0:02

Welcome to the Verse Cast the flagship podcast

0:05

a Variable Immersion I mean for David Pearce

0:07

and I am sitting here updating a bunch

0:09

of apps on my Met A Quest three

0:11

so I tend to go kind of in

0:14

and out with Vr stuff. I had a

0:16

long run of doing workouts and Supernatural says

0:18

using the thing almost every day and then

0:20

you know it was winter I got lazy

0:22

so I didn't do that for awhile. and

0:25

then recently I got really into the Assassin's

0:27

Creed game Assassin's Creed Nexus Vr. It's super

0:29

cool, but then I had one of those

0:31

moments been like, okay, I'm. Spending too much

0:34

time with his game. Time to stop. But recently

0:36

I've been picking this thing back up because I'm

0:38

gonna be honest with you, have been having some

0:40

Fomer. So this week is the week Apple's Vision

0:42

Pro comes out. We've been waiting for Apple's A

0:45

R V are mixed reality whatever you want to

0:47

call it. Thirty five hundred are had to come

0:49

out and it's coming out this week on Friday,

0:51

February. Second, I've been hearing from people who preordered

0:54

one. I've been hearing lots of ideas about apps

0:56

that are going to come out. It all seems

0:58

very exciting and it's just making me feel bad

1:00

because I don't have one. but you know who

1:03

does? Have one is Neil Patel, the Verges

1:05

editor in chief and my first guest cohost.

1:07

So we think it for this episode we

1:09

would just grill Neil I about the Vision

1:11

Pro. He spent the last few days writing

1:14

about it, testing it, trying to figure out

1:16

what this thing means in the world and

1:18

whether it's worth your thirty five hundred dollars.

1:20

So we got lots of questions from you.

1:22

We have lots of questions for new hi

1:25

Alex and I are going to spend I

1:27

mean potentially like many, many many hours asking

1:29

me like all of our questions about the

1:31

Vision Pro to figure out not. Only if

1:34

it's better than this thing the Quest three

1:36

that I'm in right now, but it fits

1:38

the future. Is this The next thing? Is

1:40

this where we're headed? Certain we're going to

1:43

do for the whole rest of this episode.

1:45

It's all Vision Pro all the time. all

1:47

week. because it's Headset week. All. That

1:49

is coming up in just a second. But first I feel

1:51

like I just killed myself into doing a workout.

1:54

Saman a pop in the supernatural for a little

1:56

bit. do some boxing and there were going to

1:58

get to. It this. the first gas We'll

2:00

be right back. If

2:04

you're not tapped into the music of Kali Yucci's You

2:06

Should Be, I'm Rianna Cruz,

2:08

producer of Switched on Pop, and this week

2:10

we're looking at all Kali has to offer. Her

2:13

newest album, Marquesias, jumps from the

2:15

Dominican Republic in Puerto Rico all the way

2:17

to South Africa, and it's Sonic Pallet. And

2:19

on this episode of Switched on Pop, we take a

2:21

closer look. You can find Switched on Pop anywhere you

2:23

get your podcasts. Shawn

2:27

Elling here, host of The Grey Area.

2:29

On our show, we delve into the

2:31

ambiguities around the world's biggest questions, which

2:33

is why I spoke with Maggie Jackson,

2:35

who wrote a book about the joys

2:37

of uncertainty. If we approach uncertainty,

2:40

knowing it's a space of possibilities,

2:43

then we, you know, roll up

2:45

our sleeves and be present in

2:48

the moment and start investigating and

2:50

exploring. Hear more of

2:52

our conversation on this week's The Grey

2:54

Area, available wherever you get your podcasts.

3:00

Welcome back. All right, it is 9 10 a.m. on

3:02

Tuesday, January 30th, which

3:05

means 10 minutes ago was when the embargo

3:07

for Vision Pro reviews lifted. There's a bunch

3:09

of them out there. Our friend Marques Brownlee

3:11

has one. Our friend, Joanna Stern has one.

3:14

A scene that has a video I was

3:16

watching. I Justine has a fun video that

3:18

I was just poking through. There's a bunch

3:20

of good stuff out there. But before the

3:22

review publishes is actually one of my favorite

3:24

moments, especially being sort of inside the process.

3:26

Because you go through all this testing and

3:28

you have to decide what to make of

3:31

this thing. Not just is it good, not is it cool,

3:33

does it have some neat features? But is

3:35

this a good package? Is this worth buying?

3:37

Is it worth the price? And

3:39

I think the challenge for us and from watching

3:42

some of these reviews for a lot of other

3:44

folks is to figure out what to make of

3:46

this thing. Everybody seems to read that the tech

3:48

is amazing. There's just no question that Apple did

3:50

a lot of the things it was trying to

3:53

do very well. But to what end? What is

3:55

this for? What is this thing about? What are

3:57

you supposed to do with it? Why does it

3:59

exist? These are the big like

4:01

existential questions that both as a reviewer and

4:03

as a person thinking about buying a product

4:06

like this You have to think more about

4:08

with a first-generation device like this It seems

4:10

like the vision Pro really is the first

4:13

of something But exactly what that is and

4:15

where it's going and whether we want it

4:17

is hard to know so about

4:21

24 hours ago as I'm recording this we sat

4:23

down with an Eli we dragged them into the

4:25

studio in this like haze of doing all of

4:27

the review stuff and Tried to

4:29

go through that before the review publishes before

4:31

he'd seen anything else before we've gotten comments

4:33

and everything I just wanted us to sort

4:35

of pick his plan about the review So

4:38

for the whole rest of the show It's

4:40

gonna be just me Alex Kranz and Neillie

4:42

Patel and we are going to go deep

4:45

on the vision Pro Neillie's review

4:47

how he felt what it was like to

4:49

use this thing and a whole bunch more. Let's get

4:51

into it Neillie Patel

4:54

welcome hello ask Kranz hello.

4:56

Hello Neillie. We talked about your

4:59

life status We've all reviewed gadgets all three of

5:01

us And I know that this is the point

5:03

of the process where it can either be going

5:05

very well Or you can be brewing a lot

5:07

of things you've decided about your life and decisions

5:09

You've made in the past that have led you

5:11

to this moment. How you feeling? I

5:14

want the audience to know that David has

5:16

chosen to record this podcast with me at

5:18

the most vulnerable time for any reviewer This

5:20

is very much on purpose. Yes. It's right

5:22

now. It is 27

5:25

hours before embargo time yeah, which

5:27

is when everything about everything you've ever done

5:29

in your life is suddenly up in the

5:31

air Yeah, so I was just just to

5:33

give people the context. I've had the vision

5:36

Pro for a little less than a

5:38

week It'll be six days when you hear this Apple

5:40

security arrived at my house the vision Pro last week.

5:43

It was pretty intense And

5:45

we've had it we've been using it This is

5:47

the moment in the review process where the video

5:49

is shot It's being edited the written

5:52

review is mostly written It's in edits,

5:54

and I'm just sitting around waiting to

5:56

see if I'm right which

5:58

again is the most vulnerable part of any

6:00

review. Like I've done, I've said what I think. Here's

6:02

what I think. And then tomorrow it'll get published and

6:05

everyone will yell at me and I yell at me,

6:07

who knows. But so David is like, this

6:09

is when I want to talk to you, which is mean

6:11

and unfair. It's the perfect time.

6:13

Yeah, I feel, I feel really good about it. And

6:15

you can hear it. We've been pulling basically all-nighters for

6:17

a week. Uh, you can hear

6:19

it in my voice, I think. It's been a

6:21

lot. So in an effort to make

6:24

this easy on you, basically what is going to

6:26

happen here is we have a long series of

6:28

questions, some of them from us and

6:30

some of them from listeners. We asked

6:32

for questions on the hotline and an email and

6:34

on threads and we got like a billion

6:37

of them. Some of them are very weird, but

6:39

basically we're sort of at the top here, we're

6:41

going to go through your review like beat by

6:43

beat. I just, we have a bunch of questions

6:45

and we're going to talk about them because this

6:47

thing is weird and complicated and we're going to

6:49

sort of wind towards your big feelings

6:51

about this at the end. And then we're going to get

6:53

into a bunch of questions we got from people. Does that

6:56

make sense? Yeah. Okay. So the whole first

6:58

section of this is called, is it

7:00

good? And we're just

7:03

going to enable it to things and we're going to

7:05

ask about if it's good. And Alex, you should obviously

7:07

ask all the questions I'm missing, lots of stuff going

7:09

on here, but okay, we have, we have a bunch

7:11

of these, but the first one is, is wearing the

7:13

thing. Is it good? Medium.

