52 – Apple Vision Pro

The Apple Vision Pro is out and we each got ourselves one… Our first impressions on the early days of the Vision Pro. Will it change the world forever, like the iPhone?

Navigation:

• Intro (01:34)
• Overall… TL;DR
• In-depth analysis
• Competition with Meta Quest 3
• Conclusion

Our co-hosts:

• Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt
• Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture newsIntro

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Nuno G. Pedro

In this episode, episode 52 of Tech Deciphered, we will talk about the Apple Vision Pro. It’s now out, and both Bertrand and myself got ourselves one. So what are our first impressions on the early days of the Vision Pro? Will this revolutionise the future of input and output? Is this the new iPhone? Is this finally the product that Tim Cook has developed that shows us that he is the future of Apple? Let’s start with the overall impressions, Bertrand. What are your overall impressions?

Bertrand Schmitt

What are my overall impressions? It’s a mixed bag, that’s for sure. It’s a very impressive piece of tech. I think my worry is that it has been oversold by Apple, but also by a lot of YouTubers. When you keep looking at these YouTube videos of people using it for eight hours a day, I think it’s totally, utterly bullshit. There is no way in hell any normal human being will put that on their head eight hours a day unless forced to do it.

Nuno G. Pedro

Unless you’re working on your neck like you’re a Formula One driver or something.

Bertrand Schmitt

Exactly. You are working on your neck. Yes, it’s neck training. No, more seriously, overall, and we will go more in depth later on this episode, I feel it’s a great device for maybe two use cases. One is if you want to watch 3D content. To watch 3D content, 3D movies, potentially at some point 3D sports, when we get that, we don’t have that yet so far, 3D concert, then I think It’s awesome.

Bertrand Schmitt

Watching 90 minutes of 3D movies, it’s just an insane experience for me. It’s just amazing. It’s your best way to consume a Blade Runner 2049, a Dune. It’s actually maybe better than in a movie theatre if you combine it with a proper headset because the audio is quite good, the bass are pretty poor. For me today, as a mainstream consumer, that’s the best main use case. For businesses, there might be some reason to look at, if you are doing 3D design, to look at 3D objects in the middle of your room, I can see that as well.

Bertrand Schmitt

Beyond that, I think we’re talking about very stretch use cases. One of these could be to record a video of what you are doing and sharing that with other for training. I could see that probably for training purposes. But beyond that, at this stage, I’m not sure what’s the point to put 2D panels in the middle of a 3D vision with a headset that’s very heavy and very uncomfortable.

Bertrand Schmitt

I don’t know your experience, wearing the headset, but anyone telling you that this headset is nice to wear, do they have a metal head to wear that comfortably? I have no clue. I mean, I’m hopeful there will be better straps, but for me, it’s still a nightmare to wear it.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yeah, this has been tested by 007 villains, so they all can send away the thing on their head. Fully agree with your assessment. It’s impossible have it on your head, to be honest, even for more than an hour-and-a-half, two hours. An hour-and-a-half and two hours is already a lot. So even watching that movie, you might have to take a little break to watch that movie, in particular if it’s over two hours, which many of the Sci-Fi movies actually are, or at least the canonical ones.

Nuno G. Pedro

I agree that for the consumer side, I think the consumption of content will be great. Maybe I would say besides immersive content, immersive communication, we’ll get back to that later on the Zoom experience and the FaceTime experience, so I won’t unravel that whole discussion right now, but the immersive communication piece, I think, will get finally started at some point.

Nuno G. Pedro

For me, those two pieces are the pieces that are going to be core to the early use cases of the Vision Pro. Business, agree with you. Some collaboration tools, some consumption also of immersive content for business is quite powerful, but it’s $3,500, right? It’s so expensive. I mean, it’s more expensive than a really good laptop or an iMac.

Bertrand Schmitt

It’s a price range of your high-end MacBook Pro.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yeah, it’s the price range of the best-in-class laptop that you could use out there from Apple. It’s just expensive as hell. I feel, maybe giving it the other angle, I feel it’s a platform. The Vision Pro is a platform that they launched where they don’t have any killer apps yet, almost. Except maybe for the content, immersive content piece, they have no killer apps day one.

