The headset war is?on!

The release of the Apple Vision Pro fills me with enthusiasm for the future of multimedia consumption and interaction.

But what is different about this headset?

It’s how natural it feels to interact with content by selecting with your eyes and confirming with a pinch (within 15 minutes, it’s become muscle memory). For the first time, it’s very possible to believe this could be your next personal computer. I’m not an Apple fanboy, but using the Apple Vision Pro, it’s striking how Apple knows how to create delightful user experiences for most people (the experience of calibrating eye tracking is really nicely done, and typing on an augmented reality keypad is trippy).

With my hands being busy, I have found myself using Siri more than usual and believe that a voice assistant that works will be a much-needed companion. And seeing the prowess of ChatGPT or Gemini, it’s clear that voice assistants are finally close to delivering what we’ve always wanted them to be.

Yes, it’s too heavy on the nose (you can reduce the strain by opting for the Dual Loop headband), but I didn’t experience any motion sickness, nor did I feel like my face was being compressed, as is often the case with a diving mask or another VR headset.

Yes, the first-generation Apple Vision Pro costs 7 times the price of its only real competitor at the moment, the Meta Quest 3 , and therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you’re getting a more advanced headset (e.g., display resolution, eye and hand tracking, Digital Crown to chose your level of immersion), but it’s also the first headset where you start telling yourself: this is how I can see myself interacting with multimedia from now on. No, the first-generation Apple Vision Pro is not Apple’s first headset for the general public; it’s for professionals, developers, and enthusiasts.

I am longing to see the headset that Google and Samsung (with Qualcomm) are developing together. Google is the only company outside of Apple that has proven to create a very large-scale ecosystem of apps, and Google has been experimenting with VR and AR for many years now (R.I.P. Google Glass , Google Daydream , Project Tango , etc.). Samsung is the only company outside of Apple that has proven to create mobile devices that billions of people enjoy using (Samsung has also been experimenting with VR and AR with Gear VR in collaboration with Oculus/Meta and HMD Odyssey for Windows Mixed Reality). More importantly, what my experience working in Product Innovation at Samsung has taught me, is that Samsung is laser-focused on bringing to market products that enable real consumer benefits. I believe, maybe even more than for any other technology product to date, that a deep understanding of user behaviours, motivations, needs, desires, and aspirations is crucial for the widespread adoption of VR/AR/MR/spatial computing.

In the meantime, I want to commend Meta for being the most ardent supporter of the category. It has now been 10 years and 8 headsets that Meta pushes the boundaries of the category, and for its price tag, the Meta Quest 3 is the headset for most people for now. The Meta Quest 3 is the headset that non-professional users curious about exploring VR, AR, MR, and spatial computing should buy.

And yet, for me, the billion-dollar question is: what will make you want to use a headset every day? For a headset to be an everyday necessity, the same apps that you use every day will have to provide a superior benefit than their non-headset counterparts.

I firmly believe that we are much farther from widespread adoption of headsets than what many tech enthusiasts and commentators suggest. When I joined Samsung in 2015, notably to work on VR and AR, it was touted as the year VR would take off, with mobile and tethered devices finally hitting store shelves. Fast forward nine years and over 50 million VR headsets later, and one might ask, ‘How many minutes have you actually spent in VR this year?’ The same question applies to AR. At Samsung, I had the opportunity to interact directly with hundreds of consumers and quickly realized that there exists a significant gap between what technology enthusiasts desire and what regular consumers actually want.

Still, wearing the Apple Vision Pro, for the first time with a VR/AR/MR/spatial computing headset, the future didn’t feel that far away.

If you’re interested in a more detailed analysis of the impact the Apple Vision Pro will have on the VR/AR/MR/spatial computing category, you can find my in-depth perspective in the article titled ‘Apple bets your future computer will be a headset ’.