mergeconflict397 === [00:00:00] Frank: Welcome back, everyone. It's another episode of Merge Conflict, brought to you this time from the other side of the screen. Some screen, some other screen. James, James, can you hear me? James, I'm trying to report in from the other side. Are you in there, Frank? Are you in there? I can't see you. I can't see your eyes. [00:00:25] James: This is the best podcast of podcasts in the world. I don't know if anyone's podcasted with the Apple Vision Pro Live, but this is pretty amazing. [00:00:32] Frank: Um, it's actually kind of great. I wasn't sure, um, like I, I could just put the goggles on and talk into a microphone, but I decided I actually had to do something in VR. So I've did the Mac virtual monitor. And I've made you huge, James. I'm just going to keep making you bigger and you're like bigger than life size now in my room. So I feel like you're right in front of me, kind of intimidating [00:00:56] James: me a little bit. That's good. It's like, we've never been closer in our entire lives and yet we're hundreds upon thousands of miles apart. This is fantastic. Um, I challenged you, uh, via text earlier when you screenshots, I'm like, you got a podcast in. In the Apple Vision Pro. Now, what I see is really fascinating actually, because, uh, I'm not sure you can probably see yourself in Zencaster, but actually all the little light sensors, when you look at the screen and the camera are twinkling. Uh, at me. It's almost like, uh, uh, it's almost, it's almost like, uh, sirens are going off or something. I'm an [00:01:36] Frank: electron. Hello. Um, electrons communicating. You know what? Um, I thought I, for this device to be any good, the AR mode had to be good. And I tell you, I, I can just live. In this alternate reality place, um, call it alt world, alt dot world. Um, I'm fine here. I don't need to buy a new monitor. It turns out I can make a screen as big as I want, and then I can just walk around it and just do that and live it. Yes, I'm blinking. Uh, people blink in the alt world. That's what we do, James. It's, it's, it's just what happens. [00:02:18] James: I like it. Now, what's very fascinating is that, you know, anything that's on the screen right now, I can't see. So I can't see if I'm supposed to see your eyes or I can see something about it, but I can't see anything now. [00:02:31] Frank: Well, I, I don't know how to give you eyes. The, uh, one downside, well, the big bonus of living by yourself is I can just wear this thing all around. The cat doesn't seem to mind. Uh, I haven't had to deal with interacting with other human beings, but. Uh, from my, from inside the Alt. World perspective, um, real world is pretty accessible. Uh, it's out there, it's available if you should choose to interact with it, but mostly you want to stick with the, uh, virtual content. [00:03:02] James: So what you're seeing right now, and I'm going to, I'm going to guess what you're seeing, because I've actually never seen the other side. So this is actually kind of, I've never seen the other side of what Frank looks at. But my assumption, right? Even though if you're watching this on YouTube right now, you're just seeing Frank and me have a conversation and Frank is in the other world that's out there and moving around now, what's really fascinating about it is that. I'm assuming what he's seeing is like a wall. I don't know if there's a wall in front of you and it's your MacBook, but then I am just hovering and other things like iMessages are hovering in, I'm not in, I'm hovering inside of your house basically, or at least a Safari browser is. [00:03:47] Frank: Well, it's not a Safari browser because, uh, we use a fine piece of software called Zencaster and you are required to use the Google Chrome for that. And so my only options here were to do a full on Mac screen share, which is, uh, it's pretty nice. It's basically a virtual monitor. Um, it's a feature I hoped they would implement. Sadly, it's the one where you actually kind of want like 10 different monitors. Like I want 10 virtual monitors now. Yeah. Don't limp out on me, Apple. Apple. Apple. Apple. Um, so I'm actually, uh, viewing my entire Mac screen, but bigger because like actually the monitor's right there. I could size it to the monitor, but it's so wee. It's, it's so small. So no, you, you, you're in alt dot world. Uh, you can just make it bigger in spatial world. We can just. Space things out bigger. Ah, pretty good. Pretty good. Uh, I'm not disappointed. [00:04:45] James: Yeah. What's your first, first impressions out of the box? Give, give me the whole rundown, [00:04:50] Frank: Frank. It came in more pieces than I was expecting. Um, the little battery pack is not connected to the headset, which, uh. It's very un Apple like. It wasn't even MagSafe. It feels very rugged. There's a metal connector you gotta snap in and twist on. And, uh, that connects you into Alt. World. I can figure that that's just how it works. Um, the box was beautiful. I didn't do any, like, Twitch unboxing because I would just come out sounding like an idiot. Uh, but the box is just fine. The device is, uh, pretty surprising when you hold it in your hand. Uh, the, uh, little part that attaches to your face actually detaches with magnets very easily. It's, it's a little weird, but the device is actually a bit smaller than I was expecting. I've, I've had the Oculus Rifts and all that, you know? So, um, the device is actually a lot smaller, especially if you take away the. Faceplate? It's almost just like a big curved iPhone, which makes me want like a big curved iPhone someday. Um, and then you, here was a scary moment. You put it on your face. It took me a little while to figure out how to actually turn the silly thing on. Uh, you put it on your face and you're in the black screen. You're like, yep, been here. This is VR as I know it. And then, um, how does Oculus start? It starts with the little O for Oculus. Um, Black