Is anyone working at least 4 hours daily on an Apple Vision Pro?

I feel like I would have been the ideal customer for it. I travel a lot and I'm a developer deep in the Apple ecosystem who is constantly wishing he had more screen real estate while bouncing between hotels and Airbnbs every few weeks.

I bought it and tried it for two weeks and ended up returning it. It's really cool, but even aside from the issues with 1.0 like not being able to just pull up individual app windows from my mac or multiple desktops -- it's just too impractical, it takes too much effort to get into this thing.

A phone, a tablet, a laptop, you can pick up, immediately use, put down, interact with the world around you, pick up again, zero friction, it's not restrictive, it's not an item of clothing, it doesn't take over your whole world and sensory system and thus alienate you from everyone and everything around you.

Not only is it that whole extra thing, but it needs to be plugged into a special battery pack, so you have another usb cable dangling onto this bulky pack which is daisy chained to your laptop or another charging port unless you want it to die in 2 hours. So you pull out your laptop, plug it into a charger, pull out your headset, plug it into its battery pack, plug that battery pack into your laptop, put on the headset, untangle yourself from the wires and figure out where to set the battery pack to be out of the way...

It's just so much faffing around. Plus it's fucking huge and takes up the majority of my backpack and I like to travel with a single carry on backpack.

A pair of Raybans with a usb c cable sticking out, maybe I could see that being legitimately usable without having to make a giant effort just to use it. It seems like a few companies are getting close to that, but I have yet to try those alternatives.

Yes, I do. It’s an amazing monitor and combination iPad. It’s very different than what is easy to describe - partially because it defies convention in so many ways - but I use it with my Mac and then will have mail and chat and music floating on the sides.

Btw I said iPad. Apple says it’s a computer. Falls short in some key ways, but not unfixable

It is heavy but I don’t mind it. I can see how that might be a deal breaker.

Btw I honestly think that if apple wants to market this thing as a computer, they need to include a keyboard and trackpad. It adds so much to the utility factor that it’s basically indispensable for me. That it works well without one is testament to apples amazing engineering, but they really should be packing those in imho

These things are going to be killer productivity devices if

- price down. obviously.

- lower weight, better battery

- combo keyboard and mouse accessory offered that fits into a carrying case

- able to host Mac apps, or a Mac vm, or something similar. Let me run vs code, IntelliJ, and a terminal with a local container with my build tools. Or blender. Or photoshop. Etc etc etc

Btw protip, tea tastes fine through a metal straw

I tried, and went back to laptop+monitor. In theory it would be great when on the go, but it doesn't really function without a laptop present, which makes it pretty unwieldy as you need two devices. In theory it would be good in a the back seat of a car or when walking around, except the software doesn't allow you to do that (windows are pinned to space outside the car, you can't make them follow you). When I'm at a desk, I guess it would be better than a _bad_ monitor, but I have a nice big 8k screen and it's both better looking and more comfortable.

I am a developer and coding in vision pro for around 2 months. It is heavy, without third-party accessories, it is unbearable. But with 3d printed gadgets and band, the weight problem is solved 80%. I code in mac virtual desktop, enlarge it and push it as far as possible. The text is clear enough in most of time. But the resolution is still low, i hope the ultra wide virtual desktop feature can solve the problem. Using two keyboards (one built in, one external) to mimic split keyboard, so i can stay in a comfortable pose and type. Installed a thirdparty extension to make modifier key works cross keyboards. Normally 1-3 hours per day.

I do like work in VP, it feels more isolated and easier to focus. There are some side effects, e.g, less water drinking, tend to sitting for longer time etc.

I do on days when I work from home. I like to move around the house when I code so I’ll do a bit of work from a couch each day to spend time with the pets , and then I just take my laptop+headset to get a good large screen experience.

I also watch movies+shows regularly on it but that’s on the order of 2-3h of use at a time.

