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Cortex

Apple Vision Pro: Experiencing the Future

 

00:00:00   Where are you right now, Mike?

00:00:02   I am in a hotel room in Cupertino, California, about a stone's throw away from Apple Park for WWDC.

00:00:10   And yesterday, I got to experience a private hands-on demo experience of the Apple Vision Pro.

00:00:19   Oh, God!

00:00:24   What a difference a year makes.

00:00:27   Oh, man.

00:00:29   I want to give a little context for this.

00:00:31   So, obviously, we had the keynote on Monday.

00:00:34   It's Wednesday as we're recording this.

00:00:37   So it has been an absolute whirlwind couple of days.

00:00:40   So we watched the keynote and I was able to get booked in a session at the hands-on area that they have.

00:00:50   Because usually after an Apple event, you'll go to the C-Dress Theater and you'll get to see and try whatever they've announced if there's hardware.

00:00:58   And so at the C-Dress Theater, which we watched outside with the developers as well, like everyone's out together like a festival.

00:01:05   And you go up to the C-Dress Theater and they have all of the Macs that they announced up there.

00:01:10   And then there was like buzz upstairs, like the headset's downstairs, the headset's downstairs.

00:01:15   So everyone goes downstairs and it is, but you can only look at it, can't touch it.

00:01:21   And I have some photos of my phone, which remind me of like what the images that I've seen of when the iPhone was announced looked like.

00:01:30   Where it was just like loads of people taking photos or like trying to look at this thing.

00:01:34   But that was in like a glass tube at Macworld 2007.

00:01:38   But this time these were on these like circular tables and you could just see them.

00:01:42   So people were hoping you could try it on, but you couldn't.

00:01:45   And Apple has set up a building on Apple Park.

00:01:51   They built a whole building on what I believe was like a basketball court or a soccer field or something.

00:01:59   I could see this structure from across the waves where they had the podcast studio.

00:02:04   Because I recorded an episode of Upgrade and Connected from the podcast studio in Apple Park.

00:02:09   And so you could see this structure the whole time.

00:02:12   And so it was very obvious what it was.

00:02:14   And they were allowing and inviting some members of the media to go and do the TryOn Experience.

00:02:24   Which was an hour and 15 minutes long in total.

00:02:28   And is the hot ticket.

00:02:31   These are very limited and I feel so incredibly lucky that I was one of the people that got to try it on.

00:02:40   And I expect it's because they want me to talk about it on this show.

00:02:44   So we're doing that.

00:02:46   Because also I have a co-host who would really like to know what this whole thing was about.

00:02:51   Well, I mean, you have a co-host who is at this moment trying to do the mental calculus of if he has ever been more envious of an experience that another human being has had than the one that you had getting to try that out.

00:03:05   There's a lot of envy floating around. Because I had I think at least one or two friends try it on before my try on time was confirmed as well.

00:03:14   So like, you could cut the envy of a knife here in Cupertino amongst everybody.

00:03:19   Oh, I believe that.

00:03:20   So for anyone listening, the thing is though, it's like I'm really envious that you got to try it.

00:03:24   I too am in a hotel room, but I'm on the opposite side of the earth in Cambridge just like doing a bit of a work trip.

00:03:30   And it's like, oh, I'm all sad and on my own and there's the coolest party happening on the other side of the earth and Mike got the hottest ticket at the coolest party.

00:03:38   And so like, I'm like so jealous.

00:03:41   But, but there's also this thing where I am so happy that I get to talk to you in particular about this.

00:03:50   Because I was thinking about this this morning and I honestly think there may be no one on earth in a better position to review this headset than you.

00:04:02   Because you've been doing real work in VR.

00:04:07   Like we've held meetings in VR as a thing.

00:04:11   I haven't listened to anyone say any of their thoughts on this headset because I just like I wanted to hear what you had to say about it.

00:04:19   And it's like, I have one question that I'm dying to ask, but it is totally a case of there is no human on earth I could trust to answer this question than you because of the experiences you've had trying out VR before.

00:04:36   So I feel really lucky that I get to talk to you and that like, I can get answers from you that I can just trust.

00:04:44   You don't have to do that meta calculus for the reviewers of like, yeah, but like how do they normally think about this thing?

00:04:51   So let's talk about the headset, Mike. What happened? How did you get there? Like, how did the day go?

00:04:56   So I was doing a podcast recording just before the announcement and I luckily got like a little bit of time to sit around beforehand.

00:05:04   But the funny thing of getting there is you're going through the reception at Apple Park and the area is so far away.

00:05:11   Like it's like basically the other side of the ring. So they have these golf carts and so you'd sit on and you would be golf carted all the way up to the try on area, which if you want to feel like Mr. Big Time being put on a golf cart and taken to your appointment, it puts you in that Mr. Big Time mood.

00:05:31   You know, like you're ready to go at that point. You're like, oh, I'm a big fan.

00:05:35   So you arrive and they took me into kind of this area, which was obviously incredibly well lit. These beautiful sofas and like it looked like an Apple store that they'd just built, which is kind of hilarious.

00:05:50   So they take you in, they check you in. And the first thing you go and do is kind of get fitted.

00:05:56   Oh, right. Because were you wearing your glasses?

00:05:59   Yes. And this is how this part works. And my expectation is at least some of this will be similar to what it will be like to actually buy the thing with one missing detail.

00:06:10   So the way that the Apple Vision Pro works from a sizing perspective is they have these like foam kind of insert that squishes against your face.

00:06:22   They call it like the light shield or whatever. Apple will have a large selection of these available that fit different face shapes.

00:06:31   And you do a face ID like scan on an iPhone where it scans the shape of your face.

00:06:40   Oh, okay.

00:06:41   And then they use that to find me the closest matching kind of like face foam.

00:06:48   They have a word for this, but like the word didn't really stick in my brain.

00:06:52   Right. It's the face foam. I know what you mean.

00:06:53   The face foam. We'll call it the face foam.

00:06:55   My understanding is the Trion experience, they did not have access to the full range.

00:07:01   So I would probably have one that would fit me even better if I was to go through the buying process.

00:07:07   And I think when they're available, if you buy it online, you have to do this as part of the process or you'll do it like this in an Apple store.

00:07:15   They also want to customize the spatial audio, so you have to do like a spatial audio scan.

00:07:19   I've seen this in like the set up for personalized spatial audio where you look at the iPhone and turn your head to the left and to the right so it sees the space of your ears to your nose, I think.

00:07:29   So you do that too. And that's the kind of scanning part.

00:07:33   They then took me to the optometry part, which I don't think this part will happen at Apple stores.

00:07:42   Right.

00:07:43   So they go in and I gave them my glasses and they put them in this machine to just check my prescription so they could get me the right vision correction for the headset.

00:07:53   Wow. Okay.

00:07:54   But I think that you have to, when these become available to buy, I think you have to buy the prescription lenses separately and you just order those with your prescription.

00:08:05   Maybe they'll offer this in stores. I don't think they will. And I didn't get confirmation for that.

00:08:10   The lenses magnetically attach and they showed me afterwards that I took it off and they can just snap it in and they just attach to the unit itself.

00:08:18   So you could change them out and maybe so other people could use them.

00:08:21   I actually don't think this is a device that's intended to be used by more than one person.

00:08:27   Kind of basically like an iPad, right? An iPad, realistically, is supposed to just be used by one person.

00:08:33   It's not like a Mac where you can have multiple users, but you can have it used by multiple people.

00:08:39   So I think that the Vision Pro will be a similar experience of like, they kind of intend it to be yours, but I guess you could buy extra lenses if someone else in your home wanted to use it as well.

00:08:50   Yeah. I'm not surprised by that at all. I just kind of assumed it would be a single user device.