7:16

Okay. Medium. It's heavy. It

7:19

is not, not heavy. Everything about

7:21

this product is a fight between

7:23

what Apple wants it to be

7:25

and what it is. As I've

7:27

been using the thing, there's a

7:30

very clear gap between Apple's ambitions

7:32

and dreams and the product

7:34

that they can make. And the product they can

7:36

make today is the best version of this thing

7:38

that anyone has ever made. I'd

7:40

want to be very clear about that. The headset

7:42

you put on your face where you look through

7:44

lenses at a screen, no one's

7:47

ever done it like this. It is very good. It

7:50

is obviously not the thing that they want. And

7:52

so their ambition is just way out ahead of the

7:54

reality of this product. And the reality of this product

7:56

is that it's heavy. It weighs more than an 11

7:58

inch iPad pro. 11-inch iPad Pro is

8:00

470 grams. This one is somewhere between

8:02

6 and 650 depending on its

8:05

configuration. Then there's the

8:07

headband situation where the

8:10

really cool one, the one you wanna use, the

8:12

solo band with the ridges in the back and

8:14

the wheel, the one they designed. The full ski

8:16

goggles look. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, and

8:18

that's one I've been using, it's fine, but

8:20

there's not a lot of affordances

8:22

in it. So you know the back of your

8:25

head, there's a ridge to your neck. Those

8:27

are in different spots in different people's heads, but

8:29

there's no like hinge point. So if

8:31

you just get what you get, like the thing just compresses around

8:34

your head and wherever the back of

8:36

your head lines up with your eyes, that's

8:38

what you get. You know, it's like, there's

8:41

just that. The fact of the

8:43

thing is there's

8:45

not a lot of affordances to wearing it. And then when

8:47

you're wearing it, it's hot. Like

8:49

it gets hot after a while. And

8:52

maybe that's, you get hot after a while, maybe it's it

8:54

gets hot after a while, but you're like, I'm wearing a

8:56

big heavy thing on my face. And then you just take

8:58

it off. And then when you take it off, you're

9:00

no longer looking at screens, you're just back in the

9:02

world. And you're like, oh, this is very nice. The

9:05

thing that I remember, especially

9:07

with a lot of the early Oculus

9:09

and Quest stuff, was there was that

9:11

feeling where you would take it

9:13

off and you would kind of like scrunch and

9:16

stretch your face because you would realize like your

9:18

forehead and the sort of bridge of your nose

9:20

had gotten just tons of pressure as you're wearing

9:22

the thing. Is that the feeling? Like, is it

9:24

sort of the same thing? Oh yeah, especially on

9:27

my forehead. I feel like after a long while,

9:29

you feel like your eyebrows are just working. Like

9:32

you just start doing the thing with your eyebrows. Like, I'm

9:34

just gonna lift it with my face a little bit more.

9:37

And then you monkey with the fit. It's not

9:39

the worst. Like make take the decision

9:41

to take the battery out of it to

9:43

reduce weight. I understand why they made that

9:45

decision. And it's fine because the

9:47

thing is such a stationary product like in

9:49

its way that the batteries goes on my table and you're

9:52

fine. But it is like, they had to

9:54

do it. If they'd added the batteries, let's

9:56

put your 383 grams or something. They'd added

9:58

another 383. a disaster.

10:02

So it's as close as they can get it

10:04

to being comfortable, but for a

10:07

long duration of time, it is

10:09

not. Okay. Can you expand on it

10:11

being stationary? Does it mean you're just like

10:14

everything you do in it, you're just sitting still? Yeah.

10:16

You and I talk about the quest all

10:18

the time. The quest wants you to get

10:20

up and move and play Beat Saber and

10:22

Supernatural and there's games in the quest are

10:25

like virtual reality games. So like I'm going

10:27

to run around in virtual reality. I'm

10:29

going to do stuff. This thing is like, I'm going to sit down

10:31

and I'm going to look at windows. Those

10:35

windows could be everywhere, but

10:37

like mostly it's sit down and look

10:39

at stuff. There are surprisingly few games

10:42

for this thing that feel like you need to

10:44

move around. The only one I've seen is

10:46

Super Fruit Ninja, which was in a demo, which

10:49

is not even out yet. So I

10:51

haven't even gotten a chance to play Super Fruit Ninja, which

10:53

is very funny. And I haven't seen a single

10:56

VR game yet. There are some coming, right? The

10:58

thing supports unity. I'm told that unity

11:00

developers across the industry are working very hard. I'm

11:02

bringing games to, we'll see that's to be seen,

11:04

but all the games right now are mixed

11:07

reality games. We're just like a game board is floating in space.

11:10

Yeah. So it seems like it is big and

11:12

heavy in the way you would sort of expect it to

11:14

be big and heavy, but not like worse than a lot

11:16

of other things. Like it's just a headset. I feel like

11:18

so much of this and it goes back to that thing

11:20

you were saying at the beginning, like Apple would love for

11:22

this not to be a headset, but it's

11:25

a headset. It is super a headset. You're

11:27

going to ask what these questions are about.

11:29

Is it good? And the frame for that,

11:31

all of them is like, is this the

11:33

best headset ever made? Right. And the answer

11:35

is almost always yes, but

11:38

it's a headset. Yeah. So just add parentheses for a

11:40

headset to all of the questions we're about to get

11:43

to. The next one is the displays. Are

11:45

they good? This seems very important.

11:47

They are displays. This is what I

11:49

mean. The displays are incredible.

11:51

They are a triumph of engineering that

11:54

you can't see pixels. The pixels are

11:56

smaller than red blood cells. Right.

11:58

They're 7.5 microns. They're about

12:00

the size one of those very cool

12:02

and totally meaningless Right like

12:05

they're like itty-bitty like and

12:07

then each of those pixels has three RGB

12:09

sub pixels This isn't like a pen tile

12:11

pattern. It's like straight Apple calls it S

12:13

stripe. You can look at a photo It's

12:16

RGB for each sub pixel each of which

12:18

can be individually controlled like the

12:20

engineering of this little display panel Or

12:22

two of them in each device that

12:25

works when you're moving your head around

12:27

like I'm beyond impressed but then you're

12:29

looking at them through lenses and There's

12:33

just the reality of a display in a

12:35

lens system So the lenses have

12:37

specular highlights or what looks like specular

12:39

highlight when you look at something bright

12:42

The lenses have color fringing like

12:44

green pink color fringing around the

12:46

edges That if you look

12:49

for it in certain condition, it's just gonna be there

12:51

The lenses are slightly vignette it the lenses are

12:53

slightly distorted at the edges. I Asked

12:56

Apple about this and this is they know like they're

12:58

like we're doing a bunch of hardware and software to

13:01

minimize these effects But as you they were

13:03

they said something to me like as you you're well

13:05

aware of displays and lenses You are obviously familiar with

13:07

these problems. Oh, yeah Here

13:09

they are Here's a thing that

13:12

I keep thinking about and I actually really want

13:14

your feedback on whether this is important or not

13:16

Apple spec for the display is 92% of

13:19

the DCI p3 color gamut, which is an

13:21

incredible thing to put on a webpage It

13:23

sounds really good. That's a neoli bait right

13:25

there. DCI p3 is like, you know High-end

13:27

color gamut for cinema people, but

13:29

it itself only represents like 53 or

13:32

54 percent of the colors your eyes can see

13:35

So 92 percent of DCI p3 means

13:37

the displays can only show you 49%

13:41

of the colors your eyes can see I'm like a display,

13:43

you know, I'm a display card I don't

13:45

care on a laptop or a phone like this

13:47

is stuff I think about I like

13:49

reading about if you're like asking me

13:52

to look through it all the time I'm like, well, you

13:54

just threw away 50% of the color

13:56

information in the world I don't know how to like I

13:58

emotionally do not know how to like comprehend that, right?

14:00

Because in every other context, I just don't care because

14:03

I can just look around. So displays are

14:05

incredible. Like I don't want to overdo it. The

14:07

displays are incredible. They are a triumph.

14:10

No one has ever engineered or shipped displays

14:12

like this at scale. Just think

14:15

about how tiny those pixels are. And

14:17

then you're like, oh, they are still displays. Like

14:20

you never forget, right? You never

14:22

forget. You are looking at screens,

14:24

like the most screens. And

14:27

then the reality pass-through is camera-based.

14:30

So there's just like motion blur. Even a

14:32

bright room, when you look around, there's motion

14:34

blur on the displays. You just

14:36

can't overcome the inherent nature

14:38

of cameras and displays. So

14:41

the question is, are the displays good?

14:43

There's really a question about how is

14:45

the product designed to be used and can

14:47

the displays do all the things that you

14:49

think they should be able to do? And

14:52

the answer is they are the most incredible displays

14:54

ever. They're a triumph of engineering. You are still

14:56

looking at screens and being asked to perceive reality

14:58

through screens is a tall ask.

