Apple Engineers Allegedly Able to Use Vision Pro With Two Mac Displays

[jclardy]

The second display is going to be locked behind a $1,000 paywall, duh. I am just kidding - I hope.

TBH, you are probably correct, but indirectly...my guess is that this might require an M3 mac with better display compression and Wifi 6...so the paywall is buying the newest MBP.

And it was not announced previously to lessen the negative press around Apple "artificially" limiting to 1 display to make people spend an extra $2k on top of a $3.5k headset...

 

[G5isAlive]

As a retired former software engineer and based on things mentioned in the story, I would guess the reason is that Apple isn’t confident of the multi-monitor feature, whether it’s because of bugs or lack of system resources to allow for good performance. If it’s indeed running in Apple labs, it probably needs a ton of optimization.

Remember it’s still really early in that we can’t even arrange app icons on the “desktop” yet, a feature that will inevitably come to VisionOS. Or mouse support. There are probably a ton of features Apple simply hasn’t finished. Software managers would insist they have to ship something, so right now we have a very limited feature set. Time will tell. This is still very much a 1.0 (well, 1.0.2. Close enough). 1.0’s are rarely feature packed compared to what we get with a 2.0 or even a 1.5. I can mention quite a few bugs I’ve encountered that definitely need fixing before they get to new features.

Really good points, and another thing I will add to the pile that I havent seen discussed much yet, is the APV is laggy. We know it has an M2 chip, but it lags as compared to my M2 MBA. It's just an overall feeling. Its not just the visual elements or the interface, if anything the visual is really snappy, but even when I hook a blue tooth keyboard to it for example, I can type faster than it can register. I havent had that experience for over a decade or more on a Mac. I think they are probably focused on optimizing for speed as well right now. And so while technically wifi can handle the speed, perhaps the M2 APV isn't up to the rest. And maybe thats why it has the M2 and not M3 (perhaps counter intuitive) but maybe it's been tuned to the M2 and the things the M3 does better (ray tracing? even hardware based?) would just eat up cycles the APV cant afford to be put elsewhere?

Dont know. Just know the APV has some improving to do

Not that I am going to return mine, nope! LOL

 

[Le0M]

I'm sure it's coming, which will be great. vOS will continue to get better over time, just like all of them. There are still a lot of other quality of life improvements that I'd prefer to see prioritized though

It might come in next gen Apple Vision.

 

[Le0M]

visionOS 2.0 here we go

More like Apple Vision Pro 2.

 

[spazzcat]

Assuming we will see the beta of VisionOS 2.0 at WWDC, these employees could be testers.

 

[k1121j]

Wait!!! that was the selling point for version 2.

 

[Le0M]

The fact that the base M-series chips can’t do dual monitor, but the Vision Pro with the same chip can will 100% anger everyone.
if Apple releases dual screen support on the gen 1 AVP with M2, expect to see a whole host of angry M2 MBA/iPad Pro owners.

They won't, and for hardware limitation, not for fear of "angry customers".

 

[tweaknmod]

Virtual monitor stands to make it look like your screens are on your desk.

😅

 

[tobybrut]

Really good points, and another thing I will add to the pile that I havent seen discussed much yet, is the APV is laggy. We know it has an M2 chip, but it lags as compared to my M2 MBA. It's just an overall feeling. Its not just the visual elements or the interface, if anything the visual is really snappy, but even when I hook a blue tooth keyboard to it for example, I can type faster than it can register. I havent had that experience for over a decade or more on a Mac. I think they are probably focused on optimizing for speed as well right now. And so while technically wifi can handle the speed, perhaps the M2 APV isn't up to the rest. And maybe thats why it has the M2 and not M3 (perhaps counter intuitive) but maybe it's been tuned to the M2 and the things the M3 does better (ray tracing? even hardware based?) would just eat up cycles the APV cant afford to be put elsewhere?