World. Oh, and it's a terrible test case for optics because you have black on white and it's just, it'll show you any, um, imperfection in your optics and what pops up, of course, white apple logo screen though, I go, boy, here we go. It's going to be identical, but then they do the best magic trick in the world. They, um, lift the black veil of the virtual reality world and allow The real world to seep into your eyes. And it was astonishing, honestly, at first. Um, I would say the resolution is absolutely incredible. What struck me at first was the color reproduction. If you think about, they're doing a bit of a trick here. They're taking a camera feed and outputting a video feed. And it's a lot, it's a lot, it's tricky to get. The real world colors, especially because you can pop the things off, put them right back on and to see all the real world colors match perfectly and have an actual depth of field, which was important. First thing I did was look at my feet to see if I could walk around or not, and I could, so I would say like as an AR device, it won me over immediately just from high res screen, excellent color reproduction, and you have a sense of depth. [00:07:36] James: Oh, nice. So you were able to see your feet, walk around, do everything. It's basically as if the outside world is inside. Now, I did hear that you're saying the colors are pretty accurate. I've heard the colors are fairly accurate, like pretty close, 90%, [00:07:51] Frank: 95%. I wear blurry contacts all the time. I'm, I'm used to a slightly blurry world and all that. Like, um, I hear the other criticism was the foveated display. Some people weren't liking that. I haven't noticed it. It's fine. Um, I think the color reproduction is fantastic. In fact, I've been, um, without using the virtual monitor, I've been actually sitting in front of, like, my real monitor monitor. And the, um, the video is good enough that you can actually, like, code. With them on, using like a normal monitor. The video feed is tolerable enough. I'd say the worst part of the video feed, the real world has a tiny bit of lag to it. Of course, it's going to have a tiny bit of lag to it, but the real world is a tiny bit. So like said coding, if I shake my head around, there's going to be blurry edges on everything, but it all comes into sharpness. You know, the moment I control my face and hold still for a moment. So, uh, you know what the best part was? I'm walking around, I'm enjoying my beautiful color reproduced fake real world. I'm like, wow, this virtual world is a lot like the real world. It's pretty good. [00:09:02] James: Yeah. In fact, it's almost one to one, you might say. [00:09:06] Frank: I saw the cat, I didn't step on the cat. It was perfect. And then all of a sudden, a little cursive hello, um, appeared before my eyes. That was the Apple's introduction. And honestly, um. This is where my complaint about working in the simulator has been so annoying because I'm like, I know a lot of the stuff is going to look cool in reality, but like, you're doing a 3D world on a 2D screen. It can only look so good. And just a very basic cursive hello. Looked fantastic because the stabilization was solid. The color matching was solid. The, yeah, just it, they, they nailed it just with a hello. They sold me with a stupid curse [00:09:50] James: of Hello? I was, uh, I think like a good. At least how like I'm envisioning it as sort of the first time that I saw drone fireworks. So for example, you know, fireworks, they actually do attempt to sometimes make a thing or words out of fireworks, but it kind of is the fireworks. So they dissipate, right? I was watching, we were watching The Bachelor last night and there was a date or whatever that ended. And they usually do fireworks, but they did drone fireworks and they were making, they were making like these three dimensional roses with like things around it. And they spelled out the word, the bachelor and like did all this cool stuff. And I was like, dang, that is like, like, that's kind of mind blowing. So that's what I'm imagining you're seeing, but extremely close to your face. You know what I mean? Like you're seeing that dimension of all that stuff happen. And it's like right in there. [00:10:41] Frank: Yeah, it's, it's, um, It's a magic trick, but the illusion is sold. That's it. You just have to sell the illusion. They, they convinced my brain that that object exists in the real world. And we'll get to it, like, to the point where I'll have apps docked around the house, and I'll walk around them. Because my brain is interpreting them as physical objects because they're just as stable as anything else my visual system is receiving as input. And, uh, it's funny, like, I don't want to run into the app and they're like, no, it's virtual content. I can, I can walk through it. The really real world will allow it. Yeah. Uh, pretty great. Uh, so what, what is, uh, step one in any wonderful Apple purchase experience? Signing into iCloud. I [00:11:35] James: was like, okay, I see the hello. Usually it's like, all right, now let's do a bunch of these. Like, do you want to enable this thing? Do you want this thing? Do you want that thing? Do you this thing? But I guess I signed in as like the first, right? Yeah. [00:11:47] Frank: Yeah. So my actual experience with this thing was terrible. Oh no. Yeah, because, uh, they, they bring up this weird prompt. They're like, do you want to restore from a backup or not use data? And I'm like, neither of those sound like good options. So I'm like, I'll restore from a backup, I guess. And they're like, sign into iCloud, fool. I'm like, Oh, how do you type on this thing? Typing, not great. Not great. Not a great experience. Uh, I applaud the effort though, that they put into making the typewriter work. Uh, and then, I click the login, oh, by the way, so I've got like my iPhone in my hand, and I'm using the virtual keyboard to type in my password