Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Better Offline. I'm ed Zetron. This is a
Speaker 2: weekly tech podcast where I break down the ways in
Speaker 2: which the tech industry, and in particular big tech, is
Speaker 2: trying to change the future for better or for worse.
Speaker 2: And in the case of Apple, a company worth nearly
Speaker 2: three trillion dollars, it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 1: You see.
Speaker 2: It took me fifteen minutes and two restarts to try
Speaker 2: and rename the title of the script. I'm currently reading
Speaker 2: you the Vision Pro, Apple's latest device and their first
Speaker 2: real new computer since the iPad, released in early February
Speaker 2: of this year, and it's a three five hundred special
Speaker 2: computer which, to quote Apple's marketing literature, you navigate simply
Speaker 2: with your eyes, hands and voice. This device refused. It's
Speaker 2: time and time again to let me select the part
Speaker 2: of the document in Google Dogs that I wanted to
Speaker 2: look and point and grab. Theoretically, I was meant to
Speaker 2: look at it with my eyes and then it would
Speaker 2: go to the place I wanted it to go, and
Speaker 2: then I'd tap my fingers and then I'd select it
Speaker 2: and then type things in. That's not what happens. You
Speaker 2: can probably guess. I assumed at first that this was
Speaker 2: potentially due to a poor fit. So I pulled the
Speaker 2: vision Pro off my head, I adjusted the strap, I
Speaker 2: put it back on, and I saw nothing, only the
Speaker 2: vision Pro showing me the world around me. No menus,
Speaker 2: nothing was projected on the one thing this device was
Speaker 2: meant to do it was not doing. This is a
Speaker 2: bug that's happened to me at least five different times,
Speaker 2: and this entire experience is indicative of what the vision
Speaker 2: Pro is simultaneously the single most interesting and annoying piece
Speaker 2: of technology ever made. Practically speaking, the vision Pro is
Speaker 2: a head worn computer that attaches eye with a single
Speaker 2: band rap called the solo band, which adjusts with a
Speaker 2: little wheel. It kind of goes around the back of
Speaker 2: your head and you turn it to tighten it, or
Speaker 2: the dual loop band, which adjusts with two extremely basic
Speaker 2: velcro straps. It feels very unapple, but it works. The
Speaker 2: headset itself features a big sheet of glass and metal
Speaker 2: with a series of cameras and sensors for measuring the
Speaker 2: space around you, letting you see the world through pass
Speaker 2: through technology. This is a fancy way of saying that
Speaker 2: there are cameras that show your surroundings and it's pretty
Speaker 2: good perspective wise. It feels realistic. You can grab a drink,
Speaker 2: you can pet a cat, as I have many times.
Speaker 2: Inside there's even more cameras and there's two four k
Speaker 2: O lead screens that's organic LED kind of see it
Speaker 2: in fancy high end TVs, particularly ones by LG. And
Speaker 2: these OLED screens are how you see the vision pros
Speaker 2: operating system, which is projected onto the world in front
Speaker 2: of you, and the thing that actually blocks out the
Speaker 2: light around you, that actually puts the vision Pro against
Speaker 2: your face close enough so it works. It's called a
Speaker 2: light seal and it clips on with a bit of
Speaker 2: magnets and it's strange. It's really weird and it kind
Speaker 2: of works, but not regularly enough for me to recommend.
Speaker 2: One would think you could just buy this thing, and
Speaker 2: you'd be incorrect. You can't just order a vision Pro no, no,
Speaker 2: no no. You have to have an iPhone or an
Speaker 2: iPad with face ID, which is the scanner that allows
Speaker 2: you to unlock your phone or your iPad and you
Speaker 2: scan your face before you can order it so that
Speaker 2: they can tell you the right size light seal face rest,
Speaker 2: which is the little cushion that goes inside the light
Speaker 2: seal and headstrap. Now you're probably hearing this and thinking, man,
Speaker 2: I hope they don't get that wrong, and you're completely
Speaker 2: right to worry about that. My first scan gave me
Speaker 2: a light seal that didn't really seem right, so I
Speaker 2: scanned it again a day later and got a larger
Speaker 2: light seal, which costs three hundred dollars. This sucks, and
Speaker 2: it's the least Apple experience I've ever seen. It's the
Speaker 2: hallmark of a product rushed out without any real planning
Speaker 2: or thought. I had to scrape through Reddit to find
Speaker 2: out what to do with this thing, and apparently there
Speaker 2: is a way of swapping this. I cannot find anything
Speaker 2: from Apple themselves about doing so. Nevertheless, you scan, you
Speaker 2: tell it if you have any vision issues, You tell
Speaker 2: it if you need optical inserts, and then you provide
Speaker 2: them with your prescription if you do, and then you
Speaker 2: order the bloody thing three and a half thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And that's just for starters, two hundred and fifty six
Speaker 2: gigabytes of memory in there, going all the way up
Speaker 2: to one terror byte, approaching four thousand dollars. When you
Speaker 2: get the device. It isn't small, but it definitely isn't
Speaker 2: as bulky or awkward as say Innoculus Quest or an
Speaker 2: HDC vive or a steam Index, which are all virtual
Speaker 2: reality headsets. It took about half an hour of messing
Speaker 2: with it for me to find something comfortable. This thing
Speaker 2: is not light, though, and you put it on and
Speaker 2: you can definitely feel it on there. The solo strap,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, is useless. It's uncomfortable, it does not
Speaker 2: hold it on right, but the dual strap is actually
Speaker 2: pretty good. Nevertheless, it took me about half an hour
Speaker 2: of messing around with it to make it comfortable and
Speaker 2: make it actually feel right. But when you get there,
Speaker 2: it kind of just works. It's different from every other
Speaker 2: VR virtual reality in AR augmented reality experience that I've
Speaker 2: ever had. You put it on, you turn it on,
Speaker 2: and it powers on sort of. The initial setup of
Speaker 2: the Vision Pro requires you to look at your hands,
Speaker 2: then look at several colored spots hanging in the ether
Speaker 2: all around your vision, and you tap with your fingers,
Speaker 2: which you can see with the cameras on the outside
Speaker 2: of the device. Once that's done, you're presented with a
Speaker 2: slate of pretty familiar apps, messages, notes, email, and so
Speaker 2: on and so forth, all things that you would have
Speaker 2: seen on your iPhone or your Mac or your iPad.