00:08:54   So I'm actually pretty happy though that it's magnetic. So you could do that, right?

00:08:58   Like if it was like, oh, you ordered it and then the lenses were just like fixed inside of the thing, I think that wouldn't be a great experience for the letting other people in your home try it and use it. Maybe they want to watch a movie or whatever.

00:09:10   I mean, in single people's prescriptions changed. That was something that was on my mind straight away.

00:09:14   It's like, well, my vision has gotten worse over the years. It's like this thing you need to update and I wouldn't want it to be locked to the device.

00:09:20   The lenses are being offered by Zeiss. I think that this might be one of the reasons, one of the many reasons why it's US only to begin with, because I think they're going to have to make these partnerships for the lenses to be made in every country that they're doing this in.

00:09:37   It kind of reminds me of some of the Apple Watch features where like, okay, this is now a health related thing. So you're going to have to make individual arrangements in every country for somebody to produce the vision lenses.

00:09:51   So like, I'm sure it's also there like there's a million reasons why it's going to be US only like they don't not going to make too many, but I think this will just be another kind of like stone on that pile for why the rollout will probably be slow.

00:10:04   So I'm going to sit down and they take me into a room. Now, unlike a lot of these types of experiences when you go for briefings or hands ons, this was an absolutely completely private demo.

00:10:17   So it was me and two people from Apple. And we're in this room that they've made that looks like a living room. Like, I assume they had like 12 of these living rooms built inside of this structure.

00:10:29   So like, I'm sitting down on a couch, there's a coffee table in front of me with this beautiful tray that inside of it has my vision pro to try on to sit in there.

00:10:38   And the spokespeople have it, they're sitting there like one person was like, actually guiding the experience. And we had another person sitting in who could also help answer any questions.

00:10:50   And they were able to see what I could see on an iPad, which I think that is like just a for this, right? So like, they could help guide me through and make sure that they could see what I was seeing, they could help me if I had any questions.

00:11:03   So the thing that I was immediately struck by was the strap on the vision pro had like a top headband strap, which isn't what all of the hero images show. All of the imagery show it's like like ski goggles, it's just one strap that goes around the back of your head.

00:11:21   But they also have an additional if you want to include it strap that goes over the top, like the meta quest Pro.

00:11:29   Oh, okay. All right, right. Because my initial thing of seeing that was like, there is no way to me that this would be comfortable for long periods of time without a top head strap to kind of help.

00:11:41   And I asked afterwards, a question about that strap, because I didn't remember seeing it in the keynote, but they said it was in there for a moment, that they are at this point, still finalizing what the actual strap experience will be like the kind of the headband, like that part at the back is done.

00:12:01   And they're kind of still working through the final components of it. But they expect that they will offer an additional like over the top strap. And they also said they expect that, like the Apple Watch, there will be lots of third party options for different comfort levels that people will be able to make, because it's an interchangeable strap experience like the Apple Watch.

00:12:24   So I thought that was fascinating, because one, they will probably have options, but two, Apple fully expects that other companies will make headbands and straps for this device.

00:12:34   So that makes me feel very positive about like the comfort levels, because what I will say is, this is heavy.

00:12:43   I should have expected it. I thought the removing of the battery would change it. But realistically, the easiest way I can describe this device is it's the AirPods Max of VR devices, where the materials that they have chosen to make it look and feel and act the way that they want means that for a device in its class, it is a heavy version of that device.

00:13:10   I know this is like impossible to judge, but was your gut feeling that it's heavier than the MetaQuest Pro?

00:13:18   I can't say if it's heavier overall, but it's heavier on the front of my face.

00:13:24   Okay.

00:13:25   And all I'll say is it was I only noticed the weight when I put it on. After that, that went away.

00:13:31   You know, like I wasn't paying attention to it the whole time, which for me is the same as AirPods Max. Whenever I put my AirPods Max on, I'm struck by the weight of them. I have them on right now, but I can also wear them for 11 hours.

00:13:44   Right. So like, I am aware that it's heavier. I am not sure if that would impact my experience, because the issue that I have using my MetaQuest Pro for two hours has nothing to do with the weight of the device.

00:13:59   Yeah.

00:14:00   It's the quality of the screens.

00:14:02   If anyone listens to our special episode on the MetaQuest Pro, yes, the weight of the device, I don't know if we even mentioned it, except in passing. It didn't make the top 10 list of things.

00:14:13   Yeah. None of these devices are incredibly comfortable right now, because it's just not where we are in the life cycle of this product category.

00:14:22   Like, we're a long way away from maximum comfort. Like, at the moment, we haven't even entered miniaturization for most of these things. That's all to come.

00:14:31   Because again, remember, like, Apple's idea for this product, this is an AR product. Like, it was very clear to me with the announcement, and it was clear to me with the demo.

00:14:43   It looks like a VR product, and you can make it act like a VR product, but for them, this is an AR product, and if you look at it through that lens, all of this is going to go away eventually.

00:14:53   That Skee-Goggle effect, that's all going to just, like, over time, shrink, shrink, shrink until there's just a pair of glasses. Right? Like, that's the goal.

00:15:02   So I don't know in the long term how important the weight is.

00:15:05   I did think that was fascinating watching the keynote. I really had this feeling of, I'm very glad that we've done a bunch of stuff in VR, because it made it much more clear to me what Apple was not trying to do.

00:15:22   And it really felt like, oh, this is Apple taking their usual path of arriving late to a market and doing much less than whatever the top of the line is, but the things that they're choosing to do, they're really focusing on.

00:15:41   And I was just so aware of that during the keynote, of like, they are pitching this as screens in your living space so hard, right? But like, but you are not disconnected.

00:15:56   It's not like when we do our meetings for Cortex brand in VR and we're in a totally virtual environment. Like, there was none of that.

00:16:03   I think I wouldn't have picked up on that as clearly if we hadn't done some of this stuff before. And that's particularly why I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this, because you have that as a frame of reference.

00:16:13   Yeah. And going through the whole experience, it was just like always in the back of my mind of comparing it.

00:16:19   And I kept mentioning like, oh, compared to other products that I've tried, this is very different because of this.

00:16:25   Like, I kept talking about that, but spoiler alert in all positive ways.

00:16:29   So the hardware itself also feels like the AirPods Max in that it is incredibly high quality, right? Like it feels incredibly well put together.

00:16:41   The adjustment mechanism for the band is amazing. So it's like this little wheel that you turn and as you turn it, you feel the back headband just be pulled together.

00:16:54   It's pulled together like via this tension string and you just feel it like very gently close on the back of your head.

00:17:01   And it's like it just feels so much nicer than anything else that I've tried. Like the wheel on the MetaQuest Pro feels like I could break it off if I tried too hard.

00:17:11   But this is just like this tiny little wheel that you turn very comfortable to put on.

00:17:15   And so then I'm immediately into the headset after, oh I have to do a bit of a setup where you're like it's testing your eye tracking. So you kind of like look at these dots and it's just like testing your eye tracking.

00:17:27   And then it like registers your hands. You like put your hands up and so it can start the tracking of your hands because that's the entire interaction model.

00:17:35   It's eyes and hands, right? You look around with your eyes and you click by pinching your finger and thumb together.

00:17:41   And you can do that. You can have your hand on your lap, but kind of behind you like it's got very good range of picking up the detection for the...

00:17:51   There will be a name for this, but like the pinching to select.

00:17:55   And obviously the first thing that I'm met by is the pastor experience, which was surprising.

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00:20:01   It's full colour pass-through and what it feels like is I am looking through the headset.

00:20:10   I do not feel like my eyes are connected to cameras.

00:20:15   Really?

00:20:16   Yes. Now, the clarity of the image is almost there.

