Apple Vision Pro Beats Out Transparent TVs and AI Cheese(?) as Innovation of the Year
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Popular Science has named the Apple Vision Pro as 2024’s greatest innovation, beating out such products as a transparent television and AI-formulated vegan cheese.
While the Apple Vision Pro hasn’t been a huge success — it carries an expensive price tag, and developers have proven to be cautious about developing for it — Popular Science has named the headset as the “Innovation of the Year,” sitting atop its report of 50 greatest innovations of 2024.
While AR headsets have existed before, this one gets our award because of how much potential it shows. It’s part of Apple’s overall hardware plan. The new iPhone cameras have a specific arrangement to shoot spatial video for consumption in AR. Familiar apps can offer augmented experiences specifically meant for headsets. We expect the next version of the hardware will skip the creepy image of your eyes that shows up on the exterior screen. Still, we’re curious to see what Apple does next, because a consumer-friendly price on an experience like this could be a true game changer.
PopSci website
As for the other innovations on the list, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series of chips received an award, beating out Apple Silicon, AMD, and Intel chips. The Qualcomm chips, which are used in Microsoft’s first generation of Copilot+ PCs, offer the promise of long battery life without their performance suffering when running on battery power.
“[We’re] we’re hopeful this new chip will be the key to all the weird form factor Windows PCs we’ve been wishing for,” writes the publication.
PC gamers will want to pay attention to one of this year’s winners: the Snap Tap by Razer. Gamers will know that pressing two opposing-direction keys at the same time on standard keyboards will cause the on-screen character you’re controlling to stop dead in its tracks, leaving you a sitting duck. Snap Tap fixes that by registering the last key input and giving it priority, so if you’re heading to the left and press the right key, you’ll change directions to the right. While it may not be a big deal for non-gamers, on-screen warriors will certainly want to give it a try. The feature is available in several keyboards already in the Razer lineup.
Sure, the processors and the gaming keyboard feature are big news, but you started reading this to learn more about the transparent television and the AI cheese, right?
The TV set in question is LG’s Signature OLED T, which has a layer of contrast film that sits behind the OLED panel, providing a black background for a “typical” TV experience. However, with a single button press, the film moves out of the way, leaving the lit OLED pixels suspended on a (mostly) clear panel. The publication reports that the experience is “amazing” in person, as it offers a clear view of anything behind the screen while still providing a relatively bright on-screen image.
As for the cheese? It’s an AI-formulated cheese sold as a vegan item by Climax Foods and consists of plant-based blue, brie, and feta cheeses formulated by AI.
“California-based Climax Foods built a training set of metrics for cheese characteristics such as scent and stretchability,” reports PopSci. “Then, they used AI and educated guesswork by cheesemakers to develop plant-based formulations that hit the same benchmarks as dairy cheese.”
Be sure to check out the Popular Science website for a look at all 50 greatest innovations of 2024.