Speaker 2: When I say you're presented or you see these apps,
Speaker 2: what I actually mean is the Vision Pro projects these
Speaker 2: onto the world around you. They are it's almost as
Speaker 2: if they're physically there, but they're not really. It's all
Speaker 2: computer magic. The screen is sharp, the text is smooth,
Speaker 2: the icons are rich with color, and they all have
Speaker 2: a satisfying pop when you look at them, because that's
Speaker 2: how you really navigate this device. So you look at
Speaker 2: an icon, you tap your fingers and then that opens
Speaker 2: it up. You navigate through pages, say, if you're looking
Speaker 2: at I don't know, a Google doc like the one
Speaker 2: I'm looking at right now, and you pinch and you
Speaker 2: hold your fingers and then you move them up and down.
Speaker 2: It feels kind of cool. And this is all done
Speaker 2: because the vision Broken see your hands by your side,
Speaker 2: and they can see where you're looking at. They actually
Speaker 2: look at your eyes using cameras inside the device. Theoretically speaking,
Speaker 2: you can just use this device with your hands and eyes. Essentially,
Speaker 2: the world's your desktop. You open Safari, messages, whatever else.
Speaker 2: You move those windows around by pinching them, and say
Speaker 2: you underneath everything you're looking at, say a web browser,
Speaker 2: there's a little dot and there's a little line. The
Speaker 2: little dot lets you close it by pinching, and the
Speaker 2: little line lets you grab it and move it around space.
Speaker 2: You can have a theoretically infinite desktop space. You can
Speaker 2: also resize things by looking at the corner of a
Speaker 2: window and kind of moving your hands up and down.
Speaker 2: This all sounds quite weird when you're in the experience,
Speaker 2: it's quite accurate. When it works. It's genuinely magical. It's
Speaker 2: a functional workspace that turns basically anywhere you are into
Speaker 2: a huge desktop, resizing windows by grabbing the corners, throwing
Speaker 2: things around. It feels satisfying, it feels futuristic. Apple has
Speaker 2: on some level delivered a consumer friendly augmented reality experience
Speaker 2: that anyone can use. It's really exciting when it works. Sadly,
Speaker 2: that's a load bearing when now you may be hearing
Speaker 2: all this and saying, wow, that sounds amazing. Moving things
Speaker 2: around with my hands and my eyes. How innovative. But
Speaker 2: what if I need to write an email. The first
Speaker 2: thing to realize about the vision pro is that has
Speaker 2: the single worst keyboard I have used on a modern
Speaker 2: consumer device. And remember, Apple once made a keyboard so
Speaker 2: bad it ended up on the receiving end of a
Speaker 2: class action lawsuit, of course, talking about the Butterfly keyboard
Speaker 2: of the twenty fifteen to twenty twenty era MacBooks that
Speaker 2: really sucked and cost Apple millions to settle. And that keyboard, well,
Speaker 2: I mean compared to the Vision Pro, that thing's a
Speaker 2: bloody masterpiece. The Vision Pro's keyboard is so poorly devised,
Speaker 2: so horribly executed, and so offensively unfit for the task
Speaker 2: that I cannot understand how this device was allowed to
Speaker 2: launch with it. Typing involves either selecting the keys and
Speaker 2: the keyboard by looking at them and then pitching or
Speaker 2: physically poking at the air like a confused ape, something
Speaker 2: that Steve Jobs himself once said he did not like.
Speaker 2: And that's why MacBooks don't have touch screens. It's ill
Speaker 2: suited for tasks where you need to precisely select something
Speaker 2: from a densely packed group of things. It's awkward, it's ugly,
Speaker 2: it does not work, and it's astonishing that this device
Speaker 2: launched with this. This is enough of a problem that
Speaker 2: they should not have put the vision Pro out into
Speaker 2: the world without a Bluetooth keyboard, which the vision Pro
Speaker 2: does support. This thing is effectively useless for any kind
Speaker 2: of written communication, relying entirely on this horrifying airborne poking
Speaker 2: thing or Siri, a voice based assistant, which, as you
Speaker 2: know from using literally any voice assistant, is a C
Speaker 2: plus replacement for the written word. Anyone with a strong
Speaker 2: accent and mind by comparison, isn't that strong compared to
Speaker 2: say from Scotland. They're probably going to drop a few letters,
Speaker 2: few words and just find themselves deeply frustrated by the
Speaker 2: whole experience. One might think, of course, now that I
Speaker 2: mentioned bluetooth keyboards like Apple's Magic Keyboard, that this would
Speaker 2: solve all the problems. You'd plug this thing in and
Speaker 2: are where you go, you type away, and you'd be
Speaker 2: like fifty to seventy five percent correct. Look, if I
Speaker 2: was making this product, if I was Tim Cook and
Speaker 2: I was putting this bad boy into the world, I
Speaker 2: probably would have thought, well, my keyboard sucks, so I'm
Speaker 2: going to make the best Bluetooth experience anyone's ever seen.
Speaker 2: That's not what Tim Cook did. Look for reasons I
Speaker 2: cannot ascertain the vision pro treats Bluetooth keyboards unlike any
Speaker 2: other device, acting with abject surprise in its existence. You'll
Speaker 2: turn this thing on, connect it, and suddenly blue lines
Speaker 2: will appear on random things on the bar, on safari,
Speaker 2: on a textbox in messages, and it isn't obvious what
Speaker 2: you're meant to do there. You might hit enter and
Speaker 2: you'd think, Okay, this is going to put me in
Speaker 2: the textbox. It doesn't. It isn't obvious what it wants
Speaker 2: to do, and at times it completely freaks out. You'll
Speaker 2: be typing and then the screen will start freaking out
Speaker 2: and selecting different parts or unselecting the place where you
Speaker 2: are currently typing. My theory is that the vision pro
Speaker 2: is still tracking your hands as I mentioned it does
Speaker 2: as you are typing. This suggests the hilarious possibility that
Speaker 2: Apple's engineers did not consider the fact that people use
Speaker 2: their hands to type on keyboards. Writing in a Google
Speaker 2: document as I am reading off of now, as billions
Speaker 2: of people do every day. One of the Web's most
Speaker 2: common tasks is an exercise in frustration. Sometimes the vision
Speaker 2: pro will arbitrarily decide that I need to move the
Speaker 2: entire window, or that I can type, but I cannot
Speaker 2: navigate through the words with the arrow keys, as one
Speaker 2: might do on literally any device from the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it will open the software keyboard while I'm typing
Speaker 2: on the hardware keyboard, getting in the way, physically blocking
Speaker 2: my vision with a keyboard that I don't want to
Speaker 2: use because I'm using a physical one, and then I
Speaker 2: have to close that or move it because sometimes it
Speaker 2: will pop back up. Similarly, when you use I message
Speaker 2: so you're texting features, you have a lot more problems.
Speaker 2: One might think that this would be a simple case
Speaker 2: of looking and then maybe tapping and then typing. What
Speaker 2: actually happens is the vision pro has a minor history
Speaker 2: onic situation, unable to tell whether you'd want to use
Speaker 2: the bluetooth keyboard or the on screen keyboard, or even
Speaker 2: if you want to text. I really cannot make it clearer.
