Crying in Apple Vision Pro

From the inside, though, the view is incredible. It really is. I’m just as surprised by this as you are. The picture is crisp, and the spatial sound is so realistic that more than once I removed the headset to see if someone was at the door. While watching Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni marched across the space where my living room meets the dining room, right up until (spoiler) Nazis took him out back and shot him. I cried.

Tears welled up in my goggles, pooling at the soft rim of the face cushion. These tears never made their way down my cheek. I was literally crying on the inside. When I plucked the Vision Pro off my face, I saw that the face computer’s seal was soaked. The inner lenses needed a good microfiber wipedown. It was, in a word, disgusting.

Fortunately Apple offers support, though not of the psychological variety. Apple warns that the Apple Vision Pro and its battery are not, in fact, water resistant. (Oops.) “Keep your device and battery away from sources of liquid, such as drinks, oils, lotions, sinks, bathtubs, shower stalls, etc. Protect your device and battery from dampness, humidity, or wet weather, such as rain, snow, and fog,” the support page says. Not a word about tears! Or other bodily fluids. An incredible oversight.

I soldiered on. Using Cinema Mode, I watched a comedy-drama that isn’t categorically sad but always makes me well up at the end. Thanks to the Apple Vision Pro, I sat alone in a hyper-realistic virtual movie theater, watching in anamorphic widescreen format. Achievement unlocked: The headset was soggy. Honestly, I was starting to love this thing.

I text-messaged two friends, “Honestly, I’m starting to love this thing.”

Theater of Pain

During my two-week trial period with the Apple Vision Pro, I gave other apps a go. I iMessaged by tapping my fingers in the air. I sent a few voice notes. I swiped through my camera roll and captured spatial photos. I FaceTimed with a friend. Its most elementary feature, the floating home screen of apps that greeted me when I first logged on, might have thrilled me the most.

Still, I wanted to determine if it was worth $3,804 in emotional pangs.

I rented and watched The Eternal Memory, an Oscar-nominated documentary about a Chilean couple struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. As a meditation on personal and cultural memory, it’s heartbreaking, but it occurred to me that it was no more or less so because I was streaming it from an expensive computer on my face.

I was about an hour into the Norwegian film The Worst Person in the World (which doesn’t seem sad from the trailer, but I assure you it gets there) when I realized the left side of my lip was numb. I searched for my own face with my finger pads. My whole left cheek felt like someone else’s. I text messaged the same two friends, “I think the Apple Vision Pro made my face numb.”