Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - First Impressions of the Vision Pro: What It Is, What It Might Have Been, and a Note About Guest Mode

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Ben and Andrew share first impressions after Andrew demos a Vision Pro and Ben spends 24 hours exploring the AVP at home. Plus: Venting about Apple’s user-hostile guest mode process.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing? Andrew, the question is not how am I? The question is, how are you? Now that you have had what I presume was your life-changing Apple Vision Pro experience at the Apple store today. Are you a changed man? I mean, you did show up not wearing one.

So I guess they didn't get you to walk out with one. What was it like? Well, for the sake of the podcast and the sake of our. new era in video. I consider just dropping $4,000 worth of whatever just to show up with the headset on to kick the podcast off and just throw you for a loop. But, um, it would have been for a loop. Yes. I don't think I could have done a full hour in the, in the headset. I am excited to talk through it with you. You've had it for what, a day now or a day and a half over there? Yeah, I've had it for about 26 hours. Okay. And I have strong takes. I think I've established exactly.

me what I think. It's sufficient. I feel good. But no, I want to hear yours. I've used one before, which actually I think is pertinent and connects to your experience. But what I understand the demo you get is actually pretty similar to the demo that I had, but no basketball footage for some reason. Apparently they don't have rights to it or something like that. I was so upset. We hit all the beats that you hit at the Worldwide Developers Conference. We got Alicia Keys. We got the dugout view of Fenway Park and somehow the NBA aspect of it was elided from the general public demo. More Yokets Eraser.

What can you say? Yeah. It's really too bad. No, I honestly, I left my demo feeling relieved by all of it because afterward my wife texted me asking how it was and I said, not great, not terrible. And that's okay. I like after a weekend of getting low level anxiety about the future watching videos of people wearing these headsets in all walks of life. I left that demo feeling pretty confident that we're a long ways from any kind of mass adoption of this technology.

And it's not going to. So what, well, let's start with the positive. What stood out for, for you? So positives. From a technical standpoint, I didn't personally find the weight to be. be any sort of problem. I thought the strap they had worked really, really well. Did you use the single strap or the double strap? Single strap. And that was great for me. So I, so I have a theory on this. I have to ask you about this. Were you laid on your stomach as a baby or on your back?

I believe I was on my back, but I can't pause the podcast to call that the check. That blows up my theory. So I have a very round head. And apparently if a baby is always on their back, like one of the you do get sort of a flatter back of your head. And I love the single strap. I like it's that thickness. I feel like I can feel it like gripping the back of my head and like holding on. And I don't find it uncomfortable at all. The weight did not bother me in the slightest.

I was using it for like an hour. I didn't even notice it at all, which is like it's interesting. I feel a lot of my responses to actually having it were the exact opposite of like what conventional wisdom has settled on. And that was one of them for sure. On the other hand, I thought the dual strap was horribly uncomfortable. I did not enjoy it at all.

It didn't seem to work on my head. So I developed a theory around it that apparently is totally wrong. Right. Well, and just from an engineering standpoint, I thought the single strap was pretty elegant and they have the little knob on the back that you can adjust. And it all worked very well for me. I will also note that in the past using Quest products, I've always left feeling a little bit dizzy or sick afterward. That did not happen with the Apple Vision Pro. And similar to what

you were just describing, like the demo flew by. So by the time it was over, I was almost ready to complain to the Apple staff because I felt like I was getting jipped somehow, but it had been about 40 minutes. Yeah, it had already gone over on time. So it flew by. And I was engaged the entire time. And like, the audio worked well. The pass through vision worked well. So. So it lived up to the hype from a technical standpoint, but I did leave the demo sort of scratching my head being like, I'm not sure exactly what people would use that for on a regular basis. And so I guess that's sort of the central question as we move forward here.

What were the negatives then? Just that you didn't, you couldn't figure out how it fit in your life or were there any sort of active things that you disliked? So it's interesting. I would say that as I was using it, one thing that I wanted to do was text the group chat, like live updates from my demo, which sounds ridiculous, but also has like real utility because I wanted to take notes as I was doing it. And it was just too difficult to like look down at my phone while also sort of pinching my fingers and navigating around the screen and doing that whole thing. And then as I was

encountering that problem, I realize that, you know, for most of the media I consume, like, right out of the gate, this is being billed as mostly an entertainment device. And for most of the media I consume, whether it's sports or movies or TV shows, I'm already knee-deep in my technology addiction. And so I'm usually texting people and second-screening it throughout whatever the experience is. And so the reality is that there's just not. that much content that I want to be immersed in, which is what the Vision Pro is offering. And so not only did I sort of struggle navigating from app to app and reading and zooming in, all of which I'm sure would become more intuitive if I had it for a couple days.

But I don't think it would be all that useful from a productivity standpoint for me right now. And then from an entertainment standpoint, it's not really what I want. It wasn't mind-blowing enough to say, oh, my gosh, I need to just change the way I consume sports and movies going forward and also watch everything by myself going forward because this is so amazing that I just have to live in this experience as often as possible. I sort of came away with the opposite take, which was, yeah, it was pretty cool, but definitely not cool enough for me to upend all these other consumption habits that I've developed over the years. I think that's a pretty accurate takeaway. And I think you touched on a few things, even if you didn't get the experience of them, that became very tangible to me over the last 24 to sort of 36 hours. One of the things that occurred to me once I was using it is that during the demo,

you're only ever doing one thing at a time, right? You're doing like the Alicia Keys experience and you're doing the dinosaur experience. By the way, did you feel the butterfly touch? your finger. I didn't get the dinosaur experience or the butterfly touching my finger. So another area, another grievance for me. It's an app that chips on it like experiencing dinosaurs. It opens with this butterfly flying out and like it lands on your finger. And it's like 50 50. Some people feel it. Oh, wow. You're obviously not feeling it. But it's that it is an incredible experience and it's so immersive. Like my daughter like had a freak out. She's like like I want to take it off. I don't want to see it anymore.

which I kind of felt that way with the high rope walking one, which I just bailed on. Like, I can't do this crap. Just because it is so immersive. But all those experiences are sort of like, it's not just that it's a single player device. All those experiences are single experience experiences, if that sort of makes sense.

And this is not what I am excited about, not what I'm interested in. My whole thing has been, look, I sit here with four screens. I imagine being able to go around, go anywhere and have an infinite canvas. You can put stuff anywhere. And my biggest takeaway from using it is this is not remotely close to an infinite canvas. If you have more than two windows on the screen, it becomes unusable very, very quickly. The navigation is terrible for like a multi-window experience.

You can put stuff far away and close, but then how do you move between them? Right. How do you bring up, you know, bringing up the- I couldn't tell whether that was user error on my part. But I was definitely struggling with the same issue. No, like it's not great. It's not like your control. The control is not good.