00:20:22   It feels like there is a noise to the image and what it reminds me of is if you take a photo on your iPhone in low light and just things kind of have like a slight fuzziness or muddiness to them.

00:20:36   Like that's kind of like the image quality but the biggest thing is the latency.

00:20:43   It is imperceptible.

00:20:45   There is a moment in the demo where they make me stand up and move around and I felt so comfortable to just get up and walk.

00:20:53   Like I felt like I had just as much like field of view as I would normally have as a human with my eyes.

00:21:00   Wow, okay.

00:21:01   But the biggest thing is like everything else that I've tried is either black and white or it's like an image where you feel like you're looking through a low quality camera.

00:21:11   This has not that at all. Like I feel like I would be able to read anything that someone could put in front of me.

00:21:21   It really just felt so much more like I was looking through and this was where I got the biggest example of the foveated rendering.

00:21:32   So this is the idea that wherever you're looking with your eyes is the clearest the image will be.

00:21:38   So like the two people at Apple were sitting on the left and right to me and they were just slightly blurred.

00:21:46   But it was blurred in a way that feels natural to how my eyes were blurred for things in my peripheral vision.

00:21:52   And as soon as I would look at someone they were immediately in focus.

00:21:56   In the presentation when they said that thing about the the foveated rendering I was like, "Oh you geniuses, right?"

00:22:02   Because human vision isn't uniform. We think it is but it isn't.

00:22:08   All the stuff that you're not looking at is not remotely as in focus as you even think it is.

00:22:14   So that's a genius processing power saver of we're not trying to render the whole thing in perfect resolution.

00:22:22   A thing a little bit unclear though is when you say it feels like you're looking through the glasses, is it a 3D effect or is it still like a screen?

00:22:30   It's just an extremely sharp feeling screen?

00:22:33   I wouldn't say there was a 3D effect. It's just like a 3D effect of how your eyes make the world look 3D.

00:22:39   That's just what it looked like.

00:22:41   Okay yeah that's what I'm wondering though because again I'm thinking about on the VR for pass through the Wii U's.

00:22:47   When I'm looking at the world there's no pretense at all that it's anything other than looking through a camera.

00:22:54   I kind of think of it as like Robocop vision. It's like this is what the world looks like if your eye was a VHS camera.

00:23:01   And there's just no depth except for what you know must be depth because you're a person who's lived in the world.

00:23:08   That's what I'm wondering about because again in their little demo they really kind of focused on a couple of things.

00:23:15   And one of them was like "Oh the little girl she kicks the soccer ball to the dad and he stops it."

00:23:20   That's the kind of thing you really want to have some actual depth information to be able to do properly.

00:23:25   Like they focused a lot on people handing other people stuff.

00:23:30   And I'm just wondering if it seemed like they were doing the thing like in VR where you have to render slightly different images to each eye.

00:23:38   So that you have some sense that there's real depth there. It's not interpolated depth.

00:23:43   It just felt like I was wearing a pair of safety glasses in that regard.

00:23:47   It just felt like I could see everything as normal. And what enhanced that was the visual elements.

00:23:54   Like where we are in my experience so far there's no UI yet.

00:23:59   Like I'm just looking through. When the UI comes into play it's casting shadows.

00:24:04   There was a demo where it put some text and the text moved back towards a wall.

00:24:09   And when the text got towards the wall there was a shadow of the text on the wall.

00:24:14   Okay, alright. So yeah, they're doing real 3D processing.

00:24:17   They're doing a bunch of 3D mapping stuff. It has IR cameras and blasters.

00:24:22   They're due for the face ID. They have that in the headset.

00:24:26   So that's projecting to understand the space of the room.

00:24:29   But also means that if the lights were off you could still use all the gestures because it uses that to track your hands.

00:24:35   Oh, okay. Right, right.

00:24:37   So that's like with face ID.

00:24:39   The first thing you do is you reach up and you press the digital crown and that brings up the home screen.

00:24:45   Like home view thing which has all of the apps.

00:24:49   This is where I am introduced to eye tracking.

00:24:53   I cannot express enough how absolutely incredible the eye tracking is.

00:25:03   I'm getting goosebumps right now explaining this to you.

00:25:07   I have never experienced something like this before.

00:25:11   Where the way that you select things is by looking at them.

00:25:16   I didn't know my eyes could be so precise.

00:25:19   I did not know that anyone could detect that my eyes were looking at a specific button on something.

00:25:28   Like with the way that I'm looking at my Mac right now I have the Skype window up and there's like a red hang up button on the Skype window.

00:25:36   When I'm using the Vision Pro if I wanted to hang up I would just look at that button and tap my fingers together.

00:25:43   And it knows.

00:25:44   And like if I'm looking at my Mac right now I'm looking at that button and I feel like there's no way that anything could detect that I'm looking exactly at this tiny button which is like a centimeter.

00:25:55   But this headset knows.

00:25:58   And in my half an hour not one thing was detected incorrectly.

00:26:03   God damn.

00:26:04   The only trouble I had with this system is I was thinking too much about it.

00:26:08   Right right.

00:26:09   You know if I was like looking for a button or whatever sometimes I would like move my head towards the button to like make sure I was looking straight on at it.

00:26:17   I'm overthinking it.

00:26:18   Right right yeah yeah.

00:26:20   The way that they guide you through the experience is very clever because like at first they're like look at this and then tap your fingers together.

00:26:27   And then eventually they're just like just close that image and I go boop and it's gone.

00:26:31   Mhm.

00:26:32   I was skeptical about the interaction method.

00:26:35   I genuinely didn't think they'd be able to pull it off because it feels like it's too precise.

00:26:40   Like both the eyes and the tapping of the fingers.

00:26:43   It was perfect.

00:26:44   I don't know how they've done it.

00:26:46   I can't work it out.

00:26:47   It feels too good.

00:26:48   Like it's unbelievable.

00:26:49   Like there's this one moment where the home view has all of these like icons right circular icons.

00:26:59   And it's like you can you look between them and it's kind of like tvOS in a way or when you use the trackpad on ipadOS like when you look at them they kind of like shimmer a little bit so you can see where you're looking.

00:27:09   But also on the left hand side there are these three icons.

00:27:14   Apps, people, environments.

00:27:16   That's what these like three selectors were and it takes you to different kind of menu hierarchies.

00:27:21   So you're looking at the apps initially and they wanted me to go to the environments thing.

00:27:26   So like can you just go select the environments from the left and I look over and as I look over it expands into a menu and then as I look up and down it highlights each part in the menu.

00:27:36   And these are three elements stacked right on top of each other and it could detect which one of those three I was looking at.

00:27:42   And it's just like I don't I just I don't know how they're doing it because it just feels too perfect.

00:27:49   It's unbelievable.

00:27:50   So like I'll jump to the environments part.

00:27:53   So when you open environments you're given a selection of places in the world that you can choose from and they have you choose Mount Hood.

00:28:03   You select it.

00:28:04   I couldn't tell if it was CGI or someone had taken 3D camera to this place.

00:28:09   I think realistically it's a mixture of both.

00:28:12   I was going to say yeah it's almost certainly it's both.

00:28:14   Yeah.

00:28:14   And so this is where they're like OK turn the crown and you'll be in a VR environment.

00:28:22   So you are able to it was like maybe two full turns of the digital crown as it was fading from the front of my eyes to enveloping me all the way around.

00:28:33   And I could stop at any point in that so I could choose the exact amount of immersion that I wanted to be in the kind of VR environment that I was in.

00:28:41   Like it looked as good as any of these VR environments that I've seen.

00:28:45   I could turn all around.

00:28:47   They had like spatial audio.

00:28:49   It was raining.