from my iPhone, and my iPhone won't unlock because I'm wearing silly goggles on my face. Anyway, get the password put in, you press the button, and spinner. Spinner, Spinner, Spinner for 1 minute, Spinner for 2 minutes, Spinner for 5 minutes, Spinner for 10 minutes. And I'm like, you know what? Data's not that important to me. I'm going to hit the back button. Back button doesn't work. I don't know what to do. I'm like, well, I broke my new device. Oh no! Probably Starlink. I'm probably going to have to drive down to Seattle, go talk to some nerd. Um, but then I had the, uh, I am a Windows user at heart, so I had a thought. I'm like, what if I just disconnect the battery from it, reboot it and start over? So I got [00:13:14] James: to go through Yeah, it hasn't gotten all the way through. Like it should be relatively close. [00:13:18] Frank: Well, what scared me was I had to put, um, a device passcode in and there was some stuff on the internet about, do not forget your passcode. If you forget your passcode, you have to take it to an Apple store and get it reset. So be very careful. And so I was a tiny bit nervous about it all because I was. Reading up on that, but, uh, anyway, after the reboot, the sign in experience went much better. I didn't even have to sign in, turns out, um, and I was in, I did a 3D scan of my face to create a virtual avatar that So uncanny valley. James. So, I don't like him. [00:14:00] James: He's weird. I like it. Did, is it the long, did it get the long hair? Did it get facial [00:14:08] Frank: features? I would say actually the reproduction was really good. My problem was it's. It, it, it's resting facial expression was one of amazement, so I don't know, like, what I was looking like when I was, when they were scanning, cause they have you do things, like smile. Yeah. Lift. Yeah, you do all these funny things. So anyway, I created an avatar, but I haven't seen him since, Goodriddance. I was a little worried he was gonna be like, clippy, and just like, show up in the corner from time to time, but thankfully Virtual Frank seems dead, and I, I don't have to deal with him. So. [00:14:44] James: I think after this podcast, I think we have to probably have you FaceTime us. Cause I think when you FaceTime from it, it will actually show up now. What would be really cool is like, obviously I don't know if this would happen, but if you could get Zencaster to work inside of the Apple vision pro Safari, which it does it, I don't think, but if it did, maybe StreamYard does, then what'd your persona come up as your. Yeah. [00:15:09] Frank: Oh my gosh. And I was trying to do neat things because they have two modes that integrate with Macs really well. The one I keep talking about that I love is the screen share, so you can just take your Mac screen anywhere you want to go. But the other one is the reverse. You can put your Vision Pro view, my view of Alt World, onto a Mac screen. The problem is it doesn't like show up as a video feed, so I can't like pipe it through OBS or anything. I haven't figured it out. The trick's there. Um, I'm, I'm sure there's some apps I can get to like capture an AirPlay stream or something like that. And turn it into a camera or something, because it would be nice to be able to mix it in with like OBS and give you a view of the world. It's, it's funny. I can put it up on the TV easily enough. I can put it up on the Mac enough. I just don't know how to put it as, um, when recording something as prestigious as Merge Conflict here. [00:16:06] James: Oh my goodness. That's so cool. Okay. So you're, you're, you're, so how long is this process so far? You're what, like five hours in? [00:16:15] Frank: It would have been so smooth and so fast if not for that stupid spinner. Everything went well. I even messed up scanning a little bit, but that was fine. They walk you through a thousand dialogues. Apple, stop it with the dialogues. Anyway, finally, they let you into the real world. You know, after they teach you how to do your clicky things with your fingers and all that kind of stuff. Finally, they let you just like, alright, good luck, buddy. And you get the springboard interface, the good old app icons. And you start clicking some apps, let's see how the apps run. James, we're app developers. Let's do some work. This isn't a toy. This is a professional productivity device. It is a [00:16:57] James: pro device. I heard it's pro for pro. This device is for professionals, [00:17:03] Frank: Frank. So what's the, what's the first app? I download. [00:17:08] James: Oh, you didn't even try any of the built in apps. You're just going to the app store. I [00:17:11] Frank: don't care what Apple has done. No, I'm just kidding. I have reviews of Apple's apps. I did actually start with a couple of theirs. Um, I was still unclear what the interaction model was with this device. And Apple included their drawing app. They included Keynote and their drawing app. And I'm like, well, that's gutsy for this. virtual world, you're going to interact with some 2D shapes and all that kind of stuff. I'm a little suspicious. And so I decided to do, what's the app called? Free style, free [00:17:44] James: form, free form, free form, free [00:17:47] Frank: form, free form. And so I opened the free form and. I, I kid you not, I put a rectangle on the screen and I'm like, how in the world am I going to interact with this? And as I moved my eyes around, different parts of the rectangle highlighted, and then I used my little pinchy pinchy gesture and I moved rectangles around, and it was surprisingly freakily intuitive in how to interact with a 2D surface. I mean, intuitive isn't quite right, uh, learnable and all that, and it worked just so much better than I was expecting. Um, I wasn't expecting 2D interactive like that kind of apps, draggy aroundy touch apps, touch apps, really, um, to be that good. And this stupid thing was great. I was like, this is excellent. Uh, and that