Dan Riccio, one of Apple’s most prominent executives for more than two decades, will retire from the company this month, according to a report in Bloomberg that cites people with knowledge of the move.
Reportedly, Riccio has said he has been planning his retirement for the past five years, and his last day will be Friday, October 11.
Riccio began working at Apple in 1998, and by 2012, he had become the chief of hardware engineering. In that role, he oversaw several major hardware developments for Apple, including AirPods, the evolution of the modern iPhone, the iPad Pro, and more.
He held the title of senior vice president of hardware engineering during that time, then moved into a new role within the company in January of 2021. The public at first only knew that he was working on a “new project” at that time, but before long it became clear the project in question was what became the Vision Pro, Apple’s augmented-reality headset that launched this February.
The group that produced the Vision Pro is called the Vision Products Group within the company; that’s the 2,000-engineer-strong group Riccio has overseen since 2021. He was also involved in developing Project Titan, Apple’s smart car initiative that was eventually abandoned.
Apple is struggling to attract fresh content for its innovative Vision Pro headset, with just a fraction of the apps available when compared with the number of developers created for the iPhone and iPad in their first few months.
The lack of a “killer app” to encourage customers to pay upwards of $3,500 for an unproven new product is seen as a problem for Apple, as the Vision Pro goes on sale in Europe on Friday.
Apple said recently that there were “more than 2,000” apps available for its “spatial computing” device, five months after it debuted in the US.
That compares with more than 20,000 iPad apps that had been created by mid-2010, a few months after the tablet first went on sale, and around 10,000 iPhone apps by the end of 2008, the year the App Store launched.
“The overall trajectory of the Vision Pro’s launch in February this year has been a lot slower than many hoped for,” said George Jijiashvili, analyst at market tracker Omdia.
“The reality is that most developers’ time and money will be dedicated to platforms with billions of users, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands.”
Apple believes the device will transform how millions work and play. The headset shifts between virtual reality, in which the wearer is immersed in a digital world, and a version of “augmented reality” that overlays images upon the real surroundings.
Omdia predicts that Apple will sell 350,000 Vision Pros this year. It forecasts an increase to 750,000 next year and 1.7 million in 2026, but the figures are far lower than the iPad, which sold almost 20 million units in its first year.
Estimates from IDC, a tech market researcher, suggest Apple shipped fewer than 100,000 units of Vision Pro in the first quarter, less than half what rival Meta sold of its Quest headsets.
Because of the device’s high price, Apple captured more than 50 percent of the total VR headset market by dollar value, IDC found, but analyst Francisco Jeronimo added: “The Vision Pro’s success, regardless of its price, will ultimately depend on the content available.”
Early data suggests that new content is arriving slowly. According to Appfigures, which tracks App Store listings, the number of new apps launched for the Vision Pro has fallen dramatically since January and February.
Nearly 300 of the top iPhone developers, whose apps are downloaded more than 10 million times a year—including Google, Meta, Tencent, Amazon, and Netflix—are yet to bring any of their software or services to Apple’s latest device.
Steve Lee, chief executive of AmazeVR, which offers immersive concert experiences, said that the recent launch of the device in China and elsewhere in Asia resulted in an uptick in downloads of his app. “However, it was about one-third of the initial launch in the United States.”
Lee remains confident that Vision Pro will eventually become a mainstream consumer product.
Wamsi Mohan, equity analyst at Bank of America, said the Vision Pro had “just not quite hit the imagination of the consumer.”
“This is one of the slower starts for a new Apple product category, just given the price point,” he said. “It seems management is emphasizing the success in enterprise a lot more.”
Nonetheless, some app developers are taking a leap of faith and launching on the Vision Pro. Some are betting that customers who can afford the pricey headset will be more likely to splurge on software, too.
Others are playing a longer game, hoping that establishing an early position on Apple’s newest platform will bring returns in the years to come.
Enlarge/ A Vision Pro on display at an Apple Store in Tokyo.
Apple
Apple’s Vision Pro headset went on sale outside the United States for the first time today, in the first of two waves of expanded availability.
The $3,499 “spatial computing” device launched back in February in the US, but it hasn’t taken the tech world by storm. Part of that has been its regional launch, with some of the biggest markets still lacking access.
Apple announced that the product would be sold internationally during its keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month.