Nuno G. Pedro

As I said, I think they will have immersive communication day two, day 100, whenever a lot of these bugs are sorted out. But day one, that’s it. They launched a platform, which is the Vision Pro. It’s really exceptional. As you said at the beginning, it’s great technology. It’s really incredible. It does show us a glimpse of the future, but it’s not the future yet. I agree with you because of the size and how heavy the device is, I’m not sure as a platform, it would stand a test of time, even with software updates, et cetera.

Nuno G. Pedro

I have a bunch of things that I have issues with this on. We were just before recording this episode, trying to sort out My Persona, which is in beta trial, but it needs the optical ID thing, and the optical ID thing for some reason is not working for me, and I don’t know why, and maybe I need to clean it better. I’m not sure.

Nuno G. Pedro

It’s just there’s still all these little quirks at the core of the experience like optical ID piece that are just like, “Guys, why did you launch it?” Maybe you should have waited a little bit more and have that ecosystem a little bit more prepared.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah, I think the usual way to launch a product where we present you a bit in advance. We share with you a developer conference the details of the API, you can learn how to compile on your Mac, make it work, but you cannot access the device, and you have to wait so long before you can access the device.

Bertrand Schmitt

Basically, most developers who have developed any app for the Vision Pro probably didn’t have any access to the Vision Pro itself. You are guaranteed a few months of horrible bugs trying to just make it work. Surprisingly enough, even as you say, the Apple apps are actually not working so well. You’re having issues with Apple ID.

Bertrand Schmitt

Me, I’m facing a contact page that’s empty, and everything is actually properly linked on my account and everything, but it’s empty by default. I have to manually add everyone so that I can FaceTime them. It’s just pretty insane, so it’s not a bug per se, it’s just horrible design. It’s very weird out-of-the-box. I still want to say that out-of-the-box, that media consumption with Apple TV if you’re watching 3D content, it’s totally insane.

Bertrand Schmitt

For me, it has replaced my home cinema at home. I’m putting a big high-end headset. I have a really good bass as a result, and the Vision Pro, and it’s the best movie theatre experience I ever had. It beats a movie theatre because there is no one around blocking my view. I’m in the perfect spot, and it’s better 3D that you can have in a movie theatre. It’s better colour. You have an OLED screen versus a projection.

Bertrand Schmitt

For me, there is one use case, I’m very surprised that they have not pushed hard on it, because a lot of their other use case are simply not there. Another piece I see a lot, I mean, Apple is showing off, you are watching your Apple Vision Pro in a plane. Come on. I mean, this stuff is the size of a backpack. When the box to put your Vision Pro in, it’s on backpack. We’re seriously going to transport that in a plane? You don’t take any other luggage, it’s just your Vision Pro with you? I mean, this is nuts.

Bertrand Schmitt

People will say, “Oh, yeah, it’s great. It’s an external screen for my Mac.” Come on, you can get an external screen that’s a small, slim light and put in your backpack on top of your Mac and everything else. That’s not a realistic alternative. At home or at work, of course, you have an external screen if that’s what you need. Don’t tell me you need a Vision Pro for an external screen. I think this use case just makes zero sense.

Bertrand Schmitt

For me, at this stage today, makes zero sense. But that media consumption has really shocked me because I’m doing it only once every day at night. The other piece that has shocked me is the quality of the special 3D. If you start watching a 3D object in your home, it can be a Formula One car, it can be a human body, it just sits there perfectly at the right height with the right lighting in a very good pass-through environment in the middle of your living room, for instance, it’s awesome. I don’t have a real use case for it, but it’s super, super awesome. I’m sure some 3D professionals will have use case for it. That is also very, very well nailed. But everything else at this stage, it’s like whatever.

Nuno G. Pedro

There’s this video with the Apple Immersive video stuff that has all their nature videos that are available for free. Also the Alicia Keys.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes, the Apple Immersive videos are awesome, awesome.

