The Verge’s David Pierce chats with Victoria Song and Wes Davis about using the Vision Pro for the five months that it's been available to the public. The group details what works, what doesn’t, and what’s next for the device. David then chats with the folks at Sandwich Vision, who create Vision Pro apps called Television and Theater, about why they made 3D-rendered versions of CRT TVs in virtual reality.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Verge cast the flagship podcast of spatial computing. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am in Bora Bora
00:00:06I mean, no, I'm not I'm in my basement where I always am
00:00:08but I'm in the Apple Vision Pro in one of the
00:00:12Immersive environments and what I've discovered about this thing is that obviously you can turn the Vision Pro all the way down and see your actual
00:00:20Surroundings through pass-through or you can turn it all the way up with the digital crown and be in sort of a pure VR environment
00:00:26But I like to turn on one of the environments but only to like
00:00:3060% and what that means now is as I'm looking forward here
00:00:34I'm seeing my Mac monitor because I think that's how most people use
00:00:38their Vision Pro is as a monitor for their Mac plus a couple of Vision Pro apps that I've aligned around and
00:00:44It looks like I'm on the beach, right? I'm in a lounge chair on the beach in Bora Bora
00:00:48It's delightful
00:00:49But then if I look off to the side or I look behind me or I even look kind of down at my desk
00:00:55I can see my actual surroundings and that's usually what I need to be able to see in a glance
00:01:00Anyway, like the dog comes charging down the hallway
00:01:03I need to be able to look and see the dog charging down the hallway
00:01:05But normally if I'm just looking forward I get this lovely serene beach environment
00:01:10It's delightful and I can do it from my basement. It actually like it feels so silly to talk about this, but it's kind of great
00:01:17Anyway, the Vision Pro is what I want to talk about on the show today
00:01:21So five months ago today as you're listening to this on Tuesday, July 2nd
00:01:27Was the launch of the Vision Pro February 2nd 2024?
00:01:30That was when it shipped and regular people started getting to use it
00:01:34And I thought this might be a good time to just do a check-in. It's been five months
00:01:38We've heard a lot about new software. We've heard a lot about new hardware developers have gotten a chance to do it
00:01:42People have gotten to spend real time messing around in this thing
00:01:45I think the novelty is worn off in a way that's actually really useful. We can just talk about this thing
00:01:50So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna talk about what we've been up to in this headset for the last few months
00:01:56We're gonna talk to some developers about what they've been up to you
00:01:59We're gonna talk about where all of this is headed lots to do. I think the Vision Pro has sort of been through the hype cycle and
00:02:06Really? We've all in a certain way kind of forgotten about it. Honestly, it was not a huge hit
00:02:11It didn't change the world, but I feel like there's still a lot to talk about here
00:02:15So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna talk about it
00:02:18All of that is coming up in just a second, but first I
00:02:23Have to go and fix my hair because dear lord you use this thing for 10 minutes and your hair looks ridiculous
00:02:28And we just can't have that
00:02:30Lots of Vision Pro stuff to do. This is the Verge cast. We'll be right back
00:02:35Welcome back. So like I was saying this is a really interesting moment for the Vision Pro because on the one hand
00:02:42I think everybody has kind of stopped talking about and thinking about it
00:02:47The people who were gonna buy one bought one the people who weren't gonna buy one
00:02:51Weren't because it's $3,500
00:02:53There was so much hype and so much excitement and then some disillusionment and then there were questions about whether it was a hit or whether
00:02:58It was a failure
00:03:00Realistically, it's neither but it's kind of gone out of the consciousness and yet there's been all this news recently about Vision OS 2
00:03:07Which has lots of new features coming to it and more coming later this year
00:03:11We've gotten some news about Apple's hardware team kind of changing gears and rethinking the way that they think about Vision Pro
00:03:17We've heard a lot about other
00:03:19headsets and
00:03:20Glasses sorts of devices the Ray-Ban meta smart glasses have been a huge hit which I think is a really interesting part of the Vision
00:03:26Pro story. There's just a lot going on
00:03:29This gadget is five months old, which is brand new and also in a certain way kind of old in the way
00:03:34The tech news world works, but there's still a lot happening and it feels like whatever is gonna happen here is very early
00:03:41but I wanted to get some perspective from people who frankly have used this thing more than I have so I grabbed two of
00:03:47The folks at the verge who have the most Vision Pro experience and that is Wes Davis and Vsong
00:03:53They have spent many more hours
00:03:55goofing around at this thing testing it using it in their own lives than I have and
00:03:58So I thought I'd grab them to talk about what they've seen so far how they've used it
00:04:03Whether they would continue to use it over time and where it seems like all of this might go next
00:04:09So let's just get into it Wes Davis. Welcome at the verge cast. Yes. Hello. Good to be here Vsong. Welcome back
00:04:15Thank you for having me
00:04:17so I wanted to talk to you because you're you're two of the
00:04:20Vision pro is to people at the verge which is I would say it's kind of a dubious distinction at this moment
00:04:27But let's just let's just talk about how you're both
00:04:30Using the Vision Pro and Wes. I want to start with you because unlike V and me you paid
00:04:35the hard-earned
00:04:37Actual human dollars for your Vision Pro. I'm still paying money for it
00:04:42I did the uh bought it with the installment payments through my apple card
00:04:47Um, so i'll be paying for it for some time. Oh, no
00:04:50So when you bought one, what did you buy it for? What did you think you were getting?
00:04:54I knew that I was getting a product that
00:04:57Isn't fully fledged. I knew it was going to be basically a
00:05:02You know like a tech demo product. I had read the review. I knew
00:05:06The shortcomings I knew what I was getting into I think to be completely transparent
00:05:11Like the reason I wanted to get it is because I hadn't really used a vr thing since the virtual boy
00:05:18Like nintendo's, you know, it's been a minute drastic failure
00:05:22Like I had played with other people's stuff, but I hadn't owned one, you know what I mean?
00:05:27so I kind of wanted to
00:05:29See where I guess not just where things are but kind of where they're going right because this is like
00:05:35It's a little bit ahead of its time. That's not the right word, right?
00:05:39Like but it's you know, it's ambitious. Um, the the tech is pretty ahead as far as like visual clarity
00:05:46And all that stuff the screen's a really high resolution. And did you have a thing that you were like, okay
00:05:52even if
00:05:54It's terrible at everything at least it'll do this one thing for me and that'll make it worth it
00:05:58Did you have one of those in your mind that you're like if only it's x
00:06:02Yeah
00:06:04Not really. I was intrigued by the whole like let's put a big virtual screen in front of me thing
00:06:10I have since found out that that it's nice for certain things
00:06:15but
00:06:16It does also do things like when you have a gigantic display in front of you. I've never
00:06:21Used on uh a regular basis more than like a 27 inch screen
00:06:25But when you have a gigantic screen like blow it up to you know, the size of a huge hd tv or projector or whatever
00:06:33uh, you will miss notifications because like really on mac os they're all just in the top right and
00:06:39When when the top right is five miles away from you, you don't see them
00:06:42You mean like literally in your eyesight like yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so large
00:06:47Yeah, okay, so I don't do that. I feel like I have the exact opposite really experience with that
00:06:52Yeah, I just feel like I see everything all at once. I just become michelle yoh everything
00:06:59Once I have the power you have hot dog fingers
00:07:01Yeah with hot dog fingers, uh, or it feels like hot dog finger
00:07:05It might as well be hot dog fingers just because like I have a lot of problem with it recognizing my finger gestures
00:07:11I don't I feel like every single time every so often I have to recalibrate using it. So yes truly I just become michelle yoh
00:07:19I mean, there are worse things to become right? Yeah, it's it's in certain ways. That's the dream and in other ways
00:07:25Less so but what about you you you acquired this thing basically from nilai you stole it from him
00:07:31Like eight minutes after we publish our review in january. Why did you why did you want to have this thing around?
00:07:36Um, basically one you wear it. I'm the wearables lady
00:07:40so that is it is like it is a category of wearables and one that I
00:07:45You know, I like emerging tech a lot
00:07:46so i'm just curious about it because it also I wanted to see how it stacks up to
00:07:52The idea of smart glasses and just kind of I feel like it's part way on the evolution to that
00:07:58so I just really wanted to kind of
00:08:00Dig into it and it wasn't what I expected in many ways
00:08:04Like I I don't I think I was expecting something different than a vr headset
00:08:09Even though everyone had said it's just essentially a vr headset
00:08:12And yeah, yeah, it is a vr headset. It's slightly different though. It's very it's very apple is what i'll say when i'm in it
00:08:19I also have uh the metaquest
00:08:22Three. Yeah, the most recent one I have that so I kind of go back and forth in between them sometimes and it's just
00:08:29They're the same but it's like the same thing written in different fonts
00:08:32but one of those fonts is comic sans and the other is like
00:08:36I don't know what the hip new font is
00:08:41Oh, okay. Yeah, so it's comic sans
00:08:43So it's just very i'll let people wonder which one I think is comic sans and which one I think is the hip new font
00:08:49I feel like it's very obvious, but that's yeah, well, it's good. We'll leave it mysterious for you
00:08:53So, okay. So fast forward to now and wes i'm curious for you to
00:08:58What do you do when you put on the headset?
00:09:00Like I feel like we've it's been long enough part of the reason I want to do this now is it's been long enough
00:09:03That the like I wonder what this is and how it'll work. Is this anything?