The first new markets to get Vision Pro shipments are China, Japan, and Singapore—those are the ones where it went on sale today.
A second wave will come on July 12, with the headset rolling out in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
When we first tested the Vision Pro in February, we wrote that it was a technically impressive device with a lot of untapped potential. It works very well as a personal entertainment device for frequent travelers, in particular. However, its applications for productivity and gaming still need to be expanded to justify the high price.
Of course, there have been conflicting rumors of late about just how expensive Apple plans to keep its mixed reality devices. One report claimed that the company put the brakes on a new version of the Vision Pro for now, opting instead to develop a cheaper alternative for a 2025 launch.
But another report in Bloomberg suggested that’s an overstatement. It simply noted that the Vision Pro 2 has been slightly delayed from its original target launch window and reported that the cheaper model will come first.
In any case, availability will have to expand and the price will ultimately have to come down if augmented reality can become the major computing revolution that Apple CEO Tim Cook has predicted. This international rollout is the next step to test whether there’s a market for that.
A report by tech news site The Information suggests that Apple is shifting its augmented reality priorities. The next high-end version of the Vision Pro has purportedly been canceled while work continues on a more affordable version with a reduced feature set.
Citing both an employee in Apple’s headset supply chain and one working in headset manufacturing for Apple, the report claims that the cheaper Vision product—perhaps around the $1,600 mark—is due before the end of 2025. Apple had originally intended to present this headset alongside the Vision Pro, similar to the models available in each iPhone release. The more affordable model would likely have fewer cameras, smaller speakers, and weigh less, though Apple has struggled to bring down the cost of the unit’s displays.
Apple’s efforts in augmented reality are closely watched by other players in the headset space, so even a momentary, situational step back from high-end headsets could have significant repercussions. The Information cites current and former Meta employees in describing how the company had killed plans for its own higher-end headset in January 2023, but it then began work on a new premium model five months after Apple’s Vision Pro debut.
The Vision Pro will launch in China, Japan, Australia, and many European countries later this month. The Information’s sources suggest that Apple has produced roughly 500,000 Vision Pro headsets and will not make significantly more, despite the entry of these new markets.
Apple has not responded to The Information or other outlets. Ars contacted Apple for comment and will update this post with any response.
In Senior Editor Samuel Axon’s extensive experience with the device, the home theater aspect of the Vision Pro, and specifically its high-quality display units, is the “one use case that’s a slam dunk.” Reducing the quality of the Sony micro-OLED displays in the Vision Pro, and their “staggering 3,386 PPI (pixels per inch)” density, would seemingly cut at a solid selling point for the device. It is otherwise not made for walking around, and while working in the Vision Pro is possible, it’s not ready to replace anyone’s standard setup yet, especially if they have regular web meetings.
CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple kicked off the keynote for its annual developer conference by announcing a new version of visionOS, the operating system that runs on the company’s pricey but impressive Vision Pro mixed reality headset.
The updates in visionOS 2 are modest, not revolutionary—mostly iterative changes, quality-of-life improvements, and some features that were originally expected in the first version of visionOS. That’s not too surprising given that visionOS just went out to users four months ago.
Vision Pro users hoping for multiple virtual Mac monitors will be disappointed that’s not planned this time around, but Apple plans to add the next-best thing: Users will be able to take advantage of a larger and higher-resolution single virtual display, including a huge, wraparound ultrawide monitor mode that Apple says is equivalent to two 4K monitors.
There’s one major machine learning-driven feature: You will soon be able to convert 2D images into 3D spatial ones in the Photos app, even photos you took years and years ago, long before iPhones could take spatial photos. (Apple also announced that a new Canon DSLR camera will get a spatial photo lens, as another option for taking new spatial photos.)
Other notable improvements include support for using travel mode on trains instead of just airplanes and a simple finger gesture to open the home screen so you don’t have to invoke Siri or reach up to press a physical button on the headset.
A lot of the improvements that will lead to better apps come in the form of new developer APIs that will facilitate apps that really take advantage of the spatial features rather than just being flat 2D windows floating around you—something we noted as a disappointment when we shared our impressions of the device. Some APIs help create shared spatial experiences with other Vision Pro users who aren’t in the same room as you. One of those, TabletopKit, is focused on creating apps that sit on a 2D surface, like board and card games.
