The Apple Vision Pro review

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss Nilay's review of the Apple Vision Pro, and then answer questions from our listeners. Further reading: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not Apple Vision Pro review (video) Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of variable immersion. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am sitting here updating a bunch of apps on my Meta Quest 3. So I tend to go kind of in and out with VR stuff. I had a long run of doing workouts and Supernatural, so I was using the thing almost every day. And then, you know, it was winter, I got lazy, so I didn't do that for a while. And then recently, I got really into the Assassin's Creed game, Assassin's Creed Nexus VR. It's super cool, but then I had one of those moments of being like, okay, I'm spending too much time with this game, time to stop. But recently, I've been picking this thing back up because, I'm gonna be honest with you, I've been having some FOMO. So this week is the week Apple's Vision Pro comes out.

• 0:45David Pierce?

  We've been waiting for Apple's AR, VR, mixed reality, whatever you want to call it, $3,500 headset to come out, and it's coming out this week on Friday, February 2nd. I've been hearing from people who pre-ordered one, I've been hearing lots of ideas about apps that are gonna come out. It all seems very exciting and it's just making me feel bad because I don't have one. But you know who does have one? It's Nilay Patel, The Verge's editor in chief and my Vergecast co-host. So we figured for this episode, we would just grill Nilay about the Vision Pro. He's spent the last few days writing about it, testing it, trying to figure out what this thing means in the world and whether it's worth your $3,500. So we got lots of questions from you, we have lots of questions for Nilay. Alex and I are gonna spend, I mean, potentially like many, many, many hours, asking Nilay

• 1:30David Pierce?

  all of our questions about the Vision Pro to figure out, not only if it's better than this thing, the Quest 3 that I'm in right now, but if it's the future. Is this the next thing? Is this where we're headed? So that's what we're gonna do for the whole rest of this episode. It's all Vision Pro, all the time, all week, because it's headset week. All that is coming up in just a second, but first, I feel like I just guilted myself into doing a workout, so I'm gonna pop into Supernatural for a little bit, do some boxing, and then we're gonna get to it. This is The Vergecast, we'll be right back.

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• 3:04David Pierce?

  Welcome back. All right, it is 9:10 a.m. on Tuesday, January 30th, which means 10 minutes ago was when the embargo for Vision Pro reviews lifted. There's a bunch of them out there. Our friend Marques Brownlee has one. Our friend Joanna Stern has one. CNET has a video I was watching. I just seen has a fun video that I was just poking through. There's a bunch of good stuff out there. But before the review publishes is actually one of my favorite moments, especially being sort of inside the process. Because you go through all this testing and you have to decide what to make of this thing. Not just is it good? Not is it cool? Does it have some neat features? But is this a good package? Is this worth buying? Is it worth the price? And I think the challenge for us and from watching some of these reviews for a lot of other folks is to figure out what to make of this thing.

• 3:49David Pierce?

  Everybody seems to agree that the tech is amazing. There's just no question that Apple did a lot of the things it was trying to do very well. But to what end? What is this for? What is this thing about? What are you supposed to do with it? Why does it exist? These are the big existential questions that both as a reviewer and as a person thinking about buying a product like this, you have to think- Think more about with a first generation device like this. It seems like the Vision Pro really is the first of something, but exactly what that is and where it's going and whether we want it is hard to know. So about 24 hours ago, as I'm recording this, we sat down with Neelai. We dragged him into the studio in this like haze of doing all of the review stuff

• 4:32David Pierce?

  and tried to go through that before the review publishes, before he'd seen anything else, before we'd gotten comments and everything. I just wanted us to sort of pick his brain about the review. So for the whole rest of the show, it's gonna be just me, Alex Cranz and Neelai Patel, and we are going to go deep on the Vision Pro. Neelai's review, how he felt, what it was like to use this thing, and a whole bunch more. Let's get into it. Neelai Patel, welcome.

• 4:59Nilay Patel?

  Hello.

• 4:59David Pierce?

  Alex Cranz, hello. Hello. Neelai, we have to talk about your life status. We've all reviewed gadgets, all three of us, and I know that this is the point of the process where it can either be going very well or you can be brewing a lot of things you've decided about your life and decisions you've made in the past that have led you to this moment. How are you feeling?

• 5:18Nilay Patel?

  I want the audience to know that David has chosen to record this podcast with me at the most vulnerable time for any reviewer.

• 5:24David Pierce?

  This was very much on purpose, yes. It's right now, it is 27 hours before embargo time.

• 5:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:31David Pierce?

  Which is when everything about everything you've ever done in your life is suddenly up in the air.

• 5:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so just to give people the context, I've had the Vision Pro for a little less than a week. It'll be six days when you hear this. Apple Security arrived at my house with the Vision Pro last week. It was pretty intense. And we've had it, we've been using it. This is the moment in the review process where the video is shot, it's being edited, the written review is mostly written, it's in edits, and I'm just sitting around waiting to see if I'm right, which again is the most vulnerable part of any review. Like I've done, I've said what I think, here's what I think. And then tomorrow it'll get published and everyone will yell at me or not yell at me, who knows? But so David is like, this is when I want to talk to you, which is mean and unfair. Perfect time.

• 6:17David Pierce?

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

• 6:19Nilay Patel?

  And you can hear it. We've been pulling basically all-nighters for a week. Uh, and I hope you can hear it in my voice, I think.

• 6:25David Pierce?

  It's been a lot. So in an effort to make this easy on you, basically what is going to happen here is we have a long series of questions. Some of them from us and some of them from listeners. We asked for questions on the hotline and in the email and on threads and we got like a billion of them. Some of them are very weird, but basically we're sort of at the top here. We're going to go through your review like beat by beat. I just, we have a bunch of questions and we're going to talk about them because this thing is weird and complicated. And we're going to sort of wind towards your big feelings about this at the end. And then we're going to get into a bunch of questions we got from people. Does that make sense?

• 7:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:00David Pierce?

  Okay. So the whole first section of this is called, is it good? And we're just going to name a bunch of things and we're going to ask about if it's good. And Alex, you should obviously ask all the questions I'm missing. Lots of stuff going on here. But okay, we have, we have a bunch of these, but the first one is, is wearing the thing. Is it good?

• 7:19Nilay Patel?

  Medium.

• 7:20David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  Medium. It's heavy. It is not, not heavy. Everything about this product is a fight between what Apple wants it to be and what it is. As I've been using the thing, there's a very clear gap between Apple's ambitions and dreams and the product that they can make. And the product they can make today is the best version of this thing that anyone has ever made. I'd want to be very clear about that. The headset you put on your face where you look through lenses at a screen, no one's ever done it like this. It is very good. It is obviously not the thing that they want. And so their ambition is just way out ahead of the reality of this product. And the reality of this product is that it's heavy. It weighs more than an 11-inch iPad Pro.

• 8:04Nilay Patel?

  11-inch iPad Pro is 470 grams. This one is somewhere between 6 and 650, depending on its configuration. Then there's the headband situation where the really cool one, that one you want to use, the solo band with the ridges in the back and the wheel, the one they like designed.

• 8:19David Pierce?

  The full ski goggles look, yeah.

• 8:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's like, that's the one I've been using. It's, it's fine, but there's, there's like not a lot of affordance. Is in it. So you know, like the back of your head, there's like a ridge, you know, to your neck. Like those are in different spots in different people's heads, but there's no like hinge point. So if you just get what you get, like the thing just compresses around your head. And wherever the back of your head lines up with your eyes. That's what you get. You know, it's, it's like, there's just that, there's the, the fact of the thing is there's not a lot of affordances to wearing it. And then when you're wearing it, it's hot. Like it gets hot after a while. And maybe that's you get hot after a while. Maybe it's it gets hot after a while. But you're like, I'm wearing a big, heavy thing on my face and then you just take it off.

• 9:02Nilay Patel?

  And then when you take it off, you're no longer looking at screens. You're just back in the world and you're like, oh, this is very nice.

