It’s official. Apple took advantage of its annual WWDC conference for application creators to unveil the Vision Pro mixed reality headset, an ambitious device that aims to reproduce in virtual reality what the iPhone produced in mobile telephony 15 years ago.
Tim Cook said it: “This day will be historic! The CEO of Apple was on stage in Cupertino, five minutes earlier than expected Monday, unusually feverish. He called the day “the biggest WWDC conference ever”. A video then showing a young man soaring into the void to conquer a soap bubble could not better illustrate where Apple is in 2023.
It was only at the end of the 120-minute presentation that Cook returned to the stage to unveil his Vision Pro helmet. “I think augmented reality is amazing technology,” he said. And that’s why I’m excited to introduce the new Apple Vision Pro platform. »
Apple Vision Pro
Vision Pro is a virtual reality headset that the user can put on to access an immersive digital environment. A crown housed at the top of the helmet allows you to adjust the level of transparency of the display, which allows you to have an overview of your surroundings without removing the helmet.
This “mix between the digital world and the physical world” is Apple’s card in its sleeve to compete with already existing virtual or augmented reality headsets from Meta, Microsoft and others.
“It will bring a new dimension to personal technology,” says Tim Cook. The Mac allowed the mouse to emerge. The iPhone introduced multi-touch touchscreens. Apple hopes the Vision Pro will do the same for a form of gesture interaction that happens without a controller.
The cameras and sensors incorporated into the helmet will have the task of interpreting these gestures. They will also be able to identify nearby objects, such as other people or the screen of a Mac, to integrate them more or less naturally into the image.
I believe augmented reality is amazing technology. And that’s why I’m excited to introduce the new Apple Vision Pro platform.
Several small details make the Vision Pro a little more refined than rival helmets. The integration of a technology called “Optic ID” will allow for example to pay in the blink of an eye. In all, Apple says it has created more than 5,000 small innovations on this helmet, which it hastened to patent. That probably explains why it will sell for US$3,499 when it hits the market in early 2024. That’s several times the price of a Meta helmet.
“Betting on scenarios of use in a context of work or productivity is brilliant”, reacted the analyst of the American firm Creative Strategies, Ben Bajarin. “The key for Apple is to have positioned its headset in the space computing category. »
Spatial computing is likely a way for Apple to distance itself from the metaverse, the term put forward by its rival Meta to promote its own virtual reality technology. Many applications “that only Apple can achieve” are offered by the helmet, adds Ben Bajarin.
To underline the strategic importance of this new helmet, Apple even invited the CEO of Disney, Robert Iger, on stage. “This platform will allow us to deliver Disney to our fans in a way that has never been possible before,” promised the American businessman.
Premium ecosystem
If there is one trend that emerges from all that has been presented, it is that Apple wants to strengthen its position as a manufacturer of slightly more high-end computing devices. It must be said that historically, this position has benefited him rather well. Including on the side of personal computers. A new Mac Pro desktop computer with an advanced M2 Ultra processor was also presented.
Its power makes it a device for programmers and film and video editors who dream of creating the next Hollywood blockbuster. Its price, which reaches US$6,999, confirms that the device is reserved for a smaller group of buyers than the MacBook Air, a laptop also updated this spring and which costs four times less.
Other innovations continue to concentrate users of Apple products in an ever more sealed ecosystem. Apple’s messaging continues to refine. We have added a new “arrival” (“check-in”) function which alerts your contacts when you arrive at your destination, or which issues an alert when this is not the case.
Apple also wants to replace the business card. The exchange of contact details will be more evident in the future and will be done by a more natural and contactless transfer of the contact card of the owners of an iPhone or an Apple Watch. It will be enough to bring two phones next to each other to start the transfer.
Obviously, Android phones are excluded from this kind of interaction. Google will have to continue to make its displeasure known, as it would like to see Apple adopt the industry standard for richer and more secure text and multimedia messaging, called RCS. It won’t be for this year.
Because Apple, it is well known, is Apple. And no matter how important the novelties, that, it seems that will never change.
Alain McKenna is Apple’s guest in California.
