Jonathan’s Vision Pro Demo - Amazing Tech, had me at floating Hello!!

 

Jonathan’s Vision Pro Demo - Amazing Tech, had me at floating Hello!!

For my 30 minute Vision Pro Demo appointment, it was a pleasure to  visit again the Apple Carnegie Library Store in downtown DC - and with bike parking on both sides for the building, I was in bicycling heaven.  

We began with about 10 minutes of Vision Pro set up, with eye configuration mostly, including the reader lens for me, and adjusting the band.  So this isn’t a device we could ever just pass around at a meeting.  Lavon, my charming and helpful demo instructor, assured that no shared screen FaceTime -as I’d tentatively arranged with Van —was possible during the demo, plus for test reasons, not even any screen captures.  All she could offer was a photo of me wearing the Vision Pro, so voila, above is the only genuine pic from the day!   

When first donning the headset, one sees the Hello , that is the greeting on new Apple devices, but on the Vision Pro, it’s floating lifelike in the air!  

The pinches to do things, from selecting, to moving, to resizing, was easy to learn.

The ability to move windows around in the 3d vision was very cool and useful: so for a time, I had Photos app on my right side, Safari on the left side, and app choice field in front of me, with an immersive picture.in front of the the app choice field.

Most amazing was the headset’s ability to focus on a precise area for selecting and carrying out other actions.  A training for that showed dots arrayed around a circle that one had to look at and select.  By the second round, this got easier to do.  So some concentration is helpful when using that capability.  

When we opened Safari on the Vision Pro headset, I used the virtual keyboard to type wap.org - where everything else was a pinch to do something, I noticed that the virtual keyboard invited a virtual button press on the keys -  requiring some adjustment.  

The immersive pics and videos were amazing.  The videos shot with Vision Pro and shown on it have a lifelike form different from any other video I’ve seen.  So the prospect of virtual events using this headset - from sporting to music - is wild!  But equally amazing was that on the side of the screen I could see the room we were in - this functionality, to show via cameras, people  and things nearby means none of the VR discomfort that comes with the Meta Quest models.  

On my list to try in the short session was the Dinosaur app.  When this opens, and you put you hand up, a butterfly comes to land on it - so cool. 

The raptor like dinosaur bipeds along in such a lifelike manner that I told Lavon I’d send feedback for the app developer to add a little smoke come from the virtual Dino’s nose!  

For the brief demo session, they didn’t offer the top strap, just the main headset back strap.  This was comfortable enough, and a button on the right side of the strap easily lets one tighten or loosen the strap.  For any longer session, I’d definitely be using the top strap too.  This is a heavy device to wear on your face.  

Well, our next touch of this device might be at Jim McLean’s lab - many thnaks to GMU

scholarship recipient Rosy Sultana for visiting Jim and touring his lab - so hopefully we’ll soon have a date for that!

List of Demos

Set up

select small dots around a circle

Photos:

use pinch select to expand, make smaller, move app around on the the field of view.

Immersive Photo - how to fill the background with a photo

Spacial Videos - enjoying, and again resizing, moving

Safari - online keyboard

Dinosaur demo

Mon. Feb 19th, so fresh off the Mark Gurman episodic reports of Vision Pro returns, here's what Perplexity AI had to say about any prospect of Apple selling refurbished units with a mark down:

Apple Inc. has not started selling refurbished Vision Pros yet. The Apple Vision Pro, a spatial computer, was made available for purchase on February 2, 2024, at U.S. Apple Store locations and online

1

. However, there have been reports of some customers returning their Vision Pros due to comfort, lack of apps, and the high price

2

3

4

. The device can be returned within 14 days of purchase, and some early adopters have cited discomfort, motion sickness, and the device's weight as reasons for returning it

3

4

. Additionally, some users have expressed that the Vision Pro does not offer enough productivity relative to its price

3

4

. Despite these returns, it is unclear how widespread this phenomenon is and whether it will impact the future availability of refurbished Vision Pros.