Tom’s Apple Vision Pro Experience

Intro

Tom Anderson (0s)

No.

Jeff Battersby (0s)

And you haven't brought it to the office.

Tom Anderson (1s)

No, I'm not wearing that thing in public.

Jeff Battersby (2s)

Okay.

Jeff Battersby (8s)

Dork.

Intro music (13s)

♪ I don't want to know about your imperfections ♪

Tom Anderson (14s)

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Basic AF.

Tom Anderson (17s)

Tom Anderson, joined by Jeff Battersby, as always.

Tom Anderson (21s)

Hello, Jeff.

Jeff Battersby (23s)

"Hello, Tom! What's cooking, man?"

Tom Anderson (27s)

Well, we are mid-March.

Jeff Battersby (30s)

"Mid-March."

Tom Anderson (30s)

Spring is about to spring.

Tom Anderson (33s)

Allergies will kick in.

Tom Anderson (35s)

We'll all be a mess for a while,

Tom Anderson (38s)

but days are getting longer.

Jeff Battersby (38s)

and I'll be blowing my nose as we record.

Tom Anderson (40s)

Yep, and days are getting longer,

Jeff Battersby (41s)

Yes, oh my gosh.

Tom Anderson (42s)

which I'm very happy about that.

Jeff Battersby (45s)

Yeah, I like it when it's like that.

Jeff Battersby (47s)

I feel like getting out of bed in the morning,

Tom Anderson (50s)

Right, and it's not, it's dark.

Jeff Battersby (50s)

when it's, oh my gosh, I am, I don't know.

Jeff Battersby (57s)

I think I'm a bear in real life.

Jeff Battersby (59s)

I just want to sleep all winter and then I'm happy to get up in the hours when the summer comes around.

Jeff Battersby (1m 7s)  

• Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (1m 9s)

Before we kick off the show, let's put this at the top.

Jeff Battersby (1m 12s)

You can email us at feedback@basicafshow.com.

Jeff Battersby (1m 17s)

We like feedback, so feel free to do that.

Jeff Battersby (1m 20s)

And in whatever podcast app you're using,

Jeff Battersby (1m 24s)

but especially in Apple podcasts,

Jeff Battersby (1m 27s)

if you would please like or subscribe to us because that does good things.

Jeff Battersby (1m 32s)

We are, we're seeing the numbers tick up,

Jeff Battersby (1m 35s)

which is really great.

Jeff Battersby (1m 37s)

we're really happy that more.

Jeff Battersby (1m 38s)

More people are listening to us and, uh, it's, uh, we're really grateful for the time that you're willing to spend with us, uh, our main show artwork, random art design, Randall does great work.

Jeff Battersby (1m 50s)

I highly recommend that you have a look at Randall in the show.

Jeff Battersby (1m 53s)

Music is psychokinetics.

Jeff Battersby (1m 55s)

So, uh, have a listen, go look at psychokinetics and Celsius seven.

Jeff Battersby (2m 2s)

Somewhere on your favorite music streaming app.

Jeff Battersby (2m 5s)

There we go.

Jeff Battersby (2m 6s)

We've done all the ads at the beginning and we've.

Tom Anderson (2m 8s)

The ads. Today's show brought to you by us. Yes. Well, maybe. But anyhow, we do thank you for being here. We know time is limited, so we appreciate it. So what are we talking about today, Jeff?

Jeff Battersby (2m 9s)

Yeah, right, because we're making a fortune.

Jeff Battersby (2m 11s)

Can you hear the change jingling in my pocket?

Jeff Battersby (2m 16s)

Nobody, but Tom and Jeff, because we like you so much and we like each other.

Jeff Battersby (2m 22s)

We're well, not like that.

Jeff Battersby (2m 24s)

We don't like each other like that, but.

Jeff Battersby (2m 32s)

Yeah, we do.

Jeff Battersby (2m 35s)

So, Tom, you know that I went and, uh--

Tom’s Apple Vision Pro Experience

Jeff Battersby (2m 39s)

I went and checked out the Vision Pro at the Danbury Apple Store, Danbury, Connecticut.

Jeff Battersby (2m 44s)

Went and tried that on, had the big demo,

Jeff Battersby (2m 46s)

and I told everybody that I wasn't gonna get one,

Jeff Battersby (2m 51s)

and I didn't.

Jeff Battersby (2m 52s)

You did.

Jeff Battersby (2m 54s)

Tom Anderson went out and bought himself a Vision Pro,

Jeff Battersby (3m)

and initially, with the idea of the old 14-day trial,

Jeff Battersby (3m 4s)

and I can take it back to the store,

Jeff Battersby (3m 7s)

But Tom, did you--

Tom Anderson (3m 8s)

I did to get the bands exchanged.

Jeff Battersby (3m 8s)

Did you take it back to the store?

Jeff Battersby (3m 11s)

You did?

Jeff Battersby (3m 16s)

And then you came back home with it, didn't you?

Tom Anderson (3m 18s)

I did.

Tom Anderson (3m 20s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (3m 20s)

YOLO, baby.

Tom Anderson (3m 22s)

Uh, yeah, pretty much.

Tom Anderson (3m 24s)

Um, yeah, so we, when we did that, uh, hands-on show where you, uh,

Tom Anderson (3m 30s)

that didn't sound right.

Jeff Battersby (3m 33s)

La la la la la la la la la la.

Tom Anderson (3m 33s)

Scratch that.

Tom Anderson (3m 34s)

Uh, when we talked about your hands-on experience with the

Tom Anderson (3m 38s)

Pro in Connecticut on release day, um, uh, I think I said there, we,

Tom Anderson (3m 44s)

we talked about that, like, would I get one?

Tom Anderson (3m 46s)

And I said, I'd like to get one to try it out because I thought it was an intriguing device.