• 9:08David Pierce?

  The thing that I remember, especially with a lot of the early Oculus and Quest stuff, was there was that feeling where you would take it off and you would kind of like scrunch and stretch your face. Because you would realize like your, your forehead and the sort of bridge of your nose had gotten just tons of pressure.

• 9:26Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 9:26David Pierce?

  As you're wearing the thing. Is that the feeling? Like, is it, is it sort of the same thing?

• 9:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, especially on my forehead.

• 9:31David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 9:31Nilay Patel?

  I feel like after a long while, you feel like your eyebrows are just working. Like you just, you just start doing the thing with your eyebrows. Like I'm just going to lift it with my face a little bit more. Uh, and then you, and then you monkey with the fit. It's not the worst. Like make, take the decision to take the battery out of it to reduce weight. I understand why they made that decision. And it's fine because the thing is such a stationary product, like in its way. The, the battery just goes on my table and you're fine. But it is like, they had to do it. If they'd add the batteries, that's 383 grams or something. If they'd added another 383 grams of weight to this, it would be a disaster.

• 10:06David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Nilay Patel?

  So it's as close as they can get it to being comfortable. But for a long duration of time, it is not.

• 10:13David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 10:13Alex Cranz?

  Can you expand on it being stationary? Does that mean you're just like, everything you do in it, you're just sitting still?

• 10:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you and I talk about the Quest all the time. The Quest wants you to get up and move and play Beat Saber and Supernatural and there's games in the Quest are like virtual reality games. So like, I'm going to run around in virtual reality. I'm going to do stuff. This thing is like, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to look at windows.

• 10:38Nilay Patel?

  Those windows could be everywhere, but like mostly it's sit down and look at stuff. There are surprisingly few games for this thing that feel like you need to move around. The only one I've seen is Super Fruit Ninja, which was in a demo, which is not even out yet. So I haven't even gotten a chance to play Super Fruit Ninja, which is very funny. And I haven't seen a single VR game yet. There are some coming, right? The thing supports Unity. I'm told that Unity developers across the industry are working very hard on bringing games to see. That's to be seen, but all the games right now are mixed reality games. We're just like a game board is floating in space.

• 11:14David Pierce?

  Yeah, so it seems like it is big and heavy in the way you would sort of expect it to be big and heavy, but not like worse than a lot of other things. Like it's just a headset. I feel like so much of this, and it goes back to that thing you were saying at the beginning, like Apple would love for this not to be a headset, but it's a headset.

• 11:29Nilay Patel?

  It is super a headset. You're going to ask all these questions about, is it good? And the frame for that, all of them is like, is this the best headset ever made?

• 11:38David Pierce?

  Right.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  And the answer is almost always yes, but it's a headset.

• 11:43David Pierce?

  Yeah, so just add parentheses for a headset to all of the questions we're about to get to.

• 11:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:47David Pierce?

  Uh, the next one is the displays. Are they good? This seems very important.

• 11:51Nilay Patel?

  They are displays. This is, this is what I mean. You cannot, the displays are incredible. They are a triumph of engineering that you can't see pixels. The pixels are smaller than red blood cells, right? They're 7.5 microns. They're about the size.

• 12:05David Pierce?

  One of those very cool and totally meaningless comparisons.

• 12:09Nilay Patel?

  Right, but they're like itty bitty like, and then each of those pixels has three RGB sub pixels. This isn't like a pentile pattern. It's like straight, like Apple calls it S stripe. You can go look at a photo. It's RGB for each sub pixel, each of which can be individually controlled. Like the engineering of this little display panel, or two of them in each device, that works when you're moving your head around, like I'm beyond impressed. But then you're looking at them through lenses and there's just the reality of a display in a lens system. So the lenses have specular highlights where what looks like specular highlight. When you look at something bright, the lenses have color. Color fringing, like green, pink color fringing around the edges.

• 12:52Nilay Patel?

  That if you look for it in certain conditions, it's just gonna be there. The lenses are slightly vignetted. The lenses are slightly distorted at the edges. I asked Apple about this and this is, they know. Like, they're like, we're doing a bunch of hardware and software to minimize these effects, but as you, they were, they said something to me like, as you, you're well aware of displays and lenses, you are obviously familiar with these problems. I was like, yeah, yeah. Here they are. Here's a thing that I, I keep thinking about and I actually really want your feedback on whether this is important or not. Apple's spec for the display is 92% of the DCIP3 color gamut, which is an incredible thing to put on a webpage. It sounds really good. That's an Eli bait right there. DCIP3 is like, you know, high-end color gamut for cinema people.

• 13:33Nilay Patel?

  But it itself only represents like 53 or 54% of the colors your eyes can see. So 92% of DCIP3 means the displays can only show you 49% of the colors your eyes can see. I'm like a disp- you know I'm a display nerd. I don't care on a laptop or a phone. Like, this is stuff I, I think about and I like, I like reading about. If you're like asking me to look through it all the time, I'm like, well, you just threw away 50% of the color information in the world. I don't know how, like, I emotionally do not know how to like comprehend that. Right? Because in every other context, I just don't care. Because I can just look around. So displays are incredible. Like, I don't want to overdo it. The displays are incredible. They are a triumph. No one has ever engineered or shipped displays like this at scale.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  They're so, just think about how tiny those pixels are. And then you're like, oh, they are still displays. Right.

• 14:24Alex Cranz?

  Like, you never forget, right?

• 14:26Nilay Patel?

  You never forget. You are looking at screens, like, the most screens. And then on, you know, the reality pass-through is camera-based. So there's just like motion blur. Even a bright room, when you like look around, there's motion blur on the displays. You can't, you just can't overcome the inherent nature of cameras and displays. So the question is like, is, are the displays good? Is really a question like, how is the product designed to be used? And can the displays do all the things that you think they should be able to do? And the answer is they are the most incredible displays ever. They're a triumph of engineering. You are still looking at screens and being asked to perceive reality through screens is a, is a tall ask.

• 15:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's a weird one. I feel like for this first run of this, when this technology is new to most people and new to like existence, that feels like a somewhat acceptable trade off, right? Like, we're gonna hit a point where, especially with something like this, if I am looking at my room, and then I put on a headset, and suddenly my room, which it's still showing me, is different, that feels bad in a way that like I turn on my TV and trees don't look the same color they do out my window, but they're like different trees in a different place, and my brain understands that that's a screen. Like, your brain is not supposed to understand that this is a screen, right? Like, that's what success looks like, is that you forget you're looking at screens. And for now, at least, it feels like I'm

• 15:48David Pierce?

  looking at screens and they're very good. Like, just the fact that you didn't even mention how it feels to like read text on a webpage feels like a victory to me, because it means it was fine. And that is, to me, at least for this first one, that's the bar, is like, can I look at stuff? And it seems like we're there.

• 16:06Nilay Patel?

  You can read text on a webpage, the refresh rates, it can go up to 100 hertz. I mean, again, incredible technical achievement with these displays. Not even a hint of, boy, I can imagine how these displays could be better. Like, incredible technical achievement with these displays. And what digital information, right? Windows, videos, Mac mirror, like, all that stuff looks good. But again, the displays are being asked to pass through reality, and your eyes are better than screens and cameras. And that is a historic problem. Like, I don't know that we can overcome that problem.

• 16:43Alex Cranz?

  Well, I was gonna ask, is it, you know, when you think of AR, the two kind of most successful, I'm using big scare quotes here, most successful ones have been what? Magic Leap and HoloLens?

• 16:53David Pierce?

  That's a bleak statement.

• 16:54Alex Cranz?

  I use the scare quotes, guys. I use the scare quotes. Is the experience, just that that that interaction with the real world through this headset, is that better in this than in those systems?

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  What's fascinating about both of those is, one, they failed. Two, there's like no AR happening in this thing. None. There are exactly three AR things that I have seen so far. And by AR, I mean, digital information layered over the real world, where the real world and the virtual world interact.

