133: The Jeff Vision Pro Show! 🥽 (with a Helping of Envy from Brett 😎)

Welcome to In the News for February 2nd, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from AppsinLaw.com.

And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhoneJD.

And Brett and I cannot stop laughing because the situation is so ridiculous.

Brett, I'm talking to you from the future, apparently.

I have waited for this day.

This is so great.

We have a special guest today.

We have Vision Pro Jeff.

And then we have real life Jeff.

This is absolutely fantastic, Jeff.

This is better than what I thought it could be.

But obviously, obviously, you have the Apple Vision Pro.

You are wearing it right now.

And this is just really fantastic.

I do.

Okay, so the first thing we're going to talk about is anyone listening to the audio version of this podcast, which is how I prefer to listen to podcasts.

This is the one week that you're going to want to jump on YouTube.

And you're going to want to look at what is it, In the News show on YouTube, because I am talking to Brett using the Zoom app on the Apple Vision Pro, which means that the person that Brett is talking to is the avatar of Jeff Richardson that was created by the Apple Vision Pro.

Brett, everything on this Apple Vision Pro is so futuristic and experimental and barely held together with scotch tape and everything else.

And yet of all the features, there's only one.

There's only one that even Apple calls beta.

And it's this thing called a persona.

And so what it did is I used the Apple Vision Pro to take a picture of my face and it created this avatar, which it is the uncanny valley.

My head has never been bigger.

My forehead has never been bigger.

It looks a little bit like me and it also looks nothing at all like me.

It's just bizarre.

But I will tell you, I've seen enough of these.

That's what it would be.

And a cartoon perhaps.

Okay, I want to hear about this.

There's just so much to say.

So let's just say for this podcast, and we also have a second camera in this podcast, which is my traditional camera where you can see that I'm wearing the Apple Vision Pro headset.

The real life Jeff.

But let me just say that one thing that you're not seeing even when the video is from my end.

So I'm looking at my computer monitor over here and then over here I have this beautiful big screen with your face on it, Brett.

Brett, this is the most cool Zoom call I've ever been on in my life because you look huge.

You are the size of the wall.

Do you remember that?

Do you remember in the late 90s when Steve Jobs came back to Apple and Bill Gates came to do a presentation and he came on that big screen in the background?

It was like Big Brother looking down over it.

This is what you look like to me.

It is the biggest Brett Burney I've ever seen in my life.

And I'm not making fun of you.

It's awesome.

Like this is how I want to do video conferences in the future.

And although we happen to be using Zoom right now, my understanding is that Microsoft Teams works the same way.

So it's a shame that you have to see my sort of cartoonish persona because when I look at you, this is awesome.

Like this is how I want to do video conferences.

So, so cool.

Really, really cool.

It's so bizarre, but it's so cool at the same time.

I mean, I can just see where this is, like you said, the beta aspect of this, right, Jeff?

I mean, it's just going to get better.

It's just going to get better.

It's got to get better because it's right.

But you sound good and it's so weird because even though it's this cartoonish aspect of it, Jeff, it really is mimicking everything you're doing.

I mean, if I didn't know you as well as I knew you, I would talk to the cartoon version of Apple Vision Pro Jeff.

And it would be funny.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I can move my lips and my lips move.

I can smile and it smiles with me.

And you know, even though when I did a full scan, it did not scan me sticking my tongue out.

But if I do so, you know, there's like somehow Apple has created a digital tongue and made it come out.

So it's in my hands too, to a certain degree, you can see my hands sort of bleeding through just a little bit.

And that's interesting, especially because hands are so important to using the Apple Vision Pro.

But again, I don't want to dwell too much on this whole persona thing, even though it is hilarious, because this is the feature that is the most beta.

I mean, let's get back and just talk about the process itself.

You want to start at the beginning, I want to hear because you pre-ordered this two weeks ago, and this morning was your pickup time.

Correct.

And so I had a pickup time this morning at 830, but I decided to go to the store a little early just to check it out.

And you know, back in the day, Brett, you know, back when you like before you could pre-order iPhones, people used to stand in line at Apple stores or AT&T stores or Verizon stores to get an iPhone.

And so I thought there might be a little bit of that at my local Apple store, even though New Orleans is a small community, and there was.

I mean, there wasn't a ton of people, but there was definitely a number of people out there.

One of the people I ran into was Zach Hall of 9to5Mac, who we talk about all the time.

He's a fantastic writer.

And so Zach and I got a chance to talk.

And then there were two.

So first we were just sort of waiting, and then there were two lines outside the Apple store.

There was one for pre-ordered, which was me, and I was first in line.

And then there was one for people who were just trying to demo it, and there was no way to pre-schedule a demo.

So you had to just show up first thing in the morning.

And Zach, although he wasn't buying one, he wanted to demo it so he could write about it.

I'm sure he's going to write about it soon on 9to5Mac.

So he and I were first in line, just sort of walking in there.

And it was a really cool process.

So when I walked in, they said, "I had already pre-ordered it, so if you just want to pick it up and go, you can go.

Or do you want to go through the demo process that we do for people when they're trying to decide?"

And I'm like, "Well, I want to go through the demo, because I wanted to sort of walk you through it."

I will tell you that the demo process was really cool.

However, I have seen enough people talk about the Apple Vision Pro.

Like, if you've seen all the videos, you're not going to be surprised.

When he showed a dinosaur, I knew I was going to see a dinosaur.

When he showed a Lisa Keys, I knew I was going to see it.

So there wasn't much in the sense of surprise.

And also, I was very quickly, because I read about it enough, able to pick up on all the little gestures and stuff.

But it was fun to do.

It was neat to do that.

There were some little mishaps.

Like, for example, they couldn't get my Vision Pro to work.

No, I say mine.

It wasn't mine.

It was a demo unit they were using.

And so they bring out this—it's literally a platter that has this demo unit on it, all nice, it's cleaned and everything else.

And you put it on, and they couldn't get it to work.

They couldn't get it to work.

They brought up the manager, couldn't get it to work.

They eventually brought up Paul.

And Paul was the one who actually flew to Cupertino.

You know, every Apple store in the country had at least one person fly to Cupertino for training.