Jeff Battersby (3m 48s)

Yes, and you thought you might do it on the company dime, you know use one

Tom Anderson (3m 55s)  

• Yeah, that didn't work out.

Tom Anderson (3m 58s)

It still may, but it hasn't yet.

Tom Anderson (4m 1s)

Part of that is due, we just recently ordered one for our AR/VR folks, but it was a bit of a process 'cause Apple was setting up a system for that and everything, so it took a little while.

Tom Anderson (4m 11s)

But yeah, so I decided, well, my wife will tell you this is true, like when I just think about a big purchase,

Tom Anderson (4m 20s)

it's like torture.

Tom Anderson (4m 21s)

Like I'd sit, well, maybe I should, maybe I should.

Tom Anderson (4m 24s)

Oh, that looks kind of nice.

Tom Anderson (4m 25s)

And I think she got to the point where she was just tired of hearing me talk about it.

Tom Anderson (4m 28s)

And she was like, just do it.

Tom Anderson (4m 31s)

You're going to do it.

Tom Anderson (4m 32s)

Just do, I don't know why you do this to yourself.

Tom Anderson (4m 34s)

Um, and I was like, I'm a Virgo.

Tom Anderson (4m 36s)

That's what we do.

Tom Anderson (4m 37s)

Uh, and so I did, uh, and, uh, so yeah, what, uh, if you go through the apps or the Apple store, not the app store, the Apple retail store, um, shopping store for the app, Jesus, um, try one of those things, pick one, doesn't matter.

Jeff Battersby (4m 51s)

Try one of those things.

Tom Anderson (4m 55s)

Uh, delivery dates were a month or so out, but you could check during the day, like usually mid morning in the afternoon and they restock at the local stores.

Tom Anderson (5m 3s)

And so that's what I did is I just kind of kept an eye on it.

Tom Anderson (5m 6s)

Uh, and so I got the 512 gigabyte model and, uh, It picked it up at the Reston store, the Reston Virginia store.

Jeff Battersby (5m 16s)

Okay, and I believe you did not drive there did you other than to get a new band you had your wife

Jeff Battersby (5m 23s)

Pick it up for you. Did you not?

Tom Anderson (5m 24s)

Yeah, she was down that way. Yeah. So she she picked it up.

Tom Anderson (5m 28s)

Yeah, so got it. I don't know. February. It was the week of the Super Bowl.

Jeff Battersby (5m 33s)

That was part of the plan, wasn't it, to watch the Super Bowl with the Vision Pro?

Tom Anderson (5m 34s)

So about a month ago.

Tom Anderson (5m 40s)

It was. And I did.

Tom Anderson (5m 44s)

You know what? Having that having the game up on a screen the size of the living room wall and bedroom wall, whatever, man, that was massive.

Tom Anderson (5m 54s)

Nice. That was good. I ended up watching it on Paramount Plus.

Tom Anderson (6m 2s)

And they had some struggles with their feed quality. And so I got pixelated a little bit here and there. I think YouTube TV people were saying it looked better, but I'm not subscribed to that. And I actually just did the trial for Paramount Plus. Like,

Tom Anderson (6m 16s)

I don't subscribe to that either, but I did that just to watch the game.

Tom Anderson (6m 19s)

So, yeah, that was nice. And, you know, of course, I think that's the big thing that,

Tom Anderson (6m 24s)

you know, a lot of people talked about was the media playback capabilities,

Tom Anderson (6m 28s)

which is kind of true for all VR stuff. But I think with the Vision Pro, with those

Tom Anderson (6m 33s)

super high resolution displays that they've built into it.

Jeff Battersby (6m 38s)

Yeah, I bet and, and with regard to sports, but I, when I took that demo or when I looked at the demo, one of the things I thought was really impressive was, uh, the clips that they had of major league softball, softball, soccer, I'm trying to think ahead and major league baseball.

Tom Anderson (6m 51s)

That was good.

Jeff Battersby (6m 58s)

So MLS, oh my gosh, major league softball.

Jeff Battersby (7m 1s)

I mean, I'd watch that, but it would be, yeah, well, you know, well, you know, it's, it's

Jeff Battersby (7m 8s)

the basic AF show where two idiots try to talk for 10 minutes straight.

Jeff Battersby (7m 15s)

Um, the, uh, was very impressed by that.

Jeff Battersby (7m 20s)

And Apple has since announced that, uh, they're going to be, they've already got MLS set up to, uh, to have that kind of super immersive, uh, programming.

Jeff Battersby (7m 32s)

So it'd be interesting to see, see how that plays out.

Jeff Battersby (7m 35s)

I think MLB and I think the NBA.

Jeff Battersby (7m 38s)

To going to be doing that kind of stuff.

Jeff Battersby (7m 40s)

So courtside seats for most of us.

Jeff Battersby (7m 42s)

But anyway, I don't want to talk about myself.

Jeff Battersby (7m 44s)

I want you to talk about your experience with the mission.

Jeff Battersby (7m 48s)

So go ahead.

Jeff Battersby (7m 49s)

So you watch that you watch the Super Bowl game and then

Tom Anderson (7m 52s)

So that was the honeymoon period, right? Because it was brand new and everything.

Jeff Battersby (7m 55s)

sweet.

Tom Anderson (7m 59s)

Any particular order you would like to cover this?

Jeff Battersby (8m 2s)

I think I think your experience from end to end what made you decide to keep the thing, you know, you you were really kind

Jeff Battersby (8m 8s)

of dead set on.

Jeff Battersby (8m 8s)

I'm going to take it back, you know when you got it and obviously I would say you were talking to both Gannon and me about about this and you I would say within the first week.

Jeff Battersby (8m 24s)

We're like not keeping it.

Jeff Battersby (8m 27s)

So what precipitated that that decision because you were ready to you know, do 14 days and send it home.

Jeff Battersby (8m 35s)

So what what made you keep the dog?