00:09:08I would assume that's worn off by now and now it's like you don't quite have the like
00:09:13Oh my god, every time you put it on or the like, uh, this sucks every time the battery dies
00:09:18So you're like you're in a space where you can actually kind of use it as a person
00:09:21How do you use the vision pro now? Um, just for cooking. Um, no, I uh, I use it. Um,
00:09:28I was about to be like that is the most exciting answer
00:09:30I believed you for a second. I tried it once after reading. Um, those joanna stern's review, right? Yeah
00:09:35Yeah, joanna stern's story, but uh, it's horrible for that. Um, don't use it for cooking
00:09:40We were facetiming while you were cooking that one time or did we okay? I forgot that
00:09:45We were facetiming in the vision pro while you were cooking that was an experience watching it was a bad idea
00:09:51That was something. Yeah, don't not safe. No, uh, mostly so
00:09:56I will use it one or two
00:09:59times a week while i'm working, um, usually it's like
00:10:03if I really want to focus on a uh, something specific if i'm working on on, you know, a bigger piece or
00:10:10Um every now and then I just just to try it just to see
00:10:14But I I'm a three monitor guy, which is stupid, but I am i've gotten used to it
00:10:19And so when I have just the one monitor i'm like now all my stuff's on top of each other
00:10:24I can't just look over I can't put all my apps on all the screens. So there's that I use it a
00:10:30Fair amount actually to watch stuff. Um, i've been catching up on for all mankind, which I never watched before this year
00:10:37So i've been watching that a bunch
00:10:40Every now and then i'll think like hey, like this is basically a movie theater
00:10:44um on my face so
00:10:46Like are there old movies that I never got to see in theater things that I missed?
00:10:50Um, so i'll i'll do that sometimes so you use it as like a single tasking device
00:10:56Yeah
00:10:56And as I'm fascinated by this idea that you're like I have too many screens and when I need to focus I put on a headset
00:11:02Uh, yeah, which on one hand sounds so counterintuitive
00:11:05But it's also a thing i've actually heard a few times from folks that it is like it is a surprisingly useful
00:11:11Focus device like why does it work for you that?
00:11:15Harder to explain. I think it's it's sort of that it zeroes me in so it's like when I put it on
00:11:21It's like I get to go into
00:11:23uh, like mentally into a mode where i'm like
00:11:25Like this is the thing that i'm doing right now is working on whatever this task is
00:11:31I don't know. It's uh, it's helpful. I like it for that. Is it worth
00:11:35$3,500 to do that when I could also just get my laptop and like go do that
00:11:42Exact same thing. I'm not sure although, you know, my laptop is like a tiny little
00:11:47rectangle and this lets me
00:11:49as I said earlier have a
00:11:52You know 500 mile wide screen. So yeah, it is a very funny thing that like years ago
00:11:57I had a co-worker who had a chromebook that he had rigged up to not run anything other than google docs
00:12:03And he was just like this is my this is my typewriter, right?
00:12:06Like I sit here when I just need to write things
00:12:08And and like do you have a hundred other devices that will also run google docs?
00:12:11Yes, of course, absolutely
00:12:12But there was something about that space that just felt sort of better and saner and more focused to him
00:12:18You hear about writers, right? Like who keep around like old max or whatever like for the same reason georgia are martin
00:12:27At him like i'm sure part of that is just like this is the comfortable thing that i've been writing my novels on for
00:12:34You know decades i'm not going to give it up until you know, it completely dies or whatever
00:12:39But v what about you what has been sticky for you over time?
00:12:42Actually kind of very similar to west when I really need to focus on a draft
00:12:47Um, like really just I have a lot of little focus tools on my regular thing because breaking out the vision pro
00:12:54It has to be really intentional for me just because I have really bad eyes
00:12:58So if i'm wearing glasses, I don't have this ice insert
00:13:01So I have to be like, okay, it's time for me to go upstairs and put my contacts in. Oh, wow
00:13:05Yeah, it's like a several step process for you just to be like
00:13:08I'm gonna open up google docs in the headset now
00:13:11Yeah, but I actually think that the most useful thing for me has been actually having a 500 foot
00:13:18Google docs in front of me just to like really zero in on the words
00:13:24Actually, I write mostly in the cms
00:13:25so sometimes it's just the cms just in front of me with the chaos like just just really
00:13:32Impressing upon me the importance of finishing this draft literally the stuff of nightmares. Yeah, it's a giant nightmare screen and or
00:13:39you know, um
00:13:40You know
00:13:41Sometimes i'll watch stuff on there because I really do think it's like best when you're using it as a screen
00:13:46It kind of isn't as good in my opinion when you're using it for the way that I think apple wants you to use it
00:13:53uh, it's really just like having an amazingly large screen in front of you and uh,
00:13:58my problem though with watching content is
00:14:01The platform of content like I think if you have something that you want to watch on
00:14:06Disney plus or the stuff that's or apple tv plus that's integrated. Oh, yeah, that's super easy, but I want to watch my kdramas
00:14:13Because my husband won't watch kdramas with me and this is a solitary experience
00:14:18so
00:14:19you know going to my crappy streaming kdrama, uh websites where everything is like a
00:14:26One second away from getting malware
00:14:28Infected into my vision pro that's kind of not quite so easy
00:14:32And then when you do watch it sometimes like I did watch a little bit of bridgerton
00:14:36through
00:14:37Going to netflix in safari and and the thing I was just like wow
00:14:42This is too overwhelming. There's just so much happening
00:14:45um real like I don't I don't know that I feel
00:14:49quite as
00:14:51enamored with it like a few months on as like a watching medium because I do want to I do want to like
00:14:56Text kranz who's the one use the sole reason why I watched bridgerton and be like, oh my god
00:15:01The men on this show are stupid. They just need to talk about their feelings
00:15:04and like, you know, it's so easy when you're just on a tv and you can just pull out your phone and be like
00:15:08Oh simon is stupid and bridgerton. I can't really do that
00:15:12I have to hold my thoughts and then then like tell people afterwards because I could type
00:15:17In in in the the actual yeah
00:15:19but it's stupid because you have like one finger and typing unless i'm gonna what am I gonna do get up from my very comfy
00:15:25daybed and then
00:15:26uh type
00:15:28Into my computer so that yeah, no with my keyboard just to message someone more clearly
00:15:34It's it's not quite as intuitive
00:15:37You guys are talking about this sort of single tasking thing. Do you do this in?
00:15:41The like immersive environments vr headset style or do you just sit in your own living room with a gigantic screen?
00:15:47I I sit on the moon. I sit on the moon just because i'm just like it's it's goodbye
00:15:52Everybody every once in a while my every once in a while. My cat will just like start touching me
00:15:57While i'm on the moon and that kind of takes me out of the moon. That is a real thing
00:16:02Like cat jumping on you while you're immersed. I'm, sorry. I just used that term but while you have that turned on
00:16:10Yeah cat jumping on you
00:16:12Although I will say
00:16:14That my cat, uh, one of his favorite things to do and it feels very intentional is to jump in my lap while i'm
00:16:21you know holding my phone or my tablet or
00:16:23Whatever, um and be in the way of that like it. It's not
00:16:28Yeah, and he can't do that. Uh when i'm using vision pro
00:16:32He has to wedge himself between your thumb and your your index finger and that's that's the yeah
00:16:37Sometimes he'll kind of like flash like i'll see little ears flashing into the screen
00:16:41but as far as like using the
00:16:44Immersive stuff if i'm trying to type it's uh, I don't know like trying to find the keyboard is really annoying now
00:16:51They fixed that in vision os 2
00:16:53So if you have the beta you can you can do that and it will recognize a magic keyboard
00:16:58They say that it's just for magic keyboards
00:17:01I've gotten it to recognize this nes controller that I have as a keyboard for for just a few minutes and it would kind of
00:17:08show it when I look down at it again, and then it
00:17:10Stopped it figured out. I was lying. So I love that. The pro tip is just fooling the vision, bro
00:17:15That's a good strategy. Absolutely, but no you're you're getting ahead of me on some of the software stuff
00:17:21But one of the things i've heard a bunch of people talking about is that the phone mirroring thing
00:17:25inside of mac os
00:17:27inside of the vision pro
00:17:29Could be a big deal for solving kind of both the problems you're talking about, right?
00:17:33like the the how do I input while i'm in this space and
00:17:38V like the thing you're describing which I call like light multitasking is a thing
00:17:43I have thought so much about with the vision pro because like I love going to movie theaters
00:17:46I go to movie theaters alone all the time to see movies just because i'm not allowed to use my phone
00:17:51It is the best and it's just like i'm gonna sit here. I'm gonna watch this whole movie
00:17:55Like a maniac right like i'm gonna just look at the movie the whole time and and there is something about the vision pro
00:18:01That is really compelling in that way. I found especially
00:18:04In like the good streaming apps and really it's basically like disney and like max a little and that's kind of it
00:18:11Apple tv is good, uh, but there aren't many but the ones that are good
00:18:14I have found I actually like really enjoy watching stuff in
00:18:17Uh, but vm with you like if it's a matter of loading up a browser, it just that doesn't at that point
00:18:22I'm, like this is worse than watching on my television. What am I doing here?
