Apple Vision Pro: the Next Big Thing in Tech?

Apple’s new Vision Pro headset is a major step forward for augmented reality, but it’s full of limitations. It allows users to interact with apps in the real world, but it’s bulky, and it uses a tethered connection to a battery pack. As I was watching the presentation, I couldn’t stop thinking that Apple is being held hostage by its own five-year-old business plan.

Apple has become the third Big Tech company trying to convince us that in the future we will work with others using a big headset mounted on our heads. Microsoft pioneered the idea with HoloLens, and Meta doubled down on this with Oculus. I wrote about the problems of using augmented reality (AR) headsets in 2021, when Meta announced their metaverse to much fanfare. Nonetheless, the future that Mark Zuckerberg hyped had a key component: regular-looking glasses that worked as AR devices.

That’s not what Apple announced today, mainly because we are still about 10+ years away from that type of miniaturized technology. Instead, Apple announced a headset that pressure-fits your head, and uses a wired connection to an external battery pack. They also announced a new way of interacting with the virtual world, using hand gestures; it brought back memories of how tiresome using Kinect was back in the day.

A lot of emphasis was made today around the fact that Apple had been working on this $3500 device for many years. This, combined with the call to developers encouraging them to create AR experiences for Vision Pro, gave me flashes of the past. Apple started working on this back when the industry thought that the next big selling product was going to be virtual and augmented reality.

Fast-forward to 2023, and artificial intelligence (AI) has become the next shiny toy for the tech industry. The tech industry is rushing to integrate AI on every possible product  —even those that don’t need it. If Apple could reinvest today the billions of dollars required to make the Vision Pro, would they choose a different big bet? I think so.

Unfortunately for Apple, it’s too late to abandon the effort. The device was first rumored in 2015, and remained in the news for years until it leaked months ago. Right around the same time, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT and sent the tech industry into an AI frenzy. Apple remained relatively quiet on the AI topic, with little to no integration on any of its products (including Siri).

A future where regular glasses give us access to an AR desktop-like experience on the go is still attractive, but we are still too many years away from that. Of course, that future cannot materialize without companies investing first in improving current technology; it’s just unusual to see Apple create a device this early in its technology lifecycle. This shows that Apple is willing to take risks, even if they are costly.

My prediction is that this iteration of Vision Pro, which is scheduled to arrive in 2024, won’t make a significant impact in the market. However, support from early adopters will help Apple iterate in its AR technology with subsequent versions. Hopefully, Apple will make future iterations more affordable, eventually reaching the compact format of regular glasses by 2035. The question remains: will you buy into it?

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