Nearly two years after its ambitious debut, Apple’s Vision Pro headset has received a subtle yet significant refresh with the M5 chip, promising smoother performance and incremental comfort tweaks. But as Ars Technica‘s latest deep dive explores, does this update finally unlock the spatial computing revolution—or is it a poignant reminder of the device’s persistent hurdles in content, adoption, and everyday appeal?
Sameuel Axon for Ars Technica:
I still like the Vision Pro, but I can tell it’s hanging on by a thread. Content is light, developer support is tepid, and while Apple has taken action to improve both, it’s not enough, and I’m concerned it might be too late.
When I got a Vision Pro, I used it a lot: I watched movies on planes and in hotel rooms, I walked around my house placing application windows and testing out weird new ways of working. I tried all the neat games and educational apps, and I watched all the immersive videos I could get ahold of. I even tried my hand at developing my own applications for it.
As the months went on, though, I used it less and less. The novelty wore off, and as cool as it remained, practicality beat coolness. By the time Apple sent me the newer model a couple of weeks ago, I had only put the original one on a few times in the prior couple of months. I had mostly stopped using it at home, but I still took it on trips as an entertainment device for hotel rooms now and then…
Whereas the first Vision Pro had Apple’s M2 chip — which was already a little behind the times when it launched — the new one adds the M5. It’s much faster, especially for graphics-processing and machine-learning tasks. We’ve written a lot about the M5 in our articles on other Apple products if you’re interested to learn more about it.
Functionally, this means a lot of little things are a bit faster, like launching certain applications or generating a Persona avatar. I’ll be frank: I didn’t notice any difference that significantly impacted the user experience…
I believe there is room for this product in the marketplace. I still think it’s amazing. It’s not going to be as big as the iPhone, or probably even the iPad, but it has already found a small audience that could grow significantly if the price and weight could come down. Removing all the hardware related to Personas and EyeSight would help with that.
I hope Apple keeps working on it.
MacDailyNews Take: Any device, no matter how cool, that makes the user work too hard just to use it, is a failure.
Bonus review via Becca Farsace:
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