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I couldn't buy an Apple Vision Pro even if I wanted to

Plus Samsung's Galaxy S24 announcement and more!

I couldn't buy an Apple Vision Pro even if I wanted to
Image courtesy of Apple

Bright and early Friday morning, Apple started taking preorders for Apple Vision Pro, its mixed-reality/virtual reality headset. Although, the company doesn't want developers calling it that. Instead, it's a Spatial Computing headset. Whatever that means.

I guess you could say I'm Apple Vision Pro curious, but I'm also not going to spend a minimum of $3,500 on a first-generation product with a whopping 2.5 hours of battery life.

But, curiosity got the best of me. So Friday morning, I woke up and browsed the preorder page for a few minutes, looking for any information about eyeglass prescription limitations. My prescription is often on the high-end or out-of-range for things like Meta's latest Ray-Ban smart glasses, or even Meta Quest 3's lens inserts (more on those in a minute, however).

Eventually a follower on Mastodon sent me a link to the official ZEISS landing page to check if your prescription is compatible with Apple Vision Pro. After entering my numbers, I was greeted with this:

Bummer.

Case closed. I couldn't order or use an Apple Vision Pro, even if I wanted to.

Coincidentally, I had been searching for a company that could make prescription lenses for the Meta Quest 3. ZEISS is the official partner for Quest 3 lenses, but as with the Apple Vision Pro, the company doesn't accept my prescription. A couple of weeks ago I found HONSVR who gladly accepted my prescription for an extra $10, bringing the total to $60.

My lenses arrived this week and let me tell you, the difference between wearing glasses when using Quest 3 and using prescription lenses is night and day.

Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra sure looks sharp.

Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra is here. Literally!

As expected, Samsung did indeed unveil the Galaxy S24, S24+ and S24 Ultra during its Unpacked event on Wednesday. The phones are available to preorder right now, with Samsung doubling the storage if you order before the phones officially launch on Jan. 31.

Samsung sent me the S24 Ultra to review for Pocket-lint, which will be live at some point next week. If you have any questions or want to know anything about Samsung's latest flagship phone that's chock full of AI features, let me know and I'll try to work it into my review.

MacBook Pro, white ceramic mug,and black smartphone on table
Photo by Andrew Neel / Unsplash

What I worked on this week

The Unpacked event was my first as an editor assigning and editing stories, and coordinating coverage with the rest of the segment editors and our team of writers. Talk about stressful. It was my second day on the job and man... I have a whole new appreciation for what editors do.

That said, I'm very proud of what the team accomplished this week. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with this section given that my writing output (in theory) will drop with my new role.

So, let's try this:

You can check out the bulk of our Unpacked coverage in this roundup post, find the best Galaxy S24 preorder deals, learn how to use Google's new Circle to Search feature or see a list of all the devices Galaxy AI is coming to.

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