WWDC 2023 Recap: Apple Sets Its Vision for the Future of Computing
What brand marketers need to know about Apple’s new “spatial computing” device, as well as other announcements from WWDC
Editor’s note: Part of this recap was first published in The Drum under the title “Apple sets a new vision for the future of computing — & opens new opportunities for brands”.
Top-line summary:
- Apple announces Vision Pro headset — designed to replace Macs, iPads, monitors, and TVs with immersive screens.
- Priced at $3,499, and not available until early next year, Vision Pro is positioned as a high-end consumer device in its initial iteration. Key use cases for Vision Pro are focused on entertainment and productivity at launch.
- Smart brands will have to work closely with developers to keep up with the latest information about visionOS, the all-new operating system powering the headset, and the brand opportunities that may emerge.
- Beyond Vision Pro, Apple announced next-gen operating systems across devices with tidbits that point to spatial computing in their UI design and new features.
On Monday, Apple unveiled its long-anticipated immersive headset device, Vision Pro, at its annual WWDC developer conference. The device, which resembles a futuristic set of ski goggles, allows users to view digital content on top of their surroundings, and is controlled using voice, eye tracking, and hand gestures.
In lieu of industry-standard terms like “mixed reality” or “virtual reality,” Apple executives repeatedly stressed the term “spatial computing” during the WWDC keynote. Equipped with a M2 chip, the same processor used in the latest Macbook Air, along with a brand new R1 chip made for real-time processing of the information gathered by cameras and sensors, Vision Pro is positioned as a device that will usher in a new computing paradigm that liberates our digital interfaces from 2D screens to roam free in 3D spaces. This positioning also indicates a desire to distance the device from in-market headsets like Meta’s Oculus or HTC Vive, who have been trying in vain for years to make VR headsets a mass consumer device.
What sets the Vision Pro apart from the in-market competitors is that it does not try to replace the smartphone. Instead, the headset is designed to replace Macs, iPads, monitors and TVs with portable, immersive virtual screens. At launch, Apple (perhaps intentionally) downplayed the 3D elements that typically dominate demos of mixed-reality headsets, focusing instead on the way that room-filling, adjustable 2D apps look in Vision Pro.
The primary use cases showcased during the keynote are home entertainment and productivity. On the entertainment side, Apple invited Disney CEO Bob Iger to join the keynote, announcing a partnership between the two companies to create immersive content and experiences for Vision Pro — multiple screens can display different sports playing on ESPN, and 3D replays can show court details of a basketball game, for example.
In private demos for select journalists, Apple also highlighted immersive video experiences that were shot using a new format that enhances the 3D effect. The demonstrations included a courtside view at an NBA game, a dugout view from a MLB game, and stageside view at an Alicia Keys concert. Apple declined to comment on the cameras used to capture the content, but one could see how this immersive video format could become a popular medium on spatial computing devices.
While Meta’s Quest headsets have turned out to be, first and foremost, gaming consoles, Apple mostly kept gaming out of the WWDC demo. Sure, there was a quick mention of Vision Pro being capable of playing Apple Arcade titles, but Vision Pro is not intended as an immersive gaming device, given the device’s lack of controllers, as well as Apple’s weakness in triple-A gaming.
From a productivity perspective, Apple eagerly showcased how Vision Pro could replace multi-monitor workstations, capable of running various productivity and video-conferencing apps simultaneously. Life-like virtual personas can be created via 3D scanning to represent users using Vision Pro for video calls, so that they still show up like themselves sans the headset.
In fact, conscious of the usual criticism of existing mixed-reality headsets for their isolating effect, Apple made sure to stress that Vision Pro will not cut users off from their surroundings or the people around them. An EyeSight feature will display a digital rendering of the user’s eyes when others approach, and nearby people also appear to pop into more immersive experiences.
Retailing at $3,499, Vision Pro will be a hard sale to most consumers. While Apple called it their “most advanced consumer electronics device,” the enterprise market may be an easier target with this price tag. Nevertheless, Apple is positioning it as the genesis of its new product line of consumer-facing spatial computers, whose price will likely decrease with each iteration. The early adopters will be the hardcore Apple fans and power users that are eager to replace physical screens with virtual ones. In the meantime, software developers will start to explore more consumer-friendly use cases beyond 2D media and work apps, likely in a similar trajectory of the App Store during the early days of the iPhone.
What Vision Pro Means for Marketers
This positioning means that, for brands and advertisers, Vision Pro will not become a mass platform at launch, or even within a few years. It would take several iterations for Vision Pro to take over as the primary screen for media consumption and digital interactions. Its emphasis on productivity use cases is also a double-edged sword in this regard, as it may spur adoption as a work device while alienating some prospective users looking for fun and escapism.
