Starting today, you can receive a free Vision Pro demo at any Apple Store in the U.S. on an appointment basis. You can reserve a time slot up to seven days in advance on Apple's website, or by using the Apple Store app on your iPhone or iPad.
During the 30-minute demo experience, guided by an Apple retail employee, you will learn how to navigate the visionOS operating system as you explore a few built-in apps, including Apple TV, Photos, and Safari. The employee will make sure the Vision Pro properly fits you, and provide the correct ZEISS optical inserts for vision correction if necessary.
At select stores, Apple has created a special "Demo Zone" with curved sofas and rugs to create a more comfortable and homey feel. Apple Store expert Michael Steeber provided more details about the demo experience in his Tabletops newsletter today.
Demo Zone at Apple Fifth Avenue in New York City
Vision Pro launched in the U.S. on Friday, and Apple plans to release the headset in additional countries at some point later this year.
"The era of spatial computing has arrived," said Apple CEO Tim Cook. "Apple Vision Pro is the most advanced consumer electronics device ever created. Its revolutionary and magical user interface will redefine how we connect, create, and explore."
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My wife asked if she should hang on to my wallet. I told her, "sure, I have my cards installed on my watch."
OK, had my demo: Let me say one thing... if we hadn't just spent $3400 on summer camp for our daughters, I'd probably have bought.
This is the closest thing to the Star Trek holodeck we might see in our lifetimes. It's just really cool. Remember the first time you saw an HDTV or multi-touch or used a mouse (for us old timers)? It's that kind of feeling. And yes I've tried Meta's goggles... not the same. I no longer question why I have a 60 megapixel camera. You can just dive into photos and the video blew my mind.
I'm a Vision buyer, some day at some price point. $3500 was the only thing stopping me. At $2000 I'm in.
Having just completed a demo, I have no shortness of ideas.
The demo was brief and every time I tried to explore beyond the demo restrictions. The sales person must like let me help you let me guide you. Get a chance to explore some of the things I wanted to, but I thought all in all this is one of the best deals demonstrations I have ever seen of a complex product.
The used the machine to gauge my lens prescription and it was flawless didn’t share prescription information just to QR codes so they could lock in the right type of lenses to magnetically attach to the device.
I will say the field of view in normal every day operations the home screen, the app space and workflow was pretty bad. When you’re in a massive experience, such as a video or an environment, the field of view becomes much better. The live view is un obstructed by the dithering or blur effects of the field of view, but I will say reading text in Safari was extremely harmful for my eyes. Tried moving Window back. Try the window closer tried tricking them window and well text is Crisp the one or two sentences you’re focusing on everything else just seems to be almost crisp but not crisp enough so it hurt my eye is trying to focus on it cause it something I could focus because my eyes would have to move that location and I very much read differently, consuming more text than normal person would as their eyes scan.
I had some interesting alignment issues and I could see where a lot of people have pressure on their brow and then eventually becomes pressure everywhere noses and cheekbones and such.
I had some interesting odd artifacts when I was in normal app mode. The very corner of borders had this kind of red blue outline, shimmer shatter thing on the very very edges of the screen or the bounding box of the app. Again, I think that spatial photos were almost fake 3-D like you can kinda tell it kind of 3-D but remind me more of a holographic, print out where you can tilt a little little bit kinda see how a little three object is trying to be there, but it was extremely compressed really really bad.
Now the 3-D spatial video, unbelievable how you could see everything and you could move and you moved like you were in the scene and you really felt like you were there present. The video capturing might be a little bit compressed and I know a lot of people said it’s a square experience, but you really felt like it didn’t matter what the dimensions were cause you were in the scene.
Seeing spatial video recorded by an iPhone 15 was unnecessarily smaller than the actual video, but it definitely felt the same. Definitely felt a little bit more sharper and less compressed.
Now the demo they walk you through they show you a trailer of the 3-D movie and that trailer was again extremely compressed but you could see the 3-D dimensions and it felt almost right.
The immersion Apple experiences all they were phenomenal. They definitely took you into the scene and you fell like you were there 180° filled of view. I noticed I couldn’t see much of the floor, but I could see a lot of the ceiling and I didn’t have any artifacts and my field of view was crystal. Clear 180° a lot sharper and a whole better experience than looking at safari. Now because it’s a 3-D lens you can kind of see some distortion you’re like there was a scene where people were dancing and they kinda see their hands are a little bit distorted as they were dancing because of how the 3-D langues captures and I’m sure the industry will fix many of these issues.
I will say I took the headset off wrongly and it fell apart magnetic stuff fell all over the place oops. But I did notice when I took the headset off. It was a blinding light.
so when you use the headset, your eyes automatically adjust to the darkness if you will of the displays, not that their intentionally dark because they’re bad quality, but I think they’re intentionally darker because that way you can view the screen longer without damaged to your eyes and your eyes automatically adjust so it was definitely a high definition HDR display.