00:18:25I wish all the stuff that I wanted to watch on my own was in the good apps, but they're not
00:18:30Which is kind of you know, the whole thing about the loneliness in the vision pro
00:18:34It's it's a real I think that's like my biggest problem with it
00:18:38Is that I would enjoy it so much more if I had more people
00:18:42To hang out with in there. Otherwise, yeah. Otherwise i'm just kind of like
00:18:48Everyone's out here
00:18:51That tension sort of both sides of that I I was one of the things I wanted to ask you both about because you both
00:18:55Live in households with other people
00:18:57and also
00:18:58Are like big nerds who are online talking to people all the time for me as a person in a household with other people
00:19:04I cannot bring myself to wear this around other people like and that's probably just a me thing
00:19:10Maybe i'll get over it
00:19:11but i'm curious what your experience has been like like do you
00:19:13sit on the couch around your your partner family friends, whoever and
00:19:18I have been
00:19:20Roasted within an inch of my life wearing that thing. I actually wore it in a car one time
00:19:26Uh, just to test the travel mode. Uh, I was not driving. Just to be clear. I was not driving
00:19:31I was the passenger and that was just
00:19:33That was not fun
00:19:35the the windows were
00:19:37It was it was trying to fight me the entire time because I think it knew that I wasn't supposed to be in a car
00:19:42With that thing
00:19:43But when I was testing it more frequently my spouse would walk by would just look at me and go
00:19:48Oh, i'll talk to you when you're a human again. Oh interesting. Yeah, okay. Bye like
00:19:54No, or you would go
00:19:57That is just so cursed because you have the eyesight on the other side and he's just like that's not that's not your eyes
00:20:03That's just
00:20:05Yeah, eyesight's not the solution. It's just not I get why they did it. I get why they did
00:20:11I think it's actually like very
00:20:12oddly human and thoughtful why they did that because eye contact is so
00:20:17They're actually like talking about the social cues with by creating that particular feature
00:20:22but
00:20:23I have not I've never had a single person go. Wow. That's so cool. Can I try it?
00:20:28I've been like derided because most of the people in my life are not huge tech nerds
00:20:34Like my husband's just they he gets so mad seeing it and he's like, why do you have this?
00:20:39What is the purpose of this?
00:20:41What is the meanwhile they love they love the meta ray-ban glasses like they they can't stop using them
00:20:47But they look at me and the vision pro and they're like why?
00:20:51Humanity is like
00:20:53Yeah, the one thing that I do
00:20:55Kind of in like the common space in the in the living room is I will go in there because it's the one room
00:21:01That's bright enough and big enough
00:21:03In my house where I can play games
00:21:07On it, which like I don't do a lot of
00:21:10But there there is one rhythm game which uh called synth writers, um, and it's basically beat saber, right?
00:21:16Um kind of it's like you have balls flying at you and you have to catch them
00:21:20In time with the music or whatever. It's stupid
00:21:23But uh, it's also I enjoy it those games are very fun. And and the good news is you look so cool doing it
00:21:30You look you look so cool. Yeah, and so like every now and then uh, like my my wife will come
00:21:36Uh downstairs and walk in and i'm just standing there like
00:21:40Doing like all these weird movements waving my arms around and stuff
00:21:44but uh
00:21:45She also has played it and has fun with it
00:21:48she never asks to play but if i'm playing and i'm like do you want to do the thing and and then she
00:21:54You know often will take me up on it
00:21:56Because she also secretly thinks it's fun, but her reaction
00:22:01she's not as angry, I think as uh
00:22:04Or upset by it she's not offended by it
00:22:07She's just like she'll come in and and just be like, oh look, it's my robot husband
00:22:11Yeah, I think the i'll talk to you when you're done in there
00:22:15reaction is so
00:22:17Common and so fascinating because that is like percent the the precise thing
00:22:22that apple was trying to solve right this thing where like I and they did so many interesting technical things to make it work like
00:22:28the the thing where a person sort of fades into your view as you come in like
00:22:33Technically incredible it works
00:22:35Shockingly. Well, it's only alarming at least for me the first couple of times like it freaked me out
00:22:41Pretty legitimately the first couple of times and then I got used to it
00:22:44But it doesn't it fixes the problem for you
00:22:47as the wearer a little bit
00:22:48but i've had the exact same reaction every time i've been ringing around somebody else that like
00:22:51As soon as they see me in the headset, it's like oh we're not interacting like we can't you're somewhere else
00:22:57I can't you can even if you can see me even if you can see the space you are somewhere else
00:23:01We are not going to talk
00:23:03I wonder if that's because
00:23:05eyesight itself is the problem or if it's because it's just not bright and high fidelity enough because you know when you look at
00:23:11It it looks like a like a like you're looking at one of those hologram cards
00:23:15of of somebody's like
00:23:17You know eyeballs, I think that's part of it and just like the uncanniness of sure at the same time just like that really
00:23:24because you know like it it kind of you see the eyes, but it's like
00:23:28There's like tinge there's a tinge with blue I think if you're in an app so they know that your full focus isn't there
00:23:34But unless you sit down with someone and explain to them what that means
00:23:38And they're aware of what those cues are. I think just people are gonna look at that and just go like uh-uh
00:23:43Yeah, they're just gonna do a big, uh, brendan fraser in the mummy just going
00:23:48so let's let's talk about like where we go next right because I think it is it is we're five months in this thing is
00:23:53Brand new like every time I talk to people who love the vision pro
00:23:56They're like what about the iphone after five months and like that's true
00:23:59It's none of it. None of it was any good after five months. So like it's fine. Sure
00:24:04But wes you've been writing a bunch about vision os2
00:24:07Which I think my read on vision os2 is basically like this is now
00:24:13Fixing all the sort of table stakes stuff. It's basically vision os1 now
00:24:18What in there are you excited about give me the rundown?
00:24:20So the thing i'm i'm most excited about is the big curve display thing
00:24:25uh for the reasons I mentioned earlier just not having all the space that i'm used to and it's
00:24:30weirdly like a lot of the
00:24:32Things that they brought in for this version are things that I like had thought
00:24:38Specifically that I wanted and a curved display was like I had thought like, you know, we all well not we all
00:24:45But a lot of people were saying in forums and stuff like we want multiple displays in the vision pro
00:24:51Why aren't there multiple displays and one day I was thinking like why why do we need multiple displays? It's a virtual environment
00:24:57Why can't you just have a big?
00:24:59You know a big long display or whatever
00:25:02And then they announced that and I didn't expect that like I I thought it was going to be a multiple display thing
00:25:07But like why not why not have a big curve display thing another thing that uh that I had really wanted
00:25:14Uh was some better ways to get to things in in the vision pro so like launching the
00:25:20Launching your apps for instance like the home screen before your two options were to reach up and push the little button
00:25:27on the top the digital ground
00:25:29or you could go into the control center by
00:25:32Looking up hoping you get the little dot tapping the dot. Yeah that whole process. It's like a three-step process
00:25:39Now you just like do this funky like little flourish with your hand and I love it
00:25:45It is like a little it's it's the very end of a magic trick kind of vibe
00:25:48It is you're just like you you flourish your hand and there's a little dot that shows up right here
00:25:54It's shows up pretty reliably and then you tap your fingers together and you've got your home screen
00:25:59It's easy and then while you're doing that if you want to
00:26:03Quickly check the time or the battery which is like not a thing you can do normally
00:26:08I mean you can by again looking up and finding the dot but it's not I don't know. It's not as
00:26:14somehow it's different than this motion, which is just like turning your hand over and
00:26:20I kind of likened it when I wrote about it before to to being like turning your hand to look at your
00:26:25Wrist to see what time it is. I don't know if that's what they were going for
00:26:29But it's what I immediately thought and they you know that that seems appley right to kind of
00:26:35Think about it that way and that will show you the time the battery level
00:26:39And you can tap there to get to the control center or you can tap and hold to like change the volume stuff like that
00:26:45just bringing in
00:26:47easy quick gestures to
00:26:50do
00:26:51Stuff inside of the vision pro get to menus and and all that stuff instead of having to go through all this rigmarole
00:26:57I would love it if there was like a way to get to settings for instance, um that way too because
00:27:03This being a new product i'm still you know months later constantly going in and changing settings
00:27:10Right just tweaking little things and I do that anyway on all my devices
00:27:15But you know, it's just it's more pronounced on the vision pro
00:27:18how often do you guys use siri on the vision pro because I feel like my answer to all of the weird ui stuff is
00:27:23I just yell at siri. I use siri three times as much on the vision pro as on any other apple device
00:27:28I am surrounded by home pods. Oh fair
00:27:32And phones and all kinds of things I do use it and it does seem to prioritize
00:27:38the vision pro
00:27:39But my experience over the last several years of using like the apple home stuff
00:27:45Has been that like while it has improved it's still frequently enough
00:27:51Misunderstands siri still sucks is what you're saying
00:27:54So yeah
00:27:55Like I my phone is not like still doesn't have siri turned on because of that
00:28:00Like if I want siri on my phone, I will press the button
00:28:02I use siri most while driving and even then half the time when i'm driving. It's like no, that's not what I asked
00:28:08Oh my god, stop
00:28:09and some of that is just me like I have to
00:28:12I have to like know what I want to ask and how I want to ask it in a way that
00:28:16the voice assistant is gonna understand and i'm not too good at that because I just
00:28:21Word vomit half the time what I want. So it's not like a coherent sentence. I feel like you have to say
00:28:26You know siri
00:28:29See, I don't even know what to say in a fake siri prompt besides like setting timers before that
00:28:34I'm, just like it's like siri and then my brain like buffers i'm like, what do I want her to do?