Speaker 2: It is very difficult to just look at a place
Speaker 2: and then start typing and then send a message with
Speaker 2: a Bluetooth keyboard. This is a three and a half
Speaker 2: thousand dollars item. It should be easy. This is the
Speaker 2: easy stuff. Look, look, look. While this may seem petty.
Speaker 2: I just want to be crystal clear. The Apple Vision Pro,
Speaker 2: Apple's first this new kind of computer in some time,
Speaker 2: is incapable of simply letting me type words into a
Speaker 2: document without experiencing some kind of mental breakdown. The user
Speaker 2: interface issues on this thing are remarkably bad. They suggest
Speaker 2: this company simply did not test it in real world cases.
Speaker 2: It feels as if they rushed this out. Apple, a
Speaker 2: company that redefined the computer several times over and likely
Speaker 2: will several times more, has managed to launch a three
Speaker 2: and a half thousand dollars device that its basic level
Speaker 2: cannot let me type words on a fucking page. And
Speaker 2: it's astonishing that this company would launch a product so
Speaker 2: utterly ramshackle in its execution. It isn't clear why, for example,
Speaker 2: I cannot simply type in this document, check my text,
Speaker 2: and then immediately return to the same document without the
Speaker 2: Vision Pro either failing to let me start typing or
Speaker 2: dropping my cursor into the middle of the page. Look,
Speaker 2: these are bugs, obvious, ridiculous bugs. An Apple has shown
Speaker 2: an utter loathing and disrespect for their customers by shipping
Speaker 2: this device with such obvious flaws, And there are plenty
Speaker 2: more too. On taking the device off and putting it
Speaker 2: on again. As I mentioned on the intro, about half
Speaker 2: the time, it'll simply not load the user interface, forcing
Speaker 2: me to do a hard restart of the entire device.
Speaker 2: I've had multiple times where the eye tracking simply didn't work,
Speaker 2: selecting stuff I was clearly not looking at. Apple has
Speaker 2: also rushed ahead without a full app ecosystem, relying on
Speaker 2: compatibility with and I quote millions of iPhone and iPad
Speaker 2: apps that really aren't that compatible with it at all,
Speaker 2: including chatap signal, which requires you to take a picture
Speaker 2: of a QR code to connect to your account. Note
Speaker 2: that there is no way to take a picture of
Speaker 2: a QR code that's inside a device that you're looking
Speaker 2: at with your eyes. It's just sad. It's really sad.
Speaker 2: You can't launch something with a facsimile of Slack, a
Speaker 2: workplace piece of software used by millions. But don't worry,
Speaker 2: Microsoft team fans, You're supported. The basic building blocks of
Speaker 2: an app ecosystem are not in place here. There's no
Speaker 2: YouTube app, though YouTubers mentioned that they might build one.
Speaker 2: Netflix no app. It feels as if Apple just thought
Speaker 2: we'll just get this shit out there. Who cares and
Speaker 2: as I've mentioned, well, there's technically Bluetooth keyboard support, Apple
Speaker 2: has done such a lazy, half fast, than thoughtless job
Speaker 2: with it that it's barely an improvement over there regular
Speaker 2: software keyboard unless you can make it work, and that
Speaker 2: is that's in unless. As I've mentioned, there's technically Bluetooth
Speaker 2: keyboard support, but Apple has done such an awful, lazy,
Speaker 2: half fast, and thoughtless job with it that it's only
Speaker 2: somewhat of an improvement over the software keyboard. This is
Speaker 2: the easy stuff, as I've mentioned, So while writing this draft,
Speaker 2: While putting this together, I had quite a few problems
Speaker 2: with Focus. I would pick the thing up, put it on,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't look right. I'd readjust and I could kind
Speaker 2: of get it right, but it just didn't feel consistent.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'd look and it wouldn't look at the right place,
Speaker 2: For example, when you open the device and you have
Speaker 2: to enter your passcode. Sometimes it just wouldn't accept where
Speaker 2: my eye was looking. I'd look at the top right corner,
Speaker 2: it would look in the middle. I called Apple Support,
Speaker 2: couldn't get through to anyone. I'd book a core, dogged
Speaker 2: someone for five minutes. They're gone. Hung up on me.
Speaker 2: This was within a week of the launch of a
Speaker 2: device that made Apple half a billion dollars. Nevertheless, many
Speaker 2: of the problems I ran into were a result of
Speaker 2: poor fit. I want to be clear how inexcusable it
Speaker 2: is that a major tech product, one that made a
Speaker 2: company hundreds of millions of dollars in a single day,
Speaker 2: could be shipped as poorly as Apple has shipped the
Speaker 2: Vision Pro to try a different sized light seal. An
Speaker 2: essential part of this device is three hundred dollars, and
Speaker 2: the cushions that go inside the light seals cost an
Speaker 2: additional thirty dollars each. I got really lucky. I found
Speaker 2: someone with exactly the same issue as I had on Reddit,
Speaker 2: someone with exactly the same sizes. I scanned my face
Speaker 2: on the day and I got fitted for what Apple
Speaker 2: caused twenty one W. The person on Reddit also had
Speaker 2: this problem. They tried to twenty three W. It was better,
Speaker 2: but a trip to the Apple Store ended up with
Speaker 2: a twenty three N When I tried it, this was
Speaker 2: exactly what I needed. The Vision Pro was now very consistent.
Speaker 2: Every time I put it on it was pretty good.
Speaker 2: Things mostly worked because that's the Vision Pro experience. Now,
Speaker 2: these numbers are of course all nonsense and based on
Speaker 2: some kind of internal calculus that would have made Steve
Speaker 2: Jobs take a hostage. Had I not spent hours trying
Speaker 2: to work out these issues and spending ninety bucks on
Speaker 2: different eye cushions, I would have assumed that the Vision
Speaker 2: Pro was just kind of awkward if you didn't put
Speaker 2: it on right. It turns out it's meant to feel
Speaker 2: a certain way every time, and in many cases I
Speaker 2: think people would simply return it them correct the homework
Speaker 2: of a company with two hundred and fifty billion dollars
Speaker 2: in cash in the bank. I of course was doing
Speaker 2: this review, so I had to get it right. It's
Speaker 2: also ridiculous that I had to, and it's ridiculous that
Speaker 2: Apple does not have a way of checking whether the
Speaker 2: fit is correct. The way the vision Pro is meant
Speaker 2: to work is it's meant to go on and feel
Speaker 2: good immediately. You're not meant to shift the bugger around.
Speaker 2: That's what I found out only through my own experimentation.