Nuno G. Pedro

The Alicia Keys recording thing, whatever. I had a friend of mine test it over the weekend, and she was afraid because there’s one where she’s doing some tight rope walking over a cliff, whatever. She was like, “I can’t watch anymore. I’m out.” I was watching, and I’m a huge fanboy of Alicia Keys. I know she’s well-married, but I’m a huge fanboy of hers.

Nuno G. Pedro

This was before, obviously, the Super Bowl, which was part of the performance as well with Usher. I was like, “This is so cool,” because I could literally see her. She’s talking to us, to the camera, or to the cameras. You’re like, “Wow, this is different ball game in terms of experience.” That was really amazing.

Bertrand Schmitt

I want to add on that because I believe that as of today, the best 3D content for the Vision Pro is actually what Apple calls the Apple Immersive Video, which is a rebranding for a standard that has been around for a while, which is VR 180, except that Apple did it in 8K, 90 FPS. It’s just absolutely awesome because this one compared to a 3D movie, it’s totally filling your field of view, horizontally and vertically and beyond.

Bertrand Schmitt

You can slightly turn your head, which you do normally. Your head doesn’t stay fixed like crazy watching something. It’s a very, very nice experience. Because it’s Apple, you can still see your hands. I don’t know if you notice, but the fact that you can move your head normally, see your hands normally as you would in a movie theatre, it doesn’t feel like an off-body experience. It feels normal and natural.

Nuno G. Pedro

The baby rhinos, we all want to touch the baby rhinos. When the baby rhinos come, it’s like everyone, my friend was also wanting to touch the baby rhinos.

Bertrand Schmitt

You didn’t want to touch the big dinosaur? I didn’t get to the big dinosaur yet. You will see it’s cute. Another type of cute. It was not a baby. But this one was also a very shocking experience and quite impressive because it’s mixing a AR passthrough. You can get a glimpse of what proper quality content will generate. I must say the Alicia Keys video, what was especially awesome is that you got really the impression to be with her and her team.

Nuno G. Pedro

She was there, yeah. We were there with her.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah, she was there, and it felt like for the first time, you are properly watching a normal humans in video. It’s so much more awesome in 3D than in 2D. That was really my take. It’s so much more awesome. I don’t know if you notice with all these immersive videos, it’s a very different game than recording 3D movies because there was no special effect.

Bertrand Schmitt

The camera is just sitting there watching at human-height. It’s very immersive because you are at the normal height, you are looking at her as if you were in the room. There is no special effects. It’s really enabling you to be immersive as if you were somewhere. It’s either with Alicia Keys or it’s watching baby rhinos, or it’s watching someone walking on a cliff.

Bertrand Schmitt

But that for me is very impressive that the proper 3D immersive experience does not require special effects. You could argue maybe it’s the end of special effects because now that you can be with someone in the middle of that movie, there is no need for special effects. You don’t need to zoom in, you don’t need to do anything.

Nuno G. Pedro

You still need it for Sci-Fi and stuff, right? You still need it for movies that require fundamental changes to environment.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah, sorry. You might need CGI, but you don’t need that out-of-focus, in-focus, sudden big zooms, that stuff. I feel movie making is totally different. Actually, that’s what the experts say. I used to do this type of video, is that it’s a totally different way of doing 3D movie making. I’m very excited when we see more of it because I think it might be the ultimate media consumption experience, actually. To be where you are without anything special beyond potentially CGI.

Nuno G. Pedro

To bring it all together and overall, maybe from my perspective, immersive, huge thumbs up. In the last two weeks, I’ve done the two most interesting immersive experiences, probably of my life recently, which was watching you two at the Sphere and now Apple Vision Pro. This is intimate. This is yourself. It’s individual. Obviously, the Sphere is you’re with a bunch of other people.

Nuno G. Pedro

But this is incredible. I think this is the first time, to your point, Bertrand is like, I was smiling at Alicia Keys. There’s no way in hell she was smiling at me because obviously, she’s just looking at a camera. That’s incredible. It’s like that level of intimacy, I think the Vision Pro is incredibly good at proposing. I still believe maybe the communication thing they’ll nail for intimacy as well and for immersion.

