VR headset is there is a moment. And now that Apple is making one, these might even last for a while – assuming enough people actually want to wear them.
Apple has followed a news-filled week in virtual reality—Meta has new headphonesalso Lenovo—by launching its own mixed reality headset, Professional visionin its time WWDC keynotes Yesterday.
Nearly a decade after Google Glass was born being ridiculed non-stop online, Apple’s announcement raised a similar set of questions—such as “Why?” and “OK, really, but Why?” Apple’s aluminum goggles may look sophisticated, but the examples the company gives of the Vision Pro being used aren’t the kind of situations where facial computing would be practical or comfortable.
Apple falls into the same trap as Meta—encouraging people to wear VR headsets to business meeting—by showing how the Vision Pro headset can put the wearer front and center during a videoconference business call. Even if Apple captures the imagination of hustle culture and finds a user base willing to wear the $3,499 headset to facilitate columns in AR Excel, wearability will still be an issue. Apple hasn’t said how much the Vision Pro will weigh or its exact battery life (a few hours, maybe less), but we can tell from the videos and photos it has shared that the device is bulky. bulky and connected to an external battery pack.
“People’s tolerance for wearing something on their head for an extended period of time is limited,” said Leo Gebbie, VR analyst at CCS Insights. “If it’s something people are going to wear all day, it needs to be thin, light and comfortable. No one has really achieved that in the VR world yet.”
Apple’s headset, like others before it, is a mixed reality device, meaning it allows users to interact with virtual elements while still allowing some real world to flow through. That ability to pass through real-world video is what Apple focused on during the Vision Pro launch by positioning the device as something you can wear while walking around without constantly bumping into furniture. furniture, countertops, pets and children. But Apple’s AR vision is still packaged in a VR headset, a wraparound device that obscures your entire view.
This leads to the “head in the box” problem, says Tuong Nguyen, chief analytics officer at tech analytics firm Gartner. Something like Google Glass or Meta’s Facebook Sunglasses may not be as feature-rich as Apple’s Vision Pro, but at least you can see around their frame. Apple’s headphones have a physical knob that lets you adjust how much of the screen is occupied by digital elements, but you’re still relying on the screen to bring in real-world visuals.
“Video transmission is basically your head in a box,” says Nguyen.
Also, the monitors we use every day are not completely reliable. You may have come across a situation where you wanted to take a photo or video of something, so you launched the camera app on your phone, only to find the image stuttered or the app crashed. Now imagine that happening to your entire vision.
