Apple Vision Pro will soon begin reaching the hands of customers, and a new report from Bloomberg sheds light on what to expect from the Apple Store demos for the device that will take place from Friday, February 2.
Details of the Vision Pro retail demo are presented in the latest edition of the weekly Power On newsletter. For starters, the demo is expected to last between 20 and 25 minutes per customer after a fitting process involving Face ID-like scans of the wearer’s head and face to find the appropriate Light Seal and headband fit.
For those who wear glasses, each Apple Store location will also have a dedicated apparatus to measure the lenses’ prescription details. Each store will reportedly stock “hundreds” of ZEISS Optical Inserts with different prescriptions. Once those details are gathered, a personalized Vision Pro demo unit is put together with the appropriate Light Seal, headband, and Optical Inserts sizes before the customer gets to wear the headset over their face.
Retail employees will walk customers through how to control Vision Pro’s interface with their eyes and hands, as well as using the headband’s Fit Dial to adjust its fit and the headset’s Digital Crown. Employees will also carry an iPad that shows them what’s happening on the Vision Pro’s screen at all times.
Once a customer wears the headset, they will first be instructed to calibrate Vision Pro’s cameras with “various tracking and tapping exercises” so that it can accurately track their eyes and hands for control gestures. The calibration exercises will reportedly require the wearer to follow several dots with their eyes as well as place their hands in front of the headset for a quick scan.
The actual demo will ask the wearer to open and interact with different apps, including Photos to look at still and panoramic images. The demo will then move on to showcase prerecorded 3D spatial photos and videos. The demo will also explain to the wearer how they can use Vision Pro as a replacement for their Mac or iPad by manipulating “multiple app windows in space” and scrolling through Safari. Finally, the demo will conclude with “3D and immersive movies” that span a few nature scenes.
Vision Pro demo units will also come pre-installed with several curated third-party apps. In addition, retail employees will also get to try the headset in private a few days before its planned launch date to get a feeling of it in what is described as a “shift” from past high-caliber product launches.
Vision Pro’s retail box will reportedly resemble that of the Apple Watch, the report adds. Apple plans to bundle together the correct size of each accessory at the point of sale once measurements are taken as described earlier just like how the Apple Watch is bundled with various band styles and sizes in a modular box.
Customers will be able to pre-order Vision Pro starting from Friday, January 19, at 5 a.m. PST. Sales will begin two weeks later on Friday, February 2 on Apple.com and all Apple Store locations in the United States.