I couldn't. I don't know anyone else who has actually bought one, mine was provided through work but even there no one uses it. I tried, and tried, but it's too heavy, gives me eye strain and I finally gave up on it. I went to the Apple store thinking maybe I was wearing it properly, and they took me through the demo but it's just not for me. The Quest was actually better but there the weight of the helmet eventually forced me to stop using it. Maybe one day we will have glasses instead of a helmet because the technology is really cool.

I would use it more but after an hour I have ENORMOUS bags under my eyes that last for 24-36 hours. I've tried multiple 3rd party accessories but to little success. My wife is not a fan.

Otherwise I would code and work in them for a few hours a day. I find the environment incredibly focusing.

I do not have this issue using the Oculus Pro, or any of the myriad headsets I've had in the past.

I use mine probably 2-3x per week, ~8 hours per day. The biggest productivity boost is being able to increase the environment, and thus isolation from the stuff around me in my office.

It should be noted that I spend on average >20 hours per week - sometimes 40 or more - using a Pimax Crystal as well. The weight of the AVP is significantly less than that, so I’m not feeling the “it’s uncomfortable” stuff that others report.

Yes, I do. I use it a ton when on the road, see [0] but I wasn't sure how much I'd use it at home.

Turns out that I'll typically be at my standing desk for some / most of the morning then move to the Vision Pro in another part of the apartment in the PM. I enjoy using the VP a lot, even after 8 months it still has a magical feel for me, but I also find that immersion is a great focus boost.

One recent app that sucked up a lot of "Vision Time" for me was Fly [1], which is basically Google Earth in the VP. Flying above 3D cities in particular is amazing and being able to dip into Street View to look around a location very cool.

Yup, it's heavy and not particularly comfortable, though I've long since grown accustomed to both, but if it broke I would likely buy another. It's that useful/enjoyable for me.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40663619

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fly-explore-the-earth/id650196...

Not my cup of tea, but there's some folks that use the xreal glasses which might be more comfortable than vision pro as it's more like having a fixed screen in front rather than being in VR: https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/search/?q=glass...

Yes, on WebXR and Unity-based “fully immersive” projects. Usually 8-10 hours a day, though not straight through.

I have done, and I’m pretty comfortable working for hours in it, but I generally only use it for work when I’m away from my home office, so nowhere close to daily.

I want to, but it’s too heavy. Also, Universal Desktop was just slightly too buggy for daily driving last time I tried it. It has received lots of updates and bugfixes though so I should give it another shot.

I haven’t used it recently because I don’t travel with my AVP (again because it’s too heavy).

You can only use first party desktop extension if you use iCloud. Naturally I firewall off all Apple services from my desktop computers.

I bought it and used it this way professionally for 2 weeks before returning. Honestly I loved it but the screen is still slightly muddy compared to looking at a MacBook and the bigger issue is it’s way too heavy still. Face started hurting after the first hour.

I've tried but I honestly start getting a headache after an hour, more from the weight of the device on my head than eye strain. And that's with the dual loop band

Has to be AVP? A close friend works 6-8 hours a day,almost every day, on the quest 3

It's really not for me and most others probably but he swears by it

I have seen on Reddit, somebody said that AVP is like buying the nicest house in the middle of the desert.

I only use it for watching movies at times but nothing beyond that.

It’s not great as an external display, since the experience is like sitting very close to a massive TV while wearing steampunk googles. You have to turn your head a lot, and eye-tracking is broken for a lot of sites in Safari (eg accidental downvotes on HN).

I don’t think that’s a dealbreaker - as long as the device can actually act as a standalone computer.

But it can’t, at least not for developers. It’s much closer to an iPad that only runs 10% of the apps you want. Maybe this is sufficient if your job only requires communication, and not, like, actual work.

So you end up with an expensive, socially awkward accessory to your MBP, which quickly gets left at home, because it doesn’t really do anything better than your existing devices.

(The one use case AVP handles well: watching a movie, in bed, alone. Which is kinda bleak.)

I have spent hundreds of hours developing multiple apps for AVP, but I personally can't use it at all. My vision is uncorrected for general daily use (I wear glasses at the computer for slightly improved comfort, but I can see fine), but I find the Vision Pro to be fairly blurry, to the point that it's uncomfortable to use. I bought the custom Zeiss lenses, and they help marginally, but it's still blurry, particularly when mirroring a Mac display.

