Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

This strikes me as the best review I've seen if you read the text (I'm not sure x/10 is useful). I learned a lot about it, including quite a few things Apple has been quite coy about.

Wonderfully written review. Happy to have read it and disappointed with some of the takeaways. I wish that there were more of a "mac-centric" approach taken for powerusers, rather than barreling forward with visionOS. Once their OS is truly consolidated I may have more use for this device.

This is a very in-depth, informative and factual review. My hats off to the Verge; great job.

I have racked up hours upon hours of actual, productive work in my Quest 2 and 3, so to say that I am a big proponent of the ideas that Apple is trying to advance would be an understatement. This makes me all the more disheartened to read that, for all their efforts, this release is mired by the same drawbacks that I have encountered across numerous headsets over the last decade:

> [..] there’s a little bit of distortion and vignetting around the edges of the lenses, and you’ll see some green and pink color fringing at the edges as well, especially in bright environments. [..] If you’re looking at something bright or otherwise high contrast [..] you’ll see highlights reflecting in the lenses.

Prior to this review, I was actually willing to understand certain seemingly odd decisions, such as the concept of putting an OLED display on the outside, the potential for weight distribution issues, and an external battery, as I was hopeful that, similar to the iPhone, there'd be a cohesive whole in the end that wasn't fully understandable until reviewers got to use it.

I also was, somewhat naive, I admit that, under the impression that their handling of vignetting, etc. would be less noticable then what seems to be the case and, again naively following their marketing videos, had higher FOV expectations.

To draw a parallel, the initial iPhone made some major tradeoffs and at the time odd choices, to say the least, many of which were laughed at for arguably justifiable reasons at the time, but I could see something in that that went beyond then-available touch-only smartphones and PDAs in terms of usability and cohesiveness.

I fail to see the same in this review. Neither as an actual user nor as an enthusiast, do I see anything here that has not been done before. While your then-PDA may have supported 3G and came with many other capabilities the first iPhone lacked, there were certain things in regard to build, design, usability and intuitiveness that were unparalleled in the products at the time. Comparing an iPhone and an iPAQ Pocket PC made the latter seem ancient, even though it could do a lot the iPhone couldn't. Compare a Vision Pro to a Quest 3, I am saddened to say I don't see the same.

> It’s been pretty disingenuous of Apple to have all their marketing photos with the single strap, when the unanimous opinion is that strap doesn’t work at all for comfortability or longevity.

"I found the solo loop much more comfortable" - direct quote out of the article you're replying to.

Oh boy: "Listen to me, do you want to use a computer that is always looking at your hands?" It took a second for that warning to sink in.