00:28:38How should I say that brain buffer thing is real? Yeah
00:28:40Yeah, it's like that's my main issue with it and it's why I don't but it's frustrating because when i'm in there
00:28:46And i'm on safari and i'm, you know trying to type I go like oh it would be so much easier
00:28:52If I could just talk to to siri and do it and then i'll look at the microphone and try and tap
00:28:57And it's not working and so then I just give up and then I and yeah, so that's that's my issue
00:29:02I will say though like yeah, um to your point david's like opening apps
00:29:06That way is actually like I I do do that somewhat frequently the part of the reason that I don't is because i'm
00:29:13Always forgetting the name of vision pro apps because they have weird names sometimes and then other times it's like
00:29:20Until recently until vision os 2 you couldn't rearrange the home apps and now you can that's another thing. I'm
00:29:26Excited about I guess like I don't know like it feels weird to say i'm excited
00:29:31So much of vision os 2 is like now you can copy and paste on the iphone, right? It's like yeah
00:29:36Okay, great. That is good and useful and hooray and also how on earth did this not exist until now?
00:29:42Yeah, and you still can't like, uh as far as I know, um and v if you've figured out how to do this
00:29:48But I don't think you can uh make folders
00:29:51In inside the home. There is a folder for ipad apps
00:29:54That's already there and you have to use it like it came with vision os
00:29:58But you can't make more and that drives me nuts because like I don't like like on my iphone
00:30:04I have it very intentionally set up where um, most of my apps live in the library and only a few are
00:30:11Actually on my home screen in any way and it's organized so that I uh only have the things that like
00:30:18that I
00:30:20use regularly so like
00:30:22My podcast app is there and my books app stuff like that
00:30:26Otherwise, it's like everything else is shoved over in the app library. I will search for it when I want it
00:30:31Um, I don't want it there. Like I don't want tick tock on my home screen being like do you want to watch some videos?
00:30:37Uh, how responsible of you?
00:30:40But like with the vision pro you can't do that there's no app library it is the app library
00:30:45It's very old school iphone in that way. It's just pages and pages of apps and
00:30:51Thankfully you can rearrange them, but that's annoying too
00:30:54The whole app experience in the vision pro has been annoying like downloading them
00:30:59It takes forever to download something like it just you're just waiting and then by the time it's downloaded
00:31:05I forget that it's there
00:31:06So it takes me a while to go back and find the new app or something
00:31:11and like with what's that is just like having to find stuff like i'm i'm
00:31:15I don't know. It's it's it's just easier to do it on my phone sometimes
00:31:20And then sometimes the apps that are in there. I i'm just like that this this is
00:31:24This was not what I was promised. I was in the zillow app in there and it's not that's not
00:31:29What I wanted from the zillow app on the vision pro
00:31:33I want to talk about the zillow app in a minute, but i'm curious v
00:31:36Can you actually read your phone because I want like I can't no
00:31:40Okay, like I mean I could if I like I have really bad eyes
00:31:43Like I don't know if this is useful because my eyesight is garbage
00:31:46but like I have tried looking at my phone and it's just kind of
00:31:49I have to squint and i'm already like so
00:31:52My eyes are already dry in the vision pro because my eyes are so wide on the inside and like i'm wearing contacts
00:31:58Which is extra drying and so then I have to squint really hard to look at my phone
00:32:02So it's just not worth it. Really?
00:32:03Yeah, and I still can't wear it for very long at a time
00:32:07Like I I think west you said you figured out how to wear it for like two plus hours
00:32:11Like I I have to tap out after an hour. Like it doesn't matter how
00:32:16I arrange it on my head doesn't matter what strap i'm using just after a while. I really feel it
00:32:22So I kind of have to take it off and it's not that way for me every time most of the time I can
00:32:27Legitimately get away with wearing it for an hour two hours
00:32:30I've i've gone even longer than that not all day or at least I haven't tried it all day
00:32:35It took a while to get to that like it took a lot of fiddling with the strap
00:32:39Um, like I still I still use the solo thing
00:32:44I tried the other the one that's supposed to be the comfortable one for a while
00:32:47And it made the top of my head numb and that bothered me
00:32:51So so I switched back and I figured out a way to make it work
00:32:54But I think you've written about this, uh v
00:32:58um, just about like how
00:33:00Personal wearables are right? Yeah, and now like like especially with like, uh,
00:33:05Uh with like smart rings and stuff like that
00:33:08um, just every every single person's body is different and
00:33:12You know, I might be able to wear the vision pro all day
00:33:15Maybe who knows why maybe maybe I have like an extra fat forehead or something and it's just got a lot of padding there
00:33:21I don't know we had parker who's our our product person like went through hell to get that thing to like to fit his face
00:33:29Yeah, um, whereas me I got lucky but it took a while like at first it was like, you know
00:33:34It would press too hard here or press too hard here
00:33:37Uh, it felt heavy my neck hurt from wearing the thing
00:33:41I don't know if I just have an extra strong like back of my neck now or or what but like most of those issues
00:33:47Are gone I actually will lie down wearing it if I try to if I have to wear it for a longer period of time
00:33:54because it just like
00:33:55Relieves the pressure from the top of my head and like the tightness around it. I it's I have flat cheekbones
00:34:02So, you know, there's no actual bone support to lift this thing
00:34:07So I have to like tighten it around my face
00:34:09So I think that's part of the reason why I have no like I have no bone
00:34:13Structure with which to hold this thing up and that is like a thing with wearables like your face
00:34:18Everybody's face is going to be structured differently and like with the glasses. It's it's the nose bridge again
00:34:23I have a flat face. I have a flat nose bridge. I have nothing to hold these things up
00:34:27So if there's no supportive structure in there, okay, it just slides down my face all the time
00:34:32So I don't have a face made to wear it comfortably, but I do so for the blog
00:34:40Yeah as as somebody with very good vision
00:34:42um and
00:34:44Ample nose, I suppose the thing that always gets me is
00:34:47just
00:34:48Like my my eyes get tired at the end of it and and west like that's the thing that is most surprising to me
00:34:54like I can fight through the
00:34:56you know, my head hurts thing like do you guys ever see the tick tocks of the people who have the
00:35:00The dent in their head for headphones all the time
00:35:02But yeah, i'm convinced the vision pro is going to end up doing that to me
00:35:05but I can soldier through all of that, but I get like
00:35:08Physically exhausted just from looking at this stuff all the time and I think to some extent that's just like
00:35:13It's just the light in your eyes all the time
00:35:15Like if I sat close to my tv and watch it for hours at a time
00:35:19No, no
00:35:20I actually talked to ophthalmologists
00:35:21It's on the verge.com about is it dangerous to have a screen that close to your face?
00:35:26And the answer is not really the like that's a myth about having the screen so close to your eyes
00:35:31It's actually that your eyes are just open for too long
00:35:34You're not blinking as much so your eyes become less hydrated
00:35:38And that's can that can cause like burst blood vessels in your eyes. Uh, it's it's benign generally
00:35:44I had a friend in high school who used to
00:35:46Play doom so much
00:35:48That he would come to school with burst blood vessels in his eyes because he would forget to blink for hours at a time
00:35:53Shout out tim
00:35:54so you do you do need to be putting the eye drops in your eyes if you're prone to
00:35:59Prone to dry eye and it's like also again with me with my contacts contacts are drying
00:36:04So because the the the display is so stimulating you're just going to blink less
00:36:09You're not going to be blinking normally as you would in there
00:36:12So that I do think that the eye fatigue is a thing that we haven't necessarily talked about because you know
00:36:17You're in an immersive environment every so often. Are you going to hit pause to like just like open?
00:36:22oh, like
00:36:24Take off the thing squirt in some eye drops and then put it you should build that into the vision pro
00:36:28It's like the opposite of the thing in the watch that expels the water. It just flushes water into your eyes every 20 minutes
00:36:33Just flush water and choose the saline solution because I you know, that is eye hygiene
00:36:38There is like like good health and good practices that you have to use with these devices that we don't always do
00:36:44So like the screen distance like talk to actual ophthalmologist the screen distance is not the problem
00:36:48It is the fact that you are not blinking that can cause actual eye strain and that's not great for you
00:36:54so it's there's they said 20 20 20 every 20 seconds look 20 feet away for um,
00:37:01I think 20 seconds every 20 minutes look 20 feet away for 20 seconds
00:37:04That's what it is, but you can't do that in a vision pro right because it's all
00:37:09An inch and a half away. It's fair
00:37:11I do have to say one thing that um, I thought of earlier. I right now i'm uh,
00:37:17I'm building a bicycle from a frame that old frame that I had
00:37:21Um, and I realized I didn't have the measurement of something and I don't own calipers
00:37:25There's an app in the vision pro called hand calipers. There you go
00:37:29Did you put calipers on in virtual reality?
00:37:32You don't put them on you hold your fingers up and two little dots show up and it shows the measurement between your fingers
00:37:39And it's delightful and I used it and it gave me an accurate measurement and that's all I want to say
00:37:44They are going to make a vision pro commercial about you
00:37:47Tomorrow. Yeah, I hope they do somewhere somewhere the vision of revision pro team
00:37:52Someone's screaming with joy is saying yes, they used it the way I want. Oh, it's nobody on the vision pro team
00:37:58It's just some guy who made me as far as I could tell but uh, that's that's the stuff, right?