Nuno G. Pedro

I agree that, as a platform, this is maybe just the beginning. It’s going to be a V2 or a V3 that’s going to be the next thing. I’m relatively optimistic. I told you I felt the Vision Pro, the first version was going to be somehow a bit limited and clunky. It is really exceptional the way they did it.

Nuno G. Pedro

There’s pieces of the software that you could see if they sort out the edges, it might actually work really well. The price, I think, is the big showstopper of this thing. I mean, 3,500 bucks for this, it’s just silly. You have some very strong views that this might be one of the worst products in Apple’s history in terms of returns.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah. I think, again, I have some very strong, positive thoughts. As of today, it is the best way to experience any 3D movie or immersive video format. What about 2D, you could ask? Yeah, I think it’s a good way to experience 2D, but that special thing is with 3D content. Of course, you can still watch well on 2D content. I think there is a real use case to say, “I’m going to replace my home cinema,” or, “That’s when my spouse is using home cinema, I have my own, and we can watch two different stuff and no fight.” That might be the way to look at it.

Bertrand Schmitt

Again, if you’re a professional doing 3D design, I think that there is huge value. You might still be missing the tools. Just to be clear, you can watch stuff. Open 3D files with some additional apps, but I don’t think you have any creation app, but I’m sure it will be coming in one or two years. Again, for travel use case, forget it. I think another big piece is that it’s not a social experience at all at this stage. You need friends who have an Apple Vision Pro, have set on their personal well, and you can call them in FaceTime, and you can have somewhat of something social.

Bertrand Schmitt

But what is clear is that it’s not for something to enjoy with people around you. I mean, forget the height-side stuff. It’s useless. It’s really not social at this stage. For me, that’s also another issue I have with it. On the plus side, it’s very private. You want to do stuff privately, watch stuff privately. No one can watch above your shoulder. That’s a positive.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yeah, but they can see what’s being projected in your thing. It’s actually less private than other solutions out there, certainly the VR Immersive.

Bertrand Schmitt

How do they watch, sorry?

Nuno G. Pedro

I can watch in front of you and there’s things going on on the screen. I could see at least some stuff that’s going on on the screen from the other side.

Bertrand Schmitt

But if I don’t decide to share, you cannot see anything.

Nuno G. Pedro

No, no, no, no, no. If I on the other side of your lenses, I could see stuff that’s going on in your lenses.

Bertrand Schmitt

No, you can block. You see eyesight, but I don’t think you see anything. Eyesight is not showing what you see.

Nuno G. Pedro

Are you sure of that?

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes.

Nuno G. Pedro

Okay.

Bertrand Schmitt

You only see what Apple want you to see on the outside, and they want you to see that you are doing something, watching something, showing your eyes, but it’s not showing what you are seeing. It’s totally blocked.

Bertrand Schmitt

Overall, my take is that it might be the highest return rate of any Apple product, because, I think, you talk about price, people will be very critical. Is it worth $3.5K? I think there are some use case where, yes, it is.

Nuno G. Pedro

I don’t think it is today. I mean, for sure.

Bertrand Schmitt

But yeah, I think overall, a lot of people will be either, “I’m a huge fanboy, or, “I’m a VR developer,” or, “I love to watch 3D content and all that’s my best device. But beyond that, every other use case, I think It’s not there. Why keep it instead of returning it, waiting one year for a better version? Again, the whole environment, app ecosystem, it’s just not there.

Bertrand Schmitt

I think it was one question to say, you know what? Your first iPhone, it was expensive it was expensive, but only 600 bucks in comparison. It was working for the base use case, which was phone and Safari. You had these three use cases. With any of these use cases, email on mobility, Safari and mobility, and phone, it was… Like, yeah, all combined, it was a game-changer, and the UI was, of course, amazing.

