On this date a year ago, I was first in line for a demo of Apple Vision Pro at Apple Lakeside Shopping Center in New Orleans. Anticipating a crowd, I arrived an hour before the store opened. However, I still would have been first in line if I arrived 10 minutes early. It was launch day for Apple Vision Pro, unveiled eight months earlier, and many people were still discovering it was now available.
One year later, Apple Vision Pro has improved enough through software updates to make it more capable than on day one.
Making ordinary photos come to life by adding depth is amazing. Extending your Mac’s display to the size of two 5K monitors side-by-side is impressive. More than anything, Apple Vision Pro has become the best personal and portable immersive movie theater on the planet.
But with the one-year mark comes one less excuse for Apple Vision Pro. We can no longer excuse Apple Vision Pro’s shortcomings by saying, “It’s just the first year.”
Where are the immersive sports replays that happened over the last week and not last year? When will there be an immersive film that gets discussed because it’s a great movie and not because it’s a novel format? How long until Apple releases more visionOS-native versions of its iPad apps instead of relying on the compatibility folder?
visionOS 3 will probably answer a lot of the platform-specific infancy issues. Window management is surprisingly difficult. Viewing your Apple Watch or iPhone through Apple Vision Pro isn’t pretty. The Photos app is a viewer and not a full-featured experience like on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. What about iPad Virtual Display?
As we hit the one year mark for Apple Vision Pro, we’ll no longer be able to dismiss as many concerns because it’s a brand new platform. Apple Vision Pro’s $3500 price tag still shields it from the harsher scrutiny of mainstream adoption. But if the company wants to continue down the Apple Vision path, more of these early shortcomings will need to be solved before a more affordable version enters the chat.
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