Opinion: The Apple Vision Pro

Published in

Neurotech@Davis

5 min readFeb 28, 2024

A deep dive into the capabilities of the Apple Vision Pro, the first ever computer you can wear on your face — followed with predictions on its future utility.

A device that would make Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury roll in his grave, the Apple Vision Pro is an astounding breakthrough in the era of spatial computing. A device that one wears like a large pair of goggles, the Vision Pro can “seamlessly blend digital content with your physical space,”¹ allowing you to go about your daily activities while visualizing your apps, news updates, streaming services, and even video games as hovering entities in the air, only visible to you. This seemingly futuristic device has “more pixels than a 4K TV” for each eye, and can capture the things you see with 3D spatial video and audio, allowing you to even go so far as to play back your own memories (yes, like that one Black Mirror episode). This article will dive into the primary uses of this device, and will take a stab at its utility in the next 10 years.

How do you use it?

The Apple Vision Pro is controlled with your hands, eyes, and voice. You can simply look at an element, such as an app, and the eye trackers in the headset will immediately recognize where your gaze falls; by tapping your fingers together, you select the element. You can then type, which from the outside perspective will look like you are tapping at the air. The dictation option allows you to replace typing with speaking, and the Vision Pro will write down what you say. You are essentially wearing your phone on your head, and the device’s coordination with your eye movement, voice, and surroundings, will provide for an astounding interactive experience, one that surpasses the boundaries of what technology has been capable of so far. Apple’s UI has consistently been at the top of the game, and the Vision Pro puts it to the test with its plethora of new features and uses.

Its most useful application is the Vision Pro’s seamless usage in a work environment. With life-size Facetime, which can be adjusted to your liking and is compatible with group viewing and editing of documents, the Apple Vision Pro could be a serious game changer for the work environment. For companies willing to fund their employees with the device, Zoom’s stock prices would drop as more people collaborate via the Vision Pro. Apple is already advertising this application, with a lot more traction than its competitor Meta’s own VR headset, the Meta Quest. If you can host an entire professional meeting from the comfort of your home, complete with life-size avatars of the attendees and the ability to easily present straight to peoples’ faces, do you even need to show up to work?

Predictions: Usage

As with any new device, this headset is not perfect. Made out of aluminum and glass, the headset is both heavy and not very durable. Some users have reported that cracks form easily on the front display without having dropped or mishandled the device². Additionally, there are reported frustrations with inconsistencies in the hand and eye tracking, and some note that the virtual avatars can be uncanny and even a bit scary³. Thus we will likely see a parallel undertaking to the iPhone; I would not be surprised by the release of an Apple Vision Pro 2 in the next few years, boasting increased durability, a lighter weight, a smaller device, and irresistible new features. The headset’s price, however, (at a whopping $3,500) might slightly extend this timeline.

Privacy:

While many people have raised concerns regarding issues with privacy usage in the Vision Pro, it is important to remember that it is not all that different from the iPhone or Apple Watch that have been normalized into our society. Location tracking, microphone and video exist in devices we already use; I predict that, similar to Instagram and Tik Tok, users will have an option for whether they can “ask app not to track” their user preferences or more details, after being given a long description of the reasons the app would indeed like to track them. This can also come in the form of agreeing to a long list of conditions users are simply not interested in reading. Regardless, the issues with data privacy will remain similar to the ones we have today, the only extension being that the Vision Pro can directly record what one is seeing while wearing the headset. It seems unlikely that the headset would record without the user’s knowledge, but there are always ways that a computer can get viruses and bugs, and the Vision Pro headset is nothing short of a new computer.

Competitors:

Apple is determined to stay ahead of its competitors with the Apple Vision Pro. Other computing headsets, like the Meta Quest 3 and the Sony PSVR2, despite having been released earlier, failed to meet the expectations that would skyrocket their popularity in the same way as Apple’s device. The Meta Quest 3 is much cheaper than the Vision Pro, at $500, and is touted as their “first mainstream mixed reality headset”⁴. While Meta’s headset has unique qualities such as virtual fitness training and games, it still doesn’t have the insanely high-quality display, spatial distinctions of apps, and Facetime that the Vision Pro does. It is obviously also not integrated with your phone, watch, iPad, and laptop the way that the Vision Pro can be. The Sony headset is primarily for gaming, and requires a tethered connection to a PS5 console⁵. The Apple Vision Pro supports both PS5 and Xbox streaming, rendering its gaming competitors obsolete as well. It seems as though Apple has already won the VR war simply by its established stake with our smartphones and work devices, making the transition to VR usage an easy addition to consumers’ vast collection of Apple devices.

The Bottom Line:

When the first iPhone came out in 2007, nobody would have guessed that 17 years later, the Apple empire and the state of technology would have grown enough to the point of normalizing wearing a computer on your face at work, while driving, and to relax or play games. The Apple Vision Pro, with its superior visuals, features, and user experience, is already being enjoyed by over 200,000 users worldwide, which is only going to continue to grow from here. The increased understanding of AI, machine learning, and the human interaction with machines is a primary reason for Apple’s success in the development of this device. As we continue to find fun ways to integrate with machines, we will change the way we perceive and interact with the world itself, and must always remain cognizant of the ways that this affects our daily lives.

Opinion: The Apple Vision Pro

Written by Twinkle Bansal