That's just an hyper expensive huge screen.
Even before it came out, I naturally assumed it was going to be able to do this. Major flub IMHO. Well that and the completely superfluous frontfacing screen for your "virtual avatar". Because the Vision wasn't already expensive enough...
I'm very eagerly looking forward to Valve's headset coming out.
It is priced to be a pack-in with seats of Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE, but Meta's experience has been that the VR consumer is price sensitive which is why they followed up the MQ3 with the cost-reduced MQ3S.
I think Apple is looking at this the way they look at AirPods (something you stick in your ears to modify and augment your hearing) which is good and monitors, which is bad. Apple's always sold a tiny number of monitors with astronomical margins which looked like a good business because they didn't have to invest in product innovation to make them the way they do for the AVP -- and they didn't need software developers to invest in product innovation for their monitors, but the AVP absolutely requires it. And if they aren't shipping enough units, who is going to make software for it?
I'm honestly not sure if Apple Vision would fare much better if they had a device that costs $100. Like, sure, they'll sell more units that way. But how many of those units would end up collecting dust?
https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
It eats batteries but you can get a charger and more batteries the way you would have a few mirrorless generations ago.
My trouble is not really having a system to show these to people, red/green anglyohs sometimes work fret but aren’t consistent, there doesn’t seem to be an ‘instagram’ for sharing stereo photos, it ought to be easy to make a WebXR application to show stereograms but I haven’t seen a fully realized one and found texture memory limits are a bitch in the MQ3 so my first attempt to make one got stuck.
I wrote this to take the .MPO files (a common file format on the earlier commercial digital stereo cameras) and convert them to print-ready stereograms: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/Stereographer
My take is the MQ3 is pretty good for UX. I regularly use my image sorter and RSS reader in a web browser with a huge number of windows open, bringing my click targets up to the WCAG AAA standards made them very usable in this environment. The Apple Magic Keyboard pairs perfectly, as does a mouse. The controller work great for games and other immersive applications.
I'd say though that my game backlog on the MQ3 is long as is my game backlog in Steam, and there is just a huge amount of competition from flat content so I don't play as many VR games as I could.
The metrics are brutal, for Quest 3 and for every other headset. Meta worked hard to bring the costs down and improve the UX, and it still isn't enough. They wanted "the next smartphone" and fell so short it's not even funny.
It's less comfortable, inputs are much less precise, inputs take longer, output is less legible, output has less information... The list goes on.
You'd also have more of a critical mass of people with accessories. A used market for lenses and accessories, people with spare batteries about, etc.
Not to mention an app ecosystem. For every person like me lamenting what could be, there are a dozen people with more mainstream desires, like Instagram 3D or Temple Run 3D or whatnot.
The biggest issues left in VR sim racing are still arguably comfort and weight in longer races, but even that is getting solved now with really compact new headsets like the Big Screen Beyond 2 etc.
But Valve is reliably rumored to be releasing an untethered successor within the next year for a third of the cost of the AVP. The appeal is having a dozen monitors anywhere.
Vision Pro M5 PR says something about 120mhz. So the M5's "40% faster GPUs" is being used to double the frame rate?
Being noob, I'm guessing each desktop requires 3 additional cores and 16Gb VRAM.
Of course, we can think of many strategies (using current hardware) to support additional desktops, spaces, windows, etc. If Apple really wanted to.
60mhz and 120mhz are your typos, because that's an insane refresh rate. It's 60Hz and 120Hz, not mhz...
> So the M5's "40% faster GPUs" is being used to double the frame rate?
You always have to read full marketing BS when you read it, it almost always says "X times faster than Y in Z workfload".
> "X times faster than Y in Z workfload"
Mosdef.
Also, reducing energy use (heat generated), mostly thru process improvements, allows each new generation to run that much faster.
It was incredible how much Vision Pro marketing was based on stuff Microsoft had demoed for HoloLens a couple of years before.
I hope they swap out Haskell though, probably can make your own compositor
I still remember the good old days of Gary's mod movie theater servers.
