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Posts tagged with "Vision Pro"

Vision Pro App Spotlight: CARROT Weather and Mercury Weather

We’re going to be covering a lot of visionOS apps over the coming weeks, so I thought a fitting place to start would be with two of our favorite weather apps from other Apple platforms: CARROT Weather and Mercury Weather. Both apps are past MacStories Selects award winners. CARROT Weather won the Best Watch app in 2020 and the Readers’ Choice award in 2022, and we named Mercury Weather the Best Design winner of 2023. So, I expect a lot of readers are already familiar with both apps. However, if you’re not, be sure to check out these past stories for more on what makes them two of our favorite weather apps on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch:

So today, my focus is solely on the visionOS versions of both apps, which fill the gap left by Apple’s curious omission of its own Weather app from Vision Pro.

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Apple Publishes Vision Pro User Guide and Support Documentation

Apple has created a comprehensive Vision Pro user guide and accompanying support documentation that was published late last week. I’ve spent some time browsing through the user guide, and it’s full of excellent tips to help get people started with the new device. Each section of the guide links to related support documents, which go into more depth about the topics covered. I’ve pinned the page in Safari as I continue to explore everything the Apple Vision Pro can do.

Another page worth bookmarking is a story by Joe Rossignol and Aaron Perris of MacRumors, who compiled a long list of what they describe as ‘nearly all’ of the support documents listed in the Vision Pro user guide. You’ll come across links to these documents in the user guide itself, but if you want to go deeper on a topic and bypass the user guide, MacRumors’ story is a great place to start.

iFixit Disassembles Apple Vision Pro→

Source: [iFixit](https://www.ifixit.com/News/90137/vision-pro-teardown-why-those-fake-eyes-look-so-weird).

Source: iFixit.

As with myriad other Apple gadgets, the folks at iFixit have pulled apart a Vision Pro to see what makes it work. There’s a lot of tech crammed into a relatively small space, which made the Vision Pro difficult to take apart. But, after heating and prying parts apart, removing brackets, screws, and cables, iFixit made it reached the inner layers to show off all of the Vision Pro’s components, concluding that:

The Vision Pro is insanely ambitious. Yes, it’s heavy, and the glass is fragile, and that tethered battery might get annoying. But Apple has managed to pack the power of a Mac, plus the performance of a new dedicated AR chip, into a computer that you can wear on your face.

Repairability-wise, it’s not great, but on the plus side, some of the connections are quite delightful. You should have seen our teardown team jump up when they realized that the side arms could be popped out using the SIM-removal tool, for example, and the magnetic cushions are yet more user-friendly.

To see the Vision Pro pulled apart step by step, don’t miss the companion video on YouTube:

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Wallpaper Interviews Apple’s Alan Dye and Richard Howarth→

Today, Wallpaper published an interview with Alan Dye, Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, and Richard Howarth, Vice President of Industrial Design. It’s a fantastic read with some great images, including an exploded view of the Vision Pro’s components.

Something I noticed as soon as I unboxed the Apple Vision Pro was how approachable it was. The setup process was easy, well-paced, and felt natural. That carries through to the hardware itself, too, which Dye explained to Wallpaper:

We wanted people around you to also feel comfortable with you wearing it, and for you to feel comfortable wearing it around other people. That’s why we spent years designing a set of very natural, comfortable gestures that you can use without waving your hands in the air. That’s also why we developed EyeSight, because we knew more than anything, if we were going to cover your eyes, that takes away much of what is possible when you connect with people. Getting that right was at the core of the concept of the product because we wanted people to retain those connections in their actual world.

My very early impression is that Apple’s design team accomplished its goal. Howarth puts a slightly different spin on the same message:

There’s a hardness and precision to the front of the product that is completely technical and feels like it’s been sent from the future, but then everything else that connects the product to you is soft and really approachable, so you feel cushioned and there’s not a barrier to putting it on or taking it off. And in fact, it should be a pleasure.’

Nobody is going to confuse the Vision Pro for something that it’s not. Still, the care that has been taken in its design goes a long way toward taking a device that is completely foreign to many people and making it one that isn’t intimidating. That’s something very uniquely Apple and why I’m optimistic about Vision Pro’s long-term prospects.

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Apple Offers USB-C Enabled Vision Pro Strap to Registered Developers

Apple is offering a new Vision Pro accessory to registered developers: a head strap with a USB-C connector for $299. There aren’t a lot of details about the strap, which is designed to be connected to a Mac to accelerate development and testing for the Vision Pro, other than this description that is behind a developer account login:

Overview

The Developer Strap is an optional accessory that provides a USB-C connection between Apple Vision Pro and Mac and is helpful for accelerating the development of graphics-intensive apps and games. The Developer Strap provides the same audio experience as the in-box Right Audio Strap, so developers can keep the Developer Strap attached for both development and testing.

Tech specs

  • USB-C data connection
  • Individually amplified dual driver audio pods
  • Compatible with Mac

Although we haven’t been able to confirm the capabilities of the Developer Strap, USB-C may allow developers to connect the Vision Pro to their network over Ethernet or access external storage, for example.

Why is a USB-C dongle $299? It’s expensive, but as the description makes clear, it incorporates the speaker found in Vision Pro’s right strap, which it replaces, explaining at least part of the cost.

On Vision Pro’s Spatial Computing→

There’s no tech commentator better equipped to talk about the history of spatial interfaces in Apple operating systems than John Siracusa, and I enjoyed his latest, thought-provoking column on where visionOS and the Vision Pro’s gesture system fit in the spatial computing world:

Where Vision Pro may stumble is in its interface to the deep, spatial world it provides. We all know how to reach out and “directly manipulate” objects in the real world, but that’s not what Vision Pro asks us to do. Instead, Vision Pro requires us to first look at the thing we want to manipulate, and then perform an “indirect” gesture with our hands to operate on it.

