I know there are a lot of naysayers for this product but this is a potential iPhone moment. A see it to believe it product. Apple's big product intros tend to be 10 years in the making. The concept has been around for a long time but nobody has done it quite right. The weight of the headset, the miniaturisation of optical components, Apple's processor advances, software and tools development via iOS and so many factors play in to this having transformative potential.
If you can take yourself inside a virtual studio/world with Mac-like capabilities, retina-like resolution and can communicate and collaborate 'face to face' whilst still maintaining a safe tether to your physical environment so they can feel connected as one and the same (and with M1/M2 style efficiency) then we're on to something!
This is a subjective point of view that doesn't meet reality (no pun intended). Facebook, a troublesome company but social juggernaut have bet their entire future on this market. A consortium was formed of the biggest names in tech and the likes of the Quest 2 are sold in every major electronics retailer in existence.
There was no real use case for the internet in the mid 90's until people with a new vision carved out a new future. There IS a market, a very large one but nobody has solved the major pain points of such a product.
- Weight and comfort is number one. Goggles only look silly to people on the outside. The comfort and adaptability is what affects the users themselves.
- Power and efficiency (see Apple's recent advances)
- Optical clarity. It is essential that resolution and peripheral vision are vastly improved to remove the pixellated window affect. Creating true immersion.
- Creating integration and harmony between your digital world and the physical world around you. You need to be able to move seamlessly between your digital environment and your real one without ignoring family members, tripping over coffee tables and so on. This is key to the product's success.
- Digital representation of self. You need a leap forward in visual self in these shared digital spaces. Avatars need to take a generational leap to allow 'face to face' communication between digital people. Memoji on steroids.
- Power. like iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches. We need to aim for all day battery life. That may come later though!
Exciting times. This is finally step 1 in doing 'spatial computing' right. I had a gut feeling (based on my prior experiences) that this was going to be positioned more along the lines of a new approach to the Mac where you blend your digital and physical worlds.
I have been dabbling with VR for a little while and have tried working and communicating inside of those systems but Apple have done what they always do so well, they've taken the hard path, studied the problems and fixed them so the potential can be fully realised. They have made the vision of AR/VR experiences a reality for the first time by fixing most of the major pain points and this is only gen 1.
* This is a device that is more in line with MacBook Pro and iPad Pro in terms of positioning. It still sells well but more niche than an iPhone. The price is right for the experience and this particular segment of users. That's why the 'Pro' is included in the branding and marketing as a designator.
* To leap frog off of that initial point that means this is a new tool in the arsenal. Not everybody wants an iPad Pro, not everybody will want this. Different tools and approaches for different generations, workflows and people. Some people use iPads as their daily driver and sketch, annotate all of that kind of stuff. Some people need keyboards, peripherals, extra horsepower and specialist applications or inputs.
* I think we can safely say at this point based on all major reviews that they have nailed the core technologies in gen 1. The pixel density, field of view, raw power, inclusivity of the people and environment around you, the ties and interoperability with your eco system and the development tools are all in place.
* The things that now need to improve over the next 5-10 years are the battery life (the biggest miss) along with further weight reduction and miniaturisation. That might get us to Vision Air. We also need further integration of the product's unique feature set across the ecosystem so that means iPhones recording our 'memories' in 3D, sending them up in to the iCloud library so you can re-experience them with the Vision Pro later.
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