The APPLE Vision Pro Dilemma: Bridging the Gap Between iPhone and MAC Mirroring

Among the acolytes of Apple, disappointment is always followed by a renaissance of hope, something that the company’s latest versions of products, developments about the upcoming Vision Pro and macOS Sequoia, brought about in many spaces and forums. Soon after the WWDC 2024 was announced and the eager fans started binge-watching a documentary about the company, they were looking forward to the users of the company’s new upcoming AR glasses Vision Pro being able to mirror their iPhone screens into it – just like they can already do with a Mac. The bitter reality was different. What is the future where all of the Apple products play together perfectly? We want to explore, dream about, and ponder that question.

Understanding the Limitations of Current APPLE Continuity

A Hurdle in Mirroring

That’s a fair amount of mirror. The time before WWDC 2024 was spent with many in the community, myself included, hoping that the event would announce users could mirror their iPhone in the Vision Pro. Instead, we got that and more. What we got was an ability to do iPhone mirrorin’ on macOS Sequoia. That’s right, you can now control your iPhone and use it as a screen for your Mac. It’s a bit less than we were hoping for, with respect to direct integration of the iPhone and Vision Pro.

One Mirroring at a Time

And the dream? That would be perfectly mirroring both a Mac and an iPhone onto the Vision Pro all at once, which is not possible yet, at least according to Apple aficionados who have gotten real-world glimpses of the functionality and told me it supports only one Continuity mirroring feature at a time. So, if your Mac is showing on the Vision Pro, you can’t mirror your iPhone at the same time, presumably a limitation endemic to the networking capabilities. Which implies that, at least for now, perfectly rendering both the Mac’s and an iPhone’s screen for the same display is indeed a bridge too far.

The Potential for Future Connectivity

Evolution of Continuity

Even so, there’s a glimmer of hope. In visionOS 2, Apple has doubled the resolution of Mac mirroring, and it’s also newly adding a feature to virtualise an ultra‑wide display. It’s a promising development and hints that, one day, Apple may well find a way to overcome the current limitations that prevent multi-device mirroring. If nothing else, there’s always the hope that a future update could finally enable direct iPhone mirroring onto the Vision Pro (hopefully in conjunction with Mac mirroring, too).

Exploring iPhone Mirroring on macOS SEQUOIA

A Step Forward

Though iPhone mirroring is not directly integrated with the Vision Pro yet, it’s still worth checking out what the new iPhone Mirroring feature in macOS Sequoia has to offer. It’s a step up from the current iPhone mirroring capabilities. It requires both WiFi and Bluetooth to function, projects at 60 fps, is in landscape, which is great for gaming and has simultaneous sound. And, it will only drain about as much battery life as it does when you regularly use your iPhone.

The Promise of Integration

But aside from these near-term benefits, the prospect of being able to drag and drop files between an iPhone and a Mac – third-party apps included – means that we’ve taken another step forward to deeper iOS integration and closer workflow between devices. If this isn’t the unified ecosystem many of us hoped for, it’s at least a foundation upon which that eventuality can be built.

Looking Ahead: The Future of APPLE Connectivity

The path toward more tightly integrating Apple’s ecosystem will continue, with every release of software and hardware, and with each step we’re closer to getting there. With Vision Pro, and the forthcoming additions to macOS Sequoia, we got a tantalising glimpse of what is possible today, as well as where we are currently lacking and where improvements could take place in the near future.

It’s up to us as users and fans to continue to push for these changes to happen, and to dream of a future when mirroring across all Apple devices is seamless and as intimate as we have come to expect from the brand. Until then, we watch, we wait, and we hope that the future brings our devices closer together, and enhances our digital experience in ways we can only imagine.

About APPLE

Built from a ‘culture of innovation’, Apple’s ‘integrated ecosystem of products and services’ has long been known for ‘an emphasis on design, usability and user experience’ that not only serves the needs of its hundreds of millions of users but ‘sets the pace for the industry as a whole’. That’s certainly what it seems to be doing with not only the Vision Pro but also macOS Sequoia’s new features.