00:28:50   So I had the sound of rain.

00:28:52   But this was to demo the idea of someone could just pop into your view.

00:28:57   So like one of the Apple spokespeople kind of like leant towards me and he started to pop in like a force ghost into my image.

00:29:07   This is the idea that if you're in VR someone can actually talk to you and as they approach you they start to appear.

00:29:14   Again it was like all I could see was the guy. I couldn't see the world around him and they do it where he's kind of like faded kind of wispy until he got closer and closer and I could see him perfectly.

00:29:26   And then he's like lift up your hands and lift up my hands and they're doing that like basically perfect pass through of just my actual hands in these VR environments.

00:29:38   Oh OK right.

00:29:39   There's no fake hands here.

00:29:40   Like I pick it up and it's my hands.

00:29:42   So like that was all fantastic.

00:29:44   I didn't get to use apps in this part.

00:29:48   But I know that's a thing that you can do if you haven't seen the videos right that you can be using Microsoft Word or whatever and also be in an environment.

00:29:59   Again that was kind of all I really got with that part because I think they were more wanting to show the like look at this in the space that we're in which again like Apple seems to be focusing more on the AR part.

00:30:11   We looked at photos and videos and this was where I got to experience the gestures of the device.

00:30:17   So this was like swiping and pinch to zoom and it was all incredibly natural.

00:30:22   You know like you just pinch your fingers together and swipe left swipe right up down and that's how you scroll through things and like pinch to zoom.

00:30:30   You take both hands you just pull them apart right and it zooms in.

00:30:34   It was all incredibly natural again like in a way where he just was like can you just go to the right and I just did it.

00:30:41   It worked and this is where I saw like panoramas and stuff and the panoramas were fine.

00:30:46   Like I think that the panorama stuff I don't think that the iPhone camera is high quality enough yet to make that truly feel like an immersive experience.

00:30:58   But it's nice that you have a way to look at your panoramas like all around you like it's a cool feature.

00:31:05   But I could imagine Apple making the panorama camera experience higher quality in the future.

00:31:12   Like I think about the 48 megapixels in the pro it's like oh that's what you'd want it for.

00:31:16   You want as much detail as possible if you're taking these kinds of images you know.

00:31:22   And then we had the like 3D photos and videos, spatial photos and videos.

00:31:29   I don't know about this part so like they look really good.

00:31:34   It's almost like creepy how good they are.

00:31:38   The videos especially they have in the demo they showed a birthday like a kid's birthday and that's what you see.

00:31:45   So you are sitting there and there's a cake in front of you and the child blows out the candles and the smoke comes towards your eyes.

00:31:53   Which was smart the way they put that together right so you're like oh and it's like feels pretty immersive.

00:31:58   And then the family's having like a fun moment and it's like this looks really good but I don't like the way this was made.

00:32:08   I totally agree with you there that that was the part where I was like I don't care how cool these 3D videos are made.

00:32:14   The idea of like dad has the headset on while he's recording his daughter's birthday is like I don't like that very much.

00:32:21   So the experience of these photos and videos, these spatial photos and videos was really good.

00:32:28   Apple clearly will create a way to make these that's not just with this headset.

00:32:33   For sure it's going to be in the phone at some point yeah.

00:32:36   Because I don't know like how far apart the lenses need to be.

00:32:39   I could imagine this maybe coming to the iPad first because you could just put a lens on each corner of the iPad right to make them.

00:32:48   I don't know what it needs. Do I believe Apple has some kind of way of making this work eventually?

00:32:53   Yes like I think they'll find a way and I think that's important.

00:32:56   It's cool that you can capture these photos and videos but to me it feels like I would only want to do that as like a look at this thing I can do.

00:33:05   Because I'm not going to be wearing my Vision Pro at the family gathering.

00:33:10   In that presentation I was just constantly blown away by how good of a job they were doing at pitching it towards normal people wanting to do normal things.

00:33:22   And that was the only one that was like a tiny bit of a misstep.

00:33:28   A lot of people won't like love the idea of having a headset on to record family moments.

00:33:35   Or really what normal people won't like is the idea that someone at the family moment has the headset on.

00:33:42   That was the tiniest one that felt like it was a little bit off.

00:33:45   Otherwise a presentation that was just constantly nailing how is this actually useful for regular people not for VR nerds.

00:33:58   And I think they did such an amazing job of it.

00:34:01   I didn't even think about that for you getting to see a demo of what those 3D videos would look like.

00:34:06   They look really great but it just doesn't...

00:34:09   The capturing of it feels wrong and I would be so surprised if by the time this thing comes out they haven't shown you how you'll be able to take them otherwise.

00:34:18   There is a whole like 9 months maybe until this thing is available.

00:34:23   You could introduce new iPads and new iPhones that could have this technology.

00:34:27   And then by the time the Vision Pro comes out this just isn't weird anymore.

00:34:31   Because now you can make them in a different way.

00:34:34   I like that it's there.

00:34:36   I actually think I could imagine it being better to be there for work stuff.

00:34:40   So again I take a picture of a thing on my desk to send to you and now you have some idea of its scale.

00:34:48   I think that's exactly how I would have demoed it.

00:34:51   Not with a family moment.

00:34:52   I would have demoed it as like "Oh hey I'm on site and I want to show you something. Here's a video."

00:34:58   And now you can get a good look at it.

00:34:59   I love live photos.

00:35:00   Live photos give this additional context to the moment that the picture was taken.

00:35:05   This is that times a thousand.

00:35:07   Yeah.

00:35:08   I just bullied a family member into turning on live photos on their phone.

00:35:13   Because they'd still left it off from whenever that was first introduced.

00:35:17   They're like "Eh that's not a thing I want."

00:35:18   It's like trust me you want this.

00:35:20   It's just an additional thing for some moments.

00:35:23   And you're crazy not to have the option there because it just makes photos better.

00:35:27   So yeah I can easily imagine.

00:35:29   I didn't really think about that.

00:35:30   But I can imagine that yeah they just have a way to record this on your iPhone or on your iPad.

00:35:36   And so you have these things as a separate thing and then you just need to view them in full form on the Vision Pro.

00:35:41   We next moved on to multitasking.

00:35:45   So they were showing me how I could have multiple apps open and the way I can move them around.

00:35:51   And you know like the iPhone has that bar at the bottom?

00:35:56   Mhm.

00:35:57   Like that's always there where you do the gestures.

00:35:58   There's one of those on each app window.

00:36:00   And again you just look at it and you grab it by holding your finger and thumb together.

00:36:05   And you just move it.

00:36:07   You can push it backwards.

00:36:08   You can bring it towards you.

00:36:09   You can put it to the left, to the right, anywhere you want.

00:36:12   It looked like Stage Manager.

00:36:13   Yes.

00:36:14   It actually kind of made me think "Oh this is what Stage Manager was for."

00:36:18   Like it was not for the iPad it was for this.

00:36:20   Yes it's like Stage Manager.

00:36:22   I took the like photos window and I put it over to the left.

00:36:25   I opened up Safari and then I opened up Messages.

00:36:28   Messages just automatically popped in on the right.

00:36:31   But I had the ability to move it.

00:36:33   I even overlapped them.

00:36:34   And when you overlap it kind of fades the window behind you a little bit.

00:36:41   Just with the space that is taken by the app that you put in front of it.

00:36:45   You know so like they're very aware of each other from a physical standpoint.

00:36:50   Like they feel like real things.

00:36:52   And the fading between the two was really good.

00:36:55   And then I could look at Safari.

00:36:57   I could scroll.

00:36:58   The scrolling gesture is the one I'm not 100% sure of yet.

00:37:02   If I was reading an article I don't think I would like to scroll, scroll, scroll.