I would love to be able to have a dedicated spatial location for each part of my Django app: look over here for the CSS, step here for the views, scroll through the logs over here...
1) It's been doable for years and yet AR/VR doesn't take off
2) It will only ever be a hyper niche use case of an already hyper niche market. People do not want a giant screen glued to their face.
Have you actually tried "working" in VR? It is awful and pointless and zero percent of my work is limited by the size of my screen FFS. Are you one of those people that keep 100 terminal windows open with random TOPS and log watchers but never actually uses them? Those people always seem to have lots of monitors. They don't actually seem more productive though.
I even downgraded from two external monitors to one because all the extra monitor was doing was making me hurt my neck from looking back and forth.
A 30 inch monitor with 1440p resolution can do everything you want from django and is like $200
And no I haven't tried working in VR. I do actually just work with one monitor and only have a few terminal tabs running at any one time, but honestly do think there are so many improvements I could make to my workflow before even a perfect VR solution would be worth considering.
Any monitor recs? My current one has started flickering and it's slowly driving me insane
Pimax and Bigscreen I think work hard for that market? Bigscreen has those neat goggles which I'd like to try. Rumors are that Valve is building another headset, with better specs. That might put pressure on that market.
For monitors, I must confess I am somewhat wrong. My 32inch (or something) LG monitor might have been $400, not $200. But I used a giant TV for years thinking I didn't need "nice" monitors and I was so wrong. 1440p and over 120hz refresh rate are so worth it, even for work tasks. When I bought it a couple years ago, the caveats were that it's a VA panel, so it has really bad ghosting. It's noticeable in games, but somehow has not ruined my experience. The other types of panels have their own drawbacks I think. OLED is the best non-compromise for image quality but then you will have to keep burn in at bay.
I like my LG monitor. My girlfriend's ASUS monitor is nice. I hear nice things about BenQ, but you're better off with review sites than my anecdotes.
My window management "trick" is that no window is full screen, and every window is overlapped such that there's always a sliver of the "under" window I can click even if that window is otherwise not in view. I also make significant use of alt-tab. I think people who use the multiple desktop feature of modern windows and mac have a much better system. One desktop per "Task" I think works really well.
I do wonder if that person had ever tried any of the myriad of VR device available a decade before beforehand and I do wonder how popular Apple's product would be if other companies were given the opportunity to integrate with the OS on the same level that Apple can (I feel like Apple is breaking anti-competitive laws constantly but nobody really cares about making them open up).
I also don't think think this breaks anti-trust but percentages doesn't stop market manipulation.
My point in saying the usefulness of it being tied to the ecosystem was more of a negative one than a positive one if it wasn't clear. It is personally useful for me because I have a lot of Apple products at home (though I also have PC and linux stuff too), but I wish my primary use-cases for it were more platform agnostic.
I'm also very in support of aggressive anti-trust legislation and it's probably my biggest point of contention with Apple.
Despite all that, I still like the Vision Pro and think it's an incredible piece of tech that blows every other headset I've tried out of the water for the things I like to do.
Microsoft had and still has this opportunity, they even have game console and much of game developers to bootstrap VR/AR ecosystem.
> (I feel like Apple is breaking anti-competitive laws constantly but nobody really cares about making them open up).
lol okay
https://github.com/saagarjha/Ensemble
This is what is looks like in action:
https://twitter.com/TheOriginaliTE/status/175125156764134634...
Disclaimer: I don’t know how well it works in practice because I don’t have a Vision Pro.
Assuming you're an engineer, have you thought about what handing over a "window" from one computer to another actually entails? CRIU can do checkpoint/restore at container/process level - but you actually want it to run on both, no? So you need to split off just the I/O, but at the OS-level per window.
Apple has been doing a lot of work in this direction and they have stuff that actually work (like video calls and to some extent windows. These are processes running on different OS-es with a matrix of hundreds of devices.
It's not something you vibe code over the weekend.
