Tim Cook has been finally pictured wearing the Apple Vision Pro headset. The photographs accompany a Vanity Fair article about the device, which leads on the digital cover of the magazine.
This is the first time the Apple CEO has been seen wearing the device since its unveiling at WWDC 2023 in June. Given that Cook is usually keen to model and be seen using Apple devices, particularly during keynote events and speeches, it's interesting that the company appears to have been a little more reticent to take the same approach with Vision Pro, until now.
The article includes interview quotes from Tim Cook, Greg Joswiak, James Cameron, Jon Favreau, and others on their experience with Apple Vision Pro, how the headset was developed, and more. Here are some select quotes from the piece, which was written by Nick Bilton:
You can actually lay on your sofa and put the displays on your ceiling if you wish," Cook told me. "I watched the third season of [Ted] Lasso on my ceiling and it was unbelievable!" When I got home and hooked up my own Apple Vision Pro, I watched Ford v Ferrari on my ceiling, and with the spatial audio it felt like Ken Miles’s Ford GT40 was in the room with me. "I think meditation is on a different level than anything I’ve ever experienced, and I've meditated for a long time," Cook said. I've always had trouble meditating, and he was right about that too. "And I use it for productivity," Cook told me.
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"I would say my experience was religious," the director James Cameron told me when I asked him about his first encounter with the Apple Vision Pro. "I was skeptical at first. I don’t bow down before the great god of Apple, but I was really, really blown away."
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If there's one consistent grumble about the Apple Vision Pro, it's about the size and weight. It's around 20 ounces, which might not sound like a lot, because you cook with ounces, you don't necessarily wear them. But that's the same as five sticks of butter—imagine walking around with five sticks of butter on your face all day. Carolina Cruz-Neira, a pioneer of virtual reality, told me that the way a device sits on your face really impacts how you respond to the technology. "I’ve been working in VR for over 30 years, and until we can get the scuba diving mask off your face and we make it less noticeable, we’re not going to make this a mass-adoption technology," Cruz-Neira said. "And the size and weight of these scuba diving masks are not going to be solved in a year."
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"There’s nothing we could have done to make it lighter or smaller," Richard Howarth [Apple VP of industrial design] explained. "This is the state of the art." Everyone else I spoke to at Apple proffered a similar sentiment. "It feels like we've reached into the future and grabbed this product," Joswiak said to me. "You’re putting the future on your face." As did Rockwell, who told me: "We packed just about as much technology as you could possibly pack into that small of a form factor."
You can read the full review on the Vanity Fair website.
Apple Vision Pro starts at $3,499 and launches in the U.S. this Friday, February 2. Apple has said the Vision Pro will launch in additional countries later this year.
Top Rated Comments
Made my day!
And about the whole product, there's one thing I retain from all the reviews and interviews:
- Lots of good UI ideas (some weird and some really bad as well)
- Incredible hardware
- Having the behemot power of Apple behind this product is the guarantee that this will not be yet another moonshot at the concept
- iPadOS as the foundation gives it a very strong head start.
But my extended time with the Vive at home and other VR headsets at work allows me to make one very concerning conclusion:
This technology IS ISOLATING, whatever the marketing department wants you to believe in.
Since the new rise of VR with Oculus, this and the other concerns I have still not changed at ALL.
- Watching a movie on a giant screen? Great ! But... what's the point of going alone to the movie theatre?
- Working on productivity stuff? Aren't you better served with a couple 4k screens, a mouse and keyboard and a powerful and versatile OS like MacOS or Windows? Yes you can do that with the AVP, but with a brick on your face and a sore neck. Why?
- You're stuck to your chair/couch. Moving with a VR headset is still not a solved problem. Mixed /AR experiences can offset the issue to a point, but as soon as it become too immersive, many people will be prone to sickness (Nilay told that even watching Avatar in 3D made him uncomfortable)
- Interacting with others: as long as you can't share your "world", your own cyberspace, with others, you'll feel forever alone.
-Sharing: the need for customizing the device to your eyesight makes it very difficult to share. Go go go individualism ! Same approach as the iPad: why encourage your customers to share a device when you can upsell a device to each of them ? That's why iOS and iPadOS will never see multi-user implemented, and I suppose that if Apple could, it would do the same to MacOS.
- Getting interrupted during your experience will always be awkward for the person interrupting because they can't see what they are interrupting.
Are we really after this lite dystopia experience? Is this really something solving any issues, or at least more issues than it creates? The first images of that AVP dad filming the birthday was already quite telling, and even if it isn't pushed as strong as before, the people who proposed this kind of ideas are still trying to get you on their coolaid.
I think the main issue is that people working at Apple aren't family guys, they all live alone or in environment far diffrent than what "normal" people live everyday, with kids, significant others, relatives always around the corner, talking to you, showing you a photo,...
Believe me, I tried to use the Vive for somehting else than short experiences, and it is NOT compatible with a family life.
It's not by chance than the Meta Quest is focusing on games and fitness, two activities many people like when they're in their own world.
My bet is Apple will probably have to pivot around and focus on these experiences instead of productivity, for short bursts of adrenaline. Like they did with the Apple watch.
Of course, this is just my opinion, but while I appreciate the technological prowess, I'm really not sold on the concept.
Thanks for all the cultural help judging the AVP, cool kids.
Interestingly, he uses it for media consumption, not AR (he mentions productivity generically, with no specifics), having to watch on the ceiling to mitigate the weight of the device.