Bertrand Schmitt

I think it’s a very, very different ball game. I’m a believer that Apple will improve hardware and software, don’t get me wrong. All the bugs we are talking about and stuff, even the weight and size and bulk will decrease. I’m more pessimistic that we will get in a reasonable price range quickly, but that in three years, we have removed most of the issues and the price is a bit better, yes.

Bertrand Schmitt

In five years, it’s quite game changer, probably. In 10 years, it gets to some scale similar to tablets, yes. That’s where I see this. I would say overall, cautiously optimistic on the mid-term. I think what they should have called it is not the Apple Vision Pro, but the Apple Vision Developer Edition. I think that would have been a more fair expectation. But right now, I think it’s an issue. I think YouTubers, for instance, are really too much spinning this stuff out.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yeah, this is a developer tool. This is not a ready, full-on consumer, let’s-go-do-stuff.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah.

Nuno G. Pedro

I think they’ve positioned it as a consumer thing, and that’s their fault.

Bertrand Schmitt

I think it’s a mistake.

Nuno G. Pedro

It was a mistake, agreed. Let’s go in-depth analysis.

Bertrand Schmitt

Let’s go about the pros first. Again, I think as a first pro, that’s really the best way to watch a 3D movie. You have a huge screen size, you have the 3D quality you have ever experienced. As long as you combine that with a proper high-quality headset for big bass, then you have something quite magical, I must say. Especially if you start with the Apple Immersive content, you have some 3D IMAX content as well, and you have your 4K Dolby Vision 3D. For this use case, it’s amazing.

Bertrand Schmitt

I think the big question is, is that enough for you to keep it? It’s that one killer feature right now.

Nuno G. Pedro

I think so. For me, the whole experience you get from movies is amazing. I agree with you, you need earphones. I started using my AirPods with it when I’m in it. The demos are incredible. We’ve already talked about a few of them, so we won’t belay too much on it. There will be, I believe, some interesting experience for basic gaming, I think, to start with. I’m not sure I would see mid-core coming anytime soon because of controllers.

Nuno G. Pedro

But I feel in gaming, we’re going to have some interesting casual things coming up as well that would be developed well for the Vision Pro. But overall, I was blown away with the immersive nature of the content, blown away. It is impressive.

Bertrand Schmitt

I don’t see anyone buying a Vision Pro for casual gaming.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yes, we already discussed nobody’s going to buy the Vision Pro for any reason whatsoever because it’s too expensive. But if you have a Vision Pro, I feel the experience of potentially starting to play with casual games is something that will come your way. That’s how I see it.

Bertrand Schmitt

I have tried a few casual games from one music game to some more traditional game improved or remastered for Vision Pro. I think it’s a nice addition. No one in his right mind should buy that for this use case at this stage. I would say, and we will talk later about this, that’s where the Quest 3 actually shines quite a bit. There is some proper high-quality VR game content that you don’t find in the Vision Pro and you might not find until they decide to add controllers.

Bertrand Schmitt

Again, in the pros, I think there is amazing stuff to watch in your living room or your office. Take that Dinosaur demo app, take that Jig app where you can watch any 3D design, basically from a car to an engine to a plane and human body. You can watch that in detail in your room. It’s amazing. This stuff is amazing. That’s where the passthrough is for me truly shining because there is a use for the passthrough.

Bertrand Schmitt

You can move around, watch around without tripping in your living room or in your office. That is amazing. I don’t have a use case for it, but I’m sure some have. The more we have tools to not just watch that content, but edit it, correct it, shape it, that would be amazing step by step. I see a future there if 3D design is one of your priorities. Or you have stuff to learn that benefit from 3D.

Nuno G. Pedro

The Nature, the episodes that we talked about earlier, the Nature series in 3D, the Alicia Keys, recording room thing, et cetera. There’s a couple of really cool things for you to do it. In any case, start with the Apple Immersive demo for content. It’s relatively short, and you’ll get a feel for some of the key scenes in all of these videos. Maybe audio. I think the audio is great. As I said, it’s just the headsets themselves are not, so you need to add headsets to it.