The field of view is shockingly small, which you don't realize when you're looking at one app. But it's like, you know, people call the binocular effect where it's like you can only see you about. Even compared to the quest, the field of view is much narrower. And this was a compromise, a tradeoff they had to make to get the screen technology that they did. But it is a compromise you feel immediately if you're trying to. trying to use more than one app. If you want to have tons of stuff around, you have to be physically moving your body to different places to be able to sort of consume it. This idea that you're going to sit at your desk and just have slight movements of your head and get this

big experience, not going to happen at all. It's just, it's not doable. And so the, the, and I realize, like, I was projecting this possibility from a demo that was all sort of single app experiences. and I think that actually holds very, very strongly and is my sort of broadest takeaway. Number one, from a productivity standpoint, if you are the sort of person, your computer, you have one screen, you have one app full screen, and that's it, and you work in it, and then you go do something else, this could work for you and it could be sort of very compelling and sort of the aspect we're talking about. If you have multiple windows open and you're moving stuff around, no, it's not going to happen.

The interaction model just does not work with it, sort of number one. Number two, one of the most annoying things about using a quest is you put the headset on, they have to find the stupid controllers. And you're like, it's like highlighting them. You're trying to like look under and look, you know, the pastor's not as good and trying to find them and pick them up and put them on. And it makes it unpleasant to use. It makes you not want to use it because there's like this tax. You know, we talk about this all the time. Like there's these taxes that don't seem very big.

But every little bit of friction sort of diminishes the desire or whatever to sort of do something. that there is attacks with putting on the Oculus in a way that in my estimation, they're very tangibly is not with the Vision Pro. It's very neat that I just put it on and boom, I'm there. I don't have to get controllers. My hands are there. This idea of just sort of sitting there and your hand can be up on the arm of the couch and you don't need to move around and stuff like that.

It's really great. And considering the complexity, it's all very intuitive. It doesn't take more than 90 seconds to learn. the basics of how to use it. The problem is all of this is a tradeoff. Everything that makes that so great to get into and launch Apple TV Plus or whatever and launch a movie. And in this case, the immersion and it being hard to use my phone is a huge benefit.

I am a leading candidate. They're going to do brain studies on me for what happened to people that can't sit down and watch a two-hour movie anymore. If they check their phone, everything is. They want to talk to the group chat. That's right. Yep. And so this I, like, I do still love going to the theater because I like the being locked in to do something for two hours and sort of enjoying that. Like it's a forcing function. And I think that that's, I, to the extent I keep using this, it is like last night I finished writing, I went over, I sat down, I put on the vision pro. I didn't have to find the controllers. It was just there. And I went through some of like the, the experiences, immersive experiences they had and all these sorts of pieces. And in this. case, to use my phone would have been significant friction. And it was significant friction that I just didn't do it. And I sat there and I sort of like enjoyed myself. Now, I am old. My kids are old. Like like the, you know, we're not having communal sessions around the TV or the baby and, you know, talking about our days. Like, you know, my wife was out. My kids were in bed. I just sat there. I want to hear from you. Well, quite literally, they're all sleeping. And instead of having a TV across the room with AirPods, which by the

the way is great. The AirPod connection with the Apple TV is amazing for this sort of use case. This is clearly better. And, you know, if I ever actually get back into watching TV shows, it will be because of this because it's like a real escape from the daily. It's an escape. It's an escape in a very positive sort of sense. And keep that in mind. I'm to come back to that. Come back to that bit. Well, it just on that point, what occurred to me as I was going through my demo is Sunday night, the Bucks were playing the jazz. Now, I watched that game. a collapse by the Bucks in the fourth quarter. Oh, it's back to back.

But that's the sort of new Joey Cropter. I don't want to distract us. Yes, no worries. Bucks are going to be fine. But that's the sort of like meaningless regular season game where I actually don't need to lock in and be immersed in the action. And if there's a bigger game, chances are I want to either be watching with friends or talking to friends throughout the stoppages and play.

And so it's hard for me. As much as we've talked about watching sports in the Apple Vision Pro, it's hard for me to imagine that many examples of sporting events that I would want to consume in that environment. But we'll see. I got 10 seconds during the demo. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to extrapolate.

But I think that that's a very good and sort of fair observation. You know, and there's potential progress to be made here. Like we're, you know, could you have, there's an app that actually projects your iPhone into the space, but it's just sort of off to the side. Could Apple Institute? something where you can look down to your phone, but it's actually putting the real screen on the phone so it's clear and legible and you can sort of use it through pass through. That would be super compelling. And I think for this use case would be very cool, like you're sitting on the sideline

an NBA game and using your phone there, right? That would be ideal. But all this bit, all this thing that makes it a phenomenal video experience. I think all that is fair. Again, a quick for me, long day of work, finish publishing, kids are in bed, sit down, pop it on, and I'm there. And all that lack of friction. Every single part that makes that possible makes this a terrible device for productivity, which is sad for me because that's what I'm most interested in. But again, the eye tracking and clicking so cool, not remotely usable if you actually have a lot of stuff going on on screen. The interface is not usable.

It's really a single app experience. The field of view is very narrow because it's getting these sort of very high quality sorts of things. And it feels like this is, you know, John and I were talking on dithering about the iPod versus the Rio. Was the Rio before your time? No, it wasn't. Yeah. I may have even owned a Rio, but it has been lost the time. What a shot out for the Rio.

I had a Rio. I got an expanded memory cards. I got 32 megabytes of memory. inside 16. Oh, look at you. That carried me through like my, my college years. I listened to a lot of music on my Rio. And then the iPod was just astronomically better, right? It just for all the reasons that everyone knows all the songs of your pocket, navigation, all those sorts of things. The Vision Pro feels like that relative to the iPad for being a video consumption device. It's like, imagine having a portable video device, but 10 gazillion times better than what you had

previously. Like it's, it's like it's, it's, it's great. But again, every aspect that goes into that makes it just, it's not, I just can't imagine this as currently the current approach being a sort of a productivity device. The UI doesn't work. iOS feels very limiting. iOS is like, was built for an iPhone. It's an incredible, it's incredible for the iPhone, the direct interaction, the one app on the screen at a time, and then doing the plumbing to sort of link underneath the surfaces, all those sorts of things. But it feels as screens get bigger, iOS gets more frustrating. And that feels like the case here. And then you get to the Mac projection into your screen.

Why don't I just use the Mac? That was my question when you're laying out. Well, if you're someone who likes a single screen, then it can work. And I'm like, well, if you're that type of person, maybe you're just using the Mac. and you're perfectly happy using your giant Mac screen, unless you're on an airplane. I don't, I can't, like theoretically you would have Vision Pro apps to the side and your Mac screen in the center.

I don't find this usable. Like just the eye interaction, so you can use your touchpad across both. And that's the only way to try to do it because you can, the eye interaction with some apps and only, only cursor with the other ones, it's too much of a disconnect. It feels very uncomfortable. Like it just, I felt unpleasant.

