A closer look at Apple’s Vision Pro keyboard and other controls

theverge.com

15 points·mfiguiere··7 comments

VR keyboards are really tricky.

The Oculus Quest can pair with a real-life Logitech K830 and display it to you via a combination of pass-through and rendering it in your VR environment (most of the time its rendered, when you type some pass-through is used to show you your real hands as they move over the keyboard). I tried to use it, it was impressive but ultimately still awkward. Moving the text cursor around is awkward.

I don't think even Apple are going to be able to make VR typing nice enough that you can actually do work there. Talking, sure. Writing code on a massive screen floating infront of your face? I think thats still quite some years away from being a nice experience.

I wonder if you can pair a normal bluetooth keyboard / mouse with the headset?

You can, they showed the physical keyboard in the demo and mentioned the mouse/trackpad elsewhere I believe.

I really wonder how the mouse would work, could it just be limited to macOS or can you have a 3D cursor (kinda like the teaser for the 15 inch MacBook Air) flying around the environment and controlling your apps and windows?

Thats how it works on Quest. I'd bet Apple's solution will look similar(?)

But then I'd also want to be running a normal OS, so bring the MacBook Pro/Air.

Maybe I could work in a cloud dev instance so then all I need is this $3500 client and the keyboard+mouse.

The VR air keyboard seems terrible for much typing. Lack of the keys springing your fingers back up means you have to pull them up using the muscles on the backs of your fingers which is very quickly tiring.

will it ship with a terminal or ide apps?

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