Dont know. Just know the APV has some improving to do

Not that I am going to return mine, nope! LOL

This thing definitely has a lot of improving to do. Some of the bugs I’ve seen are aggravating, such as video skipping forward or backwards and losing my place because I moved my hand to scratch my nose. Or UI elements that refuse to select even though I’m looking right at them, but the control next to it lights up. Or the fact I can’t see what I’m deleting when I hit the delete key on the virtual keyboard. Or that I have to redo eye tracking or hand tracking because I lost the ability to do Optic ID for some unknown reason. Or the repeated warnings that my eyes are too close to the display even though I’m already using the W+ light shield cushion. Yeah, that’s a small number of bugs I’ve seen, and I haven’t even tried to use a Bluetooth keyboard yet.

Definitely a 1.0 product, but we knew that going in. Pioneers take the arrows. I’m not returning mine either. Despite the aggravations, I still spend 4-5 hours a day using it.

 

[darngooddesign]

The fact that the base M-series chips can’t do dual monitor, but the Vision Pro with the same chip can will 100% anger everyone.
if Apple releases dual screen support on the gen 1 AVP with M2, expect to see a whole host of angry M2 MBA/iPad Pro owners.

Yes it can. The M2 Air and iPad support two displays, one internal and one external; the M2 Mac Mini supports two displays, both external.

 

[blackcrayon]

Seems to be mostly a bandwidth thing. Of course, it seems like you could easily have 2 lower resolution displays that would use a similar amount. The Mac - in - vision works really well though, I played some Death Stranding and Baldur's Gate 3 and it worked really well.

For my needs, a single Mac display isn't particularly limiting because a lot of things I run on my second Mac monitor as just fine as "iPad apps". PDFs, slack, email, that kind of thing.

 

[magicschoolbus]

Looking forward to this feature on the Apple Vision Ultra.

 

[G5isAlive]

This thing definitely has a lot of improving to do. Some of the bugs I’ve seen are aggravating, such as video skipping forward or backwards and losing my place because I moved my hand to scratch my nose. Or UI elements that refuse to select even though I’m looking right at them, but the control next to it lights up. Or the fact I can’t see what I’m deleting when I hit the delete key on the virtual keyboard. Or that I have to redo eye tracking or hand tracking because I lost the ability to do Optic ID for some unknown reason. Or the repeated warnings that my eyes are too close to the display even though I’m already using the W+ light shield cushion. Yeah, that’s a small number of bugs I’ve seen, and I haven’t even tried to use a Bluetooth keyboard yet.

Definitely a 1.0 product, but we knew that going in. Pioneers take the arrows. I’m not returning mine either. Despite the aggravations, I still spend 4-5 hours a day using it.

This. Thank you. I appreciate hearing actual use cases without the 'this should be perfect I am going to return it' drum beating so that we can focus on how to actually use it.

I dont get (I understand but literally its not shown to me) the warning about being too close to the display, I do sometimes get I am too far away message. fit is so critical. did you have yours mailed to you or did you go into the store for a fitting. I had mine mailed and I am considering going in to have it checked.

The bluetooth keyboard (mine is the smaller apple Magic Keyboard) paired effortlessly and works great (but I am a touch typist, looking at it to use is not optimal, but then I tend to be leaning back at a very oblique angle). I guess I have two problems with it, 1) I tend to type faster than the APV can follow, which I used to do routinely on a mac more than a decade ago but not recently, and 2) it still opens a small text display as you go window, that is NOT part of the email, so maybe this is why it lags? it is updating both this small text input display and the document its going in. and sometimes those two windows overlap (annoyingly so). so I typically move the text input display away, and focus on the main window. but I hate the virtual keyboard and this works well (enough) for me.

I also have to train my hands to not fidget so much. who knew I clicked my fingers together when not paying attention (my wife says she does lol)

 

[Fuzzball84]

I have combined two Vision Pro headsets so each of my 4 eyes can have their own 'window'. It's amazing and I can now move my entire workflow to Vision Pro while my 4 arms gesture front, right, left and back. I plan in the coming days to get my feet involved too, so my four feet can multitask too.