• 17:27Nilay Patel?

  Right, so virtual reality, you're just in a virtual world, you're doing stuff in a virtual world, the real world doesn't matter. Mixed reality is what most people have experienced, it's what most of this is. Where you're in the real world and you just like put up virtual stuff, but there's no connection between the real world and the virtual world.

• 17:40David Pierce?

  Right.

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  Right, so I've got windows, Safari windows are open all around me. It's not like they're sticking to the walls, like they're just like floating all around me. And then that bubble can move through the past. It's weird, but it, you know, like, that's a mixed reality and that's what most people are familiar with and that's a lot of this. The three AR features I've seen so far in the Vision Pro. Two of which I think are historically important, like should go down as footnotes in the history of AR. One, when you open a Mac laptop and you look at it and it's your laptop on your iCloud, a button floats above the screen that says "Connect."

• 18:13David Pierce?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  And you can just reach out and push it and then your Mac display mirrors into the Vision Pro. Incredible.

• 18:20David Pierce?

  That rules.

• 18:21Nilay Patel?

  Two, when you are typing on a Bluetooth keyboard and you look down, it knows where the keyboard is and it puts a text preview window above it. So you can look at your fingers typing on the keys and see what's being typed.

• 18:30David Pierce?

  Oh, so instead of having the text box like way up here while you're looking down at the keyboard, it brings the text box down to the keyboard?

• 18:36Nilay Patel?

  Right, I've got a big Google Doc up there, I'm typing away and I look down at the keyboard and I can see what I'm typing, so I don't have to like move my head around.

• 18:44David Pierce?

  Clever.

• 18:44Nilay Patel?

  And it positions that box correctly near the keyboard and it shows you what you're typing. That is a true AR feature, right? Yeah. There's a connection between what I'm doing in the real world and a connection in the virtual world and that is amazing. Again, I think these are like the first mainstream AR features to ever ship. Historic. The third one that I've seen is the loading screen for Super Fruit Ninja where you can throw a strawberry at a pig that's running around your floor. That is not even shipping yet. I only saw that in a demo that Apple gave me. It feels less historic. I'm just gonna say, I don't think that is quite as historic.

• 19:18David Pierce?

  I feel like this is true erasure of the thing where I can put an Ikea couch in my living room through my iPad.

• 19:25Nilay Patel?

  But that's what Apple's been demoing forever, right?

• 19:28David Pierce?

  It's the only feature idea anyone has ever had until this thing.

• 19:32Nilay Patel?

  And it's just not here. I asked and you know, they're like, game developers are working on this, like, you know, the most charitable read of this thing is this is a developer kit.

• 19:40David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Nilay Patel?

  And so they're gonna build all these and they're yet to come and I think that if you want to be really fair to this thing, that's how you think about it. But Apple's positioning of the thing, the thing they're asking it to do, the ad they put out is like people wearing it while they're just like hanging out doing laundry and a call comes in. And you're like, what is the value of wearing this if it's not doing anything for you? And the value should be a bunch of AR stuff, not I'm waiting for the phone to ring. And I, there's, again, there's a real tension between the ambition of the product and how it's been communicated and the reality of the product.

• 20:09David Pierce?

  Yeah. Okay, that's good. So, and I think this is related and we've kind of halfway answered it, but the next one I had written down here is the pass through. Is it good?

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  It is as good as any pass through can ever be, and I think pass through is a dead end.

• 20:20David Pierce?

  Okay, that's essentially what I wanted you to say. And this is where, this is where we get into questions about like optical AR and the question of like, what are these things supposed to look like in the future? And one of your hobby horses, which you've talked about a lot on this podcast is like, a VR headset might be the wrong direction for this. Because eventually, if it's going to be glasses, you're going to have things like peripheral vision and light is going to be able to get in from the outside. So like even the best possible version of this thing we're trying to do is not the thing. And, and it doesn't seem like using this has changed your mind on that at all.

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  It's displays and cameras.

• 20:52David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 20:52Nilay Patel?

  So you've got a thing over your head and then there's a camera looking at the world for you and it's showing it on the display. And that just, you already, if you're a Vergecast listener, you already know a bunch of stuff about cameras and displays, just by osmosis from being around the show.

• 21:06David Pierce?

  We're so sorry.

• 21:07Nilay Patel?

  In low light, what does a camera have to do? It has to increase the ISO or increase the shutter speed. They can increase the shutter speed because they need the latency to be so low. So you can tell what it's doing is really ramping ISO and then doing a bunch of noise reduction. So in low light, things just get, the world is less sharp. I walked into my bathroom wearing this the other day and turned around and I couldn't find the light switch.

• 21:27David Pierce?

  Oh, wow.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  Right? It was just like too dark in there for me to see the light switch. I took the thing off and I was like, where are the lights? You know, it's like, so there's a thing that happens there. It is incredible passer. Again, it is the best that has ever been done on a consumer device. It is the best that most people will ever experience. Alex, I don't know about the, the Vario headset that you've talked about. Addie is familiar with it. She was my editor on this. She's like, you know, it's an enterprise product. It's way more expensive, like. So for a consumer headset, this is definitely the, the best passer that has ever shipped. It might be better than the Vario, you know, but the Vario is like aimed at enterprise applica-, it's just like a different thing. For a consumer product, this thing is the best you will get.

• 22:03Nilay Patel?

  And it can do things that no other passer I've ever seen can do. I can just use my phone with no blooming, like Apple's HDR video processing capabilities are incredible. And they're doing it in real time at 12 milliseconds of latency. So. Stunning technical achievement. You're asking it to replace reality. You've set the bar so high that like, I don't know that it can be crossed. I can't sit here and imagine how you could make cameras and screens overcome their limitations. It like a real way, like maybe noise reduction can get even better. But you have to make it 50 times better for this to substitute for reality. And so there's just, when I say it's a dead end, it's like, this is as good as anyone has ever done it.

• 22:46Nilay Patel?

  And it feels like optical AR is still the thing you want. Where light is just passing through some glasses, some lenses, and their screens are being put over it. And that's really hard. And I think there's a reason Apple shipped this because no one has gotten there yet.

• 22:59David Pierce?

  There was some technology, not that long ago, I think it might've been self-driving cars, that somebody described as like really amazing and three physics miracles away from being possible. And I feel like there's some of that in here too, that it's like, the things that we're doing here are incredible. And we fundamentally have to change the laws of the universe in order to get to the next thing after this.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that feels, that feels correct with this device.

• 23:21Alex Cranz?

  It's kind of like robotics, right?

• 23:23David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Alex Cranz?

  Where you're always expecting the, the robot to walk like a human, but actually humans are really well made.

• 23:30Nilay Patel?

  For that thing. Humans are not well made for mounting hardware on like a VR headset on your face.

• 23:35David Pierce?

  I have found myself wondering and talking to you about this thing many times, who the like platonic ideal of the Vision Pro wearer is? And like what the measurements of their face are? Cause you know, there is like, there is a head in there that is like just crushing it with the Vision Pro.

• 23:49Nilay Patel?

  Apple, you know, Apple like measures everyone ears to make the AirPods. I asked if there was a maximum head size. And I was told, uh, we have not considered that, but there is a maximum hair size.

• 23:59David Pierce?

  Wow. It's Craig. If you have bigger hair than Craig.

• 24:02Nilay Patel?

  It is like very, it's not like a small, it is very large, but there is some sort of maximum hair size.

• 24:08David Pierce?

  We have to find the maximum hair size. This is now the first cat's main goal. Uh, all right, let's keep going. Audio, which I think is a sneakily important and kind of under discussed feature of all of these headsets. Uh, is it good?

• 24:21Nilay Patel?

