I Keep Attending the visionOS Study Group Even Though I Still Do Not Understand Many Things
Vision Pro is an incredibly rewarding toy to tinker with. I am also interested in Meta's XR glasses, but for now I am exploring toward my first self-made app.
The visionOS Study Group originally came about because I was invited through visionOS Developer Meetup #2, and I have been participating every other week. I have currently attended twice. Because it is held in free spaces, the location changes each time.
For the first session, I attended with a suitcase. Actually, whenever I take Vision Pro outside and also do development, I end up using a suitcase. That is because I need not only Vision Pro but also the following items.
- LCD monitor
- Mac mini
- Keyboard
- Mouse
- Various other cables and power strips
As this list shows, the only Apple silicon macOS machine I own is a Mac mini. I keep thinking that if I had a MacBook, I could reduce my luggage much more, but I have not bought one yet. Vision Pro itself was already a very expensive purchase.
After thinking about various things from the first session, I decided to minimize what I would bring to the second session as much as possible. If it is heavy, my motivation to go drops, and it would be a shame if the future closed off there.
Incidentally, although I bring a Mac mini and LCD monitor, in practice I work by using the Mac virtual desktop from Vision Pro, so the external monitor almost never gets used. However, after various experiments, I learned that to take a Mac mini outside and use it together with Vision Pro, an external monitor is absolutely necessary.
So I decided to bring the smallest possible external monitor. The smallest LCD monitor in my home is a camera monitor called the TARION X5. It is a 5-inch monitor originally intended as an external monitor for cameras. Because of that, it is powered by attaching a camera battery.
The wonderful thing about this LCD monitor is that it has Full HD resolution, in other words 1920 x 1080. Of course, there is no way I could work on that screen, but it is enough to log in.
With that, I was able to drastically reduce the LCD monitor, stand, and related items, and somehow fit everything into one backpack.
Developing for Half a Day on Vision Pro
Once carrying the Vision Pro with the development machine became easier, one worry decreased, but a new one appeared. If I concentrate and keep developing on Vision Pro, it becomes quite tiring.
After doing development and research for a few hours, I got tired and read Kindle. But on a 5-inch monitor, I can barely tell what is written even in Xcode, so work does not progress. In that sense, compared with the previous setup where I could work on a real monitor, this ended up being a worse environment.
It feels like I should just buy a MacBook instead of spending time worrying about all this, but then I also wonder whether reaching that thought is itself distorted cognition caused by the part of me that wants to buy a MacBook. Recently I have become increasingly good at convincing myself, which is a problem.
This setup had downsides from becoming lighter, so I will think a bit more about the configuration.