Apple's First Spatial Computer: Get Ready

Arguably, the biggest news in the tech world this week —?and certainly in the consumer electronics world —?is the availability of 苹果 's Vision Pro starting this Friday, February 2. Whether you've already preordered; you're indifferent or even dismissive; or like most folks somewhere in between?—?this product release and its cascading effects will over time change important things about how you do your work, how you communicate, how you watch video and play games, and generally how you live your life.

Will it be as world-changing as the iPhone? This remains to be seen?—?but there are strong reasons to believe it will be.

What is Spatial Computing?

I'm often asked to define the term Spatial Computing, as it's a new one for many people —?although it's been in use for many decades . Essentially, SC (let's use this acronym) enables computers to understand and track their relationship with the 3D physical objects and spaces they operate in —?aka "the real world"?—?so that the content and functionality they provide works coherently with these environments. In other words, Spatial Computing lets computers interact with our world, instead of us having to learn to interact with their world as we've always done.

Spatial Computing makes AR (Augmented Reality) possible, and yet there's a lot more to it than this. In an upcoming edition of this newsletter I'll be doing a broader survey of the technology, the range of devices and approaches it represents, and what all of this means for you in 2024.

For today though, we're going to focus on this single device and its significance, the possibilities it enables and how you can put these to practical use in the near term.

Apple's Audacious Stance

Last June when Tim Cook introduced the Vision Pro, he made a bold claim:

"Just as Macintosh introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro will introduce us to spatial computing." —?Tim Cook, Apple

If this were any other company, taking credit for each of these 3 major eras of computing would be dismissible, even laughable?—?but this is Apple. With this statement, Tim Cook signaled the company's intention: To make spatial computing as mainstream and transformative as both personal and mobile computing. And given the company's success with the Macintosh and the iPhone (not to mention the iPod, iPad, Watch, and AirPods as category-defining devices), we'd be well advised to take this intention seriously.

Positioning of the Vision Pro

As their "Get Ready" launch ad telegraphs , Apple wants us to see the Vision Pro as the fulfillment of something we've been dreaming about for decades, something deeply shared and natural to our humanity: Our love of putting things over our eyes that immerse us in new dimensions of experience, giving us new powers — even superpowers.

The irresistible cultural appropriation of everything from Star Wars to Spongebob to Snoopy?—?as well as the company's decision to prioritize the term "spatial computing" instead of any of the *R variants (AR/VR/MR/XR) —?is brilliantly designed to carve out a distinct space in our thinking and imagination, followed (they hope) by our desire to jump in.

We've had years —?even decades —?of VR/AR headsets, along with mainstream indifference and relatively slow adoption even in contexts where the technology is clearly useful. So it's essential that Apple position the Vision Pro differently —?as a better way to do the things we already love?—?meeting people where we already are.

Macintosh, iPhone, Vision Pro

Describing AVP (Apple Vision Pro) as the first device of a new era of computing is instructive. There are several important similarities between Vision Pro (spatial computing) and the Macintosh (personal computing) and iPhone (mobile computing) that came before it.

A New Interaction Paradigm

Each of these groundbreaking devices introduced fundamentally new ways to interact with a computer. The Macintosh made the mouse central to how we get things done in a visual computing environment. The iPhone introduced the multitouch screen, along with its tap, swipe, and pinch gestures. For most of us, it's hard to recall a time before these modes; they've been second nature for as long as we can remember. And importantly, they were so immediately intuitive and easy to use that they required almost no instruction?—?especially the iPhone, and then the iPad after it. Babies and even cats could use the UI.

"It Feels Like Magic"

For as long as I've been working with immersive technologies like AR and VR, I and my peers have been eagerly awaiting the moment when Apple enters the ring. This is no mere fanboyism; after decades of successfully introducing new and superior interaction paradigms for computing, we very rationally expected Apple to do the same for face-worn computers.

"Magic" is how many early users of AVP have described the experience of using the device. It introduces eye gaze for indicating what you want to interact with, similar to mouse pointing and screen tapping; finger/hand gestures that build on the familiar ones from iPhone and iPad; and voice, with a Siri that works well and will no doubt rapidly improve as it incorporates new AI/ML capabilities.

This high bar of user experience is a baseline expectation for Apple, and a requirement if AVP is going to succeed in the mainstream market. It will likely feel a bit rough at first, but as with the Mac and the iPhone/iPad before it, over time its new interaction paradigm will also become second nature.

That is, IF there's enough there there for people to keep coming back after the magic feeling wears off.