  It's great. No, no complaints. It is very loud. Uh, the spatial stuff is really cool. When you push the window, I watch. The NFC championship game on YouTube TV in the browser on the thing last night. And as I pushed the browser window away, the Detroit Lions got farther and farther away from me. You know, like, that's cool. It is very loud. Everyone around you can hear what you're doing. So if you are in a public place, you should wear the, you should, in particular, you should wear second generation AirPods Pro. You can use any Bluetooth headphones you want, but the second generation AirPods Pro get all of the features. So they get spatial audio, they get lower latency, they get 48 kilohertz, like, you just want to use those.

• 24:57David Pierce?

  Also feels like the right, you don't want big headphones with these, like you don't need more weight on your head as you're wearing this. Yeah, okay, but in, but no, no notes. You're a guy who cares deeply about this stuff. You're, you're good with spatial audio. You're happy about this.

• 25:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sure if I had more time and sleep, I would have notes on the audio, but no, no notes.

• 25:15David Pierce?

  Everyone has just been sneaking up on you for several days now.

• 25:19Nilay Patel?

  But again, there's not, again, because there's not a lot of AR experiences or even VR experiences, that thing hasn't happened. It's just windows are playing audio at you. I was on a FaceTime call with Joanna and Marquez so we could look at personas and, uh, boy. And they, their PS3 characters sounded like they were talking to me from where they were, which is cool.

• 25:39David Pierce?

  Part of that is really cool. All right, one more, and then we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna get into some of the like, how you use this thing stuff. Battery life, is it good?

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  Irrelevant. That's my answer. It's, it's fine. Uh, it's two and a half hours. We haven't had a chance to like do a battery rundown. I'm not even sure that I would want to subject anyone to do a battery rundown. And that's what I mean by it's irrelevant. If you are in this thing for two and a half hours, boy, are you gonna feel it? I can't, I just, I personally cannot imagine a situation where you want to be in it for that long. I know Joanna wore it for like 20 hours straight. Some enormous, I don't know what the actual number is, because as we are recording this, I've not read her review. But when I had talked to her on that FaceTime call, she'd been wearing it for five hours. And I'm very worried. I love her to pieces. She's one of my very closest friends. I'm so worried about her. I just can't imagine a situation where you want to hit the battery life.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  And then because it is so stationary, you're, it feels like it'll be close to power. Now, the one situation where I could see it being a problem is a plane. But then you're sitting, so you can just like plug in a battery, like you'll be fine.

• 26:43David Pierce?

  Can you hot swap the batteries? That's a question we've gotten a bunch.

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  You cannot hot swap the batteries. The batteries are, it's a mechanical twist connector. It's very satisfying. It's like a big cyber decky twist connector, you know? And it lights up. The battery has a motion sensor, so when you pick it up, the light glows green or orange. It's very Apple. There's no button to tell you the battery status. It has a motion sensor inside. At $34.99, you can do anything. So it just picks up and glows. But you can't hot swap it from the headset itself. You can just plug another battery into it over USB-C.

• 27:12David Pierce?

  All right, let's take a quick break and then we're going to come back and talk about a bunch of the ways you actually use this thing. Be right back.

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• 28:54David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Next one on my list. I think we should get into the like, life inside of the headset thing. And I feel like there are two big parts of the how you use this thing that really sort of define whether this thing is gonna work or not. I guess the first one is, is the eye tracking. So eye tracking, is it good?

• 29:13Nilay Patel?

  It's as good as anyone has ever shipped.

• 29:17David Pierce?

  I'm just gonna start playing that for myself at the beginning of every one of these answers.

• 29:20Alex Cranz?

  Which version of Toby does it really like perfectly replicate?

• 29:24David Pierce?

  That's Toby with two eyes.

• 29:27Nilay Patel?

  It is the best eye tracking that anyone has ever shipped. It's not good enough.

• 29:31Alex Cranz?

  Ooh.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  This is, like, I'm just gonna keep coming back to this and it's gonna be frustrating. Until you use it, it's the best, the first time you use it. Until you use it, it's hard to even for me to explain what I'm talking about.

• 29:45David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 29:46Nilay Patel?

  The first time you put it on, and we, you know, so many of us have had that demo. It's magic. You look at stuff, it highlights, you click your fingers together. If you get it wrong, like, oh, you just have to get used to it, right? Like, that's the experience that you have in that first demo.

• 30:00David Pierce?

  The idea is basically like, where your eyes focus is a cursor. It's sort of the way to think about it, right? And you're sort of moving that cursor around with your gaze. And you look at a button in order to be able to click on that button, right? Is that like, is that a reasonable way to think about the metaphor there?

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you know how the iPad cursor kind of snaps? It's that. Right? So you're sort of like, if buttons are big and you look in the general area, they will highlight.

• 30:25David Pierce?

  Oh, I see, okay.

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  Fascinating thing about this is, one, I think Vision OS is designed for eye tracking that is slightly more precise than it actually is. Like, that's how it feels. It probably isn't. It's probably designed to be exactly as, it's Apple, right?

• 30:38David Pierce?

  Meaning like, the buttons are like a little too small and a little too close together?

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'll just give you one super dumb example. The keyboard is like ridiculous. Like, it's just a fully, like, they needed to have a keyboard and it's there, but there's no way they want you to use that keyboard for any serious text input. The keys are too close together. So you're like sitting there trying to look from one letter to another. And you're just like, I hate, I hate this. And then you just give up and you like dictate to Siri or you connect a regular keyboard and use that keyboard. There's no way you should use that keyboard. And part of it is that it is just fun, it's fundamentally ridiculous. Part of it is that the buttons are too close together. And you will sit there trying to look from the E to the R. And the system just like won't let you. And I've never looked at a letter as hard as I've tried to look at a letter. Like, I'm looking at it, man.

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  Your brain is saying like, R, R, R. Yeah. And sometimes the easiest thing to do is to look completely away and try again. Right? And maybe the thing is like, you know, I can't quantify it. Maybe it's 99% accurate. But that 1% just like ends it.

• 31:41Alex Cranz?

  But it doesn't like wiggle. Like Toby would sometimes kind of wiggle. It wouldn't quite register your eye.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  It's the best eye tracking that has ever been shipped. This is what I'm saying. This is the best anyone has ever done it. Without question, it's the best anyone's ever done it. And, you know, a keyboard on a computer is 100% precise. Right? You push a button. That button is pushed every single time. Multi-touch iPhone is actually not 100% precise. There's a lot of algorithmic work happening to make a touchscreen appear to be 100% precise. Like, a lot of work has happened over the past decade to make those touchscreens feel even more precise. But they appear to you to be 100% precise. And when they are not, like when autocorrect fails, which is an experience everyone has, you are utterly frustrated. Right? When, when a touchscreen goes dead and you're jabbing at a button and it doesn't do anything.

• 32:32Nilay Patel?

  Phew, that's awful. Right? That's the worst. But most of the time, a touchscreen appears to be 100%, like direct input control. Your eyes are bad.

• 32:43Nilay Patel?

  Like, you are just constantly looking at stuff that you don't want to look at. Right? Or like, you're looking at the biggest thing instead of, well, the play button is the biggest thing in a video player. And I constantly want to push the plus 10 seconds. But my eyes are like, look at how big that play button is. And so I'm just looking at the wrong thing. And that is, it's the best anyone's ever done it. And it went, Addie's line was, "It works until it doesn't." Right? And my version of that is, "It feels like magic until it is not."

• 33:07Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Nilay Patel?

  And there's, it's just a binary. So I, this connects to hand tracking, which I think is your next question, probably. Yeah. The hand tracking is exactly the same way. It's magic until it is not. And particularly where it's not is when it can't see your hands. Which, like, I'm just sitting at a table right now. If I just had my hands in my, my lap, it couldn't see my hands. This is a ridiculous complaint. The hand tracking system needs to see your hands. No other computer stops working if it can't see your hands.

• 33:35Nilay Patel?

