Ars Technica: It just works; Apple has nailed the Vision Pro’s visionOS interface

In Ars Technica’s Samuel Axon’s testing, Apple’s Vision Pro visionOS eye tracking was “perfectly accurate and responsive.” “There’s nothing to criticize,” Axon writes. “Apple has nailed the interface.”

Samuel Axon for Ars Technica:

Vision Pro’s interface is all about eye tracking. Whenever you look at a UI element (like an X to close a window or a photo within a gallery in the Photos app), it is subtly highlighted in your view. To actually make a selection—to click, if you will—you simply tap two of your fingers together. You don’t have to hold your hand in front of the headset to do this; as long as your hand is not hidden completely behind you, it can be pretty much anywhere. To scroll, you pinch and move your fingers up and down or side to side. It feels a bit like pulling a string to open window blinds.

In my testing, the eye tracking was perfectly accurate and responsive. It reminded me of using a similar feature in PlayStation VR2, but it felt just a bit more accurate. If you’ve used well-implemented eye tracking in VR before, you know it becomes intuitive and natural almost immediately.

I’ve used headsets that required hand gestures, but it never felt very natural. With Vision Pro, it feels just right. The fact that your hand can go anywhere, and that you can pinch subtly instead of making some kind of dramatic gesture, goes a long way.

If you’ve used a Meta VR headset, a PlayStation VR, or almost any PC VR device, you know how awkward it can be to carry controllers in your hands. Now that I’ve used Apple’s interface, it will be hard to go back to using controllers again. This approach is not only more immersive; it’s much more practical.

I was able to launch windows for multiple apps and arrange them around me. Moving them around involved simply gazing at a small white line beneath each, pinching to match what on desktop would be holding down the left mouse button, and turning my eyes to where I wanted the window to go. I was able to place windows in an array around me, and I was even able to overlap them on top of each other. Whichever one I looked at appeared in front in that moment. All of this worked well, and I had no complaints. In this respect, there’s nothing to criticize: Apple has nailed the interface.

MacDailyNews Take: In the highly recommended full article here, Axon covers much more including immersion levels, how the twin high resolution micro-OLED display look and feel, the wide field of view, and much more.

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