And good old Paul was the one in New Orleans who did it.

And he actually figured out that the—if you look at the main camera here, you can see the Apple Vision Pro is connected to a battery pack.

And he said that at the very top of the battery pack, there's nothing on it right now.

But he said that if you tap it—let's see if it works right now.

Maybe not because I have it plugged in.

He says, "But if you tap the battery pack, it should have a light come on at the top."

And so he tapped our battery pack.

That is a doorknob.

And so sure enough, somehow the battery had already died on that demo unit.

Okay, I got to pause you right there because—okay, so I'm talking to Vision Pro, Jeff.

You're looking down through the Vision Pro at your battery because you can see the battery in front of you.

So you're looking through the Vision Pro while you're talking to me.

I'm just saying this is so mind-bending, Jeff, in the sense that you can see through it even though I know you're looking at me in Zoom.

But you're looking over to the side now at this battery pack and holding it.

I mean, it's just—I'm trying to wrap my head around how I am interacting with you right now, and it's just great.

And let's pause on that one point.

It is like I totally—I see the entire room around me.

I'm looking at my office.

I'm looking at my desk.

I'm looking at the battery.

I can pick up my AirPods, and I'm looking at my AirPods.

You know, I totally see the room around me except that there just happens to be an entire wall-sized window of Brett Burney.

And if I look to my top right, I'm looking at my text messages because you and I were texting with each other just before we started.

And if I look to my left over here, I see a panel, a window with my settings because you and I were talking about that.

And it's like all these things are around me, and they are so—it's just as if they were in my real world.

I mean, there's no difference.

It's almost bizarre.

But you can see the real world.

That's what I'm trying to get my head around.

I can see the real world.

You're interacting with your desk and everything the way that you normally would.

It's just you have some of these pictures in boxes and everything superimposed on it.

Exactly.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm just trying to wrap my head around that.

This is beautiful.

And it's one of the coolest things about the Vision Pro because you totally lose track of the fact that some of the things that I'm seeing are real, and some of the things I'm seeing are virtual.

And you almost forget which is which.

It's like, you know, if I go like this, I'm going to touch my monitor screen.

But if I go like this, why am I not touching you?

I should be touching your—you know, it's like I feel like you're right here.

It's weird.

It's very bizarre.

Okay.

Okay, we have just cut the podcast and come back again because for some reason on my Apple Vision Pro, the Zoom app was being a little funky with my microphone.

And so I've switched over to the microphone connected to my computer here.

So hello, computer microphone.

But the image is still here, so you can still see my lovely persona.

Yeah.

You know, this is all day one.

This is all as beta as it could possibly get.

But what I was starting to tell you, Brett, was— Day one, it's like zero hour.

I mean, it's just a few hours ago you had it.

Okay.

Please continue.

We're definitely at the zero hours.

So I would encourage folks, as I did this morning, to go to the Apple Store and to do one of these demos because it goes by in about 20, 30 minutes.

It goes by so quick.

I mean, it's in and out.

And they teach you how to use the Vision Pro.

They teach you how to move around windows and how to like use your eyes.

And then they show you some demos, some of which we've already seen shown online before that are very, very fun.

Like a little snippet of a woman doing a high rider, a high wire walk, a snippet of dinosaurs.

But it's all just so much.

I will tell you, though, that when it gets to that 3D content, it's unlike anything you've seen before.

And I'm just going to put a bookmark on that.

And we're going to come back to that in a second.

We'll come back.

Yeah.

So, but then at the very end of the process, I got my Vision Pro.

The one change that I had made was the unit that I got.

I had pre-signed up for a 256 gigabyte.

And I decided, you know what, this is such an expensive unit.

I'm going to hold on to it for such a long time.

And because I know that media consumption is like an important part of this thing, I was like, you know, I'm going to get the 512 just so I end up downloading lots of video or 3D content, whatever.

So we'll see.

Hopefully that was the right decision.

And I'm going to cut in right because I just was going to say I was actually in New York City this morning when you and I were out.

I know.

And so the thing is, I was just a few blocks away from the Apple Cube store.

It's so funny.

You're looking at your computer looking at me, right?

I can look over here too.

I'll look both places.

I know.

No, it's okay.

It's good.

So anyway, I told myself, I'm like, okay, I have to, before I go catch my train to get to the airport, I have to go to the Apple Cube store, Jeff.

And I saw Tim Cook.

Woo.

No, I really didn't.

But that would have been a really cool story.

That would have been a cool story.

Yes.

I walked in there and it showed up just quickly, just to underscore what you just said.

You know, I thought, I didn't know there was going to be a line.

There wasn't a line.

There was a lot of people though, walking out with vision pros.

I mean, a lot of people, I probably easily 60 people just in maybe the span of like eight minutes that I was there, Jeff.

But just quickly, I wanted to say, I did want to get a little demo, but I only had a few minutes.

And so the lady, they were actually going to let me do it right then.

And she's like, do you have 30 minutes?

I'm like, oh no, I don't.

And I just like, can I just put it on?

But they wouldn't let me do that.

Like if I had to get a demo, you had to do it, but they had some slots open even.

So I just wanted to say that would be, it would be great.

And of course I might even do this tomorrow.

I want to go and check all this out after you've been doing this.

Okay.

But now back to your story.

So you got the unit.

Yeah.

I'll also say in terms of walking out of the Apple store with vision pro the, if you go on my main camera over here, the box contains the vision pro is huge.

And there's even like a separate bag that Apple had to make, especially size this box.

It's a huge, huge box.

So it's, it's easy to see people walking out of stores, carrying them because they are just so, so big.

But anyway, that was it.

So I, I, I got the, I swapped it out for the one with the extra memory and I added on Apple care just to be safe.

And then came back to my office and sure enough, my prescription lenses that I had preordered were already here at my office when I got here.

So that was great.

So I was able to pop them in.

And I will tell you, I mean, I, I I've been at my office since this morning and I have pretty much been wearing the Apple vision pros all day long and it's been totally fine.

I mean, it's a coming in and just saying hello.

