What is Apple’s ‘Vision’ for Spatial Computing?
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Apple’s Vision Pro is a very impressive piece of technology, but it’s hard to say whether the company envisions it as its end game or merely the first step on a much broader path.
After all, this is a product that’s been in development for nearly a decade — and possibly rattling around in the imagination of Apple’s designers for even longer than that. It’s one of the most-storied Apple projects in the company’s history, perhaps second only to the ill-fated Apple Car for intrigue and speculation — the twists and turns it took.
For years, the common belief was that Apple’s goal was to create Apple Glass, a set of augmented-reality glasses that would have followed in the footsteps of Google Glass. Many folks still suspect that the Vision Pro was what we ended up with instead.
Of course, it’s worth noting that Google Glass never got very far, and Apple most definitely wanted to do something far superior to what Google had attempted. The problem is that futuristic sci-fi glasses are easy to imagine and look cool on paper, but they’re much more challenging to turn into an actual product at the level of today’s technology.
By 2019, it became apparent that Apple was working on two initiatives: the mythic Apple Glass and a mixed-reality headset that ultimately became the Vision Pro. Both were active projects with internal code names and working groups, but the headset was always expected to come first.
Sadly, the glasses never moved beyond the “architecture” stage. As we approached the debut of the Vision Pro last year, reliable sources began telling us that Apple had shelved the project indefinitely until the technology could catch up to its dreams.
The Vision Pro is More Paradigm than Product
Perhaps one of the reasons Apple decided the Apple Glass project wasn’t worth pursuing right now was simply the cost factors. Even if it were possible to create something so ambitious, the price tag would be so high as to make it out of the reach of anybody but the wealthiest consumers. Apple produces high-end products, but it doesn’t make stuff that only the elites of society can afford, and Apple Glass would almost certainly fall into this category.
Even the Vision Pro has a price tag that’s difficult to stomach, but at least there’s a case to be made for Apple’s headset. Having gone through the demo, I can see how it’s worth the price tag for someone who could actually use what it offers. However, it’s not priced for the casual AR/VR fan.
However, Apple is a company that releases tangible products, not concept videos. The Vision Pro is something customers can see and touch and — if they can afford the $3,500 price tag — buy and take home with them. That’s a stark contrast to Orion AR Glasses that Meta just announced, which, if they were available to the public (they’re not), would cost around $10,000. They’re also unavailable for mere mortals to try out, and I don’t think they look like anything Apple would want to put its name on. On the other hand, even if you can’t afford or justify the price of a Vision Pro, you can go into an Apple Store and experience one. The Vision Pro isn’t exactly a fashion statement either, but it doesn’t need to be.
While Meta’s Orion AR glasses may give us a sense of what true AR glasses could eventually become, they also provide a good indication of why Apple isn’t ready to release its own. As Jason Snell pointed out at Six Colors, it’s impossible to make a judgment call that Meta is ahead here since Apple’s culture of secrecy means we have no idea what it’s working on until it’s ready to show us a finished product. Orion is most definitely not anywhere near a finished product and would be akin to Apple announcing the Vision Pro over two years ago when it was only showing it off in secrecy to its Board of Directors.
Still, as we noted last week, Meta is ahead of Apple in one key area, and that’s producing a more affordable VR headset. The new Quest 3S is a VR and mixed-reality headset focused on gaming and entertainment, and it goes on sale in two weeks for only $299. As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman observed in this week’s Power On newsletter, that puts the Vision Pro “more than 10 times the price of the entry-level Quest offering, and it’s certainly not 10 times better.”
Apple is clearly chasing the higher end of the AR/VR market and trying to redefine a new “spatial computing” paradigm. The Vision Pro, as it stands today, is a valuable tool that can benefit serious professionals, but it’s an entertainment device only for folks with healthy amounts of disposable income.
Ultimately, the goal of the Vision Pro isn’t so much the product as the first step into what Apple hopes is a brave new world beyond the iPhone. Apple Glass is undoubtedly still on the radar for when the technology makes it possible to do the way Apple wants to do it, but Gurman’s sources reveal that, in addition to that “holy grail” of spatial computing, Apple’s Vision Products Group is looking at other directions to expand the paradigm, including simpler smart glasses akin to Amazon’s Echo Frames and Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, possibly controllable by an Apple Ring, along with camera-equipped AirPods that could leverage AI and augment smart glasses or a headset.
