How much would you spend to see your Mac screen displayed across your living room? However, if money is no object, the latest developer beta of the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro offers the opportunity to use your Mac on a much larger and wider monitor. I tried it two days ago, and it’s probably the best way to use an old, tried, and tested Mac, as long as you don’t mind dropping oodles of money for the privilege.
The Apple Vision Pro is unique in how much of a closed ecosystem it is compared to other VR headsets. When I first tried visionOS 2, I thought that Vision Pro would succeed in replicating and improving the experience of other Apple products, such as iPhone or Mac. As it happens, I’ve been testing the latest macOS 15.2 betas as well M4 MacBook Pro 14 and M4 Pro MacBook Pro 16. You’ll need both betas running on your devices to take advantage of the wider Mac display. Why would you like it? Well, just look at these screenshots and tell me if you think that looks cool or not.
Happily, my favorite monitor at work is a 34-inch curved display instead of the multi-monitor setup I enjoy with my coworkers. When I downloaded the developer beta of visionOS 2.2, I knew this would be like lowering myself into a normal but overindulgent bath. Even though Apple is promoting 180-degree content like the latest Submerged navigation, 120-degree Mac mirroring is a better use case for such an expensive headset.
As you can see in the screenshots, the exposed Mac screen can grow to gigantic dimensions, taking up an entire room to the ceiling. There are three screen modes: “standard,” “wide,” and “super wide.” Wide adds a slight curve to almost the 21:9 aspect ratio, but ultra-wide is surprisingly large. At this size, the 100-degree FOV of the Apple Vision Pro cannot take in the entire display at once. My Mac screen can have three full Chrome windows side by side, and in games that support ultra-wide, like Baldur’s Gate IIIthe setting will make you forget where your characters portrait is.
Paired together, my review copy of the Pro 16 and Apple Vision Pro cost $5,000. Using high-end Macs with an M4 Pro with a 20-core GPU means I can play games like Resident Evil 4 at full resolution without worrying about framerate drops. That’s still amazing value for money for this kind of experience (and all while ignoring all the ongoing comfort issues with the Vision Pro). It also won’t work with every game that runs natively on macOS. Death Stranding with the App Store not supporting very wide monitors. At most, it can reach an aspect ratio of 21:9.
The full release of visionOS 2 added several additional features that make accessing the Mac’s interface easier, such as a palm touch to access the control center. You can also look at any paired Mac screen and tap on “connect” to reveal a large, animated display. With the visionOS 2.2 developer beta installed, the top of the window will let you choose between three options for your screen size.
This type of feature is already available on Meta Quest headsets through the Virtual Desktop app. That app costs $25, but with a little playing around, you can get the same extensive experience on a PC or Mac. Apple Mirroring for Mac is very simple and easy to use, but it takes a lot of effort, if not more, to get a Windows machine to connect to AVP.
So Mac mirroring ultra-wide is not the only feature of the Vision Pro, although it is the best of Apple headsets. The two Pancake Optics on the AVP are some of the best in VR right now, and they support enough resolution that Apple calls their wide fit “two 4K monitors” side by side. It simply looks better than anything you’ll find on the Quest 3 or Quest 3S. Yes, you should. The $300 3S costs about 12 times more than Apple’s Vision Pro.
The Mac blow-up screen should work with any of the latest Apple brand computers. However, the best choice for those on offer is the new Mac mini. In the M4 Pro’s configuration, it’s a powerful enough device to play most of the few games available on the Mac with a large aspect ratio and spatial resolution, although you may have to turn down the settings or scoff at any available stable framerate boost.
The Vision Pro is the most compact commercial headset available. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook recently told reporters that he uses it to watch movies in bed. As such, it is one of the more difficult, expensive ways to view content on the big screen. The wraparound Mac screen is a template for that. Perhaps, one day, we can achieve the same thing without dragging 1.4 kilograms of earphones from our skulls, and the attached battery pack.
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