got me super excited. Uh, I'm like, okay, so if you put a lot of effort into your app and your Apple. You can probably make your app pretty, uh, half decent on this. Yeah. Okay. So now what app? That's cool. I [00:18:54] James: try, I circuit 3D, [00:18:56] Frank: nah. Ah, laal. . [00:18:59] James: Oh wow. Laal. Which I believe I wanna go for some native apps. which is a native app on the app store we talked about last week. Yes, correct. Yes. And it's in the store. Good friend, Miguel ding bell. Boom. Miguel [00:19:10] Frank: Deza. I gotta tell you, uh, you don't want to type on this thing, and so, um, thankfully Siri was able to recognize my terrible accent, and was able to find Lotta Murnell. Uh, they, they have split the App Store in two sections in Twain. There are the Vision apps, and there are the others. Oh [00:19:31] James: no, the others we're stuck in the others . Oh no. Oh no. . [00:19:39] Frank: Uh, and when you do a search, it defaults to vision only, of course. [00:19:43] James: Ah, that makes sense. That makes sense. They wanna show the, the, the nativeness of the native apps. Uh, it does [00:19:48] Frank: actually. It's fine. It's. I, I say it's fine from a user perspective, from an app developer, I'm like, D'oh! Whatever. Um, so, works great. Wonderful app. I realize I have no servers to connect to. So I'm like, okay, I gotta try something else. Now what do I try? MyCadence. Because I know the most important thing that I have to accomplish out of this mad purchase and this whole exercise in silliness is I gotta give James a report. Hell, well. That's his app work in AR. James, how well do you think your app works? Well, [00:20:27] James: you know, I guess it has Bluetooth caked in. So I guess if you had a Bluetooth bike, you should be able to connect. And I, I, here's my assumption works. Amazing. It's flawless. It boots up super quick cause it's ahead of time compiled. And, uh, it's a big blob. It's a big square. It's this big square that, that has a button. That's hard to, my assumption is everything is just a little bit harder to interact with on it because it's like smaller or something like that. I don't know. [00:21:00] Frank: Right on one account, wrong on so many other accounts. Really? Okay. I'm going to look at the screen and try this one again. Right on the account of works flawlessly. Amazing flawlessly. I, I do not know what magic Apple pulled to get iOS apps, iPad apps, whatever apps to run this well in alt world, because it is fantastic. Yeah. Uh, you would think that the app would be hard to interact with. No, the, the opposite is true. The I tracking that they use to decide what you wanna interact with, uh, it's a weird skill. I could go on for a whole day about the eye tracking stuff, but like, because you wrote using native controls, you did it through forms or whatever, but you use controls, everything just works beautifully. The back button lights up when it should, the, uh, little star to become a pro user lights up, uh, the settings work fine. The Bluetooth works fine. Or then I was very annoyed because I'm like, I don't actually have any devices that work with James's app. Yeah. But, uh, it worked beautifully, um, so however you programmed it, uh, the app is only allowed into two modes. I don't think you've checked the flag where, um, a lot of apps you can resize with the corner. Uh, yours allowed a vertical presentation or a horizontal, but otherwise you can resize apps with other tricks by just kind of dragging them around. Oh, okay. Uh, I was so pleased with that because, uh, it means that our iOS apps have a fighting chance of being half decent in this world. [00:22:39] James: I'm really curious about my skiing app because the skiing app, uh, has a map. It has a bunch of tabs. It has a bunch of like scrolly things. Like. It's actually a real app that doesn't require extra hardware. You know what I mean? Uh, [00:22:53] Frank: and then I just couldn't remember the name of it. Pitch it for me. [00:22:57] James: What it's called. It's it's called the Meisner app. You, you wouldn't be able to find it. I will send, I'll send you a link right now into the app store. Uh, what would be fascinating, uh, is if. If, if I send you an app, like a link, cause you're going to get it inside your iCloud. But then if you tap on it, like, I wonder where it's gonna want to, you know, like, it's going to do it on your, yeah. [00:23:26] Frank: So I did install messages on, uh, in alt world. So I get alt world messages. I'm sure I can figure them out from there. Nice. Now I installed every single one of my apps because I was excited. I'm like, look, iOS apps are actually looking half decent on this. Yeah. So iCircuit number one. I freaked, oh, and by the way, your app did just pop up super fast. Um, the processor in this thing is awesome. And iCircuit popped up super fast. Nice. Circuit simulating, animations, uh, scope, doing scopey upy downy things. Wow. Uh, everything just working beautifully. In a giant window, that looked good. I kept wondering like, for months, I've been wondering like, What resolution are they going to render iOS apps, because if you think about in a 3D world you can get infinitely close to an object. Which means you need infinite resolution textures and all that. So like, you really want high resolution textures when you're rendering out an app. So an iOS app needs to render out to a texture at some point. Uh, and the texture size they chose is really good. All our apps look really fantastic. Now, another promo for native coding. I did, I got really close to iCirc. I'm like, getting right up, getting right into the pixels. I want to see, I want to see all the tricks Apple is playing. And as close as I could get. In my multimeter view, I did start to notice, okay, some text is starting to look pixelated. But, mind you, I'm like, I'm right up on this thing, I have it stretched out to the sides of the entire room. Um, I'm like, okay, some