Personal essays
Not ready to share this view of the world
Sticking
The Apple Vision Pro is really expensive - but that’s not the reason I don’t see myself getting one.
Actually, is the Apple Vision Pro too expensive?
On the one hand, $3500, so yeah. On the other hand, Microsoft’s HoloLens2 starts at $3500 and the only version I could find in stock is the Industrial Edition for $4950.
But once an idea gets stuck in your head it’s so hard to get it out.
Why do people talk about the price of Apple’s $3500 headset but not Microsoft’s? I really don’t know.
We seem to only get ideas stuck in our head for some people and things but not others.
Hillary calling opponents “deplorables” stuck even though she was applying it to people who were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobice, and/or Islamaphobic. Trump calling opponents “vermin” didn’t stick.
Biden’s gaffes and the recent report referring to him as old with limited memory is looking like it will stick. Trump confusing Biden and Obama, Pelosi and Haley, being convicted of sexual abuse, trying to steal an election, with memory lapses and difficulty telling the truth never seems to stick.
Wait. Where was I.
Oh yeah. I tried a demo of the Apple Vision Pro.
It was ok
Here’s the TL;DR; - I didn’t not like it.
The guy helping me was nice enough, but he kept trying to sell me the device. It was a classic-car-salesman-like experience.
Kept trying to help me see myself in the device using it throughout the day without understanding how I use technology or what my day looks like.
“So,” he asked at several points during the demo, “do you think you’ll be ordering one today.”
“No,” I said each time and politely said some version of, “I’m just here to try them out and see how they feel first hand.”
He didn’t ask what I knew about the product. He didn’t ask why I was interested in trying it out.
He didn’t ask me anything about my home or work settings. In a way, I’m a perfect target for this device. I live and work on my own and wouldn’t be shutting anyone out if I used it at home.
At one point I mentioned that I have a music app on the store and I wanted to see if it made sense to bring the app to Vision Pro.
He later tried to call back to that information in a way that showed he wasn’t really listening. “You said you like to listen to music,” he said, “many music apps run great on the Vision Pro.”
It wasn’t what I said and he didn’t show me any music apps - but I understand it was a scripted demo.
Not for me
It could be that I’m not a gaming guy. I haven’t tried any of the headsets that have come before this.
Well, I’ve tried them, but not more than a quick experience.
Years ago I visited a VR room at NASA and it was a lot of fun - though early days.
I saw an early demo of Croquet. It was a 3D Squeak like environment where I could build my world and you could build yours and we could visit each other’s worlds and walk around.
The demo was at an O’Reilly conference years ago. There was what looked to be a PowerPoint presentation on the screens on the left and right side of the room. And then we realized it was our vantage point - our camera angle as two independent actors were watching the same screen. They backed up, turned and faced each other and the audience got that we weren’t in Kansas anymore.
Virtual worlds - augmented worlds. If the time isn’t right for them, perhaps it’s closer.
A friend produced serious content for the HoloLens for a local medical school and Maggie and I got to try it out. I found the experience cumbersome and hard to navigate.
My brother and sister-in-law gifted me a fantastic meal in Bilbao last year. The dessert course was served with an Occulus headset. You put on the headset and waited for the environment to appear and then you were to eat the tiny dessert items in a proscribed order.
The food was amazing. The headset added nothing.
If anything, it took me out of the moment.
I could feel it on my head and the scene I was presented with had a poor image quality and didn’t seem to have anything to do with the dessert.
And so I followed the directions of the guy at the Apple store and lifted the device with my left hand and pulled the strap over my head with my right hand.
The Demo
The scan of my face and prescription glasses worked great and a moment later the device had booted up and I saw the menu floating in space between me and my guide.
Navigating wasn’t difficult but I found it required more gesturing than felt natural.
We started with the photos app. You look and you tap your fingers together and that worked fine. It was the scrolling that I didn’t care for. On a web page later in the demo my guide told me I could scroll down and keep reading but it took a lot of effort to scroll and scroll. As a friend observed, on my Mac I can tap the space button to scroll down a screen-full.
Oh and speaking of buttons, typing the URL in to navigate to a web page was painful. I ended up choosing one of the stock URLs. I found this particularly interesting if you remember what it was like to send a text message on a phone before the iPhone and how nice and natural it was once we got the full keyboard on an iPhone. This felt like hunt and peck in the worst way. It was kind of like entering a search on Apple TV with the remote control selecting a letter at a time.
Then again, I figure I could have been holding it wrong.
The photos demos were nice. The 3D were fine. The immersive were fun.
My guide had me resize the window and move it off to the side and select the TV. He had me watch trailers and then I watched an immersive demo with quick scenes from this or that.
My favorites were the sports demos. Getting to sit in great seats and look around at the action or check out the scoreboard was a killer app that I could see myself paying for at some point.
My brother sent me an article that said that movies on a flight were another killer app.
There was a control on the headset that allowed me to dial up or dial down my surroundings.
And this is where they lost me.
It reminded me that this is a device you put on to immerse yourself in a world currated the way you want it.
It’s an isolating experience.
Maybe that’s what I didn’t like about wearing a headset for the high-class dessert.
Meals - even if you’re eating alone at a restaurant - are a shared experience. The couple at the table next to me turned to chat now and then. I watched some people enjoy courses I’d had already and others sample courses that were to come.
I’ve watched us progress from people who engaged with others to people who sit next to each other staring at their phones. (Although, for some reason many of them have their speaker on so that I have to listen to their FaceTime conversation or their music.)
There will come a time when I want to put on a headset like this and immerse myself in its content.
At that point I’ll be able to come up with some justification for whatever the price is.
But now, it’s too important that we stay aware of what’s going on around us.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 203. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe