For Apple CEO Tim Cook, the long-awaited $3,499 mixed reality headset could be his Blackberry moment. Apple’s Vision Pro is a brave foray into the nascent market of augmented and virtual reality devices and, if the video demonstrations are to be believed, it could be answer to the bulkier VR contraptions that are now available in the market.
The way iPhone completely changed the course of smartphone technology, stomping out Blackberry, the leading smartphone device in the early 2000s, Apple’s Vision Pro could be an answer to the struggling ecosystem of mixed reality headsets, which are yet to deliver a user experience that will be widely adopted by users and the industry.
The mythos of the iPhone launch is that it popularised the touch screen technology. A 2007 article by the Associated Press described the iPhone launch as ushering in a new age of technology, with the improvements promising to be “slicker and more intuitive than the rough stomp of finger presses and stylus-pointing required by many of today’s (2007) devices”.
Also read: About ducking time: Apple to tweak iPhone autocorrect function
Experts are perceiving Vision Pro to be something similar; it is far ahead of other VR headsets with unprecedented eyetracking and gesture control. Unlike other VR devices, Vision Pro users can conduct immersive computation and be able to interact with their physical surroundings at the same time. For all intents and purposes, it appears to be the intuitive answer to the qualms a lot of people have with virtual reality technology, well nearly all of them, except for the price.
Price of device
At nearly ₹4 lakh, Vision Pro is ridiculously expensive, compared to Meta’s latest VR device, Quest 3, which comes for a neat sum of $499. But for all intents and purposes, Apple is committing to greater heights in the mixed reality world, and could lead others to follow suit.
Apple is shying away from using the word metaverse, which has gathered notoriety in recent months, being ditched for the new fad in town that is generative AI. Cook preferred the less ill-famed term spatial computing, which is essentially metaverse for all intents and purposes.
While tech geeks will debate on the lexical nuances of this technology, experts believe this could add winds into the sails of new investments in the metaverse/spatial computing. Apple has given a strong demo and investors are already perking up, exhalting this new revolution.
Published on June 6, 2023