Like, much more so than, like, touch on a computer. Like, you're just, touch is the same as like a mouse. I don't know. I didn't, I didn't like it. I can't imagine using it. The one exception, and this is sort of the, the broader point that it sort of occurred to me in this. The one exception is being like economy class on an airplane and having this for

your computer would be amazing, right? Right. You can't barely open your computer on the tray. I hate having the sense of people. and next to you looking at your screen. And this sort of like came to me when, you know, dumb and, you know, brought, brought it over for me because, you know, I need it for for this to create content like we're doing right now.

And I'm setting it up and I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to get all these apps and then, you know, getting a little frustrated realizing how constrained it is, I think, from a productivity standpoint. But it was a private experience in that he was sitting there and he didn't know what was going on. And that was great, actually. It felt good that I could fumble around and not. know what I was doing and not look like an idiot. And, you know, of course, it's a dumb thing.

Like, he's not going to judge me for not knowing how to do stuff. You'd probably help by pointing stuff out. You know, but that sense of, you know, people talk about escapism as a bad thing or isolation as a bad thing. And yet people value privacy. Oh, yeah. Is a good thing. I struggle getting work done on flights because there are certain things that I am just

self-conscious of writing and it's not anything like all that sensitive. but I just don't like having people looking over my shoulder and judging or not judging. I don't know. It's in my own head. It's all in your head, but then it doesn't mean it's not real, right? It's incredibly stupid. Let's be clear, but the Vision Pro would solve a lot of that. It feels like actually really tangibly a great thing.

And O'Mellek talked about this when he was on trajectory, you know, the use case of someone sharing a house with a bunch of people and just wanting to get away and being able to have this experience. And yes, of course we should be social and interact with people, but sometimes you just want to get away. Sometimes you just want to relax. You want to escape. You want to watch a movie. You want to do sort of XYZ. And having this device is actually really great in that regard.

There's just one very large problem for Apple specifically. What's that? Which is the people that most need slash want that experience because they can't get privacy and isolation otherwise. probably can't afford $3,500 headset. It's dropping $5 grand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like the, you know, at the end of the day, I have no problem achieving isolation and privacy if I want to. Right. Well, that's also just a really narrow lane

for the Vision Pro moving forward. And I, as I stepped back in the wake of my demo, I was trying to resolve the discrepancy between my experience, which is like, it's pretty cool. And you're sort of,

mind-blown experience at the developers day, like six months ago. And I think the key variable there is expectations where you were experiencing the Vision Pro alongside like the Quest 2 as a primary VR reference point. And I was experiencing it alongside a bunch of rapturous reviews about how this is the future of computing. And this is just step one. And no, there's a friend of mine. He's like, he's like, I think pastor is terrible.

Like, it's really disappointing. It was fine. Yeah. And I'm like, well, compared to everything that came before, it's unbelievable. But yes, you are looking through a video camera. Right. And it's an obvious technical achievement. Like some of the sensations you get as Apple runs you through the spatial video and even the photos.

Like, all of it is incredible from a technical standpoint. But then I step back and I'm like, the form factor here, I'm not sure this is exactly. what we're all going to be using in 10 or 15 years. And in order to get us there, Apple needs to do more than make it just an incredibly cool version of the iPad. I actually think that's a great analogy because when I step back and think about when I am happy to just watch something on my own, it's on my iPad in bed. And the Vision Pro would like blow that out of the water. Well, funnily enough, it actually doesn't work well in bed, the way they have like the tracking sort of set up. No, no, but I think that's fixed.

They can fix that. They can make it better. The quest, I haven't tried this, but apparently the quest does work much better in that regard. But I do, like that, that is my broad takeaway is this is an astronomically better video experience than the iPad. And all the other stuff does not, I think is, is disappointing in my expectations. Like I wanted this to sort of do more things. and it doesn't feel like it's going to do that. And by the way,

by the way, controversial take coming. I'm a little more optimistic about meta and quest after the Vision Pro. Yeah, expound. The Vision Pro is from a video experience, pass through experience, not making you a sick experience.

It is seven times better product. Oh, it happens to be seven times more expensive as well. I don't think like, like it does really. feel like this is a, you know, Apple deemed a minimum viable sort of product quality that the quest does not meet in that sort of regard. And that's, I think that was a good choice by Apple, particularly for Apple and sort of the

things that they do. But from a fundamental, like, for what I want. And again, my desires are different than most people. I'm not a huge video movie person as we talked about. Like, I'm the biggest nerd ever. I want to have like a mind-blowing, like, compute experience. right? That's what I want, right? And I come away from this feeling I'm more like, there's two angles. So for me personally, I feel like I'm more likely to get the experience I want

with a high resolution meta quest than I am from a Vision Pro because I don't see Apple making the software choices that I would want them to make to get there. So the experience you want, again, just to clarify, is like sort of a multi-screen workspace that's available in a headset. Is that right? Just multi-app, multi-screen. Basically, I want to be able to carry a headset around. But my dream sort of experience, actually, like, if we want to, like, fast forward to wherever we might get there, is number one, I would like to have a phone that obviously has all my stuff. And then I would like to have maybe my phone is the computer or I just carry like a puck that's the computer or whatever.

might be and I put on a headset and I have this. I can recreate my desk sort of experience. I can have as many monitors I want, as many views as I want. I don't even monitor as many like apps and windows. And I can have this fully immersive, you know, computing experience that is customized in detail to exactly what I want. And I can have that anytime, anywhere, whatever. I would love to sit down on my desk.

I have no monitors here. It's like I have a clean desk. I have the camera in front of me for podcasting and a mic. And I, I don't need that. that because I just put on my headset and I have the experience that I want. That's what I want. And this is not necessarily the use case anyone should be building towards because most people are not me.

So, but just to just to put like, you know, frame around this for me personally. I just wanted specifics in terms of what you were dreaming of. Right. That would be sort of sort of my dream. And for me,

the limitation on the quest. Now, to be fair, I have not used the quest that much because the cardboard is not remotely good enough, right? And so there's complaints I have about the vision. Pro that I don't have about the Quest just because the Vision Pro hardware is good enough for me to have those complaints.

And it's like, look, this screen quality is so high, I can read tech so well. I don't get, don't get dizzy. I don't get a headache, whatever. Why can't I have a bigger field of view? Why can't I have a better sort of user interface for these sorts of things? And my concern is because it's iOS, because it's Apple, they'll never truly unlock all the capabilities. I want a true computer.

And they will say, oh, we have Mac pass through. And Mac pass-through is going to be a crutch for basically forever. It's like, oh, if you want to do computer stuff, use the Mac pass-through. And I'm like, I don't want Mac pass-through. I want a Mac. That's what I actually want. And I just don't think Apple's going to give that to me. And no matter how good their hardware is, I feel like the software is going to be forever

constrained from being what I want it to be. And that's just a reality that I have to accept. So how do you square where you are today with where you were like a week ago with this product? Is it just using it for a little while makes it obvious that that vision is going to be untenable, at least in the short and medium term? No, so this was my concern all along. I think I wrote it more in a follow up to my Apple Vision article in June, which is like, look, all this cool stuff I'm excited about is fundamentally constrained by iOS and Apple's approach to computing, which is not the approach to computing that I want for myself. for my main computing device. And that's going to be a fundamental limitation.