There will also be new enterprise-specific APIs for things like surgical training and manufacturing applications.
Finally, Apple says Vision Pro is going international. It will go on sale in China (including Hong Kong), Japan, and Singapore on June 13 and in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK on June 28.
There was no specific release date named for visionOS 2.
All the available Immersive Video launch content fit on a small strip in the TV app.
Samuel Axon
Initial videos were labeled as episodes in a series, but subsequent episodes haven’t come.
Tonight, Apple will debut some new Immersive Video content for the Vision Pro headset—the first sports content for the device. It doesn’t seem like much after two months of no new content, though.
Starting at 6 pm PT/9 pm ET, Vision Pro users will be able to watch a sports film captured for the platform’s Immersive Video format. The video will be a series of highlights from last year’s Major League Soccer (MLS) playoffs, and according to Six Colors, it will run just five minutes. It will be free for all Vision Pro users.
On February 2, Apple released what appeared to be the first episodes of three Immersive Video series: Adventure, Prehistoric Planet, and Wildlife. Each debuted alongside the Vision Pro’s launch with one episode labeled “Episode 1” of “Season 1.”
However, it’s been almost two months, and none of those series have received new episodes. The only other piece of Immersive Video content available is an Alicia Keyes performance video that also debuted on February 2. Most of these videos were only a few minutes long.
That means that this short soccer video depicting sports moments from 2023 will be the only new piece of Immersive Video content Apple has put out since the device launched at the beginning of February.
When I reviewed the Vision Pro as an entertainment device, I lauded its capabilities for viewing 2D films and videos, but I also talked a bit about its 3D video capabilities. I said the first pieces of original 3D content from Apple seemed promising and that I looked forward to future episodes. Given that they were labeled just like Apple TV+ series in the TV app, I assumed they would arrive at a weekly cadence. Further episodes haven’t come.
Notably, Apple didn’t include a first-party app for playing 3D videos downloaded from the web with the Vision Pro, though an independent developer filled that gap with an app called Reality Player. There are a few 3D video streaming or downloading services in the visionOS App Store, but the selection is very anemic compared to what you have access to with other headsets.
Apple hasn’t been calling the Vision Pro a VR headset, opting instead for the term “spatial computing”—and that’s understandable because it does a lot more than most VR headsets.
But if you’re looking for new examples of the sorts of passive viewing content you can enjoy on other headsets, the Vision Pro is still far behind the competition two months in.
The device can display a wealth of 2D video content, but this drives home the initial impression that the Vision Pro is meant for viewing flat, 2D content as windows in 3D space. The situation isn’t quite as dire with apps and games, with a handful of new spatial apps in those categories rolling out in recent weeks.
Most apps behave just like iPad apps, with 2D viewports at the content; you can position those viewports wherever you want in the room around you. Most video content is also 2D.
There are situations where that’s neat to have, but it’s surprising Apple hasn’t invested more in actual 3D content yet. In terms of new stuff, this short soccer video debuting tonight is all we have right now.
Enlarge/ The Vision Pro has two micro-OLED displays.
Apple
Research firm Omdia has published the first publicly available educated estimates of how much the materials for each Vision Pro really cost Apple. The analysis sets an overall price tag for the materials and identifies which components cost the most money.
Omdia Senior Research Director David Hsieh estimates that the total bill of materials comes in at around $1,542. The consumer price for the headset starts at $3,499 but can be as much as a thousand dollars more than that, depending on the configuration the buyer chooses.
Vision Pro presents both the real and the virtual worlds to the user with two micro-OLED displays, one for each eye. Together, these dual displays are the most expensive component in the headset, costing $456. Another external display (the one used for EyeSight) costs around $70, Hsieh estimates. That means that Omdia estimates the device’s displays account for about 35 percent of the total cost of the device’s materials.
The runner-up category is silicon; a roll-up cost estimate of both the M2 system-on-a-chip and the R1 processor together lands at $240, or just over 15 percent of the total cost of the device’s materials.
You can see the full table of materials in Omdia’s estimate here, as first seen in one of the firm’s blog posts:
No matter how accurate that $1,542 number is, we should steer clear of the temptation to declare that Apple profits $1,957 on each Vision Pro sold for $3,499, as that’s certainly not the case.