That said, Vision Pro still marks an important moment as an earnest attempt from the most successful consumer technology company on earth to push at least part of our attention away from existing screens and onto new, virtual environments. Its ambitions are clearly to replace, eventually, many of the existing screens in our lives. Although CEO Tim Cook called it “the first device you look through and not at,” the reality you’re looking at with Vision Pro is a real-time digital rendering of your surroundings that has been captured via front-facing cameras.
By focusing on 2D content at launch, Apple smartly ensured that Vision Pro is a device that extends its existing ecosystem of apps. However, it is capable of far more than just putting 2D virtual screens around your living room. Apple hinted at some more advanced features during the keynote, showing brief glimpses of how Vision Pro users could interact with 3D objects and AR overlays during a montage of developer demos. One such demo showed a life-like dinosaur popping out of the 2D frame and seemingly entering the room, in typical augmented-reality style.
Although Vision Pro won’t become available until “early next year,” there is still plenty for innovation-minded brands to do in preparation for its arrival. Branded assets need to be upgraded to 3D assets, and existing AR experiences should be converted into compatible formats. Although Apple announced that hundreds of iOS and iPadOS apps will be available on the Vision Pro from day one, these applications will not be headset-native.
Therefore, brands should work with developers to leverage new tools like Unity, whose 3D object format Vision Pro supports, and Apple’s Reality Composer Pro developer kit to scale up mobile AR experiences to room-filling dimensions, or create new native ones that take the new UI features, such as eye-tracking and hand gesture control, into account.
When the iPhone was first introduced in 2007, few foresaw the revolutionary impact it would have on our media consumption and everyday life. By the early 2010s, however, every brand with enough foresight could see how vital mobile advertising and mobile commerce would become. Vision Pro is still half a year from its official release, but the race to figure out how to adapt your brand experiences for these virtual screens and immersive environments has kicked off this week.
The OS Beneath the Headset
Powering the Vision Pro is a brand new operating system called visionOS, which Apple designed from the ground up for spatial computing, so that it can display digital elements on top of the real world or create immersive virtual environments, like a forest or a moonlit lake shore. It even allows users to pull 3D objects out of apps and play with them. While it is based on iOS, it also has many new features and capabilities that take advantage of the headset’s hardware and sensors.
An interesting aspect of visionOS is that it runs on a real-time subsystem, which handles all the sensor data from the device. Vision Pro comes with a new Apple silicon processor called R1, which is responsible for processing all camera and sensor inputs. Together with the subsystem, they work to eliminate latency issues common with VR devices, which tend to cause dizziness and nausea.
Of course, it is still very early days for Vision Pro, and what we don’t know vastly outnumbers what we do know at the moment. The developer sessions following the keynote will hopefully surface more details about how visionOS works and the types of brand opportunities it will enable. Smart brands will work closely with developers to keep up with the latest information as the headset becomes available.
For example, part of the developer toolkit that Apple introduced for visionOS is the VisionKit, which enables apps to identify objects in photos. Apple hinted that VisionKit can identify “Products,” so there is a potential visual search opportunity for brand discovery and even AR shopping. However, without knowing how VisionKit differentiates between products or distinguishes between brands, it’s difficult to gauge how big the brand opportunity is at the moment.
Another question regarding system-native support for web content in visionOS is also unclear. A cursory review of the developer “state of union” session suggests that visionOS will support some kind of web-based 3D experiences, which would open the door for Vision Pro users to access a lot of existing AR experiences available through the web. But it is still unclear whether visionOS will be able to support all AR formats, or only the ones supported by Unity.
That said, one thing is now crystal clear about visionOS: Apple is betting that virtual screens will be the stepping stones that transition users from 2D screens to the 3D virtual environments that will be the primary computing UI of the future.
The shift towards visionOS is also bolstered by several updates to Apple’s operating systems across iPhones, Macs, and AirPods, all of which show a subtle but significant shift in UI design towards visionOS. Whether it’s the “Live Sticker” feature in iOS 17, which invites users to put stickers on messages as one would with real objects, the new “adaptive audio” feature for AirPods Pro, which automatically adjusts noise canceling with conversation awareness to ensure safety and communication, or the new FaceTime “presenter mode” in the new macOS Sonoma, which overlays presenters on top of the content they’re sharing, all of these features are geared towards acclimating Apple users to interact with their devices in a spatially-aware, context-driven manner that will help make the transition to the virtual screens in Vision Pro easier.
