Opinion: I am 50/50 about the Apple Vision Pro’s future

Great tech confuses the uninitiated

If you’ve stumbled here then I recommend first reading our hands-on experience of Apple Vision Pro. The link to that article is here. It will give you a good grasp on what the Apple Vision Pro is all about. Once you read that then you can come back here and read this banter, which is from a perspective of a person who’s not worn the headset… You’ve been warned, let’s go.

This augmented reality headset from Apple was in the making for a couple of years. Apple is fashionably late to the AR/VR headset space and in the meantime, Zuckerberg and co. have been pushing the Oculus headsets for half a decade but rarely found any grip within the mass market. All things considered, there are some things only Apple can do and that’s primarily because of (checks note) ecosystem! Now that word has been more abused than a UPI QR code but trust me it brings a lot of perspective into the Apple Vision Pro’s future…

Firstly, it’s platform agnostic within the Apple ecosystem. Ya, as much as I would love to use one VR headset with another device such as a PS5 or my gaming PC, it’s sadly not possible to do so even with the Oculus or the PSVR2. The PSVR2 serves a single purpose and that’s gaming on the PS5, if you take it to a gaming PC, you might as well use it as an eye mask. The same story is with the Oculus and Meta headsets. Outside the confines of its platform support, there’s not much you can do. Apple Vision Pro on the other hand works with a computer, a smartphone and as a standalone device. That’s the level of integration that Apple users look forward to but Apple won’t share the good juice with other platforms so in a way, the Apple Vision Pro is limited too.

The Apple Vision Pro also now becomes a new aspirational product something the iPhone was for the longest time. Since Apple is not making a foldable for another year or two, the Vision Pro is the next lust-worthy Apple device that separates the affluent buyer from the herd. So to say that its $3,499 price tag won’t have an audience would mean that I am informing the world that I simply won’t be able to afford it, but some people can and will.

That brings me to the Pro moniker. Apple is very selective about slapping a Pro at the end of the product name. The word, in and of itself has a very loose definition even by Apple standards. The Apple AirPods Pro are not what professionals use but people who have the spending power. Apple iPad Pro and MacBook Pro is keeping the other side of this argument alive. Regardless, a Pro headset indicates that there’s a non-Pro version Apple is working on, or I hope they’re because $3,499 is a steep commitment to have something on your face.

One thing covid taught me is that people hate masks, and convincing them to wear something on their eyes for a long duration is going to be challenging even for Apple. Apple’s biggest cash cow is the US market. Can Apple thrive where Oculus and HTC failed for half a decade? Outside the interests of (rich) gamers, tech enthusiasts, engineers and designers, VR/AR headsets have remained an afterthought for all consumers. You won’t buy a soundbar before you can afford a TV, right?

The tech enthusiast in me sees the Apple Vision Pro for what it is, a springboard for every other AR/VR technology. Companies like Snapchat have been neck-deep in AR technology for the longest time and those devs will flock to Apple’s Vision Pro for pushing their efforts into the mainstream. The purpose of an Augmented Reality headset is not to steal you away from your reality with 4K displays, it’s to bring the virtual world into the real world and mix the two. The way to do it is through ski goggles right now but eventually, the goal is to fit all of this tech inside something as little and easygoing as a sunglass. The fact that Apple has managed to make its Augmented Reality headset as dinky as possible while having an M2 chip is astounding. It’s for $3,499 so it better be good, yes?

I know for a fact that if you wear the Apple Vision Pro, you’ll love it, Nishant (my Editor) did and he loved it. This thing can expand movie screens and open multiple MacBook tabs and place them in your living room. So it’s pretty cool for Apple ecosystem residents but to be honest, I’ve used AR/VR headsets before and it makes me disoriented after a few hours. Not to mention the eye fatigue from keeping this thing on to watch something as long as the Avatar movie. Even now, there are folks who don’t like the silicon tips of the AirPods Pro which is why Apple still makes AirPods which sound just as good but don’t seal your ears. Skin is sensitive, eyes are more so… the future of Apple Vision Pro won’t be dependent on its premium price tag or its ecosystem control, it will depend on how fast this technology gets compact and intuitive. Well, you can scratch the intuitive bit because the gesture controls on this thing look something out of a sci-fi movie. Force-choking Jedis as Darth Vader is a real possibility.