As a rule of thumb, the tech from dystopian cyberpunk novels in the 80s and 90s manifests in our reality in one of two ways: either as horrifying weapons of police state oppression, or expensive novelty bullshit for rich people.
After more than a decade, it seems clear that virtual reality is one of the latter cases. What began with Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of headset startup Oculus in 2014—and its subsequently ill-advised VR pivot and rebranding as Meta—has led us to Apple’s announcement of its new Vision Pro, an augmented reality headset which is set to retail at a typically-Apple starting price of $3,500.
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Revealed at the very end of the company’s recent press conference, the VR/AR “spatial computing” device is less notable for its features and more for its shocking inability—or perhaps refusal—to read the room. Large companies like Meta have repeatedly failed to make a compelling use case for VR over the past decade, despite massive hardware budgets and hype campaigns singularly obsessed with the idea of building an online Metaverse that no one wants to live in.
It should have been a sobering moment for the tech industry: no matter how much they boost it, no normal human being wants to wear goofy-ass goggles so they can attend work meetings in Minecraft. And yet here we are, with another expensive device searching for a market that doesn’t exist, and maybe never will.
Vision Pro is technically impressive, as new Apple gadgets often tend to be. It uses iris-scanning for biometric authentication (which, like FaceID, thankfully stays encrypted on the device), eye-tracking tech that lets you interact with digital elements by looking at them, and a dial for seamlessly shifting between the physical and digital worlds—like a dimmer switch for reality. In terms of raw computing power and design it seems poised to easily blow competing headsets from Oculus and HTC out of the water. But to what end is the question that continues to elude everyone—perhaps even Apple.
The people I know who are excited about Vision Pro tend to be either consumer tech nerds, game developers, or creative hacker types eternally vibing at the Intersection of Art and Technology. Some of them are the same folks who got excited in 2012 during the launch of Google Glass, the search giant’s early and deeply embarrassing attempt at wearable augmented reality. Mercifully, Vision Pro’s paltry 2-hour battery life suggests there at least won’t be annoying tech bros walking around with dorky surveillance devices strapped to their heads.
So if not for awkwardly embodying legless avatars, what—and who—is Vision Pro for?
One of the only semi-compelling use cases is that the goggles could effectively eliminate the need for a large TV and surround sound system. Just strap the 4K micro-OLED of your Vision Pro to your face and you essentially have a larger-than-life virtual display embedded into your physical environment. But at a time when gigantic 4K TVs regularly dip into the sub-$400 price range, even this seems to put a $3,500 device firmly in the realm of novelty. Even then, it’s not clear that Apple has addressed one of the long-standing problems with headsets: that they cause motion sickness and disorientation for a huge number of people.
The earliest depictions of VR and AR devices in science fiction were exciting because they came at a time when the internet was untamed, and the line between the digital and physical worlds seemed to blur for the first time. In our current reality, that distinction has long since ceased to exist, and the internet is largely controlled by the whims of giant tech companies and their captive platforms. Apple’s new device might briefly revive interest in the idea, but after a decade of stagnation, it’s going to be hard-pressed to get anyone to strap in besides the profoundly wealthy and bored.
