Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
We are in the middle of the Apple Vision Pro’s first holiday season – I know, we all can’t wait to wish you the season’s greetings – and there’s a great update in the form of VisionOS 2.2. And no, it is not the arrival of Apple Intelligence.
First joked back in June 2024 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference was a major upgrade to the Mac Virtual Display experience – new display sizes, including a behemoth ultrawide curved monitor view. It’s always been a popular feature of the $3,500 Spatial Computer, the fact that you can stream your Mac screen — as long as it’s an M-series powered unit — directly to your Vision Pro with almost no noticeable lag.
Whether you’re in a middle seat on an airplane, longing for a bigger screen, or just working from home and wanting a bigger monitor that can be stretched to what feels like infinity, Mac Virtual Display in Vision Pro just got the job done. done However, it was a classic digital flat monitor; it did not have an enveloping effect.
That’s resolved now, though. In a demo where I had to play Lies of Pi Streaming from a 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and doing some daily business in macOS Sequoia from a Mac mini with M2 or a 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3, it was a light bulb moment.
Wide or Ultrawide feels like a new dimension for the Vision Pro
In the demo, I sat in a fairly cozy chair, selected Mac Virtual Display simply by looking at a 16-inch MacBook Pro in Space Black, and then was greeted by a submenu instead of turning on the display. You can now choose between three sizes: standard, wide, or ultra-wide.
The standard is, as you might suspect, the standard experience we’ve had since day one on the Apple Vision Pro with two key differences – it’s now at a 5K resolution and is slightly curved to make it more natural to use .
Wide is cool at 21:9, but Ultrawide kicks into ultra-high gear at 32:9, which is the equivalent of two displays side by side, as what Apple says is a 5K resolution.
It looks undeniably strong and really feels like it wraps around you. Like any window in VisionOS, you can stretch it by looking at the bottom corner and simply pulling it with pinched thumb and forefinger. I especially liked this one, and unlike a conventional curved monitor – perhaps one of TechRadar’s best gaming monitors list – you’re not locked into whatever size you choose based on the monitor you can buy.
I could resize the monitor to a supersize curved screen that filled the room when I wanted to be in the action of Lies of P, but I could also reduce it to see other people in space or even dim the lights on an evening on the Moon. It’s especially immersive for gaming, and I love that the audio from the Mac can go through the Spatial-capable speakers on the Vision Pro or AirPods Pro.
It also makes the Vision Pro an even better fit for extending the power of the Mac – both a Mac mini, MacBook Airo MacBook Pro. Many, if not all, M-powered Macs can handle these AAA game titles and dozens of Apple Arcade titles, but there’s still something to be said for working in Vision Pro and just using your Mac. In fact, I wrote this piece on the ultra-wide screen.
Of course, you need to be comfortable with the headset and invest in Vision Pro at $3,500 (starting). We were asked about a potential killer app or experience for the Vision Pro.
My colleague Lance Ulanoff wrote about it a year of the Apple Spatial Computer earlier this year. However, this kind of experience with the Mac is truly spectacular. Rumors of a potential collaboration with Sony PlayStation for more supported controller types makes the prospect of future games you’ll be able to play on a Mac in UltraWide in Vision Pro quite exciting.
It’s been a long road for visionOS 2.0 to fully release, and visionOS 2.2 finally offers a better view of the Virtual Mac Standard Display and two new sizes; it makes the experience even better.
