The Immersive Hype Is Real

My thoughts on trying the Apple Vision Pro.

After listening to all of my favorite tech podcasters give their first impressions of the Apple Vision Pro, I thought I would follow what John Siracusa did on ATP and schedule a demo at my local Apple Store. My local Apple store is about 25–30 minutes from me, depending on traffic, so it isn’t a quick trip.

I will usually only go to the Apple store if it is on the way to do something else, but I made an exception this time. Since the announcement, I have not been totally sold on Apple’s vision (sorry, had to), with the Apple Vision Pro. It seemed a bit cheesy and not fully fleshed out on what it would be used for.

After all of the reviews and listening to a ton of people talk about their hands-on experience, I still don’t know if that vision I was looking for has been completely answered. What I did gather from all of the talk about this device is that it is super cool and unlike any headset or computer, many have used before.

So I decided I wanted to try it out for myself without having to drop thirty-five hundred dollars. Apple offers free demos of the Apple Vision Pro, so I jumped on the Apple Store app and was able to schedule the earliest appointment available, 10:30 AM. I assumed it wasn’t going to be super packed for this demo since every slot was available, but I opted for the earliest appointment so I knew the store would be a little more empty too — I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel wearing it in a crowd.

My Apple Store Experience

I thought I would go over this whole thing in steps, starting with me going to the Apple Store and checking in. I do want to mention that I actually do not like this Apple Store. I have had many bad experiences with poor service, slow and bad communication when I take devices in to get them fixed, and just a sense of lack of organization.

It may have to do with the fact that this store gets a lot of people walking in with broken or damaged computers and phones, so it is constantly hectic. But the ones, like myself, who make appointments and schedule for pickups as you are supposed to, I still feel like I leave this specific store with some kind of headache from a mix-up that occurred.

Anyway, this is all to say that though my hopes were high, and I was actually pretty excited at this point to try out the Vision Pro, I was a little worried how it was actually going to go.

When I walked in, I did notice a young child with their parent wearing and in what looked to be a Vision Pro demo at the other side of the store. I was looking to see where the demo might take place and noticed a demo already happening. While I was waiting for my headset, I also overheard another person ask for a demo who didn’t have an appointment, so I think they were being lenient on giving demos probably because they had time slots available.

The check-in was easy and fast, and the person who actually checked me in was the one who ended up doing the demo with me. Speaking of disorganization, a good example of why I feel this store has a problem, while we were in the middle of trying to get things set up, two different people came and asked if he was doing the demo for me since he kept forgetting to assign me to himself on the iPad.

It wasn’t a big deal but was distracting during some of the parts of the process I was trying to pay attention to — like going over how to put it on, what I should look for in a good fit, and hand gestures. Luckily since I am a geek and I have read, watched, and listened to so much about this device, it was just a little irritating.

He also did have an issue syncing the iPad Mini to the headset. Something John mentioned he experienced too during his demo. I almost told the Apple Store employee to reboot the iPad Mini, like John had said what happened with his situation, but he ended up just swapping it with another iPad and it started working.

Before I go into the experience I do want to mention a couple of other things that happened while at the Apple Store. Another person ended up sitting across from me doing a demo as well, and that was very distracting. The person doing the demo and the Apple employee both talked a lot louder than we did so it did get annoying at times.

Plus, because the Apple employee can do things on the iPad Mini for me, there were a couple of times when he closed something or stopped something on accident which was a bit disappointing. Overall it was fine, but I do feel like some of this is still fairly new to them too. I could see that he was reading from a script on the iPad as he was walking me through the demo.

Apple Vision Pro First Impressions

I will say right off the bat, 30 minutes was way too short. The time flew by and I wanted to keep it on and do so much more. I do feel like the size of the front piece was not quite right for my face. After all of the other interruptions and delays I didn’t want to say anything, but I do feel it didn’t make the experience perfect.