There may be simplifications to this, but I suspect it eventually lands in a distributed system problem involving state and strong consistency semantics. I’ve done this for most of my engineering career and all I can say is that they are fun problems to work on because they are some of the most difficult ones :)
the revenue-driven decision was choosing to make the OS more like iOS, locked down with an app store, rather than macos, which allows third-party applications, browsing the filesystem, dropping into a terminal, etc. with built-in first-party support.
instead of making a computer in an AR form-factor, they made an iPad in an AR form-factor.
And it's easier and more power-efficient (because of hardware video encoding) to use screen sharing instead of sending drawing commands etc.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/videos/2025/autoplay/10/apple...
My workaround for this is using applications that work comfortably in a safari window (like vscode) and you can have as many safari windows free floating as you want
(I returned it)
Do you feel you're more in focus when using Vision Pro like this, as opposed to using an external monitor?
There was this program called Immersed for Quest and some other VR headsets (apparently Apple's one too?) that ages ago was quite brilliant: I could connect my laptop or PC and have as many virtual desktops in addition to the real ones displayed around me. Even on my Quest 2, until the strain set in, it was cool to just kinda tune out the room around me and be in a black void surrounded by just the screens of whatever I'm working on.
Sadly, in one update they randomly removed it as a "legacy feature nobody uses", which ruined the program for me, and Virtual Desktop for the Quest also has limited screens you can display, so I can't even do all 4 of my physical ones, nor virtual ones - despite it having worked previously in the other program.
For a little bit, it was a really cool mode of working, but sadly I only got glimpses of it and would need more capable hardware like AVP for that in the first place (Quest 2 very much had its limitations).
Also, this was a pretty cool idea, even if a novelty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7Y1H5D8cY
This gave me the impression it wasn't ready for general use, and they would have to control your impression of the thing while selling you on it.
I know that VR is hard, and AR is much harder, but this made me think apple still hasn't cracked it.
As to single app - I figure the thing has to be hard real-time to do things without giving you a headache or nausea/vomiting. that probably doesn't leave room for a lot of sharing of resources.
In the end, I think this is a iphone 1.0 type device, and only continued development with deep pockets will make it viable, eventually.
There isn’t any prep I saw that they would have to do before they could except a walk-in.
Most people put phones in cases which makes heat dissipation much worse.
Nobody is saying you should be able to render some 3d models on an iPhone..
What I see is that non-serious users who only communicate and consume content use phones and tablets. Laptops and desktops are for work, non-trivial content creation, and serious gaming with high memory and GPU requirements. You’re not running “cargo build” or a VM with Docker or Cyberpunk 2077 on a phone.
Higher end phones almost have enough CPU but not enough GPU, RAM, storage, or heat dissipation.
But that's mostly email, SaaS, web meetings, and spreadsheets. Most people have never in their lives run "cargo build" or launched Cyberpunk 2077. The actual market for sustained high local CPU/GPU compute is pretty small compared to the market for minimal load with the occasional small burst, and the latter works pretty well with poor cooling solutions.
Apple is already offering apps that work on all devices on their stores. Look at every single Apple Arcade release as an example. That's their vision; every device has a specific UI, but apps can run on all of them separately.
They likely have enough talented developers to make iOS run Mac apps natively. But I assume they neither want to cannibalize their laptop market nor want to let people circumvent the 30% fee for the iOS App Store, which is not required for Mac software.
I’m struggling to see this amount of work translate into more sales or a better experience for more than a token number of customers.
I’m super doubtful it would be that impactful. Also, switching Mac sales to Vision Pro sales probably works well for Apple in the long run.
The battery will discharge faster than it charges, the flash storage will wear out, etc etc.
I'm very excited for stuff like smart glasses ever single Glass, meta's new stuff is awesome in terms of slimming things down but the real excitement is the wristband for input. Looks like we'll be solving the display/input problems soon enough.
They seemed resistant to the idea of a compute puck but I honestly think that's fine. I'd rather have a phone in my pocket that can be used for compute than bulkier glasses, though it is nice if future glasses can do very basic tasks unaided.
I hope that pretty soon I won't even need a laptop for out of hours tasks (but would still use one for the standard work day most likely).
Obviously there would be performance constraints but at least for your $3499 you'd be getting a Mac instead of just a Mac Monitor.