Beyond the Headset
The unveiling of Vision Pro was the final part of a long keynote presentation that kicked off Apple’s annual WWDC event on Monday. Leading up to the “one more thing” announcement, Apple went through its usual WWDC routine, updating the various operating systems for its various devices, from iOS and iPadOS to watchOS and tvOS, highlighting some new features that will improve the user experience and make its ecosystem of products work better together. Among them, the following three jumped out as highly relevant for brands and advertisers:
No More Trackable URLs on iOS
If you have ever shared a URL with a friend via email or text, you probably have noticed that some URLs come with a long tail of tracking code that makes the link unsightly long. Publishers have long relied on those embedded identifiers to track who is visiting their site and to prove attribution to brands and advertisers. Now, as part of Apple’s crusade to protect user privacy, Messages, Mail, and Safari private browsing mode in the upcoming iOS 17 will automatically remove these tracking IDs. For example, if you receive this link, and click on it www.examplewebsite.com/top10vacationdestinations?clickId=d77_62jkls, then your iPhone will automatically remove the ‘clickId=d77_62jkls’ part of the URL before taking you to the site.
This move will further decimate the use of third-party cookies and push the publishers and marketers that rely on embedded identifiers for tracking and analytics to find new solutions to track their readers and to prove attribution to brands and advertisers. Some possible solutions include using first-party cookies, server-side tracking, or consent-based identifiers, and smart brands should start working on switching to less intrusive web tracking and data collection practices today.
AirPlay Comes to Hotels
Apple announced that it is bringing AirPlay support to hotels, allowing travelers to cast content from their personal devices to the hotel TVs. This is a significant move that will enhance the guest experience for Apple users, who make up a large and growing segment of the U.S. market.
According to Apple, AirPlay will be available in select hotels starting this summer, and will expand to more locations by the end of the year. Guests will simply need to scan a QR code displayed on the TV screen to connect to the hotel Wi-Fi network and start using AirPlay. They will then be able to stream their own music, videos, photos, games, and more to the hotel TV, without compromising their privacy or security.
Some hotel TVs already support Google’s Chromecast, so this will be a welcome addition for iPhone users. To accommodate Apple users and take advantage of this opportunity, hospitality brands should ensure that their hotel TVs are compatible with AirPlay and that their Wi-Fi networks are fast and reliable. By offering AirPlay support, hospitality brands can differentiate themselves from their competitors and increase guest satisfaction and retention.
SharePlay Comes to Cars
As part of the “Home and Audio” section of the conference, Apple unveiled a new SharePlay feature that will enhance the music experience for drivers and passengers alike. The feature will allow passengers to add songs to a shared Apple Music playlist using their own devices. When the driver’s iPhone is connected to CarPlay, any passenger’s iPhone will automatically suggest joining their session with a simple tap. This way, everyone can contribute to the soundtrack of the road trip and enjoy their favorite tunes. This new feature will be available in the upcoming iOS 17 update and will work with any CarPlay-compatible vehicle.
In addition, Apple also simplified the way to start a SharePlay session in iOS 17. Users can now bring devices together to instantly start a shared activity without connecting through FaceTime. For example, if you are jogging with a friend, you can sync up your music so you can run to the beat of the same tunes. Apps that support SharePlay, like Twitch, will also now allow users to bring their iPhones together to instantly start watching the same livestream.
Beyond this tidbit about SharePlay, Apple didn’t share much car-related news during the keynote. However, the aforementioned real-time processing subsystem that is a foundational part of visionOS is also a requirement for an autonomous car, which Apple has been rumored to be working on for a long time. In this regard, the visionOS might be the first glimpse of the software that will eventually power the “Apple Car” one day.
Widgets Galore
Across all the new OS’s that Apple announced on Monday, there was a clear prevalence of widgets across all platforms ranging from iPads to Apple Watch. Combined with the new Standby mode in iOS 17, which turns iPhones into an alarm clock when it’s charging, locked, and placed horizontally, this seems to be hinting toward some kind of smart display coming soon.
The watchOS 10 redesign, in particular, highlights the use of widgets with a rolling feed easily accessible from the watch face, controlled by the digital crown. Together, this emphasis on interactive widgets prioritize glanceable information and real-time information, which are also suitable for spatial computing devices.
This emphasis on widgets may push some users towards apps that support it. While not every brand needs to have an app these days, the ones that do care about their apps should consider how their widgets can offer real-time, bite-size information to their customers. Zillow, for example, often adopts new Apple features early, and is rewarded with positive PR for it.
Want to Learn More?
This has been a special edition of our Lab Weekly newsletter, bringing you the latest and greatest news at the intersection of innovation and marketing. If you are keen to learn more about Apple’s WWDC announcements and what they mean for your brand, discuss why Apple did not mention generative AI once in their keynote despite the hype, or just chat about the potential brand opportunities in spatial computing and Vision Pro, the Lab is here to help. You can start a conservation by reaching out to our group director, Josh Mallalieu (josh@ipglab.com).