However, it really felt like a flash bang went off when I took the headset off and was in the store outside of the headset.
The Atmos sound pods are fantastic of course being in Apple AirPod Max user I was disappointed to find out that it isn’t supported on the headset. Although I have seen some of yours at attempt to use the AirPod maxes with the current headset and fan that it doesn’t fit.
The controls became intuitive within within 20 minutes, and I was mind blown how easy it was. I kept turning my head to point at things supposed to rolling my eyes around the screen until I got used to it. a lot of the features such as seeing a face come into an immersion view is a little bit different than what they showed during the demonstrations on their product pages and in the keynote. It’s like a thin film, overlay on top of everyone that kind of keeps you in the immersion but you kind of see them and it if you keep looking at them, they come up clear and focus but they never come truly 100% into your immersed environment.
I think that this is a phenomenal product and has a lot of potential and I look forward to the second generation where I may make a purchase at that time. In the meantime, I did take home MedQuest three because at least it was cheaper and has a wide range of games and experiences in it that the vision pro does not.
I will say Apple is trying to showcase this product as an entertainment product. They didn’t focus on game development and boarding some AAA titles or some cool VR experiences in games. They could find themselves being great video gaming system if they chose to support real 3-D environments, with the pro or maybe a max chip powering the immersive 3-D environments. However, they’re trying to make it seem like you need infinite displays will not being able to do a lot with the device.
I left not feeling like I was being sailed too, but have a good demonstration of the product. At least a decent demonstration. The sales guy wasn’t able to answer some mechanical questions I was able to answer more of my consumer level questions and all and all it was a good experience.
I was very pleased that Apple wasn’t forcing a sale. Instead, they left you with the ability to purchase on your own time. Here’s an email scan the QR code and then the demo was concluded. But they are definitely shoveling people in and shoveling them out because they only give you 30 minutes 20 minute demo and five minutes on each tail to set up the device collect the information and prepare the experience or reset the experience for the next person.
at the end of the day, it’s a phenomenal product, but it is not worth anyone purchasing it for $3500. It’s very expensive, very heavy, and still very glitchy… However, if one of my clients wants to build an apple vision pro app then I would be, open to developing an app and building with this experience. I will say the presumer version of this that we all expect to come out in 6 to 8 months or maybe a year or two from now will be a more stable version and I’d recommend people to buy that and wait for that to come out.
But if you have $3500 to spend and your OK with a lot of the downfalls of the new technology, go for it.
because Apple is trying to make this in AR experience as opposed to a VR experience expected it to be more flawless now it was very intuitive and I learned to use it but seeing through it, it took a lot of me to undo and refocus in from using my peripheral vision, all the time to focusing in on a small part of the screen, and I don’t think I could ever do work in this thing. I don’t think I can write code in this, I don’t think I could write documents in this, I don’t think I could design in this… I might add it in it, I might do some tests in it, I might use some of the virtual experiences, but that’s all I can think of for now.
If you have timeslots available for the demo at your Apple Store, I strongly recommend that everyone try it out as it is 100% the future of computing and it won’t be long before laptops iPads go away in place of a more AR augmented reality, spatial computing experience.
my thoughts,
Also, I apologize. Many of this is text to speech because apparently the mobile version of Safari is broken a little bit and it deletes multiple letters when you try to hit the backspace as opposed to just wanted at a time. God love beta versions of the OS.
The problem is you know in 10-12 months Apple will come out with V2 that's MUCH better and maybe cheaper. Hard to justify spending that kind of money on V1 product.
Learned my lesson with Apple Watch
I’m living in the moment. I’m not guaranteed to be alive in 10-12 months to enjoy V2.
Fun fact: V3 will be much better than V2. See the pattern there…
They may not charge you any money to try out the product for 30 minutes, but they know at least some of you are going to be impressed enough to place an order on the spot. Or, if they have them in stock, walk out the door with one under your arm. Well, not literally under your arm. In a large box in a large paper bag. And some of you are going to say "it's not for me, at that price", but you'll change your mind after you think about it for a few days.
And some of you will say, "I'll wait for version 2", and then you'll spend months suffering in the ebb and flow of FOMO. You'll stick to your word, though, but when Version 2 is announced, you'll see the new specs (the few Apple shares) and features, and the new killer apps and the new price, and you'll tell yourself how smart you were for waiting, as you set your alarm for pre-orders.
One way or another, a lot of you are going to pay for that free demo.
I just want you to know before you go in. Apple isn't doing this out of the goodness of their heart.
That doesn’t make it a scam, that is literally how sale demos work. Apple did the same with the Apple Watch. It doesn’t mean it isn’t an impressive product. I’m in the UK, we don’t have it here, but i will do the demo if and when they bring Vision Pro here. I’m not even sold on VR or AR, but if anyone can do it, it’s Apple.