After years of rumors and speculation, Apple launched its first mixed-reality headset last month and saw a varied reception to the new product. Apple Vision Pro certainly felt like it was a taste of the future, but like the first-generation Apple products that have come before it, the headset also felt incomplete. The hope of reviewers like myself was that Apple could fix some of these bugs and limitations through software updates; however, that wasn't a guarantee. Now, about a month and a half later, Apple publicly released visionOS 1.1. It's likely the first of many software improvements that will hit Vision Pro over the coming months and years, and it's already a significant improvement.

I've been using visionOS 1.1 for a few weeks now, and the update makes Vision Pro an objectively better product than it was just a month ago. The operating system is more stable and responsive, Mac virtual displays are more crisp and stable, and a few missing features are now present in visionOS. On one hand, it's great news that Apple is managing to improve Vision Pro with speedy software updates. On the other, it all but confirms what many suspected: that early Vision Pro adopters are essentially beta-testing the product in real time. With all that said, let's take a look at three ways visionOS 1.1 has improved Apple Vision Pro so far.

3 Overall stability and new features

There are fewer crashes, MDM support, and Home View changes

It isn't the most exciting thing to say about an operating system update, but visionOS 1.1 is much more stable than prior versions of visionOS. This is something usually said about almost every update ever, although it means more when referring to visionOS. There were serious bugs experienced on the day-one version of the OS, and it made the entire Vision Pro experience frustrating. More serious problems caused the entire device to respring or restart, and minor ones impacted the everyday use of the device.

One issue I ran into frequently would cause app windows to visually stutter when they were looked at after being outside my field-of-view for a brief period. It was jarring, and distracting. This problem is completely patched in visionOS 1.1, and Vision Pro is much better at keeping track of windows in space. It also seems to be better at using foveated rendering without this tactic being perceptible to the user. This is just one example of a relatively small bug that made using Vision Pro an aggravating experience. Many of these have fixes in visionOS 1.1, and it's a really good sign for the future. Sometimes, these small stability improvements are more impactful than flashy new features.

visionOS 1.1 also includes some new features, but they're arguably ones that should have shipped with Vision Pro from day one. You can now delete system apps from the Home View, which is a pretty basic tool. However, you still can't rearrange apps in the Home View as you please. For enterprise users, Apple Vision Pro supports Mobile Device Management (MDM) software too. There's now a way to reset Vision Pro if you forget its passcode, although this was technically introduced with visionOS 1.0.3. All these bug fixes and additions signal that Apple is steadily making Vision Pro better, and that's a good thing.

2 Personas look much better

They're still in beta, but they look more realistic than they once did

Persona is a Vision Pro feature that creates a digital avatar of the wearer for use in apps that would typically show a front-facing camera feed. It's currently in beta, and it wasn't hard to see why in early versions of visionOS 1.0. The avatars were uncanny, and could either look great or horrible depending on the person and the individual Persona capture. Personas are improved significantly in visionOS 1.1, and users are prompted to re-capture their Persona immediately after updating. It might seem like Personas are a silly feature, but they're vital to Vision Pro. As it currently stands, Vision Pro is an isolating product, and Personas have the potential to make it just a bit less isolating.

1 Mac virtual display is improved

It's not perfect — but it's getting better over time and is actively being worked on

Before purchasing Vision Pro, one of the features I was looking forward to most was the Mac virtual display. Essentially, you can virtualize your Mac display and mirror it as a window within visionOS. This gives you a much larger display than the one that's built into your Mac, and allows you to move it around in visionOS' spatial environment. But there were plenty of disappointments, starting with the fact that you can only use one Mac virtual display in Vision Pro. More importantly, Mac virtual displays lacked crispness and clarity in terms of graphics, making it difficult to see normal-sized text.

Luckily, Mac virtual display quality is massively improved in visionOS 1.1. While the resolution and pixel density still leave something to be desired, it's much easier to make out text and other small visual elements in Mac virtual displays on Vision Pro. I took dual Mac virtual displays for a spin with the Splitscreen app a few weeks ago, and my biggest complaint was that the app doesn't fix the biggest issue: virtual display quality. Well, visionOS 1.1 does fix that issue to some degree. We still need higher-resolution Vision Pro displays in order for Mac virtual displays to be a viable alternative to physical high-resolution displays, but this clarity improvement is a great start. With visionOS 1.1, Mac virtual displays are actually usable.

Aside from quality improvements, Mac virtual displays are more stable with fewer crashes and connection issues. The dreaded "Input temporarily not working error" hasn't appeared since updating to visionOS 1.1, for instance. Plus, Apple says it is aware of an issue that causes Mac virtual display and AirPlay "to conflict when used concurrently." Though a fix isn't available yet, Apple is clearly steadily improving the Mac virtual display experience in Vision Pro.

What's left for Apple to fix?

The improvements Apple made with visionOS 1.1 make me more likely to use Vision Pro on a more regular basis. It's a significantly better productivity device than it was just a few weeks ago, for example. However, it's clear that Apple still has a long way to go before Vision Pro becomes ready for primetime. Still, the fact that Apple made so many quality improvements in the first major visionOS update is a good sign of what's to come. I'm already looking forward to what visionOS 2.0 might look like.