This is Apple's week
This is Apple's week
This week is all about Apple. The Vision Pro is reaching customers' hands, and Apple has also secured an intriguing new patent.
This is MadeMeThink – A Weekly Publication with Curated Content for Visionaries, Innovators & Critical Thinkers Exploring the World of Tomorrow. Written by Prof. Thomas Metzler, Ph.D.
This MadeMeThink last week…
This is Apple's week
A lot has happened in the Apple world in the last week. Apple has been granted a patent for innovative smart glasses that eliminate the need for traditional prescription lenses. These glasses feature adjustable liquid crystal lenses, capable of correcting vision, including presbyopia and higher-order aberrations 👀 This means that the Apple Lens would adapt dynamically to your eye. I hope this will also be available for traditional glasses at some point. 🤓
The “Apple Vision Pro 2.0” or “Apple Glasses” would sport lenses that match a different prescription for each eye, and also allow switching the same device between multiple users with different prescriptions.” - AppleWorld
This would be fantastic. Anyone who has saved the money for specific lenses for their headset knows what a pain it is to use the headset with their traditional glasses. Furthermore, given the price of the Vision Pro, many households will probably not buy several headsets, but rather share one. Nice tech Apple. Read more.
Meanwhile, more Vision Pro reviews are coming in (I have already covered Apple Pro reviews from TechCrunch and Wired in a previous article). Here is a Vision Pro Unboxing Video, for all those who can't wait to unpack their own Vision Pro ;)
And for those who prefer to read, here is a longer text review of the Vision Pro (thanks Walter Ritter from our XR/UX Innovation Lab for sharing). Below you will find a tl;dr (= internet slang for "too long; didn't read") of the text review with the most important statements.
A passage from the review that caught my attention is this one:
“Vision Pro is heavy. I've used it for hours at a time without any discomfort, but fatigue does set in, from the weight alone. You never forget that you’re wearing it. Related to Vision Pro’s weight is the fact that it’s quite large. It’s a big-ass pair of heavy goggles on your face. There’s nothing subtle about it — either from your first-person perspective wearing it, or from the third-person perspective of someone else looking at you while you wear it.” - Daring Fireball (2024)
I know this from the Meta Quest. After 2-3 hours you don't want to wear the headset any more. This is definitely a problem, especially as Apple positions itself with the Vision Pro in such a way that it will be used for work (which in my understanding means having the glasses on for several hours). For me, this indicates that the Vision Pro currently cannot replace a traditional workstation. So at the moment I'm not sure whether this promise of Apple WWDC 23 can be kept: “It lets you replace a desk full of monitors with infinite screen real estate so you can be more productive than ever”. Perhaps the Vision Pro will replace the classic setup for a few hours, but for an entire working day? Hardly, not yet. Nevertheless, promises like this were used to argue the high price of $3.499. I am very curious to see how the sales price of the Apple Vision Pro will develop over the next few years.
However, Apple has apparently not exaggerated in terms of display quality, which appears to be excellent.
I’ve used the original PlayStation 5 VR headset, HTC Vive Pro, and own a Meta Quest 3. Vision Pro’s display quality makes both of those headsets seem like they’re from a different era. Vision Pro is in a different ballpark, playing a different game. In terms of resolution, Vision Pro is astonishing. I do not see pixels, ever. I see text as crisply as I do in real life. It’s very comfortable to read.
With the quality of the display, it seems to be a pleasure to enjoy films or 3D experiences.
Vision Pro is simply a phenomenal way to watch movies, and 3D immersive experiences are astonishing. There are 3D immersive experiences in Vision Pro that are more compelling than Disney World attractions that people wait in line for hours to see.
However, Apple does not seem to have succeeded in designing the digital ("photorealistic") avatars (also called personas by Apple) in a way that feels natural.
Apple is prominently labeling the entire persona feature “beta”, and it doesn’t take more than a moment of seeing one to know why. Personas are weird. They are very deep in the uncanny valley (…) I FaceTimed my wife after capturing mine, and her reaction — not really knowing at all what to expect — was “No, no, no — oh my god what is this?” And then she just started laughing. We concluded the test with her telling me, “Don’t ever call me like that again.”
But well, let’s not forget that this is the first Vision Pro and the technology will improve massively over the next few years.
“In a few years, after a few product generations, we will all look back at this first Vision device and laugh. We’ll laugh at the external battery, we will laugh at the size and weight of the device, and eventually we will laugh at its price. The knocks against it are all undeniably true: it’s too heavy and too big for everyone, and too expensive for the mass market.” - Daring Fireball (2024)
What do you think? Write me a comment on my related Linkedin post.
Book me as your keynote speaker: If you found this article insightful and you’re looking for an engaging keynote speaker to elevate your next event, I invite you to discover more about my keynote topics and speaking engagements. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Disclaimer: The thoughts published in this publication are my personal opinion and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation for any type of action. I am not a financial expert. The startups or corporates highlighted in this publication have caught my interest. This mention is not an endorsement or recommendation to engage with them. Readers should always do their own research.