text is pixelated here. But I look up. A mere couple feet because it's so stretched out. And then there's precisely rendered text. Crisp edges. Like, oh, you know what that is? That's a native control versus my little rendered control. A native control on iOS uses a CA text layer, a core animation text layer, which allows the GPU to render out the text, which Apple has done magical things where those layers render out. Crisp text, no matter how close you get to them. Really fascinating. Uh, so everything's looking great. But then, uh, the real question with iCircuit is interactions. Is this eye tracking thing? gonna work or not? This was a freaky moment. I looked at a resistor. I put my fingers together and I dragged my fingers and the resistor moved. It was freaky. Apple has done an amazing job in compatibility, in translating weird random things I'm doing with my body. into touch events that make sense to our apps. And so it's, it's super exciting. Like our apps work great. iOS apps work great in alt world and boy, it didn't have to work out that way. You know, it, they could have been kind of trash, but it's kind of wonderful. So you have the whole giant iOS ecosystem at your fingertips. [00:26:41] James: And the, where we write about iCircuit3D, which was like, it's a flat. 3D? [00:26:48] Frank: Yeah, it's a flat 3D, but okay, this is the one that I was absolutely most nervous about. Um, I installed it, I ran, I'm like, oh gosh, what's gonna happen? And the stupid thing worked perfectly fine. Uh, it, it has, yes, it's its own 3D world in there, but like all the touch, just like I was saying, I looked at a resistor and then I dragged it with my little fingers. Wow. It worked out. Just fine in iCircuit. Uh, you could pan around, you could do everything you kind of want to do. It's really amazing, uh, what they've done with the iOS apps and everything. And I think we should all, I think this is definitely going to be a niche device. It's going to be very small customer base, but it's good to know that like all our apps are running beautifully. And [00:27:33] James: that's really cool. Thank you for testing a few of those apps. I like that. Uh, I, yeah, I'm really, it's really cool that they made this compatibility because one thing that in most of the reviews that were out there, they didn't really show a lot of the, uh, third party apps. I don't know if Apple was like, Hey, if you're going to review it early, don't show that or whatever. And I mean, there's been more review videos, but I'm only gonna watch so many review videos. Right. Um, and I've seen, uh, yeah, like, you know, like YouTube in the browser or whatever, Netflix in the browser, because there's not an app or whatever that that's allowed on it, right. Cause you have to, you can uncheck to allow it on Apple vision pro. So for example, if for some reason it didn't work, you could uncheck it because you don't want your app not to be working. Or in [00:28:18] Frank: the, or in the case of continuous, it just, it's not available on vision because it links in a stupid library that's not available on vision. So I gotta do a new release that doesn't have that library. There you go. Reasons you might not be on there. Yeah. But, um, if you can be, I do recommend getting your app on there. And I know it's scary to do it untested if you don't have a vision device, but I promise you, like. The interactive model is really good. If you're using native controls, if you're using like Xamarin Forms or Maui, you're probably [00:28:49] James: fine. I'm super curious how like web apps work. You know what I mean? If there's obviously as many of [00:28:57] Frank: those. [00:28:57] James: Yeah. Yeah. Or I'm interested in, like, I wonder how those hand drawn controls, like something like, uh, Uh, you know, I mean, I'm assuming like all the Flutter apps and React Native apps work fine as well. I'd have to like download some stuff, but I'm curious, like if you're, if you're drawing stuff with SkiaSharp, I guess it's still a control under the hood. So there's still a stack that it can grasp onto, I assume. [00:29:24] Frank: Yeah, I, I'm, I'm really curious, uh, precisely which cues from like UI views, um, it uses to know, because what happens is you move your. Eyeballs around and little rectangles show up, uh, it'll highlight items that you can then interact with. And that happens basically for free for buttons and, well, buttons, you know, kind of the most important thing, but like text boxes and things like that too. Um, It's unclear, like, um, if your control is a tab stop, if it can gain focus, um, it's probably the focus thing. It's probably the big flag they go off of. Um, uh, if it can become a first responder in the iOS world, that just means it can handle direct interactions with the user. Uh, those, I guess, are probably the criteria they use. Anyway, if you, if you use native y stuff, you're, you're just fine. Uh, I think, I don't know. I, I, I'm a little bit sad because I didn't spend my, this is just day one, I didn't spend my day downloading cool 3D, uh, apps to use in augmented reality. I've really just been using a bunch of 2D apps, but, um, even in that mode, it's still a very compelling interface because when I tell you I got my cadence working, And Lautermannau, and iCircuit, and iCircuit 3D, and I had some music playing. I just had these apps sprayed all around the house, and they all just run, uh, at the same time, concurrently. And it's, it's really exciting because, you know, I think like the iPad still doesn't do a great job at running concurrently. It's still, the windowing interface is still kind of terrible. Whereas, um, in the alt world. Uh, the, the, the, the window management is so intuitive and simple, uh, multi, multi app lifestyle is kind of great. And I just want to have a million apps running everywhere. I'm sure I'll get tired of it eventually, but it'd be nice to have some settings like, you know, bring