15:01

Yeah, it's a weird one. I feel like

15:03

for this first run of

15:05

this, when this technology is new

15:07

to most people and new

15:10

to existence, that feels

15:12

like a somewhat acceptable trade-off, right? Like we're

15:14

going to hit a point where, especially

15:17

to something like this, if I am looking at

15:19

my room, and then I put on a headset

15:21

and suddenly my room, which it's still showing me,

15:24

is different. That feels bad in a

15:26

way that I turn on my TV

15:28

and trees don't look the same

15:30

color they do out my window, but they're like different trees

15:32

in a different place and my brain understands that that's a

15:34

screen. Your brain is not supposed to

15:36

understand that this is a screen, right? That's what success

15:38

looks like, is that you forget you're looking at

15:40

screens. And for now, at least

15:42

it feels like I'm looking

15:45

at screens and they're very good. Just the

15:47

fact that you didn't even mention how

15:49

it feels to like read text on a webpage

15:52

feels like a victory to me because it means

15:54

it was fine. And that is, to me, at

15:56

least for this first one, that's the bar. It's

15:58

like, can I look at stuff? And

16:00

and it seems like we're there you can read text

16:02

on a web page that refresh rates It

16:05

can go up to a hundred Hertz do

16:07

me again incredible technical achievement

16:09

with these displays I not even a

16:11

hint of boy,

16:13

I can imagine how these displays could be better like Incredible

16:16

technical achievement with these displays and

16:19

what digital information right

16:22

windows videos Mac

16:24

mirror like all that stuff looks good

16:27

but again, the displays are being

16:29

asked to pass through reality and Your

16:32

eyes are better than screens and cameras and that

16:35

is a historic problem Like I don't know that

16:37

we can overcome that problem Well, I

16:39

was gonna ask is it you know when

16:41

you think of AR the two kind of

16:43

most successful I'm using big scare quotes here

16:45

most successful ones have been what magic leap

16:48

and hollow lens I use

16:50

the scare quotes guys Is

16:54

the experience just that that that interaction with

16:56

the real world through this headset? Is that

16:58

better in this than in those

17:00

systems? What's fascinating about both of

17:02

those is one they failed to? There's

17:06

like no AR happening in this

17:08

thing. No There

17:10

are exactly three AR things that I have

17:12

seen so far and

17:14

by AR I mean digital information

17:17

layered over the real world where

17:19

the real world and the virtual world

17:21

interact Okay, right so virtual reality you're

17:24

just in a virtual world You're doing stuff in

17:26

virtual world the real world doesn't matter mixed reality

17:28

is what most people have experienced It's what most

17:30

of this is where you're in the real world

17:32

and you just like put up virtual stuff But

17:34

there's no connection between the real world and the

17:36

virtual world, right? All right, so I've

17:38

got windows safari windows are open all around

17:40

me It's not like I'm there sticking

17:42

to the walls Like they're just like floating all around

17:44

me and then that bubble can move through the pastor

17:46

That's it's weird But it you know like yeah that's

17:48

mixed reality and that's what most people are familiar with

17:51

and that's a lot of this The

17:53

three AR features I've seen so far in the

17:55

vision Pro to which I think

17:57

are historically important like we should go down notes

18:00

in the history they are. One, when

18:02

you open a Mac laptop and

18:04

you look at it, and it's your laptop

18:06

and your iCloud, a button floats above the

18:08

screen that says connect. Oh, that's cool. And

18:10

you can just reach out and push it.

18:12

And then your Mac display mirrors into the

18:14

Vision Pro. Incredible. That rules. Two, when

18:16

you are typing on a Bluetooth keyboard and you

18:18

look down, it knows where the keyboard is and

18:20

it puts a text preview window above it so

18:23

you can look at your fingers typing on the

18:25

keys and see what's being typed. So

18:27

instead of having the text box like way up

18:29

here while you're looking down at the keyboard, it

18:31

brings the text box down to the keyboard. Right.

18:33

I've got a big Google Doc up there. I'm

18:35

typing away and I look down at the keyboard

18:37

and I can see what I'm typing so I

18:39

don't have to move my head around. Clever. And

18:41

it positions that box correctly near the keyboard and

18:43

it shows you what you're typing. That is

18:45

a true AR feature, right? Yeah. There's a connection between

18:48

what I'm doing in the real world and a connection

18:50

in the virtual world and that is

18:52

amazing. Again, I think these are like

18:54

the first mainstream AR features to ever

18:56

ship. Historic. The third one that I've

18:58

seen is the loading screen for Super

19:00

Fruit Ninja where you can throw a

19:02

strawberry at a pig that's

19:04

running around your floor. That is not even

19:06

shipping yet. I only saw that in a demo that

19:09

Apple gave me. It feels less

19:11

historic. I'm just going to say, I don't

19:14

think that is quite as historic. I feel

19:16

like this is true erasure of the thing

19:18

where I can put an Ikea couch in

19:20

my living room through my iPad. But that's

19:22

what Apple has been demoing forever. It's the

19:25

only feature idea anyone has ever had until

19:27

this thing. And it's just not here. I

19:29

asked and they're like, game developers are working

19:31

on this. The most charitable

19:33

read of this thing is this is a developer kit. Yeah.

19:36

And so they're going to build all these and they're yet

19:38

to come. And I think that if

19:40

you want to be really fair to this thing, that's how you

19:42

think about it. But Apple's positioning of the thing, the thing they're

19:45

asking it to do, the ad they put

19:47

out is like people wearing it while they're just like

19:49

hanging out doing laundry and a call comes in. And

19:51

you're like, what is the value of wearing this? It's

19:53

not doing anything for you. And the value should be

19:55

a bunch of AR stuff. Not I'm waiting

19:58

for the phone to ring. And there's again, there's There's

20:00

a real tension between the ambition of the

20:02

product and how it's being communicated and the

20:04

reality of the product. Yeah. Okay. That's

20:07

good. one I

20:09

had written down here is the pass-through. Is

20:11

it good? It is as good as any

20:13

pass-through can ever be, and I think pass-through is a dead

20:15

end. Okay. That's essentially

20:17

what I wanted you to say. And this is

20:20

where we get into questions about optical

20:22

AR and the question of what are these things supposed to

20:24

look like in the future. And one of your hobby horses,

20:26

which you've talked about a lot on this

20:28

podcast, is like a VR headset might be the

20:30

wrong direction for this because eventually if it's going

20:32

to be glasses, you're going to have things like

20:34

peripheral vision and light is going to be able

20:36

to get in from the outside. So it'll be

20:38

like even the best possible version of this thing

20:40

we're trying to do is not

20:42

the thing. And it doesn't seem like

20:44

using this has changed your mind on that at all. It's

20:47

displays and cameras. So you've got a thing

20:49

over your head and then there's a camera

20:51

looking at the world for you and it's

20:53

showing it on display. And that just, you

20:55

already, if you're a Vergecast listener, you already

20:57

know a bunch of stuff about cameras and

20:59

displays. Just my osmosis from being

21:01

around the show. In low

21:03

light, what does a camera have to do? It has

21:05

to increase the ISO or increase the shutter speed. They

21:07

can increase the shutter speed because they need the latency

21:09

to be so low. So you can tell what it's

21:11

doing is really ramping ISO and then doing a bunch

21:13

of noise reduction. So in low light,

21:16

things just get, the world is less sharp.

21:19

I walked into my bathroom wearing the SUIDAY and turned around

21:21

and I couldn't find the light switch. Oh

21:23

wow. Right. I

21:26

took the thing off and I was like, well, it's like, you know, it's like, so

21:28

there's a thing that happens there. It is incredible

21:30

password. Again, it is the best that has ever been

21:32

done on the consumer device. It is the best that

21:34

most people will ever experience. Alex,

21:36

I don't know about the Vario headset that you've

21:38

talked about. Addy is familiar with it. She was

21:41

my editor on this. She's like, you know, it's

21:43

an enterprise product. It's way more expensive. So

21:45

for a consumer headset, this is definitely the best

21:47

password that has ever shifted. It might be better

21:50

than the Vario, you know, but the Vario is

21:52

like aimed at enterprise applications. It's just like a

21:54

different thing. For a consumer product, this

21:56

thing is the best you will get. can

22:00

do things that no other password I've ever seen can do.

22:02

I can just use my phone with

22:04

no blooming. Apple's HDR video processing

22:06

capabilities are incredible. And they're doing

22:08

it in real time, at 12

22:10

milliseconds of latency. So stunning

22:14

technical achievement. You're asking

22:16

it to replace reality. You've set the bar

22:18

so high that I don't know that it

22:20

can be crossed. I can't sit here and

22:22

imagine how you could make cameras and screens

22:25

overcome their limitations in a

22:27

real way. Maybe noise

22:29

reduction can get even better. But

22:32

you have to make it 50 times better for

22:34

this to substitute for reality. And

22:36

so when I say it's a dead end, it's like

22:38

this is as good as anyone has

22:40

ever done it. And it

22:43

feels like optical AR is still

22:45

the thing you want, where light is just

22:47

passing through some glasses, some lenses, and

22:49

the screens are being put over it. And that's really

22:51

hard. And I think there's a reason Apple shipped this,

22:53

because no one has gotten there yet. There was some

22:55

technology of not that long ago.

22:57

I think it might have been self-driving cars,

23:00

that somebody described as really amazing and three

23:02

physics miracles away from being possible. And I

23:04

feel like there's some of that in here

23:06

too, that it's like the things that we're

23:08

doing here are incredible. And we fundamentally have

23:10

to change the laws of the universe in

23:12

order to get to the next thing after

23:15

this. Yeah, that feels correct with this device.