I recently had a friend with similarly good vision try it out, and he didn't think it was so bad until I mirrored the Mac display, and he agreed it was unusable.

Very disappointing for me, as this was something I was looking forward to for a long time.

If anyone is succeeding here I hope they have a stronger neck and head structure than I do.

I was present when Randy Pausch made the empirical lecture on screen real estate at CMU almost two decades ago. I believed strongly in that argument and was lucky to hear it before the last lecture.

However, as my work and tools evolved, I found myself abandoning the triple monitor Windows, Mac, Linux setups I used for the kind of portability work I did then.

And so while I did the apple vision pro demo when I interviewed at Apple this summer I experienced probably the most legitimate and extreme dichotomy between the value proposition of infinitely extensible screen real estate and diminishing returns on that real estate.

Put simply, that dichotomy is standing on the shoulders of poorly designed HCI for decades. Apple gets a free pass on design here but they should be held to a much higher standard.

If they were, we'd have something approaching Bret Victor's dynamic land or at least a desktop metaphor not siloed in a Cartesian model hundreds of years old when what we need is n-dimensional.

The data out-dimensioned displays decades ago. What the world needs now is a better tiling window manager, not another attempt to solve the problem by extending human vision while causing head and neck trauma we may never understand.

Raymond Loewy said, "most advanced yet acceptable, not most advanced yet bone crushing.

When I used apple vision pro, I found the experience so compelling I pinged all my friends working in AR singing its praises and potential applications in things we'd worked on together: radiation oncology treatment devices, visualization, robotics, and autonomy. But the thing that stopped me in my tracks was the ungodly physical trauma that accompanied the experience. That's saying something given I am an adult with nearly perfect health and no orthopedic issues whatsoever.

The thing that shifted my perspective on screen real estate was realizing that monstrous monitors are big tech's mcmansion hell. I did my day job on an 11 inch Chromebook running Linux a decade ago. I still ask why I need the morbidly obese MacBook pro m I have now with a 16 inch display and 32 GB ram.

Soon we'll see that big tech is just reading big pharma's playbook from decades ago. The reason it's hard to see now is that big tech did not finish reading the playbook, particularly as it applies to side effects foisted on an unsuspecting public. Give it a few years. I hope I'm wrong.

I bought one bc I travel a lot and it's been a game changer for me. Both in terms of watching movies and also getting some work done.

Having the something similar to a multi monitor setup in a portable setup is amazing.

the negatives are the battery and the weight after couple hours. I can do a max of two 2-3 hour sessions per day and anything more would be pretty rough. Ideally I just do one 3 hour session and the rest on MacBook.

is it cool...yep! is it a necessity? nope. would I recommend it? nope. do I love it and use it a lot? yep

I can't wait to see what Apple does with this after 2-3 generations. i still think VR is looking for that killer app.

No. The thing has like 2.5 hours of battery life. You'd have to plan your day around it or get battery extenders.

Nope.

Anyone want to buy an (Oculus) Quest Pro. It's barely used! ;@)

I use the Apple Vision Pro pretty much every workday for at least one to three hours. Sometimes, when I’m deep in coding or other major projects, I’ve been in it for over five or more hours at a stretch. I use it exclusively with my MacBook Pro or iMac as an immersive display, with the Magic Keyboard and Trackpad paired to the computer. This setup is basically perfect. I frequently have some mellow ambient music in the background, which, in combination with the immersive work environment, helps me concentrate like never before for long stretches without getting distracted.

A major improvement happened with the release of beta version 2 of their operating system, which made the keyboard visible even when the immersive environment is fully turned up. This change allowed me to have the best of both worlds. Obviously, I have it plugged into an outlet through the battery or it would never last for such a long time. I’ve tried going back to the Oculus, but there’s no comparison. I love it!

Zero interest in headsets

Haven't event touched one or see one around me.

I seriously guess if there is more than one or two in my hole country.

As a comparison, there are lots of iPhones and MacBooks here.