First Impressions of the Apple Vision Pro from a Spatial Computing Product Manager

Through serendipitous timing and living on the US East Coast, I was fortunate to place my pre-order for the Apple Vision Pro in time for the February 2 launch day. While I enjoy my Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3 headsets, I was excited to see first hand how well Apple delivered to the concepts presented back at WWDC23.

If you're still on the fence on getting the headset, here are my Top 5 personal opinion takeaways from my first weekend with the hardware:

1. Setup and onboarding processes were intuitive and refreshing.

Having spent my XR product career demoing and training new users to the Quest 2, I’d gotten too accustomed to the necessary challenges of manually configuring a guardian boundary, manually connecting to Wi-Fi, and the tedious back-and-forth synchronization steps between the headset and the companion app.

Meanwhile, the Vision Pro felt very integrated into the existing Apple product ecosystem, leveraging information from my Apple account and my other Apple products to streamline my headset setup. It redefined what the onboarding experience could be, especially for non-tech-savvy users.

2. AR Home Menu first impression: a double-edged sword.?

I was underwhelmed. On one hand, the recognizable iOS app icons made it easier to find what I was looking for. But, on the other hand, it was a missed opportunity for awe.

I vividly remember my first moment in the Quest 2: being teary eyed as I gazed at the hot air balloons soaring over the sunset horizon of Desert Terrace, musing about how far technology had advanced since my youth. That awe during my first time user experience motivated me to explore the platform more and naturally drove me to scour the app store for new experiences to download and new ways to further personalize my virtual space.

I did not experience that same emotional crescendo with the Vision Pro UI. Rather than being instantly teleported to a world of new possibilities, I found myself staring at my same old office, looking at the same familiar iOS user interface. I had to force myself to browse through the app store, and even then, the experience felt too similar to scrolling through apps on my phone and tablet that I’ve done plenty of times before.

3. I struggled with the eye gaze and pinch interactions.?

As someone who regularly trains users how to hold a Quest 2 controller, I hoped that this evolution away from controllers would result in a lower learning curve for VR interaction, Instead, I found myself having to blatantly hold my gaze to correctly focus on a button, followed by erroneously pinching my fingers 3 to 4 times to finally execute my intended command. (I got finger cramps from all that pinching!)? The experience made me double guess my aptitude for using the platform and made me question if perhaps I had calibrated my headset poorly.

While I remain optimistic towards the technology improving over time and towards my ability to overcome the initial learning curve, it is difficult for me to conclude that the average non-tech-savvy user will definitively adapt to Vision Pro controls faster than to a Quest controller.

4. The audio and visual quality is a game changer for spatial computing.

Once I started listening to music and turning the crown dial to the full spatial environment setting, I remembered why I love my Apple products. Seeing expansive, hyper-realistic vistas with highly reflective water effects was a thrilling change from the polygonic, stylized, performance-centric graphics that I’ve come to accept with spatial computing up to now. Avatar hands in VR give the feeling of role playing a character in a virtual space, but seeing my actual hands in the Vision Pro genuinely gave me the feeling that I, myself, am physically at said place. Despite some other reviewers commenting about the blur effect around the user's hands, I personally did not find this too immersion breaking; the impact of seeing your actual hands in the virtual space outweighed the impact of the visual artifacts.

Within my first hour, I made a core memory of being on the Moon environment, watching my real hands flail as I danced the foxtrot to a Michael Bublé song at full volume from Apple Music. It would be very difficult to go back to my Quest headsets and to expect the same visual and audio fidelity, and I am excited to see the bar raised for what quality that consumers should expect in their spatial computing app experiences.

5. I’m not abandoning my Quest 3 just yet.

As a gamer, I have more years of experience with controllers, and thus am currently able to complete the tasks I want to do in headset faster and with less effort in the Quest than in the Vision Pro. The majority of apps on the Vision Pro app store at launch are either ported mobile device experiences or third party experiences that could be done in older headsets.

Until there are more apps that are uniquely designed for the Vision Pro’s gestures and media quality, I don’t foresee the Vision Pro entirely replacing my need for my other platforms just yet; though I would not be surprised if that day approaches sooner than later.

Honorable Mention: Unlike bulkier headsets, the Apple Vision Pro is light enough for me to wear my signature scally cap while using it. So that's always a plus!