Enlarge / A Mac virtual monitor in visionOS 2. (credit: Samuel Axon)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple kicked off the keynote for its annual developer conference by announcing a new version of visionOS, the operating system that runs on the company's pricey but impressive Vision Pro mixed reality headset.

The updates in visionOS 2 are modest, not revolutionary—mostly iterative changes, quality-of-life improvements, and some features that were originally expected in the first version of visionOS. That's not too surprising given that visionOS just went out to users four months ago.

Vision Pro users hoping for multiple virtual Mac monitors will be disappointed that's not planned this time around, but Apple plans to add the next-best thing: Users will be able to take advantage of a larger and higher-resolution single virtual display, including a huge, wraparound ultrawide monitor mode that Apple says is equivalent to two 4K monitors.

Enlarge / A blurry, ghostly Persona in visionOS 1.0. They should at least look less bad in visionOS 1.1. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple has released a long list of medium-sized software updates for most of its devices today. The macOS Sonoma 14.4, watchOS 10.4, tvOS 17.4, and visionOS 1.1 updates are all available now, and most of them add at least one or two major features as they fix multiple bugs and patch security vulnerabilities.

The visionOS 1.1 release is the first major update for Apple's newest operating system, and as our coverage of the headset has demonstrated, there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit to fix. Most notably for people who are trying to use the headset for work meetings, Apple says that there have been multiple changes to the look of Personas, the 3D avatars that show up in your place when you're video chatting with the Vision Pro on your face. The update improves "hair and makeup appearance," "neck and mouth representation," and "rendering of the eyes," and while it's clear that it's an improvement over the 1.0 release of Personas, the core uncanniness still seems to be intact. The Persona feature is still labeled as a beta.

Apple has also made tweaks to the appearance and functionality of the headset's virtual keyboard, improved the Virtual Display feature's Mac connectivity, and added a handful of mobile device management features for IT administrators.