A bill of materials like this doesn’t take into account manufacturing, shipping, or marketing, nor does it factor in the cost of research and development. There’s no way to know from these estimates how much profit Apple earns on each Vision Pro sold, but it’s definitely a lot less than the difference between the price tag and the bill of materials.
Apple has historically maintained substantial profit margins on its hardware products like the iPhone, and Vision Pro could follow in those footsteps, or it could be that Vision Pro is anomalous. Only Apple knows for sure. In any case, analysts expect some of these costs to come down with time.
Enlarge/ No way would Zuckerberg be photographed wearing a Vision Pro, but let’s just imagine he’s looking at a picture of one in his headset here…
@zuck Instagram | Aurich Lawson
Since the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, it’s not been hard to find countless thoughts and impressions on the headset from professionalreviewers and random purchasers. But among all those hot takes, the opinions of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stand out for a few reasons—not least of which is that he and his company have spent years of development time and lost tens of billions of dollars creating the competing Quest headset line.
For that reason alone, Zuckerberg’s Instagram-posted thoughts on the Vision Pro can’t be considered an impartial take on the device’s pros and cons. Still, Zuckerberg’s short review included its fair share of fair points, alongside some careful turns of phrase that obscure the Quest’s relative deficiencies.
To figure out which is which, we thought we’d go through Zuckerberg’s review and give a quick review of the points he makes. In doing so, we get a good viewpoint on the very different angles with which Meta and Apple are approaching mixed-reality headset design.
There’s “high-quality” and then there’s “high-quality”
Near the start of his analysis, Zuckerberg says that the “Quest 3 does high-quality passthrough with big screens, just like Vision Pro.” This is only true in the most technical sense. Saying both headsets have “high-quality passthrough” is like saying an old 720p LCD TV and a new 4K OLED both have “high-quality screens.”
Compared side by side, Apple’s array of cameras and higher-resolution displays combine for a much sharper and more dynamic view of the “real world” than the Quest 3, which barely limps over the “good enough” passthrough threshold, in my experience. That display quality extends to the “big screens” Zuckerberg mentions, too, which are noticeably clearer and easier to read on the Vision Pro.
Enlarge/ A view of my mixed reality “office” in the Quest 3 app Immersed.
Speaking of those “big screens,” the experience with 2D virtual displays is quite different in both headsets. The Vision Pro seems built from the ground up with the ability to place and resize thousands of flat iOS apps anywhere around your virtual space. Those virtual windows react to the light in the room, cast gentle shadows in your virtual view, and get occluded by objects in the real world, adding to the sense that they are really “there” with you.
The Quest, on the other hand, was built more with immersive VR experiences in mind. Yes, recent Quest OS upgrades added the ability to snap selected flat apps and system tools (e.g., the store) into place in your Quest “home environment.” But the system-level “huge floating screens” experience is still much more limited than that on the Vision Pro, which offers easy free positioning and resizing of all sorts of apps. Quest users looking for something similar need to rely on a third-party tool like Virtual Desktop, which also has its own quirks and limitations.
The Apple Vision Pro with AirPods Pro, Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad, and an Xbox Series X|S controller.
Samuel Axon
You can see the front-facing cameras that handle passthrough video just above the down-facing cameras that read your hand gestures here.
Samuel Axon
There are two buttons for Vision Pro, both on the top.
Samuel Axon
This is the infamous battery pack. It’s about the size of an iPhone (but a little thicker) and has a USB-C port for external power sources.
Samuel Axon
There are two displays inside the Vision Pro, one for each eye. Each offers just under 4K resolution.
Samuel Axon
Apple offers several variations of the light seal to fit different face shapes.
Samuel Axon
A close-up look at the Vision Pro from the front.
Samuel Axon
The Vision Pro is the strangest product Apple has introduced in the time I’ve been covering the company. By now, it’s well established that the headset is both impressively cutting-edge and ludicrously expensive.
You could certainly argue that its price means it’s only for Silicon Valley techno-optimists with too much money to burn or for developers looking to get in on the ground floor on the chance that this is the next gold rush for apps. But the platform will need more than those users to succeed.
