I know I'm late to the party on this, but I finally tried Apple Vision Pro this weekend. I was in the Apple Store at the Toronto Eaton Center getting the battery replaced in my phone, so I decided to do a demo. And let me tell you -- I was totally blown away. I messaged everyone I knew (after I got my phone back) and told them that they need to try it.
To be clear, though, very few people right now want to actually buy this computing device. Initially, Apple was thinking that it would sell upwards of 800,000 units this year. But now it expects to sell somewhere closer to 400,000. Maybe. The device is too expensive, too bulky, and the use cases just aren't there for someone to feel they need to buy it.
I also found that, when I was looking at the world around me, I could tell I was looking at a video. It wasn't exactly perfect. (Vision Pro creates a mixed-reality experience by recording the world around you and then playing it back to you.) But that's okay. The hardware will get better. The price will come down. And the developer community will build a bunch of killer apps that nobody has even thought of yet.
https://twitter.com/Casey/status/1753848769118970152
None of this changes the fact that the device is still an astonishing technical achievement. The eye tracking works perfectly. All of my hand gestures were flawlessly picked up. And the overall experience was entirely immersive -- from 3D videos (recorded on regular iPhones) to a butterfly landing on my hand and a velociraptor flaring its nostrils right in front of me.