00:38:02Like you talk about spatial computing like that is that is the stuff and there need to be a million more things like that
00:38:08But that is if if this stuff is ever going to be the thing it's things like that
00:38:12But david's like, uh when you were talking about like not ever wanting to wear the vision pro around people
00:38:18Like I had to walk out to my garage
00:38:20Which is a separate building, uh holding the vision pro and I was like holding it on the side of my body
00:38:25So that like my neighbors wouldn't see me
00:38:29I have to go to home depot this afternoon and i'm gonna bring the vision pro and just wander the aisles holding stuff up
00:38:34To the vision pro just to see what happens
00:38:36See how quickly you can get kicked out of the store. It's gonna be great. But okay other than calipers
00:38:40So there are two great uses for the vision pro
00:38:42There's calipers big screens and hand calipers
00:38:46the big screen thing is really interesting to me because I think that's where most people have landed right whether you use it as a
00:38:50as a big giant display for your mac or as kind of a
00:38:54Personal television. It's a big screen. What goes on it? Who knows? It's a big screen
00:38:58But then there's all these rumors about like, okay
00:39:01The thing apple is doing and mark kerman at bloomberg has been reporting this over and over is trying to figure out
00:39:07How to make these things cheaper and the way that apple seems to be making it cheaper
00:39:11Is by making the screens worse that that apparently the pixel density of the next vision
00:39:17Device might be half of what the current one is and on the one hand that makes absolute perfect sense
00:39:23These screens are ridiculous. This is how you get it to be this good
00:39:26It's also why it's this expensive like it's why it takes so much power on and on and on
00:39:29Does that work like if you take away the fact that this is such a good screen on your face
00:39:35Does the cheaper version of this become more compelling or does it become less compelling because you've just made the only really great feature
00:39:41Half as good. I don't know. I'm so torn. What do you guys think? I think it depends, right?
00:39:46um, if it's lighter if it's more comfortable
00:39:50if the
00:39:51Interaction still works as well
00:39:54Do you know that thing where you know if you go back and you watch uh, like a you know
00:39:59A dvd even on the right screen like maybe a 1080p tv or whatever
00:40:05you kind of forget that it's lower resolution for the most part until like some text shows up and you can see all the like
00:40:11Aliasing around it or whatever. I wonder if that could be the case with the vision pro 2
00:40:18Not the vision pro 2 but the vision pro cheap, whatever whatever they call it. Oh, is it like light se?
00:40:24Yeah
00:40:25They should I just kind of wonder doesn't that just make it a meta quest 3 right if that's the case
00:40:31Yeah, so they'd have to be really
00:40:34Good at all the other stuff. I was using them kind of concurrently for a while and I would go into the to the
00:40:42You know the meta quest 3 and i'd be like, oh my god, it's so much lighter
00:40:45It's so much easier to use there's so many more things to do and then i'd be in the app i'm like dang
00:40:48this is pixelated and
00:40:51you know, so that would kind of just be like a
00:40:54You know, I can get around it. It's not the end of the world, but it is a thing that it's just like, okay
00:40:59then what does
00:41:00What is setting it apart?
00:41:02Because like right now what's setting it apart is the screen the pass-through is just like oh wow
00:41:07This is a noticeable noticeably better and those experiences like I I don't know. I don't know it would have to set itself apart
00:41:15Besides being cheap part of the problem. I think is like I think I think it was the german report from this weekend
00:41:22um, I want to say that uh, he he said that it might actually be
00:41:27An even like less field of view it might not have been government
00:41:30but like if if that's the case if it's lower resolution and it's like
00:41:35you know suddenly you you don't have that impressive thing to look at then abruptly the
00:41:42$500
00:41:43meta quest 3
00:41:45versus the
00:41:47Maybe two thousand dollar vision pro like the calculus is suddenly like
00:41:52really wonky because like uh the experience inside the vision pro would have to be significantly better than a meta quest
00:41:59Three or four or whatever? Yeah, I don't know that
00:42:03Compromising on the screen is the right move so much as making the materials lighter
00:42:07Yeah and cheaper because like isn't it made out of some like I forget what exactly it's made of
00:42:11But you have actual glass on the on the front of the I mean it's metal and glass
00:42:16Yeah, that's that's heavy on the quest 3 is not that much lighter, right?
00:42:21Than the vision pro like really it's like it's significantly lighter
00:42:25It's so much easier for me to wear and it's because the weight distribution it's not so front heavy
00:42:30the vision pro is very front heavy and it's all that glass and
00:42:35I kind of think that is sort of it has a very premium feel when you touch it because apple right everything apple makes
00:42:42Premium feel super luxe or whatever. You could just make it less luxe
00:42:46And keep the thing that makes it really special which I think is the screen or try to keep that as as close to possible
00:42:52I don't know if that's possible
00:42:54But if I were going to make this thing cheaper
00:42:56Which you should make it cheaper because it's more fun when more people you know are in there
00:43:01I don't know if that's the right move. I think the right move would be make it lighter and
00:43:06feel cheaper
00:43:07Yeah, I mean take the glass off like it can still feel good without having a big just get rid of eyesight
00:43:13Nobody needs that. I actually agree with that. Yeah put googly eyes on the front of it
00:43:18Yeah, honestly, I think people would have more fun if you just put giant googly eyes
00:43:22You know what? We we really will make it like everything everywhere all at once just put giant googly eyes on the front
00:43:28I can pretend i'm a rock perfectly in keeping with apple's entire design ethos and branding too. It makes sense
00:43:34I really like I never thought I would sit on this podcast and try to convince apple to make a plastic gadget
00:43:39But like here we are
00:43:41It's it would probably be better if it were a plastic gadget
00:43:44It probably would be just because the wearability I like i'm gonna say this until i'm blue in the face with a wearable device
00:43:52It has to be wearable if you're not going to wear it. It's
00:43:56Not successful. So if making it plastic means that more people will wear it not only because it's more comfortable
00:44:03But because it's cheaper make it plastic just do it or
00:44:07titanium
00:44:10Is that gonna lower the price west because we also have to lower the price
00:44:13It's okay. Wes is paying for this thing every month. Just make it five thousand dollars. Wes won't even notice. It'll be fine. Oh god
00:44:20Well, that is a good note to end on uh, we're gonna get via cheaper one
00:44:23We're gonna get west a more expensive one and everybody's gonna be happy it all works out ten thousand dollars
00:44:28Love it. Let's take it to the moon. Thank you both. Thanks
00:44:31All right, thanks for having us
00:44:33All right
00:44:34We gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and get a bit of a different perspective
00:44:38On what it's like to make stuff for and live inside the vision pro. We'll be right back
00:44:49Welcome back
00:44:50ultimately as we've been talking about the success or failure of the vision pro has
00:44:55Absolutely everything to do with the app store if apple keeps caring about the vision pro which I would say is not guaranteed
00:45:03But pretty likely the hardware will get better. There will be a cheaper one
00:45:07But if there's nothing to do in the headset, no one's going to use the headset
00:45:12I really think it's just that simple and I wanted to get a different perspective on the state of vision pro apps
00:45:18so I called up the developers behind one of vision os's most interesting apps that app is called television and
00:45:25It does what you might think it lets you put a virtual television in 3d space
00:45:30Think of it like a bridge from where we've been to where we're going in here
00:45:34You can watch on any tv from our curated collection or grab more from an expanding catalog across the decades
00:45:42The television can be lots of things. It can be an old wooden cabinet tv from like the 1950s
00:45:47It can be this tall teal thing right out of the jetsons
00:45:50It can be one of those big flat screen tvs with those huge speakers on the sides
00:45:55Lots of things whatever set you pick you then plop the set down in your physical space and then you can put whatever
00:46:02Kind of video you want on it. You can stream stuff that you've shot. You can play stuff from youtube all kinds of stuff
00:46:08It's just a television
00:46:10I like the app because it's charming but also because it's the kind of thing that could only work on a device like the vision pro
00:46:17It would seem like ridiculous kind of kitschy skeuomorphic design on an ipad or a tv screen
00:46:23We've actually seen things like this on those devices and it always seems like kitschy and skeuomorphic
00:46:27But when it's a physical seeming object that you can actually walk around and place in space
00:46:33It's just more fun. And since the tv stays right where you left it
00:46:37I kind of use it like a background tv like you might find in a waiting room or whatever
00:46:41You know, you just put on the news and then turn around and look at it every once in a while
00:46:45It's kind of great
00:46:46Anyway, television was developed by a company called sandwich which you might know from the super deadpan and fun commercials
00:46:53It's been making for a long time
00:46:55I'm here to tell you about coin
00:46:57It solves a problem. I think most of us have see my wallet is filled with cards. This is a coin
00:47:04I talked to three of the folks at sandwich all of whom worked on the app. I'm adam lisigor
00:47:09I'm the founder of sandwich in the context of sandwich vision the vision os app studio
00:47:14I would say i'm the creative director. My name is dan sturm. I am the visual effects supervisor at sandwich
00:47:20I'm, andy ross and i'm the engineer on both television and theater
00:47:24Oh, right to andy's point
00:47:26They also just made an app called theater which is similar to television except instead of putting a funky old tv in your living room
00:47:32It sends you to a big immersive movie theater style place
00:47:35Anyway, I asked the sandwich team to go back to the beginning a bit to even before the app existed
00:47:41Even before the vision pro was really a thing people could buy and tell me about what it takes to dream up
00:47:47Build ship and sell a vision pro app adam said the idea came to him kind of out of nowhere
00:47:53personally speaking
00:47:55Six months ago. I did not assume I was going to be building for the platform
00:47:58It was just not in software development headspace at all
00:48:02I didn't become activated until I was sitting down i'm working on another startup sort of more in the sas space
00:48:08And my co-founder had not really had experience with vr that much and I have a meta quest at home
00:48:14I've been a I was a dk1 user an oculus dk1 user early on
00:48:18So i've been paying attention and tracking the space but never thought it was worth developing for the vision pro had been announced
00:48:24My co-founders was curious and he said you have a meta quest
00:48:27Let me see how it's changed since the one time I used it
00:48:30So we spent kind of half a day just exploring different things in the meta quest platform
00:48:36And it was fun to see him get activated again
00:48:38Then we started talking about vision pro that was coming and just wondering what are things?