23:17

It's kind of like robotics, right? Yeah,

23:19

totally. Where you're always expecting the robot

23:21

to walk like a human, but actually

23:23

humans are really well made. For

23:26

that thing. Humans are not well made for mounting

23:28

hardware on, like your headset on your face. I

23:30

found myself wondering and talking to you about this

23:33

thing many times, who the like platonic

23:35

ideal of the Vision Pro wearer is and

23:37

like what the measurements of their face are.

23:40

Because you know there is like, there is a

23:42

head in there that is like just crushing it

23:44

with the Vision Pro. Apple, you know, Apple like

23:46

measures over in ears to make the AirPods. I

23:48

asked if there was a maximum head size. And

23:50

I was told, we have not

23:53

considered that, but there is a maximum hair size.

23:55

Wow. It's Craig. If you

23:57

have bigger hair than Craig. It's not like a.

24:00

Small it is very large,

24:02

but there's some sort of maximum hair size.

24:04

We have to find the maximum hair size

24:06

This is now the first cat's main goal.

24:08

All right Let's keep on audio which I

24:11

think is a sneakily important and kind of

24:13

under discussed feature of all of these headsets

24:16

Is it good? It's great. No,

24:18

no complaints. It is very loud The spatial stuff is

24:20

really cool when you push the window I

24:22

watched the NFC championship game on YouTube TV

24:25

in the browser On

24:27

the thing last night and as I pushed the

24:29

browser window away the Detroit Lions got farther and

24:31

farther away from me You know, like that's cool.

24:33

It is a very loud everyone around you can

24:35

hear what you're doing So if you

24:37

are in a public place, you should wear that

24:39

you should in particular You should wear second generation

24:42

AirPods Pro You can use any Bluetooth headphones you

24:44

want but the second generation AirPods Pro get all

24:46

of the features So they get spatial audio they

24:48

get lower latency. They get 48 kilohertz Like

24:51

you just want to use those also feels like

24:53

the right you don't want big headphones with these

24:55

like you don't need more weight On your head

24:57

as you're wearing the show. Yeah. Okay, but in

25:00

but no notes You're a guy who cares deeply

25:02

about this stuff. You're you're good with spatial audio.

25:04

You're happy about this Yeah, I mean,

25:06

I'm sure if I had more time and

25:08

sleep I would have notes on the audio, but

25:10

no no notes. Everyone has just been sneaking up

25:12

on you for several days But

25:15

again, there's not again because there's not like

25:18

AR experiences or even VR experience that thing

25:20

hasn't happened it's just windows are

25:22

playing audio at you I was on a

25:24

FaceTime call with Joanna and Marques we could look at personas

25:26

and Boy

25:29

and they their ps3 characters

25:31

sounded like they were talking to

25:33

me from where they were which is cool Part

25:35

of that is really cool All right one more

25:38

and then we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna

25:40

get into some of the like how you use this thing

25:42

Stuff battery life. Is it good? You're relevant.

25:44

Mm-hmm. That's my answer. It's why

25:46

it's fine It's two and

25:48

a half hours. We haven't had a chance like

25:50

to a battery run down I'm not even sure that I

25:52

would want to subject anyone to battery run down and that's

25:54

what I mean it by it's relevant If you are in

25:56

this thing for two and a half hours boy,

25:59

are you gonna feel it? But I can't I just

26:01

I personally cannot imagine a situation where you

26:03

want to be in it for that long

26:06

I know Joanna wore it for like 20

26:08

hours straight Some enormous,

26:10

but I don't know what the actual number is as

26:12

we are recording this I've not read her review, but

26:14

when I had talked to her on that FaceTime call,

26:16

she's been wearing it for five hours I'm very worried.

26:18

I love her to pieces. She's one of the very

26:21

closest friends. I'm so worried about her I

26:23

just can't imagine a situation Where

26:25

you want to hit the battery life and

26:28

then because it is so stationary You're it

26:30

feels like it'll be close to power now the one situation where

26:32

I could see it being a problem is a plane But

26:35

then you're sitting so you can just like plug in

26:37

a battery like you'll be fine. Can you hot swap

26:39

the batteries? That's a question. We've gotten a bunch you

26:42

cannot hot thought the batteries the batteries are It's

26:45

a mechanical twist connector. It's a very satisfying. It's

26:47

like a big cyber decky twist connector You know

26:49

and it lights up the battery is a motion

26:51

sensor. So when you pick it up the light

26:53

glows green or orange It's a very Apple. There's

26:55

no button to tell you the battery status. It

26:57

has a motion sensor. I'm sure at

26:59

3499 you can do anything So

27:02

it just picks up and glows but you can't hot swap it

27:04

from the headset itself You can just plug another battery into

27:06

it over USB-C. All right, let's take

27:08

a quick break and then we're gonna come back All

27:10

right, we're back next one on my list

27:22

I think we should get into the like life inside

27:24

of the headset thing and I feel like there are

27:26

two big Parts of the

27:28

how you use this thing that

27:31

really sort of define whether this

27:33

thing is gonna work or not I guess the the

27:35

first one is is the eye tracking so eye tracking.

27:38

Is it good? It's as good as anyone who's ever

27:40

shipped I'm

27:42

just gonna start playing that for myself at the beginning of

27:45

every one of these answers which version of Toby does it

27:47

really like? perfectly replicate

27:50

That's Toby with two eyes It

27:53

is the best eye tracking anyone who's ever

27:55

shipped. I it's not good enough Oh,

27:57

this is like I'm just gonna keep coming back to

27:59

this and it's gonna

28:01

be frustrating until you use it. It's

28:04

the best, the first time you use it, until

28:06

you use it, it's hard even for me to

28:09

explain what I'm talking about. The

28:11

first time you put it on, and so many

28:13

of us have had that demo, it's

28:16

magic. You look at stuff, it

28:18

highlights, you click your fingers together.

28:21

If you get it wrong, you're like, oh, you

28:23

just have to get used to it, right? That's

28:25

the experience that you have in that first demo.

28:27

The idea is basically where your eyes focus is

28:29

a cursor is sort of the way to think about it,

28:31

right? And you're sort of moving that cursor around with

28:34

your gaze and you look at

28:36

a button in order to be able

28:38

to click on that button, right? Is that a reasonable

28:40

way to think about the metaphor there? Yeah, you know

28:43

how the iPad cursor kind of snaps? Mm-hmm. It's

28:45

that. Okay. Right, so you're sort of like,

28:48

if buttons are big and you look in a general area,

28:50

they will highlight. Oh, I see, okay. The fascinating thing about

28:52

this is, one, I think

28:55

Vision OS is designed for eye tracking that

28:57

is slightly more precise than it actually is.

28:59

That's how it feels, it probably isn't. It's

29:01

designed to be exactly, it's Apple, right? Meaning

29:03

the buttons are a little too small and

29:05

a little too close together. Yeah, I'll just

29:08

give you one super dumb example. The keyboard

29:10

is ridiculous. They

29:14

needed to have a keyboard and it's there, but there's no way

29:16

they want you to use that keyboard for any serious text input.

29:19

The keys are too close together. So you're sitting there

29:21

trying to look from one letter to another and you're

29:24

just like, I hate this. And

29:26

then you just give up and you like dictate to

29:29

Siri or you connect a regular keyboard and use that

29:31

keyboard. There's no way you should use that keyboard. And

29:33

part of it is just fundamentally

29:35

ridiculous. Part of it is the buttons are

29:37

too close together and you will sit there

29:40

trying to look from the E to the R and

29:43

the system just like won't let you. And I've

29:45

never looked at a letter as hard as I've tried

29:47

to look at a letter. You're

29:49

like, I'm looking at it, man. Your brain is saying

29:51

like, R, R, R. Yeah, and

29:54

sometimes the easiest thing to do is to look

29:56

completely away and try again. And

29:58

maybe the thing is like. You

30:00

know, I can't quantify it. Maybe it's 99%

30:02

accurate, but that 1% just like ends it. But

30:07

it doesn't like wiggle. Like Toby

30:09

would sometimes kind of wiggle. It

30:11

wouldn't quite register your eye. It's the best

30:13

eye tracking that has ever been shipped. This

30:16

is what I'm saying. This is the best anyone

30:18

has ever done it. Without question, it's

30:20

the best thing that has ever done it. And

30:22

you know, a keyboard on a computer is 100%

30:24

precise. Right.

30:26

You push a button, that button is

30:28

pushed every single time. Multi-touching iPhone is

30:31

actually not 100% precise. There's

30:33

a lot of algorithmic work happening

30:35

to make a touchscreen appear to be 100%

30:37

precise. Like a

30:39

lot of work has happened over the past decade

30:41

to make those touch screens feel even more precise.

30:43

But they appear to you to be 100% precise.

30:47

And when they are not, like when auto-correct

30:49

fails, which is an experience everyone has,

30:51

you are utterly frustrated. Right.