There's something much more approachable about having an appliance with a built-in screen vs having to get a monitor/TV and dedicate part of your living space to something you use sometimes.
The math isn't how many people will buy Vision Pro M5, it's how many have nots can be created by putting it in the Vision Pro.
They'll keep their face computers separate for as long as they refuse to build Macbooks with touch screens. Which seems to be forever.
It's just so useful to have a huge display wherever you want it - no hunching over looking down a small laptop screen. This is especially useful on a plane where I'm not even able to open the laptop completely due to the tight space.
My main gripe is: Why do I need a separate Mac at all? Even the original M2 Vision Pro has more than enough horsepower to run the virtual Mac inside of the headset, so it seems like a fake limitation.
I'm looking forward to it being lighter weight and smaller, and for them to make the Mac Virtual Display native to the Vision Pro experience without the need for a separate computer.
They might as well have made the plunge.
Comfort: For me, the answer was “no” out of the box. I had to exchange my light seal twice before I got the right one. This was no charge but obviously it would be great to get it right the first time and it seems like a large number of users never did this and those are the ones who complain most about comfort. Not blaming the users btw, Apple needs to fix this if they care about the product
Onlookers: I always wonder if somebody will bug me and they never have. If you are self-conscious, it might not not be the product for you
Gestures: You learn that they can be done very subtly and you don’t need to bother the person next to you
It’s not comfortable though.
All of the features work well even with no internet (for linking the mac & vision pro). Travel mode takes care of issues with the plane's movement and the sensors work excellent for gesture / tap detection even in complete darkness, and there's never a need for big sweeping arm gestures with the vision pro - you can operate it in a small space.
I bought the belkin headstrap to help distribute the weight, and I imagine the success of that type of accessory is what prompted apple to introduce the new dual knit band. With that extra support I can wear it for a few hours but I definitely have goggle marks on my face for a while afterwards - like you would have after skiing.
To elaborate on that last bit: macOS ships with a number of utilities and frameworks specifically to detect and remove known-malicious software. macOS also has to operate notarization infrastructure for supporting non-MAS apps, as well as boot infrastructure to deliberately run untrusted or known-insecure OS kernels. None of their other platforms need this[1], because they have strict code signing enforcement. The web browser and developer mode aside, the only code that is ever allowed to run on device is code written by an entity with a business relationship to Apple. Anyone who wants to ship malware has to create a paper trail and expose themselves to getting a legal ass-ramming.
Of course, in practice the enhanced security of iOS and its derivatives is really just an excuse to extract 30%, a price most app developers aren't willing to pay. Putting all your "real apps" behind a virtual display that you have to carry a separate device around for is a way to contrive an inconvenience whose answer is "ship a native visionOS app."
I suspect the whole reason why Mac mirroring is even a thing at all is because Apple realized iPad apps weren't going to cut it on a $3500 VR headset, and this was their quick hack to make the Vision Pro useful while they figured out a way to browbeat their developers into officially supporting it. A task which, by the way, has failed miserably.
[0] No relation to "exclaves" - i.e. bits of security-sensitive code that have been isolated from regular iOS system processes and run inside SPTM's "secure kernel" domain, but can still IPC back and forth. The most likely approach to "Mac enclaves" on visionOS would be enabling Hypervisor and shoving macOS in EL1.
[1] EU DMA notwithstanding - in fact, much of Apple's anger regarding the DMA boils down to the fact that complying with it while keeping their devices secure means shipping macOS-like antimalware infrastructure on other platforms.
It never really leaves the house, and I get why a lot of people don't like it, but personally, it's one of the coolest pieces of tech I own and I get a ton of value out of it. The value is just tied to being integrated into the apple ecosystem more than it being a standalone device, which is a very Apple thing to do.
I have lots of criticisms too, but overall I really like it. Also converting photos to spatial photos and looking through old memories in 3D is truly incredible. Can't overstate how much I love that feature.
The thing I'm most excited about from this release is the backwards compatible Dual Knit Band, which I'm definitely buying.