  Like, if you want this to be a primary computing device, like, your hand, it has to be able to see your hands. If I, if you're just standing up and your hands are by your sides, and if you're like me, they kind of like fall behind you, it stops working. And so like, it's the best it's ever been shipped. Without question, it is the best it's ever been shipped. It just hits the wall of reality, which is, the thing is not actually, your eyes and your hands are not actually controlling this device. Cameras are watching your hands and your eyes, interpreting them and turning that into input. And that interpretation has real limits.

• 34:09David Pierce?

  So, like, to keep it fully functional at all times, you have to kind of like, keep your hands up at all times?

• 34:14Nilay Patel?

  No, it's a pretty big bubble around you.

• 34:16David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  So like, if you are, it's basically like, if you sliced your body in half, it's the plane of the body in front of you, like, all the way around. So, uh, if you're sitting on a couch and you've got your hand over the side of the couch, it mostly works. If you are anywhere, anywhere can see your hands, basically. But if you, if it's really dark and you are lying down, and the IR floodlights in the front can't sort of like, reach down and see your hands and light them up, the cameras can't see your hands. So they can't use, it's like, you're, you're just gonna find all of these places where like, if you are meant to wear this thing all the time, they will come up more than you think. But in most uses, it feels like magic, right? It's, this line, it is absolutely magic until it is not.

• 34:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, and then the other thing that's funny, uh, is that it is always using your hands as input.

• 35:02David Pierce?

  This is what I was about to ask about, like, have you had to train yourself to be aware of your eyes and hands in ways that you wouldn't be otherwise? Like, you, anyone who has ever watched the Vergecast on YouTube knows, Neelai never, ever, ever stops moving his hands. You touch the mics, you're moving around, you're gesturing at stuff, you're pointing at things, you're, you're, like, are you like, aware of these parts of your body in new ways after using these devices?

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  Yes. In particular, you have to sit still. When I write scripts for a decoder or for video reads like this, I talk as I write to make sure I can read what I'm writing and it sounds good and flows. And I move my hands when I talk, and I was just scrolling all over the place by accident. Just whipping windows around for no reason, just clicking on stuff. And I was like, oh, I gotta, I gotta keep my hands still. Some people do not see, this is a very personalized complaint, but if you do, you're gonna notice. You have to sit still unless you want to do something. And then the other thing is that you have to get used to the control being linked to your eyes. And that is not how you use a computer. How many times have you looked at something on the screen and just banged around the arrow keys to get around without looking at the arrow keys?

• 36:06David Pierce?

  Constant.

• 36:07Alex Cranz?

  All the time.

• 36:07Nilay Patel?

  On the Vision Pro, you have to go look.

• 36:11David Pierce?

  Right.

• 36:11Nilay Patel?

  Right? And that's just like the simplest example. On a phone where, you know, there's a little bit more collapse between what you're looking at and the controls. How many times have I opened Lightroom and like moved a slider back and forth while looking at the photo to see how the brightness is changing or whatever? On the Vision Pro, you gotta look at that brightness slider. Weird, weird.

• 36:29Alex Cranz?

  Does it feel like that friction could ever go away for you? Like at some point you could see yourself doing it more naturally and it's just, you've had five days with it.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I've had five days with it. You know, I've asked Apple about this particular thing. This is a big philosophical, meaty design.

• 36:43David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Nilay Patel?

  Question, right? Like, should the control of the thing be directly linked to what you're looking at? Or should those things be disconnected? And so, you know, obviously, I'm asking this, I'm just wandering the streets being like, what is the essential nature of input? This is what I love. I love it. I love talking about this stuff. And they're like, you get, one, you get used to it, and two, that it's not the only input on the system. Right? You can connect a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. You can use Siri to do all this stuff. Like, we want to expand the range of computing inputs beyond the mouse and the keyboard. And after five days or six days, I'm kinda like, well, the mouse and keyboard are historically undefeated. So, good luck.

• 37:22David Pierce?

  I agree with that. The one that's missing there is, like, I think there's a way of looking at the Vision Pro that is sort of an amalgamation of all of the technology Apple has ever built to do anything, all in one device. And the one that it feels like it's missing is multi-touch. Like, it's surprising to me, given all of the stuff in here, that there isn't a way to reach out and touch the buttons on the keyboard to type.

• 37:43Nilay Patel?

  You can punch one finger at a time.

• 37:45David Pierce?

  Oh, you can. Oh, okay.

• 37:46Nilay Patel?

  You can't multi-touch.

• 37:47David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 37:48Nilay Patel?

  Right? So it can register big movements of the hands. I want to like, big is the wrong word.

• 37:54David Pierce?

  So you can type on it like a typewriter, kind of?

• 37:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can, you can henpeck on a, and you look silly and it's slow and it's not 100% accurate. And like I said, that, but you can do that, right? Like, uh, we don't have optic ID set up on ours because other people, like the video team is constantly using it. They're going to light it up and all that stuff. And so everyone puts it on and they punch the code into.

• 38:14David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  Right? Instead of doing the thing, because it's just, it's just a big phone keypad, what looks like a phone keypad, shows up in front of you and you're like, boop, boop, boop, boop. And it's like very funny to watch everyone do this every time they put it on.

• 38:25David Pierce?

  Okay. So that is a fallback option, at least makes me feel a little bit better about this. I do think there is a thing that the, the eye tracking, it just adds another step to everything you want to do.

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 38:36David Pierce?

  The, the example I always give to people is like, your muscle memory knows where all the app icons are on your phone. So like, if you, if you had to think about looking at an app every single time you wanted to open it, it would be annoying. And it's just your, your fingers learn where things are, uh, in a way that is useless to you on the Vision Pro.

• 38:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you have to be looking at things. I'll give you another example. Actually, the multi-touch example is a really good one. So a Quest, right? You have controllers and every VR company loves being like, you're a DJ now. They just love it. Then, you know, in my twenties, I was like, I'm gonna be a DJ.

• 39:08David Pierce?

  That's right.

• 39:09Nilay Patel?

  If we all, we all go through this period.

• 39:11Alex Cranz?

  We all had that moment.

• 39:12David Pierce?

  And in all subsequent decades, Neela has said those things.

• 39:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm still a DJ. I'm playing tonight at Soundbar. Uh, so in the Quest, you have controllers in your hands and you like, look at Tribe XR, which is the DJ app on the Quest, uh, and it's floating in space. And you like, reach out and it shows your hands. It doesn't show the controllers. And you push the button and it looks like you're grabbing the fader. And then after a while, your brain kind of remaps. You're like, oh, I'm actually grabbing this fader. I'm actually twisting this knob. And your hands are doing some controller stuff, right? They're just like gripping or pushing the button, the trigger button. But it, your brain just kind of like remaps to that thing. Vision Pro doesn't have that. It's got taps. So you look at a knob and you tap your fingers and drag it, the same way you do anything else. And it's like, oh, I'm not, there's no connection between me physically interacting with this floating

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  deck in DJ, which is the Vision Pro version of this, the way that in Tribe XR, it's like, I've got a controller, I'm pushing buttons on a controller. And because something tactile is happening to my hands, that looks like something tactile is happening over here. Like my brain is just rewiring to be convinced that that is actually happening. Now, can I DJ in any of these apps? No.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely not. But the Vision Pro is like because you're just tapping your fingers together. It's like you're clicking. The difference is very much between, I would give you the differences feels very much like the difference between a touchscreen and a mouse. Right where a touchscreen feels like you're directly controlling some pixels and a mouse is like, I'm clicking on stuff.

• 40:38Alex Cranz?

  Okay, so sort of like when you're on a touchscreen and you're trying to play like a Nintendo game on your phone. It feels like garbage, but then younger people are just used to phone screens. And so they don't hate it as much. They can play Fortnite and stuff.

• 40:51Nilay Patel?

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

• 40:55Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, so she'll have a great time.

• 40:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so maybe the younger people are going to live fully in headsets and it'll be fun. But it's that, it's that control dynamic is you will feel it in a way that, again, like he's saying, it is the best it's ever been done. Is it good enough? Like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it can ever be, it has to be 50 times better. By the way, can I say this thing?