00:48:42What things are going to happen in this space?
00:48:44And then that night I kind of was laying in bed
00:48:46And I just kind of like my imagination started popping off and I started writing down app ideas in terms of just thinking
00:48:53What does this device make possible that the other devices don't make possible?
00:48:57How can we take advantage of our space like what at that point spatial computing as the nomenclature?
00:49:03Was kind of a laugh right it felt like a branded apple thing that they were making up
00:49:07Just to differentiate and not say vr because they're contrarians which and I love that about them, of course
00:49:14So what is spatial computing? What does that mean?
00:49:17It means using the space of the world around you as your display as your you and your interaction model with the software
00:49:26And then suddenly starting to think about okay, what can happen when?
00:49:30Computer stuff happens in your space that can't happen when it's on the black rectangle
00:49:35That's where my imagination started really going into overdrive
00:49:39Because we're filmmakers at sandwich and we think in terms of that 2d rectangle
00:49:44and then
00:49:45Obviously in non-spatial computing we think in terms of the 2d rectangle even the people who have you know
00:49:51Their whole desk is filled with displays that in vertical and horizontal orientations
00:49:56So like what does it mean when you see past the black rectangle and the world is your display
00:50:02And then that's when we started I started dreaming up the television app and that's when I got in touch with andy
00:50:08You know sort of just lucked into meeting andy and explained the idea to him andy
00:50:13Do you remember what the explanation was i'm trying to imagine how like the four sentence pitch of what television is?
00:50:20Yeah, I think it was basically let's throw some old school 3d tvs in your space and you can watch anything
00:50:27I was like, all right, i'm sold pretty good
00:50:30Were you into all the headset vr ar stuff at the time?
00:50:35Yeah, i've been into vr for a few years
00:50:37I had been doing development for the quest for a while in both unity and unreal and i've just been anticipating
00:50:44Apple's headset for a few years now
00:50:46I'm, just waiting to see what they could bring to the table and do differently than the other headsets
00:50:52Like even before it launched and before you started building like had you seen?
00:50:56What the vision pro was were you like convinced? This was the one like this there they've done the thing
00:51:02I'm, still not convinced. It's the one. Okay, fair enough. I'm with you on that
00:51:06Um, but it's it's definitely an interesting
00:51:09Approach to spatial computing and it's something that i've just been interested in since since they announced it
00:51:15And then dan, where did you come into the picture?
00:51:17I think in those early conversations with adam the the filmmaker storytelling side of
00:51:23The device like it's kind of our responsibility to understand the technology
00:51:28that we're telling stories about and
00:51:30to a certain point getting ahead of it because we're kind of assuming that there's going to be more
00:51:33Vision os developers who are going to come to us to help tell that spatial computing story
00:51:37And we don't want to be guessing at what that's like
00:51:39We we want to know what it's like intimately to to use the device and what what are the?
00:51:43What are the amazing parts of it? What does it feel like to use?
00:51:45What's the stuff that's going to really attract people to a product?
00:51:49And that really starts with us using it, you know
00:51:52We saw all the the videos that apple released and that's great and it shows what it can do
00:51:56But there's no way to prepare you for what it feels like when you first put it on
00:52:01I mean even in our very early tests with 3d models that didn't have video on them because i'm not a vr guy
00:52:07I've never really been a vr guy, but when I put this thing on and I started
00:52:10Manipulating a 3d tv in my space like it was incredible. Like I i've never felt anything like that before
00:52:16It's just like I stood up and I walked in a circle around a 3d tv in my office and it's like what is this?
00:52:21Like this is incredible
00:52:22so, you know getting our feet on the ground like
00:52:24Which is vision os in general was where we started and then what does that enable?
00:52:28What are the what are the parts of this that we want it to look like?
00:52:31Like what what is our ideal version of this app, you know?
00:52:33What are the things that we wish it could do that sort of stuff? That's where we started
00:52:35I think adam you just reminded me we were texting
00:52:38I think it was a saturday about this idea and you had one of the models
00:52:41I think it was the streamline media stand or whatever and you texted it to me
00:52:44And I was sitting in a chair watching my kid play and I put my iphone up in ar mode
00:52:49And I put the tv over there and I just kind of turned and saw a tv
00:52:52And then turned back to my kid and I was like, yeah, that's awesome. I want that
00:52:56I just want to have a tv over there to the side of my room and there'll be stuff on it
00:53:00At this point again, I should mention the vision pro wasn't for sale
00:53:03All the sandwich guys had all anyone had was a simulator that they could use to get a rough idea of how it might work
00:53:11So the team here started with an off-the-shelf 3d model of a retro tv
00:53:15Just kind of spinning it around and seeing how it picked up light and if it felt sort of realistic
00:53:21In this virtual space inside a simulator on a computer screen that worked pretty well
00:53:26Adam said so then they were off to the races
00:53:28They found more tv types sent them to dan to turn into 3d models
00:53:33And basically tried to figure out how you're actually supposed to interact with all of this stuff
00:53:38This thing is so new this whole category of devices is so new that nothing about how we use them is settled
00:53:45How do you select stuff? Where do buttons go? What should those buttons look like?
00:53:49Nobody knows which is fun and kind of daunting
00:53:53We made the classic dev mistake of like making one control panel that had like 18 different buttons
00:54:00On it. Oh sure that feels like a cockpit of a of a cessna and then figuring out
00:54:05okay, what are the
00:54:06things the user always needs access to and what are the things we can hide behind settings and
00:54:11Andy came up with some ingenious stuff like the drawer gallery that that slides out, you know of the control panel stuff that nobody else
00:54:18Was doing this is the evergreen time like right now for developing all the designing all this new language that nobody else is doing
00:54:24This is when the next pull to refresh comes out, you know
00:54:27Now like a year from now everybody is using as a pattern
00:54:31Their first real experience with television in a headset came at one of apple's developer labs in cupertino
00:54:37apple did a lot of these before the vision pro came out just to give developers a way to see
00:54:42What their app would look like and how it would feel when real users put on real headsets and had real experiences with their apps
00:54:49It's a big moment. Honestly for a lot of these developers
00:54:52It's a thing i've heard a bunch of is you either put it on and it either feels magical and great or it feels totally broken
00:54:59For the television crew. It was pretty good
00:55:03I looked over at andy because he got the app up and running before I did I look over at him
00:55:07He's got a big smile and he goes it works
00:55:09You know
00:55:11And then as soon as I got the app up and running it was like oh this tv that we only have seen
00:55:16flat on the simulator
00:55:18It now feels like a substantial 3d object in front of me and I can look around it and view it from different angles
00:55:24It picks up the light. That was boom. That was like everything
00:55:28How true was the simulator in retrospect?
00:55:30Like was it when you loaded up for the first time in the headset?
00:55:33Is it was it what you expected and hoped it would feel like or did you all of a sudden?
00:55:37Understand it in a new way
00:55:39There's just no substitute for your actual space
00:55:42You know, you could take a photo of your actual space and put it, you know
00:55:45Use it as your environment
00:55:46You can model your own room and put it into the simulator and it doesn't even come close to one percent
00:55:51of the experience of of what vr is supposed to be or ar
00:55:55That's the most frustrating thing as storytellers or because if you I mean if we're designing products
00:56:00We know that the end user is going to experience the same product as we're experiencing in their own space
00:56:06if you're telling the story in 2d like we had to do like we often have to do a software like dan alluded to
00:56:12It's so frustrating because you can't even come close to the feeling
00:56:16Of it until these technologies are pervasive where everybody's using it
00:56:19So, you know, there's no disparity between the superficial simulation of it and the real thing
00:56:25Yeah, andy you were smiling as he was saying that what was that experience like for you?
00:56:29Yeah, that experience in the dev lab was a little more nerve-wracking for me. I think than adam
00:56:35Uh with other vr headsets
00:56:37I have some experience where you know
00:56:39You build something on a pc and it is running great on this nvidia graphics card
00:56:45And then you go to build it on the quest and everything just falls apart
00:56:49and so I was
00:56:50I was really really
00:56:52Nervous about that happening because we'd been using the simulator for a few months
00:56:56But luckily the simulator is pretty representative of how the device works the software at least you don't get you know
00:57:02The full experience of wearing it and we went to that dev lab and it just worked like I expected
00:57:08I was just I was so excited. Yeah, that's pretty cool to apple's credit because they really have built a supercomputer device in that thing
00:57:15It's this it's not hobbled even the version 1.0 of it. The processor is not hobbled
00:57:20It can do what they want you to do with it
00:57:23Dan, what about you like building all this stuff making it work?
