This is going to be a historic WWDC conference. Let the show begin.” With that phrase, which reflects a certain degree of euphoria, Apple CEO Tim Cook began the presentation of a series of products on Monday that culminated in the Vision Pro, extended reality glasses that are intended to be a new revolution. To understand the concept of the device, it is necessary to imagine that, by putting on the visor, the reality that surrounds the user becomes an unlimited canvas on which to place virtual screens for leisure and work that are operated without controls, only with the eyes and with hand gestures.
It is a mix of augmented reality and virtual reality. What the user sees around him is what the 12 viewfinder cameras transmit to screens located in front of his eyes, which have an enormous definition, never seen before. But if someone looks at the Vision Pro from the front, he will be able to see the eyes of the wearer. It is a projection. Apple has taken great care not to understand it as an individual isolation product, but as an advanced communication device.
Microsoft has had its HoloLens glasses on the market for seven years, which cost $3,500 like Apple’s when sold in early 2024 in the United States, but has only sold about 300,000 units in that time. Why does Apple firmly believe that it will succeed where others have not?
The keys to the Vision Pro are very diverse and, no matter how outstanding the technical characteristics of the device are, nothing guarantees that it will be a product of mass adoption. In this case, Apple has been maturing the product for 15 years, when it registered the first patent. Today it has more than 5,000 granted patents. If you’ve waited that long and are selling it at that high price, it’s a sign that you expect its rate of adoption to be slow but steady.
One of its technological keys is the use of components of extreme quality. Each of the two state-of-the-art Micro LED screens for each eye has a resolution that allows you to see any detail of reality and virtuality with a formidable precision that far exceeds that of 4K televisions.
So far, several manufacturers that have tried to go down that route have run into the resolution problem. Screens without sufficient definition recreate a world that is perceived as fictitious. Apple has gone to great lengths to avoid that feeling.
The degree of public adoption for the Vision Pro is anyone’s guess. You can work with them in a different, very creative way, and in leisure it offers things like recreating a high-quality large movie screen – even in 3D – with surround sound in the middle of your living room. But it is a product for one person, while for many people watching television is an activity shared with others.
The Vision Pro is also a double-edged sword for software developers. If they spend time on a product with an uncertain future, it may be a mistake, but if Apple’s viewer prevails, being in the front row is an advantage.
The price will be a determining factor, at least at first. Apple has little room to make it cheaper. It has two state-of-the-art chips, twelve cameras, advanced sensors and sophisticated systems such as iris recognition to identify the user. The show has started.