Speaker 2: Apple has made very little effort to make sure you
Speaker 2: are using their device properly. This is not aid to
Speaker 2: quote Steve Jobs, You're holding it wrong. Issue. This is
Speaker 2: a you have deployed your launch wrong, mister Cook issue.
Speaker 2: It's a complete disgrace that a company as large as
Speaker 2: Apple could ship a product I add that costs several
Speaker 2: times more than most people pay for rent, requiring such
Speaker 2: a precise fit, and then trusts these measures to a
Speaker 2: phone's face scanner. The difference between a correct fit on
Speaker 2: a vision pro is the difference between the clarity of
Speaker 2: a seven to twenty piece screen, so the kind that
Speaker 2: you would have seen from televisions fifteen or twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: and a four CR screen like you'd see on most
Speaker 2: televisions today. And there's very little out there to tell
Speaker 2: you what right feels like. If Apple was a responsible company,
Speaker 2: they'd demand customers come in to pick up their vision
Speaker 2: pros and get fitted by an Apple genius when they
Speaker 2: did so. Instead of doing the expensive, important hard work
Speaker 2: of building, say satellite fitting appointments, or perhaps a thorough
Speaker 2: remote fitting appointment, Apple would rather burden an indeterminate amount
Speaker 2: of customers with an inferior experience. Imagine if you got
Speaker 2: your laptop and you opened it up and sometimes the
Speaker 2: resolution was wrong, or maybe your eye phone came and
Speaker 2: just the quarter of the screen didn't work, and these
Speaker 2: were all basic settings that had never been put in.
Speaker 2: This is the level of fuck up that Apple has
Speaker 2: made with the Vision Pro, and I think it's important
Speaker 2: that consumers are aware of this look. I don't have
Speaker 2: any data on this subject, but based on even in
Speaker 2: a cursory glance of social media, there are so many
Speaker 2: people who do not know if they're getting the intended
Speaker 2: experience with Apple's Vision Pro. I spent days with this device,
Speaker 2: feeling uncomfortable and trying to make it work in a predictable,
Speaker 2: reliable manner, without success. I did try and schedule a
Speaker 2: call with Apple support, but when I did so, I
Speaker 2: spent five minutes giving them the most basic information about
Speaker 2: my device, like my serial number and all sorts and
Speaker 2: things I'd already tried. At that point, the specialist drop
Speaker 2: my call, dump me back on hold with a chirpy
Speaker 2: voice telling me that a specialist would be right with
Speaker 2: me in a few minutes. After ten minutes, I hung up.
Speaker 2: To be abundantly clear, this was a call I sched
Speaker 2: with Apple several hours beforehand. It's also important to add
Speaker 2: that Apple does allegedly have pop ups that are meant
Speaker 2: to warn you of a poor fit of the vision
Speaker 2: Pro or issues with eye tracking. They never appeared once,
Speaker 2: and I simply assumed that Apple had really not quite
Speaker 2: worked out how to make augmented reality work yet. And
Speaker 2: what's really frustrating about this whole thing is that Apple
Speaker 2: was really really close to doing something quite marvelous. I
Speaker 2: wanted to give you listeners a little more perspective on
Speaker 2: the vision Pro, so I reached out to one of
Speaker 2: the leading tech reviewers in the country. Joanna Stern is
Speaker 2: the Emmy Award winning personal tech columnist at The Wall
Speaker 2: Street Journal and was one of the founding reporters at
Speaker 2: The Verge, another major consumer electronics website. She reviewed the
Speaker 2: vision Pro for the Journal, and I thought it'd be
Speaker 2: great to get her views. Joanna, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 3: Anytime where else would I be?
Speaker 2: Well, maybe that's a good question. Do you plan to
Speaker 2: use your vision Pro past the review period?
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 1: I think, I you know, I think I've had it
Speaker 1: now what okay, two weeks with days today, I'm.
Speaker 2: Very prepared for your podcast Wednesday the seventh.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I've actually had it for two weeks. Today
Speaker 1: at five o'clock PM, in one hour from now, I
Speaker 1: will celebrate my two week anniversary with my vision Pro
Speaker 1: review you and we will be together and well, well,
Speaker 1: I won't go there in the augmented world, in the
Speaker 1: augmented world, and so I will say I finished the
Speaker 1: review about a week ago, and I have used it
Speaker 1: for two things since. I will also just caveat saying
Speaker 1: I have been sick and I've been very nauseous without
Speaker 1: the headset on. It's just the sickness that I seem
Speaker 1: to have come down with. So for the last two
Speaker 1: days I've just been like, I do not want to
Speaker 1: go near that thing. But when I recover, I plan
Speaker 1: to put it back on. But the two things i've
Speaker 1: used it for. One is working, so I don't have
Speaker 1: the best monitor at my Wall Street Journal office. I know,
Speaker 1: shocking Leading it was such a glowing intro you did
Speaker 1: for me, but Leading Technology Columnists has crappy monitor, as
Speaker 1: really the headline here, and so I've been using the
Speaker 1: headset to just work.
Speaker 3: I have a very good setup.
Speaker 1: In there with my three different monitors or virtual monitors,
Speaker 1: and I've kind of arranged it the way I like it,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm actually quite productive in there. And
Speaker 1: the second is I've been watching in it. I've been
Speaker 1: watching Beef. Have you watched Beef?
Speaker 2: I've not.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, it's pretty it's a crazy show. It's on Netflix,
Speaker 1: and I watched the last two episodes in there.
Speaker 2: So what was the fitting experience? So you, I assume
Speaker 2: got it straight from Apple. Did they do any kind
Speaker 2: of fitting experience with you?
Speaker 1: They did, but it was very similar to the fitting
Speaker 1: experience that anyone else goes through, which was on the app.
Speaker 1: Really that was the you know, I enrolled my face.
Speaker 1: I did this sort of weird head turns looking at
Speaker 1: the phone. It then gives you prediction of what size
Speaker 1: you're going to be, and that was all I really did.
Speaker 1: But no special, no special. I think mine fits pretty well.
Speaker 1: I mean it's really interesting because now, so the first
Speaker 1: week I had it, I really couldn't show it to
Speaker 1: anyone that was part of the agreement with Apple, and
Speaker 1: couldn't really let other people wear it. And then after
Speaker 1: the bargo broke and we were able to start sharing this,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of colleagues want to test it out.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm convinced that's how I actually got sick,
Speaker 1: because they were all breathing in my face computer and
Speaker 1: when you put it on them, like you can definitely
Speaker 1: see this thing does not fit them right. It's mostly men,
Speaker 1: and they have big heads and you know literally and figuratively,
Speaker 1: and they and they come out of like the demo
Speaker 1: that I've done with them with like a giant red
Speaker 1: stripe on their head, like it looks like they've gone
Speaker 1: scuba diving.