me into chill mode, bring me into communications mode. For now, it's fun just being able to have a million apps around the house. Now, [00:31:48] James: if you. Are here and you, let's say pen my cadence, but then you walk into the kitchen. Does my cadence close? [00:31:56] Frank: If it thinks it's actually obstructed from view, it doesn't close. It just more like goes into background, just like how our apps always have. But, um, for example, I had iCircuit stretched out to be the full size of my living room and I was two rooms over. I could still see it. Out of the corner of a door, and they kept it running. The graph is still bouncing around. So, obviously, they're going to have some heuristics, and you'll figure out what those are, but apps do eventually turn off if you get far enough away from them or don't interact with them over time. Uh, the main model is usually everything is fully opaque, unless the app doesn't want to be, but fully opaque. And then over time, or if different things happen, they become a little bit translucent. And I wonder if That's an in between stage, like they go from translucent to gone, or they just stay translucent for a while. Anyway, you just look at them and tap on them and they become full again. It's [00:32:55] James: fine. Oh, okay. That's what I was curious about, because I've watched a few videos where people are like, walking or doing something and it's there, like, is it there forever? Is there a way to, like, close it? Like, if you were to Go into another house. Like, is it still pinned at your own house? Like, let's say you came and visited me, like, are those apps still running somewhere back on the island? [00:33:14] Frank: I, I would love to know. I don't have the answer to this. I'll say within an app, you can create what's called a world anchor. And that will stay at a physical location for eternity. So if you owned two houses, let's say, something crazy, who would ever do that? You could have some things anchored at one place and some things anchored at the other place. Uh, that's within N. I don't know if it applies to Uh, Springboard, you know, the actual apps themselves and that kind of stuff. Yeah. Cause [00:33:45] James: we talked about like, Oh, I'm in my yoga studio. Let me have the yoga mode. And I'm at my desk. I'm at my desk mode. I'm in the game area. Let me have my game area mode, uh, in there. Yeah. You know what? I'm really fascinated that I'm, I'm really surprised they didn't do this. I'm sure when someone's going to do it, but like, I'm surprised that they didn't make it more. Animal Crossing e, because like Animal Crossing, like you're kind of, you're in your house and like every little Animal Crossing character and you're like, Oh, I'm going to like paint my walls and put up wallpaper. I'm going to like decorate. I have like a whole like house thing. Like, I think what'd be neat is like, Oh, there's like plants. It's like, Oh, I'm going to put, I'm going to put a fake plant on my desk. You know what I mean? And it's just going to be there in the virtual world and anchor that as part of the U S. That'd be [00:34:30] Frank: amazing. It's great. Except, like, it can be a talking plant, you know, it can be a chatty PT plant. Totally. Yeah. It can just answer questions. That's what I want it to be. Don't, don't steal my ideas, but I'm thinking about writing just a little yellow rubber duck and you can just talk to it and it's just a chatty PT, little rubber yellow duck. Just [00:34:51] James: hanging out. [00:34:52] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Give me, give me your, your, your pros. [00:34:59] James: Okay. Your cons and your. Extremes. [00:35:05] Frank: Extremes. Alright. Pros. Excellent screen. Augmented reality is superior to virtual reality in every way. This is a very fundamentally different device than, um, the VR headsets I've used in the past. Um, cons. There's a lot wrong. I still have light leakage on the edges. So I'll get little reflections off, off of the lenses now that they do come with like a whole different patchy thing you can put on the inside. So I'll fiddle around, but overall, when you're using it, it's fine. If you catch a glare once in a while off of a sun or something, I don't know why the face plate is magnetically coupled. But it should be glued on 'cause it's super annoying. , it like keeps UNM magnetizing from heard the magnets. [00:35:56] James: I heard that like there's in the videos, like they, they tell you like to make sure that you're picking it up at a specific thing. 'cause a lot of people might accidentally pick up the magnetic part and then like drop it. Yeah, [00:36:06] Frank: for sure. I could a hundred percent see it. 'cause the magnets aren't very strong and I feel like it's totally a Steve Jobs thing. Like you're holding it wrong. Like it even like, I forget if it was in the video or in the instructions. It comes with the cutest like five-year-olds. Instruction book on getting to know your Vision Pro, but they were very careful in explaining how to pick it up correctly. Uh, very Steve Jobs moment. Uh, it comes with a silly cover thing. I guess you're supposed to put on. I'm never going to do that. That's not going to happen. Uh, that's silly. Stop at Apple with the silly stuff. The case is 150. That's absolutely silly. The cable to attach it to a Mac is [00:36:54] James: 300. And that's developer only. It's the developer strap. [00:36:58] Frank: Developer, the developer strap. Um, I, I want to go into a crazy moment talking about Xcode and all that, but I almost bought the developer strap today. I was getting that desperate here for a minute. Now [00:37:11] James: I've, I've done, now I'm assuming that there's no. The developer strap is a USB connection between the vision pro and a Mac. And it says it's helpful for accelerating the development of graphics, intense apps, and games. That's the description. Now I had to register my. Apple TV with the