The Disney Plus and Vivendi’s sports games are coming to Apple Vision Pro

Apple Vision Pro: A Television for Virtual Reality and a TV for 3D Sports Video-to-Visual Game Play (Visiting Apple Watch in VR)

But I have a different theory: it’s a TV. At least at first, the best thing this headset will do is play movies and shows. While Apple has big ideas for a new format for watching things, it will take a while to really catch on. It is possible to fire upstreaming and watch it on a virtual screen. That’s going to be ready right away. For all its potential and Apple’s lofty rhetoric, the Vision Pro is a television — and an extremely Apple-y one at that.

The video also teases that Disney Plus users will be able to use the Vision Pro headset to watch sports games in VR, a feature that prominent Apple leaker Mark Gurman mentioned in his Power On newsletter in April. This is demonstrated in a few ways: the first of which features a regular 2D football game surrounded by useful information in widget-like boxes, such as the score, win probability, and player stats. An example is a 3D view of a basketball game projected onto a coffee table in the user’s lounge, allowing them to see a courtview replay of the match from every angle.

Back in 2015, it was said that Apple had stopped its plans to build a TV set, because of work on the Vision Pro. The reason was obvious, it wanted to ship a high-resolution display and integrate cameras so it could make video calls but couldn’t figure out how to make it compelling and inexpensive enough to win the TV market. Back then, Munster wrote, “We incorrectly assumed that a combination of Siri, FaceTime, a TV app store, and PrimeSense based motion control could be compelling enough as a unique feature set for the device.”

From a purely technical perspective, I had the same experience using the new Apple Vision Pro that most others who have tried it seem to. The screen, field of view, and gesture control are all more natural for a first-generation product than any other headset on the market. The Vision Pro did get a little heavy on my face after a while, and obviously, all we’ve seen so far are controlled demos in a controlled situation, but there’s no doubt this is a remarkable piece of hardware.

We’re a long time away from Vision Pro shipping, and there are many questions to answer in that time. It will be up to the platforms to choose if they want to create new immersive spaces for their apps or just send lightly adapted iPad apps like the Vision Pro. Apple will surely use Apple TV Plus to push that envelope, but in the early days of VisionOS, I don’t think there will be many streamers devoting huge resources to such a niche product.

Generally speaking, people watch the most convenient thing in the most convenient way — which is why you might sometimes find yourself sitting on the couch in front of your beautiful big-screen TV watching YouTube on your phone. The quality bar goes even higher because of not being able to put a headset to your face.

Many of Apple’s other demos felt familiar, too. I saw a video of the NBA game, shot from just above the backboard, a soccer game from atop the goal, and a brief moment of an artist singing in front of a studio audience. The makers of headsets are looking for ways to make content that can only be experienced in virtual and augmented reality.

The whole thing is to go to a virtual theater. It is not a new idea. It’s a staple demo of a lot of headsets. The Meta quest allows you to watch a movie on a big virtual screen in a cozy cabin living room, while Bigscreen built a whole digital cineplex and platforms such as Prime Video and Peacock have their own apps for the virtual reality technology.

One of the first things Apple showed me in my Vision Pro demo was a clip from Avatar: The Way of Water, and to my eyes, the 3D footage looked almost — but not quite — as good as it did in a theater. It works well in the headsets because it is just a simulation of the two screens in front of your eyes. By default, the movie played on a screen floating in front of my face, about three-quarters the size of the wall in front of me. I could move or resize the window, bring it closer to my face, or plant it farther away in the room. The cinema mode in the visionOS app would launch when I hit the button, and it would put the movie on a big screen and black out all of my surroundings.

Which brings up the other, much more interesting question: what is this thing for? Apple has a few answers: it can take super-immersive videos of your kid’s birthday, it can add more monitors to your office setup, and it can stare at a 3D human heart in your living room.

Over the years, Apple has tried to get the iPad adapted for creation, even after shifting the line between iPad and iPad Pro. Apple spent most of its time during the iPad Pro announcement in 2015 demonstrating productivity apps like Office and Photoshop, with a focus on professionals getting work done. I still get a laptop when I want to do work on my iPad because it hasn’t caught up with macOS or Windows for multitasking and creation.

Microsoft was also quick to pledge its support for the Apple Vision Pro headset, enabling Apple to briefly demo Excel, Word, and Teams running on the headset. Adobe Lightroom also works on the Vision Pro and was shown being controlled with the eyes and hand gestures. Having these big names on board will undoubtedly push other developers to eagerly adapt their iPad and iPhone apps for Apple’s new headset.

A few demonstrations did go beyond consumption. The DJAY app for apple vision pro looks to offer some impressive interaction compared to anything Apple demonstrated

It’s possible that Apple has nailed legible text here and made the environment more compelling to use as a mobile workstations, but at $3,499 it’s too much compared to the many Vive headsets that can create virtual giant workspace and TV screens.

The combination of Apple Vision Pro’s capabilities makes it perfect for the office or when you’re working remote, according to a product manager. We didn’t know how powerful these capabilities were or how well they were used to manipulate documents. Instead, Apple showed a 10-second demo of team collaboration on a document from the headset wearer’s point of view. We didn’t understand how you can create a document in a static document. What is it that is perfect for the office about this? We are not really sure yet.

You will need a keyboard and mouse for that exact type of control on the Vision Pro. The developers will need to make adjustments to their apps for this new input. Apple demonstrated the ability to use Bluetooth accessories like its Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard for when you want to type up long emails or fill out information in a spreadsheet. You can even remotely connect to a Mac screen and make it a portable and private 4K display in the headset, running alongside apps built for the Vision Pro headset.

The ability to drag and drop content from Messages was something we saw, but not the making of that 3D content within the headset. There was a brief demo shown using a virtual keyboard to send a message, but not the complex type of “pro” interactions for text, document, and image manipulation using just your voice, hands, and eyes that we’ve come to expect from pro devices with a traditional mouse and keyboard attached.

Those early MacBook Pro days have lost meaning because of the “pro” label. OnePlus, Huawei, Xiaomi, and others started using “pro” monikers on phones before Apple decided to do the same with its iPhone 11 Pro in 2019. At the time, former Verge senior reporter Chaim Gartenberg (damn, I miss that nerd) asked what it even means for a phone to be “pro,” and here we are nearly four years later asking the same about a new headset.

The MacBook Pro was one of Apple’s first Macs to switch to Intel, announced alongside an Intel-powered iMac that was targeted more at consumers with a built-in iSight camera, DVD burning capabilities, and a bundle of digital lifestyle apps. The MacBook Pro was all about justifying the switch to Intel for power and, in particular, performance per watt. Steve Jobs stood onstage and even showed off SPECint benchmarks for CPU integer processing power during the announcement. Apple didn’t use any benchmarks to justify its “pro” label on the Vision Pro.