00:57:26Like you you're you're sort of deep in the details of it
00:57:29What is that experience like the first time you're actually sort of inside of the space getting to look at the space?
00:57:34I mean to apple's credit
00:57:35I mean they they had sort of laid the groundwork for this stuff with ar kit on the phones and
00:57:41Playing around with these models on an iphone you get a decent sense of like what level of quality you're going to get out of it
00:57:47You know all of the usdz format stuff, which is all very boring, but it's great that it worked out of the box
00:57:51Basically, so you kind of understood that they're going to wrap it in this sort of like soft world sphere of lighting
00:57:57So it accepts some of the light around you but in the filmmaking world from visual effects if a 3d model
00:58:03Doesn't look good
00:58:04You just like give it a million more polygons and render it and it's going to take a day to render a frame
00:58:09But it'll look great and you can't do that kind of stuff in vr or in any of these systems. So
00:58:15finding ways to
00:58:16Not destroy all of andy's work with a model that's you know, three gigabytes or something is very complicated work
00:58:22it's it's a it's a delicate balancing act between
00:58:25Detail and performance at all times. I mean there are a few tests we did that just
00:58:30They were just uh dead on arrival or it's just like yeah
00:58:33Just throw all the detail in the world at it because it'll look great. It's like oh
00:58:36My computer is dying. The vision pro doesn't like this
00:58:38Like let's take a step back for a minute and figure out like what we actually need to do to optimize it
00:58:42Which is very interesting because there's not a lot of people
00:58:44A there's not a lot of people trying this sort of stuff within their apps and b
00:58:47There's definitely not a lot of people talking about how to do it
00:58:49I think only recently we've gotten some guidance from apple in terms of like how to optimize your app for
00:58:54Vision os and it's like oh we missed those targets by a long shot
00:58:58But you know, we're doing our own version of that
00:59:01So, you know trying to align with what they want us to do is it's interesting. It's it's fun work, too
00:59:05yeah, and this level of detail is even more apparent and frustrating and challenging in our theater app that we're
00:59:11You know that we're sort of building out right now because it's not just a 3d object in front of you
00:59:16It's an immersive space that really does require detail in order to render believably at a massive scale
00:59:23so
00:59:24Like it's it's almost like 10x the challenge in the room as it is to just have the polygonal object in front of you
00:59:30and we made it harder by saying like we want people to be able to move around the space to to
00:59:34So like actually experience the theater if we just sat in one place and everything 20 yards away was, you know
00:59:40Fewer polygons and cheapened detail like that would be great for performance, but we don't want that out of our experience
00:59:46So we got to figure out how to make that work
00:59:48This is the thing i'm so stuck on when it comes to vision pro and the thing that I keep feeling as I use it
00:59:53There's so much cool tech in here
00:59:55And to a large extent it is remarkable that it works as well as it does forget about the fact that it's
01:00:003,500 which I think is ridiculous forget about the fact that it's so big forget about the battery life
01:00:05It's impressive that this thing exists at all. But like are we sure this is how it should be?
01:00:11Should I really have to laser focus my eyes on a button for the entire time it takes to click it?
01:00:16Do I want to do some things with my hands and other things with buttons?
01:00:20Is a virtual keyboard floating in the air a good idea?
01:00:23What is the best way to move windows around or send something to someone or open an app or anything else?
01:00:28These things get decided and then we treat them as if they were inevitable
01:00:32But it just isn't that way and it doesn't have to be that way
01:00:35And there's something exciting about the fact that on the vision pro all of this feels new and unknown
01:00:41And also there's something deeply annoying about the fact that so much of it right now just feels weird to use
01:00:47But from a big picture perspective
01:00:49I really like the way adam described how he thinks about the user experience and how the vision pro ought to feel
01:00:55We're in an interesting space with its own opportunity because we're trying to build experiences that feel like the real world but better
01:01:03Right. So just imagine you go outside and suddenly you want the information of the world at your fingertips
01:01:08So what is the interaction that your mind would design in that moment?
01:01:12How do you want to reach up and access the information and then have it go away?
01:01:16That's essentially what we're doing
01:01:17We're sitting our users down in a movie theater
01:01:19If you were in a movie theater that you could just chill out in all the time and be by yourself
01:01:24And you can summon any content to that big screen. How would you do that?
01:01:29What would be an interaction model or you know, a lot of it just translated to the outside space
01:01:34I think that's how designer ui designers have to think about this stuff is knowing that eventually 50 years in the future
01:01:41There will be no hardware and the world in front of us will always be sort of like have a digital layer to it
01:01:47That feels organic and real what is that interaction model, you know, so if you can summon things, you know
01:01:53Really that we are especially at this early phase of the os as a platform
01:01:58We're at the mercy of apple because apple, you know
01:02:01They'll let you do new cool things that they've deemed worthy of the sdk
01:02:06And then we will be able to do new cool features and I think that at some point there's an inflection point where
01:02:13Developers kind of invent new stuff and then apple follows but right now I think we're in the apple leading time of the of the process
01:02:21Do you feel like that's the right way for things to be right now?
01:02:24I think that's probably pretty normal for a new platform like this
01:02:27But are you are you like chafing at the edges of what apple will let you do or does it feel like we're in a good
01:02:31zone
01:02:32Yeah, but a perfect example is like playing with light to reflect what the real world feels like
01:02:38We know that we want when you use a real tv
01:02:41Especially a vintage one with a bezel the light that casts from the screen is reflected on the edges of the tv, right?
01:02:48Well, that is not easy to do with especially in os1 of reality kit
01:02:53We know that in apple's own immersive cinema
01:02:56When something is playing on that big screen the light bounces off the screen to the ceiling and the floor
01:03:03And in real time, it makes it feel very
01:03:06Material it makes it feel like the light is real and the surfaces are real and apple doesn't make that easy
01:03:12Because working with light as a source in reality kit version one was really not possible in version two
01:03:20Apple has decided let's make these tools available to developers and that means that we can start to build in
01:03:26this new
01:03:27Replication of reality that wasn't possible before and in our app in theater
01:03:31Andy came up with an ingenious way to fake it of reflections from the screen bouncing off the walls and the ceiling and floor
01:03:38But now we get to do it for real, which is very exciting
01:03:41Obviously a lot of this stuff is changing really fast
01:03:44Apple just announced vision os2 which has a bunch of big changes including some of what adam is talking about with reflections and light
01:03:51I mean these are the things right you have to change the way that light works
01:03:56In an api in order for apps to be able to build things that feel real like this is how long the pipeline is
01:04:02Television has been out since february and it has already changed a lot
01:04:05You can now browse and watch youtube inside of television. You can use shareplay to watch stuff with friends
01:04:11There are a few new ways to fast forward and rewind and control playback speed
01:04:15And you can now play spatial video on any of the screens, too
01:04:19That's kind of the vision pro thing right ultra retro tv playing the file format of the future supposedly
01:04:25Anyway, the last thing I asked the sandwich crew was how it's going being someone who sells vision pro apps
01:04:32It's funny because you know in the early days of iphone, I think everybody assumed app millionaires, you know
01:04:37you're just the business model for
01:04:39app development is you
01:04:41Make the app and then you sell a billion copies of it and you get rich
01:04:45But I think it's what's more interesting from a business perspective is what is what are the models that it opens up that weren't possible
01:04:52before and in our case, it's like for delivering content if our app is a
01:04:57content delivery system
01:04:58Then where are the business opportunities in that?
01:05:02It's pretty fascinating stuff the mind reels with possibilities, but I don't know like what in terms of app sales
01:05:08Oh, it's definitely been a loss
01:05:10I mean like this business runs at a cost at a net loss and I expected that to be the case
01:05:16I mean I held out hope, you know, we didn't none of us knew
01:05:19We didn't know if like we were going to get a hundred thousand downloads on the first day
01:05:23We did not
01:05:26But it turns out like that's not the exciting part of this the exciting part is like building a new
01:05:31It's a whole new infrastructure for creating software and running a business and that's where it really gets interesting
01:05:38Like a lot of developers i've talked to they're really optimistic about where all this could go
01:05:42And I sort of hope that they're right
01:05:44It'd be fun to have the vision pro become a huge new platform with lots of new kinds of things to do
01:05:50and the more there is to do
01:05:52The better the headset is and the better the headset is the more people will buy it
01:05:56And the more people who buy it the more developers will get on board and the more developers get on board the more there
01:06:00Is to do and then the flywheel is off and running
01:06:04This is the thing you need if you want a platform like this to work
01:06:07I've got a vision pro sitting right here next to me. Luckily. I didn't buy it
01:06:10I think the verge did and I just stole it for a while and as impressive as it is
01:06:15I just don't use it very much
01:06:16The only way that is going to change is if more developers find more of these silly fun weird things to make for it
01:06:23I really hope they do
01:06:26All right, we gotta take one more break and then we're gonna come back and take a question from the vergecast hotline
01:06:30We'll be right back
01:06:38All right
01:06:40All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline as always
01:06:42The number is eight six six verge one one. The email is vergecast at the verge.com
01:06:47We love all your questions and we try to answer at least one on the show every week this week
01:06:52I'm doing a weird thing, which is i'm going to try and answer a question from many months ago
01:06:58Because it's one i've been thinking a lot about ever since this thing came out. It's a vision pro question
01:07:03It's an old one, but I actually think it says a lot about where this is headed. So here it is
01:07:09This is maz
01:07:11One of the things that apple has been really good about over the years is a miniature
01:07:17registration
01:07:18Of really good computers the problem with the vision pro
01:07:22For me is that the actual computer?