I think that's absolutely true. The disappointment I have is that I don't find the Mac pass through very compelling relative to just using my computer. Again, leaving aside the privacy sort of angle. And I don't enjoy, and I have a hard time seeing myself coming to enjoy mixing Vision Pro apps with the Mac, which would sort of be the answer, right? You have the Mac there, but then you have all these other apps sort of around you. And number one, there's a physical hardware construction.

which is the field of view is so narrow. It's not really doable. Like it just like it to have anything in volume. But number two, I just find the mix of interaction types very unpleasant in sort of actual practice. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. And honestly, when I think back to the demo that I had, it was very frustrating to have it be this standardized experience. Like Sunday night, I went to the NBA website and made sure I had my league pass account connected to my Apple TV ID because I wanted to recreate that like four or five screen set up. And then I also had some pictures of baby Charles to throw on the Vision Pro. Instead, I talked to Dumbin on the way down to the Apple store.

And he's like, yeah, it's the same experience for everyone in America. So don't worry about it. I mean, to be fair, from a logistical perspective, they are giving you 30 minutes. That one is on me. That was, it's on me. I will say it's a nice little metaphor for Apple and their inability. to loosen the reins and relinquish, like, absolute control of this platform. Well, it's actually, you're right.

It is a good metaphor because you know what? The iOSification of the experience is better for most people. The reality is, is that computers, particularly computers 20 years ago, were way too free for most people. Most people ended up with 47 toolbars in Internet Explorer and their computer going to a crox. They'd installed so much malware and sort of virus is sort of accidental. would always get very loud. It would be like breathing heavily.

You can hear it from the desk. Yeah, because it's worried you hard. And people would just go and just buy a new computer because their computer like they didn't even know how to fix it. Every two years, sure. And I think this is something that us sort of like nerds and developers and stuff that get frustrated about Apple's control easily lose sight of, which is the iPhone and the iOS and that approach to computing is better for most people. People make this analogy to cars all the time, but I think it's 100% legitimate, which is, yes, you may like a car. You can go in and you can fix it, and it's naturally aspirated, and it's stick shift, and there's no traction control, and you can get, you can maximize, you can get the most out of it, and you can get high performance, and you can tune it and you can fix it. And you do all these sorts of things, and the vast majority of people have no desire or inclination, nor should they need to do anything other than put it in drive, and the car takes care of everything else, right?

And if you needed to get it fixed, you go to a mechanic. And that's actually better for most people. It just, I think the same thing applies to computers. Now, I think we need space for more innovation. And I think there's a, you know, we've discussed ad nauseum. Could Apple strike a better balance here? But it is important to keep in mind that for most people, that is better. And Apple delivers on that.

And Apple's North Star is always number one Apple. But number two, it is the sort of cliche, can you hand an iPad to your parents and they can check their e-mail and see pictures of baby Charles, right? And that's real value that Apple delivers in a very real way. And that comes with real tradeoffs. And all of us who complain about Apple control should keep those tradeoffs in mind that we are asking for things. Now, I think there's way to enable this so you can have both to a greater extent than you do. do now, but it's sort of dishonest to not acknowledge that there's very real benefits that do come from their approach. Oh, sure. There are definitely benefits. I would also ask you, I mean,

aren't there clear challenges if they're going to try to micromanage the experience now? Like a computer makes sense if it's governed by Apple exerting all this control. But it seems like with the Vision Pro, they're exerting even more control over this nascent platform that is going to require all sorts of experimentation in order to unlock its full potential over the next however many years. And that may not be possible in an Apple ecosystem. Yeah. That's why there's, you know, hopefully there'll be competition, right? And maybe there'll be an opportunity for the quest.

Maybe there'll be opportunity for something even more open. You know, I think developers do gripe about Facebook and their control of the app store. They take like an even bigger percentage than 30%, I believe. So, you know, hopefully there ends up being more options here. But the other bit about the quest is not just this aspect of I like having the controllers are annoying, but the level of precision and control it gives actually delivers a better experience in a lot of use cases. It does not deliver a better experience for video. Look, if you just want to sit down on the couch, open up the Disney Plus app and watch a movie,

the Vision Pro is perfect. Like not having controllers is great. Using your eyes is great. If you accidentally misclick, it's fine. It's not damaging. You're not sitting in there in terror like I was trying to actually use apps and clicking stuff on accident and not realizing what you did and trying to back out of it, right? I'm really glad you said that because it's something that I would not have articulated, but I was getting frustrated while I was using the Vision Pro. And I can't even imagine how frustrated I would be getting if I was trying to like get work done and having to screw around with moving the windows and zooming in and zooming out and just like futsing around.

I'm on video here. I'm pinching my fingers, which is what everybody has to do to use this thing. And in that context, I just want, give me a mouse, give me a keyboard, give me something I know

is going to work every single time. Otherwise, it's inevitable that I'm going to like lose my mind somewhere along the way. Right. And even if you're using a track pad with, because everything has to work with eyes, you're just like you're gimped even with like a track pad.

You have more precise control. So it doesn't, you don't screw up. as much, but you're still like, like, it took me like, it just ages, like, how do you close a safari window and versus another one? And just like, just because there's not as many controls on the screen. Like there's just sort of sort of limitations that, that sort of come there. Now, stuff like that, of course, I could figure out. But there's a real sort of dumbness that's implicit with this incredible eye tracking capability that is just not,

that's just going to be inherent to sort of the platform going forward. And again, It's, you know, we have this debate with the developer friend, should Apple have allowed Apple TV apps versus iPad apps? And my takeaway after the WC demo is like, look, this precision is incredible. It feels almost more mouse-like than like the big dumb tap targets on Apple TV where you're swiping on the remote. After using it, I think it was totally wrong. It actually feels fairly dumb and having big focus areas. Dumb in a relative to like the precision of a mouse sort of what I mean is. And that's fine for, again, I don't want to sound like I'm dumping on this.

The video experience is great, not just because the video is a big screen and not just because you have in your ears. It's every aspect of the device from how easy it is to get in, how easy it is to sort of navigate and get to what you want to watch. It's spot on. And if I had to get a controller and pick out my video and do all this sort of stuff, it would diminish the experience considerably. But all of that comes with very real tradeoffs that for me personally work against.

sort of the use case that I want. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I think for me, the iPad analogy is just spot on. And I think that's a good way to capture why I now look at it as less revolutionary in the wake of trying it. And on the way into it, I was like open to having it be this transformative technology that blows my mind. Were you open to it? I was. I was, I promise you I was. Because I was like, I was looking at all these morons just stumbling around the streets and on the subway pinching their little fingers.

Let's get to that. Let's get to that in a moment. I think there is your point of that. But the other point I would make about Quest is this privacy bit, which I think is underrated, makes is way more compelling if you're a cheap headset. Right. Like, you know, and I think for. It's a great point. Yeah.