Bertrand Schmitt

Personally, I feel the audio is absolutely amazing. It’s just that it’s lacking pass. But if you forget the pass part, this audio is crystal clear. When you talk to someone else, we see it actually on FaceTime, it’s actually the best audio I’ve done remote with anyone. Out of the box, the audio of the other person was absolutely perfect. It was like being with him in the room. That I was quite shocked. A human voice doesn’t require too much pass, actually. That’s why it was great.

Bertrand Schmitt

Again, for movies, it’s not good enough, but for YouTube videos or talking to someone, it’s actually quite amazing. I have not tried, but apparently it’s extremely good at excluding any other audio but your own audio. Some people say that I’m in the middle of a train station and no one is hearing I’m in a train station.

Nuno G. Pedro

The audio is great, but what we’re saying is the speakers are great. If it’s just voice stuff that you want, if you want immersive, you need to put your earphones on or something like that. Yes so, it’s basically the speaker nature of the device rather than the audio itself. The audio is actually really good.

Bertrand Schmitt

I think hands are working really well. You see them, it’s always visible, even in the middle of the movie, theatre environment. You can use your hands in some apps to move objects, but the fact that they are always visible, you see your own hands, and it’s very different from a Quest 3 experience, for instance, where it’s fake hands. It’s pretty impressive. It’s well done.

Nuno G. Pedro

The hands are great. The sensitivity of them is okay. I think we’ll talk about keyboard later on, but the keyboard experience is not so great.

Bertrand Schmitt

Oh, yeah.

Nuno G. Pedro

But otherwise, the hand stuff is actually great. To your point, from a UX, UI perspective, it’s definitely ahead of the other things that are out there in the market. The ability that you have of moving stuff around, how intuitive it is to close windows and do things around it is pretty significant.

Bertrand Schmitt

The passthrough is overall also a great experience. It has virtually no lag. It’s good, not great image quality, but it’s good image quality. It’s difficult to see stuff close, just to be clear. Yes, you can read your watch, but forget about reading stuff on your iPhone. Yes, you can read a password on your iPhone, but you don’t want to read anything on your iPhone.

Bertrand Schmitt

It looks like the main issue is a lack of autofocus for the camera. I’m not clear I think they have a fixed focus, so they are not able to focus at something close. That’s the main reason. That’s something that can be corrected and is actually available on a high-end, it’s called the Varjo XR-4, where you have a special version with autofocus, and this one is only 10K.

Nuno G. Pedro

It’s slightly more expensive, I guess. I agree on the passthrough, very difficult to do things on your phone while you’re doing it. It needs to be minimal. It needs to be, as you said, a password or something you need to approve. A bit of a problem because your face ID is gone. You’re like, then you need to put the code again for the pin for the phone. I hope Apple at some point starts this out as well. I’m not always using my Apple Watch and all that stuff. I don’t know. It felt a little bit clunky the whole experience.

Bertrand Schmitt

That’s when having a Samsung phone with a fingerprint reading.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yes, I’m on a Samsung phone right now, actually today. We’re definitely giving value to that, but I fully agree with you. It’s a great experience, the passthrough experience. It feels like you’re seeing through, and effectively you’re just being given images of what’s on the other side. There’s no way you’re going to bump into someone when you’re doing it. Even if you’re in your home or against the wall, it’s very clear what you’re seeing.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes, I would agree, but I would say to people, be careful because it’s not the same field of view. You are missing your normal real-life field of view. Because of that, there is stuff you might bump into that you might not have seen because vertically, horizontally, it’s not the same as human eyes. Be careful even at home and absolutely never use that outside your home. It’s crazy, just to be clear, it’s dangerous. If you are seated in a plane, that’s okay, but don’t use it walking anywhere outside. That’s a danger.

Nuno G. Pedro

On top of that, two things to put into context here. One is if you’re in full immersive mode, like we were talking about some of these videos, like the Alicia Keys one and some of the Nature ones, you are in full immersive mode, right?

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes.