Will report back
I do have a few widgets floating around in different rooms, but rarely use it from somewhere that isn't my chair or bed, so it's mostly a few clocks embedded into my walls to keep track of time, and those are persistent.
There's something to this AR XR stuff but even with infinite resources the convenience just isn't there for all day use for me.
It has comparable PPD, at the center, so works just as well for using as windows/mac virtual screen (mac being my main use case).
The announcement mentions Steam Link too.
Price will go down in five years, once the tech mature la. For now this is a bit like how the Oculus DK1 was. An early device to explore what the overall vision is about, and figure out the apps.
How often do you use it?
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/spatial-photos-record...
I don't have either so I don't know how well iPhone vs. natively taken photos/videos compare.
I got an oculus quest 2, was blown away by it for 1-2 hours, but never really picked it up again. The games were fun but very shallow, and never tried any practical uses.
Would love to use VR for working on a plane. Currently use a laptop, but my neck sometimes gets sore from looking down. VR has the potential to 10x the screen real estate and prevent having to look at down at an acute angle.
That said, it's AMAZING as a home theater replacement, other than an issue with internal reflections in the optics. So in dark scenes it gets a bit annoying.
If I lived in an apartment, I would absolutely use it in place of a large TV that eats up a lot of my space. Especially coupled with the airpods MAX and spatial audio. Watching a 4k 3d movie in it is mind-blowing. Most 3d you've ever seen was really 50% of 1080p, so it's a whole new world. Some of the Apple original content is also great. The thing with the submarine is amazing.
Personally I already have a full sized home theater, so I just use that. However, I'm willing to bet that in 5 years when it's time to upgrade the home theater I'll probably just be turning it into a library with some seats I can use a VR headset from. Who knows, maybe it will be a descendant of the AVP.
Does Vision Pro have any apps for a virtual theater where you can watch video online in a VR space with other people? I've used Bigscreen for that once or twice with a Quest, and it struck me as something that would be a cool feature if I knew more people with VR headsets.
I believe you when you say that it could replace the experience for yourself, but, at least for me, hosting with my home theater is the main driver for improving it.
That said, I entertain less than I watch movies alone. It's probably not worth giving up an entire room in my house for the handful of times per year that I actually entertain. My home theater is mostly just about my quest for perfection when enjoying the films that I love. If/when I can get that out of a headset... cool.
Ideally it will have real Dolby Vision/Atmos and all of the other things high end home theater equipment is expected to have, and right now the AVP doesn't. Between the reflection issues, lack of Dolby Vision, etc it's only like 80% of the way there.
This seems to literally be its only killer feature.
I was hoping apple would be able to figure out what nobody else has, an actual useful everyday use for AR. But still we are just given a personal theatre, or proof of concept toy 'experience' apps.
I immediately wonder how much of my carry-on allowance will be taken up by a VR headset. These things are still fairly clunky.
EDIT: I think people are misunderstanding me. I dont mean VR/AR will be dead, I maen that all devices will be normal size glasses and big chunky headsets wont exist any more.
Sadly I think you are vastly overestimating the rate of progress here. Quest 2 came out 5 years ago - in those 5 years we've shrunk headset volume by about half (mostly due to pancake lenses). We'll need to find another fundamental improvement in lens technology to shrink the next 50%
I'd say the biggest unsolved issue is the focus/depth of field issue...how to provide variable per pixel depth so that virtual objects can appear in a scene and be focussed on naturally (apparently called vergence–accommodation conflict) since most if not all displays have a fixed focus distance atm.
You could add more cameras and lidar for depth, yes, but then you'd also need a display for the other eye, and you still wouldn't be able to do immersion because your displays are transparent and have a tiny FOV, and you're also not doing passthrough, so why do you need the cameras again? And so on.
For example, consider field of view, which is a critical measurement of these displays. Typical specs are 120 degrees for headsets, 40 for glasses.
Headsets also perform very high performance rendering compared to glasses. The tiny <1Wh batteries in glasses are insufficient for that amount of work.
Glasses can't be expected to compete with headsets, much less eliminate them from the market entirely within a few years. It makes more sense to think of VR headsets and AR glasses as completely unrelated product categories.