developer account. Cause I wanted to do the beta testing on the Apple TV and how I had to do it was it's like a remote wifi, weird setup. And it was like very clunky. It worked eventually, but it was like very clunky. Is that the process you had to go through for that? [00:37:55] Frank: James, they, they looked at the Apple TV clunky pairing process and they're like, we can do one better. We can make it clunkier. We can make it even more clunky. We can up the clunkiness level. Yeah, gosh. I, I paired the Apple TV for the first time, like, a few months ago, and that was hilarious. I, I had never experienced that before. Uh, sadly, they don't really document any of this. Uh, eventually I was able to find a link to an article that vaguely documented any of it, but really, you go to a forum post where everyone's like, h h how? How, how, how to connect? How can I connect? Obviously, if you have a cable, you plug the cable and the thing connects, but it wasn't at all clear. The trick was, in the end, be on the same Wi Fi network. You have to go to a weird thing, general remote devices, and sit there. There's not going to be a spinner. It's not going to tell you it's doing anything, but it's doing something. Just leave it. Leave it alone. Let it sit there and spin. Then you're going to go to Xcode, and you're going to go to Xcode Devices. And it's not going to be there. No, that would be too easy. What you're going to do now is sit. And you're going to sit and wait. And you're going to contemplate, did I make a mistake? Or am I just waiting on something? But no. You are doing it correctly. You are just waiting. Your job is to wait and sit and wait. And the longer you wait, the more it's going to be worth it because eventually the Vision Pro icon will show up and you're like, yes, thank goodness. Because you do want to go to privacy and security and enable developer mode, but that option's not there. No, it's just not there. It's not an option because you have to pair with a Mac first. So you got to pair with the Mac. So you start to do that and you're like, Oh boy, I'm going to be a Vision Pro developer any moment now. This is going to be amazing. And then it's like, well, hold on there, buddy. You gotta, you gotta enable developer mode now. You're like, right, of course. So you go and enable developer mode. Bink, bink, bink, flick, bink, flick. Developer mode. We're going to restart your device. So then it's going to reboot and you're going to be back in Xcode and you're going to be sitting there and you're like, I wonder if I made a mistake or, or should I just sit here and be patient? And you're going to put the other thing back in the spinny mode and you're going to sit there and you're just like, I'm just going to be patient. And then one minute will pass. Two minutes will pass. Eventually five to 10 minutes will pass, and then the Vision Pro will appear there ? [00:40:30] James: No way. That's terrible. Oh [00:40:33] Frank: gosh. I don't know if it's my network. I don't know. I don't, I usually have really good luck with the wi uh, my wifi network. Uh, I don't, I don't know what the problem was, but eventually I became a Vision Pro developer and I got my one app on there, and oh my God, the stupid thing worked great and I loved it. Because again, working in the simulator is just horrendous. Um, being able to develop the apps. Here's the great experience you can do now. You put on your little vision pro goggles for a measly 3, 500. You stretch out your Mac monitor because now you can have a big monitor. And when you hit play in Xcode, your app. Runs right there. Yeah. You know how when you're doing like iOS development, like you have your device and some cables and you're like doing some window management you don't have to do that. You can just look and left and right. And it's actually an incredibly wonderful development experience. [00:41:32] James: Once you get hurt. That's cool. Yeah. That, that does make sense because it's like, you can put your Xcode there and all that stuff. And, um, have you like, you know, so when you're using your Mac, can you use the Mac keyboard or no? Yeah. [00:41:47] Frank: Um, yeah. What. Okay, so if I'm doing a Mac screen share, I'm using the Mac. So if you have a Bluetooth keyboard and a Bluetooth thing, you know, you're in excellent shape. Uh, silly, I can't find my Bluetooth keyboard. It's around here somewhere. I will find it. Um, and then I can drag my Mac monitor around the house. And I can work on my Mac from anywhere. Oh, gotcha. [00:42:09] James: Yeah. As long [00:42:09] Frank: as you're in the Wi Fi network. I'm sorry, within Bluetooth range of the Mac. Oh, [00:42:13] James: gotcha. Okay, that makes sense. For the keyboard and the mouse [00:42:16] Frank: and, you know. It's really making me want a Mac Mini, you know, like, can I put a Mac in my pocket to carry around with this thing? Uh, because, you know, as much as I love iOS and, uh, Continuous isn't there yet, my day to day job is still typey type. Um, so, even if I got real apps for this thing, I'm still gonna probably want a Bluetooth keyboard or something. Uh, the virtual alt world keyboard is Neat and clever. I'm sure someone pulled out a lot of their own hair working on it for months and months and years. Uh, but nothing beats a physical keyboard and you can just type you [00:42:51] James: type. Yeah, that's cool. Oh my goodness. That's really neat. Uh, I think you sent me some screenshots of the app that you were working on, which I'm pretty sure is what it was, but yeah, pretty cool. Um, All right. Uh, these all sound pretty positive besides Xcode. Um, any other, like the, the unit itself is like crazy. [00:43:13] Frank: No, [00:43:13] James: I'm not going to be negative. heavy? How's your, how's your head feel? How long have you been wearing it for? Like, can you wear it for more than four hours? Like what's the jam? [00:43:21] Frank: Yeah, I would say its biggest downside is