Nuno G. Pedro

You can see your hands, but that’s really it. You’re not seeing through anything. That then obviously blocks your view. You’re more in a VR type of mode. Then the second piece is obviously the windows. If a window is stuck in front of you on your line of sight, you don’t see through those windows depending on the window, opacity, et cetera. It might be that you don’t see through the window either. Again, don’t use it while you’re walking outside. I guess that’s the message there.

Bertrand Schmitt

On this one, the only good news and downside of Apple special technology is that if you have a window, and you are walking, the window is to quickly disappear because it’s stuck in space where you put it. That’s the very odd part. I was expecting some experience where you walk with a window that stays in your field of view.

Bertrand Schmitt

For instance, let’s say you have a video. You move around your home or your office while the video stays in your headset. No, that’s not how it’s working. The video disappears step by step because it’s still where you put it. It’s amazing, you can come back, and the video is exactly where you left it. Their tech is insane versus anything that happened before. One thing that you truly get while calling it special technology is not a gimmick. It’s truly what they have achieved.

Nuno G. Pedro

It is truly special.

Bertrand Schmitt

It’s truly special. But at the same time, there are a lot of stuff I would like to keep in my field of view. Like, again, a video. I’m chatting with someone, I’m moving around my home. I want that person to still be there with me, not gone.

Nuno G. Pedro

They should have some lock mode, spatial lock mode where I lock my field of view. Yeah.

Bertrand Schmitt

Given that is purely software, I guess they can do it. There is no restriction. However, given it’s a change of UX, and it’s Apple, maybe they will refuse to change that for the next five years.

Nuno G. Pedro

I hope they don’t because, again, they’ve done the more difficult piece, which is the tracking and spatial recognition, the state of the art, as you said. Doing the lock is actually the easier part, which just stays in your view. Yeah. Hopefully, they won’t this fundamentalist religious fight with us again and say, “Oh, no, you can’t lock it.” It’s like, “Why?”

Bertrand Schmitt

But exactly that’s what I’m wondering, that it would be a philosophical fight.

Nuno G. Pedro

Maybe because of what you said earlier in the episode, because you should never use it walking in blah, blah, blah.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes. Let’s go to image quality. I think, again, this stuff is amazing. That’s the first time, and I’ve used a lot of VR headsets over the years, that’s the first time that the resolution is perfect. You don’t see the pixels. The colours are great. The brightness is insane. Actually, there are some movies I’m watching. I have to close my eyes. It’s too much brightness for me. My eyes need time to adjust.

Bertrand Schmitt

For the FOV, I think it’s good enough. Of course, I wish a bigger FOV. I don’t know if it’s around 100 degrees. I wish bigger, but it’s big enough for the current experience you get from the Vision Pro. Give me more, no question, but good enough for everyone.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yeah, it’s the image quality is stellar. You can’t have a fully immersive experience if the image quality is not stellar. I think they’ve taken us to the next level. The bar now is at a different level altogether.

Bertrand Schmitt

For me, to that point, we got more and more used with our laptop screens external screens, 4K TVs, iPhone, to have a retina quality image in front of you. I would say in VR, in AI, it’s even more important because it’s always in front of you, this screen. Everywhere you look at, if you see pixel, it’s horrible. Especially that it’s been 5, 10 years in your normal life, you don’t see the pixel any more. I think they were absolutely right to wait to launch this device until they can achieve retina level quality. That was the right decision.

Bertrand Schmitt

Battery life, I don’t know for you, but for me, it’s really not an issue. People are complaining. I don’t see any normal human being watching more than three hours of content every day in this device. Maybe you are not a normal human being, and you want to use that more than three hours, but you get around three hours of battery life, more than two, definitely, two hours and a half maybe. It’s easy to plug it if you’re not moving too much while you are watching something. I think it’s a non-issue. Of course, I would prefer to have the battery on my headset, not in a pocket, but I think it’s no big deal and completely overblown at this stage.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yeah, I agree. But I think it’s more because of the limitation. The battery is not fine if you could wear it for 4 hours. It’s just because you can’t. The battery is fine.

Bertrand Schmitt

You’re right.

