I am (like many) blown away by the POTENTIAL of the Apple Vision Pro. The immersive content, on the other hand, is lacking. There’s just not very much of it. What there is will leave you changed. (SRSLY!)

Tonight I watched a 3D movie inside the AVPro for the full experience. I chose DUNE for my maiden voyage. The new DUNE opens on March 1st everywhere, so good to rejoin the planet Arrakis and House Atradies before the next Denis Vilanouva classic arrives. And as a direct-to-face experience it was fair. Great movie. But it is easy to see, with the best that you can get, 3D in movie theaters with glasses for effect, that the Apple Vision Pro is going to be a massive hit. Remember your first WOW moment with a big 3D movie. And then remember how quickly you opted for the 2D-version when a new movie would come out. 3D in a movie theater is about 30% as vivid as a 3D movie inside the AVPro.

Apple’s immersive content takes 3D into the “jacking in” level. You can experience as close as technically possible for jacking-in ah la the Matrix. And $4,000 for that experience, well, there are plenty of disposable dollars that will follow that promise. The AVPro is going to be a hit. Today, the unit is more like an experiment. Like a developer’s toy to begin showing the CREATORS what is possible.

As an early member of the Apple Developers Program, we’ve been exploring the coding tools and environments for the AVPro. The data, the tools, the path to victory on the AVPro is a bit of a fantasy for now.

Experiencing the Metaverse

Well, by now we all know Mark Z and the Facebook gang did not establish the metaverse like they had hoped. Instead they gave us Threads. And then they waited to see how Apple would rewrite the face computing, face display, VR/AR universe. APPLE HAS DONE IT.

Gaming is cool. But it’s not $4,000 fun unless you’re a young man with Robucks to burn. The games are good, but there’s about 4 that are worth your time. No COD, No Red Dead, No Assasin’s Creed. Oh, and here’s the big WHAT moment for that young male gamer crowd that’s going to put a damper on sales. NO PORN. Well, NO VR porn. You can still hit Pornhub and anything a browser can visit, but you can’t run VR porn. (The jailbreaking all-night sessions have already commenced.) So, the application that established VHS as the dominate video format. The content that capitalized on the Internet when it still had a capital “i.” The content that drives a huge portion of the commerce and traffic on the internet.

NO FAP.

This device was not made for child’s play. The ambition for a VR/AR work environment is a bit far off. Even with my Zeiss optical inserts, the sharpness of a Word document is not worth the hassle. You can use your wireless keyboard and trackpad from your Mac setup, but still. I’m typing this on my MBP for two reasons. 1. It’s clear, bright, and real; and 2. I type well.

The journey with the Apple Vision Pro will continue. And I am hopeful I can find a killer app, killer use case, killer workflow for you to get excited about. It’s sort of like AI right now. We’re all running around afraid we’re missing something while the professionals are digging in and trying to make it pay off. The payoff on the AVPro is a bit further off for Apple and any developer that hopes to create immersive content. Apple hopes to sell 400,000 units in 2024. That’s not a very big market come Dec/Jan holiday season. Look for a less-expensive version by Christmas 2025. It’s okay, we really should all be paying attention to what’s going on with our government and the upcoming elections anyway.

You will love the AVPro even if you don’t understand what the use for it is, or the justification for the high price tag. There is no justification for an Apple Vision Pro at this moment unless you are looking to develop content. Then you an write it off, depreciate it, and use your Apple Developer Subscription as a cost offset. The hype will wear off on the AVPro. Your first experience of 3D as a kid will not. We can all feel the “h-fk” moment when the dinosaur pokes his head out of the screen and looks ready to bite your head off. Apple has two little demos that make Jurrasic Park 3D look like 8-bit graphics compared to what is now possible.

Go. See. Do. Be creative.

Check out our new site AVPRO.FUN to get the latest on the Apple Vision Pro.

John McElhenney — let’s connect online
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