• 41:15Alex Cranz?

  Please.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  Because I haven't given this a score yet. So we're going to spend all night debating the score. I think shipping a $3,500 computer whose default input method is not 100% consistent. That's a full point.

• 41:28Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 41:29Nilay Patel?

  That's a full point, right?

• 41:30Alex Cranz?

  100%.

• 41:31David Pierce?

  And one out of every 100 times you hit a key, it just made up a different key to do. You would not like that keyboard.

• 41:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Nilay Patel?

  Right, and there's all these other affordances and whatever, but like that feels like a full point.

• 41:41Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, anytime I review any e-ink device, I have to like knock off a point because it's not going to work all the time.

• 41:48Nilay Patel?

  That's brutal.

• 41:48David Pierce?

  You type three letters and then four seconds later it types two of them and then something else. Okay, let's get to the two main use cases that I think we and others have identified for this thing so far. And you should, you should add to this list if there are any obvious big ones that I'm missing. But the first one is using it essentially as a monitor for your computer, as a thing to attach to a Mac and do stuff with. Is it good?

• 42:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's really good. Caveats, one, it's really good. You put, especially if you have a laptop, you push the button. The thing that I really enjoyed doing was putting the virtual display over where my Mac display had been, my MacBook display had been, and then making it really big. So then you're like, I have a 50-inch MacBook Pro. I'm in the light room. It's cool. Like, that is just cool.

• 42:33David Pierce?

  So it's like you have your Mac on your desk and then a giant ass like TV sized monitor in front of you.

• 42:38Nilay Patel?

  Right, but like where the MacBook display is.

• 42:42David Pierce?

  Can you do the thing from your Mac where you have like a bunch of windows spread around the room or whatever? Can I put Mac apps in all those places or is that just Vision Pro apps?

• 42:52Nilay Patel?

  You get one single Mac display. You can't have multiple Mac displays, which I know a lot of people want to do, uh, which you can do to much less good effect with Quest headsets, right? Like, there are apps in the Quest that just let you have multiple monitors. I assume there will be those apps for the Vision Pro, but by default, and with all of the cool iCloud stuff that you want, which is really important, it's one display. And by the way, the cool iCloud stuff, magic. You know, this is like an iPad on your face. Like, it's a very easy way to understand what's happening here. And the cool iPad stuff that, uh, Continuity can do is amazing in this context. So you're using a Mac in this window and then you just scroll the mouse on the Mac trackpad over and it turns into a Vision Pro cursor. You copy from the Mac in this window and you paste it in the Vision Pro app over here and it just works. Very cool.

• 43:36David Pierce?

  Alright, so that's that one. And then the other one is basically using it as a TV entertainment system. This is the one I think Alex and I are both the most theoretically excited about. That feels like it could be the most immediately useful for people. Is it a good TV?

• 43:49Nilay Patel?

  Super good. Very good. I watched way more of Top Gun Maverick than I wanted to. And by the way, I watched it on the treadmill at, uh, 2.7 miles an hour, just walking up a hill very slowly. I did not try to run. I was like, I'm not, I don't know about this. But I was like, can I take a slow walk watching a movie on the best TV I can get in near a treadmill? And the answer was unequivocally yes. Very cool. Uh, it does this really cool thing when you put it in environments where the light from the TV reflects on like the mountain. It's, it's just all very cool. The caveat I will give you is it supports 3D. It supports high frame rate. It's the only consumer device that supports high frame rate 3D. So you can watch Avatar with water at 48 frames per second in 3D.

• 44:31Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if that's good. It's just like, that's what James Cameron wants. Like, you can, you can live that life. I watched five minutes of that and I was sick.

• 44:39David Pierce?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:40Nilay Patel?

  Like I'm pretty good at VR. Like I do, I play Gran Turismo VR. VR motion does not drive me too crazy. This was like, whoa, too much. And I had to take it off immediately. So I would just be careful. And there are no guardrails anywhere in Vision OS. To tell you be careful. The one that I've seen is if you take a spatial, like a first person video, and there's a lot of motion in it, it will detect that there's a lot of motion and be like, be careful watching this one. It does not say be careful watching Avatar.

• 45:08Nilay Patel?

  But if your own video, it'll sometimes say be careful.

• 45:10David Pierce?

  You should always be careful watching The Way of Water, no matter the circumstances. Should always be careful.

• 45:16Nilay Patel?

  But yeah, the TV stuff is good. The thing that I will, two caveats there. One, you're alone. There's no, even if like three of you have a Vision Pro together, you can't sync them up. So you can't look at the same thing at the same time. I mean, you can manually sync them up, which is sad. If you find yourself with like three people wearing a Vision Pro, counting to three to hit the play button on Avatar, like, just buy a TV.

• 45:35David Pierce?

  It's like the thing on a plane where you try and hit play on both screens at the same time. It's good stuff.

• 45:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So like, but there's no in, in OS syncing of that stuff. So yeah, I'll watch the same thing. Which is weird, right? Movie or somewhat social experiences. And then two, you can't screen record what you're seeing. Like Disney will just DRM that shit out. And I was like, this sucks. Like that's me being like, oh, this sucks. Like a huge part of the experience of watching shows right now is like sharing clips to social media or whatever. And you can't. Weird. It's, and then it's your eyes, right? You're like, I'm seeing this. Look at how cool the light on the mountains is. I can't show it to you because of copyright restrictions. Weird.

• 46:15Alex Cranz?

  I'm sorry for laughing.

• 46:17Nilay Patel?

  It's weird. It's weird to be like, oh, like Bob Iger has DRM'd my eyes. I don't like that.

• 46:24Alex Cranz?

  Very Black Mirror feeling. Like I just keep thinking that the episode where she like, gets her husband out of the way or boyfriend or whatever. And it just feels like this headset's really equipped for that. But not in a pleasant way.

• 46:36Nilay Patel?

  It's weird, man.

• 46:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's weird.

• 46:38David Pierce?

  Are there any like big picture use cases other than those two? Those are the two people seem to mostly ask us about and also been have been kind of imagining since this thing first launched. Is there anything that like leaps out to you as equally big to those two things?

• 46:52Nilay Patel?

  No, to be perfectly blunt, and I think the Mac thing is, I want to see how people actually react to it.

• 46:58David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's cool, and it was really cool, but 2560 by 1440 is not enough. Like, my 16-inch MacBook Pro has more resolution than that, right? So it's cool to have a big, like, editing and Lightroom huge is great, but then the sort of reality of the resolution is actually you're going to find yourself fighting it. And then, you know, TV is TV, like, some of that stuff is really cool. But I was, again, I was watching the playoffs last night. There's no Fox Sports app to stream in 4K, and I was watching YouTube TV, 720p Fox, it huge sound. It's like, ew.

• 47:27David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Nilay Patel?

  Ew.

• 47:30David Pierce?

  Fair.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  There's a part of me, and I'm just a shameless plug for the TV that I'm convincing myself was not an extraordinarily splurge purchase. You can go buy an ISO LED for far less money, and then you'll have a really nice TV that you can take pictures of if you want to share something.

• 47:47David Pierce?

  But then Bob Iger will come to your house.

• 47:49Nilay Patel?

  Then Bob, he's like, look, I'm not busy enough. I need you to stop doing that.

• 47:53Alex Cranz?

  Just cuts the cord off.

• 47:55David Pierce?

  All right, one more before we take a break, and then we're going to do some listener questions, and then we're going to get out of here. The Vision Pro, is it good?

• 48:01Nilay Patel?

  The Vision Pro is the best version of this thing that anyone has ever made.

• 48:05David Pierce?

  Which, to Apple's credit, has basically been what it has been saying about this all along, right? Like, the answer to why is this thing $3,500 is because it is the best one of these we can make.

• 48:16Nilay Patel?

