Remember Apple’s Vision Pro? That’s the $3,499 mixed reality headset the company launched early in 2024 that failed to garner much public interest. Apple has steamed ahead with updates for the platform over the past year, and soon there will be a new version upgrade: visionOS 26. (Apple announced at WWDC it was changing the way it named its operating systems to match the following year.)
I got a chance to try out a few of the new capabilities, but two stuck out to me more than the others. First is the upgrade to Personas. That’s the spatial avatar the headset creates based on your likeness using the onboard cameras. (You have to point the headset at your head and run through a setup process to create a Persona.) Last year, the first thing I heard when I joined Zoom meetings wearing the Vision Pro was laughter. My Persona was rigid, my hair looked matte—it just looked bad.
Apple has revamped the look and feel to make these 3D digital representations significantly better than before, with a much more natural and realistic design. You can even see the entire side view of the head. Hair textures are better, as are skin complexions. I set up my Persona without wearing glasses but was able to add virtual glasses in nearly the same style as my actual frames, and they didn’t clip or look wonky. (I recorded a little greeting through a third-party app, which you can see below.)
Correction: An earlier version of this story mentioned a public beta, but there is no public beta for visionOS.
