One Week in with The Vision Pro

So if you look in your podcast player, I've got some chapters in there to help you navigate. So first we're gonna talk about comfort number one. I. It's surprisingly not uncomfortable. Having a pound and a half on your face I thought would be more uncomfortable, but I have found that it's actually not that uncomfortable. A lot of people are gonna have different issues with the comfort, and so your mileage may vary. I will say, as I mentioned in one of my previous episodes, that.

This is not designed for people with small heads. So if your head is small, it's, there's a limit to how tight you can make the tightening strap on it. So be aware of that. This is somewhat related to comfort. My eyes got tired after watching videos, and so I didn't really

notice, Fatigue or anything except when I was watching videos and that's where I started to experience that. I'm not sure exactly what's going on. Somebody mentioned something online about the focal depth being 1.3 meters or something like that, which is about four feet or so, and that if something is not in that right range, then it might be. Fatiguing to your eyes. So I'm not totally sure about that. but that's something else. Number three.

Sometimes it feels like there were suction cups on my face, around my eyes, after I take it off. and sometimes it looks like I've got really bad bags under my eyes after wearing it. That is definitely a concern. And again, your mileage may vary. Maybe I'm putting it on too tight, I don't know, but that's something that I have noticed. So those are a couple pieces around comfort. LLL Next, I wanna talk about productivity. The productivity aspect of this is incredible.

I talked about it in the productivity episode that I did, but I'll also just reiterate here, this idea of locking in. Is really powerful. I'm really appreciating that because when I put it on, I know that I'm going into work mode and that just makes it easier to stay focused and harder to be distracted, which is really powerful. The other part about this is having the Mac virtual display is really incredible. I love that. I took the Apple Vision Pro with my laptop to.

The library this week, and that was just great because I could

have my whole home set up at the library instead of just at my home. So I had a huge monitor. I had windows around. I had a Pomodoro timer. All kinds of great stuff that really helped make it a better working experience.

One funny little challenge with that is that, I was sitting across the table from someone and because I had the sensing people thing turned on, that person's face was sticking through my display, and that made it a little difficult to get work done 'cause there was a big face in the middle of it. So be thinking about those kinds of things.

One of the things that people complain about is the guest mode, and I think the issue there is that people thought that having a guest mode meant that this could be a multi-user device. I've never seen it as a multi-user device. I've seen it as a person's device that if you're lucky, other people could use now. Having that perspective in a school setting, I think this is actually really good because you don't have to set up an individual profile for each student who might be using it.

You can say, here's the app I want you to use. This is all you can do. And then boom, you give it to 'em, and then the next kid comes and you have to set up something different for them. I don't think that is a drawback.

I think that is actually really nice. I like that idea. Would I like more users? Yeah, I would love it if I could have my wife on there and she could say, all right, I'm gonna use Apple Vision Pro and have it connect to her Mac and be able to do the things that she wants to do with it. I think that would be really great, but I didn't expect that would be the case. So the guess mode seems very nice to me to be able to use it in that way.

I can also say, I don't need to worry about somebody else using this. I just know that this is mine. They can try out the apps that I give them permission to try when I give them the guest mode. And to me, this is a feature, not a bug. And being able to set it up individually for each kid that needs to use it. That makes sense. Sometimes I think having a non. User account would be even better because then somebody can just put it on and start using it.

But I think the way the Apple is designing this is for everybody to have a personalized experience, which that was the other piece that I talked about, the ecosystem. If you already have all these iPad apps, they're already there. You already have access to these things that you've already been using and know how to use, and that is really powerful and I don't really know of a good way to do that, that isn't tying it to your Apple ID account.

So I think that this guest mode is pretty good and considering what it is, I think it's pretty well thought out also. So the next piece I think is funny. This ties into the MAC Virtual display. The Apple Studio display came out a while ago and it was a super expensive monitor, $1,500 and really nice, certainly high quality. Definitely a beautiful display. However, I and many others said, that's too much to pay for a monitor.

the joke's on me because I've paid $3,500 for another monitor, which is the Apple Vision Pro, and that is the way that I have used it the most as another monitor for my computer. And that doesn't mean that it's terrible. it is amazing. I get a big, huge display and then I can have multiple Apple Vision apps running around that display and that is really nice.

I think there's a lot of good things about that. I just think that it's funny that I thought that one was too expensive and I paid a lot more for this one, and that's how I've used it the most.. The tapping your two fingers together and touching things that are on the screen. I say screen, but it's like a heads up display is what I should say. Tapping things that are on the heads up display. When I say heads up display, I'm thinking about the things that pop up that you can literally.

not literally, but figuratively touch that are right in front of you as opposed to tapping your two fingers together to cause interaction. if you're responding to a text message, a keyboard pops up close to you that you can reach out and touch, which looks strange if you're not wearing the Vision Pro. But if you are feels and looks very natural and very comfortable, except typing is not that great. Some VR headsets use controllers to help navigate where your hands

are and what you want them to do. In my experience using those, they're still not that great and I find that my experience using the hands. Just my hands is most of the time perfectly suitable. There are a couple things I've mista unintentionally because I don't usually think about what my fingers are doing, and so for example, I was watching a YouTube video while I was folding laundry the other day, which was awesome because my whole wall was this YouTube video and my laundry.

I could still see it. It was there in front of me. Really cool that I could do that, but every time I'd bring my fingers together to fold a piece of laundry, then I would have a tap happen, and so it was causing me to sometimes jump around the video. It was causing me to skip forward, pause or hit the share button. Those kinds of things are definitely annoying. Again, some of that is user error. Some of that is. How it's designed.

