Apple unveiled its Vision Pro mixed reality mask on June 5 in California. Tim Cook spoke of a historic day and the future of computing with this mask, which contains the equivalent of a Mac computer and a giant screen. Inside, the space around you serves as a three-dimensional support for your application windows. So much for innovation, but many questions remain unanswered.
Is the Vision Pro really the anti-isolation mask that Apple is promising? So it’s true: when someone walks up to it, the user’s eyes and upper facial expression appear on the front of the mask, allowing for interaction. Likewise, the person presenting themselves is integrated into the wearer’s mask by one of the 12 cameras.
However, even Mark Zuckerberg remarked: “Every time Apple demonstrates, we see a single person on a sofa.” That’s right, except for this man, who appears to be working in a professional, open space. Still, since it’s a “pro” product in both name and price, it’s interesting to offer it primarily for home use. And then, at €4,500 per mask, likely price including VAT in France when it comes out, if we add another spouse and two children on the sofa, it doesn’t need one mask, but four. Suffice it to say the price of a beautiful car that makes it unaffordable for the general public.
Then we fall back on the problem that plagued 3D TVs with glasses: nobody really wants to watch a family movie, everyone is in their own bubble.
Progress for graphic designers?
As far as work is concerned, will anyone really be able to work with it? For office automation, yes, especially since Microsoft, with the Office suite, is already one of the publishers who will offer their software in a dedicated version for the mask. On the other hand, graphics, photo editing, anything that requires very high resolution today, offers greater comfort of work on 5K monitors or even more, flat screens, desktops, traditional. Despite its 23 million pixels, the Vision Pro shouldn’t represent any progress, at least in terms of display quality. Of course it will be tested.
What about people who wear glasses? This is one of the differences, especially with the Meta masks, which are four to seven times cheaper depending on the model: it is impossible to put on the Vision Pro while keeping the glasses. It will therefore be necessary to order special magneto-optical inserts, developed in collaboration between Apple and Zeiss: according to our colleague Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, this is expected to be an additional cost of $300-$600. We would then exceed €5,000 including taxes in France. In other words, it’s better to wear contact lenses.
External battery at the end of a cable
One more question: Apple made fun of the cord on the leg of its mask, that cord with an external battery on the end. Why did you make this choice? In the nearly eight years of development, this has apparently been one of the main topics of discussion internally, between those who advocate an integrated whole and those who prefer the external option.
By deporting this battery, the interest is not in increasing the weight of the mask. The exact weight remains a secret to this day. Apple is talking about just over a pound, probably between 500 and 600g. The battery drained Vision Pro would therefore weigh more than the Quest 3 but less than the Quest Pro offered by Meta. However, the weight is not the only criterion: the way it is distributed is at least as important.
After all, why haven’t we seen a picture of Tim Cook with his mask on his face? However, it has been a tradition at Apple since Steve Jobs with the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and then the iPad. Tim Cook continued this with the launch of the Apple Watch in 2014, which he proudly wore on his wrist.
In the case of the Vision Pro, it’s the first time an Apple CEO hasn’t brandished or carried a product that’s nonetheless presented as a revolutionary, certainly game-changing product. Tim Cook simply posed next to the mask for the “official” photo as if he was having a hard time accepting it, and no doubt there were a few other questions to be answered before it was first launched in the US by 2024.