Part of Apple’s pitch behind the price tag seems to be that the Vision Pro could replace several devices, just like the iPhone did back in the late 2000s. It could replace your laptop, your tablet, your 4K TV, your video game console, your phone or other communications device, your VR headset, and so on. If it truly replaced all of those things, the price wouldn’t seem quite so outrageous to some.
And those are just the use cases Apple has put a lot of effort into facilitating for the launch. Many of the most important uses of the company’s prior new product categories didn’t become totally clear until a couple of years and generations in. The iPhone wasn’t originally intended as a meditation aid, a flashlight, and a number of other common uses until third-party developers invented apps to make it do those things. And Apple’s approach with the Apple Watch seemed to be to just throw it out there with a number of possible uses to see what stuck with users. (The answer seemed to be health and fitness, but the device’s distinct emphasis on that took a bit of time to come into focus.)
So while I could write a dense review meandering through all the possibilities based on my week with the Vision Pro, that doesn’t seem as helpful as drilling in on each specific possibility. This is the first in a series of articles that will do that, so consider it part one of a lengthy, multi-step review. By the end, we’ll have considered several possible applications of the device, and we might be able to make some recommendations or predictions about its potential.
So far, I believe there’s one use case that’s a slam dunk, closer to clarity during launch week than any of the others: entertainment. For certain situations, The Vision Pro is a better device for consuming TV shows and movies (among other things) away from a dedicated theater than we’ve ever seen before. So let’s start there.
My (perhaps too) exacting standards
I know I’m not the usual TV consumer. It’s important to note that before we get too deep.
I bought my first OLED television (a 55-inch LG B6) in 2016. I previously had a 50-inch plasma TV I liked, but it only supported 1080p and SDR (standard dynamic range), and Sony had announced the PlayStation 4 Pro, which would support 4K games (sort of) and HDR (high dynamic range). Game consoles had always driven TV purchases in the past, so I sprung for the best I could afford.
I always cared about picture quality before I bought an OLED, but that interest turned into something more obsessive at that point. I was stunned at the difference, and I began to find it hard to accept the imperfections of LCD monitors and TVs after that. Granted, I’d always disliked LCDs, going straight from CRT to plasma to avoid that grayish backlight glow. But the comparison was even harsher once I went to OLED.
My fellow Ars Technica writers and editors often talk about their robust, multi-monitor PC setups, their expensive in-home server racks, and other Ars-y stuff. I have some of that stuff, too, but I put most of my time and energy into my home theater. I’ve invested a lot into it, and that has the unfortunate side effect of making most other screens I use feel inadequate by comparison.
All that said, some have argued that the Vision Pro is a solution in search of a problem, but there is one pre-existing problem I have that it has the potential to solve.
I travel a lot, so I spend a total of at least two months out of every year in hotel or Airbnb rooms. Whenever I’m in one of those places, I’m always irritated at how its TV compares to the one I have at home. It’s too small for the space, it’s not 4K, it doesn’t support HDR, it’s mounted way too high to comfortably watch, or it’s a cheap LCD with washed-out black levels and terrible contrast. Often, it’s all of the above. And even when I’m home, my wife might want to watch her shows on the big TV tonight.
I end up not watching movies or shows I want to watch because I feel like I’d be doing those shows a disservice by ruining the picture with such terrible hardware. “Better to hold off until I’m home,” I tell myself.
The Vision Pro could be the answer I’ve been waiting for. Those two displays in front of my eyes are capable of displaying an image that stands up to that of a mid-range OLED TV in most situations, and I can use it absolutely anywhere.
Enlarge/ These mounted displays near the entrance let visitors touch, but not use, a Vision Pro.
Kyle Orland
For decades now, potential Apple customers have been able to wander in to any Apple Store and get some instant eyes-on and hands-on experience with most of the company’s products. The Apple Vision Pro is an exception to this simple process; the “mixed-reality curious” need to book ahead for a guided, half-hour Vision Pro experience led by an Apple Store employee.
As a long-time veteran of both trade show and retail virtual-reality demos, I was interested to see how Apple would sell the concept of “spatial computing” to members of the public, many of whom have minimal experience with existing VR systems. And as someone who’s been following news and hands-on reports of the Vision Pro’s unique features for months now, I was eager to get a brief glimpse into what all the fuss was about without plunking down at least $3,499 for a unit of my own.