Tom Anderson (8m 38s)

Yeah, so that, uh, the first week was really, I think just getting acclimated to having the thing on your head.

Jeff Battersby (8m 49s)

Okay

Tom Anderson (8m 49s)

Um, right.

Tom Anderson (8m 51s)

Because you know, and you can relate to this having done the demo when you first put it on it, it's a bit of sensory overload, uh, because you know, it's, you know, it's right up on your face of course.

Tom Anderson (9m 4s)

and then when you've got everything kind of showing there,

Tom Anderson (9m 8s)

so you kind of, you know, you see your environment and then the app icons and everything come up on top of that.

Tom Anderson (9m 12s)

And I think the first, at least the first few days,

Tom Anderson (9m 15s)

I really just stuck to the native apps that were on it.

Tom Anderson (9m 20s)

And I installed a couple, sorry about that,

Tom Anderson (9m 22s)

a couple from the app store.

Tom Anderson (9m 24s)

And I was like, yeah, I don't know.

Tom Anderson (9m 27s)

Like, this is all neat and it looks great.

Tom Anderson (9m 29s)

And I think that's, I mentioned that in the newsletter I put out a couple of weeks ago,

Tom Anderson (9m 32s)

that every, I think most people, if not all people,

Tom Anderson (9m 36s)

when they do VR for the first time.

Tom Anderson (9m 38s)

Oh my gosh, this is amazing.

Tom Anderson (9m 40s)

And especially when you go into the fully immersive things,

Tom Anderson (9m 43s)

like some of the videos they have,

Tom Anderson (9m 44s)

like the Alicia Keys video, it was really good.

Tom Anderson (9m 48s)

The one with the lady doing the highline walking

Tom Anderson (9m 53s)

between the mountains and everything,

Jeff Battersby (9m 54s)

Yeah, that, oh my gosh, brilliant.

Tom Anderson (9m 54s)

that one freaked me out.

Tom Anderson (9m 55s)

I was like, "Whoa, yes, that was huge."

Tom Anderson (9m 59s)

And so all that stuff is awesome.

Tom Anderson (10m)

But the thing is, it's like,

Tom Anderson (10m 2s)

I'm not gonna live in that, right?

Tom Anderson (10m 4s)

I mean, that's fun for a little bit of time.

Tom Anderson (10m 8s)

It is definitely captivating when you're in those fully immersive scenes,

Tom Anderson (10m 13s)

especially those types of things.

Tom Anderson (10m 16s)

And I think where it started to shift a little bit for me and into the favor of keeping it was once I started to go into the App Store,

Tom Anderson (10m 25s)

into the iPad and iPhone compatible apps for the Vision Pro.

Tom Anderson (10m 30s)

So developers can make their iPad apps available on Vision Pro, or they can opt out,

Tom Anderson (10m 36s)

which some of the bigger...

Tom Anderson (10m 38s)

Spotify didn't do that, YouTube didn't do that,

Tom Anderson (10m 41s)

Netflix didn't do that.

Tom Anderson (10m 42s)

YouTube has said they are working on a native app,

Tom Anderson (10m 45s)

which I think is good. That'll be nice.

Tom Anderson (10m 47s)

But what that let me do is I was able to get one password installed.

Tom Anderson (10m 51s)

I was able to get some of the other apps that I use a lot installed.

Tom Anderson (10m 55s)

So I got the Bear Notes app installed.

Jeff Battersby (10m 58s)

Uh.

Tom Anderson (10m 59s)

I got the Reddit app that I use, which is Narwhal2.

Tom Anderson (11m 3s)

It was on there, you know, those types of things.

Tom Anderson (11m 6s)

of my node and so forth.

Tom Anderson (11m 8s)

That made it feel like a much more familiar device because those are things I, yeah.

Jeff Battersby (11m 12s)

Okay, how so? Why don't you explain that a little bit?

Tom Anderson (11m 14s)

So those apps I use a lot across all of my devices.

Tom Anderson (11m 21s)

So my node, Bear Notes, or I use those on iPad, Mac,

Tom Anderson (11m 26s)

not so much on the phone, but they're there.

Tom Anderson (11m 29s)

One Password, of course, I use a lot just for what it's intended for,

Tom Anderson (11m 34s)

just filling passwords on websites and things.

Tom Anderson (11m 36s)

But I think.

Tom Anderson (11m 38s)

Once those were on there, like, like, okay, I can actually do some things on it.

Tom Anderson (11m 43s)

Other than freak myself out watching that lady walk that line across the mountains.

Tom Anderson (11m 47s)

Um, and so at that point it was like, okay, now that I've got those on, let's, let's see what I can actually do with it other than watch videos.

Jeff Battersby (11m 55s)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Tom Anderson (11m 59s)

And so the.

Jeff Battersby (12m 1s)

So what could you do? So here's the thing that's a curiosity to me. And, uh, you know,

Jeff Battersby (12m 6s)

I spend a great deal of my time writing. Um, I could never see writing on that,

Jeff Battersby (12m 11s)

but you're using bare notes and clearly must be doing some writing with bare notes.

Jeff Battersby (12m 17s)

How does that work for you? How do you make it do something?

Tom Anderson (12m 20s)

So, yes, the virtual keyboard that is built into Vision OS is serviceable at best.

Tom Anderson (12m 27s)

Like if you just need to type in Apple.com or a quick little reply to a message, you could do that.

Tom Anderson (12m 32s)

Of course, it's got Siri support, which actually, it actually does work fairly well in the Vision Pro for some reason.

Jeff Battersby (12m 36s)

Works? Wow. [laughs]

Tom Anderson (12m 39s)

I don't know if it's because of mic placement and it's so close to your face and everything,

Tom Anderson (12m 44s)

you can just hear better or what it is, but it has been pretty good.

Tom Anderson (12m 48s)

And so I was like, "Okay, why can't I do that?"

