When you wear Vision Pro, you are slowly eased into this new world, with varying levels of translucency between what’s real and what’s digital. Lights dim slowly when you view photos, videos or content. Everything moves with you so you never feel like you’re strapped in. The knitted band, which feels more like apparel than a tech product, brings a casualness that’s fitting for a device that can be used sitting, leaning back or even lying down. Even the absence of controllers was intentional to facilitate being able to do other things, like drinking coffee or taking notes, at the same time.
Howarth sums up, ‘There’s a hardness and precision to the front of the product that is completely technical and feels like it’s been sent from the future, but then everything else that connects the product to you is soft and really approachable, so you feel cushioned and there’s not a barrier to putting it on or taking it off. And in fact, it should be a pleasure.’
For Disney’s techies, coding the Disney+ app involved both familiar processes and new challenges, and took the better part of a year. Even brief exposure to native Vision Pro apps will tell you that they’re close kin to those designed for the iPad, which gave the company a healthy head start on getting a spatial version of the streaming service up and running. “If you’re building apps in Swift for the iPad, it’s a no-brainer,” says LaBerge. “It all translates over and is super-easy to do.”
To construct the immersive viewing environments, Disney used an Apple tool called Reality Composer Pro. That software allows for the creation of 3D imagery in a format called Universal Scene Description. And in a nifty bit of proof of how deep the Apple-Disney collaboration runs, USD happens to have originated at Disney’s own Pixar studio. (It’s since become an industry standard supported by other big players such as Adobe, Autodesk, and Nvidia.)
NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Apple CEO Tim Cook met on Friday, hours after the official launch of Apple’s Vision Pro headset, to walk through the league’s new app for the platform and discuss the future of the at-home fan experience.
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“The real first question to ask is, ‘What does it mean to reimagine your app for this kind of 3D, immersive environment?” NBA SVP and head of product Chad Evans said. “When Apple started talking about capabilities like ‘infinite canvas,’ how could we really use that space to bring fans closer to the game—that was sort of the foundational principle.”
One comparison would be to a maestro conducting an orchestra. But that doesn’t convey the sense of precision in VisionOS — the sense of fine control through indirect manipulation. What it feels like is using the Force.
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And, like the butterfly from Encounter Dinosaurs that some people can feel landing on their outstretched finger, I swear to you, I can almost feel the telekinetic connection with UI elements in VisionOS. It’s a hint, a whiff, of tension — between not just my hands and the virtual elements I’m manipulating, but between my mind and those elements. Just the vaguest sensation of tension emanating from my forehead, like a taut thread of ultrafine string connecting my mind to the window I’m moving, or button I’m pressing, or photo I’m stretching.
But as the countdown happens to 8am and the queue starts moving (all the Apple folks where shouting “AVP! AVP! AVP!” during the countdown, so pretty sure that’s the official term now!), I am realising quickly that everybody gets to shake hands with Tim Cook as they go in! And some even grab a selfie! I take out the t-shirt of my pocket and show it to my Apple escort (everybody in the queue has one Apple Retail person assigned to them) and ask, “Should I give this to Tim!?” He laughs out loud and say for sure.
That gave me the confidence i needed.
In a new support document, Apple has confirmed that a Vision Pro's location cannot be viewed in the Find My app on another Apple device, or on iCloud.com. Of the Find My family of features, the Vision Pro only supports Activation Lock, which ensures that a thief cannot erase or freshly set up the headset unless they know the owner's Apple ID and password.
Those experiencing motion sickness should stop using the headset, and should not use Vision Pro while on an airplane. Using the device for short increments of time and with less immersive experiences can help.
To minimize motion sickness, Apple says that users should reduce head motion and move the head and neck as little as possible. Apple also recommends reducing visual motion by decreasing window sizes, reducing the level of immersion, and turning on the Reduce Motion setting in the Accessibility section of Settings.
Apple has published a new support document today detailing more about Vision Pro’s support for Bluetooth accessories. Notably, the company has confirmed that “Apple Vision Pro also isn’t compatible with Bluetooth mice.”
Apple says that the Developer Strap is helpful for "accelerating the development of graphics-intensive apps and games." It is designed to provide the same audio experience as the standard Right Audio Strap, so it can be used for both development and testing.
You could rely on the intricate complexities of pricing theories, or you could simply charge a little bit higher than what you think you can get away with - and then let the market truly adjust from there. So when I talk to to other indies, I always encourage them to follow “Perks of Being a Wallflower” pricing: Charge the amount that you truly think you deserve.
There’s no guarantee that Apple will stick to this strategy in the long run, or that the company won’t butt heads with creatives the way Amazon has. But in the meantime, Apple has transformed into a viable alternative to Hollywood’s major studios—and is taking a bite out of its competition.
Developers can request a 30-minute online consultation to ask questions and provide feedback about Apple's changes. Topics of discussion include alternative distribution on iOS, alternative payments in the App Store, linking out to purchases on a webpage, new business terms, and more.
I feel disturbed when, all of my sudden, the keyboard and mouse and trackpad icons on my macOS battery widget started to disappear one by one while I was reading some web page.
Yes, bluetooth has gone wonky, again.
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Thanks for reading.