Last Week in AVP #9: New Immersive MLS Cup Highlights, China Launch Confirmed, $200 Discount on AVP, New Pencil Rumours and More!
2023 MLS Cup Highlights For Apple Vision Pro
If you haven’t watched this yet, I highly recommend it (as a person that knows next to nothing about sports). It really gives you a glimpse of what future entertainment will/should be on the Apple Vision Pro.
My only complain is that it is too short. It leaves you wondering why this content wasn’t prepared before the device launch. It really feels like Apple is playing catching up at the moment. The device teams were far ahead of the content teams.
Apple Vision Pro confirmed to launch in China this year (Reuters)
Cook revealed the headset's China launch plan in response to a media question on the sidelines of the China Development Forum in Beijing, CCTV finance said on its Weibo social account.
— Reuters
Tencent agreed to make their apps launch-ready (The Information)
This might be a positive indicator that Apple is aware of the partnership deficit for the US launch and is taking steps to rectify the situation.
Chinese tech giant Tencent has agreed to make some of its most important apps available on Apple's Vision Pro headset ahead of its launch in the country later this year, The Information reports.
New Apple Pencil With Vision Pro Support in Testing (source)
Apple has internally tested a new Apple Pencil with visionOS support, according to a source familiar with the matter. This would allow the Apple Pencil to be used with drawing apps on the Vision Pro, such as Freeform and Pixelmator.
$200 Discount on AVP while supplies last (CNet)
Right now, Woot will sell you a 256GB Apple Vision Pro for $3,299 -- a $200 saving over the price Apple charges.
This is almost certainly not a discount passed on from Apple. Most likely left over units from flipping etc.
My Apple Vision Pro nightmare (Business Insider)
We won't look back on Vision Pro as Apple's new iPhone moment. If anything, it's the spiritual successor to the Newton, the widely mocked 1990s PDA.
If you’re looking for a piece to come back to years down the road that didn’t age well, this one will be perfect.
Apple Vision Pro the ultimate personal home theater? (DigitalTrends)
An interesting report on why Apple Vision Pro might be uniquely positioned to provide a better movie experience than even then theatres due to the technology TrueCut.
I think the best way to describe TrueCut Motion to you is by calling it VRR, or variable refresh rate, for movies.
For regular TV:
When we watch movies at home, we’re watching content that has (usually) been recorded at 24 frames per second (fps). This is the cinema cadence we’ve been enjoying at theaters for decades now. But at home – when watched on TVs with 60Hz or 120Hz refresh rates, that 24 fps content tends to cause some motion problems.
And Caleb Denison concludes:
So, is the Vision Pro better than a commercial theater or home theater? It can be. It has some real magic going for it. In some ways, it can be even better. I was definitely wrong, though, when I said it could never stand up because it is so isolating.
Reflection on the future of Apple Vision Pro - Benedict Evans
I found this piece to be quite enjoyable even though I agree with almost nothing in it except the last paragraph (Hey - and that’s ok! Opposing views make for great discussions).
On the other hand, something can seem amazing and part of the future, but ‘part of the future’ can come in different sizes. Drones and 3D printing are amazing, but most people don’t have a use for them. A few days after Christmas, once you’d seen the roof of your house or printed a little plastic Eiffel Tower, they went into a cupboard. Looking at VR in particular, I always worry about games consoles. If you’d had a demo of a Playstation 5 in 1980 or 1990, you would have been amazed, but today the installed base of games consoles and gaming PCs combined is perhaps 3-400m units, and not growing. It’s a big market, but most people see one, say ‘well done, very pretty’ and walk past. Looking at something and saying ‘this is amazing!’ doesn’t have much more predictive power than saying ‘this is stupid!’
It is true that an amazing product doesn’t necessarily translate to a mass market product. But I think what’s missed here is that, Apple Vision Pro is not just a product, but a product that happens to a general computer. And if we were to use iPad as comparison - over 600 million units have been sold to date. In 2023 alone, iPad contributed more than 28 billion U.S. dollars to Apple’s revenue. In other words, the iPad business alone would be a Fortune 100 company. Even if Apple Vision Pro is a fraction of that, it would be an enormous product category.
Second, taking one step further back again, even if my doubts are all wrong, we won’t know any of this for years, and right now this is all still in the experimental category. Apple sells more watches in a typical quarter than Meta has active Quest users. Even the iPhone took years to start selling. It’s possible than in five years this will have started to work, and it’s possible than in five years we’ll have concluded that this is a niche, and we’ll have to wait for glasses, contact lenses or neural implants.
This take is true. We are years away from knowing where Apple Vision Pro will lead. People forget, but it wasn’t until the iPhone 4 when smartphone has reached mass adoption.
Axios Review: Using Apple’s Vision Pro in real life
Unfortunately, such productions are few and far between for now, given the specialized technology needed to capture such video and the relatively few devices out there capable of displaying it.
I highly doubt the lack of hardware availability is the limiting factor here. It really felt like Apple overlooked the level of partnership required to pull off the volume of content required.
Apple Vision Pro on a flight to Costa Rica (Mashable)
Interesting personal take on the AVP experience on flight. I’ve not had the chance to fly with one yet but any help I can get with turbulence is great!
On my way back from Costa Rica to New York, my JetBlue flight suffered from some turbulence while flying over Florida.
Sitting inside a rattling winged, metal thingamajig isn’t my idea of fun, so I pulled up the Mindfulness app and launched a meditation session. While being shaken and stirred inside the plane, I found my own slice of peace for five minutes while following breathing exercises with an expanding and contracting spherical virtual artifact.
Apple Original Content for the Vision Pro Is Absolutely Stunning – And Casually Terrifying - (Variety)
A fun brief review of Apple original content from Variety.
People say the tech has existed in other or better forms, notably competitor Mark Zuckerberg in his shady review of the Apple device, but as a lay person? No, it hasn’t.
This I can agree with.
My proximity to Keys left me a bit breathless (she has amazing skin, by the way, which instantly made me think that talent is going to have to get very comfortable being seen in this super hi-def medium — moisturize!).
I felt the same watching the content! The immersion was so intense that I found myself shifting on my sofa, making space for the characters as they seemed to draw nearer!
The most unsettling takeaway was a thought that still lingers. After I removed the device and walked back into my life, the real world seemed like a big disappointment for a while. Unenhanced, unrefined and with fewer possibilities. That’s great news for Apple, not so much for the humans strapped into the headset.
Apple Vision Pro Around The Web
Unparalleled sports viewing experience coming soon (source)
Up to 5 Virtual Screens on Apple Vision Pro (source)
Synthesthesia - Spatial Synth (source)
AVP travel mode for a cross country (source)
Half-Life Alyx Played Through An Apple Vision Pro (source)
What if AVP passthrough could zoom? (source)
Girlfriend experience with AVP (source)
AVP practical uses in a construction site (source)
Medical student with AVP (source)
That’s all for now, feel free to leave me any feedback and discussions! 🙏
Until next week 👋