Tom Anderson (12m 50s)

I can't use that keyboard to really write much.

Tom Anderson (12m 52s)

And so I've got a Logitech MX keys,

Tom Anderson (12m 55s)

which allows up to three devices to be connected.

Tom Anderson (12m 58s)

And then you just choose one, two or three and it switches over.

Tom Anderson (13m)

So I'd use that to go back and forth between my Mac mini and my MacBook Pro.

Tom Anderson (13m 7s)

So I had an available slot.

Tom Anderson (13m 8s)

I'd used it a little bit with the iPad too.

Tom Anderson (13m 9s)

So, but you can, it's easy to reprogram that.

Tom Anderson (13m 11s)

So I tried that and that worked pretty well.

Tom Anderson (13m 15s)

And of course you can pair a magic track pad with it.

Tom Anderson (13m 20s)

So I had one of those.

Tom Anderson (13m 21s)

And so I was doing that and I was like,

Tom Anderson (13m 23s)

"Okay, now this is starting to feel better

Tom Anderson (13m 26s)

"for doing more than just looking at stuff."

Tom Anderson (13m 28s)

And what's nice is when you pair those,

Tom Anderson (13m 31s)

you know, they're immediately available.

Tom Anderson (13m 33s)

So like keyboard shortcuts.

Tom Anderson (13m 35s)

So, you know, command space for spotlight still works.

Tom Anderson (13m 38s)

You get the little round cursor like you have on iPad OS shows up.

Jeff Battersby (13m 43s)

Your favorite cursor, by the way.

Tom Anderson (13m 43s)

And that goes between all of the windows that you've got open in VisionPro.

Tom Anderson (13m 50s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (13m 53s)

Which, to be honest, on VisionPro, it looks better.

Tom Anderson (13m 54s)

Like, it makes more sense to me for some reason.

Jeff Battersby (13m 56s)

Okay, great.

Tom Anderson (13m 56s)

Like, it doesn't stand out as much.

Jeff Battersby (13m 59s)

As it does on an iPad.

Tom Anderson (14m 1s)

Right.

Tom Anderson (14m 2s)

Yeah, so that's where it started to click.

Tom Anderson (14m 6s)

And so at that point, I was like, well, this is nice,

Tom Anderson (14m 9s)

but it was hard to find a way to keep the trackpad next to the keyboard.

Tom Anderson (14m 15s)

And so I picked up the 12 South Magic Bridge, they call it,

Tom Anderson (14m 20s)

which is basically a tray that the Apple Magic Keyboard and trackpad snap into.

Tom Anderson (14m 25s)

And that has been really nice because now they're in like a solid,

Tom Anderson (14m 29s)

it's a one piece thing, fits comfortably on your lap.

Tom Anderson (14m 32s)

So if you're using this thing on the couch or propped up in bed or out on the front porch,

Tom Anderson (14m 35s)

whatever the case may be.

Tom Anderson (14m 37s)

And so that really kind of solidified the ability to do text input and mouse gestures and that kind of stuff.

Jeff Battersby (14m 44s)

Okay, nice. So the, the gestures that you're used to using on your Mac, those those work on in, in Vision OS. Okay.

Tom Anderson (14m 52s)

Not so much. And so this is where, you know, there's, there are a lot of shortcomings,

Tom Anderson (14m 58s)

I think, both in the hardware and in Vision OS. The hardware is obviously the physical components. It's heavy. It is built really well, but it's just, it's heavy. On the software side of things, there's limited support for some of the keyboard stuff and the gestures.

Tom Anderson (15m 16s)

Like what it really needs is some window management of some sort, because it's easy to get windows

Tom Anderson (15m 22s)

windows because it's, it's spatially oriented, right? Apple says spatial computing. And so you can stack windows up. I won't say, you know, definitely, but it's easy to get things kind of lost. And especially because you can roam around the house with this thing. And so you can have the big YouTube playing through a third party app out in the living room.

Tom Anderson (15m 41s)

You come to the bedroom and you've got your notes app or messages or whatever. And then you're like, well, where's my video? And so it's still out in the other room.

Jeff Battersby (15m 49s)

Is there an easy way to bring that back into your current view or not yet?

Tom Anderson (15m 52s)

There is. So if you press and hold the digital crown, it kind of re-centers all of the windows into your current environment. So the room that you're in, of course, it rearranges the layout of everything that's on that space too. So it's, it's kind of the, you know,

Jeff Battersby (15m 58s)

got it okay all right so of course it does

Tom Anderson (16m 6s)

brute force way of doing it at this point. And so it's missing things like that. Like it, it, it needs like a expose type thing, mission control, right? Where you can swipe up, see all your windows. A command tab would be nice where you could just cycle through applications.

Jeff Battersby (16m 15s)

Yep

Jeff Battersby (16m 21s)

Oh, yeah

Tom Anderson (16m 23s)

It doesn't have that yet. And again, 1.0, I'm sure they're, they're thinking about all those kinds of things. And I'm sure they've gotten a ton of feedback now that people actually

Jeff Battersby (16m 31s)

Mm hmm. So presently, so you're, you are, you're using this on a regular basis.

Jeff Battersby (16m 37s)

Um, how many hours a day are you using it for, for actual practical?

Tom Anderson (16m 44s)

Actual practical work is fairly limited because you know, I go to the office four days a week. I, no, no I'm not wearing that thing in public.

Jeff Battersby (16m 53s)

And you haven't brought it to the office?

Jeff Battersby (17m 2s)

Dork

Tom Anderson (17m 4s)

I am, yeah, but not that much.

Tom Anderson (17m 8s)

Um...

Jeff Battersby (17m 10s)

You're gonna find yourself, uh stuffed into a garbage can somewhere in the campus

Tom Anderson (17m 14s)

[LAUGH] Probably, [LAUGH] I don't need that trauma, [LAUGH] Great, so I would say just total time per day is probably upwards to an hour at most, I have been using it every day.