The Possible: What's New About Vision Pro

As I outlined in our launch article , The Near Futurist focuses on leveraging emerging tech possibility in service of practical value, primarily for businesses?— which we know from history tend to absorb computing paradigms that gain traction with personal devices, like the Macintosh and iPhone.

So let's apply this lens to the AVP —?starting with what it makes possible.

Entertainment: The Near Future of TV

When Apple says "The things you love", it's clear they primarily mean entertainment. In Walter Isaacson's biography, he describes Steve Jobs' vision for the future of TV thusly:

“...very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant. ‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.” No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

Apple has been working on elements of the Vision Pro since the Jobs era, and naturally it will be deeply integrated with the company's entire product and service ecosystem. When you watch the promo video for the device , it's clear that kick-back couch-based video entertainment is the primary use case. And since AVP presents each eye with the equivalent of 4K resolution, along with the ability to increase the apparent size of the screen to movie theater dimensions, as well as dim or replace your physical surroundings with any immersive simulated landscape, it's completely plausible that the experience will surpass that of nearly any existing home theater.

It's important to note, however, that this TV experience is solo; no more family TV night where everyone watches the same thing on the same couch. Perhaps this is an increasingly rare occurrence since everyone already has their own phone/tablet to watch their chosen content?—?but there's a real danger that AVP and its successors in Apple's SC product line will further undermine the shared experience of physical co-presence. This is a big deal at the level of human society, and a topic we'll return to in this newsletter.

Panoramic Photos + Spatial Video: Shifting Reality

In addition to entertainment produced by others, Apple knows how much we love the media we capture ourselves. For longer than any of us has been around, photography has been a way to relive the moments of our lives, often evoking deep emotional experiences like longing and nostalgia, as well as gratitude and connectedness.

AVP's ability to surround the wearer with any panoramic photo ever taken on an iPhone feels like the reason we've taken these photos in the first place; it's the closest thing yet to reliving the moment of being in that place where you captured it.

Perhaps even more significantly, Spatial Video promises to recreate the 3D experience of physical presence, taking reliving the moment to a newly visceral level. People describe being moved to tears by this, and the next-level realism may lead to a deeper paradigm shift in how we relate to reality itself.

Many sci-fi narratives have explored future scenarios where we're able to convincingly replay moments of our lives, and even other people's lives —?and if Spatial Video and AVP's simulation quality are sufficiently high, I expect these futures will feel very near indeed.

Communication and Co-Presence

Perhaps even more than entertainment and our own media capture, we love seeing and communicating with each other, especially with those we care most about. Unsurprisingly, AVP will be fantastic at FaceTime —?promising to create a sense of co-presence with other people that sets a new standard.

The Practical: Why Would You Use One?

As with the early Macintosh and iPhone, the compelling reason to use one is to experience the magic?—?and in the case of AVP, to understand where computing and digital experience is heading. In other words, it's not to replace your existing way of getting practical things done.

That said, if you're anywhere near an Apple Store definitely go get a demo?—?and wait a week or two if you hate lines. While you're waiting check out this Guided Tour —?it's a great overview in less than 10 minutes.

The journalist reviews are starting to pour in —?and we'll be covering our own experience using AVP in the coming weeks and months in this newsletter, so make sure to subscribe and stay tuned.

In the near term, here's a brief roundup of what's available at launch, to whet your appetite —?or to justify your inclination to wait.

Entertainment: What's Available + What Isn't

Apple's been able to round up a substantial cohort of streaming video providers, although there are a few high-profile exceptions (Steve certainly did better with the RIAA and iTunes in his time):

• Disney is at the top of the list, unsurprising given CEO Bob Iger's appearance on stage at the AVP launch last June. Disney's library is enormous, optimized for spectacle, and will no doubt be a great showcase of the capabilities of this new device. See Disney's press release and its spectacular demo reel for details.
• Many other video streaming services are offering native visionOS apps, including: Amazon Prime Video; Paramount+; ESPN; NBA; MLB; and others.
• Notably, Netflix and YouTube won't be available natively; statements from each direct AVP users to their websites for consuming their content. More on this in the section on The Web below.
• Apple is introducing its own new format, Apple Immersive Video —?a 180-degree 3D 8K format that includes Spatial Audio, clearly designed for those seeking the highest quality immersive entertainment.

Personal Communication: Primarily For Apple Users

If you're not an Apple user, don't plan to keep in touch with your friends and close contacts from the AVP —?at least not for now.

