Apple Vision Pro is clearly a first-gen product. Expensive, flawed, limited, and impressive. Much of what it needs to really become a mass-market device will need new hardware that is lighter, more affordable, and more fully featured. But that’s not to say that Apple should be content with aiming its next big push at Apple Vision Air or Apple Vision Pro 2. There are so many software changes that would make this a much better overall product, some of which can be done in the next few weeks or months, others that might need to be a part of visionOS 2.
Apple has already released visionOS 1.1, but its improvements are minor at best, and don’t address some of the biggest pain points and missed opportunities of Apple’s new headset. Here are some of the software-related improvements we think should be at the top of Apple’s list for improving the current Apple Vision Pro; no new hardware required.
Follow the leader
When you open a Vision Pro app (other than fully immersive apps) it appears with a little window bar at the bottom with a “Close” button next to it. This floating window remains in place wherever you put it—you move, it stays put.
While locking apps to the environment around you like this is impressive and sometimes useful, there are times when it’s a huge pain in the butt. It should be possible to lock an app to the user, keeping the app in position relative to the Apple Vision Pro hardware. Perhaps we could double-pinch on the window bar or have a lock icon on the right side of it. I would use such a feature every day. There are some apps I simply want to move around with me.
Capture the grandeur
When you tap the top button on a Vision Pro, you launch the Capture app for recording Spatial videos and photos. Those are limited in resolution, just as they are when you record one with the iPhone 15 Pro. A lot is going on with the recording and capture of these, so the resolution limit makes sense.
But why are flat screen captures and recordings limited to a resolution of just 1920×1080? It completely undersells the exceptional resolution of the Vision Pro display and makes it hard to share cool experiences on social feeds in their full glory.
Foundry
Foundry
Foundry
No place like Home
The Home view presents apps in a sort of honeycomb-style grid with four apps on the top row, five in the middle, and four on the bottom. The first page is all Apple apps, with one folder for all “compatible apps” (iPad and iPhone apps) from any vendor. Then page 2 continues some Apple apps before listing all your other apps in alphabetical order.
It’s kind of a mess. I’m not a fan of the App Library categories on iPhone but at least there’s some sense of organization there. We need a better Home view with the ability to customize our app layout, folders, and more. The only reason this isn’t a bigger problem is that there are so few Vision Pro apps right now.
And how is this the only Apple product (other than watchOS 10 Apple Watches) that doesn’t have a Dock?
Share and share alike
Even if I’m in the same room with someone else with an Apple Vision Pro, we can’t see the same virtual objects. We can’t share windows. There’s no virtual whiteboard we can both walk up to and draw on. We may as well be in different parts of the globe. You should be able to share a “space” with someone else in your same physical environment, if both parties agree, and share fully immersive environments and/or objects with remote users.
It’s such an obvious omission that it makes one wonder if Apple is actually hard at work on such a feature but just didn’t have it ready for launch. Here’s hoping it’s ready for the fall.
Heads up!
Just as it’s useful for my iPhone’s always-on display to show some simple widget information, the Vision Pro would benefit from allowing the option to show simple info in my view at all times. Time and date would be an easy thing, but copying the iPhone lock screen widgets framework so I can pin a few pieces of useful information to the top of my view seems like a no-brainer, and easy on developers.
As with the iPhone’s lock screen widgets, they should be limited in both number and size and use only white with transparency so the operating system can keep them legible (and fade them away when needed).
Lewis Painter / Foundry
Lewis Painter / Foundry
Lewis Painter / Foundry
The gang’s all here
Let me watch a streaming video in a virtual theater with my friends, who may be on the other side of the country. I don’t even need to see a “Full-body Persona” I just want to see something in the seat next to me and voice chat while we watch the same movie together. Vision Pro does support SharePlay, which lets you FaceTime someone while you watch or listen to the same thing together, but it’s not the same as having them walking around the same immersive environment with you.
The same goes for any other sort of shared real-time experience. Multiplayer games, for instance. If I’m playing Fruit Ninja, maybe another player can load up the fruit launcher with fruits that come down a conveyor belt, trying to provide more bonuses and fewer bombs. As it stands, every Vision Pro experience is solitary, except FaceTime, which isn’t all that different from the iPhone app.
Connect the devices
It’s weird to me that the Vision Pro doesn’t really work together with anything other than AirPods. Sure, you get your Messages and Photos synced in the cloud, but there’s no notification when a call comes in on your iPhone, for example. Why can’t I take the call on Vision Pro just like I can on my Mac?
Why doesn’t it do anything at all with the Apple Watch? How come I can create a cool virtual display for my Mac by just glancing at “connect” but I can’t do that same thing with my iPhone or iPad? Using Apple Vision Pro doesn’t just make you feel disconnected from other people, it makes you feel disconnected from your other Apple devices, with the notable exception of creating a Mac virtual display.
Close the app gap
Fitness+, Health, Calculator, Apple Store, Find My…so many important Apple apps are not available on Vision Pro at all, even in their iPad form. Others, such as Apple Music Classical, Books, Podcasts, Maps, and Clock, only have their iPad versions. We need real spatial versions of all core Apple apps.
Foundry
Foundry
Foundry
Embrace the spatial
While the TV+ and Keynote apps have great “spatial computing” features, so many others are little more than glorified iPad apps, entirely devoid of useful or fun spatial features.
Why doesn’t Apple Music support the “Sing” karaoke mode like it does on other platforms, with a virtual immersive karaoke room or bar to perform in? Why doesn’t the Clock app let me set timers and pin them over things in my environment, with spatial audio and visual cues directing me back to them when they go off? Or even just a few different realistic-looking clock objects to select from and pin on the wall, with realistic animations and sounds when alarms go off?
How about a Health app that syncs with my Apple Watch to show my heart rate as a real 3D heart pulsing? Fitness+ where a fitness instruction appears virtually to show me how to properly do yoga moves? Why isn’t there an Apple Music Classical app with the ability to listen to music in a virtual concert hall? Why can’t Books put an actual virtual book in my hands? How about an Apple Store app that looks like the actual inside of a real Apple Store?
I came up with all these ideas in 10 minutes and Apple hasn’t built any of them yet. Every single Apple app, at minimum, should have spatial features that you just can’t do with an iPhone or iPad app.
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Author: Jason Cross, Senior Editor, Macworld
Jason has written about technology for more than 25 years - first in the gaming press, then focusing on enthusiast PCs and general technology. He enjoys learning how complicated technology works and explaining it in a way anyone can understand.