Jeff Battersby (17m 22s)

Give you a swirly path

Jeff Battersby (17m 33s)

Okay.

Jeff Battersby (17m 36s)

And mostly workish stuff or entertainment stuff?

Tom Anderson (17m 41s)  

• It's probably 50/50.

Tom Anderson (17m 45s)

So like this, a couple of weeks ago when I was working on the newsletter that I did,

Tom Anderson (17m 49s)

I did, I thought, oh, this would be a good use case.

Tom Anderson (17m 52s)

Let me see if I could do the newsletter wearing this.

Tom Anderson (17m 54s)

And so I did.

Tom Anderson (17m 56s)

And like, so I was propped up in bed and this is where I really kind of like it.

Tom Anderson (18m)

And I wish that it was just a more comfortable way to do that.

Tom Anderson (18m 5s)

So in bed, I had messages app off to the left,

Tom Anderson (18m 8s)

had a little widget app that showed the time and the battery life.

Tom Anderson (18m 11s)

I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Jeff Battersby (18m 28s)

Which I don't think the screenshots really show off.

Jeff Battersby (18m 32s)

Yeah, it's not as clear how immersive and how spread out all that is.

Jeff Battersby (18m 39s)

It's basically like, it just looks like a picture of a bunch of windows on the screen.

Tom Anderson (18m 44s)

and fuzzy at that because of the way they do the rendering the screenshots aren't clear and so it's like man that looks like trash and they do in the screenshots like it doesn't look that good but in the headset it looks great.

Jeff Battersby (18m 50s)

Yeah

Jeff Battersby (18m 54s)

Okay, so it's

Jeff Battersby (18m 57s)

Yeah, so creating the newsletter itself, how did how did that work out?

Jeff Battersby (19m 1s)

I mean again, I'm you're typing a bunch of words or were you dictating I can't imagine You know walking around with that thing on and dictating to it. It seems like it would drive everybody else in the room nuts

Tom Anderson (19m 11s)  

• Right, yeah, so I didn't do that.

Tom Anderson (19m 12s)

And so I was typing, I was using the Magic Keyboard track pad and that bridge thing.

Tom Anderson (19m 17s)

That worked well.

Tom Anderson (19m 17s)

And like, there are things I do with that newsletter where I kind of capture ideas and stuff into a numbers spreadsheet throughout the month.

Tom Anderson (19m 24s)

And then, so I had that up to pull some things out of it

Tom Anderson (19m 28s)

and had written it in bare.

Tom Anderson (19m 30s)

And then what I do is I transition to Grammarly to have it clean up my pitiful writing.

Tom Anderson (19m 36s)

And so that all worked great.

Tom Anderson (19m 38s)

Like I was going back and forth, copy, paste, no issue.

Tom Anderson (19m 42s)

You know, I said there was no command tab.

Tom Anderson (19m 44s)

And if your windows are oriented, you know, where they're not stacked and you're not just trying to bring an app that's behind something forward, like what you could do with a command tab potentially.

Tom Anderson (19m 54s)

But if you're just working between apps that are kind of side by side, it's super quick to just kind of glance at it and do the little tap gesture.

Tom Anderson (20m 1s)

And it makes that app active.

Jeff Battersby (20m 1s)

Okay.

Tom Anderson (20m 3s)

And if you leave it long enough, too, it'll kind of say, hey, bring that one into focus.

Tom Anderson (20m 7s)

So that's switching it back and forth.

Jeff Battersby (20m 7s)

Oh, really? Okay.

Tom Anderson (20m 9s)

I mean, I've hit that thing a couple times and it stopped.

Tom Anderson (20m 11s)

The switching back and forth is actually very quick, and it's kind of a hybrid keyboard commands, gestures to go back and forth between the two, so you kind of have to just experiment and see, like I did that and I was like, "I should just do that, that was really quick."

Jeff Battersby (20m 12s)

You're the rhythm section for this show.

Jeff Battersby (20m 16s)

Okay, interesting.

Jeff Battersby (20m 31s)

Have you linked your Mac to it yet and worked with a Mac screen and how does that play?

Tom Anderson (20m 36s)

Yes.

Tom Anderson (20m 39s)

That, when it works, is pretty good.

Jeff Battersby (20m 41s)

When it works.

Tom Anderson (20m 42s)

Yeah, and again, it's 1.0.

Tom Anderson (20m 45s)

And so I get a lot of input is temporarily not working

Tom Anderson (20m 50s)

or whatever the error message says.

Tom Anderson (20m 52s)

And so in some cases, it's not working.

Tom Anderson (20m 55s)

And like, you can't do anything on the Mac.

Tom Anderson (20m 58s)

Like the mouse doesn't move and keyboard shortcuts don't,

Tom Anderson (21m)

you know, the keyboard's not working.

Tom Anderson (21m 2s)

Sometimes you get that message and it still works.

Tom Anderson (21m 6s)

But it's very glitchy.

Tom Anderson (21m 8s)

And so there are times I've had to close it out,

Tom Anderson (21m 10s)

reconnect it, and then other times it's rock solid and it's good.

Tom Anderson (21m 16s)

The allure to that for me is, you know,

Tom Anderson (21m 19s)

I've got a 27 inch display on my desk.

Tom Anderson (21m 21s)

It's hooked up to the Mac mini,

Tom Anderson (21m 22s)

but I've got a cable there.

Tom Anderson (21m 23s)

I can easily connect the MacBook Pro to it.

Tom Anderson (21m 27s)

And the problem there, and it's not really a problem,

Tom Anderson (21m 30s)

but the thing is I've got to be at the desk, right?

Tom Anderson (21m 33s)

And I don't want to be at the desk all the time,

Tom Anderson (21m 36s)

you know, with the laptop.

