The case for Vision Pro’s success — and the need for more thoughtful app design in a world of immersive tech
“Memories were meant to fade”
Last week, Apple announced the Vision Pro — the long-rumored mixed reality headset that had been gestating since the mid-2010s. So far, the tech press seems generally bullish on the Vision Pro as a platform that will evolve, with next-level display quality, precise eye- and hand-tracking, and standard-setting real-time processing powering a new OS capable of running existing iOS apps. There are detractors, but the sharpest critiques are aimed more at its potential to harm society.
This feels like the right focus. There are plenty of reasons to think that Apple will gain significant traction with the Vision Pro (and I’ll touch on some of them). But its ability to create realistic, immersive experiences is both wildly compelling and also practically its own sub-genre of dystopian sci-fi. Apple, and those of us who develop new products, will wiel an even greater power than we did building apps for the little touchscreens in our pockets–and that demands responsible design.
Let’s unpack the Vision Pro’s potential, both positive and negative. But first, it’s worth considering the initial iPhone’s reception and subsequent evolution to help understand why the VisionOS platform has a good shot at success.
The original iPhone wasn’t insanely great
There were a lot of valid criticisms of the original iPhone.
At launch, starting at $599, it was significantly more expensive than contemporary smartphones. It lacked the fast cellular networking capability at the time, 3G. It didn’t have enterprise support, so it couldn’t be adopted within large corporations. Developers couldn’t write apps for it. It didn’t even have copy and paste.
All of the above concerns were addressed pretty quickly. Within 18 months after the announcement, the iPhone 3G was released with an App Store stocked with 3rd party apps, Microsoft Exchange support, and a lower price point — though copy and paste would have to wait another year.
Early Vision Pro critiques parallel the original iPhone: ultimately, it’s a very nice–and expensive–prototype for what can eventually come to market.
The price tag is so steep that only spendy early adopters, developers, and businesses will likely buy one. The name “Vision Pro” signals the eventual presence of a lower-priced “Vision.” And Apple doesn’t have to sell a ton of the first gen for the platform to be a success — they just need to generate enough interest from developers and early adopters.
Apple has also been building up to this and has a unique advantage as a result:
- A long history of controlling both software and hardware which arguably is a key ingredient to Apple’s success
- A more recent history of designing chipsets for use in massively popular products
- Experience in pushing the limits of cameras, displays, spatial audio, and wearable devices
- A robust developer community with tooling and languages that many current and former iOS developers will be familiar with and can apply to VisionOS
Most of the tech press understand how products evolve and aren’t spending a lot of time evaluating whether or not this first version will be a hit. There seems to be recognition that Apple has a lot stacked in its favor, and while it could be a complete flop, the more interesting question is what kind of future we might experience if it’s not.
How not to design a dystopia
A lot of the arguments against this kind of technology boil down to concerns about isolation and loneliness. This has been on the rise since the rise of social networks and perhaps powered in part by the mobile revolution, and it’s clear that Apple is considering connectedness based on some design choices. The default view is a pass-through of the room you’re in, rather than an immersive other-world. When people around you enter your proximity, they come into view on your headset. And, weirdly or not, a projection of your eyes is available for others to see when you have it on and aren’t totally immersed. Developing a complex display on a first gen product that the wearer can’t even see signals sends a loud signal about their intention here, and it’s a clear point of differentiation.
Part of what makes the Vision Pro compelling is its power to fool your brain’s perception of reality — it reportedly feels real in a way other headsets don’t. Magic Leap famously raised $2.6B to build an experience like this and in 2020 was forced to pivot. It’s easy to imagine how much more addicting and alienating a more immersive experience can be. “Reliving memories”–one of the use cases that Apple demoed– feels particularly worrisome. As sci-fi fans have noted, addiction to reliving memories is a major theme in Strange Days. (Great film finally on streaming, btw.)
