The last thing I want to do as a researcher and critic of tech companies and the futures that they sell us is to get into the game of speculating and predicting the future myself. It’s always a fool’s errand, Jake, don’t do it! Still, it was hard to not laugh at Apple’s launch of the Vision Pro (bad name), their augmented reality (more on that in a sec) headset set to release “early next year” at the truly breathtaking price of $3500 USD (that’s about $4700 CAD, friends — it will be US-only at first, so don’t worry).
As many have pointed out, Apple’s brand power is unmatched, and almost every decision they make, however implausible at first, soon enough becomes the norm. They charged over $1000 for a phone, some people balked, but then everyone was forced to adapt. They removed the headphone jack, some people balked, but then everyone was forced to adapt, while the fanboys, as ever, bought in immediately. Very, very few companies have that kind of intense and blind loyalty.
That’s why this reveal has been highly anticipated — as Meta and others have flailed in their attempts to bring about the metaverse or to convince a skeptical public that it’s worth caring about, all eyes turned to Apple. If anyone can make this happen for real, it will be them.
Of course, Apple’s positioning here is very deliberate, pointedly avoiding the word “metaverse” or even “virtual reality,” instead focusing on augmented reality, a decidedly more realistic idea about what is actually possible for technology of this calibre. Unlike clunky images of Facebook’s Horizon Worlds, Apple’s presentation largely highlights flat-looking screen-based images, recalling, perhaps, Minority Report. Still, like Facebook/Meta, it also seems primarily intended for use in work settings, as a new way to look at emails — it’s a big deal, I guess, that you can migrate your Mac desktop to the Vision Pro.
“With Vision Pro, you’re no longer limited by a display,” Tim Cook said, referring to the experience as a form of “spatial computing.” This extends to any gaming or movie-watching you want to do (Disney+ will be available at launch, of course), as there’s no VR here but instead a kind of simpler projection. Anyway, did I mention that it’s going to cost $3500?
That price point clearly indicates that, for now, it is not aimed at so-called regular consumers, at least until something below the Pro level is available. It is intended to kickstart the hype cycle and bring in other partners, all in an effort to build general interest in the goggles. I can’t help but wonder, though, if Apple has finally tackled a technology that even they cannot translate into mainstream success.
Apple’s shares are at an all-time high, and they will probably go even higher as this news trickles out to shareholders. Even if the Vision Pro is more of a niche specialty high-end product, if it sells well enough it will still be considered a success, especially by industry standards when it comes to VR or AR products. Still, it’s nevertheless true that this tech has not caught on in a meaningful way for a reason.
Sure, the promises have always been too big while the tech struggles to match up. But there is real uncertainty over whether normal people even want something like this. On the one hand, it makes sense for Apple to prioritize smaller-scale features for the home and workplace, rather than fall into the metaverse trap. On the other hand, especially at $3500, it’s hard to imagine even these low-level experiences catching on in a way that converts enough people to spend their savings on what is, in essence, a fancy pair of ski goggles that lets you read your emails in 3D. What, exactly, are we doing here?
Never count out the Apple fanboys. One look at the Twitter replies to the announcement and you see how many obsessives are yelling about how the future has finally arrived. Ed Zitron seems to think the goggles look cool for some reason, but he’s right to point out that this reframing to “spatial computing” is likely to become the new focus for venture capital in the next few months. These cycles have become even shorter than ever, moving from NFTs to crypto to the metaverse to generative AI to this, with a number of others in between, because tech stocks are all over the place and no one really knows what the future is supposed to be. Spatial computing isn’t really a new idea at all, as it emerged in the early 2000s, and in its best versions reflects the goals of computer-aided design (it might be worth pointing out here that, apparently, many folks with certain eye prescriptions will not be able to use the device).
As tech reporter Mike Isaac argues, and I think he’s right, Apple seems to be planning to demonstrate itself as industry leader with this $3500 (by the way, if you wear glasses, you’ll need to purchase corrective lenses to use it, too) high-end product and then let that reputation stand as the tech evolves and prices can go down. The problem, as he puts it, is that there is no “killer app” so far to suggest this thing is actually worth owning, and moreover, there’s no proof of consumer demand in the first place, as far as I can tell. Or there’s one thing that could do it, but Apple is certainly not going to pivot their business on the future of pornography.
Traditionally, the barriers to VR/AR popularity have been economic, technological, and psychological. The headsets are usually uncomfortable and the experience can become overwhelming or nauseating after extended periods of time. They cost a lot. And, again, statistics on consumer demand are sketchy at best. Even if Apple is able to solve some or all of the technological problems, they certainly have upped the economic ante, and provided no clear path to addressing the psychological roadblocks.
This also helps to further explain how the launch of the Vision Pro seems aimed more at business and enterprise: the “vision” of AR and/or spatial computing is firmly within capitalist ideas about the always-on future of work. As Shane Denson tweeted out an excerpt from a 2020 article referring to the Batman VR game, where you scan crime scenes and databases, “The sheer banality…seems to foreshadow the more likely, and less spectacular, future of AR/VR as a ‘productivity’ application, allowing us to access our virtual workspaces from home—and thus chaining us to our desks no matter where we may go.”
The point is, regardless of what you think about how the goggles look or if you think it looks useful in some way, the strategic reorientation on spatial computing is just the latest trick in corporate financial arbitrage, a way to move money around and shore up market confidence amid an era of growing tech uncertainty, pushback, and antitrust interest. Make no mistake that Apple, as an entity, is not interested as such in innovation or creativity. Launching a product at such a price point is not even a bullish move, it is a nihilistic promise of capitalist tech’s utter and total indifference to the consumer, otherwise known as the human being. You are nothing but a worker. Remember that.
Or: https://twitter.com/Dimosar/status/1665804644432396288?t=DQ7UltSdJmK13gPrKbfcQg&s=19.
Or: https://twitter.com/bcmerchant/status/1665803249360977922.
Ephemera
For The New York Times, Jason Farago goes in on Hannah Gadsby’s bizarre Pablo Picasso show at the Brooklyn Museum, a well-reasoned takedown of an ill-advised venture. Some choice quotes: “The trouble is obvious, and entirely symptomatic of our back-to-front digital lives: For this show the reactions came first, the objects reacted to second.” // “Not long ago, it would have been embarrassing for adults to admit that they found avant-garde painting too difficult and preferred the comforts of story time. What Gadsby did was give the audience permission — moral permission — to turn their backs on what challenged them, and to ennoble a preference for comfort and kitsch.” // “The function of a public museum (or at least it should be) is to present to all of us these women’s full aesthetic achievements; there is also room for story hour, in the children’s wing.”
Rebecca Jennings, always perceptive on digital culture, wrote in her Vox column about location sharing and other generation gap aspects of tracking technology. Is it care, is it control, is it something worse? The piece is a bit lacking when it comes to reckoning with the data extraction within surveillance and how that is being tied together with this idea of always broadcasting your existence via your blinking dot on a map. But also, are all you iPhone-havers using this Find My Friends feature to track where your friends are at all times??? One of the people interviewed says, “If the person only shares their location with you for [an hour], it’s definitely, like, a signal. You’re like, ‘Oh, are we not good enough friends for you to permanently share your location with me?’” — normal!
I’ll stop linking to new Citations Needed episodes when they stop putting out bangers, this time on AI hype and the disciplining of labour.
Song Recommendation: “Go” — Baby Rose