Tom Anderson (21m 37s)

And so, you know, working on the laptop,

Tom Anderson (21m 39s)

you're somewhat limited with the resolution and how much you can actually see in the window.

Tom Anderson (21m 45s)

And through the Mac virtual display in the Vision Pro,

Tom Anderson (21m 49s)

it greatly increases what you could see.

Tom Anderson (21m 51s)

And I put that in the newsletter too.

Tom Anderson (21m 52s)

And it's up on the website, tomfanderson.com,

Tom Anderson (21m 55s)

if anybody wants to look at it.

Tom Anderson (21m 57s)

Just to see, you know,

Tom Anderson (21m 58s)

'cause now I can have, I got a lot more room to work.

Tom Anderson (22m 2s)

It's clear enough, like there, you know,

Tom Anderson (22m 4s)

wear a contact, so if I don't have my--

Tom Anderson (22m 7s)

it's a little hard to see because the UI stuff is smaller,

Tom Anderson (22m 11s)

but it works well enough.

Tom Anderson (22m 14s)

Now the thing that you can't do,

Tom Anderson (22m 16s)

like when you do the Mac virtual display,

Tom Anderson (22m 19s)

the internal display on the Mac shuts off.

Jeff Battersby (22m 23s)

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Tom Anderson (22m 23s)

And so you just get the one display.

Tom Anderson (22m 26s)

And so some people haven't been really happy with that.

Tom Anderson (22m 29s)

So they're hoping that more support comes where you can have multiple displays.

Tom Anderson (22m 32s)

There are applications out, multi-screen is one,

Tom Anderson (22m 35s)

There are some other ones.

Tom Anderson (22m 36s)

We can do multiple screens and I saw one.

Jeff Battersby (22m 39s)

Yeah, one even allowed you to have multiple Macs, didn't it?

Tom Anderson (22m 42s)

Yes.

Jeff Battersby (22m 42s)

Yeah. Okay. So that's interesting.

Tom Anderson (22m 43s)

Yeah, and I saw a video guy did.

Tom Anderson (22m 46s)

He uses an application called Moonlight and it's more for

Tom Anderson (22m 51s)

gaming and PCs.

Tom Anderson (22m 52s)

But what was nice with that is it had so many options for the

Tom Anderson (22m 56s)

displays and so he was able to just go into the settings on

Tom Anderson (23m)

that and actually set up a huge portrait oriented display.

Tom Anderson (23m 6s)

Go display, not just the you know, a mirror basically of the

Tom Anderson (23m 9s)

Mac display.

Tom Anderson (23m 10s)

And so that was pretty cool.

Tom Anderson (23m 12s)

That would be nice.

Tom Anderson (23m 13s)

Especially if you're a coder or something and you want you

Tom Anderson (23m 15s)

might really want to be able to see more in that orientation.

Jeff Battersby (23m 18s)

I'm not expecting this but any Apple Pencil support or is there not at this point in time.

Jeff Battersby (23m 25s)

Yeah that doesn't I mean it would be interesting. I can see that with like a Wacom tablet or something like that where you're doing that kind of work where that that makes a lot of sense.

Jeff Battersby (23m 36s)

No you're not a big gamer but any games have you done anything like that?

Tom Anderson (23m 40s)

Not one

Jeff Battersby (23m 41s)

Not one. Great. Movies?

Tom Anderson (23m 42s)

Not one

Tom Anderson (23m 44s)

Movies yes, I have

Tom Anderson (23m 48s)

So you if you go into your collection some of the ones that you have if they're available that you do get the 3d version

Tom Anderson (23m 54s)

Which I didn't like that

Tom Anderson (23m 57s)

Kind of gimmicky didn't look natural to me

Tom Anderson (23m 59s)

It may have just been the way it was produced because some people have said others, you know, some of those are better than others

Tom Anderson (24m 6s)

I've been watching the it's an Apple TV plus show the dinos

Tom Anderson (24m 10s)

It's about the New England Patriots and

Tom Anderson (24m 13s)

I think they're still putting them out. So it's relatively new. They haven't released all the episode yet

Tom Anderson (24m 18s)

And it's really good if you're into the football, especially if you're a Patriots fan I'm not but if you are you you would love it and I'm just you know in the sports in it, but it's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, you know that

Tom Anderson (24m 29s)

With Tom Brady and everything that happened with Drew Bledsoe leading up to Brady You know kind of taken over and the rest is history as they say

Tom Anderson (24m 36s)

But behind-the-scenes stuff, guys are cussing a lot and tellin' jokes.

Tom Anderson (24m 40s)

And it's pretty fun.

Jeff Battersby (24m 42s)

Is it, um, relatively immersive? Like, can you do that? So you're, you're okay. Interesting. And

Tom Anderson (24m 46s)

Yep.

Tom Anderson (24m 48s)

Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (24m 49s)

is that set up for you to be able to kind of look around and see, you know,

Jeff Battersby (24m 53s)

other people in the room or is it, is it not, not that kind of immersive yet?

Tom Anderson (24m 59s)

Yeah, so when you go into the, like, so when you're watching the Apple TV shows,

Tom Anderson (25m 3s)

it comes up in kind of a, just a window. And so you see the room and everything around you,

Tom Anderson (25m 7s)

but when you look up into the upper left, they've, they've got a button there that's for the immersive stuff. And you can either watch it in an immersive scene, which one of the ones they've provided. So either a Joshua tree or Mount hood or something like that, or you can do the cinema mode, which puts you in a theater. Um, and so it kind of just darks, you know, darkens the room. You know.

Tom Anderson (25m 30s)

You've got textures up on the wall. You've got like carpet on the floor and it's it's cool though. The effects in it because those environments in there like the ceiling and floor the color of the light changes, you know with the actual video you're watching. So it is like you're there.

Tom Anderson (25m 47s)

What I like about that one too is you have some options to choose where you sit and so you can choose, you know, front row and lower section middle row back row and then they've got balcony where you can do the same thing so you can if you don't want to be super.

