Apple Vision Pro

Apple caused ripples to the metaverse and digital world yesterday. With the announcement of Apple Vision Pro they entered the game of Mixed / Augmented Reality. While lots of other releases in the field have been more tech-focused, Apple has taken steps to notice ordinary people and how they could be using the device.

As the device isn’t in the market yet, it is quite to safe to say they use state of the art tech there. Micro-OLED displays, mixed reality approach, spatial audio & OS, tracking cameras that can do 3D video recording and scan the environment in 3D, eye-tracking, hand and gesture -tracking, double chips (M2 & R1) , aluminum frame, and more. But even Apple couldn’t include a built-in battery there that would last a day. Instead they included an external power bank that can power up the headset for two hours. Or you can connect it to wall socket power source, if you don’t want to move around. This shows that you can get lots of features to a one device, but it is still lacking something. In this case Apple decided to compromise on battery life.

*There are lot of cameras and also LIDAR sensors for scanning and tracking.*

Interesting detail is that the passthrough is showing also your face and eyes to others in the room. This is done using a display that is on outside of headsets and avatar that is your 3D scanned face and using facial & eye tracking. So your you can have eye contact with people you talk with, without taking headset off. It does look a bit spooky in pictures, and I think it will do so in reality as well. But that is a new idea and adds to the device.

But the beaty of Vision Pro is not in all tech. It is about the ecosystem of existing apps, usability and making the device available for developers to start building apps for VisionOS, Apple’s spatial OS. Especially bringing your existing apps to the headset lowers the starting threshold as you get your own content – pictures and videos, for example, to the space around you. On video this all looks really cool and good – but we don’t know the reality until Vision Pro ships early 2024 to US market. For us un Europe – we will be waiting for a longer time.

There were a few things that caught my attention especially. One of those is using the device as 3D camera. And in fact Apple says that in their webpage “Vision Pro is Apple’s first 3D camera”. This is a new use case for the device that other manufacturer’s didn’t really think – at least outside specific enterprise scenarios. Apple is thinking that ordinary people could use the device to record their pictures or videos in 3D. And I doubt this will be the last 3D camera they produce – some iPhones will definitely start to have that feature as well, to create room for more immersive videos.

Second thing was the new FaceTime experience. You use the 3D camera to record your avatar off your face and that avatar will be replicating your facial and hand movements to other FaceTime participants. I can’t stop to think how Meta Quest Pro did this – with eye and facial tracking. What Meta hadn’t though is to scan person’s real face to be your avatar and animate that one in the metaverse. That requires more power and bandwidth, so that may be one reason why we won’t be seeing it in the metaverse very soon – as there are different kind of devices with different capabilities connected to it. But Apple doesn’t want to worry about that – they are just fine to run it inside their “AppleVerse”. This doesn’t take away the coolness factor. However FaceTime in Mixed Reality looks really cool – as you see others in much larger format than on tablet’s screen.

Third one could be usability and people-centric approach. Making it easy to use, bring in your familiar apps to 3D space and let apps interact with each other. You don’t start with just a few apps – you start with a lot of them you already use all the time. Looking through pictures on large screen in Mixed Reality can be a great experience. Perhaps Microsoft Teams will be there as well, and it would be really cool if Teams Avatars would support Vision Pro capabilities. Time will tell.

I did like especially how they can display panoramic pictures in 3D. This people-centric approach is something that will play a big role in the success of this device. The design is also cool and futuristic /scifi looking, which separates Vision Pro from others.

But as it is a wired device, it also has limits to its use. Sure, you can very likely to have several power banks that you could take to the long distance flight. And you would need them, since one gives you only 2 hours of use time. Wired headset also means this can’t be used in Industrial use cases – usually the wireless device is a must there, since wires can entangle to something. Vision Pro cord could be set a lot like a microphone, to tackle some of those uses, but not being wireless does limit its use case. However, it is but the first of the line and clearly a model that wants to highlight what is possible and how it can be done. As tech advances, like it does every day, there will be more updated versions of Vision Pro as well. In a few years it will be a very different kind of device. We might end up getting up a yearly (or so) advancements just like with iPhones, iWatches and iPads.