After going through the guided Vision Pro demo at a nearby Apple Store this week, I came away with mixed feelings about how Apple is positioning its new computer interface to the public. While the short demo contained some definite “oh, wow” moments, the device didn’t come with a cohesive story pitching it as Apple’s next big general-use computing platform.
Setup snafus
After arriving a few minutes early for my morning appointment in a sparsely attended Apple Store, I was told to wait by a display of Vision Pro units set on a table near the front. These headsets were secured tightly to their stands, meaning I couldn’t try a unit on or even hold it in my hands while I waited. But I could fondle the Vision Pro’s various buttons and straps while getting a closer look at the hardware (and at a few promotional videos running on nearby iPads).
Two Vision Pro headsets let you see it from multiple angles at once.
Kyle Orland
Nearby iPads let you scroll through videos and information about the Vision Pro.
Kyle Orland
The outward-facing display is very subtle in person.
Kyle Orland
Without an appointment you can feel the headstrap with your hands but not with your skull.
Kyle Orland
To Apple’s credit, it did not even try to hide the external battery in these store displays.
Kyle Orland
After a few minutes, an Apple Store employee, who we’ll call Craig, walked over and said with genuine enthusiasm that he was “super excited” to show off the Vision Pro. He guided me to another table, where I sat in a low-backed swivel chair across from another customer who looked a little zoned out as he ran through his own Vision Pro demo.
Craig told me that the Vision Pro was the first time Apple Store employees like him had gotten early hands-on access to a new Apple device well before the public, in order to facilitate the training needed to guide these in-store demos. He said that interest had been steady for the first few days of demos and that, after some initial problems, the store now mostly managed to stay on schedule.
Unfortunately, some of those demo kinks were still present. First, Craig had trouble tracking down the dedicated iPhone used to scan my face and determine the precise Vision Pro light seal fit for my head. After consulting with a fellow employee, they decided to have me download the Apple Store app and use a QR code to reach the face-scanning tool on my own iPhone. (I was a bit surprised this fit scanning hadn’t been offered as part of the process when I signed up for my appointment days earlier.)
It took three full attempts, scanning my face from four angles, before the app managed to spit out the code that Craig needed to send my fit information to the back room. Craig told me that the store had 38 different light seals and 900 corrective lens options sitting back there, ready to be swapped in to ensure maximum comfort for each specific demo.
Sorry, I think I ordered the edamame…
Kyle Orland
Shhh… the Vision Pro is napping.
After a short wait, another employee brought my demo unit out on a round wooden platter that made me feel like I was at a Japanese restaurant. The platter was artistically arranged, from the Solo Knit Band and fuzzy front cover to the gently coiled cord leading to the battery pack sitting in the center. (I never even touched or really noticed the battery pack for the rest of the demo.)
At this point, Craig told me that he would be able to see everything I saw in the Vision Pro, which would stream directly to his iPad. Unfortunately, getting that wireless connection to work took a good five minutes of tapping and tinkering, including removing the Vision Pro’s external battery cord several times.
Once everything was set, Craig gave me a brief primer on the glances and thumb/forefinger taps I would use to select, move, and zoom in on things in the VisionOS interface. “You’re gonna pretend like you’re pulling on a piece of string and then releasing,” he said by way of analogy. “The faster you go, the faster it will scroll, so be mindful of that. Nice and gentle, nice and easy, and things will go smoothly for you.”
Fifteen minutes after my appointed start time, I was finally ready to don the Vision Pro.
A scripted experience
After putting the headset on, my first impression was how heavy and pinchy the Vision Pro was on the bridge of my nose. Thankfully, Craig quickly explained how to tighten the fit with a dial behind my right ear, which helped immediately and immensely. After that, it only took a minute or two to run through some quick calibration of the impressively snappy eye and hand tracking. (“Keep your head nice and still as you do this,” Craig warned me during the process.)
Enlarge/ Imagine this but with an Apple Store in the background.
Kyle Orland
As we dove into the demo proper, it quickly became clear that Craig was reading from a prepared script on his iPhone. This was a bit disappointing, as the genuine enthusiasm he had shown in our earlier, informal chat gave way to a dry monotone when delivering obvious marketing lines. “With Apple Vision Pro, you can experience your entire photo library in a brand new way,” he droned. “Right here, we have some beautiful shots, right from iPhone.”