No, my door, my door has been closed because I know that I looked ridiculous and I was, I was trying too many things out and you know, I'm, I will probably have the confidence to use this with my door open in the future, but for today, not so much as I was figuring things out.

But I will say that in terms of you know, the weight, which is one of the things I heard people talk about because it does have a weight to it.

I mean, I can definitely, I can definitely feel that I'm wearing something, but I'm using the, the, the regular strap, the solo knit strap.

And I know I've heard people say that if it starts to get too heavy, the dual loop strap, which goes over your head would be even better.

And I I'll try it out this week.

I see no reason to use it.

I have had zero problem using this thing all day.

If anything is awkward, it's just that this little cord comes out from the side of you, which is a little bit of a pain.

But and since I've been using it all day, I have had my battery just sitting in front of me in the desk and then I just have a USB-C cord plugged into the battery.

So it's been plugged in all day long and I've been using it all day long.

I just, I, you know, I felt like on the weight thing just quickly, I don't know yet, but I'm just guessing Jeff that once you start getting literally immersed in the spatial aspect, like I can just imagine I'm not even going to feel it anymore.

Like I'm not going to feel anything just because I'm so I'm so interacting with the world and the virtual side as well as the physical side.

Anyway, that's just my impression that it would happen.

So you totally get surprised me.

You totally get caught up in it.

And I mean, I will be sitting there doing some stuff and then about an hour later, I'm like, you know what?

I've had this thing strapped to my head for an hour.

Shouldn't I have noticed it or should I have some fatigue?

But it's actually been totally fine.

I really haven't noticed it.

And on that note, quickly, like those prescription lenses, obviously they seem fine.

You haven't mentioned anything about like being able to read something or interact with anything because of the vision aspect that all went over just fine.

It sounds like.

It's all been good.

Now I will say this, that as much as I was telling you that when I did the demo, some of it seemed like it wasn't really anything all that exciting or new because I had read so much online.

And so I already knew, for example, that you're going to like look underneath the window and there's a bar there.

And then when I look at it, the bar is sort of it becomes wider.

And I hold down the bar, which we're doing right now.

Right now I'm moving the zoom window up and down that you're on.

So I had I had understood how it worked from before.

But I will tell you this.

Just understanding the system doesn't take long at all.

A couple of simple instructions and you'll understand how it works.

But getting used to it is something that's going to take me a while.

And you know what?

It reminds me of Brett.

It's been a long time since I've done this, but we have all had that point in our life where you were like showing your grandmother how to use her first computer.

And when you showed her how to use a mouse, you know, she's pushing it and the cursor is going the wrong way because she doesn't realize that the cord is to the left instead of the top.

You know, it's those sorts of things.

It's just awkward.

And you're like, OK, grandma, let me show you this again.

This is how it works.

I feel like that's where I am right now.

I texted my brother earlier this morning.

He was asking about it.

I'm like, I feel like I'm a baby again because there's all of these things that I just need to learn to be comfortable with.

And just to give you one example is, you know, the most basic part of any computer.

I just switched to something by mistake here that just shows you what I'm talking about.

But OK, and I've got to close.

There you go.

Good for me.

I successfully closed something I did not want to see.

You got it.

The.

You can open and close windows and you can move things around and you know, but instead of using a mouse or the touch screen like the iPad or the iPhone to select things, you have to look at things and it's just part of my it's just part of who I am.

It's just part of being a person that if I want to, if I'm looking on something on the left side of the screen and I want to turn and see something on the right side, I turn like my whole body.

Right.

Because that's just sort of what you do.

But the reality is I should be.

It's more precise if I keep my head still and just move my eyes, because that's really what the cursor is moving with is my eyes.

And so I've had to learn, you know, use your eyes more.

You can use your head a little bit.

It's fine to do it a little bit, but use your eyes more than your head.

That's just something new that I had never I had never tried before.

And then the other thing that's it becomes your cursor, right?

And then you're using the pinching or putting your thumb and forefinger together, putting my two fingers together and when I pinch it selects it.

And the other thing that's interesting is, you know, sometimes my hands are up as I'm selecting things, but usually they're just down by my sides.

Sometimes there's so much to my sides that I don't even realize that there's cameras on the bottom of the Vision Pro, which are seeing my my hands.

And sometimes I don't even realize that my hand is out of the camera view.

So I'll just be like looking at a document and scrolling and suddenly it's not scrolling anymore.

And I'm like, oh, it's because my hand, you know, it's it's out of the camera.

So it's you know, my point is just the interface.

It's not that it's complicated, but because it is so different, it's it there's a learning curve there.

So I'm sure that just like the first time you use an iPhone or an iPad or anything else, I'm sure that in a week or two, it's just going to be old hat.

But but certainly for today, I sort of again, I feel like I have training wheels on and I'm sort of starting all over again.

So one of the things I've got so many questions, of course, one of the things that I was so excited to hear about is we know that there is a dinosaur coming out of a wall.

We know that Alicia Keys, you know, all of the stuff that was already planned.

Have you had a chance, though, to either look at something that you selected or even better, maybe some of your own video or something of the family or so, Jeff?

Yeah, that's it.

That's an excellent question.

Let's talk about 3D.

OK, OK, let's talk about 3D.

All of us feel like we know what 3D is, because when you were a little kid, you had the red and the red and the red and green glasses, red and blue glasses.

And we've all been to a 3D movie where the glasses sort of like or like sunglasses, you know, because it's darker.

But you know, it's pretty cool effect.

OK, prepare to be blown away.

There's no word.

This is a podcast.

And so I should be I should be speaking.

I should be telling you something.

I am having trouble finding the words to describe the experience because it's just so it's just it's just so amazing.

But they're in there.

They're in different levels.

So to sort of start, OK, the if you watch a traditional so I have I have if you watch a traditional 3D movie, they are really, really, really good.

So I, for example, I started to watch a minute or two of the new Avatar movie because I know that James Cameron really did a good job of shooting it in 3D and stuff like that.

And I also watched a minute or two of the Disney Pixar film, the one that has the we don't talk about it's the Encarno or whatever it was the.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That reason.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But because those are both reading and those those are it's it's what you would expect.

