Apple Vision Pro Review: Someone Beat Me Up and Took It
“This isn’t that type of neighborhood.”
My next-door neighbor Ruth kept insisting this sort of thing didn’t happen on this block. I’ve lived here four months and was inclined to believe her based on my experiences so far. People are polite. Everyone decorated for Christmas. The other day a guy helped me push my car out of the driveway after a blizzard.
A lot of that goodwill was rendered obsolete, however, when I got my ass beat over the Apple Vision Pro VR headset I was trying to review today. I don’t know who it was, because I was in the middle of an augmented reality experience at the time. I’m not sure it was a neighbor necessarily, but based on how many of them were gathered around to watch my untimely beating, they are at the very least complicit.
Except Ruth.
I don’t think she came outside until she heard the commotion, specifically me calling for her. I knew I was somewhere near her house, so I screamed for her at the top of my lungs. She’s a nice neighbor, always asking if she can help out and whatnot. Usually, I decline, but when it became clear that I was under real-life attack, my instincts were to take her up on her offer.
“Ruth!” I shouted. “Ruth! They’re kicking my ass!”
In the distance, I heard one of my gathered neighbors say to someone else, “Yeah they are.”
I’m fairly certain I heard someone open a beer, too. I guess it might’ve been a soda.
By the time Ruth got to me, it was over. My ass? Beat. The Apple Vision Pro goggles? Burgled. I was curled up in her driveway, and the only augmenting of my reality was the way I couldn’t see so well out of my left eye, due to the swelling.
I’ve been meaning to branch out into tech reviews. This was not the start I’d hoped for, but this was my planned content for the day, so I decided to write the experience up anyway.
“Why didn’t you try to fight back?”
One thing about the Apple Vision Pro is that this thing is light! You can barely feel it. I think there’s a very worthwhile conversation to be had about the overall viability of the product, certainly from a software perspective, but what you can’t debate is that it’s incredibly lightweight. I even heard my assailants comment on it as they removed it from my head.
Hey also, I didn’t get a free one of these or anything. I paid the money for one to do this review. So if you’re like “Mark, this feels more like an account of a very tragic afternoon you probably shouldn’t be telling people about than a worthwhile post,” I will repeat: this was my planned content for the day. Do you have a better idea?
So yeah, that thing is light. I had the first PSVR they put out for the PlayStation 4, and it was fun to get in there and fuck around, but the headset was so damn heavy that it hurt the back of my head after 15 or 20 minutes. There’s no losing yourself in Beat Saber or Borderlands 2 VR when the back of your head is throbbing.
The back of my head may be throbbing now, but it’s certainly not because of the weight of Apple’s brand new “Augmented Computing” unit.
“It looked like children doing that to you.”
In addition to leaving you prone to body blows, a quick trip through the highly touted features of the Apple Vision Pro will leave you to a quick conclusion; this thing is a little lacking on the apps. There’s still plenty to do, but a lot of things are just ports of iPad apps. Nothing that exciting.
No dedicated apps for YouTube, Netflix, or Spotify. Certainly nothing worth kicking my ass for earlier today!
Still, though, there are a few flickers of promise. I was particularly enthralled with an augmented reality experience called Encounter Dinosaurs. You can imagine what it involves. I was holding still, trying not to be spotted by a photorealistic dinosaur, when I felt what I believe to be a fist strike me directly in the Adam’s Apple.
It would be unfair and unprofessional to continue to review my experience with the product any further. I will simply state that my time with the Apple Vision Pro was sadly cut short and left me with more questions than answers.
Questions like ‘Is this thing worth 3,500 bucks?’ ‘Where are the killer apps?’ and ‘How on earth did that crowd gather to watch so quickly?’
Although the answers to these questions remain elusive, one takeaway is certain: the people in my neighborhood are very interested in the Apple Vision Pro, and thus, I assume the rest of America is as well. Only time will tell if Apple is able to turn that interest into sales.
I’ve been meaning to branch into tech reviews on this new site, and readers, if today is any indication, I am going to have to suffer for my art. I sure hope you enjoyed this review.
Also, a note to consumers: Apple told me they’re not offering partial refunds at this time if you have everything except the goggles, which I think is pretty dumb.
Update: I found the Apple Vision Pro in my neighbor’s backyard, using the tracker app on my iPhone. In addition to asking him to talk to his kids about being nicer to me, I plan on trying to clean this baby off and maybe doing a more proper review next week. I will stay inside when I do. This neighborhood scares me.