Speaker 3: And I don't have that. I just don't have that.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the initial hands on I did with
Speaker 1: Apple in June at WWDC, I actually did have that.
Speaker 1: I had that like red mark across my forehead and
Speaker 1: you know, thinking back on it, it was probably because
Speaker 1: they hadn't figured out the fitting situation.
Speaker 2: So when I got mine, I had a horrible experience
Speaker 2: my foot four or five days with it. I scanned
Speaker 2: with the app of five in the morning and the
Speaker 2: day you order it and scam my face and it
Speaker 2: gave me twenty one W. I then immediately was checking
Speaker 2: like Reddit and people were saying, oh, I got that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is right. And then when
Speaker 2: it came out I put it on, I'm like, this
Speaker 2: is not this does not feel right. So I got
Speaker 2: a twenty three W based on a reddit post, and
Speaker 2: I just every so often I'd put it on and
Speaker 2: it wouldn't feel right. It wasn't be in focused, the
Speaker 2: eye tracking wasn't working. I just assumed it sucked. And
Speaker 2: then scraping through reddit more, I found someone else with
Speaker 2: the same size situation. They said, oh, by the N
Speaker 2: cushion size, and it was night and day. And it
Speaker 2: just feels to me like this is a massive supply
Speaker 2: chain issue that Apple is not considering.
Speaker 1: Or is it that they got the sizing wrong when
Speaker 1: you first did it?
Speaker 2: But that's what I mean. Though, it's the supply chain
Speaker 2: of the actual scan. It almost feels like they should
Speaker 2: not be relying on it. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: heard of anyone else. I'm not even trying to load
Speaker 2: a question here. Have you heard of anyone else having
Speaker 2: this problem?
Speaker 3: I haven't. I haven't. I mean that's good.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, you know, and they have the two
Speaker 1: and so it was the it's the light seals what
Speaker 1: you're saying, the difference.
Speaker 2: The light seal and the light seal cushion cushion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so, and I have two cushions because or
Speaker 1: maybe everyone gets two cushions, but they say you should
Speaker 1: use the bigger light seal cushion if you plan to
Speaker 1: use the lenses, the.
Speaker 3: Prescription lenses. I don't know if I have those.
Speaker 2: I don't. I also only got one one cushion with
Speaker 2: mine when I bought it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually think that I had the extra cushion
Speaker 1: because I had the lenses too, right, which is a
Speaker 1: little comfier.
Speaker 2: But and the thing is, when it's working now, it's great,
Speaker 2: But I feel like the real elephant in the room
Speaker 2: is the keyboard. The keyboard is just astonishingly bad. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I Steve Jobs. I'm surprised he didn't come out of
Speaker 2: the grave like an angry zombie over this one. It's awful.
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume it's a place that they're definitely looking.
Speaker 1: How do we make a typing experience better there?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that, like, you know, could they with swiping,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the swipe inputs.
Speaker 2: Like gesturing in the air almost exactly?
Speaker 3: Would that be better? Probably?
Speaker 2: Right, It's just so weird because the experience feels cool.
Speaker 2: But then you get to the common way of entering
Speaker 2: text into stuff, which is very common and that you
Speaker 2: should be able to do on anything, and it's just
Speaker 2: it almost doesn't feel like an Apple product.
Speaker 1: I know, and you like, I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: had this too, where it's like you can't touch type
Speaker 1: on that right, so you want to like looked out.
Speaker 1: You have to look at this virtual keyboard, but then
Speaker 1: you're looking up to see where your text is going
Speaker 1: in and is it going right. And they have like
Speaker 1: a little thing above the keyboard where you can see
Speaker 1: the text as it's typing out.
Speaker 3: But it's it's all of this. It's just not natural.
Speaker 1: And I even showed in my videos like thank god
Speaker 1: for a real keyboard, and you compare it with Bluetooth,
Speaker 1: so it's like the killer accessory for this is actually
Speaker 1: a you know, ninety nine dollars keyboard that I was
Speaker 1: going to sell you.
Speaker 2: One thing I loved in your review is when you
Speaker 2: said you can have all of this for lo lolo
Speaker 2: price of what five thousand dollars and yet the MacBook
Speaker 2: throw the keyboard, this and that is it just feels
Speaker 2: like the experience is not complete without that keyboard.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, yeah, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's fine if you're like going
Speaker 1: to just type in one show, right and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let me go to Netflix and type in beef. That's fine,
Speaker 1: or you can use voice to do that. But when
Speaker 1: you are really trying to do something in there, like
Speaker 1: you're trying to type an email or you're I've been.
Speaker 3: Doing a lot.
Speaker 1: I've actually been writing like a ton of stuff. I've
Speaker 1: been riting in there.
Speaker 2: I wrote the four thousand words script for the full
Speaker 2: episode on the Vision Pro. I can't write on a
Speaker 2: laptop sitting down. I have to be at to desk
Speaker 2: otherwise my rat brain doesn't focus properly. But I was
Speaker 2: able to sit on the couch and right this just
Speaker 2: sitting there, and that's remarkable. I find the focus parts remarkable.
Speaker 1: I think that's and some people have been remarking about
Speaker 1: this on social media and various thing pieces. But the
Speaker 1: irony of this being the killer computing platform for just
Speaker 1: two D basically notes or documents, right like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what we have gotten. The future is actually just big
Speaker 1: floating documents in our sky.
Speaker 2: Well to that point, do you think that this or
Speaker 2: a device like this is the future.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, look, that's where I kind of took
Speaker 1: my review, and now I've had some distance from it.
Speaker 1: And been able to reflect and again also just thinking
Speaker 1: about where is this going to fit into our lives?
Speaker 1: That that was the number one thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: answer in this review is, Okay, they've made this crazy
Speaker 1: piece of technology. How are we going to use it
Speaker 1: in our daily lives?
Speaker 3: And it just.
Speaker 1: Seems natural, especially when we have these new pieces of tech,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it was the iPhone or smartphones or tablets,
Speaker 1: et cetera, Like we're going to try to do the
Speaker 1: things that we did on other devices first, right, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, Right, We're going to try to work on it,
Speaker 1: We're going to try to watch TV and videos on it,
Speaker 1: like we've been trying to do that with all of
Speaker 1: our personal tech. And so when it comes to like
Speaker 1: changing those things, sure, but like the future for me
Speaker 1: and those things, like we are still going to have
Speaker 1: a good future writing documents on our computers, right, Like
Speaker 1: the whole entire AI.
Speaker 3: Vision right now is to make that easier, working easier.