There's no way you're doing work in a question. Some people are because they're crazy. I can't handle the resolution. But relatively speaking, watching video, it's more, it's more competitive. You know, you're not doing the pass through. You're watching video. You're staying still. The I think this is maybe not going to be a thing.

Gaming, it's obviously just way better. Having controllers makes a ton of difference. The battery pack blows. It's not, it sucks. Everyone who's saying it's not a big deal is lying to you. Can you explain? Why does it suck? Because I saw it and I was like, I can probably.

manage that battery pack. Like it doesn't seem all that inconvenient. You're in the Apple store. They sat you down in one spot and you didn't move. And you weren't like trying to pick it up and then, oh, you got to forget about is there and then get in the right spot. And like just the cord is just you're always cognizant of like not getting it snagged or not getting it hooked on something else.

So, you know, I'm going to like yank it off my desk at some point. It's going to be a big thing. It like for, you know, I'm sure they would rather not have it. I understand why they, they chose it. it does, again, fit much better with the, I'm just going to leave my Vision Pro at my couch. At night when I finish work, I'm going to sit down and put it on and use it.

And there it doesn't feel like a big deal. For being at my desk and wanting to, you know, get coffee or move around or XYZ. If you have to do any sort of movement, and I don't just mean movement in the headset. I just mean like movement like day to day like you're working and you want to get a drink of water. Massive pain in the rear end.

I mean, you are talking to a wired headphone guy. so wires are no big deal for me, but I understand if you can't handle it. Yeah, fair point. Touche. You'll get on my level one day. There is a bit of the people walking around. My favorite video was Casey Nestat, you know, doing the riding a skateboard through New York City and wearing it all over. Great energy.

I love Casey. I mean, Casey is like sort of like one of the OG YouTubers. I love how even in this video, he's like calling out MKBHD and Mr. Beas and like the new. generation. And you know what? I'll let you finish in a minute, but I just want to say that that is why I was open to the Vision Pro being really, really cool, because I like the energy of the people who were really enthusiastic about this product more than the energy of the people who just reflexively shit on everything that comes out in tech and we're just starking. But enough therapy about self-hating on this episode. But that's the thing. I was looking inward. I was like,

do I want to be with this like perpetually negative whiny crowd or do I want to be with this crowd that looks like they're having a great time and has like a positive optimistic outlook on life. So I like the video from Casey and the video from Marquez. So I wanted to be with them, but I just couldn't quite get there in terms of like overwhelming optimism. But in any event, continue. Yeah, Marcus is a board of a straightforward review. Casey was the sort of crazy one.

But but so here's here's a couple points on that. Number one, I don't think they were absurd videos, right? Like, there is a vision of, no pun intended, this future where you have this capability of interaction with your external environment. Joanna Stern latched onto this with her sort of review, this idea of having the timer over the pot that is actually keeping track of. Like just how much more you, that is, just like you talk about the direct interaction is really important versus the, the, abstraction of your eyes in the clicking, direct connections make a big difference. It's one thing to have a timer on your phone or two timers running on your phone that are associated with two different pots of water.

This idea that the timer is on the pot that it is actually associated with just makes life so much easier. It's so much natural. So does it though? Absolutely. No, no, no. What you're focused on is how do you get to that state, right? And there's all sort.

This is the bit we talk about of envisioning a long. long run future where you can imagine you look at the pot of water and say hey set a timer for that for five minutes it just pops up on there you didn't do anything you already had the sort of the glasses on or whatever might be it just sort of happens for you and i actually the reason i love case's video is not just because i love casey and he's great but by the way if anyone knows casey i had an hour long conversation with him in a bar like five or six years ago and it was such a great conversation It felt really awkward. I never introduced myself or who I was,

which is a great conversation. And I've wanted to reconnect with them ever since. And I just, it never happened. So, yeah, that's like a New York Times misconnection column. Live on the podcast.

It was in Hamburg, Germany of all places, actually. But anyhow, great guy. Yeah. You didn't drop your name and he also just talked to a stranger for an hour. So no,

I think he enjoyed it. Because like, yeah, neither of us are like, we're just normal people in a bar having a conversation about stuff. It's been, anyhow, it was funny because we were both the next day speaking in front of like 20,000 people. Like, I think I went on like two hours after he did.

But anyhow, the, this bit, I think it does speak to something real. And by the way, if I imagine, you know, 10 years down the road and you just have normal glasses and you get the Vision Pro experience, as it is today, I think it's pretty darn compelling. And in this case, Apple's software choices where it's not a five gazillion screens in front of you. It is an augmentation of what's around you. It's an iOSification of the world is, I think, the right approach. And when you understand, you know, Apple's talk about, you know, Tim Cook being very negative on VR and say, we want AR and sort of XYZ. There's a lot to be positive about this approach. And I think that I think maybe the key to the way Apple is approaching this.

And I think it's a valid way is where you twist the digital crown. You go in and out of reality. You can have, you can have the VR experience, which is basically. from Apple's perspective, I believe, and is going to be inevitable, given the fundamental limitations of the software direction they're going, is really going to be watching movies, watching video, watching TV, and ideally it's going to be this 3D experience. It's going to be amazing. And then you're going to go back to reality, and you'll just have this tool that will help you out in real life, that will give you information when you need it, sort of XYZ.

And I think the Vision Pro is pretty clearly in that direction. And that means it's not necessarily right for me and what I wanted because what I want is like this the the sci-fi, futuristic, 47 screens in front of me. I'm in my battle center sort of commanding the world sort of thing. And Apple's not building that, which is fine. And guess what? You would not want that if you're riding a skateboard through New York City. You don't want like 47 gazillion things going on. and all those sorts of pieces.

So I think at the end of the day, the Vision Pro is not for me for productivity. I think the productivity use cases are actually far worse than I expected. It's pretty disappointing in that regard. For me, I think the video experience is, I think it's actually better than I expected to be honest, because I knew the fidelity and the audio.

I didn't fully appreciate the just sitting on the couch and slipping it on and how seamless that is. To me, that's a really big deal. You know, to a where the question, feels burdensome to get into the seamlessness of this and the the ocular ID is amazing it works every time you don't have to position your phone to get face ID right you don't have to reach out and touch a thing might be my I think it is my favorite feature just the it just works every single time and you don't even know about it or think about it and part of it is you pop it on and you're logged

in immediately because it did did the little scan and so all of that is great not necessarily what I wanted, but that's a me problem, not an, not, not an, not, not an apple problem per se. Yep. No, that, that makes sense. And I think for me, I could see it being incredibly useful if I were like stranded on some remote military base for six months or like if anyone seen. No, no, you have to, you have to not think about the as it is today. Think about the hardware in 10 years that's the for, for this particular use case.

