The Apple Vision Pro’s Ultrawide Mac Virtual Display is something that has to be seen to be believed
We’re in the middle of the Apple Vision Pro’s first holiday season – I know, we all can’t wait to wish it the holidays – and there’s a fantastic update in the form of VisionOS 2.2. And no, it is not the arrival of Apple Intelligence.
First teased in June 2024 at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference was a major upgrade to the Mac Virtual Display experience: new screen sizes, including a colossal ultra-wide curved monitor display. The fact that you can stream your Mac display—as long as it’s an M-Series device—directly to your Vision Pro has always been a popular feature of the $3,500 Spatial Computer, with virtually no noticeable lag.
Whether you’re sitting in the middle seat of an airplane, longing for a bigger screen, or just working from home and want a bigger monitor that can stretch to what feels like infinity, Mac Virtual Display on the Vision Pro just got the job done . finished. Yet it was a classic flat monitor, digitized; it had no enveloping effect.
However, that has now been resolved. In a demo where I was able to play Lies of Pi streamed from a 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and do 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 nice cozy chair, selected Mac Virtual Display by simply staring at a 16-inch MacBook Pro in Space Black, and was then greeted by a submenu instead of just turning on the screen. You can now choose from three sizes: standard, wide or ultra-wide.
Standard is, as you might guess, the standard experience we’ve had with the Apple Vision Pro since day one, with two key differences: it now has 5K resolution and is slightly curved to make it more natural to use.
Wide is cool at 21:9, but Ultrawide kicks it into ultra-high gear at 32:9, which is the equivalent of two displays side by side since what Apple says is 5K resolution.
It looks undeniably sharp and really gives the impression of wrapping itself around you. Like any window in VisionOS, you can stretch it up by looking at the bottom corner and simply pulling with your pinched thumb and index finger. I particularly liked this, and unlike a conventional curved monitor – arguably one of Ny Breaking’s best gaming monitor list – you’re not locked into the size you select based on the monitor you can buy.
I could resize the monitor to a super-large curved screen that filled the room if I wanted to be in on Lies of P’s action, but I could also shrink it down to see other people in the room or even dim the lights to an evening on the moon. It’s especially immersive for gaming, and I like that audio from the Mac can pass through the spatial speakers of Vision Pro or AirPods Pro.
It also makes the Vision Pro even better suited to expanding the power of the Mac, whether it’s a Mac mini, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. Many, if not all, M-powered Macs can handle these AAA game titles and dozens of Apple Arcade titles, but there’s also something to be said about working with Vision Pro and just using your Mac. In fact, I wrote this piece on the ultra-wide screen.
Of course, you should be comfortable wearing a headset and invest in the Vision Pro for $3,500 (starting). We’ve been wondering about a potential great app or experience for the Vision Pro.
My colleague Lance Ulanoff wrote about Apple’s Spatial Computer for about a year earlier this year. Yet this kind of experience with the Mac is truly spectacular. Rumors of a possible partnership with Sony PlayStation for more supported controller types make the prospect of future games you could play on a Mac in UltraWide on the Vision Pro quite exciting.
It was a long road before visionOS 2.0 fully released, and visionOS 2.2 finally offers a better view of the standard Mac Virtual Display and two new formats; it makes the experience even better.