Speaker 1: So what I was trying to really look at is like,
Speaker 1: we're going to be the things that are just going
Speaker 1: to break out of the mold of the current things
Speaker 1: we do on these devices, and where will it be better?
Speaker 1: And this is where I kind of got into this
Speaker 1: cooking situation which has gone viral and you know now.
Speaker 2: Oh with and just just for listeners if you haven't
Speaker 2: seeing Joanna's review, she is able to place with the
Speaker 2: vision pro, you're able to place timers above things. So
Speaker 2: while cooking she made it what was a pasta dish?
Speaker 1: I believe, yes, yes, And so this has become the
Speaker 1: running joke like, well, did you not know you could
Speaker 1: also set multiple timers on your phone?
Speaker 3: And did you not know?
Speaker 1: And Colbert is you could maybe pipe the audio in here.
Speaker 1: He's now being making fun of me on his late
Speaker 1: night show saying, well, what else would you do by
Speaker 1: two ovens?
Speaker 2: I think Colbert needs to not throw so many stones
Speaker 2: in glasshouses with how deeply unfunny Midnight is. But that's
Speaker 2: a separate podcast. I think that that whole thing has
Speaker 2: really annoyed me as well, not because I'm particularly defensive
Speaker 2: of Apple, but it's like, if you're going to do
Speaker 2: that kind of thing about a new device, there are
Speaker 2: so many that you could have sat with the Oculus
Speaker 2: quest and done the same thing. Oh I get Oh
Speaker 2: I can work out while wearing a headset. Well, I
Speaker 2: can also do that without anything, I can just do
Speaker 2: jumping jacks. You can make that kind of thing. Sure,
Speaker 2: And actually, here's a good question. Do you think that
Speaker 2: this is going to make people more antisocial? Because that
Speaker 2: feels like the weird meme I'm seeing. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is shutting people off from the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, so just let me finish it. Answering the first
Speaker 1: one because I felt like I didn't do it great. No,
Speaker 1: it's my fault. I was going on now, But my
Speaker 1: point in that review, and maybe I haven't articulated this well.
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of analysis of the review, which
Speaker 1: thank you everyone for spending time reviewing the review. But
Speaker 1: the point was to show things that that aren't the
Speaker 1: typical things, the things that could bring this into the
Speaker 1: future and that actually make things better and change the
Speaker 1: way we use these devices.
Speaker 3: And I felt.
Speaker 1: That that situation with the cooking really illustrated it. Here
Speaker 1: is a real life thing you're doing. It's better to
Speaker 1: actually have this headset on than use your phone because
Speaker 1: you don't have to hold a phone, and cooking with
Speaker 1: your holding a phone, or you know, even touching a
Speaker 1: phone in the kitchen is a pain. Everyone knows that.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, it was just blend. This
Speaker 1: idea of blending the virtual with the real really really
Speaker 1: stuck out to me there, like I have a physical thing.
Speaker 1: It is this part of pasta. It is boiling, and
Speaker 1: I see a digital interface over it. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that he needs to be every use case, but
Speaker 1: that is where I felt like, Okay, I can see
Speaker 1: the future. So that is how I would try to
Speaker 1: answer that, Yes, I think this is the future. We
Speaker 1: still need to have the use cases and the apps
Speaker 1: to prove out what those things are going to be.
Speaker 2: The thing I and you kind of glanced at this
Speaker 2: in the review, but I understand why this wouldn't have
Speaker 2: come up, but it's it feels like the apps are
Speaker 2: not there though, like very basic apps are not there,
Speaker 2: YouTube being the obvious one. And there is, by the way,
Speaker 2: a four ninety nine YouTube app that people are hyping
Speaker 2: as a replacement. It's a goddamn web rapper that developers
Speaker 2: should be kicked off the app store anyway, But like
Speaker 2: Slack isn't there, Signal isn't there, Yep, very funny thing.
Speaker 1: Slack is there, but they're there as an iPad app
Speaker 1: and it's horrible.
Speaker 3: The same it's horrible.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't even have time in the review,
Speaker 1: but like there was a couple of places when I
Speaker 1: was cursing because you cannot select.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the issue with putting the iPad
Speaker 3: apps in.
Speaker 1: They weren't they were created for touching, right, so you
Speaker 1: actually when you're using the Slack app and the vision pro,
Speaker 1: you want to bring it closer to you and then
Speaker 1: actually tap in the air versus using the pincher, you know,
Speaker 1: using the pinch gesture. But no, absolutely, And I look,
Speaker 1: we've seen already momentum this week with YouTube saying they're
Speaker 1: going to create and more apps coming, and chat gybt
Speaker 1: announced like there's going to be some momentum and we're
Speaker 1: going to get some of these apps. But what I'm
Speaker 1: more interested in is like, what are these going to be?
Speaker 1: These ideas of these apps that we don't have right
Speaker 1: now that don't run our computers. I agree we have
Speaker 1: to have those other ones, because hey, how do we
Speaker 1: work in there if we don't have Slack?
Speaker 3: I mean, how do you work without Slack? It's impossible.
Speaker 3: I'm just joking.
Speaker 1: I don't really I'm a major Slack user, but would
Speaker 1: happily use anything else to work. So I think those
Speaker 1: are those things will come with time. But on the
Speaker 1: isolation thing, I think that's so. That is the number
Speaker 1: one reason I have not picked it up more, and
Speaker 1: I think might end up being part of you know,
Speaker 1: what happens after this first wave of real big interest
Speaker 1: is do you feel.
Speaker 2: Like something I'd ever use around a person exactly?
Speaker 3: And I live with a person. I don't. I don't
Speaker 3: know about you. I love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I live with with my wife and I live
Speaker 1: with two kids, so I live with like a lot
Speaker 1: of things at a dog and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things going on in here. And I had this situation
Speaker 1: this weekend. I was like, I'd love to watch another
Speaker 1: episode of The Beef in here, but my wife is
Speaker 1: sitting right here. I'm going to put this on on
Speaker 1: the couch and she's going to do what right? And
Speaker 1: then you start to think like dystopian, like, oh, what
Speaker 1: if we both had them and we both sat here
Speaker 1: with these on looking at the wall. Eh, I don't
Speaker 1: even if that was an amazing experience, is that what
Speaker 1: I want to do on Saturday night?
Speaker 2: It feels very doesn't feel particularly intimate.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: No. When mine arrived, I was with my fiance and
Speaker 2: I played with it, but I put a hard cap
Speaker 2: on when I stopped because it felt strange using it
Speaker 2: with another person around it just it felt very much
Speaker 2: like rejecting anyone around me, like I even with passed
Speaker 2: through it felt kind of strange.
