Tim Cook: Apple Continues To Be "Very Focused" on visionOS
With a starting price of $3500, driven by its use of expensive and supply-constrained 4K micro-OLED displays, Apple Vision Pro was never going to be a breakout mass market hit. And Apple seems aware of this, given the product's name and Tim Cook's past comments.
The first feature update arrived in visionOS 1.1, Spatial Personas. This extended the system's realistic avatars from a 2D rectangle container into true 3D space, a step-change for telepresence technology.
visionOS 2 brought hand gestures for opening the main menu and control center, the ability to turn any photo into a spatial photo, improved hand tracking and scene understanding, WebXR by default in Safari, the ability to AirPlay your iPhone or iPad to a window, a Bora Bora virtual environment, the ability to see your physical keyboard, mouse support, guest user improvements, static 3D object tracking, train support for Travel Mode, Live Captions, new developer features, and raw camera access for enterprise.
Then, visionOS 2.2 in December brought Wide and Ultrawide modes for Mac Virtual Display, letting you view your Mac on a virtual Wide aspect ratio screen, or even an enveloping panoramic Ultrawide screen. The Ultrawide mode has 10K horizontal resolution, as if you have two 5K monitors side by side, made possible thanks to foveation. Further, with visionOS 2.2 the audio from your Mac is now routed to Vision Pro, whereas previously it still played through the Mac.
