I just spent some time playing with spatial Personas with Jason Snell, and I have to say, having Personas free from their floating boxes makes the whole thing much more personal.
When you join a call, the other person is directly in front of you. You can see their Personas and hands, floating in your room. If you’re in an Environment, they appear there as well. It really felt like Jason was in the PodCabin with me.
Sometimes things gets a bit weird, as they can come crashing through your Home View:
The real magic comes when sharing content or an app experience with SharePlay.
Jason sent over a link to a Freeform document, and when I opened it, his Persona suddenly appeared next to me, with our document out in front of us. Combined with the Vision Pro’s excellent spatial audio, I had the distinct feeling that we were working together on our document in a way that sharing a document on a Mac or iPad just doesn’t deliver.
Here I am, stuffed in a Kallax inside Jason’s office while we were working:
After our ideation session, we played a round of Battleship in the excellent Game Room on Apple Arcade. After I sunk all of his ships, we watched a few minutes of For All Mankind in a couple of immersive environments.
Personas are still a bit weird, but I think freeing them from their boxes makes them feel totally different and much better. If you have a Vision Pro, it’s worth checking this out, especially with SharePlay in the mix.
When you’re done, give each other a high-five!
2024-04-03 Update: I was on a group call with Jason Snell, Myke Hurley, James Thomson, and John Voorhees and it was a true blast:
Myke’s head and hands hovering near my cardboard cutout of Casey Liss:
Jason, John, and Myke being cool dudes:
I tried petting Jason’s cat:
It’s great for the Hokey Pokey:
Being able to show the guys some recent additions to my Apple collection was pretty cool:
They used to ship software on cassette!