Tom Anderson (25m 59s)

Up front you can bring it back in this, you know, it looks just like it would which is kind of nice. I did watch a little bit of IMAX stuff. They've got a couple free things in there and that was that was pretty good experience to the biggest drawback.

Tom Anderson (26m 14s)

I've seen with some of the immersive stuff when it's like in a completely dark environment is the glare from the lenses.

Tom Anderson (26m 23s)

And some people are like, yeah, that's what it looks like for me all the time. I wear glasses and I'll say.

Jeff Battersby (26m 28s)

Yeah

Tom Anderson (26m 29s)

And it is it's there. It can be a little annoying. I think if you watched enough of it, you just get used to it, but it depends how particular you are about that sort of thing, I think.

Jeff Battersby (26m 40s)

So, there was some talk, and we'll have a link to this in the show notes, I just want to point out that it's, I can't remember, I think it's an e-user, Korean at the first part of this article, but it's also in English down in the second part.

Jeff Battersby (26m 54s)

There was a lot of talk initially that people were returning these things in droves.

Jeff Battersby (26m 58s)

The reality is not exactly that.

Jeff Battersby (27m 1s)

It's about a 1% apparently return on the Apple Vision Pro, which is pretty interesting, I think.

Jeff Battersby (27m 7s)

It says more people are keeping them.

Jeff Battersby (27m 10s)

I have no idea how many they've actually sold all together.

Jeff Battersby (27m 14s)

There's no, there are no numbers on that that I'm aware of, but if only 1% of people are returning the Vision Pros, that's interesting to me, that, you know, it's, again, I'm not in the market, I'm not the guy that's going to be buying one of these, and so, that's,

Jeff Battersby (27m 38s)

You know, I--

Jeff Battersby (27m 40s)

I don't know, but the fact that you determined that you're going to keep it, when initially you thought you were going to return it, or maybe you didn't.

Jeff Battersby (27m 47s)

Maybe that was what you were conveying,

Jeff Battersby (27m 50s)

but the reality was you really wanted to do it.

Jeff Battersby (27m 52s)

What I'm curious about is, so you've got two boys in the house and a wife in the house,

Jeff Battersby (27m 57s)

and you've got the goggles on, beer goggles maybe,

Tom Anderson (27m 59s)

Yep.

Jeff Battersby (28m 3s)

without the beer.

Jeff Battersby (28m 6s)

How is that playing?

Jeff Battersby (28m 7s)

Have you checked in with them to see--

Jeff Battersby (28m 10s)

you know, they've been playing with it and enjoying it.

Jeff Battersby (28m 16s)

But how is it to be on the other side in the house,

Jeff Battersby (28m 18s)

on the not-goggled side?

Tom Anderson (28m 22s)

Yeah. So when I first got it, I was communicated to them quite a bit about it. Like I wanted to let them know that 90 plus percent of the time, like I'm not in those fully immersive environments and probably close to 98%. And I do it more just to, Oh, that's cool. And then I dip out of it. And so I think that's where the pass through kind of comes in. Um,

Tom Anderson (28m 46s)

and I can see them walking around. So, and I don't use it that long during the day. Um,

Tom Anderson (28m 52s)

they come in to talk to me if it's more than just, Hey, can I go to, you know, so-and-so's house? And it's a quick answer, but if it's, I'll leave it on, but if it's more than that,

Tom Anderson (28m 59s)

I just take it off. Um, so I think it's been fine. Um, I think it's different cause you know, my kids are teenagers and so they don't require a lot of attention in terms of, you know, making sure they don't, they don't want any either. And so, you know, make sure they're not falling into things or eating Tide pods or something like that. Um, so, so I don't

Jeff Battersby (29m 9s)

They don't want any.

Jeff Battersby (29m 11s)

Yeah.

Tom Anderson (29m 22s)

feel like I'm being too irresponsible even with an on, but like I say, I see everything they come in and I talk to them, say hello, you know, just like I normally would. Um,

Tom Anderson (29m 31s)

and we haven't really changed too much about it. I asked my wife, I was like, does this weird you out with this? She goes, well, you look stupid, but it doesn't bother me. I'm glad you enjoy it. I mean, it's the reason you got it. Probably. Yeah. I mean, you've seen the show artwork. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Battersby (29m 37s)

The question is, was she saying that before the goggles were on, Tom?

Jeff Battersby (29m 49s)

Yes, I have.

Tom Anderson (29m 52s)

And, uh, I did, I did look at her once with the eyes showing, you know, and I was like,

Jeff Battersby (29m 52s)

Sleepy eye.

Tom Anderson (29m 57s)

so is my sleepy lenticular eyes doing the trick? She's like, yeah, no. I was like, okay.

Tom Anderson (30m 2s)

It was worth shot. Yeah. She didn't either. No, no, God, no. Jesus. That's terrible. Um,

Jeff Battersby (30m 5s)

Yeah, I don't wanna hear about that, by the way.

Jeff Battersby (30m 10s)

If you keep the goggles on.

Tom Anderson (30m 18s)

You know, and it's funny, like, I kept it, I'm still skeptical that the

Tom Anderson (30m 22s)

things are ever going to be, like, more than a niche thing. But I'm a dork. I'm a nerd.

Jeff Battersby (30m 27s)

Yes

Tom Anderson (30m 28s)

We both are. And it's one of those things where it's like, you know, she said,

Jeff Battersby (30m 29s)

Yes

Tom Anderson (30m 33s)

you don't really buy yourself much. So live a little. And so it's more just to kind of see where it goes. Use it when I want to use it. You know, I still am very skeptical of the whole idea. I do think that if they could get it to half the weight,

Jeff Battersby (30m 35s)

Mm-hmm, okay

Tom Anderson (30m 50s)

I think it would be more tolerable.

