Apple Vision Pro or $4K?

The Apple Vision Pro (AVP) is quite amazing. The picture quality is the best I’ve experienced, the UI/UX is top notch in typical Apple fashion, but I don’t find myself craving it. Sure the first few days it was super cool but I think I enjoyed blogging about it almost as much as using it, if not more. If you want the best TV (that only you can watch) then the AVP might be for you, past that it really feels like an iPad instead of a Mac. That’s not surprising, Apple never claimed it was like a Mac and the OS and apps are iPad-like (if not iPad apps themselves).

I never “got” the iPad. I mean, I understand it as a content consumption device and it does a great job at that but it was never a productivity device for me. It’s an amazing platform, my day job uses it extensively (POS software, we’re hiring if you are interested in using Vue/TS and/or PHP, email me) and so does my own company (GrubBux, food festival software). But I’ve always seen it as dependable, reliable hardware that is great to build on top of. I’ve never seen it as something I’d use for anything but to watch a movie, tv show, or maybe play a game. I know some people can (or force themselves to) do all their work on it but that’s not me and could never be me. I write code and need macOS to be most productive, everything else feels limiting.

If I could draw I’d have a comic here of a MBP singing to an AVP (and iPad/iPhone) “Anything you can do I can do better“.

And that’s what visionOS and the AVP is: limiting. I tried to use to write a very simple feature (using Mac Virtual Display) and after a deploy to my dev environment one of my monitoring systems threw an alert. It was nothing to do with the AVP but within 5 minutes of trying to investigate the error I took off the AVP to work on my Mac instead. I know some of you might be yelling at me right now that using Mac Virtual Display (MVD) was my mistake, I should have been using a visionOS app instead. To those people I just have to shake my head and wonder what world they are living in.

Yes, there are apps like Runestone, which look cool, but I’m not going to store my code in iCloud or mount a network share. Even if I was willing to do that, Runestone is not an IDE. I don’t think JetBrains IDEA is coming to AVP anytime soon and even if it was I can’t work without a terminal and full access to the underlying machine. And no, I don’t want to work on some remote machine. I’m incredibly productive on my MBP with 3 external monitors, I can’t even code in the AVP without my Mac. My main interest in the AVP was as an external monitor replacement, as I said in my first post and when I talked about writing code in my second post. The AVP might be better than just a MBP screen but it’s not better than my monitors by a long shot.

So the question becomes, is $4K worth it for an occasional monitor (if I’m not in one of the 2 places I have external monitors) and as a TV or lackluster gaming device? For me I think the answer is no. I tried the 3D games and they felt gimmicky after a while, just like in my Meta Quest 2 (MQ2), and I can play 2D games on literally anything else. In fact I prefer to play games on my Steam Deck or Xbox. Dead Cells was fun to play on a massive floating screen but I could also plug my Steam Deck into my TV. You can only make a screen so big before you have to pan your head/eyes to see it all. My 65″ TV is just fine and if it wasn’t, I could go much larger without coming close to the AVP costs. I could also enjoy the TV with friends and family.

A lot of my AVP use over the past few days has been more “work” than anything and not my real “work”. Work in the sense that I was testing out the device, putting it through its paces, forcing myself to explore every nook and cranny, forcing myself to use it for everything I could. That’s fun as a nerd but once I was done testing out things I just wanted to relax and play a game or watch a show. The games I want to play aren’t on visionOS and while I can watch a show in the AVP, I don’t think it beats my TV. I know that sounds crazy but hear me out.

If I get a text/email/etc while I’m watching TV I can just pick up my phone and deal with it. In the AVP it’s a much bigger ordeal, mostly because of text input (or cleaning up voice input). A paired keyboard might make it better but it’s not going to beat the ease of picking up my phone, responding, and setting it back down. Is the AVP more useful than my phone? Maybe, in some contexts but here’s the thing, it’s never better than my Mac. If I’m in my living room and an alert or a support ticket come through that I need to deal with then I get up and walk into my office. I had hoped that maybe MVD would be good enough that I could just do it from the couch but it’s just not.

The downsides of wearing the AVP just don’t outweigh the upsides. If I was space-limited, didn’t have an office at home, or similar then maybe I’d come down on this differently but that’s not my life. If the AVP let me jump onto my Mac from anywhere in my house and be even 90% as productive as going to my office then maybe. But I can only do that if my Mac is nearby (if only for the bluetooth mouse/keyboard to work) and even at my desk I feel limited by the AVP.

I have no doubt I’ll buy a future version of this product. If the price was much lower I’d keep it. If the passthrough wasn’t so blurry/grainy (it’s light years better than the MQ2 but not perfect) I’d keep it. If I was planning (or had the time) to develop for this platform I might be able to convince myself to keep it. Leaving windows floating in your house and seeing them as you walk by is neat. Cooking in my kitchen surrounded by screen was awesome. But only seeing the world through these cameras isn’t good enough. Maybe when they have their “retina” moment I’ll come back. You can’t see pixels in this device (the screen door effect of the MQ2 was bad) but the cameras can’t capture the world around you well enough to make you forgot you’re wearing the AVP.

I’m going to hold off making my decision for a few more days but right now I’m leaning heavily towards returning it. I have a lot better uses of $4K, including putting it back in a HYSA. If anyone can pull this off it’s Apple but either MVD is going to have to get way better and/or the cameras need to get better (or they need to make real “glasses”). I know this is really just a dev kit in disguise to prepare for a future when Apple can deliver on true AR, the same way we’ve had AR/VRKit for years as Apple prepared for this moment. I know it was the right decision for Apple to ship this as-is, I applaud them for it. Developers need time to get used to it as a platform and understand how to take full advantage. I’ll definitely be back for true AR and I might come back if passthrough gets better. I see the promise of this, I just don’t think it’s worth it for me right now.