30:53

When a touchscreen goes dead and you're jabbing at

30:55

a button, it doesn't do anything. Whew.

30:58

That's awful. Right. That's the worst. But

31:00

most of the time, a touchscreen appears to

31:02

be 100% like direct input control. Your

31:05

eyes are bad at that.

31:08

Like you are just constantly looking at stuff that you don't want to

31:10

look at. Or like you're looking

31:12

at the biggest thing instead of, well, the play button

31:14

is the biggest thing in the video player. And

31:17

I constantly want to push the plus 10 seconds. But my eyes

31:19

are like, look at how big that play button is. And

31:21

so I'm just looking at the wrong thing. And

31:23

that is, it's the best anyone's ever done it. Addy's

31:27

line was, it works until it doesn't. My

31:30

version of that is, it feels like magic until it is

31:32

not. And it's just a

31:34

binary. So this connects to hand

31:36

tracking, which I think is your next question probably. The

31:39

hand tracking is exactly the same way. It's

31:41

magic until it is not. And particularly where

31:44

it's not is when it can't see your

31:46

hands, which like I'm just sitting in

31:48

a table right now. If I just had my hands on my

31:50

lap, it couldn't see my hands. This is

31:52

a ridiculous complaint. The hand tracking system needs to see

31:54

your hands. No other computer stops

31:56

working if it can't see your hands. OK.

32:01

Like, if you want this to be a primary computing device,

32:03

like, it has to be able to see

32:05

your hands. If you're just standing up and

32:07

your hands are by your sides and if you're like me, they

32:09

kind of like fall behind you, it stops

32:12

working. And so like,

32:14

it's the best it's ever been shipped. Without question, it

32:16

is the best it's ever been shipped. It

32:18

just hits the wall of reality, which

32:21

is the thing is not actually... Your eyes and

32:23

your hands are not actually controlling this device. Those

32:27

are watching your hands and your

32:29

eyes, interpreting them and turning that

32:31

into input. And that interpretation has

32:33

real limits. So like, to

32:35

keep it fully functional at all times, you have

32:37

to kind of like keep your hands up at

32:39

all times? No, it's a pretty big bubble around

32:41

you. So like, if you are... It's

32:44

basically like, you sliced your body in half. It's

32:46

the plane of the body in front of you,

32:48

like all the way around. So if you're

32:51

sitting on a couch and you've got your hand over

32:53

the side of the couch, it mostly works. If you

32:55

are anywhere, anywhere I can

32:57

see your hands basically. But if it's

33:00

really dark and you are lying down and

33:02

the IR floodlights in the front can't sort of

33:04

like reach down and see your hands and light

33:06

them up, the camera can't see your hands. So

33:09

they can't use... It's like, you're just

33:11

going to find all of these places where

33:13

like, if you aren't meant to wear this thing all

33:15

the time, they will come up more than you think. But

33:18

in most uses, it feels like magic, right? But

33:21

this is absolutely magic until it is not.

33:24

Oh, and then the other thing that's funny is that

33:26

it is always using your hands as input. This is

33:28

what I was about to ask about. Like, have you

33:30

had to train yourself to be aware of your eyes

33:32

and hands in ways that you wouldn't be able to...

33:34

Like you, anyone who has ever

33:37

watched the Vergecast on YouTube knows, Neillai

33:39

never, ever, ever stops moving his hands.

33:41

You touch the mics, you're moving around, you're gesturing at

33:43

stuff, you're pointing at things. You're like,

33:46

are you like aware of these parts of

33:48

your body in new ways after using these

33:50

devices? Yes. So, you

33:52

have to sit still. When I write scripts

33:54

for a decoder or for video reviews like this, I

33:56

talk as I write to make sure I

33:59

can read. I'm writing and it sounds

34:01

good and flows and I move my hands when I

34:03

talk and I was just scrolling all over the place

34:05

by accident Just whipping windows

34:07

around for no reason just clicking on stuff

34:10

And I was like, oh I gotta I gotta keep my hands still

34:12

some people do not see the hands They're very personalized

34:14

complete But if you do you're gonna notice you have

34:16

to sit still unless you want to do something and

34:18

then the other thing is That you

34:20

have to get used to the

34:22

control being linked to your eyes and

34:25

that is not how you use a computer How

34:27

many times you look at something on screen and

34:29

just banged around the arrow keys to get around

34:31

without looking at the arrow Keys constant all the

34:33

time on the vision Pro you have to go

34:35

look right right that and that's just like the

34:37

simplest example on A phone where you know, there's

34:39

a little bit more collapse between what you're looking

34:42

at the controls How many times do

34:44

I open lightroom and like move to slider back and

34:46

forth while looking at the photo To

34:48

see how the brightness is changing or whatever on

34:50

the vision Pro. You got to look at that brightness lighter Weird

34:53

weird does it feel

34:55

like that friction could ever go away for

34:57

you? Like at some point you could see

34:59

yourself doing it more naturally and it's

35:02

just you've had five days with it Yeah, I've

35:04

had five days of it. You know, I've asked

35:06

Apple about this particular thing. This is a big

35:08

philosophical meaty design Yeah question right like should

35:11

the control of the thing be directly linked to

35:13

what you're looking at or should those things be

35:15

disconnected And so, you know, obviously I'm

35:18

asking this I'm just wandering the streets being like what

35:20

is the central nature of input? This

35:22

is why I love it. I love talking about this stuff and

35:24

they're like you get one you get used to it and to

35:28

That it's not the only input on the system, right?

35:30

You can connect a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad

35:32

you can use Siri to do all this

35:34

stuff Like we want to expand the range

35:36

of computing inputs beyond the mouse and the

35:38

keyboard and after five days or

35:40

six days I'm kind of like

35:43

well the mouse and keyboard are historically undefeated So

35:46

yeah, good luck I

35:48

agree that the one that's missing there is like I

35:50

think there's a way of looking at the vision Pro

35:53

that is sort of an Amalgamation of all of the

35:55

technology Apple has ever built to do anything all in

35:57

one device and the one that it feels like it's

35:59

missing is multi-touch. It's surprising

36:01

to me, given all of the stuff in

36:03

here, that there isn't a way to reach

36:05

out and touch the buttons on the keyboard

36:08

to type. You can punch

36:10

one finger at a time. Oh, you

36:12

can? Oh, okay. You can't multi-touch. Okay.

36:14

Right? So it can register big movements

36:16

of the hands. Big

36:18

is the wrong word. You can type on it

36:20

like a typewriter, kind of. Yeah. You can henpeck

36:23

on it. And you look silly and it's slow

36:25

and it's not 100% accurate. But

36:28

you can do that, right? We don't

36:30

have Optic ID set up on ours because other people,

36:33

like the video team is constantly using it and trying

36:35

to light it up and all that stuff. And so

36:37

everyone puts it on and they punch the code

36:39

into... Oh, interesting. Okay. Right, instead of doing

36:41

the thing. Because it's just a big phone

36:44

key badge, or what looks like a phone key badge shows

36:46

up in front of you and you're like, boop, boop, boop,

36:48

boop. And it's very funny to watch everyone do this every

36:50

time they put it on. Okay. So that is a fallback

36:52

option, at least makes me feel a little bit better about

36:54

this. I do think there is a thing

36:57

that the eye tracking, it just adds

36:59

another step to everything you want to do.

37:02

Yep. The example I always give to people

37:04

is like your muscle memory knows where all the app

37:06

icons are on your phone. So like

37:08

if you had to think about looking at an

37:10

app every single time you wanted to open it,

37:12

it would be annoying. And it's just your fingers

37:14

learn where things are in a

37:16

way that is useless to you on the Vision Pro. Yeah,

37:19

you have to look at things. I'll give you another example.

37:21

Actually, the multi-touch example is a really

37:23

good one. So a Quest, where you have controllers and

37:26

every VR company loves being like,

37:28

you're a DJ now. They just love it. In

37:30

my 20s, I was like, I'm going to

37:32

be a DJ. That's right. If we

37:35

all go through this period. We all had that

37:37

moment. And in all subsequent decades, Eli has said.

37:39

Yeah, I'm still a DJ. I'm playing tonight at

37:41

Soundbar. So in the Quest, you have controllers in

37:43

your hands and you look at tribe XR, which

37:46

is the DJ app on the Quest, and

37:48

it's floating in space. And you reach out and it

37:50

throws your hands, it doesn't show the controllers. And you

37:53

push the button and it looks like you're grabbing the

37:55

fader. And then after a while, your brain kind of

37:57

remaps. You're like, oh, I'm actually grabbing this fader. twisting

38:00

this knob and your hands are

38:02

doing some controller stuff, right? They're just like

38:04

gripping or pushing the trigger

38:06

button. But your brain just

38:09

kind of like remaps to that thing. Vision

38:11

Pro doesn't have that. It's got taps. So

38:14

you look at a knob and you tap your

38:16

fingers and drag it the same way

38:18

you do anything else. And it's like, oh, I'm not. There's

38:21

no connection between me physically interacting

38:23

with this floating deck

38:25

in DJ, which is the Vision Pro version

38:27

of this, the way that in TribXR it's

38:29

like, I've got a controller. I'm pushing buttons

38:31

on a controller and because something tactile is

38:33

happening to my hands that

38:35

looks like something tactile is happening over here, like

38:38

my brain is just like rewiring to be convinced

38:41

that that is actually happening. Now, can I DJ

38:43

in any of these apps? No.