It's like you're going to a movie theater and it's 3D and you can sort of see things that are in three dimensional, except that it's better than any movie theater you've ever seen before in your life because it's brighter and it's more lifelike.

But it's still restrained to a rectangle like the rectangle screen of a movie theater.

And if something's in the middle, of course, it seems like it's coming out at you.

But it's basically traditional 3D just better than you've ever seen it before.

So that that's that's one level.

Another level is you have the spatial videos that you record.

And I have recorded a number of those since we had the ability to do so with the iPhone 15 Pro.

When did that get turned on, Brett?

Just a couple months ago, right?

Right.

I've looked at those videos, and they from a from a size standpoint, they're about the same size.

You could turn on something called immersive that makes them a big little bit bigger.

But there's something about the fact that you're seeing people that you know, and right.

It's like they're there.

I mean, it's it's it's really I was watching my kids opening up Christmas presents.

And my kids are teenagers.

They're not cute like they used to be when they were, you know, four years old.

But but just it was it was really impressive.

And it was unlike, I'm like, we need a different word to describe this.

Because this is not a traditional home video.

This is something else.

I guess you could say it's a 3D video.

But when we say 3D video, we all think we know what this is.

This is something else.

It's it's a whole nother level.

And it's got that emotional nature to it.

And it's it's.

Yeah, another thing that I'll say, although this is not technically 3D, you know, we've all been taking panoramic pictures with our iPhones for many years now.

Right.

I wish I could go back and take more of them.

Because, you know, many years ago, I was in Hawaii.

And I think I took like six of them.

I wish I had taken 600 of them.

Because when you're in the photos app, and when you look in a photo at panorama, you know, at first, it sort of starts up just like you're looking at on your iPad.

And then you press a button.

And suddenly it is all around you.

And everywhere you look up and down, and it's immersive.

And it's like you were standing there when you originally took the photo.

And it's it's a way of looking at a photo that I've never appreciated before.

I mean, before now, I've always thought that that that those panoramic photos were a little bit of a gimmick.

I mean, it's a cool way to get.

Yeah, you know, the only reason I would take it before is I want to get I want to get a whole bunch of stuff that's not going to fit in the frame.

So I'll take like a panorama.

But what I now understand is, I need to be taking panorama images, whenever I'm in a location where everywhere I look, there's something cool to see.

That's that's what you want.

Because when you watch them, when you see them in the in the Vision Pro, yeah, it's it's totally immersive.

And then, you know, the probably the ultimate level of all of this stuff is something that Apple has called immersive, immersive videos.

And I mentioned that when you do the demo, you see like little 20 second snippets of it.

So now that I have the Vision Pro, I have or something.

Yeah, right.

I haven't even seen the birthday party one yet.

I wonder if there's a place to download that.

But if you go to the Apple TV Plus app on the Vision Pro, they have a section of immersive videos.

And right now there's only like six of them.

There is the Alicia Keys recording, there is the first episode of a new series of like people doing adventurous stuff.

And the first episode is this woman who puts a rope between two mountains and walks across it, you know, like a tightrope.

But it's a full episode.

And these things, because they are recorded by Apple using cameras that I'm sure cost, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And they're so brightly lit.

And the audio is so perfect.

It is that that's the epitome.

And I'm speechless.

It's like you're at a loss for words.

That's so weird.

There's a there's a line.

There's a line that I quoted earlier this week from John Gruber in his review for Daring Fireball that he said that the three there are aspects of the 3D in a Vision Pro that are better than the things that people wait in line Disney World for hours to go see.

And that's the way I feel about it.

When you watch it, it's the parts of the video where the woman's face is close to you.

I have never felt closer to a person before in my life.

I mean, it's almost too intimate.

It's like, you know, my goodness.

And when you're when you're watching her walk across the canyon, and you have a perspective from like a drone that was above her, right?

There are no words.

It's it's it's just incredible.

And I know it's a trick.

And so I am concerned that like over six months, maybe it'll be like, oh, another one of those things, blah, blah, blah.

But I hope right, because the experience is is it's just unbelievable.

And to dial it back one level, my home videos are nowhere as cool as what Apple is shooting.

But to be able to preserve special moments in your life in a way that are just it's it's a whole new way to experience it.

It really it's like an emotional experience.

So this aspect of the Vision Pro, I have no words.

I mean, Apple really, I can only imagine the people at Apple that developed this.

They looked at each other and knew, oh, my goodness, we have something really special here.

And they do.

And now the masses can start to use it.

Wow.

I'm not sharing my screen like we normally do to share your post because I wanted to have all of the Jeff Richardson's here.

Yeah.

But one of the that that cover story that you link to on Vanity Fair, he just I when you just said that about about going for it.

Yeah.

First of all, it's the first picture of Tim Cook in a Vision Pro, which is hilarious in my in and of itself.

But at the end, Jeff, I know you read this like when you were just talking about that experience, he said I'm sorry.

Who was the the gentleman built in?

Nick built in.

He said the biggest problem with the Apple Vision Pro is the fact that once you take it off and you go back to your normal computer, it's just there's no comparison.

Like everything feels flat is I think is the way he put it.

Right.

And so when you were just describing that, I that just came to mind because that's an excellent article we can talk about if we if we need to.

But just at the very end, it's you know, he said it's not the weight.

It's not the fact you got to get glasses.

Those are all issues, you know, not the battery pack, even though that's not the most fun.

But he's like the biggest issue that Apple has to come up has to overcome here is the fact that everything else feels flat.

Now when you go back to your normal computer, you just can't interact it in the same way.

And I don't know if that means that I don't want to have a vision.

I don't want to have to deal with that.

I don't want to disappoint myself all the time.

But it sounds like you're you're getting sucked into that vortex a little bit.

Yeah.

I will tell you that, you know, even for anyone listening that doesn't plan to get a vision pro, if you are anywhere close to an Apple store, do the demo, because even though the the you know, the actual time that you have to see these 3D experiences that I'm telling you about might only be about five minutes of the demo.

They are amazing.

And you'll get a taste of it.

You will you will get a taste of what it and, you know, give give yourself a free taste of what this world is like.

But then even if you don't have it yet, you know, start taking panoramic photos.