I think you are short sighted (haha!) to think that headsets and glasses are different categories, and that headsets are not just a preliminary research phase to things in the future like smart contact lenses etc.
Contact lenses having the capability of a headset? That's just magical thinking.
100 years ago, the mobile phones in our pockets would have been magical thinking too.
Meta doesn't try to force it on you the way Apple does, but you really have to or it will always be blurry. The screen has a sort of fixed focal point and if your vision isn't great at that distance EVERYTHING will be blurry instead of just the one range that's normally blurry for you.
You may not even realize you need glasses until you try it and everything is blurry.
i never got around to trying prescription inserts but i suspect they would be ideal
Keep in mind, that the Quest 3 has been discontinued in favour of the cheaper and inferior Quest 3S. It still has some good qualities, but the best one is no doubt the Quest 3.
Another thing is that to save on costs, they all ship with a very inadequate headband. For comfort, it is imperative to get another solution, either the (expensive) elite headstrap or a (cheaper) 3rd party one.
I've been considering a pair for myself after hearing good feedback from some friends, and seeing some good reviews online.
The latest versions have head tracking so the virtual screen remains "pinned" in your view.
They're also much smaller and easier to carry compared to a full VR headset, and they can plug into almost any device (laptop, tablet, phone) and just show up as an external monitor.
Don't get me wrong, they work as a monitor in a pinch on a plane when you need privacy it's just not going to ever replace a real monitor for you.
frankly i justified the cost by comparing against a planned home theater. now i RARELY use the avp as a home theater. its an incredible theater, but over time my mentality shifted and i consider the avp a tool instead of entertainment
i got used to the weight after a month. went from topping out on an hour or 2 to using for 4-5 hours no problem. also took around a month to learn the proper calibration for the light screen to "hang" on my face instead of press against it. this was a major breakthrough for comfort and session length
ive had mine since launch month and will add this observation i dont see said often:
i think the avp is meant to be taken off. meaning, i see meta going toward more comfortable ar glasses, but i dont really want to be in ar ALL DAY
its difficult to describe. the longer ive had an avp the more ive found a desire to put it on like a work hardhat, then take it off when i "feel" its time to stop. i really like that its not designed to be worn all day. im probably giving apple too much credit but its something unexpected ive found interesting in my own habitual use
* edit to add another interesting development after about a year of use: i now need to take a magnesium, calcium, and zinc pill or the weaker of my eyes will become tired and develop a spasm after about an hour and a half of sustained use. im vegetarian so that may also be a factor
I also have a Quest 3 and if I could only own one device, I'd take the Q3 hands-down. The games are fun, they get you up and moving, and although I'm not going to argue that the quality of the screens is the same or anything, it's more than good enough. I'll happily give up the virtual laptop screen in exchange for the library of VR games on the Quest.
I'm not much for consuming media so that aspect is lost on me. Unfortunately, that seems to be the primary use case Apple has focused on, if you can call the anemic dribble of content they've put out focus.
As a user, I actually use it more today than when I first got it, because each visionOS update has really unleveled the capabilities of the device. I like watching movies on the ceiling, the spatial scenes / photos / videos are really fun, and generally viewing your Photos library on Vision Pro is on a different level. Even non-spatial content just takes on a different, more immersive quality.
I have a lot of friends in the developer community, and enjoy playing with their apps. Things like "Cell Walk" where you can explore a 3D volumetric representation of different types of cells.
The Apple Immersive short films they release every so often are phenomenal – really nothing like them in my experience.
It's nice to be able to edit a movie and throw it onto a big screen, or have a gigantic workspace.
1: https://youtu.be/gDrk2HkiDhs?si=KhZsXOahpHPsAQGf https://youtu.be/QcTiDBtCafg?si=mH_MWi8MENjm8veT
Apple being stingy with storage (and RAM) isn’t new, but the base $3.5k spec with only 256 GB is extreme.
EDIT: clarity
256GB is $3499; 512GB is $3699; 1TB is $3899. You're paying ~$200 for that storage.
