Apple’s online store has gone down in the United States ahead of Vision Pro pre-orders, which should begin in under 3 hours at 5 a.m. PST. Shipping and in-store availability for the headset will commence on Friday, February 2.
The online store usually goes down before the company’s events and product launches. It had similarly gone down before the Mac’s “Scary fast” event last October and the iPhone 15’s “Wonderlust” event last September.
Vision Pro is Apple’s first entry into mixed-reality hardware. The headset features a one-of-its-kind industrial design littered with various sophisticated sensors and chips. Vision Pro comes with dual 4K micro-OLED displays capable of streaming images in 4K resolution per eye. The headset is completely controlled by eye and hand gestures for a controller-free navigation experience.
Vision Pro is powered by the tried and trusted M2 chip in addition to the all-new R1 chip for real-time sensor data processing. The R1 is responsible for the headset’s array of sensors including its dozen cameras, five 3D sensors, and six microphones. This complex system powers Vision Pro’s advanced head, hand, and eye-tracking capabilities. The R1 chip also streams new images to the headset’s displays within 12 milliseconds which is eight times faster than a typical eye blink.
The headset also introduced various innovations in other areas such as Apple’s first iris scanner, Optic ID. For an exemplary audio experience, Vision Pro comes with dual speakers with audio ray tracing and spatial audio for a personalized listening experience. The EyeSight external display keeps you connected with your surroundings while maintaining immersion when using the headset. Vision Pro is powered by an external two-hour battery and can also be used while plugged in.
Vision Pro is expected to sell out fast due to limited stock availability and the rush of a new Apple product. Priced at $3,499 the headset comes with 256GB of storage and is rumored to include 16GB of unified memory. Today’s pre-orders will only be limited to the United States, with Apple rumored to expand Vision Pro availability to more countries before WWDC 2024.