And if you have an iPhone 14 or 15 pro where you can take videos that are spatial videos, you know, it's unfortunate because spatial videos are only 1080p.

So on a computer or on a TV, they're not going to look as good as 4K videos.

But in the but and hopefully Apple will fix that in the future.

And I'm sure perhaps the next version of the iPhone that comes out this fall will take spatial video and 4K.

That's at least one of my hopes that they do.

So for now, I'm taking a little bit less quality video, but I'm having it in a state that's going to be this 3D immersive memory in the future, which is just something else.

So yeah, OK, so that's that's one whole category of this whole vision pro is the 3D.

Yeah, the 3D entertainment.

And I'll also tell you next.

Yeah, that, you know, just to finish that up, I did in the Disney app, you know, you can choose your surroundings.

So even though right now I can just see my office just as I'm sitting in here, you can like in the Disney app, you can choose to be like in the movie theater.

And it's this gorgeous movie theater where you have the best seat in the house and it's got like a Disney above the stage.

And then you start watching the movie and it's totally cool.

I mean, if you're just sitting there on your couch watching TV by yourself, why not be in this amazing environment?

It's really cool.

So that stuff is all amazing.

This entertainment video photos.

I mean, just my regular photos.

I mean, I shouldn't do little those to be able to see your photos on a huge like as big of a wall.

You know, wouldn't it be cool if you could see your photos on a screen, the biggest your wall, of course it would be, but a screen as big as your wall would cost a hundred thousand dollars.

So we can't have that, but you can have it with the vision pro for the low, low price of $3,500 because you can make the screens.

So I mean anything, photos or videos or movies or TV shows, just, just outstanding apps.

So the app story is interesting because some there are some apps, I think there's supposed to be 600 of them total right now that are for the vision pro, but that's obviously just starting.

And then there's some iPad apps that work.

And then there are some apps that just don't exist at all.

And so let me talk about some good and bad.

So for example I immediately had to put one password on here because I was logging into all bunch of new stuff.

And so, you know, this is like any device you want to get your password manager first that you have your password and stuff like that.

But it's still a little cumbersome.

I will say that using a vision pro with anything involving documents or pasting things or typing things, you really want to have a keyboard.

And so right here in my office, you know, I have my, my Bluetooth keyboard that I made it so that one of my keys, my middle key will now connect it cause I can have it connected to three different Bluetooth devices.

So now my left one is my iPad.

My right one is my PC and my middle one is the vision pro and that works great.

But I will tell you, Brett, I really wish I had a wireless mouse with me.

I don't have one here in my office, but that would have been nice too because when you're moving around and doing stuff, yes, you can look at the world and you can look with your eyes and you can pinch with your fingers.

But you know, I, this, this I can describe to you, you know how sometimes when you're trying to get work done with an iPad, it's like I can do this, but it would just be so much easier if I had a keyboard and a mouse.

You know that, right?

You know that feeling.

You really feel it on the vision pro.

There are some things that you're doing like watching movies that you don't really care about that.

It's all fine.

But when it comes to actually moving stuff around and typing things and putting your password in and everything else like that, you know, then it really is nice to have.

So I definitely think it's worthwhile.

You can use any Bluetooth keyboard, any Bluetooth mouse.

I just don't, don't happen to have one.

I think I have a Bluetooth trackpad at home I'm going to have to find and try out tonight.

But but that, that, that would, that would have been nice for input.

But but then there's things that are missing.

Like for example, this afternoon, you know, I did try to get some billable work done today in my office today.

And so I was reading through some appellate briefs and I had some of them on Dropbox, the vision pro, right?

I was, well, this is the thing I was going to, but I try to use Dropbox and there's no Dropbox app.

I'm like, Oh, so I'm like, well, maybe I can get access to Dropbox through the files app.

No, that didn't work either.

And then I was like, well, Hey, if I was using my iPad, I would be reading these docs in PDF expert, you know, my PDF app.

So sure enough, I could download PDF expert.

It's the iPad version of the app, but it works perfectly fine in the vision pro.

And then once I was within PDF expert and I had myself logged into my account and everything like that, I could connect to Dropbox instead of, you know, how, when you connect Dropbox to an app, normally on my iPad, it would bring me into the Dropbox app and I would authenticate and then go back here.

What it did is it brought me to the Dropbox website and I authenticated myself and then went back to that.

And then suddenly I had access to all my Dropbox files within PDF expert.

I'm like, Oh, this is great.

So then I made a big screen of PDF expert that just, just like you are right now for me was as big as a wall.

And I had the full document there and I was just reading it.

And Brett, this is the way to read documents.

I mean, it was glorious.

It's just this big document that I'm just scrolling through.

Now, again, it would have been better if I had a Bluetooth mouse and I could have scrolled, you know, just by doing that.

Scrolling by like pinching your finger and thumb together.

Let's flick.

Yeah.

The way that they teach it to you at the Apple store is they say that when you scroll, you pinch together and pretend that there is a string in your hand and you're moving your fingers up the string and then let go.

And that's a perfect description of it that just scroll through a long document or through a Safari webpage or something like that.

You know, pretend like you're pinching the string and just move on up.

And it, you know, it does, it does get a little bit tiresome on your arm after a while.

So that's why I wish I had had like a Bluetooth controller to do it with, but having the words of the document so big.

And then if I wanted to highlight something, I just turned on my highlighter and selected and you know, it wasn't as precise as my pencil would have been, but, um, or even a cursor on a computer, but it worked.

I was able to highlight stuff.

Okay.

Yeah.

But okay.

On the iPad, if I want to highlight, I take my Apple pencil or I'll take my finger and do it.

So how did you highlight specifically?

I went to the top of PDF expert and turned on the highlighter tool.

Right.

And then I selected text.

I, I, I started by pinching and then went across and then got to the end of the sentence and let go and it was highlighted.

Um, so it, it does, it, it, it sort of is like, I didn't even look up how to do it.

I just did it the way that I thought intuitively it would work.

Okay.

And it worked there.

I'm going to stop because this is like maybe the fourth time that this thought has come to me, Jeff, in the sense that you've talked about some of the interaction capabilities and the interface and stuff, but the fact like right there that you just were able to do it, you didn't even have to look it up and it worked.