Apple's SSDs are actually priced a bit silly though, but I think that's a different discussion. It was significantly cheaper/GB to upgrade my M4 Mac Mini's internal SSD via 3rd party despite the performance being the same (if not better) than 1st party.
Some further thoughts: two of the use cases AVP was pitched for are content consumption (streaming + offline) and spatial video/photo production. IMO the base storage should reflect that.
Given that AVP sales are struggling, I’m not sure why Apple isn’t trying to throw people a bone and offer a more reasonable amount of storage in the base config.
> but the base $3.5k spec with only 256 GB is extreme.
The plain meaning of this sentence is "I expect more than 256 GB of storage when paying $3.5K for a device". You can argue for or against that if you like (I don't give a shit, because I would not buy it at any price), but not against something they did not say.
I did not, no.
The parent poster's "EDIT: clarity" note should be a clue here.
My conspiracy theory is that they don't want to grab attention and get any more bad rep for this product when they are already half giving up.
They definitely don't have a decade. The market gave them 14 years with iPhone (Newton was 1993?). But things move a bit faster now.
That's what I initially thought but there have been two OS cycles now with no fix. I think Apple often back themselves into a corner when they base stuff around iCloud and I wouldn't be surprised if this was similar. Maybe user accounts on visionOS will be the eventual solution?
I would ask for more observations.
On a plane this is so useful. Flights go by much faster.
When traveling it’s so much less of a productivity drag to be able to pop this on and work with more real estate and focus.
The spatial videos and photos, whether taken with a real spatial device or upgraded later, are… so immersive. Seeing very old memories in 3d is emotional.
But I would pay so much to have a great gaming experience. Like a racing sim or something else realistic. The hardware is so impressive.
Frankly, I think this shines most as a consumption device for 3d content. There’s just not nearly enough yet.
If it's going to be tethered to a battery, why not just tether it to a Mac (or iPhone) instead, and make the device a lot cheaper+simpler in the process?
> keep producing
Maybe it's just me, but if they keep producing it (regardless of what chip), doesn't that mean they haven't given up on it?
Ignoring the new model: which has upgraded screens, a faster refresh rate and a new headband design amongst other upgrades - which each indicate more R&D activity on the Vision Pro than say AirPods Max or the HomePod line. One would still need to content with:
- Embracing 3rd party wide field-of-view, 180°, and 360° camera makers for direct compatibility for content creation.
- Working with Black Magic Design on a spatial production workflow and a specialised camera for simplified spatial video creation.
- The development of not just more content, but more types of content, especially around live events and sports.
- A steady stream of software updates that add useful and forward-planning functionality.
The people that are saying that it's dead are simply choosing not to pay attention or confusing apple's push into widening their AR offerings as abandoning the vision pro.
It's also hard to reason with these people because they suggest (without evidence) that the sales numbers are unexpectedly low, while also stating that the factory that makes the screens is limiting production (again without evidence). This is more the type of speak of PR astroturfing than genuine discussion.
Meanwhile you're spot on about spots, here's a news post from about a week ago:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/spectrum-brings-nba-g...
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/10/vision_pro_bites_dog
Meanwhile, my two pairs of Meta Ray-Bans are basically trash now. Loved them while they worked — but they break way too easily, and one completely died after a software update.
I found this little piece of information interesting. Apparently the display on the Vision Pro has such high resolution that they reduce the detail of the rendering. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that reported before. It means that an even higher quality display is still far in the future, since the silicon to push that many pixels isn’t quite ready.
I was praying for a new revision, but ... this wasn't it. No mention of making the thing lighter. Seems like instead they _added_ weight to the band to compensate.
Guess I'll keep waiting and hoping someone else fills the space. Maybe, just maybe, there will be a real Quest Pro with the same screen quality as the AVP. The Quest 3 is almost perfect in every regard except for that, so I'd happily drop "stupid" money to grab one with an AVP level display in it. (With the usual caveats of it being an evil Meta product, etc, etc).