  Yes, without question. It is the best version of this headset that anyone has ever made. It is unquestionably still a VR headset. And as a primary computing device, I do not think VR headsets are it. Maybe this thing just proves that point to a lot of people, right? It is weird to be alone using a computer the way that this thing makes you alone. We haven't even talked about the front display, right? You know, the big thing about this that is supposed to make you not feel alone is the front display showing your eyes to other people.

• 48:43David Pierce?

  Right.

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  We can't see them most of the time. They're soup, it's super dim, and that glass is really reflective, and mostly people are like, am I supposed to be seeing something? You know, like, it's my eyes. They're like, ah!

• 48:54Alex Cranz?

  I was like, is that actually maybe a good thing that you can't see it most of the time?

• 48:58Nilay Patel?

  They don't look good. They look like, they totally look like CGI. It's a super low-res display in there. Like, I've seen the part, you know, in a briefing. It's, you can, it's like, it's just a grid of pixels, like a sports stadium screen or something. Or the sphere. Ah, God bless the sphere. Here's a question. Would you rather live in the Vision Pro or live in the sphere? And the answer is the sphere.

• 49:18David Pierce?

  Okay. Sphere's a little more expensive, but you know, it's okay.

• 49:21Nilay Patel?

  Uh, but it's really dim. You can't really see the eyes. Uh, you're never making anything that actually looks like eye contact. Like, it's just, that's not happening. So it's like, you're just alone in there. And like, the stuff that I think is really cool, like yesterday I was walking around the cafe of our office, which was huge. And I just had windows all over the place in there. Just windows for days, just like over tables, floating in space. I was just walking around looking at stuff. And I was like, this rules. And no one else could experience that with me. Like, other people just saw me looking around pointing at nothing. I just think there's something lonely about that. Like, really intensely lonely. And I would rather not have that experience. And so I think VR is great. I, like, I'm a VR headset user. I love playing Gran Turismo in VR. I love Supernatural.

• 50:04Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's single-use applications, mostly gaming, that make a lot of sense to, like, have a focused, lonely experience. For using an iPad? I don't know. I, like, half the time, I'm like, "Look at this on my screen," to someone else. And that is really hard to do.

• 50:18David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  So I, it is the best version of this that has ever been made. But I went through and looked at every Tim Cook quote about VR and AR for the past decade. And his complaint about it always has been VR is isolating. And like, I'm here at the end with the, holding the thing. I'm like, yep, VR's pretty isolating.

• 50:34David Pierce?

  Yeah. I mean, that, the, the, like, big question, I think we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about and covering over the next few years, really, is, is the Vision Pro, like, the end of that arc? In which we realize that's not where we're headed, or is it sort of overlapping the end of that arc, but is actually the beginning of the next thing? And I think Apple wants you to believe it's the beginning of the next thing. But what it built looks more like the end of the VR arc. And so I think which it turns out to be is gonna be really interesting over time.

• 51:02Nilay Patel?

  We can end here. There's a real danger reviewing a first-generation Apple product.

• 51:06David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 51:07Nilay Patel?

  I feel it, right? Like, nobody looks back on a first-generation Quest review and is like, "They got it wrong." Like, a first-generation Apple product, especially when you're in a tiny group of reviewers, people look back on it and they're like, "You got it wrong." And I know this is a risk to say, but I'm gonna say this. This feels like it will convince a lot of people that some of these technologies are dead ends.

• 51:25David Pierce?

  Hmm.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, you can try as hard as you want. You can be one of the richest companies in the world. You can put all of that capability in. And there's a lot of this thing that feels like Apple made it because only Apple can make it, right? Like, the Giants just looking for a fight and found one. Great. I think that's so cool. Like, I have no qualms with that. Go get it. But that means, if you look at this device, you're like, "Oh, pass-through VR does not actually substitute for the goal, which is optical AR, where you're just looking through a pair of glasses and the computer's putting stuff over reality." Like, that's the goal. You gotta get to there. And this thing, there's no path from here to there. And I don't know. Like, that's my big take from this thing, is like, it feels like Apple needed to build a simulator of the computing experiences it wanted to build. And if it

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  talked about it that way, it might be a little more charitable. But their ad is like, people are just like doing laundry in it. It's like, no, this is not that thing.

• 52:18David Pierce?

  Okay. All right. Well, by the time you're hearing this, Neil's review is live, the video's live. Go watch it. Go read it. We're gonna take a break, and then we're gonna come back, and we're gonna do five minutes of quick questions, and then we're gonna get out of here. Be right back.

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• 54:09David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. So I have a big list of questions. Thanks, everybody who called and emailed and posted with questions. We've answered a bunch of them already, which is great. So we're just going to blow through a bunch of the ones we didn't do already. The first one is a hotline question from Joe.

• 54:24Speaker 07

  Hi, my name's Joe. And about the Apple Vision Pro, what does the thing smell like while you're wearing it?

• 54:31David Pierce?

  Neelai, we got this question so many times. I cannot tell you. How does it smell? I need to know.

• 54:36Nilay Patel?

  I don't know why people ask this question. Here's my situation. AirPods Max out of the box had a smell because they were like manufactured in China and then shipped over here and like they, whatever particular processor on the fabric, I think, has a smell. So there was like a tiny whiff of that smell and it immediately went away. Will they smell after you sweat in them for a while? I don't know yet. Don't know yet. I do know, I had a little bit on my face with a video review and I wore a little bit of concealer and it got on the headband. And I asked Joanne about this and she's like, that's covered in my review too.

• 55:04David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  But here's my question. Do you want to wear a computer that messes up your hair every time you use it? Do you want to wear a computer that messes up your makeup every time you use it? It's a different, bigger question. And that stuff might smell. Yeah. Like, once you cake this thing full of sweat and makeup. Ooh.

• 55:21David Pierce?

  Okay. All right. That's a good one. Next, a question from Matt, and we talked about this a little bit, but I, and it seems like the answer so far is, we'll see. But he asks, is there any gaming use case beyond playing on a virtual screen with an Xbox controller? That it seems like you can just do now, right? Like, you can play games kind of from a Mac, or in theory, from Game Pass through Safari or whatever. But have you, is there any other gaming stuff you've seen that sparks something in you?

• 55:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no. I mean, the games are all like iPad games in 3D. I played What the Golf, which is really fun.

• 55:48David Pierce?

  Nice.

• 55:48Nilay Patel?

  But it's still like, it's in 3D, right? Those are, it's a 3D game inherently, you're just looking at a 2D thing. And so like, they just built it so it's virtual and you like, pull back and let go. There's nothing like NFL Pro era, or like, any of these big VR games. They are to come, I'm told they are to come, but nothing yet.

• 56:04David Pierce?

  And that's actually a good segue to another question that we got from Kyle, who says, I want to know what iPad ports are like, and if there's any jankiness with them, both in how they work and the general UI. Basically, like, apps that are just iPad apps that they check the checkbox to say, put it on the Vision Pro. What have you seen so far?

• 56:20Nilay Patel?

  I think it is very telling that Apple shipped a bunch of its own apps as iPad apps. Fascinating. iPad apps are designed for your fingers, and so the eye tracking is even more frustrating in iPad apps.

• 56:30David Pierce?

  Hmm.

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  Because all the targets are even smaller. They work. There's no, there's no not working, right? They, they work, but you will, you will realize, like, oh, the same way that putting a mouse and keyboard experience on a touchscreen can be frustrating.

• 56:43David Pierce?

  I was just gonna say, like, have you ever attached a mouse or one of the keyboard attachments on the iPad with the trackpad? It's like, it feels cool, and also, like, it was clearly not designed for that.

• 56:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And you can, you know, if you have a, they sent me a Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad. I had those connected a lot. You can just like, that all looks like iPadOS. It's all the same stuff. So yeah, they're totally usable. There's no particular weirdness there, except if you're using hand and eye tracking, you will quickly discover that the apps are designed for not that, and sometimes that shows up. I think it's totally, I think it's like barely a criticism. Like, it's just obvious what's happening.

• 57:16Alex Cranz?