Craig soldiered through the script as I glanced at a few prepared photos and panoramas. “Here we have a beautiful panorama, but we’re going to experience it in a whole new way… as if you were in the exact spot in which it was taken,” Craig said. Then we switched to some spatial photos and videos of a happy family celebrating a birthday and blowing bubbles in the backyard. The actors in the video felt a little stilted, but the sense of three-dimensional “presence” in the high-fidelity video was impressive.
After that, Craig informed me that “with spatial computing, your apps can exist anywhere in your space.” He asked me to turn the digital crown to replace my view of the store around me with a virtual environment of mountains bathed in cool blue twilight. Craig’s script seemed tuned for newcomers who might be freaked out by not seeing the “real world” anymore. “Remember, you’re always in control,” Craig assured me. “You can change it at any time.”
From inside the environment, Craig’s disembodied voice guided me as I opened a few flat app windows, placing them around my space and resizing them as I liked. Rather than letting these sell themselves, though, Craig pointed out how webpages are “super beautiful [and] easy to navigate” on Vision Pro. “As you can also see… text is super sharp, super easy to read. The pictures on the website look stunning.” Craig also really wanted me to know that “over one million iPhone/iPad apps” will work like this on the Vision Pro on day one.
Apple’s Vision Pro went up for preorder this morning at 8 am ET. As expected, shipment dates for preorders quickly backed up to March as initial supply was accounted for. Regardless of whether you’re in for the start or taking a wait-and-see approach with Apple’s ultra-pricey new device, though, we have access to a little more information about the device than we did before thanks to updates to the Apple Store website.
The product page for Vision Pro reveals configurations and pricing, and a new specs page clarifies answers to some questions we’ve had for a while now.
You’ll find all the relevant new information below. We’ve also updated our “What to expect from Apple Vision Pro” roundup with new information from the specs page.
Hardware specifications
As previously rumored, the Vision Pro has a variant of the M2 chip with an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores and 4 efficiency), a 10-core GPU, and a 16-core NPU. It has 16GB of unified memory.
There’s also the new R1 chip, which Apple claims achieves “12‑millisecond photon‑to‑photon latency” and 256GB/s memory bandwidth.
As for the display, we didn’t learn too much new here. As Apple has stated before, the two displays push 23 million pixels combined. They support refresh rates of 90 Hz, 96 Hz, and 100 Hz, and support playback of 24 fps and 30 fps video. Apple claims 92 percent DCI-P3.
The specs page also reveals that Vision Pro supports AirPlay at up to 1080p on iPhones, Macs, Apple TVs, and AirPlay-capable smart TVs.
Storage comes in three configurations. The base 256GB model costs $3,499. Bumping up to 512GB adds $200, and going to 1TB adds another $200.
The device’s camera supports both spatial photo and video capture, and Apple lists the specs as an 18 mm, ƒ/2.00 aperture at 6.5 stereo megapixels.
Additionally, there are six world-facing tracking cameras, four eye-tracking cameras, a TrueDepth sensor, a lidar scanner, four inertial measurement units, a flicker sensor, and an ambient light sensor. The headset authenticates the user by looking at their iris.
On the audio front, we’re looking at a six-mic array for audio capture. Apple isn’t super specific on the specs page about the speakers, noting only that the device offers “spatial audio with dynamic head tracking” like AirPods Pro and “personalized Spatial Audio and audio ray tracing.” Vision Pro also supports low-latency, lossless audio with the second generation of AirPods Pro.
Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3.
Apple promises two hours of battery life for “general use” and says video watching can be up to 2.5 hours. The specs page also clarifies that Vision Pro can be used while charging the battery, which is something Apple had previously stated but then confusingly removed from its online documentation. This page seems to settle that.
The headset weighs between 21.2 and 22.9 ounces (600–650 g) depending on the light seal and headband used. That doesn’t include the battery pack, which weighs 353 g. That means Apple made the headset substantially lighter by pushing the battery to a separate unit.
Accessories and additional purchase options
As with its other hardware products, Apple offers AppleCare+ for Vision Pro. It’s $499 for two years, or $24.99 per month for perpetual coverage.
That price might seem awfully steep, but Apple lists the repair fees for the device on its service page and repairs without AppleCare+ will be even pricier—up to $2,399, depending on what’s broken. Any damage to the front glass panel will cost $799 to fix.