Speaker 1: Well, and the pass through thing, while they've done a
Speaker 1: lot more than the others right to put some screen
Speaker 1: on the front, like it's all kind of bullshit, like
Speaker 1: nobody really knows that you're looking at them. If I
Speaker 1: had like a dollar for every time I asked, Hey,
Speaker 1: can you see my eyes in this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, Like that's the same thing, and the answer was
Speaker 1: always no, right, the answer is always know and you're
Speaker 1: constantly asking. It's just like, please stop asking me if
Speaker 1: I can see your eyes?
Speaker 2: Like the persona thing is awful? Is I just why
Speaker 2: bother with that? I don't know what they were thinking, king,
Speaker 2: I know that it's this to describe for the listeners,
Speaker 2: it's you scan your face using the vision Pro and
Speaker 2: it spits out a three D clone of your face
Speaker 2: that is not flattering, I should add, yeah, and it
Speaker 2: mimics your facial actions. If someone FaceTime videos you during
Speaker 2: your use of the vision Pro, I just don't I
Speaker 2: know why they did it, but they shouldn't have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: Look, I hit on this really hard in my review
Speaker 1: because I had not laughed so hard. I don't remember
Speaker 1: the last time I laughed so hard. When I saw
Speaker 1: my persona, I couldn't. I was like crying of laughter.
Speaker 1: I think it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't look like me. And then I would call
Speaker 1: people and they would be laughing, and they would say,
Speaker 1: never call me again looking like this, like, and maybe
Speaker 1: mine was worse than others.
Speaker 3: It seems like to be the case.
Speaker 2: Oh, I have no neck in mine. I will refuse
Speaker 2: to show it to anyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, most people look bad. I just
Speaker 1: look like I look terrible. I'm another level of bad
Speaker 1: in mine.
Speaker 2: So it makes me look so I used to be
Speaker 2: about one hundred pounds heavier than I currently am about
Speaker 2: buck ninety right now. It makes me look like I
Speaker 2: weigh three hundred pounds, which is not great for myself esteem,
Speaker 2: I should add. But it also looks strange. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: looks very weird.
Speaker 1: It looks strange and like and look, there's a lot
Speaker 1: about they didn't want to go the root of what
Speaker 1: Meta had done, which make us look like cartoons.
Speaker 3: So they're trying to make us.
Speaker 1: Look more realistic and maybe eventually they get there. And
Speaker 1: they clearly they've slapped the beta label on there just
Speaker 1: to make it clear, like we are not.
Speaker 3: Done building this thing.
Speaker 1: I get why they couldn't ship without it, Like, how
Speaker 1: are you going to ship we've just been I actually.
Speaker 2: Can answer that memoji. The memoji works fine. No one
Speaker 2: is going to expect you to do a video call
Speaker 2: well wearing this buddy thing. So do the memoji make
Speaker 2: it fun?
Speaker 1: I agree, I you know, and that's there for the taking.
Speaker 1: Like our iPhones already have memojis that are like mapped
Speaker 1: to our face.
Speaker 3: Like it works.
Speaker 1: I think they didn't want to go to the root
Speaker 1: of Meta, like they didn't want to be competing with
Speaker 1: like Mark Zuckerberg cartoon face, you know.
Speaker 2: Like the irony is that they also released an incomplete
Speaker 2: product that kind of sucks. So who's laughing now, probably
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerbuck I don't know.
Speaker 1: Right, but I mean, look, on the other hand, we
Speaker 1: just spent ten minutes talking about working in this thing,
Speaker 1: so how are you going to release a device for
Speaker 1: working in this day and age where you should be
Speaker 1: working at your home office and you can't video call
Speaker 1: on it, like you have to have to have something.
Speaker 2: I I don't know. I find the whole thing quite confusing.
Speaker 2: I think you could even just have a still image
Speaker 2: of the person that would do the same job.
Speaker 3: That's true, I don't I don't know why they didn't
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 2: So I only got two more questions for you. Do
Speaker 2: you think that Apple rushed this out? No?
Speaker 1: And yes, did they rush this particular version out? No?
Speaker 1: It actually like it works really well, right like, there
Speaker 1: are some small bugs and I'm sure maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2: Selecting on like even Google Docs is extremely broken. Basic
Speaker 2: things like that don't.
Speaker 1: Feel like but that's not so that's where that's a
Speaker 1: design issue, right like that, that's can you navigate the
Speaker 1: whole web with this the way.
Speaker 3: This is designed?
Speaker 2: The only reason I push back on that is you're right,
Speaker 2: the whole web, but Google Docs what billions of uses?
Speaker 2: It just feels The reason I ask is because to me,
Speaker 2: at least, it feels rush because they didn't do their
Speaker 2: due diligence without the developers keep going sorry.
Speaker 1: But then there's the flip side of Hey, these developers
Speaker 1: need to feel and I believe Google will come along
Speaker 1: once they see, oh wow, look we're really seeing an
Speaker 1: x amount of people for x amount of time working here.
Speaker 1: We should probably do something. Right, Microsoft did it. Microsoft
Speaker 1: has apps in there, They have all of almost all
Speaker 1: of Microsoft three sixty five in there, so like they're
Speaker 1: making a bet before it's ready. I think also Microsoft
Speaker 1: has nothing to lose because they don't have their own
Speaker 1: headset coming.
Speaker 3: They've sort of abandoned that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Holo lens is kind of dead in the war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean, look I think so.
Speaker 1: But this particular version we all know this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is the first generation. I've actually called it times.
Speaker 1: Is this negative one generation? Should we should this have
Speaker 1: sort of been you know as people have called it
Speaker 1: a dev kid and all of these things. It's certainly
Speaker 1: not a mainstream product, right. The question, like really is
Speaker 1: should they have waited five years?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And would Steve Jobs, as everyone's saying, would he have
Speaker 1: waited the five years? Would you have said, Okay, we've
Speaker 1: got this, so we can do this now, but we
Speaker 1: need to wait five more years until we can slim
Speaker 1: down this and we can make this and we can do.
Speaker 2: This and that's actually my final question for you. How
Speaker 2: do you think Steve Jobs would have done this?
Speaker 3: I was asked this on another podcast. I think.
Speaker 1: I keep thinking about It's funny what you said before.
Speaker 1: You know, you put it on wrong, and or you
Speaker 1: didn't put it on wrong, but you had some issues
Speaker 1: with it, right. And there's the famous Steve Jobs quote, you're.
Speaker 3: Holding it wrong? Yeah right? And so Steve.
Speaker 2: Jobs hated touch screens on laptops because he didn't like
Speaker 2: poking the air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, and here we are.
Speaker 1: But like what he have said to you, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're wearing it wrong again, and to me too,
Speaker 1: because sometimes I'll put it on and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not aligned exactly to my eyes, and
Speaker 1: so if I look at something, it's slightly off and
Speaker 1: then I've got to like change it a.