• FaceTime is optimized for spatial use, of course —?and Apple's new Personas will render you as an avatar in real time if you're wearing the AVP, so that whoever you're FaceTiming with sees something like your face rather than you wearing something on your face. This is one of the stranger and more audacious features of AVP?—?some folks will find it disconcerting, and yet it's part of a virtual human/avatar trend that will be accelerating through 2024 and beyond.
• As of press time, Meta has not announced visionOS support for Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram —?and unless/until they do, a huge part of the universe of daily personal communication may be unavailable on AVP, or reliant on Safari for browser-based access.

Meetings + Collaboration: Most Major Platforms

Meetings and collaborative work are much better suited to the AVP out of the gate, and Apple has built on the vision for the immersive future of work that Meta , 联想 , 微软 and others have laid out over the past decade.

• Zoom also announced support for Personas, along with the ability to incorporate and share 3D digital objects with participants in a Zoom call, which is groundbreaking and could advance the effectiveness of remote collaboration significantly over time
• Microsoft Teams and WebEx should be available
• Notably, Google Meet —?like everything 谷歌 —?has given no indication yet of visionOS support

Given the level of investment by all major tech companies, I expect this immersive future of work to fully arrive in this coming years. The convergence of digital and physical presence will be as transformative as the emergence of Zoom calls during the pandemic, bringing an end to distance as an obstacle to being and working with the people, things, and places we love.

Productivity: Not Ready

While it's clearly not ready to be used as a laptop replacement, if you use a Mac laptop AVP looks promising as a way to have many large virtual displays at 4K resolution —?just put it on your face and use it as an external monitor.

• Apple announced that Microsoft 365; Slack; and a handful of other productivity apps will be available at launch
• A number of niche apps like PCalc, JigSpace, OmniPlan, and Fantastical will also be available ?—?but not enough to move the needle solidly into the productivity-ready zone

If you're really into having a highly portable, very large virtual canvas to work on, AVP could become a core part of your daily productivity setup —?but I'm not holding my breath on this. It'll be a few years before this is a genuinely practical use case.

"1M Existing iPhone/iPad Apps"

Apple points out that 1M existing apps are ready to run on AVP without modification; of course whether the experience will be better in any way on AVP than on iPhone or iPad remains to be seen in each case. Still, this is a much better start than with iPhone, which launched without an app store and with only a handful of core apps.

The Web and the Big Caveat

Safari —?Apple's homegrown web browser — will be essential to making extended immersion in AVP viable for anything other than entertainment. Many believe the web will be the killer app —?and in any case, Apple at least needs Safari and the web to provide a solid stopgap while many developers are taking a wait-and-see, if not an oppositional, stance to this new device. This is due to a combination of skepticism towards the device and antipathy towards Apple's increasingly aggressive taxation of app revenue, which is worthy of an entire article on its own —?if you're interested in a clear and astute analysis I point you to Ben Thompson's great Stratechery post on the topic .

Summary: The Near Future of Apple Vision Pro

Hopefully we've given you a good overview of the possible and the practical with AVP?—?expect to see The Near Futurist publish usage findings, insights and analysis in the broader context of both the Spatial Computing era and the practical world of business in the weeks and months to come.

I'll leave you with a few final thoughts:

• Watch for AVP in the wild starting this weekend — first class on airplane flights; coworking spaces; coffee shops; maybe a home near you
• Catch one of the unboxing videos —?as I write this Marques Brownlee's 19m video just dropped
• Go get a demo at any Apple Store?—?wait a week or two if you hate lines, but make sure you experience the Vision Pro, especially if you haven't experienced other SC headsets recently
• There's no turning back now that Tim Cook has declared this as the beginning of a new era of computing. While it's an open question how long it will take to become mainstream, as well as which use cases will command our immersion a year or 3 from now, there's so much investment (Apple, Meta, Lenovo, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Qualcomm and all the other big players) that we've crossed the tipping point into this new era.
• Mark Zuckerberg and Meta —?I believe rightly —?expect to ride the AVP wave to becoming the Android of SC , which would be a huge success worthy of the tens of $Bs they've invested
• For a broader perspective and to hear my voice, listen to my most recent podcast interview covering SC ?— both AVP and more generally

The Near Futurist and Your Business

Spatial Computing is one of our primary themes for 2024 —?so there's lots more to come in this newsletter, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything.

Finally, we've worked on numerous SC projects over the years, and would love to help you apply its possibilities to practical scenarios in your business. I'll be sharing more about previous projects in upcoming newsletter editions —?meantime please reach out directly if you'd like to explore whether working together is a fit.

See You in the Near Future!