Apple Vision Pro Travel Case.
Apple
Apple Vision Pro battery.
Apple
Apple Vision Pro Solo Knit Band.
Apple
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band.
Apple
Apple Vision Pro Light Seal.
Apple
Apple Vision Pro Light Cushion.
Apple
ZEISS Optical Inserts.
Apple
Belkin Battery Holder for Apple Vision Pro.
Apple
There are also a few optional accessories or replacement components you can buy, including:
Apple Vision Pro Travel Case ($199) – A pill-shaped case that contains and protects the headset along with its attachments and battery.
Apple Vision Pro Battery ($199) – A replacement for the battery that comes with the headset. You could also buy one of these to double your capacity while traveling, like for a long flight.
Apple Vision Pro Light Seal ($199) – The soft part of the headset that conforms to your face when you put the device on your head. This includes two light seal cushions, each in a different size.
Apple Vision Pro Light Seal Cushion ($29) – This attaches to the end of the light seal, and is intended to be removed for cleaning. It’s available in four sizes: N, N+, W, and W+.
Apple Vision Pro Solo Knit Band ($99) – One of two variations of the band that keeps Vision Pro on your head. This is the version that simply wraps around the back of your head. It’s available in three sizes: small, medium, and large.
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band ($99) – The version that wraps around both the back of your head and the top. This also comes in small, medium, and large.
ZEISS Optical Inserts ($99+) – Lens inserts for those who wear glasses, as glasses won’t fit inside the device. Available in prescription and reader variations. You don’t need these if you wear soft contact lenses.
Belkin Battery Holder for Apple Vision Pro ($49.95) – A third-party accessory for either attaching Vision Pro’s battery to your belt or pants, or securing it with a cross-body strap.
Enlarge/ Vision Pro will allow users to watch movies on a virtual TV set.
Apple
In the leadup to Vision Pro preorders tomorrow, Apple has seemingly been prioritizing the message that the device will be an ideal way to watch movies and TV shows. In many ways, that might be true, but there’s one major caveat: Netflix.
In a statement reported by Bloomberg today, Netflix revealed that it does not plan to offer an app for Vision Pro. Instead, users will have to use a web-based interface to watch the streaming service.
Netflix compares the experience to the Mac, but there are a few reasons this won’t be an ideal experience for users. First, the iPad and iPhone mobile apps support offline viewing of downloaded videos. That’s particularly handy for when you’re flying, which is arguably one of the best use cases for Vision Pro.
Unfortunately, Netflix doesn’t support offline downloads on the web. It also remains to be seen what resolution will be achievable—the maximum resolution of a Netflix stream depends on the browser, with most capping out at 720p. That wouldn’t look so great on a 100-foot virtual screen.
Granted, Netflix streams at up to 4K on Safari for macOS, but we don’t know if that will be the case for Safari on Vision Pro.
It will also make launching the app more complicated, and the interface won’t be as nice to use as a native app.
There are two ways Netflix could have supported visionOS more directly. The company could have developed a full-fledged mixed reality app like Disney+ did, with visionOS-specific features. Or it could have at least adapted its iPad app to work well within visionOS.
The latter, while not completely trivial, is relatively easy for a company with Netflix’s development resources, so it’s hard not to see this as a deliberate snub.
This isn’t the first time Netflix has chosen not to play nice with a new Apple initiative. Netflix is the most notable service missing from Apple’s useful TV app on Apple TV and iPhone, which aggregates your viewing activity and makes recommendations that link out to individual streaming apps.
Netflix and Apple now compete in the streaming space. In particular, both have courted awards for their original films with limited theatrical releases and aggressive campaigns. That could be a motivator, but we can’t know what Netflix’s leadership is thinking for sure.
Most other major streaming services, including Disney+, Peacock, Max, and Amazon Prime Video, will have working visionOS apps when the device launches in early February, making Netflix a notable outlier.
While not a deal-breaker for everyone, the omission cuts at the heart of Apple’s messaging around Vision Pro’s value proposition; the steep $3,499 price could be seen as worth the investment if you see the device as replacing both an iPad and a high-end TV. But that pitch is a little bit compromised if the experience on that high-end TV is subpar for one of the most popular streaming services.