Speaker 2: Little bit right, right?
Speaker 1: And what have he have been okay with that? Would
Speaker 1: he have said, Nope, We've got to wait. We've got
Speaker 1: to wait a number more years to get this right,
Speaker 1: to get all of these things right into a thing
Speaker 1: that people would wear, or what if you looked at
Speaker 1: it sort of like we've got to get it out there.
Speaker 2: I don't know I don't feel like he was a
Speaker 2: god to get it out that guy. It just feels
Speaker 2: like a very different Apple experience. It lacks it's almost
Speaker 2: fun in the way it lacks it. But when it's
Speaker 2: I feel like, in a like it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2: I guess it's not really fun, but it feels like. Also,
Speaker 2: the format of the vision pro really emphasizes the problems
Speaker 2: when something goes wrong in this environment. It's so claustrophobic.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmmm. Well, and I think also what we know
Speaker 1: to be true? And I think Neli Petell's review on
Speaker 1: The Verge did a really good job of this is
Speaker 1: what we know to be true? Is what Tim Cook
Speaker 1: sees the vision of this being right. He sees a
Speaker 1: vision of us really at augmented reality type of glasses
Speaker 1: where we can see the real world in this digital
Speaker 1: overlays are there, but to get there they had to
Speaker 1: make a lot of sacrifices in the here and now.
Speaker 1: And so now we have a VR headset that's trying
Speaker 1: to function as an AR mixed reality headset, but it
Speaker 1: really is a VR headset. And again, would Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: have said, Nope, We're just going to wait till we
Speaker 1: get there, we're gonna wait five years, We're gonna wait
Speaker 1: ten years.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Joanna, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 2: me anytime.
Speaker 3: I'd love to see your persona soon.
Speaker 2: Oh God, I will be hiding that from the world.
Speaker 2: All of this comes together to just make it impossible
Speaker 2: to recommend the Vision pro in its current form. It's
Speaker 2: too expensive, its experience is too variable, the supply chain
Speaker 2: and infrastructure to get this thing fitted is too thin,
Speaker 2: and the developer community is just far too sparse. Without
Speaker 2: a Bluetooth keyboard, it's claustrophobic, frustrating, and unproductive. With one,
Speaker 2: it becomes a highly customizable and consistent desktop space that
Speaker 2: I can pop up wherever I am the past through
Speaker 2: feature gives me as much awareness as I needed the
Speaker 2: world around me as i'd like, though not to the
Speaker 2: extent i'd ever use it in public. I can move around,
Speaker 2: I can close things and resize things with tiny gestures,
Speaker 2: and when it works, it looks and feels very cool,
Speaker 2: and it's far more natural than an iPhone or an
Speaker 2: iPad or a magbook. I guess when it works, and
Speaker 2: with the right fit, it's much much more consistent, looking
Speaker 2: and pitching a menu options feels great, and you can
Speaker 2: sweep and move through apps and website like a weird
Speaker 2: little wizard. When it works, I have more space to
Speaker 2: work with than my regular setup, which is a forty
Speaker 2: eight inch curve gaming monitor on a massive L shaped desk.
Speaker 2: But that's when it works. And if you're one of
Speaker 2: the hundreds of thousands of people who bought this, perhaps
Speaker 2: you're listening to this and thinking, oh, it's not meant
Speaker 2: to be this bad, And it isn't. But how the
Speaker 2: hell are you meant to know that? Because Apple certainly
Speaker 2: hasn't tried to make that the case. Apple has not
Speaker 2: put in the time, the energy, and the thought to
Speaker 2: making this the launch it deserved to be. I truly
Speaker 2: believe the Vision Pro could be something revolutionary. It needs
Speaker 2: to be smaller, it needs to be two thousand, if
Speaker 2: not two five hundred dollars cheaper, It needs to have
Speaker 2: the apps. But when it works, it really is something new.
Speaker 2: It is something I will be using a lot. It
Speaker 2: is something that I think could change how we consider computing,
Speaker 2: how we consider the spaces we work in and the
Speaker 2: ways we work in them. And indeed, if Apple actually
Speaker 2: respected their customers, if Apple had the love for their
Speaker 2: customers that I believe they used to have, this wouldn't
Speaker 2: be a problem. None of this would be And I
Speaker 2: just don't think they care enough. And I can't say
Speaker 2: it's worth three five hundred dollars despite its warts. I
Speaker 2: really do plan on keeping my Vision Pro and I'm
Speaker 2: going to use it a great deal, particularly when I'm traveling.
Speaker 2: But for the price of a vision Pro, I can
Speaker 2: get a brand new MacBook Era fifteen inch one, a
Speaker 2: terror By iPhone and still have hundreds of dollars left
Speaker 2: to spare. Well. I love the immersive nature of this
Speaker 2: whole thing. There's nothing it does better, and there's plenty
Speaker 2: of things it can't do at all. There are few
Speaker 2: reasons why the Vision Pro should have shipped in such
Speaker 2: terrible shape, other than the fact that Apple needed to
Speaker 2: show double digit revenue growth to board investors. Apple has
Speaker 2: done very little work to confirm that the very basic
Speaker 2: parts of the Internet work with any reliability. Website that
Speaker 2: you'd expect to be perfect, like Google Docs, like Google itself,
Speaker 2: like Twitter, even are just not ready for this, and
Speaker 2: Apple clearly didn't reach out to any of these providers
Speaker 2: to make sure they did. The app ecosystem marvels the
Speaker 2: iPhone app store when it first launched. The problems I've
Speaker 2: experienced with the Vision Pro are annoying. They're frustrating. They're
Speaker 2: getting a way of an experience I've really wanted to
Speaker 2: enjoy and may indeed enjoy in the future, and it's
Speaker 2: not clear if they're a result of bad quality control
Speaker 2: or the limitations of hardware and software. It really isn't obvious,
Speaker 2: but the problem here is pretty simple. The Vision Pro
Speaker 2: is an intriguing and exciting look into the future, except
Speaker 2: that future is one where a near three trillion dollar
Speaker 2: tech firm ships US beta hardware with alpha software and
Speaker 2: hopes that will thank them for the privilege of helping
Speaker 2: them fix it. I've been at Zeitron. Thank you for
Speaker 2: listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the
Speaker 2: Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out
Speaker 2: more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com,
Speaker 2: M A T T O, S O W s ki
Speaker 2: dot com. You can go to Better Offline dot com
Speaker 2: to find more episodes, find my newsletter, Where's your ad app?
Speaker 2: Or even shoot me an email at easy At Better
Speaker 2: Offline dot com, you can find this podcast on Iheartradios app,
Speaker 2: or anywhere else you find podcasts. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 3: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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