Tom Anderson (30m 52s)

I'd probably use it more.

Tom Anderson (30m 53s)

And I think more people would be apt to use it for things in certain situations.

Tom Anderson (30m 57s)

Like I really do like that spatial computing setup of being able to put

Tom Anderson (31m 3s)

windows wherever you want them.

Tom Anderson (31m 5s)

And other people have commented after you do that and you come back to your laptop or even your 27 inch display, it feels very cramped and like definitely very antiquated and it's like, huh, why am I stuck with just these, you know,

Tom Anderson (31m 19s)

this little bit of space to work in?

Tom Anderson (31m 22s)

So I do really like that.

Tom Anderson (31m 23s)

Uh, and I think is that something where we'd ever get to be able to do the majority of the time without looking ridiculous or being socially awkward,

Tom Anderson (31m 31s)

I think is the struggle there.

Tom Anderson (31m 33s)

Uh, but it is nice.

Tom Anderson (31m 34s)

It's something that I think Apple's working on probably for an update.

Tom Anderson (31m 37s)

The downside is if you go putting all of these windows around is if you shut off the unit, all of those placements get lost.

Tom Anderson (31m 44s)

Like it doesn't save those.

Jeff Battersby (31m 46s)

really? Yeah, gotta be. Because I mean, that's kind of built in the Mac OS. You know, it's not not often working the way you want it to with more than one screen connected. But that is

Tom Anderson (31m 47s)

And I think that's just a 1.0 thing.

Tom Anderson (31m 49s)

Uh,

Tom Anderson (31m 52s)

Right, mm-hm, yeah, so once they get that, I mean, I think, which they will.

Jeff Battersby (32m)

that is the that is

Tom Anderson (32m 5s)

I can't imagine that they're not probably even close to that.

Tom Anderson (32m 8s)

I think that it won't be too long before that comes out.

Tom Anderson (32m 12s)

Then I think that gets a little bit better because it does take a little bit of,

Tom Anderson (32m 15s)

okay, I need to realign all these windows again.

Tom Anderson (32m 18s)

Which is no different than when sometimes you plug your Mac into your external

Tom Anderson (32m 22s)

display or your reboot and stuff flies everywhere.

Tom Anderson (32m 24s)

But which now makes me think maybe they won't ever get it right.

Tom Anderson (32m 27s)

[LAUGH] It's hard to say.

Tom Anderson (32m 30s)

So yeah, it's neat.

Tom Anderson (32m 31s)

Is it super expensive?

Tom Anderson (32m 33s)

Yes, should somebody buy one?

Tom Anderson (32m 36s)

Only if you're interested in being on the ground floor of this kind of stuff and just like to tinker and explore.

Tom Anderson (32m 42s)

And if you live by yourself, which a lot of people do, right?

Jeff Battersby (32m 45s)

Which you might be after this, I don't know.

Tom Anderson (32m 47s)

I might, yeah, it's true.

Tom Anderson (32m 49s)

I hope not.

Tom Anderson (32m 52s)

If you're by yourself, you don't have to worry too much about kids keep tabs on or things like that.

Tom Anderson (32m 56s)

I think that is a different situation.

Tom Anderson (32m 58s)

I think if you're on the road a lot, like for work, and you're in a hotel and you've just got a 13 inch laptop maybe that you have and crappy TV in the hotel, I think that's a game changer.

Tom Anderson (33m 11s)

Is it worth $3,500, $4,000, that's up to each person to decide.

Jeff Battersby (33m 11s)

Sure.

Jeff Battersby (33m 15s)

Gotcha.

Jeff Battersby (33m 16s)

All right.

Jeff Battersby (33m 17s)

Well, Tom, thanks for spending that money so we could enjoy you

Jeff Battersby (33m 21s)

enjoying that vicariously.

Jeff Battersby (33m 23s)

Um, and we'll, uh, continue to check in.

Jeff Battersby (33m 26s)

Obviously Apple's going to be updating the, the vision of a software.

Jeff Battersby (33m 29s)

Actually, there's one supposedly coming out pretty shortly.

Jeff Battersby (33m 32s)

That should make some changes to some things.

Jeff Battersby (33m 35s)

So it'll be interesting to hear, uh, how much more or how much less.

Jeff Battersby (33m 41s)

You're using this over the next couple of months.

Jeff Battersby (33m 42s)

So we'll check in again, but I really appreciate you, uh, sharing your experience and, uh, I think that's us.

Jeff Battersby (33m 49s)

Tom another day we, we burned 30 minutes.

Tom Anderson (33m 50s)

It is. Another half hour gone just like that.

Close

Jeff Battersby (33m 54s)

Like some people burn a hundred dollar bills.

Tom Anderson (33m 57s)

Yeah, like me burning cash on this silly thing.

Jeff Battersby (34m 2s)

Alrighty.

Jeff Battersby (34m 3s)

Well, thanks very much.

Jeff Battersby (34m 4s)

We already told you about the music, about feedback at basic AF show.com.

Jeff Battersby (34m 8s)

so we don't need to dance that little dance anymore.

Jeff Battersby (34m 11s)

It's good to see you.

Tom Anderson (34m 12s)

That's it. All right, you too, buddy. And everyone listening, thank you. We do appreciate you bearing with us and joining us each week and spreading the word, which has been fabulous. And we do appreciate that very much. So thanks again. We will talk to you in a few weeks. Have a great rest of your day, rest of your night.

Jeff Battersby (34m 30s)

See ya.

Outro Music (34m 33s)

♪ I don't wanna know about your imperfections, dude ♪ ♪ Prefer to leave you on a pedestal so I'll improve ♪ ♪ 'Cause if I'm finding out you know that I'm just like you ♪ ♪ That gon' smash my whole world ♪ ♪ Lost in illusion, drowning myself up in the sauce ♪ ♪ Put my glasses on backward and rewind my watch ♪