00:37:06   I would probably like to use a trackpad which you can do.

00:37:09   So I could imagine in that environment I'm probably at my desk anyway.

00:37:12   If I'm going to be sitting and reading a long article.

00:37:14   And so like just using my trackpad I think would be nicer.

00:37:17   But I may have been overdoing the gesture.

00:37:19   I think I might have put more into it than was needed.

00:37:22   You know like I'm moving my whole arm.

00:37:24   Which I feel like maybe wasn't necessary.

00:37:27   And I know what you want to know Gray.

00:37:29   How crisp was the text?

00:37:31   This for me when I'm watching the whole presentation.

00:37:36   Having been in VR before.

00:37:40   We talked about it on that special episode.

00:37:42   The downfall of these systems is that the resolution is bad.

00:37:48   And in most environments in VR that just doesn't really matter.

00:37:53   But the moment you have to look at anything that's text.

00:37:56   That's when it becomes clear how the resolution just isn't there.

00:38:01   So this was my experience watching the thing.

00:38:03   It's like I am blown away by this presentation that they're giving.

00:38:08   But in the back of my mind I could never turn off.

00:38:11   But what does it really look like?

00:38:14   The only comparison I can make is.

00:38:16   It's a bit like in movies when they do a FaceTime call.

00:38:19   And that FaceTime call is the most perfectly crisp zero latency video you've ever seen.

00:38:26   That's not what a real FaceTime call looks like.

00:38:29   This is very clearly a camera that's superimposed on the screen of the phone.

00:38:33   That was the thing to me.

00:38:34   I was like, man.

00:38:35   This is the critical slider.

00:38:38   I want to be super blown away by this.

00:38:43   But if the way that it's being shown in the demo is significantly higher resolution than it actually seems at the time.

00:38:51   It really changes the experience of a lot of this.

00:38:55   And so yes, this is my number one question to you.

00:38:59   Is what is the resolution really like when it really matters if you were really going to do a bunch of work.

00:39:07   Like writing or emails or other office stuff.

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00:41:31   Before I answer your question, if I could give an example of like saying that in the imagery there is no way it's like real life,

00:41:40   the pass-through is one of those because like in the demos and in the videos it looks like the actual real world where the actual pass-through has a little bit more visual grain like noise to the image, right?

00:41:53   It was much better than I expected but like to set it in reality is like yeah it's not actually that crystal clear, right?

00:42:02   But looking at a Safari web page, white page, black text, this was one of the things that highlighted to me the difference between the app and the real world because the Safari web page was crystal clear.

00:42:19   Was it retina? I don't know, right? Like did the text look fuzzy? Not at all, right?

00:42:25   But like would this be classed as like whatever Apple class says retina text?

00:42:30   I don't know but I would sit there and read in this thing much more comfortably than anything else.

00:42:36   It's the crispest text I've seen in a VR headset easily.

00:42:40   It's crisper than I've seen in any operating system, app or game.

00:42:44   Like it looked great and I could zoom in on the text if I wanted to.

00:42:48   I could imagine sitting and reading in this thing with zero issue.

00:42:52   Like I don't think that fuzziness of text is going to cause me any problems because it wasn't there.

00:42:58   And this is text of all different sizes.

00:43:00   There was also the messages app where I could read the messages and the text is smaller than it was and less purposefully visually clear.

00:43:08   You know like it was like white text on a kind of silvery background which is the UI of the apps is kind of see through a little bit, right?

00:43:18   And it had that vibe to it. It's still incredibly readable.

00:43:20   In a minute I'm going to talk about the visual experiences watching videos and stuff.

00:43:25   But to me the real standout of this technology is just how high quality the imagery is.

00:43:34   They tell you it's 4K for each eye and I believe it.

00:43:38   I've never seen imagery, video, photos, text look this good on any headset.

00:43:46   And it's as good as looking at a TV on a wall to me.

00:43:50   Like it was mind blowing how good the imagery was.

00:43:55   And so reading text just doesn't feel like it's going to be an issue.

00:44:00   When they were talking about the size of the pixels there were a few like laugh out loud with being impressed moments for me.

00:44:06   And that was one of them.

00:44:08   I forget the exact number but they were like, "Oh, we're measuring it in microns or whatever for the pixels."

00:44:12   I was like, "I cannot believe that that's how small of a unit you're talking about for these pixels."

00:44:16   So they said a thing that I didn't fully understand but they also said it to me afterwards.

00:44:21   Where they've put the screen on the back of a chip.

00:44:25   Oh, okay.

00:44:26   They put the screen on a piece of silicon and they have two of those.

00:44:32   This feels like way over my pay grade but it sounds incredible.

00:44:36   But that would be to reduce latency.

00:44:38   And that's what he said. You're a genius.

00:44:40   He said it's to reduce latency. It's why there isn't latency.

00:44:44   Yeah, it makes sense. The speed of light is very fast but if your time threshold is extremely small, like with human perception, it turns out it's just not fast enough.

00:44:52   And so yeah, they'd do that to get the physical distance from the image being processed to the image being displayed down as much as possible.

00:45:00   I feel like that is another one of these Apple manufacturing their own things that really pays off.

00:45:08   Custom micro OLED display systems. This OLED, micro OLED, features 23 million pixels, delivering stunning resolution and colors.

00:45:17   Which I agree with. And apparently it's on the back of pieces of silicon so that's how they do that.

00:45:22   And after the demo was done, I got to sit down with someone from the product team and ask them some questions.

00:45:27   And I was talking about this, about the screen technology.

00:45:31   And one of the things that they were telling me was, and this is kind of what I assumed.

00:45:36   At the beginning of this project, their goal was how do we remove motion sickness. That was the goal.

00:45:44   And I always considered that this would be a goal of theirs because if Apple wants to make this a mass market product eventually, they have to find a way to get rid of the motion sickness.

00:45:55   Which is something that I think more people feel in VR than they would in a car.

00:46:00   I think more people were hit by that because there is just a latency added into the world. And that's what they were aiming for, is to remove that latency.

00:46:09   And from a perception level, it feels like they have removed the latency.

00:46:13   So I think this is all contributing to why everything looks so crisp and why everything moves the way that you expect it to.

00:46:22   Boy, that's very interesting to hear. Even if I just take your description of it's as good as reading text on a TV screen, like a big high quality TV screen, that makes me very happy.

00:46:35   Again, I'm watching this presentation while I am sitting in a hotel room, which I have brought my computer and my iPad to try to do some work on this mobile dual screen setup.

00:46:46   And all I can think of is like, "God damn, if that text can look good," because that's what my work is, just like moving words all day.

00:46:56   If the text can be good, I would pay anything to be able to have giant virtual screens in a hotel remote working situation.

00:47:08   I'd be thrilled with that, whereas the current VR headsets, I wouldn't ever dream of even thinking of taking them to work on to do the same kind of thing, because it's just, it's unworkable immediately.

00:47:21   It just looks so bad. So boy, that is a very exciting report, Mike. That is a very exciting report.

00:47:28   When I was looking at Safari, there was an image of a mountain and I had the messages window open to the right and he was just like, "Just drag and drop that image."

00:47:38   And so I looked at it, I tapped and held, and then I just looked at the message window, like the compose window, and the message was in there, like the image.

00:47:48   It just took it with my eyes. I dragged and dropped with my eyes. It's crazy. I cannot impress enough. I feel like I cannot do a good enough job to explain.

00:47:58   The eye tracking is incredible. This is transformational. The quality of this, it's like multi-touch all over again.

00:48:08   What they did with the iPhone to create this interaction model of just use your fingers and just touch it and it all feels natural immediately, that's how this feels, because you want to do things where you're looking at them.