I mean, first of all, that's amazing feats of engineering on the Apple engineers themselves, right?

That they were able to deliver a pro.

Yeah, of course there's always going to be some of these issues, but you know, that's what's always fascinated us with the iPad.

You can give it to a two year old or 102 year old.

Right.

And they basically will be able to pick up on it just because it makes sense.

And I just believe a lot of that history and experience has gone into this interface and being able to work with it that way.

And just the fact that, again, I know, I know you, so obviously you, you would have a guess of how this is, how we do it, but just the fact that you are already so interacting with all of this stuff and yeah, it may get a little tiring after a while from the scrolling and everything.

But to me, those are things that are just going to be polished over the next several, you know, several months and a couple of years or so, just like anything else that we've done with the iPhone or the iPad, just looking back on the history.

And that just excites me even more on some of them.

Now, and then to go to the next level, since I'm in this, you know, virtual environment, although as big as my document was, you know, just as big as the wall in front of me, I could turn to my left and I have a place for more stuff over here and I can turn to my right.

And so what I was doing is I was like opening up GoodNotes, which is another app that is works in the iPad mode.

And so I had some, I didn't take notes.

I should have tried doing that.

I haven't done that yet, but I had GoodNotes to the right and I had PDF expert in front of me and I had my messages at the top, right, because you and I have been texting with each other today because you were, you know, we were both moving around doing a million things.

And it's, you know, much like on a computer, you have different windows in different places and they often overlap.

Here you have like this endless canvas.

I mean, I guess in theory I could put stuff behind me if I wanted to, but I haven't done that yet.

It's really, really, really nice to just use your entire, you know, 360 world around you, or at least 180 world around you.

That's really, really cool. - I'm so excited.

And frankly, again, back to Nick, Nick Bilton's comment, the way I do this now and the way that you've been doing it is we have multiple monitors, right?

I have three monitors, but just the fact that I have to like, say, I want this window over on this monitor and this here and I have to resize it.

The fact that what you're describing right now, Jeff, that I can have all of these apps in such a big, huge, like kind of a, like a spherical almost world, I feel like. - Yeah. - And I can have it all around me.

That is just so exciting to me because I love having multiple components around.

And I do that in a flat world now with monitors to Nick Bilton's point.

And the fact that's why that was so descriptive to me, because now that you can look around and have multiple things around and just be able to glance up to what you need, that is incredible. - Yeah.

And I think we talked about this on last week's episode that like right now before the Vision Pro, I have two monitors on my computer and I have my iPad screen and I have my standby screen on my iPhone.

So I already had four different screens.

Now I can have, you know, eight different screens before I run out of space, I guess, or infinite screens really almost.

And but it's that same idea.

So if you're already used to working with multiple monitors and an iPad too, then you have a sense of what I'm talking about.

It's just really nice because if you want your iPad to suddenly be smaller, you could just make it smaller.

And if you want it to be really big, you could just stretch it, make it really big.

That's something you can't do with objects in the real world.

So, so cool.

Now there have been some problems for trying to get some work done.

And for me, a big problem has been the fact that I work for a company, like many people work for larger companies that use mobile device management.

I mentioned this in my post today.

And so right now I can't use mail, contacts, calendar on my Vision Pro because I have to have the MDM stuff.

And again, I'm not complaining.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm using the device on the first day it's available.

I'm sure this is going to all be worked out at some point in the future.

Because Tim Cook in that article that you just mentioned, he specifically said that he wanted to get Vision Pros into companies and companies have all these corporate security policies.

So, you know, someone at Apple, I'm sure is going to address this at some point soon, but it's just a little limiting for now that what I would love to have is my email.

I mean, I can use other emails.

I can use my iCloud email account, my Gmail email account.

I'm not in my personal email, but I can't have my work stuff.

And even though I mentioned to you that my messages is up on my top right here, which is so bizarre, Brett, it's just so bizarre that I'm looking up at my messages and the top right.

Yeah.

But when I'm doing it, for example, because my contacts are not on Apple Vision Pro, where you and I have been texting each other, it doesn't have your name.

It has your phone number.

So I can see your area code and stuff like that.

But because my contacts are not loaded in the Apple Vision Pro, it's not associating your phone number with the name and doing all that stuff.

So but again, these are just first day jitters and they will eventually get worked out over time.

But when it comes to is the Apple Vision Pro something that you could use to get work done?

Oh my God, yes.

Oh my God, yes.

I mean, it's definitely got some trade-offs.

Some things are better than a computer.

Some things are worse than a computer.

But if you've ever been in a situation where you've traveled and you have your iPad and that's all you have with me with you, you know that you can get work done.

Sometimes you wish that you had a bigger monitor or something like that.

And it's the same thing here.

If all you had was your Apple Vision Pro when you're just sitting in the corner of your house or something like that, you could totally.

It'd be nice to have the keyboard, the mouse with you.

But hook up that keyboard and mouse and you can have your screen, your screen, your screen.

I used Microsoft.

I did open up Microsoft Word.

You know, it works.

You know, things it's got the basics there for sure.

And with the multiple screens and stuff.

So you know, when it comes to working in this sort of spatial computing environment, it's totally early days.

Many things don't work yet, but you can totally see what's coming in the future.

And then when it comes for the entertainment stuff and the 3D and the videos, this is, this is, you know, unlike the spatial computing, which is day one, that stuff is really fully developed and amazing, amazing, amazing.

So I've just been watching you and observing you, both the Vision Pro, Jeff, and the real life Jeff.

And, you know, as, as much as you have been just right, you know, gesturing and moving your arms around, you still seem like, I mean, we're almost at this for like 50 minutes and I haven't seen the Vision Pro move on your face.

Like it feels like it's snug.

You haven't complained about anything.

It's really great.

It doesn't seem like it's inhibiting you in any way.

Like from a physical component there, it really just seems like they hit a pretty good home run.

I mean, do we wish it was smaller?

Yeah, I do.

And, you know, one day, is it going to be like the glasses that I have on my face?

I do believe that it will be, but it's just pretty amazing that it's this good now.