My workflow is reaping benefits... and I'm thinking of growing more eyes and limbs.

 

[tobybrut]

Seems to be mostly a bandwidth thing. Of course, it seems like you could easily have 2 lower resolution displays that would use a similar amount. The Mac - in - vision works really well though, I played some Death Stranding and Baldur's Gate 3 and it worked really well.

For my needs, a single Mac display isn't particularly limiting because a lot of things I run on my second Mac monitor as just fine as "iPad apps". PDFs, slack, email, that kind of thing.

What might work just as well as putting up a second remote monitor window is to allow expansion of the single monitor. Say you have a 14” MBP you’re using on your AVP. Drag the window to make it twice as big without scaling the contents and just have a bigger canvas to work with and have twice as many apps running in the one window. That might be easier than creating a second monitor window.

 

[dmi]

Wi-Fi 6 does 9.6 Gbit/s under very ideal circumstances. Transmitting a 5K image requires (2560*2*1440*2)*3*60 = 2.5 GiB/s (or ~20 Gbit/s) at 60 Hz, not to mention twice that at 120 Hz ProMotion. Oh, and that's only with 8 bits per color; for 10 bpc, you need another 33% more.

Terminal.app only needs 9600 baud per window.

 

[tobybrut]

This. Thank you. I appreciate hearing actual use cases without the 'this should be perfect I am going to return it' drum beating so that we can focus on how to actually use it.

I dont get (I understand but literally its not shown to me) the warning about being too close to the display, I do sometimes get I am too far away message. fit is so critical. did you have yours mailed to you or did you go into the store for a fitting. I had mine mailed and I am considering going in to have it checked.

The bluetooth keyboard (mine is the smaller apple Magic Keyboard) paired effortlessly and works great (but I am a touch typist, looking at it to use is not optimal, but then I tend to be leaning back at a very oblique angle). I guess I have two problems with it, 1) I tend to type faster than the APV can follow, which I used to do routinely on a mac more than a decade ago but not recently, and 2) it still opens a small text display as you go window, that is NOT part of the email, so maybe this is why it lags? it is updating both this small text input display and the document its going in. and sometimes those two windows overlap (annoyingly so). so I typically move the text input display away, and focus on the main window. but I hate the virtual keyboard and this works well (enough) for me.

I also have to train my hands to not fidget so much. who knew I clicked my fingers together when not paying attention (my wife says she does lol)

I had mine mailed since the nearest Apple Store is 75 miles away. The light seal seems to fit just fine. I ran my fingers over where it touches my face and there doesn’t seem to be any misfit. It seals just fine, though light still comes in where my nose is since the light shield doesn’t extend down there. I don’t know what causes the warning, but perhaps it’s a sensitivity tuning issue.

Ah, the finger fidgeting issue. I have to be careful I keep my thumb and index finger far apart on both hands or I start accidentally selecting things, the cause of the video skipping problem. I don’t know what Apple can do to fix it. It seems if they try to figure out accidental fingertip touches that they might end up with the reverse problem of non-responsiveness when we are trying to finger click.

 

[Schizoid]

The second display is going to be locked behind a $1,000 paywall, duh. I am just kidding - I hope.

Simply buy the new Apple Vision Pro Max Ultra and a high end Macbook Pro…

 

[barkomatic]

The second display is going to be locked behind a $1,000 paywall, duh. I am just kidding - I hope.

Or, just pay $20 per month for the second 4K display option!

 

[mwegner]

Any Apple Silicon Mac can already output two virtual displays in a mac-to-mac screen share; so it isn't the host computer blocking. This is connecting to a base M1:

My guess is either the M2 AVP is on the performance cusp of handling two, and it might come online after a little optimization, or the UX needed a tiny bit more polish (i.e. if you moved your two virtual screens far apart, had some visionOS windows in between, and wanted to move your mac's physical cursor between its two virtual monitors).