Other things I liked, when they highlighted them on the launch: connection to your Mac and using Vision Pro as it’s display. This virtual display is something Meta Quest Pro and other devices have tried to create, but the requirements for graphics are very high. Next year we will know if Vision Pro meets their marketing talk or is the reality harsher than imagination. I do hope they have packed enough graphics so web browsing and extra display use would work – it was really cool to see Safari tabs expand and you could browse the net in a new way – having several web pages open and visible at the same time. Yes, you can have a large display and do it on desktop today, but being someone doing that all the time – it is not the same as it would be in the VR. Especially if eye-tracking and app interaction work as Apple showed in their marketing video. Ability to change immersiveness – how much more or less Mixed Reality versus Virtual Reality you want) was also a nice invention.

There are lot of cool things included and packed. In tech this isn’t a huge step forward – just utilizing what’s available today. But in the field of usability, ecosystem, people and working with your existing devices it is groundbreaking step forward. Meta Quest Pro seems like a toy after seeing Vision Pro videos. Yes, I am starting to regret I bought Meta Quest Pro last October. But that device also showed really cool and good in Meta’s marketing videos. Passthrough seemed to be amazing. But the reality wasn’t what was shown – and that is why I do have doubts on Apple Vision Pro as well. I hope I am wrong and it meets all promises it is doing (probably not, but fingers crossed for at least some.. ). Of course Vision Pro has the pricetag of $3,449. Which is more than three times what MWP is today.

Closer reference, in tech, to Vision Pro is Microsoft’ s HoloLens 2, that came our many years ago. At that time HL2 was really groundbreaking in technology and capabilities – as it can be seen that it took years from Apple (they claim they had been creating Vision Pro for 7 years) to reach out to and extend the tech level. Yes, graphics are more impressive than HL2 has, but there are also big fundamental differences between these devices. HL2 is aimed for enterprises and enterprise solutions while Apple is clearly targeting (rich) consumers and business users. HL2 has a lot of this tech Vision Pro came out with – but not everything or not at as high level. Both of these devices have still their uses – HL2 is not ancient history because of Vision Pro. Perhaps Vision Pro will get apps and scenarios that can take it to HL2 level – and even above that.

Vision Pro doesn’t have controllers – instead you will be using it with hand and eye gestures and your voice. I do like that approach – it can be less precise than with controllers, but mostly it is a) you don’t need to worry about charging controllers or carrying them with you and b) looks very futuristic. (one reason why I love HL2 and why I often use MQP with plain hand tracking – it does have cool factor and less hassle than with controllers).

What seemed to be a bummer, was that you apparently can’t fit in your glasses to Vision Pro. Of course Apple can think that their users have all gone through laser eye operations or wear contacts, which is not the reality. But on the opposite side Apple seems to take privacy seriously “Eye input is not shared with Apple, third-party apps, or websites. ” – and this is a clear spike towards Meta and their plans.

So, is the price $3,449 too much? Yes, if you don’t have the extra money. No, if you have the money and you really use the headset in work and at home. Thinking about buying extra Mac or displays so you could work on the larger screen? IF Vision Pro lives up to its promise on graphics, that can make these alternative to large display. The price is high, that is for sure, and it will shy away a lot of people who are interested of Vision Pro. Business who are going to develop their apps to spatial VisionOS – that is just one expense among others. This first release is not clearly aimed to masses – but to ignite the ecosystem and get apps flowing into the spatial VisionOS.

Apple has a chance here to change the world and bring Metaverse one step closer than before. At least their AppleVerse, if not the full Metaverse. But.. That is just something you would need apps that run in the headset. Perhaps we will get Microsoft Mesh app and Office there – as well as Spatial.Io, Roblox and others. It will be interesting to see how interoperability advances and what kind of capabilities 3rd party applications can get out of VisionOS. The biggest fear I have is how Vision Pro really meets the graphics level and passthrough quality promise they give in their video. Other thing is that it is priced for business / professional use – and named as such as well – but it has most of its shown value in entertainment and personal use. Apps will make it pro or not.

One thing I think Apple lost here, or they are still hiding it, – ability to bring Siri as visual entity onto 3D.

Check out Apple Vision Pro launch video: