Just a few days away now from the Apple Vision Pro’s launch. In recent posts, I’ve commented on how critical Apple’s ecosystem is to the eventual success of AVP. The importance of having access inside your headset to your emails, your photos, your bookmarks, and your notifications — all the things which make your laptop or desktop computer *yours* — cannot be overstated. It removes a primary reason to take the headset off after all, which means you’ll spend more time in it, get more comfortable using it, be more likely to tell your friends about it, and so on.
That all said, however, for the long-run success of AVP, having the ecosystem is clearly not enough. After all, we could just use our phones, our laptops, or our desktop computers. While critical for AVP’s initial adoption, its ultimate success will be determined by whether your experience is richer, whether you can do things in your AVP that you cannot do on your other oft-used devices.
Now one could argue that the ability to layer window upon window, i.e. infinite desktop space, is one such distinguishing capability. No doubt that will be cool, but my own belief is that it will be the utilization of three dimensional space that will determine whether the Vision Pro becomes the hit Apple hopes. “Spatial” video will be one app that takes advantage of the AVP’s third dimension, but unless you have an iPhone 15 you’ll only be able to film such with your AVP, which means it won’t happen that often.
But certain AVP apps will be done in three dimensions, and it will be those I am most interested in out of the gate. Unfortunately, some will present in 3D when they really don’t need to. Tech for tech’s sake is rarely a winning strategy.
I forecast that some others, however, will be nothing short of remarkable — the kind that prompts you to say to another, “You’ve got to see this!” I saw a post today from John LePore which really captures the essence of what I’m describing. It’s a prototype, but you’ll readily see the sort of experience I’m excited to see inside the Apple Vision Pro.
Enjoy.