Now, again, I know it's first day, you know, first few hours, but, you know, even then, even within 30 minutes or so, I would anticipate that you could maybe see some issues, but you just seem like you're doing great all the time that we've been talking.

And I mean, to underscore that, I really do feel like I'm using something from the future bread.

I mean, I said this at the beginning of the podcast, but as I'm looking at you on this zoom screen and you are so huge, no, admittedly, we did have a zoom hiccup before.

And so we switched the audio.

So the world's not perfect yet, but this is the best teleconference experience.

This call right here is the best teleconference experience I've ever had in my entire life, notwithstanding our audio hiccups, because you're on this huge screen and you look crisp and clear and perfect.

And it's a plus.

I can still see the world around me, even though you were big and it's, and you sound great and it's just, it's, so this is the stuff that just makes me so excited that, you know, there is absolutely something here and it's going to only get better over time.

You've been saying that all along, Jeff and I, you know, I, I've trusted you because I know you, but there's been something in the back of my mind.

It's like, well, we'll see, you know, it could be.

It could be, you know, a spark that, you know, dies off after a while.

It may be, but I don't, I don't think so.

Just hearing you and seeing, and the fact that you, you know, your, your, your experience has been corroborated by so many other people already that we have seen, you know, and all knowing of course, that this is going to be, you know, version one of this and it's just going to continue to get better.

It also occurs to me, there's going to be so much more, there's going to be quite a bit that they can improve even just from a pure software component, right?

Just like they have with the Apple watch.

They made so great improvements on that even before maybe they had to like change to a different hardware component or something.

Like obviously we know this is version one from a physical perspective, but it's also version one from a software perspective, right?

And just some of these things, the interactions components on this, I think are just going to continue to get better.

You know, even from like the keyboard you're talking about, just, it blows my mind again.

It's like, yeah, we just connect a Bluetooth keyboard or Bluetooth mouse.

But one day just the fact that this can be happening, it's just going to be one of those like like virtual light keyboards, right?

That would probably be shown onto a desk and you'll just use that as opposed to having to lug around a physical keyboard.

Just I don't know.

I'm starting, I told you, I think a week or two ago that I'm on the Jeff Richardson train now of like being on excitement and just hearing you talk about this on the other end of it now.

And yeah, let's just say, I mean, to approach the elephant in the room though, you know, if you could see from the camera from my, from my computer, you know, I've got this bizarre looking ski goggle thing on my face and you know, I know that there's tons of people out there in the world.

They're going to be like, I'm never going to wear something like that on my face.

You look ridiculous.

And I totally understand that.

And if I was in like an open work environment prep where there were people working on other sides of me now, it's tough to say, cause I could see them completely.

But like if they looked at me, it would sort of look weird.

You know, that's one of these things that's, there's going to have to get an acceptance factor that that's going to come over.

You know, maybe it'll come over time or maybe some people will just all wait, you know, I don't know.

Those are the things that that's all, you know, side on norms and everything like that.

Now, right.

Apple knows just like you said, they've got to get it into the wild because they're going to be able to get so much more feedback from this.

And speaking of which, you know, that story again, we just keep referencing it from Vanity Fair, but it was a great one.

How many years ago was it that he talked about the story where Tim Cook went into the, you know, the black ops building of wherever that was, you know, it's like a bat cave somewhere in Cupertino to where, you know, he put on this gargantuan thing on his head.

Right.

It wasn't like six, seven years ago.

I think it was seven years ago.

Yeah.

So they've worked on it a long time.

Yeah.

That they've been talking about this, you know, but, but just that interaction.

And I think in somewhere in the, in the comments there that Tim Cook even knew then that, okay, yeah, this we're onto something, but knowing of course that was the one that, you know, Scotch tape and duct tape were kind of holding things together, but look how far we have come just in these years.

And I think it would be absolutely safe to say Jeff, that Apple is not going to have one iota of an issue selling every single one of these that they've made.

The number of people that I saw today walking out of the store, like that I knew were not like journalists or some of them, you know, I know I don't want to place judgment, but some of them I was looking at, like, you know, they weren't, they weren't, you know, getting into their Ferrari coming out of the store.

I mean, there are so many people that are already excited about this development, this product that I don't know that I guess it's almost like the more quote, you know, common man.

I'm a little more commoner, so I don't have mine yet, but just to understand what this could mean.

And like you have been saying now for several weeks, this is just the beginning of something that's even going to take us into, you know, kind of skyrocket us into another echelon of the computing and being able to interact with it.

I think it's just, it's just amazing.

And I'll just quickly say, even to where I have always told people the iPad allowed you to physically touch and interact with digital information, you know, in a way that we had some of that before, but it wasn't great.

And in this, it just seems like this is a way that we are again, another level of interacting with digital information that I couldn't even be comprehended of, I don't think other than, you know, maybe on Star Trek episodes or something.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, this is good, man.

I mean, what else do we talk about now?

This is great.

I knew I wanted to hear all about your experience and everything going on when you were there at your store in New Orleans, Jeff, how many others were there picking them up?

I know you said you and Zach Hall walked in.

Were there other people there?

There were quite a few there.

And in fact, there was another guy there who he had purchased it.

And he brought his wife because she wanted to get her own inserts that were, you know, modeled for her face that so that they could share the unit between the two of them and put two different inserts.

And that's actually something that in this first generation of it, it's not great for sharing with people because like, it really, the Vision Pro assumes that there's just gonna be one person using it.

And there is a mode that you can let somebody else try it on.

It's restricted as to what they can access, you can control that, like what you give them access to.

And then every time they put it on again, they have to recalibrate it from the eyes.

You can't save like, you know, this is my wife's eye settings, just like put those eye settings back on the next time she puts it on.

But you know, that'll probably change.

You know, it reminds me of that for many years, people were talking about how like the iPhone and the iPad, you know, didn't have multi user modes.

And that was fine.

But I don't know, there's things to be worked out in the future like that.

But there were definitely, you know, a lot of people there that were getting their units and it was just a little bit little old New Orleans.

So yeah.

All right, last couple of minutes here.

I'm going to share my screen, which we haven't done yet.

But I want to show everybody that Vanity Fair article.