…It’s going to seem pretty weird when dad is wearing a headset as his daughter blows out birthday candles; perhaps this problem will be fixed by a separate line of standalone cameras that capture photos in the Apple Immersive Video Format, which is another way to say that this is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
Note the empty house: what happened to the kids? Indeed, Apple actually went back to this clip while summarizing the keynote, and the line “for reliving memories” struck me as incredibly sad…
I’ll be honest: what this looked like to me was a divorced dad, alone at home with his Vision Pro, perhaps because his wife was irritated at the extent to which he got lost in his own virtual experience. That certainly puts a different spin on Apple’s proud declaration that the Vision Pro is “The Most Advanced Personal Electronics Device Ever”.
As we think about designing new applications for this platform, this use case feels irresponsible to pursue, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was talked about less and less by Apple.
Now, there is another use of spatial videos like the one described above that Apple has talked about outside of the keynote — sharing these same videos with family members who can’t be there. I’d argue that the transportive ability of this tech is more constructive in our lives than “reliving memories,” and I bet there are families all over the world who would enjoy exchanging clips like this with each other in between gatherings and Facetime calls.
That the same feature can be used to potentially positive–or very negative–effects highlights the choice that Apple and developers have when considering building for this platform, and really for any technology.
So, if the Vision Pro is poised to become widely used, how do we avoid some of the more harmful applications?
An easy answer is to ask Apple to lead the way and create guidelines for all to follow, but that’s neither perfect nor abdicates the developer community's responsibility. Instead, much as the AI community has been interrogating the issue of ethics and responsible design given its potential, the same should–and likely will–form around spatial computing. And it should include a mix of investors, advisors, founders, designers, and engineers.
Despite the potential for bad, I think there’s much greater potential for good.
Seeing the positive
Gaming and watching movies or sports are mostly harmless ways to spend time (in moderation) and will be pretty great in the Vision Pro. Augmented data while watching sports or remote courtside viewing both feel like great applications of this tech. Despite not being a gamer, I admit a recent flight of fancy imagining a Pokemon Go-style, world-scale AR alien invasion game where teams could run around Brooklyn Bridge Park and battle flying UFOs with invisible energy weapons. That would be kind of ridiculous, but also probably pretty fun.
The ability to use a laptop anywhere with virtual remote screens is appealing to people like me who often have to work on the go, but I might wait a few years before trying it out at the coffee shop.
I see a lot of opportunity for improved remote collaboration with the Vision Pro, even if the current avatar technology falls into the uncanny valley. Adding a third dimension to Zoom calls can make collaborative work more engaging. During the pandemic, many firms adopted products like Miro as remote version of a project “war room” for collaboration, but I can see the Vision paired with new applications being much more powerful and fun. (And Apple, of course, has Freeform.)
Remote therapy exploded during the pandemic, and this has led to greater exposure within the general public but also concerns about quality of care. The immersive quality of the Vision Pro experience could increase the impact of remote therapy — there’s already evidence that certain types of VR-based therapy can be quite effective. And with psychedelic therapy moving towards the mainstream, it’s not hard to imagine guided, remote sessions in the Vision Pro.
Vision Pro could be a helpful interior design tool, as well as a high-fidelity previewing tool for clients to test out choices and see modifications on-the-fly.
We’re probably some years away from having a version of the Vision Pro for fitness, but one can imagine biking and rowing inside a 3D environment, or getting remote personal training in a virtual gym with heads-up workout data–including from your Apple Watch, naturally. One can imagine tech-savvy players of golf, tennis, or other racquet sports eager to leverage this for remote, data-intensive training.
It’s also exciting to think about what art and music creation can be enabled by this technology. DJing is a nice start, but 3D art, game design, and whole new classes of virtual instruments can be enabled that go beyond a theremin. Playing Rock Band with friends in Vision Pro? That sounds pretty fun.
Getting ready for the future
Usually, the catastrophizers and the zealots are both wrong, and the results are weirder than anyone would have predicted. So maybe we don’t have the worst to fear–or best to hope for.
Regardless of how influential this mode of computing ends up being, early evidence suggests its power over our senses is strong even at this stage of development, and needs to be wielded appropriately. As technologists, we have a choice to be thoughtful about our efforts and hold ourselves accountable for the impact we have on our users. Put simply, we need to respect and value our users in all we create. There are externalities even to bits and bytes. That choice, and developing the practice of exercising that choice virtuously, is more important than ever.