But I mean, there are certain use case. There are certain use cases where like I, the, the. immersive video of my kids would be incredibly valuable if I were stranded from my family, but I'm not. And so being in person with my family is just better than boy, you're wearing the Vision Pro during the day. And I think when I zoom out in the past, and here, I can only, you know, my reference point is a lot of the reviews were like, this is the best piece of technology I've ever experienced. In the past, when you had thrilling new technology, they were products that actually solved problems that people had, whether it was like Google,

organizing the internet or an iPad or an iPod putting 200 albums in your pocket or Facebook or Amazon, like Facebook was connecting me with a bunch of friends stranded around the country. And all of that was kind of thrilling. And this is just a slightly more compelling way to watch TV. right now, except that it's $4,000 and you have to enjoy it by yourself. And so I would say the benefits are marginal and the costs, both figurative and literal, are something that everybody who uses technology is paying more attention to lately. Right. And I think the people who can afford the costs actually have the least benefit from it. Like, I think this is really compelling. Because you're flying business class.

Sh, that's between you and I. I didn't mean to call you out. I would rather, the collective view. I would rather use my laptop on the tray table in my isolated little pot in business class. That is exactly right. And that's exactly, but that's my whole point. It's a real market challenge where I think the, you know, the funny thing about tech is there's a long-running joke about people in tech creating use cases around airplanes. And the reality is the vast majority of people.

don't fly or they fly like very, very rarely. It's a, it's a real classic example of tech sort of being out of touch. But I think this idea of living, you know, having roommates, being a shared experience, being able to go be alone, right? You know, some people are introverts. They need the time alone to sort of recover. And this will deliver it in a really compelling way that I think could be very refreshing and beneficial for people.

It's a spin on the isolating. Sometimes isolation is good, right? And that's okay. And deep focus. Yeah. Well, and the one thing I wanted to explain is when we talk about changing the environment on the Vision Pro for anybody who hasn't used a demo or doesn't have a Vision Pro sitting in their office right now, there's a little knob that you can spin on the side of the Vision Pro that will either give you like you're sitting in an Apple store or you're sitting at like a mountain lake at the foot of Mount Hood. And it's very easy to go back and forth. And I can, envision a scenario where I'm trying to read something or trying to write something and being in that deep focus environment, whether I'm in a living room, in an office, on an airplane, there's real utility to being able to just spin back and forth.

If I worked in one of those, one of those terrible, like, office list. Open floor plan. Yeah, exactly. Just a, just terrible. I mean, like, honestly, like, I was at Microsoft at the tail end of the everyone got their own offices era, which was amazing and so much better for actually getting work done. Like, imagine this. You could close your door and actually get stuff done. Now people have to sit at these terrible things like that. All those companies, at least do your employees

the favor of buying and envision pros, right? Like, just be able to focus and get away and ignore those around you would be very, very compelling. I mean, so Apple, you know, basically, you know, funding these cheap employers that want to be able to move desks around easily. And, who cares your employees are happy or not. Of course, it arises at the time when more more people are working at home. I think this is a part why, you know, there's lots of benefits working at home to be sure.

One of them is you're not sitting in an open floor office plan. It's a great point. Yeah, and I don't want to downplay how easy they make that feature and also how well it works. And so there's just a lot of technical achievement with the Vision Pro that's easy to take for granted when you step back and ask what its future actually looks like. but the ease of use is pretty remarkable.

I suggest that everybody go to their local Apple store. People in D.C. were not beaten down the doors to get demos scheduled. I was pretty surprised. There's a lot of stock of the Apple Vision Pro and also wasn't particularly competitive to schedule a demo appointment. You put your finger on it. It's $3,500 for what? Right? Like the iPhone, everyone already had phones.

It was a better iPhone. One of the best opportunities ever. iPod like just it was three, four hundred dollars or five hundred dollars, whatever, those are early versions. And the use case was was super obvious right there, right? It's really hard to launch a product where the use case isn't obvious. It's applied more to the iPad, which was a bit of a slower ramp. And we had our discussion about the missing apps of the iPad or whatever it might be. You know, this is going to be a challenge for the Vision Pro.

Our developer is going to build these compelling experiences when there's not going to be a huge audience. and you need the compelling experience to draw the huge audience. You need to buy, by the way, one of the things that drove iPhone adoption was Unity being there. And Unity having this free SDK and then you only paid when you sort of went up levels. Even then you paid on a per seat basis. And it was a very easy entry point for building games on mobile. If you want to build VR stuff in Unity, it's like a $2,500 entry fee. Like just to sort of get a license.

And like there's lots of ecosystem type barrier. here that is going to be tough because you do want these compelling experiences. And I kind of feel like it's just going to be an iPad. It's an iPad for your face. That's what I'm thinking about, you know, I'm going to write about it. It's an iPad for your face, which, by the way, is awesome. But for the first, like, five, until the pencil came along, the iPad was really, yeah, I watch, you know, I watch video on it.

That's, it's great for that. Yeah. Well, and the iPad is a real luxury product, whereas the iPhone has turned, into an indispensable product for large swaths of the world. You can pay $1,000 for an iPhone, and the dollar you pay per hour of usage is still like the lowest of like any device you pay for me. It's the cheapest device you have. Yeah.

So while we're on the subject of iPhones, another question I jotted down in the wake of my demo, isn't it weird that there's not more synergy with the iPhone at launch here? Is there a reason for that? I don't know any of the backstory, but I was just surprised that it doesn't sync more naturally with my iPhone. Well, I mean, you do get stuff that you don't really, like your passwords, like once you're logged in with ICloud, I think you have a different experience. So like a huge one is your password just being there, right? Like if you're using one password or I call keychain or whatever it might be, your stuff is just there. Obviously, they have the whole ecosystem of iPad apps, which by and large I find pretty hard to use.

the highlighting of your eye tracking is not nearly contrasty enough for me. It's hard to tell what I'm looking at with iPad apps in particular. I would love them all to be forced in the dark mode. I think that would help, not sort of the light mode. There is a issue where particularly in the dark,

when a bright scene comes up like in a movie or an app, it reflects on your lenses inside. Maybe this is just me because I have the inserts, but it's really distracting and very frustrating. But I think the big missing iPhone use case is the you can see your iPhone through pass-through. And if you squint, you can make it out. And again, to be clear, that's an incredible technical achievement, okay, that you can even see your iPhone at all. I would love to have layered on the phone the actual iPhone being sent from the iPhone into the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro rendering the screen.

Yeah. I would imagine that's something they would want to do, maybe just. it's not doable yet or it's not possible or they haven't like gotten to it. That would be very, it's very technically difficult for sure, you'd be tracking your hand and, you know, putting forward the image.

The iPhone is a very high resolution device. So that, that I think is a, I would say by and large, the ecosystem is a big advantage for Apple. All this stuff is already there. A lot of it just works. I think it's a long term risk for Apple that they use it as a crutch,

like the Mac sort of pass through sort of thing. And don't enable the sort of native experiences that would be, better. But I think, you know, it's, it's the only reason I was surprised is because Apple is generally so amazing at interoperability between different Apple devices in your home. And so it just didn't seem like there was that sort of seamless, frictionless experience. But it was a demo. I mean, yeah, you weren't logged into your account. That said, I didn't feel it. I think I can know what you're talking about. It didn't feel quite as interconnected as I would have thought. But I'm going to reserve judgment on that just for, for the.

