To me the Macintosh has always felt more like a place than a thing. Not a place I go physically, but a place my mind goes intellectually. When I’m working or playing and in the flow, it has always felt like MacOS is where I am. I’m in the Mac. Interruptions — say, the doorbell or my phone ringing — are momentarily disorienting when I’m in the flow on the Mac, because I’m pulled out of that world and into the physical one.
— John Gruber, Daring Fireball: First Impressions of Vision Pro and VisionOS
Yes! And the same is true for me on the iPad and also on the iPhone (but less so). And it’s not specific to Apple products; it’s true for any computer, tablet or phone.
And when I go to Facebook or other social media platforms or read RSS feeds, it’s like traveling to other places. Indeed, it sometimes surprises me to think how much time I spend physically in one room of the house because it feels like I’ve been out and about all day.
Gruber is discussing this feeling of placeness in the context of the Apple Vision Pro, which he tried, and how it will vastly enhance the sense of place when using computers.
The most impressive feature of Vision Pro is that it enables you to hang multiple virtual 4K displays all around your field of vision, some as big as the broadest widescreen TVs.
Gruber again:
Last night I chatted with a friend who, I found out only then, has been using Vision Pro for months inside Apple. … he spent weeks feeling a bit constrained, keeping his open VisionOS windows all in front of him as though on a virtual display, before a colleague opened his mind to spreading out and making applications windows much larger and arranging them in a wider carousel not merely in front of him but around him. The constraints of even the largest physical display simply do not exist with VisionOS.
I absolutely expect to buy the Vision Pro. But not at its opening price of $3,500. We don’t have that kind of money lying around (especially because Julie wants one too). But I expect the price will come down to an affordable range in three to five years.