38:47

Absolutely not. But the Vision Pro is like

38:49

because you're just tapping your fingers together. It's

38:51

like you're clicking. The difference is

38:54

very much between... I would give

38:56

you the difference. It feels very much like the difference

38:58

between a touch screen and a mouse. Where

39:00

a touch screen feels like you're directly controlling some pixels and a

39:02

mouse is like, I'm clicking on stuff. Okay. So

39:05

sort of like when you're on a touch screen and you're trying to

39:07

play an Nintendo game on your phone, it

39:09

feels like garbage. But then younger people

39:11

are just used to phone screens and

39:13

so they don't hate it as much. They

39:16

can play Fortbyte and stuff. Yeah. I

39:18

watch Max plays Minecraft on her iPad. I'm like, how are you

39:20

doing this? Yeah. So she'll have a great

39:22

time. Yeah. So maybe the younger people are

39:24

going to live fully in headsets and I'll be fine. Yeah. It's

39:27

that control dynamic is... You

39:29

will feel it in a way that, again, like you said,

39:31

is the best has ever been done. Is

39:33

it good enough? Like, I don't know. I don't know. I

39:36

don't know if it can ever be... It has to be

39:38

50 times better. By the way, can I say this thing

39:40

please? Because I haven't given this a score yet. So

39:43

we're going to spend all night debating the score. I

39:46

think shipping a $3,500 computer whose

39:48

default input method is not 100%

39:50

consistent, that's a

39:52

full point. Yes. That's a full

39:54

point, right? And one

39:57

out of every 100 times you hit a key,

39:59

it just made up... a different key to do,

40:01

you would not like that keyboard. Yeah. Right. And

40:03

there's all these other affordances and whatever, but that

40:05

feels like a full point. Yeah. Anytime

40:07

I review an E-ink device, I have to knock

40:09

off a point because it's not going to work

40:12

all the time. That's brutal. You

40:14

type three letters, and then four seconds later, it types

40:16

two of them, and then something else. OK,

40:18

let's get to the two main use cases that

40:21

I think we and others have identified

40:23

for this thing so far. And you

40:25

should add to this list if there

40:27

are any obvious big ones that I'm missing.

40:30

But the first one is using it

40:32

essentially as a monitor for your

40:34

computer, as a thing to attach to

40:36

a Mac and do stuff with. Is it

40:38

good? Yeah, that's really good. Caveats. One,

40:41

it's really good. Especially if you have

40:43

a laptop, you push the

40:45

button. The thing that I really enjoyed doing was

40:47

putting the virtual display over where my Mac display

40:49

had been, my MacBook display had been, and then

40:51

making it really big. So then

40:53

you're like, I have a 50-inch MacBook Pro. I

40:56

have a new Lightroom. It's cool. Like, that is

40:58

just cool. So it's like you have your Mac

41:00

on your desk and then a giant-ass TV-sized monitor

41:03

in front of you. Right, but where the

41:05

MacBook display is. Can

41:08

you do the thing from your Mac where

41:10

you have a bunch of windows spread around

41:12

the room or whatever? Can I put Mac

41:14

apps in all those places? Or is that

41:16

just Vision Pro apps? You get one single

41:18

Mac display. You can't have multiple Mac displays.

41:20

We're going to know what people want to

41:22

do, which you can do to

41:24

much less good effect with Quest headsets. There

41:27

are apps in the Quest that just will let you

41:29

have multiple monitors. I assume there will be those apps

41:31

for the Vision Pro, but by default, and

41:33

with all of the cool iCloud stuff that

41:36

you want, which is really important, it's one

41:38

display. By the way, the cool iCloud stuff,

41:40

magic. This is like an iPad on

41:42

your face. It's a very easy way to understand what's

41:44

happening here. The cool iPad stuff that Continuity

41:46

can do is amazing in this context. So

41:48

you're using a Mac in this window, and

41:51

then you scroll the mouse on the Mac

41:53

trackpad over, and it turns into a Vision

41:55

Pro cursor. You copy from the Mac in

41:57

this window, and you paste it in the Vision Pro app over

41:59

here. Just very cool. All right,

42:01

so that's that one and then the other

42:03

one is basically using it as a TV

42:06

Entertainment system. This is the one I think Alex

42:08

and I are both the most Theoretically excited about

42:10

that feels like it could be the most immediately

42:12

useful for people. Is it a good TV? Super

42:15

good. Very good I watched way more of Top

42:17

Gun Maverick than I wanted to and by the

42:19

way I watched it on the treadmill at

42:21

two point seven miles an hour just walking up the hill

42:24

very slowly I did not try to run as like I'm

42:26

not I don't know

42:28

about this but I was like can I take a

42:30

slow walk watching a movie on the best TV I

42:32

can get in The nearer treadmill and the answer was

42:34

unequivocally. Yes Very cool. It

42:36

does this really cool thing when you put it in

42:38

environments where the light from the

42:41

TV reflects unlike the mountain It's

42:43

just all very cool. The caveat I will give you

42:45

is It supports

42:48

3d. It supports high frame rate. It's the

42:50

only consumer devices for tie frame rate 3d

42:52

So you can watch avatar weight water at

42:54

48 frames per second in 3d I

42:56

don't know if that's good Like that's what

42:58

James Cameron was like you you can you can

43:00

live that life I watched five minutes that and

43:03

I was sick Oh, wow, and I you know,

43:05

like I'm pretty good at VR like I do

43:07

I play Grand Prix movie I am VR motion

43:09

does not drive me too crazy This

43:12

was like whoa too much and I had to take it off immediately So

43:14

I would just be careful and there are

43:16

no guardrails anywhere in vision OS to

43:19

tell you be careful but the one that

43:21

I've seen is if you take a spatial

43:23

like a first-person video and there's a

43:25

lot of motion in it and It will detect

43:27

that there's a lot of motion and be like be

43:29

careful watching this one It does not say be careful

43:31

watching a way for interesting But

43:34

if your own video will sometimes say because

43:36

you should always be careful watching the way

43:38

of water no matter the circumstances Should always

43:40

be careful But yeah,

43:42

the TV stuff is good the thing that I will

43:44

to copy that's there one you're alone There's no you

43:47

even if like three of you have a vision Pro together You can't

43:49

think them up so you can't look at the same thing

43:51

at the same time I mean you can manually think

43:53

them up Which is sad if you find yourself with

43:55

like three people wearing vision Pro counting to three to

43:57

hit the play button on avatar Just

44:00

buy a TV like the thing on a plane where you

44:02

you try and hit play on both

44:04

screens at the same time It's

44:06

good stuff. Yeah, so like there's but

44:08

there's no in in OS syncing

44:10

of that stuff So you can't I'll watch the same

44:12

thing which is weird, right? movie or somewhat

44:15

social experiences and then to you

44:17

can't screen or cord what you're seeing like Disney

44:19

will just DRM that shit out and I

44:21

was like this sucks like that's me being like

44:23

oh this sucks Like a huge part of the

44:26

experience of watching shows are as like sharing clips

44:28

social media or whatever and you can't weird It's

44:30

in it and then it's your eyes, right? You're

44:32

like, I'm seeing this look at how cool the

44:34

light on the mountains Is I can't show it

44:36

to you because of copyright restrictions

44:39

Weird, I'm sorry for laughing It's

44:43

weird. It's weird to be like Oh like

44:45

Bob Iger his DRM to my eyes. I

44:48

Don't like that very black mirror feeling like

44:51

I just keep thinking that the episode where

44:53

she like gets her husband Out of the

44:55

way or a boyfriend or whatever. Yeah, just

44:57

feels like this headsets really equipped for that

45:00

But not in a pleasant way. It's weird, man. Yeah

45:03

Are there any like big picture use cases other

45:06

than those two? Those are the two people seemed

45:08

to mostly ask us about and also being have

45:10

been kind of imagining since this thing first launched

45:13

Is there anything that like leaves out to you

45:15

as? Equally big to those two

45:17

things. No to be perfectly blunt and I think

45:19

the Mac thing is I

45:22

want to see how people actually react to it. Yeah, like it's

45:24

cool and it was really cool But 25 60 by 1440 is

45:26

not enough like it my 16th 720p

45:50

Fox it huge like you

45:53

yeah you There

45:56

there's a part of me and I'm just a shameless

45:58

plug for the TV that I've convincing myself

46:00

was not an extraordinarily splurge

46:03

purchase. You can go buy an ISO LED

46:05

for far less money and then you'll have a

46:08

really nice TV that you can take pictures

46:10

of if you want to share something. But

46:12

then Bob Iger will come to your house.

