Written By: Daniel Holsher, Staff Writer
REVOLUTIONARY: Apple releases their first rendition of the hyped up “Apple Vision Pro” after announcing it a little under a year ago, showing the public how adaptive our devices can be.
Apple’s Vision Of The Future:
On June 5, 2023, Apple announced its newest innovation in technology, the “Apple Vision Pro,” at its Worldwide Developers Conference to release in the US, starting at a costly price of $3,499. The concept of the Apple Vision Pro is quite simple at first glance.These goggles are almost identical to ones of a Virtual Reality headset such as the Oculus Quest and Meta Quest, except for the fact that they are designed to blend the virtual world with the concepts of reality. Apple describes these goggles as an “infinite canvas” that goes “beyond the boundaries of traditional display.” Generally, the Apple Vision Pro allows individuals to interact with digital content that seems bound to the realm of fantasy. Think of it as an Iphone shaped into goggles, placed right on to your head, with infinite access to your apps and programs at your disposal. Essentially, you can be as productive as you want with free access to programs and tools with the command of your voice, and specific hand motions to move your apps around. Apple states that this can be a new integration to the “concept of multitasking” and “a private way to stay on task”. Any space or area you may be in can be turned into a digital movie theater with a screen that “feels 100 feet wide” and has an advanced Spatial Audio system. While you’re out for a run, or casually strolling through a park, the Apple Vision Pro can immerse you in an unfamiliar environment, getting you to question where you even are. All of this sounds really great on paper, and Apple surely designed all of these commodities with care, but a question arises in the minds of many: what can the Apple Vision Pro really do? And in that sense, how can it be useful in one’s daily life?
The Vision Pro’s Addition Of Features: (And how it adapts)
Starting off with the general interface of the Vision Pro. Upon putting on your goggles and booting them up, you are greeted with the traditional boot up screen for Apple’s products. Upon signing into your gmail account, the real fun can begin. First of all, the Apple Vision Pro will scan your eyes and gather information from the movement and mobility of your body. When you are immersed in the goggles, simply looking at the app you would like to engage in, and pinching your fingers at your side will open the app. Moving your fingers up and down with eye contact will scroll up and down on your interface. When opening up different apps, you are able to have multiple tabs at the same time. So, for example, you could be texting your best friend to your right, and watching a movie to your left, while also keeping a timer below that for your food in the oven. One feature I find quite useful is its adaptability to the environment around you. The Apple Vision Pro can scan its surroundings to get a clear view of your household, meaning, you can leave apps open in certain rooms in the house to come back to later. While you pause your movie in one room, you can come into the kitchen and check on the digital timers you set above your food on the stove. Additionally, you can move these digital timers to wherever you please, and they will continue to tick down when out of the room, even when not in sight of them. This is very useful when following a cooking tutorial, and being too engaged by measuring out ingredients to stay aware of your surroundings. When calling someone, on Facetime for example, you are able to place your tab anywhere you’d like in the room. Depending on how close or how far you put it, the Vision Pro will mimic the volume and vocal awareness of their voice from that position. The call will have depth to its video and seem as if you can truly reach into the other side to feel the surroundings of the other individual.
The same concept goes for pictures and videos you may want to pull up. You can place these tabs anywhere you’d like and watch as they come to life in your confined virtual world. Another feature I find useful is the ability to pull up your notepad to write things down, allowing you to keep that notepad in sight as you go through your day. This is especially useful when ordering food, as someone who stutters when met with the sheer sight of the menu. Speaking of food, the Vision Pro can also allow you to order food from numerous apps such as Doordash, Instacart, Grubhub, etc., simply from the vocalization of your voice, or pinch of your fingers. So while you order your food to the right, you could be on a call with your wife and kids to the left, write down their orders, then place it with your voice and/or theirs. There could be a movie playing above you as you lay back down onto your pillow, and your timer set to feed your dog just went off. I like to say it’s a trip. The Apple Vision Pro has its goggles dimmed when in the silence of the household, and not in the presence of other humans. But as soon as someone is detected by your goggles, they will light up a portion of the eyes to reveal them to the person who is speaking to the google user, making it easy to become socially aware of others, and use social cues when speaking. Getting back at the functionality of the tabs in your goggles. You are able to easily resize your windows by pinching your fingers together and placing it where you want it to be. If you do have an Apple Macbook, you are able to directly look at that Macbook to transfer the view of the screen to the screen of your Vision Pro. The resolution of these tabs are in 4k quality, along with the addition of 23 million pixels in the two displays (Right and Left Eye).
The crown of the Vision Pro allows the user to become more or less involved with the world around them. Spinning it clockwise will immerse the user into a virtual world of their choosing, engulfing the real world around them, only leaving the screens left open in the private territory. Spin it counterclockwise, and allow the real world to start pouring into your peripheral. Finally, with entertainment, innovation, and ambition crafted into the first model of Apple’s Vision Pro, it was time to release it into the public.
The General Reaction:
So. The Apple Vision Pro was released into the public’s eyes, and the reactions were mixed to say the least. Apple sold out of their pre orders not even a few hours into its re-release, and the most well known reviewers on the planet set out to give the public an opinion. The first trend of the Vision Pro involved attempting to drive with it, and generally, that didn’t end up as bad as it could have. From what we’ve been told, the Vision Pro can be used while driving when used appropriately. Hopefully this type of transportation continues to be used that way, because I can see a million different things going wrong here, but straying away from driving, the Vision Pro was covered by all sorts of reviewers on many different platforms – Marques Brownlee being one of the most notable. From the reviews I’ve watched, the critics are actually sort of happy with this! For it being Apple’s first rendition and attempt at something greater in the realm of technology, it was performed very well. Everyone looks forward to seeing the continued development of the Vision Pro as Apple paves the way to the future of technology. So, what do you think about this technological innovation? Is it good? Bad? Does it take away from the precious moments of life? Or does it sit right with you, adding new productivity into one’s dull life? I guess you may have to go and watch a review or two for yourself, or even try a Vision Pro in one of Apple’s many stores. If there’s one thing I can pinpoint, it would be that this is only the start. The start of a future of technology that we could have only dreamed of a few decades ago. The beginning of a new era of advancement.
Sources:
“The Wall Street Journal” Review
“Marques Brownlee” Review
“Apple’s Description”