With Apple's highly anticipated Vision Pro headphones hitting the shelves on Friday, you may start to see more people wearing futuristic Google Glass, which promises to usher in the era of "spatial computing."
Apple executives and their marketing experts are trying to push this esoteric technology model into the mainstream. Also avoid using other, more widely used terms like "augmented reality" and "virtual reality" to describe the transformative power of a product touted as a potential milestone, like the iPhone that was launched in 2007.
Apple CEO Tim Cook gushed about Vision Pro with analysts on Thursday: "We can't wait for people to experience its magic." ”
The Vision Pro will also be one of Apple's most expensive products, priced at $3,500, a price point that makes most analysts** the company likely to sell only 1 million or fewer devices in its first year. But Apple only sold about 4 million iPhones in the device's first year on the market, and now sells more than 200 million units a year, so there's a history where what initially seemed like a niche product turned into a product of how people used it. Life and work.
If this were the case with the Vision Pro, the reference to spatial computing could be as ingrained in modern language as mobile and personal computing, and Apple played an integral role in creating both technological revolutions.
So what is spatial computing? It is a way of describing the intersection between the physical world around us and the virtual world created by technology, while enabling humans and machines to manipulate objects and space in harmony. Cathy Hackl, a longtime industry consultant who now runs a startup, says that accomplishing these tasks often requires a combination of augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) elements, two subsets of technologies that help enable spatial computing.
It's a critical moment," Hackel said. "Spatial computing will enable devices to understand the world like never before. It will change the way people interact with computers, and eventually every interface, whether it's a car or a watch, will become a spatial computing device. ”
Apple says that one sign of the excitement of the Vision Pro is that more than 600 newly designed apps will be available on this headset immediately. The range of applications will include a variety of TV networks,** streaming services (although Netflix and Google's YouTube are notably absent from the list),* gaming, and a variety of educational options. When it comes to work, Zoom is a conferencing service and other companies that offer conferencing tools have also built apps for Vision Pro.
But the Vision Pro could expose another troubling side of technology, if its use of spatial computing is so compelling that people start to see the world differently when they don't wear headphones and start believing that life is much more interesting as seen through goggles. This situation could exacerbate the phenomenon of screen addiction that has been prevalent since the advent of the iPhone and deepen the sense of isolation that digital dependence often causes.
Apple isn't the only notable tech company working on spatial computing products. Over the past few years, Google has been developing a three-dimensional** conferencing service called "Project Starline," which utilizes "photorealistic" imagery and "magic windows" to make it feel as if two people sitting in different cities are in the same room. But Starline hasn't been widely released yet. Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms, has also been selling the Quest headset for years, which can be considered a spatial computing platform, although the company has not positioned the device in this way to date.
In contrast, Vision Pro is backed by a company with marketing prowess and customer loyalty, which tends to spark trends.
Although it may be hailed as a breakthrough if Apple realizes its vision with Vision Pro, the concept of spatial computing has been around for at least 20 years. In a 132-page study on the topic published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003, Simon Greenwold argued that self-flushing toilets were a primitive form of spatial computing. Greenwald backs up his reasoning by pointing out that the toilet "senses the user's movement to trigger the flush" and that "the space in which the system participates is truly human space."
Of course, the Vision Pro is much more complex than the toilet. One of the most striking features of the Vision Pro is its high-resolution screen, which can replay 3D** recordings of events and people, making it seem as if the encounter happened again. Apple has laid the groundwork for the sale of the Vision Pro by adding the ability to record so-called "spaces**" on the high-end iPhone 15 models released in September.
Apple's headphones also react to the user's gestures and eye movements, trying to make the device look like another part of human physiology. While wearing the headset, users can also pull up and arrange a series of virtual computer screens with their hands, similar to Tom Cruise's scene from the 2002 film Minority Report.
Spatial computing, Hackel said, "is a technology that starts to adapt to the user, rather than requiring the user to adapt to the technology." It should all be very natural. ”
It remains to be seen how natural this will look if you sit down to have dinner with someone else wearing goggles instead of intermittently staring at their smartphone.