46:14

Then Bob he's like look I'm not busy

46:16

enough. I need you to stop doing that.

46:18

Just cuts the cord off. All right one more before we

46:20

take a break and then we're going to do some listener

46:22

questions and we're going to get out of here. The Vision

46:24

Pro. Is it good? The Vision

46:27

Pro is the best version of this thing

46:29

that anyone has ever made. Which

46:31

to Apple's credit has basically been what it

46:33

has been saying about this all along. Right

46:35

like the answer to why is this thing

46:37

$3500 is because it is the best one

46:40

of these we can make. Yes

46:42

without question it is the best version

46:44

of this headset that anyone has ever

46:46

made. It is unquestionably still a VR

46:48

headset. It is a primary computing device.

46:50

I do not think VR headsets are

46:53

maybe this thing just proves that point to

46:55

a lot of people. Right. It is weird

46:57

to be alone using a computer the way

46:59

that this thing makes you alone. We haven't

47:01

even talked about the front display. Right.

47:03

You know the big thing about this that is supposed

47:06

to make you not feel alone is the front display

47:08

showing your eyes to other people. Right. We can't see

47:10

them most of the time. They're super it's super dim

47:12

and that glass is really reflective and

47:14

mostly people are like am I supposed to be seeing

47:16

something. You know like it's my eyes. They're like ah.

47:20

I think is that actually maybe a good thing that

47:22

you can't see it most of the time. They don't

47:24

look good. They look like they totally look like

47:26

CGI. It's a super low res display in there.

47:28

Like I've seen the part you know in a

47:31

briefing. It's you can like it's just a grid

47:33

of pixels like a sports stadium screen or something

47:35

or the sphere. God

47:37

bless the sphere. Here's the question. Would you rather

47:39

live in the vision pro or live in the

47:41

sphere and the answer is the sphere. Okay. Sphere

47:44

is a little more expensive but you know it's

47:46

okay. But it's really dim. You can't really

47:48

see the eyes. You're never making anything

47:50

that actually looks like eye contact. Like

47:52

it's just that's not happening. So it's like

47:54

you're just alone in there and like this stuff that I think

47:56

is really cool. Like yesterday I was walking around the cafe of

47:58

our office which is huge. And I just

48:01

had windows all over the place in there just

48:03

windows for days just like over tables floating in

48:05

space I was just walking around looking at stuff

48:07

and I was like this rules and No

48:10

one else could experience that with me like other

48:12

people just saw me looking around pointing it. No, I Think

48:16

there's something lonely about that like

48:19

really intensely lonely and

48:22

I would rather not have that experience

48:24

And so I think VR is great. I

48:26

think I'm a VR headset user. I love

48:29

playing grantee's my VR I love supernatural like

48:31

there's single use applications Mostly

48:33

gaming that make a lot of sense to

48:35

like have a focused lonely experience hurt

48:38

using an iPad I don't know I like half the

48:40

time I'm like look at this on my screen to

48:42

someone else and that is really hard to do Yeah,

48:44

so I it is the best version of this that

48:47

has ever been made But I went through

48:49

and looked at every Tim Cook quote about VR

48:51

and AR for the past decade and his

48:53

complaint about it Always has been VR is isolating

48:56

and like I'm here at the end with the holding the

48:58

thing. I'm like, yep The arts pretty isolating. Yeah, I

49:00

mean that the like big question I think

49:03

we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about uncovering

49:05

over the next few years

49:07

really is is the vision Pro Like

49:10

the end of that arc in

49:12

which we realized that's not where we're headed or is it

49:15

Sort of overlapping the end of that arc but is actually

49:17

the beginning of the next thing and I think Apple wants

49:19

you to believe it's The beginning of the next thing but

49:21

what it built looks more like the end

49:23

of the VR arc And so I think which it turns out

49:25

to be it's gonna be really interesting over time. We

49:28

can end here There's a real danger Reviewing

49:30

a first generation Apple product. Yes. Yeah,

49:32

I feel it right like nobody

49:34

looks back on a first-generation Like quest review and it's

49:37

like they got it on like a first-generation Apple product

49:39

especially when you're in a tiny group of reviewers people

49:41

look back on it and they're like you got it

49:43

wrong and I know this

49:45

is a risk to say but I'm gonna say this

49:47

this feels like it will convince a lot of people

49:49

that some of These technologies are dead ends. Hmm, right?

49:51

Like you if you can try as hard as you

49:54

want you can be one of the richest companies in

49:56

the world You can put all of that capability and

49:58

there's a lot of this thing that feels like Apple made it

50:00

because only Apple can make it. The

50:02

giant's just looking for a fight and

50:04

found one. Great, I

50:06

think that's so cool. I have

50:08

no qualms with that. Go get it. But

50:11

that means if you look at this device, you're

50:13

like, oh, pass through VR does not actually substitute

50:15

for the goal, which is optical AR, where you're

50:17

just looking through a pair of glasses and the

50:20

computer's putting stuff over reality. That's

50:22

the goal. You gotta get to there. And this

50:24

thing, there's no path from here to there. I

50:27

don't know. That's my big take from this thing.

50:30

It feels like Apple needed to build a simulator

50:32

of the computing experiences it wanted to build. And

50:35

if it talks about it that way, it might be

50:37

a little more charitable for their ad. People

50:40

are just doing laundry. No, this

50:42

is not that thing. Okay, all right.

50:44

By the time you're hearing this, the video's live, go watch

50:46

it, go read it. We're

50:49

gonna take a break and then we're gonna go back and we're gonna do five

50:52

minutes of quick questions and we're gonna get out of here.

51:00

All right, we're back. So

51:05

I have a big list of questions. Thanks to

51:07

everybody who called and emailed and posted with questions.

51:09

We've answered a bunch of them already, which is

51:12

great. So we're just gonna blow through

51:14

a bunch of the ones we didn't do already. The first

51:16

one is a hotline question from Joe. Hi,

51:19

my name's Joe. And about the Apple

51:21

Vision Pro, what does

51:23

the thing smell like while you're

51:25

wearing it? Neela, we got this

51:27

question so many times. I cannot tell you. How does

51:29

it smell? I need to know. I

51:31

don't know why people ask this question. Here's my

51:34

suggestion. AirPods Max out of the box had a

51:36

smell because they were manufactured in

51:38

China and then shipped over here. Whatever

51:40

particular process on the fabric, I think, has a

51:42

smell. So there's a tiny whiff of that smell.

51:44

Immediately one way. Will they smell after you sweat

51:47

in them for a while? I don't

51:49

know yet. Don't know yet. I

51:51

do know, I had a little bit on my face

51:53

with a video review and I wore a little bit

51:55

of concealer and it got on the headband. And I

51:57

asked Joanne about this and she's like, that's covered in

51:59

my review too. Interesting. But here's my question. Do you

52:01

want to wear a computer that messes up your hair every

52:03

time you use it? Oh, you want to wear a computer

52:05

that messes up your makeup every time you use it a

52:07

different bigger question? And

52:10

that stuff might smell yes, like once

52:12

you take this thing whoa sweat makeup.

52:14

Oh Okay. All right That's

52:16

a good one next a question from Matt and

52:18

we talked about this a little bit But I

52:20

and it seems like the answer so far as

52:22

we'll see but he asks is there any gaming

52:24

use case beyond playing on A virtual screen with

52:26

an x-class controller that it seems like you can

52:28

just do now Right, like you can play games

52:30

kind of from a Mac or in theory from

52:32

game pastors far Yeah, whatever. But have you is

52:34

there any other gaming stuff you've seen that sparks

52:37

something in you? No, I

52:39

mean the games are all like I've had games or

52:41

treat I played what the golf which is really fun

52:43

nice, but it's still like it's in 3d, right? Those

52:45

are it's a 3d game inherently. You're just looking

52:47

at 2d thing It's so like they just built it so

52:49

it's virtual and you like pull back and let go There's

52:52

nothing like NFL pro era or like any of

52:54

these big VR games. They are to come I'm

52:57

told they are to come but nothing

52:59

yet And that's actually a good segue

53:01

to another question that we got from Kyle who

53:03

says I want to know what iPad ports are

53:05

like And if there's any jankiness with them both

53:07

in how they work and the general UI Basically

53:09

like apps that are just iPad apps

53:11

that they check the checkbox to say put it on the vision

53:13

Pro What do you think so far? I

53:15

think it is very telling that Apple shipped a bunch of its

53:18

own apps as I pass Fascinating I've

53:20

had apps to design for your fingers And

53:22

so the eye tracking is even more frustrating

53:24

and I bet apps Because

53:26

all the targets are even smaller they work. There's

53:28

no there's no not working right

53:30

they work But you will and you will realize

53:32

like oh The same way

53:35

that putting a mouse and keyboard experience on a

53:37

touchscreen can be frustrating I was just gonna say

53:39

like have you ever attached a mouse or one

53:41

of the keyboard attachments on the iPad with the

53:43

trackpad? It's like it feels cool and also like

53:46

it was clearly not designed for that Yeah,

53:48

and you can you know if you have a they

53:51

sent me a magic keyboard a magic trackpad I had

53:53

those connected a lot you can just like that all

53:55

looks like iPad OS. It's all the same stuff So

53:57

yeah, they're totally usable. There's no particular weirdness there except

54:00

If you're using hand and eye tracking, you

54:02

will quickly discover that the apps are designed

54:04

for not that and sometimes that shows up

54:06

I think it's really it's like barely a

54:09

criticism like it's just obvious what's happening It's

54:11

better than like when all the iPhone apps

54:13

came to iPad and it's very clearly like

54:15

just the app big Oh, yeah, that's a

54:17

good comparison. It's way way way better than that.