Some of that is, is just the nature of using your fingers to control it instead of using controllers. If I were using controllers in that situation, I could set the controllers down and then I could fold my laundry and it wouldn't never do anything because my fingers are not an input device. But in this, they are. That being said, I do believe that multi-touch is going to come to it because the. Vision Pro does such a good job at looking at your fingers and knowing where they're at.

Even in immersive environments, I can be typing on my keyboard and not see any of the keys below my fingers, but see all 10 of my fingers, which is really amazing as well. So there have been a lot of times where I've unintentionally tapped again, I need to learn how to interact better and it will get better over time at managing that. I'm looking forward to multi-touch with 10 Fingers. I think that it's gonna happen eventually.

I think it has to happen eventually, and I think that it's gonna be pretty cool when it finally does. That ties into the lack of apps that are specifically designed. For the Apple Vision Pro, that is definitely an early adopter problem that those who are buying this early on are gonna face. There's a lot of iPad apps that do work. There's a lot of iPad apps that don't work. For example, I use an app called, Hey Calendar.

And that one is not available, at all, and that's a bummer, that's all right. It is an iPad app, but it's not available for the Apple Vision Pro. one of the things that I, about the apps is, it is relatively weak. So let's talk about the apps for a moment. Immersive virtual reality apps are really neat.

However, sometimes those are not the best thing and you don't necessarily want that. So if you want to watch a movie in a side window, being immersive in that is not really. Effective thing because when you're immersive, that is the only thing that is a single focus. That's all you can do. You can't have multiple windows open because the immersion takes over everything. I'm sure that is how it's designed and that's the point.

But as developers are making apps, they need to be thinking about, is this an app that we want to take over the whole entire screen, or is it not?

for example, with Microsoft Word, so does that really need to be a Vision Pro app? it's great that it is because the tap targets are better. It's designed better for the Vision Pro, and that's all great. So it's certainly better than an iPad app, but it is not bringing very much new. To the table. I don't know that there is anything new. I'm not a big user of Microsoft Word myself.

Keynote, for example, gives you an opportunity to present and practice your presentation in an immersive environment. In that situation, that's more beneficial. That's cool, but just editing a regular keynote, you don't want that to be an immersive experience because you're probably gonna have other windows that you're gonna wanna have open to be able to access the things that you're doing.

I. Something like MindNode, for example, seems like a great app for an immersive experience because you have these mind maps that are can be huge, and it would be great to see those things all in one place. However, the way that it's implemented right now is that it is stuck inside an iPad window, basically. That window can be big, so you can zoom in and everything, and that's great, but it's not as good as a fully immersive app, in my opinion.

That would allow you to see the whole entire mind map all at once. I would love to see something like that. Here's an example of an app that has worked really great. It's called Timer Pomodoro, and it puts a timer in your physical space around you and it counts down and you can put it in front of you, you can move it behind you so that you have turn around to look. This is really nice.

You don't want that to be an immersive app because you don't wanna take up all of your real estate and have it be taken by this immersive app. There are some like mindfulness things where you do want that immersive experience so that you can stay focused and not be distracted by other things. And so looking through the apps that are available for Apple Vision Pro, you can see how many are. Are immersive and how many are just iPad windows.

And being able to discern which is going to be best for each of those situations, is definitely something that developers are gonna have to do. One tool that I really like is called Crouton. It's an app that I use every week to plan meals and use recipes, and I really like it a lot and it's beautifully designed for the Apple Vision Pro and really just a great app. Looks wonderful, has lots of customization that you can do. but do I want that to be immersive? No, I don't think I do.

If I'm gonna use it while I'm cooking, which. I, I tried just for fun, but I don't think that's really a great experience. that's not, you don't want that to be immersive 'cause you need to be able to see your surroundings and be involved in your surroundings. That one's definitely better as a window, especially because you can create timers for each individual dish that you're cooking and put those on top of where those dishes are, which is really cool.

So this is a question that developers need to take time thinking about and answering about what is going to be best for their particular app. Is it going to be better as an immersive app or is it going to be better as a, as a windowed app? Which I think this is a really exciting question to be asking and a really exciting place to go. Right now. So I'm really excited about the opportunities that are available there as I've been talking about some of these apps, if you wanna see the 10 best.

Apps for the Vision Pro. Go to a vision for learning.com. Put in your email address and I'll send you a PDF with those apps, with links to the apps that I think are great. If you think there are some apps that are wonderful and you want to, share them with me, please feel free to get that email and then reply and say, Jethro. Here's one that I think is really great. You should check out. I'm at Jethro, Jones on all the socials, and while you're in there.

Why don't you take a moment and go leave a five star rating and review. If you're enjoying this show, remember, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I would, but I would love some five star ratings, some positive reviews. Let me just read a couple real quick.

a Hurston said I'd give more than five stars if that were possible. Thank you, aters, and I appreciate it. Dumont said Jethro has really nailed it with this podcast. His description of the practical use of the Apple Vision Pro is insightful. I'm excited to hear his thoughts for the application and personal learning and education in general.

So thank you Katie Mont for that one and for everybody else who has left ratings and reviews, I really appreciate it and it helps this show get seen by other people as well. And in the short time that I've been doing this, according to listen notes, this show is already in the top 10%. So thank you to everyone who has shared it, who has appreciated it, who has left ratings and reviews and downloaded it. Thank you so much. That means the world to me.

Thank you for listening to a Vision for Learning on the B Podcast Network.