Take the Apple Vision Pro First: 3 Reasons It Changes Everything

June 5th, 2023 will go down as the day Apple started something big. It is different from the expectation of the world. It’s more expensive, it’s more ambitious, and it has a much longer runway.

But while the Apple Vision Pro looks like a set of magic ski goggles, it’s actually a computing platform that could eventually power everything we do today on smartphones, tablets, and computers. That’s because Apple has made augmented reality the core of the product, rather than virtual reality.

At WWDC 2023, when Tim Cook announced that the Vision Pro was an AR headset rather than the expected VR headset, the live audience of developers and reporters at Apple Park fell into a stunned silence — and for good reason.

Here are my first impressions on the ground at the event.

Too: Every hardware product Apple announced at WWDC 2023: Vision Pro headset, Mac Pro, and more

AR is a huge deal compared to VR

Much of the anticipation revolving around the launch of the Apple headset seems to center around it being a VR device with a touch of AR. The reality was quite the opposite: The Vision Pro is an AR headset that includes some VR-like capabilities.

VR is inherently constrained by the fact that you are largely cut off from the world around you when you put on a VR headset. This makes for deep experiences that can transport you to another place, but it also limits the amount of time most people will spend in the headset to 30 minutes or less per day.

AR glasses, on the other hand, could shrink significantly over the next decade and become a digital display that overlays on top of most of your daily experiences.

Tim Cook called it “the first Apple product you see, no more”.

It connects the digital world and the real world

The Vision Pro is actually a mixed reality headset. It combines AR and VR. But since the world already barely understands AR and VR — even though we’ve been talking about them for over a decade — it’s helpful that Apple didn’t confuse people by introducing a new term.

Instead, Apple talked about new ways the Vision Pro could unify the online world, where many of us now spend so much of our time, with our daily lives. Cook characterized it as “seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world”.

Again, because AR overlays digital information on top of the real world, that opens up entire categories of content and experiences where developers can build on existing activities, businesses, hobbies, and passions rather than having to digitally recreate them in VR. to make from

“Vision Pro blends digital content into the space around us,” Cook concluded.

Also Read: The 4 Best AR Glasses: Pro-Level AR and XR Headsets

It’s a ‘new kind of computer’

The biggest surprise for me was the way Apple demonstrated the different interfaces for the Vision Pro, which mimicked the iPad, Apple TV, and Mac. Honestly, the iPad and Apple TV interfaces didn’t surprise me, but the Mac did. Apple showed users how to create the equivalent of giant multi-monitor Mac setups within Vision Pro.

Cook made no effort to downplay its importance, even calling the Vision Pro “a new kind of computer” and saying, “Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing and the iPhone introduced us to mobile computing.” did, the same way Apple Vision Pro will introduce us to spatial computing.”

He added, “With Vision Pro, you are no longer limited by a single display. Your surroundings become an infinite canvas.”

I have serious questions about how this will work (which I’ll get to in a moment), but the fact that Apple is also exploring the Vision Pro as a work and productivity tool was one of the most unexpected and pleasant surprises of the event. Was . This gives the device a much broader set of possibilities than any AR or VR device we’ve seen so far — and will make it a lot more interesting to a lot of ZDNET readers.

Too: Apple recently announced a number of software features at WWDC. everything is new here

some big questions

Then again, I have a lot of questions about how the Apple Vision Pro will perform in the real world when it arrives next year for $3499. I’ll be unpacking more of those questions in the coming months as we learn more about the device and think about the possibilities.

For me, the most profound questions revolve around the concept of the Vision Pro as a virtual Mac desktop computer. I could make a whole list of those questions, and eventually I’ll make it its own article. But for now, I’ll focus on the biggest one: how feasible would it be to operate a virtual mouse and keyboard in that environment?

Ergonomics aside, moving your hands through the air to mimic the motion of a mouse and keyboard can work for some simple gestures like opening a website in Safari, but it can be very useful for many extended tasks or more complex ones. Not likely to happen. Perhaps we’ll be able to pair the physical Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad and use them within the virtual space.

The other question that weighs heavily on my mind is what the Vision Pro means in your living room or den versus being able to hang out with it in the real world. All of the WWDC demos looked very static and confined to indoor venues.

One of the strongest long-term appeals of AR glasses is the ability to take them into the real world and into experiences like the Hike to Half Dome in Yosemite Park. It seems like this kind of experience is still several years away, but I’d love to hear more about Apple’s vision for how this product will be the first step on the journey to those types of experiences.