Over two hours long, and they'd already predispensed with iOS 17's accessibility features and Logic and Final Cut for iPad Pro.

Even without the Vision Pro introduction, this would have been one of the best WWDCs in years. New features to all platforms were understandable, few, focused, filled clear gaps, and I liked pretty much all of them. I'm guessing there are plenty more smaller features that went unmentioned.

Web apps on the Mac, finally? Heck. It might have taken indirect pressure from a transatlantic continent, but it seems like Apple's finally treating web apps more like first-class citizens rather than almost-first-class citizens. Even if that's not over, it's a good step and a good indicator. And it's a big way for users to customize their Macs as they prefer, which Apple marks as a strength of Macs.

Hideo Kojima's translated script seemed bizarrely identical to all of Apple's other scripts. He was "super excited" to announce his game on Apple silicon. (Console gamers, I think, watch enough Japanese keynotes that they know what Japanese developers "sound like" when translated to English. The recognizable phrasing is familiar, comforting, endearing and amusing, and it's strange when that's not there, let alone when it sounds like just about every modern Apple presenter.)

The Apple silicon Mac Pro finally made it, and now I understand that the Mac Studio was introduced to cater to… "mainstream" pros… so that the high-end "entry-level" Mac Pro could cost way more than ever. Big studios will be happy to pay for them, and more creators that wished they could pay for them will be happy to pay instead for the Studio.

But yes, it was at last the dawn of Apple's headset, and most of my impressions were correct. What was off? The launch price, which was announced, was unexpectedly higher than rumoured, not lower. In heavy quotes, "competing" with other headsets was not on the list of goals, and this first version of the device is for the rich. "Pro" is right there, right off, and that strategy traditionally is to launch the biggest and best first, rake it in while it's still as new and rare as it will ever be, invest, develop, and start to impress people later with the "low" prices of future versions. "The original Vision Pro cost…" may be eye-widening to future humans. Will they feel nostalgic intrigue as they investigate 2023?

The tethered battery pack was real: undoubtedly a compromise, but Apple marketing has a way of embracing compromises and giving them a hug in front of potential customers. But it sounded like plugging into power was an option.

I had no doubt the very basics – design and human values – behind Apple's version of a headset would be strongly considered and firmly asserted in a way that would seem unfamiliar to headset users so far. Iris scanning is now real, as a side note. But it was emphasized that while your gaze is indeed tracked for both reasons I mentioned last night, and used to select an object for interaction, that information is not relinquished to apps, but rather only the conscious confirmational gesture – the equivalent of a tap or a mouse click on that object.

"The wearer's eyes will be projected outward" seemed like a more doubtful rumour, but they embraced that too, and I don't think they even see it as a compromise, as they went to great lengths to create the appearance of transparency to bystanders. Again and again, they sought to convey how important it was that the wearer not be isolated from the real world. Virtual "environments" help create this isolation when desired, but even then, the outward-facing screen indicates to others that you're in one, and still does plenty of work to detect the presence of those others and convey them to the "isolated" viewer. This seems inspired by the nebulous displays on the HomePods, which needn't be razor-sharp in resolution, and it's even nice when they're a little blurred.

A 3D camera for 3D pictures and video!! Yeah!!

I mentioned Project Starlight last night, and that came true too! Digital avatars that resemble your physical person, usable in communications! Yeah!!!

I wasn't sure while watching, but I gather the wearer is always viewing the screens and that there's no transparency either way. When you're viewing your room, it seems, you're viewing your room as seen by the cameras, captured and relayed in stereo.

My next question is: what will be this device's role? It's positioned as a full "device," not explicitly advertised as, but presented as, theoretically capable of replacing the computer or the iPad for many people. It can run existing apps, present content, allow for creation, and undoubtedly other things other devices can barely do. I don't think it will replace any of them anytime soon (especially not at that first-gen cost). I don't know if Apple even knows what it's greatest and most-loved strengths will be, in the way it wasn't clear at first that the Watch would be so primarily about physical health. That's to come. And it seems like a good start, understandably, and traceably, very long in coming.