Apple Vision Pro launched at WWDC over a week ago and they showed a lot of clips of normal people wearing it doing (relatively) normal things, like cooking, watching movies, even working at the office.
One clip that really intrigued me was the one where a father was recording his kids in 3D through his Vision Pro. To me, this seemed off at first since to other people, it may not look like you’re present in the moment. But after thinking about it for a while, isn’t it the same as just wearing sunglasses, if not better? Sunglasses block your eyes, but Vision Pro would show your eyes to the outside world.
So I guess the question is, will Apple Vision Pro and subsequent products become widely socially acceptable one day?
So I was going to come in and give you a big “hell no”, but since you mention subsequent products, I have to respond with more nuance. In my opinion, apple hasn’t shown anything compelling enough to make any significant inroads, especially at the current price point.
BUT.
They did create a device that will allow people to start creating applications and experiences that will translate well when AR glasses are finally possible to produce. There is a potential first mover advantage given that apple will have a set of best practices and user feedback on everything that gets developed for the vision pro, and an ecosystem that may translate well to the first real AR devices. Having an actual all-day wearable AR device would be a real game changer that will ABSOLUTELY get widespread adoption.
The risk for apple is that the first (or more likely first several) generation(s) of AR glasses are not anywhere as capable from a technology perspective as the vision pro. For instance, the resolution maybe be substantially lower, or the FOV smaller, or the compute way less powerful because of the form factor. So the learnings may only be generally applicable from the vision pro, and all of the apps may need significant revisions to function well on their AR device.