justin․searls․co

The new Developer Strap delivers 20 Gbps to M2 Vision Pro

Like many other Vision Pro sickos, I was far more excited about this week's announcement of a newly-updated Developer Strap than I was about last week's news of the M5 Vision Pro itself.

Why? The original strap allowed you to connect your Vision Pro to a Mac, but at unacceptably slow USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) speeds. This still achieved much lower latency connection than WiFi, but the image quality when running Mac Virtual Display over the USB connection was rendered far too blurry to be worthwhile. The new strap, however, offers a massively-upgraded 20 Gbps connection speed. I rushed to order one at the news, because, in theory, those speeds ought to offer the absolute best experience possible when using Vision Pro as an immersive Mac display.

While Apple's support documentation says both devices "support" connecting to the strap, what wasn't clear was whether the original hardware would be able to actually deliver the increased bandwidth.

Well, I'm happy to report after plugging in the new Developer Strap into my original Vision Pro, System Information indicates a 20 Gbps connection! Moreover, I can confirm Mac Virtual Display performs better than ever.

Seriously, I don't think I'll be able to go back. The increase in visual sharpness and the lightning-quick latency beat the pants off anything I've experienced, and I've been using Mac Virtual Display daily since the product's initial release. Up to now, others who've tried using Vision Pro for this purpose have reported that the display quality is poor—likely attributable to the need for a carefully-tuned WiFi environment to sustain the connection. That Apple finally offers a wired connection that delivers the definitive experience is a huge win.

If you own a Vision Pro and use it as a display for your Mac, you're already a dummy who blew $3500 on this thing—go spend $300 more and treat yourself to a massive upgrade.

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