Nuno G. Pedro

It’s not a feature. It’s like the-

Bertrand Schmitt

It’s part of the-

Nuno G. Pedro

The negative, it’s a bug that then makes the other thing feel fine.

Bertrand Schmitt

True.

Nuno G. Pedro

It’s so heavy, it’s okay because you’re going to have to take it off anyway, so you might as well charge it.

Bertrand Schmitt

To this point, I think that that’s the realization that compared to an iPhone, an iPad, a laptop, a computer, it is not designed to be used eight hours a day. This is not designed for that as of today. You are a madman if you believe you buy that, you replace a Mac. That’s total madness.

Nuno G. Pedro

Moving on maybe to the cons. We’ve already mentioned a few because we couldn’t help ourselves. Well, head, weight, comfort. It is relatively comfort, but for a short period of time. Then it’s heavy as the crown, I guess, is what comes to mind. It’s fine if you have a little bit of some backing, like to your point, reclining chair. If there’s something behind our heads, it’s a little bit easier. If you’re on a sofa and there’s nothing behind, you still feel a bit the weight as well.

Nuno G. Pedro

You get tired quickly. I think my max right now, to be very honest with you, is maybe 30 something minutes. I’ve never gone past an hour. 30 something minutes, if you remember, is what everyone was saying for the quest in general because of VR and all that stuff. I’m yet to watch a full on movie on it. I realized the Dune movie you’re talking about is the first one.

Nuno G. Pedro

I want to watch the second one, so I want to wait until the second one is out.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yeah, that was episode one.

Nuno G. Pedro

Maybe I’ll try with the stuff It’s available for free and watch a few of them in a row. I didn’t have as much time this weekend as I expected to have because I had friends over for Super Bowl and all that stuff. I was on the road. There’s a lag here on the analysis between Bertrand and me because I was on the road for a little bit longer, so I got mine later. Bertrand was sending me all these tips and all these things, and I’m like, okay, but I still need to test a little bit more. Definitely, it’s a device that I see myself going back to unlike, to be honest, my Meta Quest 2. I haven’t used it in a long time.

Bertrand Schmitt

I think that the fact they nailed the media content is a big one, media content consumption. Me, to your point, I use it up to 90 minutes in a row. I would say for movies, it’s okay because if it’s a long movie, I would just split it in two, to be clear, because I rarely have three hours in a go available to watch something. But split into a long movie, that’s actually perfect. But yeah, three hours in a row, I’m not sure I would be ready for that in the current version.

Bertrand Schmitt

Another piece I want to be careful. If you’re doing basic media consumption, it’s fine. But if you’re trying to do more, it can be very tiring for the eyes because using your eyes to control a UI is actually very bad for your eyes. Your eye muscle are not used to do that. Your eyes are used to keep moving around and stuff, not to be locked in place, look fixately at a UI element in order to control it and then snap it with your fingers. I think if that UI is very well done, I’m actually I’m worried to use that UI on a regular basis, like for work, for instance, because I’m very worried your eye muscle are not designed for that, are not used to it.

Bertrand Schmitt

Another piece I was reading, people were saying you are blinking less in that type of environment, which is also an issue because your eyes should be blinking regularly. That’s something to be seen. Again, it goes back to if you are using it 90 minutes a day for media consumption, it’s not a If you are planning, again, to use it for eight hours a day, I’m not sure you really know what you are getting into.

Nuno G. Pedro

Yeah, there will be other side effects because of the weight and the sight and stuff.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes.

Nuno G. Pedro

Definitely, I think this is going to be a little bit of a backlash at some point on that. Definitely tiring for the eyes. The hands, I feel, are interesting for you to do, obviously, the things in terms of user interface, but there’s very limited UI interactions, to be honest. There’s very few things. There’s three movements that matter. Then can you do other things with your hands? Is there any other thing that you could use it for? I don’t know if we’re getting this because it’s early days, and so Apple has ideas on what else they want to do with your hands. I hope so. Otherwise, right now, it’s pretty limited.

Bertrand Schmitt

Yes, that’s the part I feel odd because your hands are always vi