Is this look-then-gesture interaction any different than using a mouse to “indirectly” manipulate a pointer? Does it leverage our innate spatial abilities to the same extent? Time will tell. But I feel comfortable saying that, in some ways, this kind of Vision Pro interaction is less “direct” than the iPhone’s touch interface, where we see a thing on a screen and then literally place our fingers on it. Will there be any interaction on the Vision Pro that’s as intuitive, efficient, and satisfying as flick-scrolling on an iPhone screen? It’s a high bar to clear, that’s for sure.

In yesterday’s review on The Verge, Nilay Patel shared a similar idea: it’s a strange feeling to use a computer that requires you to look at what you want to control at all times. I don’t know what to think about this yet since I don’t have a Vision Pro, but I’m curious to learn how this interaction method will scale over time as we start using this new platform on a daily basis. It’s quite fitting, however, that visionOS is based on the one Apple platform that supports both kinds of manipulation with a pointer and touch.

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What Reviewers Have Learned about Apple Vision Pro

By the time most Apple hardware is released, we usually know every minute detail of the specs and have a pretty good idea of what using it will be like. That hasn’t been the case with the Apple Vision Pro. Apple conducted multiple waves of demos in the months since WWDC 2023, but those were tightly controlled and limited. Today, however, we’re seeing the first hardware reviews from a range of media outlets and YouTubers who have had a chance to spend about a week testing the device.

There are some excellent reviews that are well worth reading in full, but I thought I’d highlight some of the most interesting tidbits that were either unknown or unclear before now to help give readers a better sense of what this hardware is all about.

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QuickTime VR and Spatial Computing→

Source: Tabletops.

Source: Tabletops.

Soon, the world will get a glimpse of the Apple Vision Pro outside of the tightly controlled demos provided to a select number of people. As we wait for that moment, it’s worth taking a look back at QuickTime VR with Michael Steeber through his excellent newsletter, Tabletops.

QuickTime VR was a 3D image format that explored some of the spatial video concepts coming to the Vision Pro, albeit using CD-ROMs in 90s-era Macs. To show off the technology, Apple created a demo CD that included a virtual tour of the recently closed Company Store. Steeber got the tour up and running and shared some wonderful images and videos of Apple’s vision for VR 30 years ago.

The story is full of interesting details about Apple retail when the Company Store was all there was to Apple retail:

At the entrance to the store is a physical map of the space, like the kind you’d find at a trailhead or in a museum lobby. In the Performa department, a cutout of a child hanging upside down looms from the ceiling. Along the wall is a disheveled pile of AppleDesign Speaker boxes. In the Newton department, an entire wall is wrapped with a print of someone’s backside, toting a Newton in their jeans pocket.

One section of the store is filled with more than 700 software titles. In early promotional materials, Apple called this aisle “Technology Way,” which is so similar to the “Software Alley” in early Apple Stores that I can’t help but wonder if it was carried over.

Be sure to check out the latest issue of Tabletops to see QuickTime VR in all its glory and sign up for the newsletter while you’re there. It’s always a good read.

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The Vision Pro’s Most Important App Is Safari→

Interesting perspective by David Pierce, writing for The Verge, on how, for the time being, Vision Pro users may have to use Safari to access popular services more than they anticipated:

But what if you don’t need the App Store to reach Apple users anymore? All this corporate infighting has the potential to completely change the way we use our devices, starting with the Vision Pro. It’s not like you can’t use Spotify on the headset; it’s just that instead of tapping a Spotify app icon, you’ll have to go to Spotify.com. Same for YouTube, Netflix, and every other web app that opts not to build something native for the Vision Pro. And for gamers, whether you want to use Xbox Game Pass or just play Fortnite, you’ll also need a browser. Over the last decade or so, we’ve all stopped opening websites and started tapping app icons, but the age of the URL might be coming back.

If you believe the open web is a good thing, and that developers should spend more time on their web apps and less on their native ones, this is a big win for the future of the internet. (Disclosure: I believe all these things.) The problem is, it’s happening after nearly two decades of mobile platforms systematically downgrading and ignoring their browsing experience. You can create homescreen bookmarks, which are just shortcuts to web apps, but those web apps don’t have the same access to offline modes, cross-app collaboration, or some of your phone’s other built-in features. After all this time, you still can’t easily run browser extensions on mobile Safari or mobile Chrome. Apple also makes it maddeningly complicated just to stay logged in to the services you use on the web across different apps. Mobile platforms treat browsers like webpage viewers, not app platforms, and it shows.

As we saw when we surveyed the state of apps already submitted to the visionOS App Store, more companies than we expected have – for now – decided not to offer their apps on the Vision Pro, either in the form of native visionOS apps or iPad apps running in compatibility mode.

I think that “for now” is key here: if visionOS proves to be a successful platform in the long term (and early sales numbers for the Vision Pro seem encouraging), most companies won’t be able to afford ignoring it. And why would they? If the users are there, why shouldn’t they provide those users with a better app experience?

This idea is predicated upon the assumption that native apps still offer a superior app experience compared to their web counterparts. The tide has been turning over the past few years. Workflows that would have been unthinkable in a web browser until a few years ago (such as design and collaboration) can now live in a browser; the most popular AI service in the world is literally a website; the resurgence of browsers (with Arc arguably leading the space) proves that a new generation of users (who likely grew up with Chromebooks in school) doesn’t mind working inside a browser.

With this context in mind, I think Apple should continue improving Safari and extend its capabilities on visionOS. My understanding is that, in visionOS 1.0, Safari cannot save PWAs to the user’s Home Screen; I wouldn’t be surprised if that feature gets added before visionOS 2.0.

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