Apple's New Field of Vision

Time and time again, when Apple launches a new product category, it does so with intent to change the playing field. On Monday, following a now meme-able “one more thing” moment from Tim Cook, the arrival of the Apple Vision Pro was announced, clearly challenging the sputtering market of AR/VR headsets.

Big players like Meta’s Quest, Microsoft’s HoloLens and Magic Leap have spent the past decade attempting to build a world to give their products purpose. Gaming ecosystems, immersive content and enterprise functions have provided enough juice to keep the devices edging forward, becoming somewhat more comfortable, higher fidelity and more intuitive — but these products still lack enough viable use cases to make them a common household or office item. 

Apple’s launch was carefully positioned not as yet another AR/VR headset, but as the first foray into “spatial computing,” telling the story of expanding the Apple OS into the immersive space rather than merely introducing a novel device.

From a hardware standpoint, the Vision Pro has come into the world well ahead of the competition in addressing issues of both physical and sensory discomfort. Key interface advances such as removing the need for controllers allow the user to navigate with eye movements, voice commands and subtle hand gestures in comfortable positions, made possible by a complex sensor array. This more natural movement gives the user intuitive control over the headset’s 4K+ resolution displays and ambient spatial audio, which reduce the uncanny sensory dissonance that mixed-reality experiences can produce.

The look of the device is not subtle, perhaps taking some inspiration from snowboard goggles or Ready Player One, but it feels at home in the world of Apple devices thanks to the obsessive attention to detail and materials that make all of Apple’s products seem better suited to a Tribeca loft than a shelf at Best Buy. The tethered battery pack will certainly be the first thing to go once Apple finds a solution that doesn’t add too much weight to the headset, but for a first-generation launch that is clearly targeted at developers and loyalists, it gets the job done.

Where the Vision Pro launch struggled was the same cloudy space that all AR/VR/MR devices have been floating in: viable, valuable use cases. The workspace examples demonstrated do show some value, especially in an increasingly remote-work world. Being able to design, research, write and present on virtual screens at any scale has very clear advantages to many fields. However, for personal use, all the examples shown were dripping with loneliness. Of course there is gaming — the Vision Pro will support more than 100 Apple Arcade games at launch — but most still lack any spatial design in play. Watching a movie alone at home can be a nice escape for a night, but it is not aspirational, and flipping through 3D pictures of memories might be kind of neat if you didn’t have to capture those memories using the headset’s 3D camera in the first place.

For less lonely moments, Apple did consider social situations while operating the headset, though the solution is a bit awkward. If someone walks into your field of vision, the immersive screen clears away so you can have an IRL conversation, prioritizing the immediate over the virtual. For professional settings or working from home, this is a nice fix. It’s a Hey honey! I’m on a call, what do you need? solution for an immersive device.

This case also introduced the potentially creepy but possibly effective innovation that is EyeSight. EyeSight displays video of the user’s eyes on a curved lenticular screen to whoever they are interacting with in the space around them. I will reserve judgment on the appearance until I have seen it in real life (as lenticular screens do not show up well in standard video), but my gut reaction is, “no, thank you.” Between the uncanny valley look and the lopsided awkwardness of the imagined conversation, I tend to think I would just remove the headset to chat.

Additionally, the integration of VisionPro with the FaceTime application leaves much room for improvement. There is a Bitmoji-ish novelty to creating a spatial avatar as the user’s stand-in, however this takes away the best thing about FaceTime: real visual interaction.

It is no coincidence that this announcement came at WWDC23 rather than the September keynote later this year. The focus on the potential of the platform, along with the almost eye-roll-worthy price point of $3,499, make it clear that this launch is meant to be a kick in the pants for developers and content creators. It is Apple saying that it’s time to get serious about spatial applications and give partners a premium tool to work with to get there.

The demonstration of the VisionOS presented a world of opportunities by introducing thoughtful solutions to many of the technical challenges of competing devices. The platform feels familiar yet expanded, leveraging Apple’s intuitive visual language and obsessively refined interface design that has made its device ecosystem the global benchmark. The familiarity with Apple’s existing OS structure lowers the barrier to immersion and should allow users to jump right into the content.

The partnership with Disney (offering Disney+ at launch with the promise of spatial content to come) and the immediate gaming features will give early adopters some options right from day one. However, it is with the thoughtful design innovations and the platform’s developer tools that Apple may finally have given the field of spatial computing the push to really get moving, and that is where this is exciting. The Field of Dreams approach to spatial experiences has, thus far, not resulted in a large content economy to draw the mass market, but Apple is now both bringing some big players along and setting a stage with all the tools the existing developer community needs to make significant steps forward.

While the “always on” vision of the future for headsets comes with a host of issues that make me somewhat apprehensive, it is hard not to feel a new surge of excitement for the potential represented in the Vision Pro. It wouldn’t be the first time that Apple’s entry changed the game by showing up ready to play.

Sam Wheeler is a creative director at Huge.