01:07:25Aspect of that product is already pretty compact if you take off the light seal
01:07:31And the headband
01:07:33And even like the stems where like the speaker is and just look at the sort of like eye mask ish part of it
01:07:40It's pretty slim
01:07:42and
01:07:43Most of the bulk that you get from the headset is actually the distance needed
01:07:48Or like presumably needed to not fry your eyeballs off of just looking at really small screens in really bright light
01:07:56So, how do you expect vision pro to progress to something more wearable or more socially acceptable
01:08:03if the size of it is not actually
01:08:07The tech and it's actually just like natural
01:08:11Human physiology of not being able to strap lcds to your eyeballs really closely
01:08:16I'm curious what you guys see the vision pro series two or three or four or five
01:08:22Where the thing should get smaller, but just given the way they've built this around passthrough and lcd displays
01:08:30I don't expect it to follow the same path as some of their other products. Thank you. Bye
01:08:35So I think this is the question right?
01:08:37I think if you're apple you have to do one of two things here
01:08:42you either have to figure out how to take what the vision pro is basically in in its
01:08:47Relatively current hardware form and make it more palatable to people and I think what that looks like
01:08:53Is just making it cheaper, right?
01:08:55Like take this exact vision pro and make it half the price and I think it would be more than twice as compelling
01:09:00To more than twice as many people that's a hard thing to do
01:09:04That is the kind of thing that happens over time just as you get better technology
01:09:08But it doesn't happen quickly and it doesn't happen easily
01:09:11And so a lot of the stuff that we've seen for apple's new
01:09:15Cheaper simpler push that we've heard about has to do with the screens in particular. These screens are ridiculously expensive
01:09:22They're hard to produce
01:09:23They are as good as you will find in a headset
01:09:26And I think what we're going to see is apple try to just pull all of that down a little bit to make it cheaper
01:09:32And in theory lower resolution would mean lower power. It would mean
01:09:36Less need for things like cooling it would solve some other problems
01:09:40Just by not having to drive so many pixels all the time
01:09:44And so you might get a little bit smaller and more wearable there, but I don't think so
01:09:48The question is right that this thing is already pretty small like as a pure piece of hardware. It's pretty remarkable
01:09:55It's made of metal so you could get some weight back on that front
01:09:58It's definitely rigid in a way that I think over time these things will want to be a little more flexible
01:10:03Which will make them wearable, but I don't know how you make this thing that much smaller and that much lighter without
01:10:09Fundamentally changing what it is which brings me to the other point
01:10:12I just can't stop thinking about the difference between what the vision pro is and is trying to be
01:10:17and what the ray-ban meta smart glasses are and are trying to be and
01:10:22It's so obvious to me at this point that the ray-ban meta strategy is the right one
01:10:28I think especially if you believe that ai is going to change how we talk to computers
01:10:32Having something on your face that is essentially a very good microphone a good set of speakers and a camera actually gets you a
01:10:39Shocking amount of power out of your device
01:10:42You can do so much with a simple wearable thing that can see the world and talk to you
01:10:47That is massively powerful, especially if you believe ai is really the future what apple has built here is
01:10:54That plus a screen and an entertainment device and I think that's interesting and that's where we will go in the future
01:11:02but the road from here to there, I think looks a lot more like
01:11:06Smart glasses than it does like headsets if that makes sense the steps between
01:11:12Something like the ray-ban meta smart glasses and something like the quest even if you want to take the other meta product out there
01:11:18Are super unknown too. It's a lot of really hard problems to solve in displays and in processor efficiency
01:11:25And in how to get a gpu on your face that is good enough to work all day how to solve battery life
01:11:31like people talk about making a lot of huge progress in tech as like solving multiple physics miracles all at once and
01:11:39That's kind of what apple and meta need if you believe that these all-encompassing headsets are the thing
01:11:46But if you don't and i'm not sure that I do
01:11:48Then smart glasses is the answer and I think if you're apple you had the ipod before the iphone
01:11:56You could look at smart glasses as the ipod. They don't do as much but they do it very well
01:12:00They are the right form factor. They feel good people like them. They solve a couple of very specific problems
01:12:07and then
01:12:08Years later once the tech gets better once people get more comfortable with the idea of the form factor
01:12:14Once you've found a couple of new things to do and new ways to interact then you do the iphone
01:12:20We weren't ready for the iphone in 2001 when they started shipping ipods
01:12:25The technology wasn't there the world wasn't ready
01:12:28We didn't have the sort of cultural understanding of how all this stuff would work
01:12:31It just wouldn't have worked as well as it did six years later
01:12:34And I think headsets might be the same thing and apple just tried to skip all the way to like the iphone 10
01:12:42Instead of shipping the ipod and i'm totally brutalizing this metaphor, but I think I have no evidence for this
01:12:49But I think that if you're on apple's hardware team, you're looking at the ray-ban meta smart glasses and saying oh
01:12:55What we should have done is built something that does less stuff and is wearable
01:12:59Instead of trying to build the thing that does all the things including some things that people don't really want
01:13:05And isn't all that wearable. So the idea of what the vision pro is now
01:13:09It's going to be hard to make this thing more wearable
01:13:12There are some things that apple can do with the straps like just having the overhead strap
01:13:15Built in instead of having just the one around goes a long way towards making it wearable
01:13:20Actually adam lisagor from sandwich said in our interview that he has actually taken out the light seal
01:13:27He uses the overhead strap and uses it essentially like an ar device so he can see around it and
01:13:33Uses it much less sort of immersively, but it's still very comfortable for him
01:13:37And I think that's really clever and there are more ways that apple can start to press on that
01:13:41Solving some of the battery stuff will go a long way like just having that cord on your face is a real wearability problem
01:13:47I think putting the battery on the headset is also a bad idea again physics miracles
01:13:51But that's one thing you'll start to see I wouldn't be surprised to see apple use a less heavy material
01:13:57Even if it's slightly less impressive again, if you want to get the price down
01:14:00That's another way to do it and it'll also have the delightful side effect of pulling some weight off the device
01:14:05So again, there are little things apple can do around the edges here
01:14:08But I think if you want to see apple do something more wearable
01:14:12It's gonna have to look like a different device and I would bet I wouldn't bet a lot
01:14:17But I would bet a little that what apple is going to do next with the vision pro is going to look less
01:14:23Like a worse vision pro and more like something else entirely I could be wrong
01:14:28Maybe this is just wishful thinking because I would love for apple to make something like the meta ray-ban smart glasses
01:14:34But that connects to siri and all of my other devices as seamlessly as like a pair of airpods does I want that?
01:14:40So maybe i'm just hoping for that
01:14:42But you can see it right like all the things that airpods are
01:14:45On your face plus a camera that feels powerful
01:14:48It feels like apple and you could see that being the vision and then this being the vision pro
01:14:53That's how you get to wearability as far as i'm concerned because I don't think we're anywhere close
01:14:57To a world in which you can build something that is as powerful and capable as the vision pro
01:15:02And feels as good on my face as a pair of glasses or even close
01:15:06And some of the reporting particularly from mark kerman at bloomberg has said that apple is working on something more like ar glasses
01:15:12But that's still a couple of years away. That wouldn't totally shock me
01:15:15But again from what i've seen from these meta glasses
01:15:19They don't have to do that much to be really useful to people camera speaker microphone
01:15:24Incredibly powerful and I think there's a lot more to do there and I think we might see apple do it sooner rather than later
01:15:31Anyway, that's all a lot of conjecture
01:15:32I'd love to hear what you think if you have had a vision pro for any of the last five months
01:15:37I want to know what you think we got a lot of feedback from folks when we published our review and in those early
01:15:42Days, but now that things have settled has the vision pro found a way into your routine
01:15:46Are you still using it all the time?
01:15:48Did you return it because it's thirty five hundred dollars?
01:15:50Are you finding new ways all the time to use it?
01:15:53Do you use it for something totally unusual that no one talks about tell us?
01:15:57I want to hear everything 866 verge 11 is the hotline. The email is vergecast at the verge.com reach out. I want to hear everything
01:16:06All right, that is it for the verge cast
01:16:07Thank you to everybody who was on the show and thank you as always for listening
01:16:11We are off on friday, by the way, we'll be back next week
01:16:14But everybody's taking a few days off for the holiday if you're also celebrating july 4th this weekend
01:16:20I hope you have a wonderful holiday. There is lots more on everything we talked about at the verge.com
01:16:24I'll put a bunch of links in the show notes
01:16:26You should go read all of our old vision pro coverage and especially some of the news about what's coming up
01:16:32In the next couple of versions of this thing. I think the vision pro is going to change a lot
01:16:36It's gonna be really interesting also read the verse.com surprising amount of news going on this summer
01:16:41This is usually like the dead period of the tech news cycle that ain't happening and it's about to be phone season again
01:16:46So it's gonna get crazy as always if you have thoughts questions feelings or vision pro apps
01:16:51You think I should try you can always email us at verge cast at the verge.com call the hotline 866 verge 1-1
01:16:57We love hearing from you
01:16:58This show is produced by andrew marino liam james and will pour verge cast is verge production and part of the vox media podcast network
01:17:04As I mentioned we'll be back next week after the break. Everybody. Have a great holiday. We'll see you then rock and roll