Apple Vision Pro: Digital nirvana or plugging into the Matrix?

I took a holiday recently and managed to lose my phone within 30 minutes of being in a new country. An exceptional start you may say.

During the chaos of getting a replacement, I found myself in the local Apple Store where the salesperson asked if I wanted to try the Vision Pro and pointed out it had launched the day before. Good effort for trying to upsell a $6000 headset on top of a $2000 phone.

Conveniently there was a demo slot available in 4 minutes time. It was fate. Almost.

Ski goggle me up

Having been across the product, what it does and its capabilities from launch I was intrigued to see how it would perform in the real world. Including assessing the obligatory Apple Demo from a tech & service design perspective, which I was expecting to be highly polished. I wasn't disappointed.

To be clear, this is not a review of it, but there were four main things regarding the device that really stood out.

1. Technologically, its close to a masterpiece. The volume of sensors and cameras is impressive, but the gestures, eye tracking and interface is truly something to behold.
2. The 360 panoramic photo immersion was great. I didn't get to use any of my own photos, but the ability to be dropped back right into the moment/place you took could give new life to the number of mindless panoramic photos I have taken.
3. 3D "Spacial video" of a birthday. Being an ex pat living 12,000 miles from my parents, I could see myself sending a video of my kids blowing out the candles on their birthday cake to my family back home very easily. Albeit that my parents struggle with their smartphones let alone a VR/AR headset - see that episode of Bluey.
4. The virtual 100 foot cinema screen to watch videos movies was clearly good. But since when did you go to a cinema on your own, the magic of cinema is that it is a shared experience. Which I'll get to later.

These 4 experiences were visually stimulating but nothing necessarily to write home about. It was just a new way to enjoy old content, not necessarily anything totally new.

Then they asked me to watch their special preprepared Apple Vision Pro highlight reel. This was a different story. Within it, there were two aspects that blew me away and gave a true indication of what the technology could do in the future was in this video.

Firstly, it loads with a 30 second segment where I was transported into a private recording studio with Alicia Keys & her band giving me a private concert. I know that it was anything but private, or for me specifically, thousands of people will watch it, but the magic is how it makes you feel that it is entirely bespoke.

Secondly, I was then transported to the NBA All Star Basketball game where the camera is elevated next to the backboard, before being zipped across to watch Inter Miami score with the camera in the top corner of the net. A brand new way to consume sport and music gave me an insight into something I could see myself paying for at some stage in the future.

So how would you execute IRL?

Just based on what I do for a job, using the Vision Pro left with more questions than answers:

• Given the two areas that excited me most, how would the commercials of sport & music play out?
• Would this replace/supplement ticket sales?
• You would need an entirely new suite of cameras to film and broadcast these new angles. I am guessing that it was not a mistake that the content came from essentially exhibition matches.
• Would teams be interested in more intrusive cameras capturing all this content? Does it impede the game at all?
• Could you watch an entire game like this, or is it best used for highlights?
• Finally, what level of tech bandwidth would you need to ensure that you could be sending 4K 360 feeds into peoples homes? To name a few.

As with any new technology or products, we have to make them deliver value, based on customer insights in tandem with commercial outcomes. Right now its an exciting platform, but with limited market penetration.

Reality check

So was it all unicorns and rainbows? No, not really. The display is very slightly laggy when you move your head. I was frustrated by the peripheral focus which is designed to replicate the human eye, but it feels like the balance wasn't quite right for me.

But the biggest issue for me stems back to basic human interaction. By putting one of these things on, I am basically sealing myself off from the world. Yes, there are tricks to that to show my eyes inside and out, but is it really the way were going to interact by wearing headsets looking at each other? A scene from Demolition Man with Sly & Sandra Bullock springs to mind.

In the world of digital innovation and design, we do so much to remove barriers and friction with the experiences we create, something about putting a big physical barrier over my face didnt quite sit right. Which lead me to another movie metaphor, The Matrix. If this is the future, are we all just going to plug in, to hell with the joys of seeing people F2F and just have content injected straight into our eyes.

BTW the realist in me appreciates, if you get on any public transport these days, 99% of people are just on their phones anyway. But come on, we all need to digital detox a bit more.

So was I impressed with the Apple Vision Pro? Yes. Did I pay $6000 for one? No. Would I pay $6000 for one in the future? I doubt it. But technology trickles down, and prices do too. So could I see myself plugging into one of these in a few years? As Sean Connery once said, never say never.

Disagree or don't know? Pop into an Apple Store and see for yourself.