Apple’s Vision Pro is finally here. What took so long?
Last Friday, Apple’s long-awaited contribution to the virtual reality headset market finally hit stores across the U.S.
When he unveiled the Vision Pro last summer, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook heralded the technology as revolutionary, saying it would be “a new kind of computer that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world.”
Lest we forget the fate of the Google Glass, the glasses with a built in display and camera first released by Google in 2013 and formally ended ten years later, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Lance Ulanoff, U.S. editor-in-chief of TechRadar, for his take on the Vision Pro. Ulanoff said Apple’s new headset just might catch on, thanks to what Apple calls “spatial computing.”
The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Lance Ulanoff: It’s basically computing in a larger 3D space. It’s going from your confined desktop to the world around you. It combines augmented reality with your reality, meaning that interface elements can float in space in front of you. You can do everything from watch movies to read emails to browse the web, but you can also work and I’ve been doing a lot of work in it. I’ve had the world’s biggest desktop because of it. So, I’m still testing it but I find it fascinating, fun, and more comfortable than I expected.
Lily Jamali: At this point, virtual reality headsets have been around for a while. Why do you think Apple is jumping in now?
Ulanoff: Apple does this all the time. They wait until everybody else has kind of tripped over themselves, not quite getting it right and then they step into the category and say, “oh, by the way, this is how you do it.” They did it with mp3 players, they did it with phones, they did it with smartwatches, they’ll do it again and again. They do not launch fresh categories that nobody else has done. It’s not really what Apple does. Apple just shows you the way. So that’s what they’re trying to do with this.
But , it’s a slightly different environment because Meta has made some gains, especially in the gaming space with the Meta Quest, and the Meta Quest Pro and HTC has done virtual reality gaming. So, there are some people with virtual reality headsets. Also companies like Amazon are starting to do slight augmented reality things. So, it’s a slightly different environment that Apple is stepping into. And there’s a big X factor here because typically, when Apple goes into a category like this, it’ll usually price things reasonably. Well, the Vision Pro is almost $3,500 to start. It’s a really significant mountain to climb to say, “yeah, I’m gonna make that investment.” It’s a major investment and I do have a theory about what Apple is trying to do here.
Jamali: Please. I mean, the price has been the big sticking point going into this launch.
Ulanoff: I think that Apple is trying to create a sort of mini market of early adopters or evangelists for this product, and for the platform, and for the concept of spatial computing. Later, there will be other iterations of the vision Pro. You know they’ve started with the Vision Pro, but do you remember how the first iPad was just called the iPad? Not the iPad Pro. It wasn’t the more expensive version. So, they’ve sort of inverted the process here and they’re starting with the Pro version. They will come out with a much more affordable version that will maybe be called Vision Air or maybe it’ll just be called the Apple Vision, but it’ll be cheaper. And then, because people know their friends and other people who invested in the Vision Pro and they’ve had tremendous FOMO, or fear of missing out, so now maybe they can afford the cheaper model. It’s a difficult way to build a market, because you really have to depend on all those early adopters who are going to be constantly talking about how wonderful this is and how it has transformed their lives.
Jamali: And they’re doing it in a category that hasn’t ever gained mass market appeal. You have to wonder if this is a risky endeavor for Apple.
Ulanoff: I think Apple is in a good position to take on a risk like this. It serves a couple of purposes. One, they’ve got the money to do it and two, a lot of people talk about how Apple is no longer innovating. You don’t have enough new categories, they haven’t done the car, they haven’t done the television. So, this is them basically putting something out there that is, in some ways, unlike anything we’ve seen before despite the fact that we’ve seen virtual reality and mixed reality and augmented reality headsets. We’ve never seen anything quite like this. And so, Apple gets to parade that around and say, “we’re the innovators again.”
I don’t know what the lead time is here, but I think that it’s okay that this is not going to be a million or 2 million selling device. I don’t think they’ve made that many of them. I think they’re happy to have limited supplies and I think they’re happy to let this story play out slowly. This will be a loss leader for a while they make their millions on the iPhone and services and then eventually, maybe they’ll start to grow.
Jamali: Let’s talk about Eyesight. I gather this is a feature of the Vision Pro aimed at basically keeping you connected to the outside world while you’re still wearing the device on your face. Tell me about it.
Ulanoff: Eyesight is really interesting because one of the problems with virtual reality with headsets like this is they cut you off from the world. You immerse yourself in it and people can’t see your eyes. So, Apple came up with this really interesting solution. They put a screen on the front of the device so when someone starts talking to you and you turn your head toward them, they break through the immersive environment, and you start to see them, and they see your eyes. However, Eyesight is not actually presenting your eyes. On the inside of the Vision Pro are cameras that watch your eyes and track their movement. But they can also be used to transmit an idea of what you’re doing with your eyes. So, it looks like your eyes but a little bit not like your eyes. I’ve yet to have a person look at it and go “oh my god, that’s amazing, I love it.” They’re all like, “yeah, you look okay” and they kind of take a step back. They’re just not sure of how to approach it.
Jamali: Is there a sort of breaking point where you where it for a couple hours and then you have to take it off? Like you’re just sick of it, kind of like Zoom fatigue where you can only take so many in one in one sitting?
Ulanoff: I’ve worn it for I’d say almost two hours and I’ve taken it off sometimes because I couldn’t do a meeting in it or in the early versions when the band felt painful. There have been times when I want to let my face breathe, like my eyes aren’t breathing enough, so I take it off but then I put it back on. I will say, when I take it off and go back to work on my tiny little desktop, I feel cramped. I’m like, “where are my big floating windows?” I actually looked up without wearing the headset as if I was going to see the interface floating above me.
One last thing I want to mention is how you’re perceived by others while wearing this thing. I have been wearing it at home and my wife walks in the room, looks at me, shakes her head and walks out. So, I don’t know what that means.
Over at The Verge, Adi Robertson has been writing about not just the hardware, but the Apple Vision Pro’s software, which sticks with the usual ‘walled garden’ strategy that loyal Apple users know well.
Out of the box, she writes, you can’t stream Netflix on a native app on the platform or watch videos on a YouTube app. There’s also nothing from Epic Games, whose series helped make iOS a home for 3D games.
Epic, of course is currently embroiled in an antitrust battle with Apple in the courts, but it’s not just them.
The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims writes the “walled garden” approach that has made Apple so successful has become “an invitation for regulators to pounce, partners to defect and competitors to circle.” His call on the fate of the Apple Vision Pro? He expects it’ll be a niche product for a long time to come, partly because of all the legal wrangling Apple’s been involved in.
Another potential headwind is privacy concerns. Geoffrey Fowler at the Washington Post writes the device collects more data than any other personal device he’s ever seen. He notes Apple has included some restrictions on the data collected by the headset, including where your eyes are looking when you wear it. But there’s other data Apple hasn’t – or perhaps can’t – address, including information about how we move and what’s in our homes.
Fowler forecasts “a privacy mess waiting to happen.”
Food for thought before we all run out and start strapping a computer with a camera to our faces.
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