00:48:25   That's just how we work, right? If you can't see something, you can't do anything to it. You don't even know you want to because you can't see it.

00:48:32   This is just perfect in tracking your eyes. You just look at the thing and you tap it, or you look at the thing and you swipe it, but you're already looking at it so it knows where you want to be. It's incredible.

00:48:44   That's a place where I can just imagine that the latency is critical for that. If it doesn't move right under your eyes, it's just not good enough. It has to be immediate.

00:48:54   That was also one of these little mind-blown moments for me watching the presentation when they talked about, "Oh, we'll just have the click be whatever you're looking at."

00:49:02   As soon as they said it, it seems like just the most obvious interface model in the same way with the phone.

00:49:11   "Oh, how do you open these things?" "Well, just touch them and it'll open." "Of course, this is the way you want to do it. You don't want to use buttons to select a thing."

00:49:19   I was hugely impressed in the way where you go. It's stunningly obvious that this is the way that it should be done, but also no one's done it this way before.

00:49:30   With a slight asterisk being the PlayStation VR2 has eye tracking in it. It is one of the reasons that people who have used that say it's very good.

00:49:40   I haven't tried it, but now hearing the way that people talk about it, the good thing about PSVR2 is the hardware. The unfortunate thing is there aren't a lot of games for it.

00:49:49   But they're using eye tracking and foveated rendering too. This is how I first learned about foveated rendering.

00:49:55   For a game console VR headset makes a lot of sense. If you want to make something look lifelike, only process what you need to at any one time.

00:50:03   So they're using some of this tech in something that's shipping today. Obviously the difference here is creating an operating system using this technology.

00:50:12   Which by the way, I haven't said the term, I like the term, spatial computing. That's what they keep talking about.

00:50:18   This is a spatial computing device. That's the idea. And that Vision OS is the first spatial operating system.

00:50:26   So I like that as a way to think about this era of computing that we're moving into here. It's all about physical space in the real world and how your computer interacts with that space.

00:50:38   I want to talk about FaceTime. So I did a FaceTime call with somebody else inside of Apple Park and they were using their persona, which is by the way a word that I don't like. I just don't like it. It just feels strange to me.

00:50:57   But they were using a persona, which is a 3D recreation of their face. They were also using a Vision Pro wherever they were. And they were having the conversation with me via FaceTime and they were kind of like this floating head and above shoulders kind of thing.

00:51:17   Kind of like a bust kind of. I didn't like it. From a technical standpoint, this is very impressive that you could create and render in real time a conversation from someone.

00:51:33   I think the reason I didn't like it is because of how good it was in a way. So like I was talking to this person and it's like, okay, I can see that you're a 3D rendering, but it's like it's moving really well.

00:51:46   But then all of a sudden, one of her eyes moved in the wrong direction for a second. And that broke it for me. I'm not sure about this. This feels like the most 1.0 of the whole thing.

00:52:01   Where it's like, maybe you can make this better than it is. You can make it more accurate. And maybe by the time they've shipped this thing, it'll be more accurate. It didn't go far enough to feel completely real. So I just kind of feel like, why can't we just use Memoji instead?

00:52:19   And I actually believe you probably can, but they're just not showing that right now because it's not technically impressive to show that.

00:52:26   Instead of using this 3D persona, you could just be a Memoji. I spoke to a bunch of people who had this experience and they did not come away from it the same as I did.

00:52:35   I do believe that there was something weird going on with this part of my presentation because we also did collaboration with a Freeform board and the Freeform board did not load properly.

00:52:47   I think there may have been an internet connection issue with this part of my demo. That is my asterisk because we had to abandon this part of the demo because there was a 3D model that was supposed to load and it didn't load.

00:53:02   And so they were trying to vamp for time, it just didn't load. So we just stopped that part. So I'm wondering if some of the weirdness that was occurring with the FaceTime persona may have been due to some kind of internet connection problem.

00:53:14   Because I spoke to three other people who were like, "It was much more lifelike than I was expecting." I didn't get any weird jitters or face movements, so I think something may have gone wrong for me.

00:53:23   But that was my experience and I wasn't sold on that part going in and I definitely wasn't sold on that part going out.

00:53:30   So my question here, because again when we talked on the past episode about doing our meetings in VR, this was one of the parts of the presentation that really drove home for me what Apple is not trying to do.

00:53:45   Apple in many ways is trying to do so much less because when we do our VR meetings, we are embodied in a completely virtual environment with virtual bodies and we're talking to each other.

00:53:59   I was just really aware of or thinking about how, "Oh, if we were to do our same meetings a year from now using Apple's system, it would very much obviously be much more like a FaceTime call than it would be like a VR environment."

00:54:16   I'm curious if you had any thoughts on that or if that was your impression as well. You're in physical space in your actual world, but some of the things that have made those VR meetings really useful for us is feeling like we're embodied, we're instantiated in a place together where we're sharing space.

00:54:39   This system is not attempting to do that in any way. So I was just curious if you had any thoughts about how that would be for us in particular, like doing meetings and what the difference would be between those systems.

00:54:52   This is about where is the line drawn for how it makes us feel that way. So this was not like we weren't in a shared environment together. I was in my environment looking at the room that I was in in AR and this person was calling me and they were kind of in a little window.

00:55:11   And I was able to move the window around and using spatial audio, it sounded like the person I was on the call with was wherever I put them. So I put her over on the left and then looked at something over on the right and she was kind of talking from behind me.

00:55:26   So it had a sense of presence more than a FaceTime call because it sounded like this person was there but just their head, you know? Like it's just like floating head.

00:55:38   Were there hand gestures?

00:55:39   Yeah, I could see the hands. If she raised her hands, I could see the hands. But it was only if the hands came into view of like that part of their body. Like you have to like the hands have to raise high, right?

00:55:51   I expect that there will be apps where we could have that immersive, we're in the same room experience. Like Apple's not making that.

00:56:01   If Meta doesn't bring Horizon Workrooms to this thing, then they're crazy. They should make a version of this for the Vision Pro. Understand where you are, Meta. You should be the platform, like a platform as well as a hardware thing. Make a version of your app for this. You should do that. Whether they will, I don't know. I think if they don't, it's like stubbornness or hubris. But they should make a version for this thing.

00:56:26   But maybe that's the thing we'll talk about later on. Just so people could have those experiences too. Because I think I could imagine that we could have these calls and it would be somewhere in between. Like a regular FaceTime and a like full on VR meeting. It kind of slots in the middle.

00:56:45   And I'm not sure where that like sense of presence, where that line is drawn. Is it drawn in between FaceTime and Vision Pro FaceTime? Or is it somewhere between Vision Pro FaceTime and Horizon Workrooms? You know what I mean? Like I'm not sure exactly where the line of, "Alright, we were doing this together," where that line is drawn.

00:57:07   Yeah, I think it's also because in that episode that we did about the Facebook system, I spent an unreasonable amount of time complaining about the avatar system. And I was like very curious about how Apple was going to do it.

00:57:19   And watching the presentation, I had this feeling of like, "Oh, I'm totally fine with this. I have no problems with this." But I was trying to think about why.

00:57:29   And that's when it dawned on me to realize, "Oh, because the difference is that in VR, I am making an avatar that I am physically instantiating in that world. It's overlaid on top of me."

00:57:45   And in the Apple system, it's more like, "Oh, I'm creating some puppet of me, but that is for you on your FaceTime call. Like I have nothing to do with that." And I think that's why I just like, "Oh, whatever. I don't really care at all about this as a system."

00:58:02   Or all of my complaints about the Facebook system just didn't trigger in my brain because that digital model of me is not in my experience. It's not in my world in the same way that it is in VR.