 

[G5isAlive]

I had mine mailed since the nearest Apple Store is 75 miles away. The light seal seems to fit just fine. I ran my fingers over where it touches my face and there doesn’t seem to be any misfit. It seals just fine, though light still comes in where my nose is since the light shield doesn’t extend down there. I don’t know what causes the warning, but perhaps it’s a sensitivity tuning issue.

Ah, the finger fidgeting issue. I have to be careful I keep my thumb and index finger far apart on both hands or I start accidentally selecting things, the cause of the video skipping problem. I don’t know what Apple can do to fix it. It seems if they try to figure out accidental fingertip touches that they might end up with the reverse problem of non-responsiveness when we are trying to finger click.

My light seal seems fine too, but like you if I look for it down low around my nose I can see some light sometimes. Here is a personal question, how big is your nose? Mine is small so it's not surprising to me that there might be some gap. But I also wonder if that is why you and I seemingly can wear ours with no comfort issues for hours.

The finger fidget, is more that now that I do click with my fingers, I sometimes just randomly do it. I have to train myself it seems. Your point about there may not be an easy Apple fix makes sense.

 

[tobybrut]

My light seal seems fine too, but like you if I look for it down low around my nose I can see some light sometimes. Here is a personal question, how big is your nose? Mine is small so it's not surprising to me that there might be some gap. But I also wonder if that is why you and I seemingly can wear ours with no comfort issues for hours.

The finger fidget, is more that now that I do click with my fingers, I sometimes just randomly do it. I have to train myself it seems. Your point about there may not be an easy Apple fix makes sense.

I would say my nose is average. The light shield isn’t present where the nose is. The only thing that blocks light from the nose area is a scrap of cloth. Fortunately I only see the light when I look down to look for it. Otherwise, I don’t notice it at all. I’m guessing Apple didn’t extend the light shield to the nose because it would make it too uncomfortable.

Oddly, I find the standard Solo Knit band to be the more comfortable one. i can’t seem to get the dual loop band to adjust properly, making it press more against my forehead than against my cheek. I ended up just using the Solo Knit. Fortunately both are provided. I easily wore the headset for about 8 hours the first day i got it without the standard discomfort getting to the point where it bothered me, even with the Knit band, and about 4-5 hours each on days 2 and 3. I guess we’re among the few where having a headset doesn’t bother us much.

 

[bartolo5]

More like Apple Vision Pro 2.

What will the non Pro version be called? Vision Air? just 'Vision'?

 

[G5isAlive]

Oddly, I find the standard Solo Knit band to be the more comfortable one. i can’t seem to get the dual loop band to adjust properly, making it press more against my forehead than against my cheek. I ended up just using the Solo Knit. Fortunately both are provided. I easily wore the headset for about 8 hours the first day i got it without the standard discomfort getting to the point where it bothered me, even with the Knit band, and about 4-5 hours each on days 2 and 3. I guess we’re among the few where having a headset doesn’t bother us much.

Again, thank you! I too find the soloband at least as comfortable as the dual band if not more, I wore it the first day straight for 5 hours with no issue, sure I am aware of the pressure if I think of it, but its certainly not enough for me to call it painful, or want to stop. Next day was 5 hours, then 2 hours, yesterday was 4 hours lol. all the time I have to force myself to stop. I did try the dual band just to see what everyone was talking about, and it wasnt any better, maybe worse, and definitely harder to get my head in and out of so I have gone back to the soloband. I wrote about that earlier and got called a fanboy defending apple lol.

My current theory is that my long standing love of Scottish Single Malt has deadened my facial nerves. And for the record, I havent had a dram since Christmas lol.

 

[endemize]

How is that news? Even my crappy quest 2 can 3 monitors

Yeah at like 1080p or less. Apples are 4k. Totally different levels of bandwidth.