When Apple debuted the Apple Vision Pro, it promised a new era of “spatial computing.” This mixed reality device was more than your standard VR headset — this was meant to be a computer strapped to your face.
And while the WWDC 2023 demo was certainly impressive, we now know that some features failed to make the cut. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, three notable features were absent from the Vision Pro but are expected to be included in a planned second-generation Vision Pro.
First, there are a pair of features that are absent from the Vision Pro that are expanded versions of features that will make it on Apple’s first headset.
On the Apple Vision Pro, you can extend the display of your Mac desktop or MacBook simply by looking at it while it’s powered on. Currently, this is limited to a single desktop at a time, but the ability to view multiple desktops at once is still in the works.
Similarly, Digital Personas were teased in the WWDC demo, a feature that allows the Vision Pro to recreate you digitally in a FaceTime call. In the demo, Personas were used to conference with a room of people on a normal instance of FaceTime (i.e. a live feed of their actual face, not their Persona), but they can also be used to communicate with each other.
However, at the moment you can only have one Persona communicate with another at a time, for a maximum of two. Future versions of the feature aim to allow a “several-person FaceTime conference” of Personas to communicate at once on FaceTime, but this upgrade won’t make it to the original Vision Pro.
Apple Vision Pro won’t be your workout coach — yet
Unfortunately, you may not get to test out the virtual keyboard anytime soon. Because while it looks gorgeous on the twin 4K Micro OLED displays inside the Vision Pro, those displays could be causing Apple some problems.
According to a report from Business Korea (h/t OLED-info), the total production cost of the Apple Vision Pro is $1,519, close to the $1,509 figure we reported. And nearly 50% of that cost could be coming from the displays alone. Business Korea says that each of the 4K Micro OLED displays costs $350 and the front OLED display that shows of the headset’s EyeSight feature costs $30. That puts the display cost for each Vision Pro at $730 — which is more than the retail price of the newly announced Meta Quest 3.
And it looks like these displays are a major supply bottleneck. A report from The Elec says that Sony, who makes the Micro OLED displays for Apple, can only produce 100,000 to 200,000 displays per quarter.
That means, at best, Apple can only manufacture 400,000 headsets per year if this rumor is true. So make sure to keep an eye on our pre-order guide so that you’re first in line once the headsets are available.
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