00:58:17   And that's why I was realizing it's a FaceTime call with just the other person. I presume that you don't have a little window where you see your own puppet. You're just doing whatever.

00:58:28   Which would be like an update from FaceTime. I think seeing yourself on FaceTime is one of the things that makes FaceTime tiring and hard.

00:58:36   And I expect the person that I was on the call with did not get a visual representation of me. I don't think that that was going on. I think they were just seeing nothing.

00:58:44   This is technology where I think my experience of it was not optimal and I'm intrigued to see where they go with it. It feels like the post 1.0 part, they probably have the most room for improvement here just because as the technology gets better, as they learn more, get more data, they can update this and make it better.

00:59:04   If they're able to pull it off, maybe I'll be happy with it. Right now, this is the biggest question mark for me. What will these calls actually be like with the personas? Would it be better to just use a Memoji? Right now, I'm not sure.

00:59:20   The thing I was most impressed by out of anything was this section that they did about entertainment. So I watched a bunch of movies. I watched a clip of Avatar 2, which was in 3D and it was the 3D movie, right? Which was the best 3D movie experience I've ever had. Ever.

00:59:43   Because what I don't like about 3D movies is you put the glasses on and everything gets dim.

00:59:49   Yeah, it's all dark.

00:59:50   This was bright and crystal clear. I will never see a 3D movie in a cinema again when I have one of these things because this is the best way to experience a 3D movie.

01:00:02   I could have the screen as big as I wanted. I also made it look like I was in a cinema. They have the whole cinema environment thing.

01:00:10   So I could tap on the environments part and I was able to say select cinema and it moved the screen back, made it bigger, put the kind of like darkness around and I was in a cinema.

01:00:22   I could also watch it from the top of a mountain if I wanted to, but I wouldn't want to do that.

01:00:26   So you can turn it into this like full cinema experience and just watch the movie like on a big screen and it's fixed in place.

01:00:33   This feels like honestly a great way to watch a movie. It's like a huge screen, just so precise, so clear, so bright, so detailed.

01:00:47   I could not believe how good this visual imagery was. It was perfect.

01:00:55   Man, we were thinking about getting a bigger TV for our living room and now I'm wondering like maybe we should just hold off on that purchase until we see what this is like.

01:01:10   But the question is I only had it on for half an hour. How would it feel to wear this for two and a half hours? I don't know.

01:01:15   And also you would need to be plugged in. The battery lasts for about two hours. So this is what I didn't mention of course, right?

01:01:24   I had the battery pack. I was on battery. So this big battery is bigger than I thought. It's like bigger than an iPhone Pro Max.

01:01:32   Oh wow. Okay, that is really quite big.

01:01:34   And it's connected via a cable, right? And you can, if you were sitting down and watching a movie or whatever, sitting at your desk, you can plug a USB-C cable into the battery and now you can just sit and use it for as long as you want.

01:01:47   So that's probably what you would do on a movie, right? But if you were just on battery, you cannot hot-swap the batteries.

01:01:55   If you run out of battery power and you can't plug in and you have a second battery, you have to completely shut down the headset, change the battery, turn the headset back on again.

01:02:07   Huh, okay.

01:02:09   But it seems there is no internal battery inside of the Vision Pro at all.

01:02:14   Can you run the USB-C cable just straight into the headset without the battery in between?

01:02:18   I didn't see it and I don't think you can. And every time they mentioned it, it was like you would plug it into the battery and then the battery is plugged into the headset.

01:02:26   How did you feel about it, having the cable?

01:02:28   I didn't notice the cable at all. Even when I was standing and walking around, the cable is unnoticeable.

01:02:33   Okay, that's kind of what I figured.

01:02:35   Because it's also coming towards the back, which is the best place for it to be, so you can kind of just drape it behind you and then the cable was quite long and they told me at one moment to pick up the battery and walk around and I kind of forgot I was even holding it.

01:02:49   As I remember back now, I knew I know I was holding the battery but I didn't really think about it because I was doing this experience thing.

01:02:55   To me, it's a non-issue that the battery is external and that there's this cable, but of course there is a thing that you always have to keep in mind about power.

01:03:06   This is not a device where you're not thinking about the charging. But realistically, it's as long battery life as other high…

01:03:16   The Metal Quest Pro is two hours the same, right? We spoke about that in our episode about that.

01:03:20   It's kind of the same experience.

01:03:23   And two hours, I feel like that's the right amount of time. Maybe they would want it to stretch to three so you could guarantee that you see a movie from start to finish.

01:03:32   But if I was working in it, there's no way… I run a bunch of timers. I take a break every hour and a half anyway, so I would want to take it off and charge it up and whatever.

01:03:43   So I don't think having it plugged into a USB-C cable is a big deal, but I was just curious to see how it felt.

01:03:49   We then did something that they called immersive video, Apple immersive video, which was like a sizzle reel of different things that they've shot with a 180-degree camera.

01:04:00   This was so cool. It was like showing me a bunch of experiences. I was in a recording studio of Alicia Keys and she was singing at me.

01:04:12   Was it a 3D video or just a panorama?

01:04:15   Panorama.

01:04:16   Okay.

01:04:17   Then it was using spatial audio. There were some backing singers that started on the right and I could turn and look at the backing singers and they were singing.

01:04:24   And it went to outside environments. I was watching somebody climb a mountain. I was watching these rhinos running along. There were people dancing.

01:04:35   I was sitting above the hoop at a basketball game and experiencing a slam dunk. I was sitting right at the edge of the field of a baseball match and watching a baseball game.

01:04:49   I'm watching that happening and someone hit a ball and someone just missed the catch.

01:04:54   Then I was above the goal at a football match and someone scores a goal and everyone goes, "What?"

01:05:01   This was so cool, man. There were so many of these little – it was just like this sizzle reel of all these different things.

01:05:08   I was on a tightrope, watching a tightrope walker over a canyon walking towards me, locked eyes with me.

01:05:16   You can move your head, right? It's panoramic. You can just look at any part of this.

01:05:21   This is the most "I had an amazing dream" part of your description here, Mike.

01:05:25   I was like, "I was doing this, but also this."

01:05:28   Because the difference here was I've seen all this stuff before, right? I've seen these videos before.

01:05:35   This felt way more closer to me being there because the quality of the image is so good.

01:05:42   Especially the sports stuff. If they manage to pull this off, if they can put these cameras at sporting events, oh, come on.

01:05:52   If you could actually be courtside at a basketball game…

01:05:57   That would be amazing.

01:05:58   Because Apple bought a company years ago called NextVR. This is what NextVR did.

01:06:04   They had VR cameras that they took to sporting events. They bought that company for the technology that they created.

01:06:12   It felt like that's what was capturing these sporting things, the NextVR technology.

01:06:18   I hope that they're able to make this work. They announced this – Disney's all on board, right?

01:06:24   So I expect using the power of ESPN, they will make this stuff work for some sporting events.

01:06:30   But this feels like, yeah, I would pay good money to watch Formula 1 this way.

01:06:39   Oh, right, of course, yes.

01:06:41   Put a camera on a corner where I could watch the cars go by, but could also look up and see a screen so I can watch the rest of the race.

01:06:48   With spatial audio of the cars driving by me, oh man, I would pay good money for that.

01:06:54   That would be so sweet.

01:06:55   Yeah. This was super, super cool.

01:06:57   This part of the presentation, it did this all in one block from Avatar to the immersive video.

01:07:04   And then into this 3D thing called Encounter Dinosaurs.

01:07:08   This was the part that blew me away the most because it highlighted to me what they've got that other people don't have.

01:07:14   Which is the quality of the screens, the quality of the speakers, and the combination of the picture perfect visuals and spatial audio.