the battery is too short because it's a very comfortable device. The strap is a little bit weird when you're putting it on and taking it off. I'm still going the single strap lifestyle here. And it just feels a little bit weird. I'm used to the Oculus Rift, which was like a snorkeling mask with suction cup to your face. And like, seal you into the virtual world, don't let any of the real world in at all. Um, this is a little more loosey goosey, even though the light seal is pretty decent on it. Um, but as you're putting it on, it's not the, like, suction cup feel. And so the sensation I often got in VR is one of wearing a snorkel mask. And you don't get that with this. Uh, the nose is open, so you can breathe just fine. It's a really light device. Um. The annoying thing is you have this stupid, um, battery cable, but I've just been throwing the battery in the back pocket and normally you don't, it's not a problem, every so often you catch it on things, but, um, I don't know. I don't want to sound like too much of a fanboy, but you know how hesitant I was on the last episode, so this is me just being very happy with the hardware [00:44:38] James: and everything. That's cool. Now, do you think that you're going to take it out into the real world? Like there's been many folks that are going outside the house. I seen the Casey Neistat video or whatever of him, like doing some crazy stuff in New York. But like, there's been some other people doing stuff. Are you going to be one, are you going to do one wheel around the Island with your vision pro on? Is there value there? [00:45:02] Frank: We'll see. There's a huge amount of value there, because when you're one wheeling, you don't want to look down at a phone. That is super dangerous. You want to keep your head up, looking toward the horizon. You can scan for cars, and do all that kind of other stuff. Um, like, MyCadence had a little, little speedometer, a little MyCadence speedometer in my virtual world. That said, I don't think I will. I don't, not sure I have the social guts to take this thing outside. I might do it for a lark. Like, I might take it to the beach and ride the Onewheel around on it. But like, I don't know. It's a 3, 500 hour device. Not sure I really feel like falling off the Onewheel with it. I'm pretty confident, but, uh, it would still be silly. I don't think for me, it's a wear it around town. Device, even though I kind of want to, I, it's, it's fine, man. Yeah. If, if you all lived in alt world, you'd get it. It's just because you live in the real world, you don't get it. Al alt world is better. [00:46:06] James: The one thing that I'm still a little puzzled on, so I think Casey, like, you gotta te you're gonna have to tether, right? So you're gonna have to tether your phone on the real world to get the datas. Now the thing, if you were on a one wheel. The challenge I think Casey had, I'm assuming you would have is like, let's say you're on your one wheel and I'm going to bring up the one wheel app on here and it's connected. I get the info, but I think as soon as you start moving, that app's going to fly behind you, right? [00:46:32] Frank: It's a wonderful question. Um, I don't know. I don't know. Uh, now I have to absolutely run that test tomorrow. Thank you. You're welcome. We'll report back. We'll have a full report. I'll say, um, if you're writing an app, you can use different anchors. So you can anchor to the device, you can anchor to the head, you can anchor to the hands, so that, like, you can, like, put a sword or something. It's in someones hand, or you can anchor to the really real stable world. And that's where you would get your effective of, yeah, the app would just go flying by, but if you anchored to the head or to the body, it would keep [00:47:11] James: up with you. That'd be cool. That's what I was thinking. Right. Of like really that additive parts. Yeah, I'm, yeah. [00:47:18] Frank: If you're building a heads up display, I don't want to give it away because people haven't quite figured this out yet. But if you're building a heads up display, it's really easy for this device. You just create an anchor at the head and put a few objects right here, and then you get a cool, you can do like a Terminator heads up display. All sorts of fun things. [00:47:36] James: All right, Frank, final thoughts, what you got for us for 50 minutes in. Best purchase [00:47:41] Frank: ever. My, my HoloVids app is going to be better than Apple's SpatialVids. Just shots fired. Shots fired. That's how I want to end it. SpatialVideos, pretty good, Apple. Nice, uh, nice first attempt. Uh, I coded that when I was a kid. [00:47:59] James: All right. Well, on that note, I think it's going to do it for this, uh, Apple Vision Pro edition. Uh, sixth edition, I should say, series six. [00:48:07] Frank: It's going to end now, right? I don't [00:48:11] James: know if it is. We'll see. Uh, you know, people on the YouTube, they seem to like it. Okay, cool. [00:48:17] Frank: Hi, YouTube. That's [00:48:18] James: going to do it for this week's Merge Conflict. I hope you enjoyed. If you have questions for Frank, write in to the, the, the pod. Go to the YouTube's, uh, leave a comment on the show or go to mergeconflict. fm, there's a contact button. Let us know what your questions are, developer questions for. The Apple vision pro, and we will answer them in an upcoming episode. So let us know, go to merge conflict. FM. You can also go on the Patrion subscriber. We get behind the episode behind the podcast episodes and more that we put out there almost every week, not every week, but almost every week and you can podcast early. So if you want to see those early. Lock them in. That's going to do it for this week's Action Facts Podcast. Until next time, I'm James Montemagno. [00:48:57] Frank: And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching, listening, and experiencing our spatial reality with us. [00:49:05] James: Peace.