Deconstructing the Apple Vision Pro

I just watched Black Mirror season 6 the Apple Vision Pro video demo, and I was stricken with awe in the truest sense of the word. Wonder. Veneration. Dread. It was all there. So I thought I’d break it down.

Here it is, if you want to watch:

Actually, my inspiration for today’s topic was a little complicated or convoluted (I can’t decide which). I’m still stuck on yesterday’s theme of holiness taking on this very desirable form of being set apart.

Reflecting back on it, the thought that came to mind immediately was the clever phenomenon of the iMessage, the blue-bubble feature shared among fellow Apple users that makes one feel part of something exclusive (the desirable brand of holiness) rather than excluded (holiness John-the-Baptist style . . . you KNOW that dude’s texts showed up green). It’s ingenious and psychotic, and it further complicates the already parasitic utopia that is our relationship with our phones.

I was going to say something about all of that, but . . . then I remembered the big Apple announcement. I had been entirely disinterested until I found out it was a headset. A $3,500 headset. So I had to see what it was all about.

What the Apple Vision Pro demo really says

1. It doesn’t matter if you look goofy. The face of the goggles themselves look pretty sleek. The entire headset, including the fabric that looks like an ‘80s aerobics accessory, might look cool on a human being if they were flying a fighter jet or shredding alpine slopes. But when the wearer is sitting on a couch? Goofy. But this demo video compiles a truckload of subtle cues to send an overt message: the person wearing the goggles is superior.I mean, they all live in massive, austere, jarringly decluttered apartments. The presentation of features is supposed to highlight the headset’s ability to transform any space into a vast expanse, yet everyone fortunate enough to possess an Apple Vision Pro apparently already has a living room roughly the size of Red Rocks Amphitheatre. This video isn’t meant to appeal to people in cramped living quarters, it’s meant to appeal to people who already see themselves living in wide open spaces with room to make cataclysmic socio-technological mistakes. I look goofy? No, YOU look goofy.

2. What you see is what you control. If you were expecting to see sensor-covered gloves or exaggerated hand gestures to swipe away windows unseen by anyone but the goggled, the video leaves you breathlessly disappointed. Everything is done with the eyes and voice, it appears. You can hover over or click icons with your eye movements. If Apple has continued its tradition of intuitive tech, you’ll be able to master the basics of using the Vision Pro without a users manual or long training sessions. But it does look complicated.It also looks like everything you look at and say could potentially be tracked and reported back to Cupertino and used to sell you every virtual experience they ever dreamed for you (because none of us will have ever asked for any of it).

3. You aren’t oblivious to the real world. No, not at all. Just when I was thinking everyone in this demo is all alone, they introduce a scene where an ungoggled friend shows up on the couch next to a Vision Pro (let’s just assume the users will call themselves this . . . the product is the new you). It’s so creepy. I’ve spent enough time in nursing homes and hospitals lately to recognize the look every visitor gives every patient: the “I’m forcing myself to smile to make sure you know I know you’re going to be okay,” and that’s the look on the friend’s face. Don’t worry, friend, everything’s going to be fine. The real you is in there somewhere.There are a few scenes with other people joining the Vision Pros, the creepiest of which are the ones with kids in them. A dad watches his daughters play and records the entire memory through the camera headset he’s wearing, and they wave to him lovingly because the goggles don’t make this weird at all! It would all be so sweet if it weren’t the scariest, freakiest thing I’ve ever seen. His daughters see a guy wearing a headset that imposes an unrecognizable altered reality on his vision—what his daughters see isn’t remotely close to what he sees—and it doesn’t matter to him at all. What the people right in front of a Vision Pro see does not matter. That’s the message.

4. People in your virtual world see the real you. All of this changes in the realm of FaceTime. In a scene where a Vision Pro carries on a FaceTime meeting with two normal yet inferior looking people, the demo shows the Apple Vision Pro’s ability to use an intricate array of sensors to read the contours and movements of its wearer’s face. It then projects a perfect virtual recreation of that person’s ungoggled face to the other FaceTimers. If you’re with me in the room, I’m wearing goggles and it’s fine—if you’re somewhere else on your phone, you can see me without goggles which we’re no longer pretending isn’t creepy.

5. No one else has a Vision Pro. It’s bizarre, considering the groupthink, in-crowd nature of Apple tech, but I don’t recall any scenes in this demo in which more than one person is wearing one. The idea of shared experience seems completely missing from the sales pitch. Exclusivity isn’t a new marketing ploy by any stretch, so it’s not totally alarming to see it used here. But given the isolating nature of this product, it strikes me as mildly concerning.

6. The barriers between you and your entertainment are gone. So too are the restrictions between you and your work or you and your social networks. You and your kids will look like you’re spying on them from prison, but all the other stuff those kids and real-life friends tend to get in the way of is right up in your business.

Takeaways

I could go on about the concerns and fears provoked by this presentation, but it really leaves me with more questions than I can answer without sounding even more like an angry old man yelling at clouds.

The question of What is reality going to be when this becomes popular? is a frightening one. The Apple Vision Pro just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing people will use for an hour at a time or with any recognizable sense of moderation. It seems like the kind of thing people will either get bored with after awhile or will fall headlong into until their relentless demands for something even more immersive send a future generation of the processing chips directly into their brains.

But that’s really the question, isn’t it? How popular will this get? Will a holy few dive down this rabbit hole while the rest of us roll our eyes and return to our phones? Or will this catch on and spread so wildly that the goggles, like their smartphone ancestors, become affordable on a popular level because of the ease with which they help redirect our money to those who least need it?

I don’t know. But I do know this: of all the roads this innovation might lead down, I don’t see a single destination that looks all too bright. To see that, I’d need a much more powerful set of goggles.