Apple this month unveiled Apple Vision Pro, a revolutionary spatial computer that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world, while allowing users to stay present and connected to others. Vision Pro creates an infinite canvas for apps that scales beyond the boundaries of a traditional display and introduces a fully three-dimensional user interface controlled by the most natural and intuitive inputs possible — a user’s eyes, hands, and voice.
Featuring visionOS, the world’s first spatial operating system, Vision Pro lets users interact with digital content in a way that feels like it is physically present in their space. The breakthrough design of Vision Pro features an ultra-high-resolution display system that packs 23 million pixels across two displays, and custom Apple silicon in a unique dual-chip design to ensure every experience feels like it’s taking place in front of the user’s eyes in real time.
Joshua Gans and Abhishek Nagaraj for Harvard Business Review:
The Vision Pro is a computer that is worn on your face, but the novel aspect is how you use it. Rather than view the computer’s output through a physical screen, that output is projected directly into your eyes with two very small but high-resolution displays a very small distance in front of you. Rather than control the computer through a keyboard, mouse, or touch screen, the primary user interface is through eye tracking and gestures.
Just as they removed the stylus for screens when they launched the iPhone, Apple requires no physical controller to use the computer. The computer senses what you are interested in interacting with by watching your eye movement and then looks at your hands to determine what you want to do.
Apple has termed this new device a spatial computer. The name is apt, because the device can use any physical space around you as a canvas to display digital outputs. There is no need for a desk (or lap) to place the device, and there are no limits on the size of the perceived viewing area. That means you could technically sit in a small space, like an airplane seat, and watch a cinema-sized movie.
The Vision Pro can display 3D objects in your current space or even transport you to new spaces. Apple, however, barely mentioned the terms AR and VR during their announcement. In doing so, they drew a line people have not drawn before. This is no AR or VR device or technology. The technology is a spatial computer, and if there is a role for AR and VR, it is in applications that run on a spatial computer.
MacDailyNews Take: Bottom line: It’s now (or soon will be) in the hands of developers and, like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch before it, the Apple Vision Pro will become something that is not yet fully imagined.
SteveJack for MacDailyNews, June 6, 2023:
Just as iPhone is a Mac in your hand, an iPad is a Mac in your hands, and Apple Watch is a Mac on your wrist — iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS are, of course, all based on based on Darwin (BSD), otherwise known at various times in history as Mac OS X, OS X, and, currently macOS — Apple’s Vision Pro is a Mac on your face (visionOS is also based on macOS). Really, Apple’s Vision Pro is a 3D Mac on your face!
One of Apple’s biggest advancements with Vision Pro is eliminating handheld controllers and, in doing so, making every so-called rival’s VR headset look like a horse and buggy in comparison, but the main thing is that Vision Pro is not a “VR headset” or “AR headset” or whatever. It’s a computer. A “spatial computer,” to be precise.
Computing in 3D space is how we should have been computing all along, but the technology wasn’t ready for several decades… Now, we can finally use our Macs naturally, with no 2D displays confining us!
So, don’t let the the Vision Pro’s ancillary features – watching giant 3D movies, playing giant 3D games, taking 3D photos and videos, etc. – drown out the fact that for just $3,500, you can own and use the world’s first spatial computer – a Mac on your face! – that allows you to compute anywhere and everywhere…
Apple’s Vision Pro is a tremendous achievement and a very strong start to a whole new platform. I can’t wait to see how far and fast it will develop!
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