  It's better than like, when all the iPhone apps came to iPad, and it was very clearly like, just the iPhone app big.

• 57:22David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good comparison.

• 57:23Nilay Patel?

  It's way, way, way better than that.

• 57:24David Pierce?

  Okay. Okay, good. All right. I have another hotline question, another one, believe it or not, that we got multiple times, from Ray.

• 57:31Speaker 08

  Hey, this is Bray and this is a question about the Vision Pro. I wonder what happens if you look in a mirror with the Vision Pro on. Would it fade you in like it does with other people? Or would it recognize that you're wearing the Vision Pro and not do it? And what happens if you turn on the fake eyes? Would it consider you a person that can fade into? Thanks.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  This is one of the first things I tried. Why do you think I was in the bathroom? You look crazy. You, uh, cause I was like trying to see my own eyes, right? Uh, so yeah, it does show you you're nice. But I can't tell if it is because it thinks you're another person or if it knows that you're looking at yourself, which is like a weird. Does a computer know I'm looking at myself is like, that's another two hours.

• 58:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, we don't have time for that today. Yeah. But it, it like, nothing horrible happened. Like you're still here. You looked in a mirror. You're still here.

• 58:17Nilay Patel?

  I was like, man, these eyes kind of suck.

• 58:21David Pierce?

  Uh, okay, cool. We got a question from Andy, basically asking about multiple user support. Um, questions about OS and software, adjustments for the hardware. Like is, is this a device you can functionally share with other people?

• 58:35Nilay Patel?

  No, absolutely not. Uh, the only affordance is something called guest mode, where you say, put this in guest mode. Uh, and then it lets you limit what apps whoever wears a headset can put, can use next. And then it lets you limit whatever apps whoever's wearing a headset can use. Uh, and that's it. That's what you get. Uh, and then, and then you're supposed to give it to someone else. They do a tiny little bit of setup just to align the displays. They don't even do the hand tracking setup. And that's it. And then so they, then it's like, you can only use Safari. And they give it back to you and you log in, you're good to go. But there's no multiple user accounts, nothing. It's, it is, this thing is an iPad.

• 59:05David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 59:05Nilay Patel?

  The same way that iPad doesn't have multiple user support, this doesn't have it.

• 59:09Alex Cranz?

  Did that feel like it heightened that lonely experience for you?

• 59:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, this is my computer. Like you give it to someone else, you're like, you can just use my computer now. It's weird.

• 59:16Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 59:17Nilay Patel?

  By the way, a particularly weird thing about that is, uh, you know, there's optic ID. So someone else should not be able to unlock your computer. But, cause again, because other people are using it for captures and all this stuff to make our video, uh, other people can just be my persona.

• 59:31Nilay Patel?

  Like they can make FaceTime calls with my head. It's like, it's not at all how it's designed, it's just the reality of how we are using it today, which is wild.

• 59:38David Pierce?

  Yeah. Talk about the personas for a sec, because that was something we got a couple of questions about too. This idea that if I make a FaceTime call, or I go on Google Meet, or whatever, wearing this, that it's not showing a camera version of me, it's showing like my avatar.

• 59:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:52David Pierce?

  What's the verdict on personas?

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I will say what Marquez said when we did our FaceTime call for the video. This is very impressive and also bad.

• 1:00:01Nilay Patel?

  They're bad. They're in, they're like, if I showed up in a meeting with a persona, I, I personally feel like that would be insulting. So the persona just replaces the front-facing camera, right? That's how you should think about it. Apps don't know it's happening, they don't see it, they call for the front camera, and they get your persona.

• 1:00:16David Pierce?

  Oh, so the Vision Pro just reports to whatever app you're doing. This is what the webcam is seeing.

• 1:00:21Nilay Patel?

  This is what the webcam is seeing, which is fascinating. A great hack, like brilliant, right? And then, you know, you do the scan, it sees your face. They look like PS3 characters. Like, I was talking to Marquez and Joanna on that call, and I was like, Marquez, this looks like you're about to give me an item that will help me fight the boss. Like, that's how it looks, you know, like, welcome to my store, like, in any game that you might play. They're bad, they're uncanny. It's weird that they have decided that everyone has the same tongue. Like, you don't scan your tongue, but you stick your tongue out, you have a tongue. Weird, just weird. Like, someone at Apple is like, do a tongue model, we'll just use it for everybody.

• 1:00:55David Pierce?

  Do a tongue.

• 1:00:57Nilay Patel?

  Like, someone had that job, right?

• 1:00:59Alex Cranz?

  Just a Gene Simmons tongue for everyone.

• 1:01:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, you can't get different tongues, you, you're always wearing the same clothes. It looks like you've just had the worst Botox ever. Like, I took a call with our creative director, Will Joel, to look at some design stuff, and he's like, I'm so used to looking at your face on these calls. Because you're looking at something, and, you know, like, your face betrays more than you'll ever see, and he's like, I can't, this is, this is not useful for me. So, yeah, I, Apple, it's in beta, there's a reason it's in beta, there's a reason they haven't shown it to anyone, like, it's not good.

• 1:01:29David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's a long way to go. And it's like, you know, for, I keep saying it has to be 50% better. I can see how this can get 50% better. It's very obvious.

• 1:01:39David Pierce?

  Okay, fair enough. All right, two more, then we're out of here. From Jesse, "What is it like looking at real-world displays through pass-through? TVs, PCs, phones, smartwatches, etc.?"

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  Fine but blurry.

• 1:01:50David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 1:01:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, fine but blurry.

• 1:01:52David Pierce?

  Fair enough.

• 1:01:52Nilay Patel?

  Like, I can just use my phone, but it's blurry.

• 1:01:54David Pierce?

  And last one, from Arunraj, who asks, "Is the Digital Crown really useful to gradually transition between VR and AR? I don't see any point where a person has to be in between the two modes. They could have just switched back and forth."

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  So, using it, you will quickly discover there's a lot of times you want to be in between the two modes, because if you put Windows out in space and they're like going through walls or things, it screws with your brain. So, you're like, "Here's a portal into depth. Like, here's a portal into a big desert landscape. And so, instead of walls in front of me, there's like depth. And now I can put Windows into that depth while I still have the room around me and I can look around." So that is very useful. It is an inherent, right, is a big compromise over like, should this be AR, right? That's like, I'm creating a virtual environment to solve the problem of AR in this moment. And then you want to, you know, you have full remerschik on the moon. But like, that halfway setting, I ended up using a lot more, just to create that depth for the OS.

• 1:02:50David Pierce?

  All right, Neelai, you have to go. You have now 26 hours to change your mind about everything. Chop, chop.

• 1:02:56Nilay Patel?

  Send more questions, we'll do more of these. I know people are gonna have infinite questions.

• 1:03:01David Pierce?

  Oh, for sure. And we, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna cover this a bunch. We'll talk about it more on Friday's show. We'll, we have a lot to do. And I think especially as we start to see more apps, we're gonna talk a lot about this. So, yeah.

• 1:03:10Nilay Patel?

  I think we have a lot, developers have to basically make this product work.

• 1:03:13David Pierce?

  For sure. Yeah, so call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. Email us, [email protected]. We'll put Neelai's review and the video in the show notes. Neelai and Alex, thank you both.

• 1:03:22Nilay Patel?

  Thank you.

• 1:03:27David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to Neelai and Alex for being here. Thanks to Neelai for braving all of these days and his deep, vulnerable state and coming on and talking about the Vision Pro. It's the sacrifices we make, everybody. Also, thanks to everybody who sent in questions via the hotline, or email, or on threads. They were all great. And please, like Neelai said, keep them coming. We're gonna keep talking about this thing for a long time. We'll also put links to Neelai's review and the video in the show notes, but we are covering the Vision Pro in every way we can think of. So keep it locked on the verge.com. Lots coming this week. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James and Will Poor. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk about new web browsers,

• 1:04:10David Pierce?

  much more Vision Pro stuff and everything else happening in tech. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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