Apple Vision Pro in the Enterprise

By George Gonzalez

- 6 minutes read - 1147 words

It’s finally here! After 8 months of waiting and much longer since the rumors began, the Apple Vision Pro has arrived at my doorstep. Over the last few days journalists, bloggers and influencers have been posting their unboxing videos, setup tutorials and reviews. This review is different, as I have one goal in mind: I want to see where the Vision Pro fits in the enterprise space. I’ll look at it from my vantage point as a systems engineer, but I’ll wear some of my other hats as well.

The Apple marketing material shows us a device that can go from productivity to entertainment and back with a simple tap of the fingers. But how realistic is that? Read on…

First Impressions

  • This is premium. The unboxing experience is what you would expect from Apple.
  • Setup is magical, have your iPhone nearby and you are all set. Just like pairing an Apple Watch.
  • It gets hot! I might have had it on too tight or for too long but I had red marks above my eyebrows. I switched to the dual loop band and the weight distribution felt better.
  • Battery life could be a problem. The good thing is that time passed quickly; between zoom calls, slacks and emails at work, I didn’t notice the battery percentage draining.
  • It is heavy. After being on calls for a couple of hours I start to notice the weight on the nose and cheeks.
  • Light leakage from the bottom and nose area. I have spoken to several other Vision Pro owners who are experiencing the same.

Will it blend?

After 3 days of working at least 4 hours a day with it, I have some thoughts…

  • Email: Web-based email has been no problem at all. The eye tracking is fabulous and I’ve had no issues with it finding exactly what button I’m looking at in the browser.

  • Slack: Works as expected, my only gripe… when pasting a text snippet, the paste and send buttons are right on top of each other, but again, the eye tracking can usually distinguish what I’m looking at. This is not the fault of Apple, this is on Slack, and to be fair, this is a “compatible” app, not a native visionOS one.

  • Zoom: While off camera, no one was able to tell I was using a new device, the sound quality and performance was what we’ve been accustomed to. I found myself bringing the screen closer or even walking towards it when working in a large room when someone was sharing their screen. The whole process was organic, it just came naturally.

  • Other apps: There aren’t that many yet, so I find myself heading back to my mac for those tasks, but like the iPhone and iPad before it, “build the Vision Pro and they will come.”

I was very surprised by how soon I became accustomed to it, walking around the office, having my coffee, interacting with my environment. Also, unlike other headsets, I have not noticed any eye strain.

What I didn’t like

  • Screen Sharing in Zoom allows you to share the entire screen instead of just a single app. Although an interesting first experience for the other participants, the whole screen moves about like a ship at sea. Not to mention the confidentiality concerns with other screens or notifications being visible. This is not a deal breaker, I’m sure it will be addressed in a future software update.

  • Screen shots. In our field it is quite common to take, annotate and share screenshots. While this is possible in the Vision Pro, there is no native way yet to selectively screenshot an app or window or even use the Photos app to crop the image to highlight what it desired.

  • Microsoft Office apps are currently not able to authenticate with work accounts.

  • As intuitive as the On Screen Keyboard is, I still found myself needing a physical keyboard.

  • My first impression stands, it is heavy and it can get hot.

  • In low light the experience becomes noticeably worse. Take my word for it, don’t try walking down the stairs in a dimly lit environment. This is just a normal limitation of current camera technology.

Who is it for?

Creative Space

Definitely! Having spent two decades surrounded by creatives, both in the print and motion picture industry, I can say with certainty, yes! This will be a hit! From editors to directors, from animators to riggers and lighters, this tool- combined with the right software and pipeline- will be amazing.

Knowledge Workers

Here it gets a bit trickier. The best answer I can give is, it depends… if you live inside a spreadsheet, or spend a lot of time in an IDE poring over code, you absolutely will not be thrilled with the “floating keyboard.” Of course, you can pair it with your laptop, but then, you need a laptop.

I’ve been able to easily navigate being on Zoom meetings, checking email and Slack and a few other apps.

Many of us have very specific hardware setups- single widescreen curved, dual 27", quad 24", one in landscape and one in portrait. It’s ok, I won’t judge. The point is, in its current iteration, by itself, the Vision Pro has some limitations in this area.

Other fields

I can see many applications in medical, manufacturing, science and countless other fields.

The tech enthusiast, early adopter

If you have the funds and are OK with having a first generation product that will be quickly eclipsed by the next iteration, then yes, by all means!

The changing of the hats

As a Systems Engineer:

  • Can I manage this with MDM (Apple recently announced they would, the feature is currently in Beta and I’m testing it.)

As the one holding the purse:

  • This costs how much?
  • And you still want a mouse and keyboard on top of the laptop\desktop you already have?

As a techie:

  • Yes, Sign me up!
  • Also, this costs how much?

Is it worth it?

Yes, Spatial Computing is here to stay. AR\VR\XR+, it will all continue to evolve. Remember the car phones that came in a suitcase, or the bulky Motorola cellphones? This will be no different, but we have to start somewhere and Apple has done what others tried and fumbled. Perhaps because the technology was not there yet, but I suspect more because they rushed it and failed to consider the entire experience.

The Vision Pro is not a monolithic product that magically appeared at Cupertino. It is a solid product built on years of UI\UX, hardware, software and app ecosystems and it is my hope that it will be the first iteration of the next leap.

In its current state, there are flaws, bugs and growing pains, but if you see it for what it can be, it is definitely worth it and has a place in the enterprise space.