Apple’s Vision Pro Isn’t the Future

I'd wager everything that Apple's Vision Pro will fail, even if I'm not a gambler.

When the $3,499 mixed-reality headset goes on sale in 2024, no doubt diehard Apple enthusiasts and VR/AR hobbyists will bring their sleeping bags and line up outside the Apple Store doors, hooting and hollering and having a ball. Perhaps some gamers will join in.

The rest of us, though? No. Without a doubt. Don't act absurdly. No matter how assured Tim Cook appears to be when he claims this is a "revolutionary" device, it is not. It's an unusual blunder and evidence that Apple is losing the capacity to transform tech-geek novelties into mainstream essentials. It doesn't portend the future so much as it suggests that Cupertino lacks a clear vision for the future.

After seeing the device in action at WWDC, my colleague Lauren Goode wrote this week, "Every successful Apple product of the past two decades has disappeared into our lives in some way—the iPhone into our pockets, the iPad into our purses, the Apple Watch living on our wrists, and the AirPods resting in our ears." The Vision Pro, however, differs from nearly every other contemporary Apple device in one key way: It doesn't vanish. As opposed to that, the device, according to Goode, settles onto your face and covers your eyes, which are "sensory organs that are a crucial part of the lived human experience." She recognised that this was true of all virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses, but the Vision Pro was unique in that it was the first time an Apple product had so significantly impacted people's lives.

I fully embraced my doomer status after reading Lauren's evaluation of Vision Pro. It emphasises the fact that an Apple headset is still a large, obtrusive device placed between its wearer and the outside world, acting more as a barrier than a conduit, regardless of how cool its specifications may be. Vision Pro is the most recent in a long line of high-profile, eye-catching headgear intended to make augmented reality, virtual reality, or both accessible to the general public, despite Apple's framing it as disruptive. Its predecessors include Google Glass, Microsoft's HoloLens, Magic Leap 2, and Meta's Quest Pro—four highly anticipated headsets that were touted as paradigm-shifting yet all fell short. Without a question, the most recent and sophisticated version of the concept is Vision Pro. It still has to overcome the same obstacle that has hampered every VR and AR headset that came before it: the issue with alternative reality headsets.

As my colleague Boone Ashworth recently noted, there is substantial evidence that people do not want to spend a lot of time wearing this type of device, for a variety of reasons, including aesthetic (snorkel mask for dorks), practical (burdensome, activity-limiting), and social (it's an isolation chamber you slide over your eyes to experience an individual simulacrum of the world rather than our shared reality). The very simple fact that there simply isn't a market for daily-use headsets has already harmed the reception of the Vision Pro; instead of the usual rapturous public response to a major new Apple announcement, this time around there was a lot of scepticism, as many people pointed out that the VR/AR market is already rife with big-named failures. Even the more optimistic reviews of Vision Pro frequently rely on the justification that Apple makes hardware that is simply too excellent to fail. It's a cool IT firm, not just another typical one. For instance, Kevin Roose of The New York Times speculated, "It's possible that the market was simply waiting for Apple to show up."

Even if the niche item in question is kind of ridiculous, Apple has an indisputably impressive history of transforming formerly niche gadgets into ubiquities.

I have AirPod Pros, and I wear them for about five hours a day despite the fact that they irritate my ears and that I constantly washing them by accident. However, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the traditional wired headphones that came with an iPhone in the past. Apple's impact! Except for parents travelling with young children, no one in this big, wide globe really needs an iPad, but they're nevertheless hugely popular. Once more, Apple's influence Apple would undoubtedly be a top contender if any business could make mixed-reality VR/AR headsets appear appealing for daily usage.

Maybe if Apple had figured out how to create a mixed reality headset that worked more like a regular pair of glasses. However, at the moment, it only provides a little sleeker improvement to a type of headgear that is rather uncool-looking.

But since Apple isn't the same firm it once was, that would be its hardest lift to yet. When was the last game-changing new Apple product introduced, the kind that becomes a regular fixture? Certainly not since Jony Ive's departure in 2019. In 2016, it may have been AirPods. Apple has a good track record, yeah. However, AirPods were released seven years ago. The company's best days are now competing with different rivals, and the path it must take to succeed in this area is much more difficult than persuading college students that stupid Bluetooth earbuds that are seriously so easy to accidentally put through the washing machine are better than wired headphones that never need charging.

Even Apple staff members have expressed scepticism regarding Vision Pro for a reason: No matter how the execution is done, it would be challenging to pull off because it is conceptually difficult to market. Even worse, there are problems with the execution. Maybe if Apple had figured out how to create a mixed reality headgear that weighed only four ounces or worked more like a typical pair of glasses. However, at the moment, it only provides a little sleeker improvement to a type of headgear that is rather uncool-looking. The nerd glasses appear to be nerd glasses.

It's absurd because Apple is aware of this. It did not publish any images of Tim Cook or any other senior Apple officials wearing the device, as Mark Gurman of Bloomberg noted. "Tim Cook's decision to stand next to the biggest product of his time rather than wearing has no explanation other than meme control. In fact, Gurman remarked, "It just seems odd to not be wearing it. Unusual—and revealing. Imagine Apple executives brainstorming how to promote their own headset in the exact opposite way to what Robert Scoble did while taking a shower while wearing Google Glass, all the while not realising that Scoble's behaviour was merely a symptom of the company's release of a terminally corny product.

The promotional materials Apple chose to explain its uses highlight that primary issue, despite the lack of images of executives or members of the media wearing the headsets: This is an antisocial device, one that the average person would be wholly reasonable to reject and even mock.

One commercial image in particular, showing a father and his young children using the device in his house, has gotten the business some online flak. The father watches while the kids play on the ground while donning his Vision Pro. Or perhaps he's watching Avatar while he ignores them. Or conversing on a FaceTime call that is more immersive. Unless their intended market was emotionally unstable parents, it appears cartoonishly bleak and more like a marketing still for an extremely blatant episode of Black Mirror than anything a software business would purposely choose to entice people.

We are currently in a time where major actors in the tech industry often and drastically make mistakes. Consider FTX. NFTs, or. or the current collapse of crypto. Or the entire flailing metaverse pivot by Meta. This yassified Oculus is evidence that even Apple can make mistakes, proving that Big Tech and its major players are not infallible. One can only hope that Vision Pro's certain failure will help the company focus on real innovation rather than this dismal step into gimmickry.

What do you think? Has Apple gone too far this time?

Have your say in the comments!