Here I will call the I haven't used it long enough to form a strong opinion on sort of that that opinion. There is one final thing I have to get to. I was wondering. Guest mode is one of the most horrific experiences I've ever had in technology ever. Okay, so explain to people what you're talking about there. Oh, so someone else wants to use a Vision Pro, which guess what? You get a Vision Pro. Everyone wants to try the Vision Pro.

Yeah. This is how I have to go. about doing it. Now it's worse for me because I have lens inserts, but let me walk you through it. I put the Vision Pro on. I invoke Control Center, which you do by sort of looking up and there's a little down icon there and you pinch your fingers and it drops down. And I actually have no problem invoking it. Some people were complaining about it. My problem is that stupid control indicator keeps showing up from that I'm watching movies. I don't know why. Maybe it's like position on my face weird or something, which is it just keeps popping through. There's this icon there. Really annoying. But anyhow, you invoke it. Then you go to this menu, which is fine. It works. This all works great. I'm not,

it sounds like I'm doing a lot, but it's not, no problem. Then you do guess mode. So you invoke guest mode. It says, do you want to give access to all your data and all your apps or whatever? Because it's,

it's just logging in basically to your account. So I said, yes, as most of my family and stuff like that. And then it says, okay, pass it to someone else within five, or take out your lenses and pass it within five minutes. So I have to take out my lenses because they're,

they're, you know, my prescription, which is very nasty. And, uh, they put it on. And then they have to go through the whole onboard.

experience. They have to scan their hands, then they have to do the eye thing where you're looking at the six dots around in a circle three different times, and then they can use the vision pro. So the first time we're doing it, you know, I had it to someone. They lift up the vision pro to kind of rub their eyes and they put the vision pro back and it says put in your pen to use. It was out a guess mode. And Apple frames this on their website as a benefit. Oh, we'll automatically ask a guess mode when they take it off. What? You have a to be kidding me. So the, like, so they had it back to me. I put my lens inserts back in and then I put it on, re-invoke Smoat and hand it to them. And they have to use it knowing they cannot remove it from their face for even a second or else they'll get logged out. And, and it, and that it, it had to do this with multiple people yesterday's like, my lenses in and out sort of invoking it, not invoking it. And it just felt, it just felt actively hostile. It's like, fine. Here's a freaking guest experience if you want it.

But my God, if someone else wants to use a Vision Pro, go to the Apple store and buy another Vision Pro. You're definitely not going to let them use it. And by the way, another $4,000. So I don't my daughter. Finally my daughter is the last one to use it. I'm like, here's my pin. I gave her the pin and she put it in. And she's like, it says will not work without lens inserts.

Like it was already walked to like my lens inserts. So I couldn't even just give away my passcode and let them use it. Like an iPad, like famously, people complain about it all the time, does not have multi-user support. Only one user, right? You can't have an iPad for the family. Well, what you can do is an iPad for the family, make a different user account or use your user account, whatever you might be. Everyone knows the passcode, right? And everyone can use it.

Nope, not in the business. At least if you have ones inserts. Maybe if you don't have ones inserts, that might work. I can't, I can't say because I do have ones inserts. But just I put on Twitter that it feels like a money grab and people got really upset about that. I said feels like, I'm not saying it is a money grab. like iOS has always been a single user operating system. Now, there is a school version that does have multiple accounts, X, Y, Z, but we'll set that aside.

It's always been a single user operating system. And people have complained about this for years. And there is no question, a financial incentive for Apple to have everyone buy their own device because they make money on the device, right? Not on sort of like services. But even in this case, what's give the most generous interpretation, which is this is a single user device, and they realize people wanted to use it because it's a vision prone and expense. and people want to try it, so they added guest mode. And out of the generosity of their hearts. I'm sorry, it does not feel generous.

It feels spiteful. It feels like they hate you for wanting to offer. I cannot over-emphasize how- So hearing you describe it. It made me angry. Like, it just felt bad because you're there and you already feel like kind of a jerk because you have a super expensive vision pro

and no one else does, right? And you're like, oh, of course I'll let you try it. And you're like, oh, sorry, you have to do this. to do X, Y, Z, you need to go through this. And, oh, don't take it off and do, like, it just feels burdensome. And, like, you feel almost embarrassed handing it off. And that's leaving and leaving aside the fact that, oh, I want to go on a trip and maybe, like, you know, I want to go out. And my wife wants to stay and watch a show.

Can't do that because if she takes it off her face, it's done. Can't use it anymore. It just feels, I mean, again, I understand the incentives. No, it feels like they didn't have anybody test it and say, oh, this is going to be phenomenally. inconvenient for every single person who uses it. It is Apple's incentive that everyone buy their own vision pro. That's how the business model works. And if that was not the motivation to be so hostile and spiteful, they should have been cognizant

that a lot of people will think that because that is their incentive structure and they needed to be extra sure to, I think, not give that impression. You know, and maybe it's time limited, right? like for for an hour or even 50 seconds would be better right this it's it's it gives you a it gives you just a bad feeling about the entire device it feels it's like all this magical experience and pop it on and use it and then there's a big middle finger right in the middle yeah no i hear you and look i was mad on your behalf because i can imagine 10 years from now if i bring home a vision pro the first thing my son is going to do

is going to be like, oh my gosh, can I try it? And even when I was at the Apple store today, I watched like the Super Mario Brothers demo, and I remarked to the lady who was helping me through the demo. I was like, my toddler son would love that. That would be like heroin for him. And she was like, do not put a Vision Pro headset on a toddler. Yeah, no, I think it's actually bad for them.

Well, not just that. I think that VR is actually bad for your eyes if you're still developing. It was bad for my eyes. Yeah. I definitely would not put it on a toddler. So disclaimer to everybody. I mean, the fundamental challenge with VR generally is that your eyes are focusing on something that's an inch in front of them. And it's trying to project video that your mind thinks is like many feet away.

Yeah. That's just a fundamental challenge that's always to be hard to fix. Magic Leap was actually trying to fix this with like changing the focus points based on where it was. But the, you know, that, but yeah, it's not, it's not good for kids. But, you know, it made me feel bad about having a Vision Pro in the house because the reality is I'm not going to sit down and set up for my kids every single time. I can't apparently, if I have lens inserts, I can't do that. It makes me want to reset it and just I will bear the cost of all wear context all the time so that everyone can use it. But then I'm not going to use it because I don't wear context hardly at all anymore.

Like it just it made me feel like a, it made me feel like a bad parent for even bringing this into the house given. the reality of having to tell my kids, no, you can't use it. Well, that's why I wanted to make sure that we mentioned it is hearing you describe it, I was then imagining basically every single family that brought home a Vision Pro probably experienced some version of what you went through, which is every other member of the family wants to check it out because they're curious and they've heard this is the future and it's incredible. Sorry, honey, I spent $3,500 and it's mine only.