The Dual Knit Band may help AVP comfort, but I'm skeptical. To have a significant benefit it would need to have much stiffer side support so that the entire thing can lever the weight of the headset upwards and pull the center of gravity way back from the face.
Granted, I only see a VR headset like four times a year, but nobody I know bought a Vision Pro either, whereas I know a few dozen people with other headsets.
But yours, is especially an apples and oranges comparison.
The original iPhone was a flawed internet-less take on a thriving exploding market (mobile).
VR's market just questionable.
i have an avp and use it daily. but it turns out im weird and most people simply dont want to put screens on their face
There are quite a few others, even some with near or at 4k res per eye released before the Apple product. Even just the Pimax 8k being the world's first dual native 4k headset early 2019.
The problem with alternative sets is, as always, a software/ecosystem one which for gaming Valve helped massively by getting everyone onto one platform (SteamVR). It's tough to do similar with Apple as they lock everything down for "security" with the added benefit of preventing competitors from creating competing products. They're happy to interoperate with Wifi and Bluetooth standards etc, though (before someone claims that doing what they want with their platform is Apple's choice - the same people who grin when MS got hammered for anti-competition with IE Windows bundling, something Apple regularly escapes).
> The lower strap features flexible fabric ribs embedded with tungsten inserts that provide a counterweight for additional comfort, balance, and stability.
This is like how the iPad keyboard case is surprisingly heavy because it's bottom-weighted for stability. While the iPad is lighter than a laptop, the iPad + keyboard case is pretty much the same weight.
Meta’s biggest weakness? No in-person support. Unlike Apple, they don’t have stores where you can walk in and get help.
My two pairs of Meta Ray Bans are broke - one was hosed after a software update.
> With support for the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller, players get a new class of immersive games with high-performance motion tracking in six degrees of freedom, finger touch detection, and vibration support.
Previously they seemed to be committed to finger controls only.
While I could get one from Germany, when I did that with the Google Pixel I ran into a whole bunch of trouble when it needed to get repaired. Since Google required an address in Germany.
This price looks surprisingly reasonable.
Given the band’s purpose, the price and the fact that it’s backwards compatible, perhaps they’re interested in increasing adoption.
Apple M5 Chip
I hope that they revisit the hardware at some point when novel tech enables a lot of weight reduction.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-01/apple-she...
edit: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/discontinued-m2-vision-...
lmao. dicks
Why?
I guess they are still making them, now with M5?
But seems like they do have a niche audience that likes it (and maybe can pass it as a business expense or something?) so they've sold a few.
[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/23/apple-may-stop-producin...
And one of them bought a fully-loaded Mac Pro, so they're not immune to the Apple Distortion Field.
Or did he do it again when the Mac Studio exists?
Still a very pricey machine.
The latest version improves performance, display rendering, battery life, and comfort, while offering innovative features with visionOS 26 and all-new spatial apps and Apple Immersive content
Apple would never make such a small deal about upgrading the chip in one of their products unless they thought that product was toast.
I wonder if they're just in full pivot mode to glasses.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-01/apple-she...
Eyeglasses with a HUD is the stupidest product category ever invented, and that's why no one wants them, which has been proven again and again in the marketplace.
I do think it makes some sense to attack the problem from both directions, but hopefully they aren't fully ditching the full immersive headset development to do it.
Eyeglasses with HUD is like Apple Watch but on your face, i.e. it's focus is on mobility, not productivity or immersion. You're supposed to wear this device all the time.
Even if we had the technology the run these devices in the same form factor (maybe in 100 years), I bet that most people prefer to keep their face and eyes tech free in mobile or social situations. For the same reasons as why it's polite to put your phone away when interacting with people. Wearing this kind of device means that they're not fully present at any time. It also signals that they're a person who wants notifications constantly blasted on their face - i.e. an idiot.
I don't actually believe that they have ditched the plans for the next version.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-introduces-the-...
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-new-14-...
The real issue is that various rumors point to them cancelling or pushing back the plan for a new version of the headset that is cheaper and lighter in favor of working on the smart glasses.
Without a cheaper, lighter headset I don't think it's going to become a significant product for Apple.