I like to think I'm a pretty seasoned multitasker. You'll often find me jumping between dozens of open Chrome tabs, Slack and Pixelmator Pro for editing photos — and that's on top of Spotify playing in the background. But the Apple Vision Pro takes multitasking to the next level, and not even the Meta Quest 3 or Meta Quest Pro can offer the same seamless experience.
With the Vision Pro, you can pin multiple apps around the room you're in anywhere you want, moving them around and resizing them with simple hand gestures. For example, if you want Safari to get bigger, you just look at the bottom right corner of the app and drag the corner. Want to move the app to your left or even above you? Just look at and select the bar beneath the app and put it wherever you like.
@tomsguide ♬ Aglow (Intro) - Slowed Down Version - Karamel Kel
Now that I've been testing the Vision Pro for over a week I have a go-to setup in my home office that I like to use. I pin the Apple Music app to the left of my standing desk and I place the Slack app to my right so I can glance at incoming messages without having to be distracted by them all the time. But it's the middle of my view that Meta can't copy.
If your MacBook lid is open, you'll see a floating Connect icon above the laptop. You just look at it and tap your fingers together and — boom — your desktop appears in front of you within the Vision Pro. And from there you can enlarge the screen. Plus, you can easily type using your MacBook Pro keyboard and leverage your existing mouse.
It gets better. If you're in a native Vision Pro app and want to bring something into your Mac, you can easily select Copy and then Paste it into the Mac the way you normally would. It would be even cooler if that text or photo just appeared if you dragged it on top of your virtual desktop, but it's still pretty impressive.
@mspoonyg ♬ Interstellar on Piano - Andy Morris
To be fair, the Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest Pro both now offer a Meta Quest Remote Desktop app that's in beta. But I couldn't resize the desktop on the Meta Quest 3 (only the window around it), and the resolution isn't nearly as sharp. You also need to manually launch the dedicated Remote Desktop app instead of just looking at your Mac to connect. It works but it's far from magical.
Spatial computing on the Vision Pro isn't perfect, either. The headset is a bit too heavy to wear for more than a couple of hours at a time. And you'll need to plug in that battery that's always attached to the headset if you want to have continuous power. But overall, I feel like multitasking on the Vision Pro is a huge selling point, whether you're at home, in the office or on the road.
