Some thoughts of mine after watching the WWDC23 keynote and letting it ruminate for a few days.
In one fell swoop (internally it’s actually 8+ years in the making), Apple have solved a big list of problems with this device category, be they technical, interaction, design & software, social, and practical. It excels in every single one of these categories. I’ll explain.
Technical
The displays are a technical marvel: Micro-OLED, more than 4K in each eye, 64x more dense than an iPhone screen, and a peak of 5000 nits brightness. 12ms latency and 90fps.
This translates to something like to looking through a sharp camera EVF. This should be enough to solve VR motion sickness.
With cameras everywhere, the headset has complete eye awareness internally and great hand tracking externally.
Interaction
A big one. How do you use it?
The interaction paradigm of this device class was far from a solved problem.
Some devices use a controller or remote. Others have hand gesture recognition, but are limited — think dead zones, or just clunky tracking.
Vision Pro has cameras everywhere, so your hands can be anywhere around you and the gestures are picked up.
Pair this with the best-in-class eye tracking, and this means your hands and eyes can be relaxed and comfortable. Gestures are direct, easy to understand, and low effort.
The control system reminds me of mobile phones, how they were pre-iPhone and post-iPhone.
Just like with the iPhone, and with the mouse before it, I expect that competitors will copy this interaction design in no time.
Design
The hardware design is typical Apple: elegant, minimalist, beautiful detailing if you look closely, made of premium materials, and doesn’t look overly techy.
Software
The critical part. A design goal was compatibility with existing iOS/iPadOS apps, and easy transition to a full VisionOS app.
This kickstarts development, has a good ecosystem on day 1, and helps acclimatise new users — by leverage the apps they already use.
Broader Appeal
The Vision Pro is positioned as a device to do work, the same way a Mac is.
By leveraging the same apps that people already use for work, the utility is far higher than something like a PSVR2 or Meta Quest.
There isn’t a big focus on gaming.
Social
Remains to be seen how this works. However, Apple have put in plenty of effort and ideas into preventing isolation when wearing this headset.
EyeSight (the screen that shows your eyes to others) is a pretty cool idea, to let others know when you are “present” or immersed
The simulated FaceTime avatars (personas) might or might not do very well in the real world. This area is hard to tell, but it’s clear that effort has been made into this category. I’m not too sure of this specific feature. Seems a bit like Apple Watch Digital Touch
Practical
The device is lighter than its competitors (450g vs 750g Quest Pro), suggesting it can be used for longer stretches, and offers far more utility and real-world use-cases, since it will be compatible with many existing apps and can leverage Apple’s enormous developer base to create new experiences.
Price
The elephant in all this is the price.
It’s extremely expensive, and is likely to limit sales volume for years to come. It’s interesting they came in on the top end. There is plenty of room for more compromised products below it (think non-Pro models, “Air”, etc).
So why introduce it with such a high price?
To win over skeptics, it’s clear that Apple wanted to demonstrate what this new device category is capable of. To do that, they went all-out on tech. No expense was spared to realise and exhibit their vision.
Having seen what’s out there, I think Apple nailed version 1.
They nailed what a device like this could be.
