That pricey new Apple gadget must be really amazing … for something
Today 80% of the people walking down the street have their noses buried in the screen of a mobile telephone, so it’s no great leap to think that everyone we see in the neighborhood will have what appears to be an air fryer strapped to their domes.
This, of course is the Apple Vision Pro, a spectacular, mind-blowing piece of technology that does something or other.
It is cool, very cool, there’s no debating that. You can tell, because a military-sized brigade of tech writers have been posting stories lately, trying earnestly to find something about the Apple Vision Pro that they like. Mainly what they say is that the device is useless, but because it is an Apple brand product, it is useless in a far more sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing way than all the other virtual reality goggles that have come before it.
Oh excuse me, this is not “virtual reality,” this is “augmented reality.”
What’s that? What’s the difference?
Oh brother, I can tell you’re not a techie, because if you were you would understand that virtual reality is reality that is what we call virtual, while augmented reality is clearly augmented. Not virtual. And that’s how you tell the difference.
Here’s the thing though: I don’t want to come across in 20 years as one of those dopes who, for example, thought the iPhone was a pile of steaming hot roadkill that would never sell and wrote long, loud epistles of ridicule that today read like the medieval kings who doubted Copernicus.
Here’s the other thing though: The iPhone was built on the foundational practicality, viz, it made phone calls. So if all that other whiz-bang junk didn’t work, you could still call somebody on it.
It was a Swiss Army knife — you might never have use for the scissors, leather punch or toothpick, but you could still cut things with it.
The Vision Pro? I don’t know. It seems like it basically functions as a laptop held one inch from your eyeballs. But let’s hear what the experts have to say:
“When you get into the groove, using the Vision Pro can feel thrilling,” writes Chris Velazco for The Washington Post. “But when things don’t work the way you expect — which in my case was pretty often — you may wonder why you didn’t just use the gadgets you already have.”
I have too many gadgets already. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Apple takes the five same functions and presents them in gadgets that are all different, but not really. It is the Taco Bell of technology.
Apple won’t much be put off by sketchy reviews, of course. And heaven knows it’s not as bad as Tesla, where the words “self-driving and “fiery crash” keep popping up in the same sentence. The good thing, I guess, about augmented reality is that you can experiment around with it without dying.
Did I mention the Vision Pro costs $3,500? And if you want the handy carrying case to go with it, that’s an extra $200. That seems like a lot. Of Vision Pro’s merits, Velazco writes, “I hand-wash dishes a lot, and it’s supremely tedious. But it’s less so when I have a YouTube video floating above my sink, one that I can interact with without drenching my phone or touching my ear buds.”
Great, but for what the Vision Pro costs, you could buy something like nine dishwashers.
But the bigger obstacle is whether the public will ever adapt to wearing an appliance on their heads. To watch a movie, OK, fine. But all day long? And does this mean that we will no longer know what people look like?
It sure makes closing time at the bar a lot more like Russian roulette. You get back to your pad and discover that the whole night you’ve been hitting on Peppermint Patty.
Just hope she’s not driving a Tesla.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
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This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: The Apple Vision Pro is cool, but is it practical?