01:07:22   Yes. I've always thought of these devices as work first and that will still be a part of it for me.

01:07:29   But as an entertainment device, this thing blows everything else out of the water.

01:07:34   It was next level.

01:07:36   I could not believe how good the video was on this thing because they are so far ahead, so far ahead with how the imagery was presented.

01:07:50   Which then went into the final part of the demo called Encounter Dinosaurs, which is like an app that they've made.

01:07:58   This is the one where I selected the app and it came up text that said Encounter Dinosaurs and the text moved back to right where the wall was in this room.

01:08:07   And there was where the shadow of the words was on the wall.

01:08:11   And then you press start and the wall opens up.

01:08:15   So like it looked like the wall was opening to this imagery.

01:08:21   Down to the app kind of screen ended right at the bottom of the wall before the floor, you know like the corner of where the wall was.

01:08:30   That is where exactly where the image was beginning.

01:08:34   So it just looked like the wall opened up.

01:08:37   And I could see this kind of like a lava rock area and this butterfly flies out, flying around the room.

01:08:45   And they're like, put out your finger. I put out my finger and this butterfly flies in, lands on my finger.

01:08:51   Okay, now they're just showing off.

01:08:54   Yes. And I move my finger around, the butterfly was there and I moved it too quickly and the butterfly flew away because it got scared.

01:09:02   And then I watched this tiny little dinosaur come out of the lava rock and they're like, get up now and walk towards the screen.

01:09:10   So I stand up and I walk towards and I can hear in the far distance the rumbling of something bigger.

01:09:18   And it starts to move in, this little dinosaur runs away and I see this bigger dinosaur coming in and it walks towards me and is looking at me.

01:09:29   And they're like, just put out your hand.

01:09:32   And so like I reach out my hand and this thing walks through and it's now come out of the screen.

01:09:38   And they're like, just try and touch it. And I reach towards it, it tries to bite me. And I flinch.

01:09:45   And I asked them afterwards, does everyone flinch? And they're like, 100% of people flinch at that moment.

01:09:50   Yeah, how can you not?

01:09:53   And then I'm dealing with this dinosaur in my space and I'm hesitant to reaching out to try and touch it.

01:10:00   And it would make that snorting sound at me, you know, like, ah.

01:10:05   And I felt like I could just touch it.

01:10:10   This was one of the great VR experiences that I've had.

01:10:15   This was so reminiscent to me experiencing it for the first time at Facebook all those years ago.

01:10:24   Wow.

01:10:25   It was a, to me, like a defining thing for a jump in this technology.

01:10:31   Because the whole time I'm also able to see the physical room that I'm in.

01:10:36   The screen was like a portal to the world on the wall.

01:10:39   But as I'm moving around, I'm seeing a dinosaur, but I'm also seeing the bookshelf behind it.

01:10:45   So like this was the blending of AR and VR in a way that I've not experienced before.

01:10:50   Because, Gray, I don't think anyone else can do it.

01:10:53   I think they're able to show off that like, you feel like this dinosaur is in the room with you

01:10:58   because it looks like the dinosaur is in the room with you.

01:11:01   We do not need to make you feel like you're in this VR experience, completely immersed in this lava field.

01:11:07   Because we're able to show you this blending of these two things.

01:11:12   It was unbelievable.

01:11:13   The quality of the visuals was so good.

01:11:16   So, so good.

01:11:17   Like it looked like a real dinosaur.

01:11:19   I could see the like texture of its skin.

01:11:22   I could look into its eyes.

01:11:25   And it was also encroaching on my living room space.

01:11:30   This is one of those things.

01:11:32   I will remember that feeling of that dinosaur biting me, or trying to bite me forever.

01:11:39   It was just mind-blowing.

01:11:42   [laughter]

01:11:46   And then they sit me down and they're like, "We're done now."

01:11:49   And I take it off and I was speechless.

01:11:53   I was flabbergasted.

01:11:54   And then they take you out and they're like, "Okay, you can ask questions to this person from the product team."

01:11:59   And I'm like, "I have no questions. I'm not even in the real world."

01:12:02   To put this into perspective, I realized halfway through the conversation,

01:12:06   "Oh, I left my backpack in that room."

01:12:08   Because I just stood up and I'm like, "Oh, okay, I'm going now?"

01:12:12   Like I just completely forgot about my bag.

01:12:15   I just left it in there.

01:12:16   I was on another planet at that moment.

01:12:19   And I'm like, "Oh, I need to try and be like, I need to be a professional here.

01:12:23   I need to sound smart."

01:12:24   And it was like halfway through the conversation.

01:12:26   I'm like, "I'm sorry, I just can't even talk about what I've experienced."

01:12:33   And they're happy about that, of course.

01:12:36   They want me to come out of that being like, "I don't even know what to ask you right now because my brain is so fried."

01:12:43   But in the right way.

01:12:45   Ending on that dinosaur thing was such a crescendo to the experience.

01:12:50   It showed me how they know what they're doing with these experiences, these briefing kind of things.

01:12:56   It was so perfectly paced to start me off with like, "Hey, look, you're looking at these apps in this world.

01:13:04   Hey, you know apps. Here's an apps. You know what photos are. You know what Safari is.

01:13:10   Oh, but what about this 3D video?

01:13:12   And now a dinosaur is going to try and bite your hand off."

01:13:15   It was magical.

01:13:17   Great, they've nailed it. This thing cost $3,500.

01:13:21   If they put out a card machine, I'd buy it. I'm in.

01:13:25   I cannot wait for this thing now.

01:13:28   I'm now in this situation. I've had this incredible experience, but I've now tasted the future.

01:13:33   And I can't shake it.

01:13:36   I know I am biased by having had this experience.

01:13:40   In that my first ever time going to see a keynote, got to see this keynote and I got to experience this product.

01:13:47   I cannot shake the feeling that this might as well be 2007 Macworld.

01:13:55   Here's the iPhone.

01:13:57   I feel like I have experienced something completely different.

01:14:00   People are going to make types of apps that have not existed before because they have this technology.

01:14:07   There will be things that you can do with this device that you can't do on any other device.

01:14:13   And I don't think we've had that really since the iPhone in a compelling way.

01:14:19   Like the iPad, it was bigger iPhone apps.

01:14:23   The Apple Watch, yeah, you could do things and they're interesting, but they're not a new paradigm.

01:14:30   You could make an app that you can have a text field, but you could also create a cave.

01:14:40   You're in a cave while you're writing.

01:14:43   I think announcing this at the WWDC makes so much sense because what Apple have done is they've built the basics.

01:14:49   And I think that's the smart thing here.

01:14:51   I don't feel like they tried to push anyone, me, any developer into any specific box of this is what you should make for this thing.

01:15:01   And I've been speaking to developers.

01:15:03   Apple has had a presentation for developers and they've shown them there are multiple types of experiences you can make.

01:15:09   You can make something that basically just looks like a floating app window,

01:15:12   but you can also freely make any type of fully immersive experience that you want and anywhere in between that.

01:15:20   Like that's what you have available to you with the tool set that they've provided.

01:15:24   You can make your text editor in a window, but you can also make your text editor with this whole VR environment around it that you can create and make it fully immersive.

01:15:34   I feel like we're at the start of something new and I just cannot get over how incredibly fortunate I feel to have not just been here when it was announced,

01:15:49   but to have also been one of the incredibly small amount of people in the world that got to use it.

01:15:58   I feel like I've worked for 15 years to try and have an experience like this.

01:16:05   And the experience that I have had is just one of those things where I could never tell my past self what this could have been like,

01:16:16   because there's just no way that I could have believed it.

01:16:18   believed it. It's unbelievable.

01:16:19   [BLANK_AUDIO]