Yeah, it's going to be incredibly. cumbersome. And if you do want to take it off for just a second to adjust your eyes or rub your eyes or something, they will have to start back from square one. And it's just, it's an example of friction that exists today. And that, and there's just a lot of different aspects of the experience that are, are more cumbersome and complicated. I'm telling you Apple, I'm telling you Apple right now. Like, I am going to grant you some leeway that no one was really testing this or focused on it. And it may be actually a heavy lift to add. No, no, hear me out. Maybe it was a heavy lift to add this to an operating system that is fundamentally single account. This needs to be fixed in the next few months,

or I am going to assume it is intentional because you're trying to drive people to buy more. And that's fine. It's your business. You can do what you want, but that is going to be my working assumption that it's a money grab. Now, if I qualified it on Twitter right now, it feels like a money grab. I'm going to say it categorically is one if it's not better in the next few months. Okay. It's horrible. It's upset. I'm upset right now.

And again, it makes me feel like, it makes me feel guilty for buying it. It makes me feel really bad because all the worst characterization of the Vision Pro is this dystopian idea and the man being home alone looking at pictures of his kids because he apparently got divorced and moved across the country or whatever. Or is it the Arctic Research Center with me? This brings that feeling viscerally. It's like, I want to swear, screw you even thinking about having any sort of interaction effect with anyone else. You were meant to be alone.

And we made a device for you being alone to enjoy yourself. And guess what? I don't want to be alone. And I resent being made to feel even a smidgen that way. That's exactly how it made me feel. There you go. Well, and the flip side is that people love the Apple Vision Pro, a lot of people who have been in tech for a long time, in part because it captures some of the magic that made everybody

want to work in tech. It's like there's that brilliance and the immersion feeling. Like there are some of it feels supernatural. And you want to be able to share that feeling with people without like going through 10 steps and driving yourself insane. So that's part of the story too. But I came away from using the Vision Pro yesterday afternoon. And I remember I was, I was going to pick up lunch. And I had to like, you know, I had to check myself and say, you're in a bad state of mind right now. And you know, it's something the older you get, you can become more sort of externally aware of where you're at.

And you can make a choice, I think in a lot of cases about your emotions. And I'm like, if I don't get a hold of myself, I'm going to start snapping at people. I'm just going to start being a jerk. Like it put me in a really deeply bad mood. It made me feel bad. And so I got a hold of myself. I came back and I did my work. And then my kids came home and the feeling came back. It was like, I feel like a bad dad. That's how it made me feel. That's how hostile it was. And again, I'm talking about my feelings. I'm not like I'm not casting aspersions. Like I said, iOS is a single user experience. For sure, they didn't want. to inspire this feeling. I am telling you Apple, though, that's the feeling that I got and it needs to be better.

Yep. Well, and I imagine it's true for hundreds of thousands of people who came home with the Vision Pro over the last couple of days. But for now, great job by you. You came prepared with takes after like 24 hours with this device. I had 30 minutes. So my original plan was to write about it next week. And I going on a trip next week and I was going to work in it and use it. And then, I'm going skiing and my wife does not ski and I'm like oh this is great I will go ski and she can use it you know when I'm not there and she was super excited about it number one that's not going to happen for the reasons we just said um but number two there's no way I'm going to work in it like I just it's very maybe it's a hot take it's only 24 hours I'm going to go through it again this afternoon but I feel pretty confident in my take because I think I understand structurally why I don't want to work in it and like so

So it's not like it's going to get better because there's choices that were made that just do not align with what I want. And that, by the way, that is not, I say that not, that's not a critique of the Vision Pro. I just articulated, I think for the Vision Pro, again, all the choices that make it worse for me, make it better for an entertainment experience in my estimation. Right. But I would say in order to really get market penetration in the mainstream, it has to be a productivity device. And if it's just an entertainment device, then it's going to be extreme luxury that's super cool for some people and not really adopted by the mainstream. It is possible. This goes back to the Apple Watch where it took Apple a few years to figure out this isn't an app device. This isn't a digital heartbeat device. It's a health and fitness device. And we're going to do all that. We're going to build it in. And that's what it's going to be for. And to me, yes. But who could say I'm totally biased is what I want. What I think what I want is I want is I want an expansive computing environment that I can have anywhere at any time. I don't like having

all these monitors around. I want this to be a relic of the past that we have this device that is, and we're looking into this screen. I want to have in general, those pictures of homes back in the day, right? There was no TV and the living room was actually centered around like to talk to each other. And there's like a fire plane and all these sorts of things that have been built around this thing on the wall. I, I feel like that should be in the past for work too. you can go and then when it's time to focus, you can put this on and you can sort of walk in and do it and have this amazing incredible experience

that is actually better than what you came before. That is what I want. Maybe that is where Apple will end up. I just worry they won't because, number one, I don't feel like it's remotely going in that direction right now because the choices they made. And number two, I just don't know that they'll ever build something like the Mac again

because having that experience means giving deeper control, letting you have a, you know, they view the Mac as a crutch for all their devices. Because they have the Mac, they can lock down everything to a far greater extent than if they were alone. What do you need to build an iPhone app? You need a Mac. What do you need to build a Vision Pro app? You need a Mac.

Because the Mac exists, these devices can be locked down. Because the Mac is heavy, these devices can be light. But I want it to be heavy. Turns out heavy is not so bad. both figuratively and literally. There you go. Well, Apple, three months to relinquish control and allow me to have a demo that features the League Pass app and photos of my son. And then also figure out guest vote for the love of God.

No, no, no, the demo thing's fine. I'm going to push back on you this. It's a logistics challenge. They got to move everyone through it. In this case, Phil, if you want your pictures, go buy a vision pro. Yours is objectively reasonable. I'm defending Apple on this point. Sure.

That's right. Now, and by the way, like I said, guess what? It just might have been they shipped, Apple shipped this quickly. They said early 2024. Everyone assumed that meant like March 31st, 2024, right? It's a great point. They got it out and maybe they just didn't finish it. That was another note I had, yeah.

I am giving them full, like I said, I'm for now, I'm giving them full grace. But I cannot overstate how viscerally upsetting it was. And it needs to be. fixed. All these tech companies need a VP of common sense. That person would have easily... Yeah, spend all over Simpinelli rule. Jump up and say, I'm resigning if you don't fix this.

That's great. Exactly. Pat Cipollone. References lost on thousands and thousands of listeners. But look, on that note, we are coming back later in the week. Email at sharp tech. com. We'd love to hear from you whether you've done an Apple Vision Pro demo or not.

And Ben, until then, enjoy your time in the augmented reality of the Vision Pro. And I will talk to you in a couple days. I'm not going to enjoy it. I don't enjoy it for work. It's scrambling through here. Yeah. But you know what? I will enjoy.

You know, I'm going to watch someone watch TV show after I've finished right. Oh, my gosh. I'll send a whole little, a diet for you over the next couple of days. Can't wait for pop culture, Ben Thompson out of nowhere here in 2024. All right. I will talk to you in a few days. Talk to you later.