A Few Thoughts on Apple Vision Pro (AVP)
The embargo on AVP media hands-on reviews was lifted today. Scott Stein from CNET just published an excellent review written inside the AVP. While I await my turn, I have a few quick thoughts triggered by it.
An emerging technology and novel product needs a carefully designed introduction
While some criticized Apple’s controlled demo and launch, it is usually very helpful for mass consumer products that integrate numerous emerging technologies and make design trade-offs. Managing expectations is crucial to avoid early disappointment, especially for products that entered the introduction stage. But be sure not to do tricks like these.
User experience is the crowning glory of consumer electronics. While Apple continues to experiment with new paradigms that aim to minimize the user learning curve, a guided demo allows testers to focus on AVP’s best features, fostering a positive first impression. This influences human psychology and has been proven effective in triggering interest and sometimes driving purchases.
Product success can be predicted by the toothbrush theory
One of the critical metrics for measuring the success of consumer products is usage frequency. The more a product is used, the higher the user loyalty, satisfaction, and lifetime value (LTV). When I worked at Google, we had a guiding question to ask before launching a product:
“Would users use it like their toothbrushes (at least twice a day)?”
This toothbrush theory helped us navigate many different trade-off decisions.
The toothbrush use cases for consumer VR are things like work, fitness, gaming, and entertainment. Almost all VR devices offer these applications, but are they good enough to keep users coming back? Many reported that their devices were just collecting dust.
I’ve seen launches of devices focused on replacing or supplementing our daily work gear, such as laptops and monitors. In trying them out, I was quickly disappointed by issues like occlusion in the mixed reality or the poor ergonomics. The interoperability of different apps and platforms creates additional barriers too. So it’s great that Apple already has applications that users are familiar with, and AVP users can easily switch between devices if they own other Apple products.
Don’t mess up with eyes
Scott rightly said:
“What really makes the Vision Pro seem futuristic isn’t the display or the apps, it’s the input. Eyes and hands.”
I completely agree. Apple deserves applause for its bold move to introduce a novel (yet familiar) interaction paradigm combining eye and hand tracking, which forms a critical part of spatial computing.
It’s novel because AVP pioneers its introduction as a primary interactive approach, although lacking controllers hence haptics is a serious missing that needs to be addressed one way or another. But such interaction is not unfamiliar because it is part of our everyday lives in the non-virtual world. Think of reaching out to grab your water bottle after your eyes locate it or your index finger pressing a button on your iPad screen right after your eyes find it.
But it’s more than that. Eyes are a bridge between one’s virtual and non-virtual worlds. While the optics in the non-virtual world is largely not a concern, it is in the virtual world. The display challenges like FOV (field of view), resolution, distortion, and VAC (vergence accommodation conflict) are extremely hard problems that require significant trade-offs if we’d like to address one over another/others. Think about Butterscotch Varifocal and Flamera.
Even if these challenges are solved, they only work for users without eye issues like myopia (unless you order prescribed lenses), hyperopia, amblyopia (lazy eye), or dry eye. If you have gone through the AVP order process, you should have noticed that Zeiss can’t make lenses for those whose prescription has prism numbers that correct problems with eye alignment. So it’s not too hard to understand that making a consumer-level VR/AR device work for millions of users is a Hercules mission.
EyeSight is probably the most confounding feature for me. One of my favorite technology experts Karl Guttag had an analysis that points to this battle between design vs. functionality. . As expected, it’s a mixed-bag feature now associated with words like “uncanny” and “wired”.
AI will be ubiquitous to enable hardware including VR/AR/XR.
Tech futurist Cathy Hackl predicted that
“the future of tech is wearable, AI-powered, and spatially aware”.
I was excited by the convergence between AI and XR visioned by Meta which was demoed by Ray-ban smart glasses. AVP has Siri (I rarely use it on my Apple products) that can be a virtual assistant as well as a part of the interaction paradigm combined with eyes and hands.
AVP and VisionOS as a platform will expect more AI integration at different levels of the tech stack. Generative AI, while useful in gaming and entertainment, will also find its way into spatial computing. All of these visions and developments are very exciting. All we need are endurance, morality, and money.