Besides marketing, I fail to see how the Vision Pro "is a completely different animal."

OP will be watching a movie... perhaps the most basic VR experience imaginable. It's not a novelty only the Vision Pro delivers...

Have you owned one?

The immense amount of work that went into making it a spatial compute platform stands out to me. It's not just something with low latency delivery of video to two eyes and a bunch of head and balance tracking. It's a compute platform that knows where things are in space, and what you're doing in that space as well.

To me, it's a totally different animal than a VR headset. I really, really hope Apple sticks with the platform; in 10 years, the hardware could be COMPLETELY different. It probably should be in a lot of ways.

But, the software and technology built that lets the OS maker, app makers and consumers engage with something that's spatially aware is huge. Huge. And that's a pretty hard thing to build, and will be a difficult moat to cross for new entrants. It seems likely to be the backbone of a major firm eventually.

To my eyes, the Pro demonstrates the (very early) viability of making spatially aware hardware and software, and sketches out the reasons it might be incredibly compelling for a variety of use cases, not just entertainment.

Anyway, I'm not too hung up on hardware here, although I stand by what I said, great entertainment experience, tantalizing work experience. All this work by Apple now could easily be re-pointed at, say, environmental cameras and microphones embedded in an office/living room, and work with projectors, thinner glasses, whatever. To me, the thing is the first viable steps toward a Spatially aware full stack operating system + hardware, and that is unique.

Sorry, but this reads like marketing fluff or someone desperately trying to justify their purchase.

It's VR... and OP will be watching a movie. OP isn't going to be "spatially computing" anything on an airplane. This thread is filled with owners saying they hardly use it after the novelty wore off. We've seen this fever frenzy with other VR platforms - people are amazed, throw down a lot of dough, then after a few weeks/months the device sits on the shelf collecting dust.

Notably you're avoiding the question of whether you've owned or indeed ever even used the device.

Kind of odd to be sufficiently motivated to battle someone's first-hand report if that's the case.

> Kind of odd to be sufficiently motivated to battle someone's first-hand report

Someone's first-hand report that reads like marketing ad-copy? Go ahead and read what was written... a lot of hand-wavy stuff that the rest of this thread says nobody uses it for anyway... "spatial computing"... what a farce.

For watching a movie, Vision Pro is a scam. It is no better than the other options for this task... and the rest is a gimmick.

One does not need to prove themselves a sucker by buying Apple's Juice to understand this device for what it is.

You're just wrong about this, sorry -- your comments make it sound like you haven't put time in with one, and if you haven't, then it might be you could become more informed by talking with someone who has.

To respond to how you imagine me, I have no need to "justify" my purchase; for reference I don't use it that often, and I'm glad I bought it for a peek into the future. You may notice that I said I have a Magic Leap 2 -- significantly more expensive, and used for under 2 hours -- I would not recommend someone even try it out. And I wouldn't even say I regret buying that -- it's useful to see what $8bn of early tech development gets you, and they did some things amazingly well.

Further, I am fully aware of the use cycle of VR goggles, see my above list of devices I've purchased.

These goggles are really not VR, and it's a mistake to think they are without using them. For instance, on a plane, wearing the vision pro, when a stewardess approaches you, the AVP notice a human is entering your field of vision, and blur them in to the scene, regardless of what you're doing.

Is this world changing? No. Is it "VR with passthrough"? Nope. It's a much harder thing, a spatially aware pipeline (one that can recognize humans) interjecting itself into a rendering pipeline. There are a number of these little moments with the AVP that show Apple did the hard, very hard work to build a new OS pipeline. Right now, they're using it for entertainment, and if you're wealthy enough, they're a great purchase for a plane ride. They cost less than a business class upgrade, and they make the flight go away.

Later, I predict if they stick with it, the IP and knowhow they're building here are going to be super valuable.

You've probably been saying similar things about VR in general over the past decade... and yet here we are, still a novelty that collects dust.

It's ok to be excited about tech toys. But let's not pretend these things are going to change the world or anything. Nobody is going to walk around with these glued to their face... we already stopped seeing these folks in public.

It's well established that it has the most advanced display of any headset and its not a secret that a better display typically leads to a better viewing experience. I get that people feel like a $300 device is good enough, but if Apple were to drop the price and match the Oculus, and you purchased it at a reasonable price to you, your opinion would be different.

Which is to say, its not based on any objective measure of experience with the device or the technology. But how much expendable income you have compared to others.

Agreed that this is a super luxury super early adopter purchase -- on those terms, I recommend it wholeheartedly. Otherwise -- wait four years. The hardware needs two revs, and the software needs two revs, plus an app ecosystem.

That said, it could become absolutely indispensable very quickly if OpenAI builds a quality spatial app. Like, this summer. We'll see.