Steve Troughton-Smith asks an interesting question on Mastodon:
“Why would anybody use my app in VR?” isn’t the right question to ask yourself. It’s “do I want my users to have to take off their headset to use my app?”
His post is clearly intended to have the obvious answer “no”, but I’m not sure there is a universal answer. I decided to opt-out of visionOS for my iPad apps, for now. I’m not sold on the device yet, and I have a bunch of other things to work on anyway.
It got me thinking about Apple’s own apps. For example, Books. Would you want to read a novel inside VR? You aren’t going to want to have Slack and other apps floating in space to distract you. An iPad seems like a better device for reading. Maybe if the book is surrounded by a virtual environment from the book within visionOS, adding a sense of being there? Apple seems to think so, because it does include the iPad version of Books with the Vision Pro.
Through the history of technology there are many “just because we could do it” moments. TikTok has swiping through an infinite feed of limitless content and users are probably worse off for it. I think the Vision Pro is going to be the same way, as developers feel out what makes sense on the device, and consider what is right for users. If some apps require taking off the headset, that might even be a good thing.
🇨🇦 Steve @manton “It got me thinking about Apple’s own apps. For example, Books. Would you want to read a novel inside VR?”
Not sure this is a great example because yes, of course I would. Turn down the distractions and just enjoy the pages.
Manton Reece @tewha Interesting. It doesn’t sound comfortable to me, but I guess we’ll see.
heckj @manton As a counter example for your book reading in visionOS - I’m hoping that being able to read reference docs (pdfs, epubs) are something I could do alongside working on my laptop. Reading a novel, probably not - but most of the “books” I have are docs, not novels. (that probably says something odd about me)
Manton Reece @heckj That makes sense. Interesting that there doesn’t appear to be a Preview app like there is on the Mac. Seems better suited to PDFs.
Steve is VRoomin’ @manton I don’t know, obviously, but using AirPods Pro with Vision Pro and tuning out the entire world might be nice for some to read a book in, with a babbling brook and shade under a sycamore tree.
Hall Happiness would be a Haynes manual in VR 🧰
🇨🇦 Steve @manton To be fair, the weight might be too much for sure.
isaiah @tewha @manton the idea of being able to read in bed without holding up a device seems pretty nice.
to be perfectly honest if i was loaded and could afford to blow $4K on a fancy display i’d buy this instead.
my handicap means i do a lot of my work in a reclining position. being able to suspend a display over myself anywhere i choose dans wires sounds pretty great. but it’s probably a pretty niche problem.
Rik @ Bikescape Reading books is one of the main things I’d expect do with a Vision Pro, as long as there were some immersive background so it’s just the book in front of me. I read a lot of ebooks via Libby and Kindle, but I rarely use Apple’s Books since the interface is very beige & low contrast.