And then I think you've got a tip that I want you to share with everybody.

And as we close out here, so here, just verify you can see my screen, see your screen, which I'm assuming it's going to be huge on your Pro, which is fine.

But now look at that.

You look just like Tim Cook in this Vanity Fair article, Jeff, just like Tim Cook.

You can barely tell us apart.

Yes, this is this is Tim Cook's office, I presume.

Right.

This is where Tim went and interviewed him.

And I remember we talked about this a few weeks ago at one of the episodes that were like, it's funny, we've never we've heard all of the Apple executives talk about the Apple Vision Pro, but we've never seen any of them actually wear the Apple Vision Pro.

And so that was why this was funny when I pulled this up today that you linked to.

It's like, wait a minute, that's Tim Cook on the cover of Vanity Fair or the cover, it says here with the Apple Vision Pro.

And he's even pinching it here in the side there, which is just great.

Anyway, this is a great article, like you said in your post today.

This is one of the best that I've seen.

And, you know, just from a comprehensive standpoint, and of course, Nick Bilton is very well respected and that's great.

A couple of other things quickly that you that you announced or linked to was, you know, like you said, how many new apps were built for the Vision Pro.

I just I can't imagine that won't continue to grow and grow and grow.

It's almost like, man, if you're not on the Apple Vision Pro at some point, you're you know, you're gonna you're gonna be put shunted over to the side here.

Let me see here.

I've got a couple of pictures quickly that I took this morning.

That's really cool.

Apple Cube.

And I don't know why the the the the apple in the cube was not yellow.

It's just the way that the picture but you can see as I walked up, it had the Vision Pro outline on the outside.

And by the way, here, I don't know if you can see let me zoom in.

You see this gentleman out here, he was getting a picture taken, holding two bags.

He had two of them.

And he's like getting his picture taken outside the Apple Cube.

But inside, there was people everywhere just trying these on like every I mean, they, you know, easily had to have probably 30 or 40 of these Vision Pros there.

And you can see people have their bags, and they're trying them out right there.

And I was walking around just taking pictures.

You can see this gentleman's like, it was funny because there was so many people just pinching the air.

Yeah, pinching up in the air everywhere they went, which I just thought was great.

But this is they had the whole setup.

Everybody was on couches sitting around, and really cool on that.

Alright, so I just had to share Oh, wait a minute.

I got a couple of pictures from you this morning.

There you are.

There's the Apple Store.

Right?

Yeah, that's that call right there.

I think you had another one here.

There you are.

You've got it on outside of your store there today.

That's just really cool.

What a nice store that is there to a new world.

Oh, it's a beautiful store.

They made it much bigger.

They doubled the size of the New Orleans store within the past.

I don't know, past year or so really nice.

All right, give us a tip my friend to close this out today.

I got nothing.

Yeah, I got questions and envy right now.

Give us a tip quickly or something that you want to notice is that when I first put on the Apple Vision Pro, you go through this little settings thing and you you know, you look at dots on the screen and you pinch on dots.

And it tries to make it sort of calibrated for your eyes.

So that if you look at this particular spot in space, it'll be very precise on that.

And one of the things that I noticed is during the day today, it seemed like as I started to get better and better, and I believe we I still have a long way to go that there were times when I was looking at I thought I was looking at something very specific, but my quote unquote cursor, there was no actual cursor on the screen.

But like, I had to sort of look a little to the side of it.

It wasn't perfect, it wasn't perfect.

And so one of the things that I learned is the settings, if you go to that picture that I sent you that, you know, there is a settings app on the Vision Pro, just like on the iPad or the iPhone.

And when you bring up the settings app, which you're looking at against my beautiful office wall here, there's something called eyes and hands.

That's something we've never seen before in the settings app.

And at the very top of it, there was a set for redo the eye setup for your prescription lenses.

And so what it did is after I had been using the Vision Pro for a couple of hours, I then redid the whole setup.

It took no time at all, like two minutes.

And once I take two minutes to do that, and at this point, you know, some of the initial excitement is gone, and I understand how things work a little bit more.

I was very precise at looking at the dots and clicking in when I was looking exactly at them.

And I noticed as soon as I did that, that everything was better.

So I was like, Oh, well, that's good to know that, you know, recalibrating it after I had sort of gotten used to this spatial vision world, things were better.

So if you if anyone listening to this, if you get an Apple Vision Pro, go ahead and follow the directions, get it set up.

And then, you know, maybe at the end of the day, you might just want to recalibrate it to do that.

I will also tell you that you can recalibrate your persona.

And I tried to do it four different times to see if I would look any better.

And every single time, I think they look totally ridiculous.

So this is this is as good of a good of a digital persona as I was able to create in the app.

But anyway, it was nice.

You can be strong.

It just Okay, first of all, that's all the cool.

That's all very cool.

But I'm just getting over this, this aspect, you sent me a screenshot that you took in the Apple Vision Pro in the virtual environment right in there.

Yeah.

And I can see I've covered it up now so that I can see your diplomas on your office.

Well, you don't have to you don't have to cover that.

But nothing nothing wrong with showing my eyes.

But it's just like that.

That's just amazing.

Like I'm seeing basically what you are seeing.

But I can see your wall behind exactly.

Yeah, that I get it.

I'm just kind of blown away like, wait a minute, like that's Jeff's office.

But that's a screenshot from the Apple Vision Pro.

Okay, anyway, it's crazy.

More to come on this.

Other than I think we need to invite Vision Pro Jeff back every every week.

I think this might be his first and last appearance.

Maybe the next time that Apple takes persona out of beta, then we'll see how I look.

You know what the next you know, we'll put them side by side or something like that.

Oh, this is this is so great.

Thank you both Jeff's for joining me today.

This is this is really great.

Jeff, thanks for sharing everything.

I know it's been a long day, because I know you were up early to go get that Vision Pro.

But this is so cool to be able to learn all about this.

Okay, I don't know how we're going to top this.

But we will definitely do something that we can to the extent that we can.

And we'll probably talk more than I'm just about the Apple Vision Pro next week.

So we'll talk with you next week, Jeff.

Sounds good.

Thanks, Brett.