Apple Vision Pro Launches in Canada: A First Impression

Toggle Dark Mode
Apple Vision Pro expanded its global footprint today with its official launch in five more countries: Canada, the UK, Australia, France, and Germany. This brings the total number of regions where the spatial computing headset is available to nine following last month’s release in China, Japan, and Singapore.
While Apple is estimated to have sold around 200,000 headsets in the US since its February launch, analysts predict the additional eight countries will only help Apple match those US sales for the rest of the year rather than surpass them.
According to an IDC report we shared earlier this week, US sales are already plummeting and are expected to remain flat throughout the rest of 2024 and even into early 2025 — at least until Apple releases its rumored lower-cost “Vision” headset later next year.
That’s probably not too surprising, as the Vision Pro is very much an “early adopter” product, so most of the headset’s potential customers have already bought theirs. However, we’re a bit more skeptical that expanding the Vision Pro’s reach to billions of additional people won’t result in more uptake than it’s seen in the US.
Granted, the collective population of all five countries where the Vision Pro launched today is only 284 million, which falls short of the 333 million people in the United States. However, last month’s launch in China, Japan, and Singapore added another 1.5 billion potential customers, which means that the Vision Pro is now available to over 2 billion people worldwide.
The Vision Pro’s international expansion also means that the visionOS App Store is now available in all regions where the headset is sold. However, it remains to be seen how many “localized” experiences Apple will be able to promote, which IDC analysts believe are key to helping the spatial computing headset gain a foothold in other regions.
Experiencing Apple’s Vision Pro in Canada
With the Vision Pro going on sale today in Canada, I decided to book an early demo to experience the new headset firsthand at the Apple Store Yorkdale in Toronto. As with most Apple launches, the store opened early — 8 a.m. ET — and I was able to get in for a 9 a.m. appointment.
They weren’t extremely busy at that hour, so they were also able to squeeze my 14-year-old daughter in for her own demo at the same time, even though we hadn’t booked one for her. However, I don’t think the relatively quiet store was a sign of poor interest in the Vision Pro. When I booked my appointment on the same day preorders began, 9 a.m. was the only time slot available today, so I attribute that to the fact that the rest of the mall — including the parking lot — doesn’t open until 10 a.m. We took a short public transit ride to get there as we live in the area, but anybody who planned to drive would have scheduled a later appointment.
While I don’t have much to report about it that hasn’t already been said by a multitude of other reviewers, I can confidently say that it didn’t fail to impress. It was lighter than I had expected from what many early reviewers reported, but that was probably helped by Apple’s recent change to using the Dual Loop for demos to ensure a better and more comfortable fit.
Despite reports that Apple plans to “go deeper” with Vision Pro demos, the initial demo stuck to the standard script we’ve heard about since February. The Apple specialist took me through the process of putting the headset on properly and calibrating the eye-tracking, which involved looking at several dots and using a two-finger pinch gesture to select them.
Once that was done, the Vision Pro booted up into mixed-reality mode, and the outside environment came into a view that was surprisingly realistic — I had to remind myself that I was looking at a pair of digital screens and not a piece of glass, although it also took my eyes a few moments to adjust into focus, likely because I wear multifocal contact lenses for far-sightedness and presbyopia, so seeing things far away on close-proximity 4K screens messed with my brain for a bit.
The rest of the demo was all pretty standard fare. The specialist had me open the Photos app and showed me how to select a photo, pinch with two fingers to zoom in on it, double-pinch to zoom back out, and then swipe between photos. We moved on to a panoramic photo, which was stunning when opened in a full wrap-around view, and then a spatial photo and two spatial videos, one shot on the Vision Pro and one shot on an iPhone 15 Pro.
The gestures were all very intuitive, and it was easy to pick everything up very quickly. Scrolling and swiping was as natural as on an iPhone or iPad, including the normal inertial motion when swiping up and down in Safari.
We then enabled the Immersive View and selected a few different ones, including the specialist’s favorite, Haleakala, which had me standing on top of a cliff feeling like I was ready to jump off and go cliff diving. This was followed by moving to the TV app to view a clip from Foundation and then a demo of some fantastic immersive experiences that ran the gamut of nature photos, a mountain tightrope walk, babies and kids at play, a jazz singer in a piano bar, and courtside/fieldside seats for an NBA and MLS game.

With some time left over, we opened the Dinosaur Experience app, which others have reported on, which began with a butterfly that landed on my finger (the specialist clued me in to hold out my hand for that part) and a dinosaur that sticks its nose right in your face, to the point where I couldn’t resist the urge to put up my finger and try and “boop” it (spoiler alert: there was no reaction).
The demo was precisely what I expected, but the experience was far better than that. Even with everything I’ve read and seen about the Vision Pro since it debuted last June, nothing compares to actually experiencing it, and everything was more natural and immersive than I could have imagined.
However, the demo didn’t include a focus on work apps or loading my own photos and videos to look at. Last month, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple would be adding these to the experience starting on July 9, but it seems like this is something customers will need to request specifically.

The specialists I spoke with said I was welcome to book another demo to explore anything I’d like to focus on more specifically, such as trying out the virtual keyboard in a more Mac-like work environment — my demo specialist recommended Keynote for that. Those are certainly part of the new demo policies, but it seems like Apple is still providing the standard scripted demo by default.
That’s not a bad thing, as Apple has meticulously crafted the demo to provide the best look at what the Vision Pro can do, and there’s nothing here I would have wanted to miss; I’d much rather go back for a second demo to explore other things. However, if you’re going into your demo with something specific in mind, it’s probably best to discuss that with the specialist first, as once the demo gets started, it’s much harder to stray from the beaten path (and you probably won’t want to).
Now that I’ve been through the demo, do I want to buy a Vision Pro? The short answer is yes, but $4,999 (CAD) is around $4,999 more than I’m willing to spend right now. Still, I can certainly see the value of the Vision Pro over other comparatively priced Apple products. If I had $5K to buy a single Apple product, it would definitely be the Vision Pro.
A high-end MacBook Pro is more than I need — my 2021 M1 13-inch MacBook Pro is still going strong, and I’m unlikely to spend much more on its replacement someday — and an M4 iPad Pro is a very cool and fun device, but I find the iPad has always sat at an awkward intersection between my MacBook and my iPhone. The Vision Pro adds something significantly new to the user experience that other Apple devices can’t replicate.