iMarc

Three and a half months after the release of Apple Vision Pro, and I am finding it difficult to get on board with Apple’s vision for the future of computing. While admittedly I haven’t tried the Vision Pro due to it not being available in the UK, and I’m sure I would be momentarily wowed by the experience, I just can’t get excited about what I see as a deeply dystopian vision of the future.

Let’s start with the vision itself. We spend too much time on screens as it is. Endless doomscrolling and the inability to switch off are widely believed to be behind rising anxiety and depression. Apple, to their credit, has attempted to remedy this with features like Screen Time which allow limits to be put in place. The very concept of the Vision Pro goes against this progress. It’s a screen strapped to your face. Right now, the discomfort of a hot and heavy device acts as a deterrent against using it too much. My worry is that as technology progresses and much like the smartphone, the Apple Vision Pro will get lighter and more comfortable — more addictive. If the headset follows the path of the smartphone, then it will eventually be something we want to wear as much as possible. We live in a world of filter bubbles. If you use Twitter (sorry, X), then your view of reality can be vastly different from your next-door neighbour who also uses Twitter, due to the fact that you both like and follow totally different posts and sets of people. Smaller social networks don’t need an algorithm to do this as they will typically only attract people of a certain political leaning in the first place. The end result is the same. Filter bubbles are an obvious problem for social cohesion, and while they are not limited to social networks (hello Fox News), I can’t help thinking that when literally everything is viewed through a screen — yes, your entire reality — the problem will only get worse. If you’ve seen Black Mirror, then I don’t need to explain why, but let me anyway. Imagine an app for a future revision of Vision Pro (or its rivals) that can be worn all day. The app allows users to employ Twitter-style blocking, so the faces of people they would rather not see are blurred out. Could someone with right-wing views use an app to blur out TV screens showing CNN or the front page of the New York Times, allowing them to walk down the high street and not be bothered by reality, or what they consider dissenting opinions? In 2020, as California was struck by awful wildfires, people noticed something strange. Their smartphones were automatically adjusting the apocalyptical red-tinted sky to look more “normal.” The image of humans using VR goggles to deny climate change or insert virtual green spaces into an otherwise industrial wasteland is just terrifying. In short, I am deeply worried about a future in which our entire reality is seen through the filter of a screen. The Apple Vision Pro can’t do any of this right now, and I doubt Apple would ever allow it to. Yet as the Twitter/Musk debacle shows us, the people who run companies can change, and their policies with it. Not to mention that if the Apple Vision Pro were to be a success, then there would naturally be rival products released which may not be as restrictive.

All of what I’ve said so far is admittedly far-fetched, and perhaps assumes the worst of humanity. So let me focus on the Apple Vision Pro as the product it is today. Apart from being deeply antisocial, the main problem I see is that it is an iPad strapped to your face but priced as if it were a fully-featured MacBook strapped to your face. The iPad and tablets, in general, are great content consumption devices, but the limitations inherent in mobile operating systems make them poor substitutes for a laptop. Samsung and Apple have taken steps to address this, including making the iPad more like a laptop with the addition of support for trackpads, mice, and keyboards. Yet the apps themselves are more often than not baby versions of the same applications available for desktop operating systems, if an app is available at all. There are exceptions — Logic and Final Cut Pro. Overall, it seems a combination of iOS (sorry iPadOS) limitations, Apple’s greedy business practices, and the poor ergonomics of tablet devices has contributed to the iPad not taking off in a productivity context, outside some niche verticals. By designing the Apple Vision Pro’s software stack in the image of the iPad, the device is unfortunately severely limited. Had the device been based on macOS, with the ability to run Mac software, then it would be a completely different story. I understand that technical limitations likely prohibit this: the accuracy of Vision Pro’s gesture recognition simply isn’t good enough to allow Mac apps designed for use with a mouse to be comfortably driven. Which brings me to my final criticism. One of the most touted features of the Vision Pro is the ability to VNC into a desktop Mac and control it remotely. The fact that this was pushed as a feature is the most damning indictment of the Vision Pro’s capabilities as a computing device. A proper computing device worth its $3,500+ price tag wouldn’t need the ability to remotely connect into your other $2,000+ laptop — it would be as capable itself. On various forums I’ve seen happy Vision Pro customers tout the ability to work on a plane for hours on end with both their MacBook and Apple Vision Pro. Here we go again with the dystopian future: can someone not take a flight for a few hours without needing to be productive? For goodness’ sake, read a book, listen to a podcast, or just look out of the window!

So, while the nerd in me is ready to be wowed by the Apple Vision Pro, I find myself despairing as I think about a potential future where we are always plugged in, online, and unable to escape work. I can’t help but think this isn’t what technology was supposed to be about. I have to ask myself, would the figure from Apple’s famous 1984 commercial who throws a sledgehammer at the big screen be wearing an Apple Vision Pro, does the screen itself represent Apple latest Vision?