Apple’s Vision Pro isn’t a Reality-Handset: What Can We Expect to Learn From Its Developer Session?
We still have plenty of questions about how Apple’s expensive new Vision Pro headset is going to work in practice (in particular the potential to pair it with motion controllers from other manufacturers), but between our hands-on experience and developer sessions like these, the experience is starting to come into focus.
Apple seems keen for users to mainly interact with the headset by simply looking at UI elements and making small hand gestures with their arms relaxed on their lap. Israel Pastrana Vicente admits in Apple’s developer session that some tasks are better suited to interaction directly, which can involve reaching out and touchingUI elements. There is also support for using game controllers.
The experimental feature called direct touch was rolled out by Meta recently to allow the use of virtual keyboards and menu buttons. According to UploadVR, Apple’s Vision Pro is most likely to be more accurate than Meta’s until the depth sensor-equipped Quest 3 arrives later this year.
The developer session noted that focusing on the microphone icon in the search field will bring about a Speak to Search feature. That’ll likely draw audio data from the six microphones built into the Vision Pro.
As my colleague Boone Ashworth recently reported, there’s ample evidence that people don’t want to spend lots of time wearing this type of device, for aesthetic reasons (snorkel mask for dorks), practical reasons (cumbersome, activity-limiting), and for social reasons (it’s an isolation chamber you slide over your eyes to experience an individualized simulacrum of the world instead of our shared reality). The public response to an Apple announcement has not been rapturous, despite the fact that the Vision Pro has been damaged by the reality that the appetite for daily-use headsets is not there.
But the rest of us? No. Absolutely not. Don’t be ridiculous. This is not a “revolutionary” gadget, no matter how confident Tim Cook looks when he says it is. It is a sign of the fact that Apple is no longer able to turn tech-geek novelties into must-haves. There isn’t augur of the future so much as suggest that Cupertino doesn’t have a clear view of the future.
When the mixed-reality headset goes on sale, people will line up outside the Apple Store and have a ball with their sleeping bags. Maybe some gamers will get on board.