54:19

Okay. Okay. Good. All right I have another hotline

54:22

question another one believe it or not that we

54:24

got multiple times from Ray Hey,

54:26

this is brain. That's the question about the

54:29

vision Pro I wonder what happens if you

54:31

look in a mirror with the vision Pro

54:33

on would it phase you in like it

54:35

does with other people? Or would it recognize

54:38

that you're wearing the vision Pro and

54:40

not do it? And what happens if you turn

54:42

on the fake eyes, but it consider you a person

54:44

that can fade into thanks This

54:47

is one of the first things I try. Why do you think I was in the bathroom?

54:51

You look crazy Cuz I

54:53

was like trying to see my own eyes, right? So yeah,

54:55

it does show you your own eyes But I can't tell if

54:58

it is because it thinks you're another person or if it knows

55:00

that you're looking at yourself Which is like a weird does a

55:02

computer know I'm looking at myself is like that's another two hours.

55:04

Yeah, we don't have time But

55:07

it like nothing horrible happened like you're still here

55:09

you looked in a mirror Okay,

55:16

cool we got a question from Andy

55:19

Basically asking about multiple user

55:21

support questions about OS and

55:23

software Adjustments for the hardware

55:25

because is this a device you can

55:27

functionally share with other people? No,

55:30

absolutely not The only affordance

55:32

is something called guest mode where

55:34

you say put this in guest mode And

55:37

then it lets you limit what apps whoever wears a

55:39

headset can put can use next and then it lets

55:42

you limit Whatever apps whoever is wearing a headset can

55:44

use and that's it That's what you get and

55:46

then you're supposed to give it to someone else They do a

55:48

tiny little bit of setup just to align the displays They don't

55:50

even do the hand tracking setup and that's it and then so

55:52

they then it's like you can only use Safari and they Give

55:54

it back to you and you log in you're good to go

55:56

But there's no multiple user accounts. Nothing. It's it

55:58

is this thing is an iPad Okay, so the

56:00

same way that iPad doesn't have multiple users support This

56:03

doesn't have it did that feel like it

56:05

heightened that lonely experience for you Yeah, this is

56:07

my computer like you give it to someone else

56:09

or you can use my computer now. It's weird

56:11

Yeah, okay, by the way a particularly weird thing

56:13

about that is you know, there's optic

56:15

ID So someone else should not be able to launch

56:17

your computer But because again because other people are using

56:19

it for captures all the stuff to make our video

56:22

other people can just be my persona Like

56:26

they can make facetime calls with my head It's

56:29

not at all how it's designed is just the reality of how we

56:31

are using it today which is wild Yeah Talk

56:33

about the personas for a sec because that was something we

56:35

got a couple of questions about to you this idea that

56:37

if I Make a facetime call or I go on Google

56:40

meet or whatever wearing this that it's

56:42

not showing a camera version of me

56:44

It's showing like my Avatar

56:46

yeah, what's the verdict on personas? I

56:49

will say what Marquez said when we did

56:51

our facetime call for the video This is very impressive

56:54

and also bad They're

56:56

bad they're in there like if I showed up in

56:58

a meeting with persona I I personally feel like that

57:00

would be insulting so the persona

57:02

just replaces the front-facing camera, right? That's

57:04

how you should think about it apps. Don't know it's

57:06

happening. They don't see it They call for the front

57:09

camera and they get your

57:11

persona Oh, so the vision approaches reports to whatever

57:13

app you're doing. Yes is what the webcam is

57:15

seeing. This is what the Which

57:18

is fascinating a great hack like it brilliant,

57:20

right? And then you know you do the scan and sees your face.

57:23

They look like ps3 characters Like we are I

57:25

was talking Marquez and Joanna and I call and

57:27

I was like Marquez This looks like you're about

57:29

to give me an item that will help me

57:31

fight the boss like that's how it

57:33

looks You know like welcome to my store like in

57:36

any game that you might play. They're

57:38

bad. They're uncanny It's weird that they

57:40

have decided that everyone has the same tongue But you

57:42

don't scan your tongue, but you stick your tongue out. You

57:44

have a tongue weird It's just weird like someone Apple is

57:46

like do a tongue model. We'll just use it for everybody

57:52

Like someone had a job right just a Gene

57:54

Simmons tongue for everyone. Yeah, but you can't get

57:56

different tongues You you're always wearing the same clothes.

57:59

It looks like you You just had the worst Botox ever. I

58:02

took a call with our creative director, Will Joel,

58:04

to look at some design stuff and he's like,

58:06

I'm so used to looking at your face on

58:09

these calls because you were looking

58:11

at something and your face betrays more

58:13

than you ever seen. He's like, I can't. This

58:15

is not useful for me. So

58:18

yeah, Apple, it's in beta. There's a reason it's

58:20

in beta. There's a reason I haven't shown it

58:22

to anyone. Like it's not good. Like

58:25

there's a long way to go. And it's like, you

58:27

know, for I keep saying it has to be 50% better. I can see

58:30

how this can get 50%. It's

58:32

very awful. Okay,

58:34

fair enough. All right, two more. Then we're

58:37

out of here from Jesse. What

58:39

is it like looking at real world displays

58:41

through pass through TVs, PCs, phones, smartwatches, etc?

58:44

It's fine with blurry. Okay. It's

58:47

fine with blurry. I can just use my phone but it's blurry.

58:49

And last one from Arun Raj who asks,

58:52

is the digital crown really useful to gradually transition between

58:54

VR and AR? I don't see any point where a

58:56

person has to be in between the two modes. They

58:59

could have just switched back and forth. So

59:01

using it, you will quickly discover there's a lot of times you want

59:03

to be in between the two modes. Because

59:05

if you put windows out in space

59:07

and they're like going through walls or

59:09

things, it screws their brain.

59:12

So you're like, here's a portal into

59:14

depth. Like here's a portal into a

59:17

big desert landscape. And so instead

59:19

of walls in front of me, there's like depth. And

59:21

now I can put windows into that depth while

59:24

I still have the room around me and I can look around.

59:27

So that is very useful. It is an

59:29

inherent, right, it's a big compromise over like,

59:31

should this be AR? Right? That's

59:33

like I'm creating a virtual environment to solve the problem of AR

59:35

in this moment. And then you want to, you know, you

59:37

have full moon or moon. But like that

59:39

halfway setting, I ended up using a

59:42

lot more just to create that depth for the OS. All

59:45

right, Neelai, you have to go. You

59:47

have now 26 hours to

59:49

change your mind about everything. Chop, chop. I

59:52

said more questions. We'll do more of these. I know people

59:54

are going to have infinite questions. Oh, for sure. We're going

59:56

to we're going to cover this a bunch. We'll talk about

59:58

it more on Friday. we have a

1:00:01

lot to do. And I think especially as we start to see

1:00:03

more apps, we're gonna talk a lot about this. So yeah. I

1:00:05

think we have a lot. Developers have to basically make

1:00:07

this product work. For sure. Yeah, so

1:00:10

call the hotline 866-VERGE11. Email us

1:00:12

vergecastverge.com. We'll put Nilay's review in the video

1:00:14

in the show notes. Nilay and

1:00:16

Alex, thank you both. Thank you. All

1:00:22

right, that is it for the Vergecast today.

1:00:24

Thanks to Nilay and Alex for being here.

1:00:26

Thanks to Nilay for braving all of these

1:00:28

days and his deep vulnerable state and coming

1:00:30

on and talking about the Vision Pro. It's

1:00:33

the sacrifices we make, everybody. Also, thanks to

1:00:35

everybody who sent in questions via the hotline

1:00:37

or email or on threads. They were all

1:00:39

great. And please, like Nilay said, keep them

1:00:41

coming. We're gonna keep talking about this thing

1:00:43

for a while. We'll also put links to

1:00:45

Nilay's review and the video in the show

1:00:47

notes, but we are covering the Vision Pro

1:00:49

in every way we can think of. So

1:00:51

keep it locked on theverge.com. Lots coming

1:00:54

this week. This show is produced by

1:00:56

Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poore. The

1:00:59

Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox

1:01:01

Media Podcast Network. Nilay, Alex, and I will be back

1:01:03

on Friday to talk about new web browsers, much

1:01:06

more Vision Pro stuff, and everything else

1:01:08

happening in tech. We'll see you then.