Vision Pro: Eye Opener

IMAGINE BEING IN the 1980s when the first personal computers started appearing in India, or even a decade later, when large numbers were using it and the internet, too, became not just a word but something experienced. And yet, most still had no idea how the world was changing beyond shape. That is the present, too. Some months back, artificial intelligence became more than a buzzword with ChatGPT. This week, Apple unleashed yet another milestone as it announced the launch of the Vision Pro, a headset which might eventually make everything from computers to television redundant.

Apple calls it spatial computing and it is a radical renegotiation of how you experience the world and technology. Once donned, it covers the eyes like any other VR headset, except that you can also interact with your surroundings and that, too, can be manipulated. For instance, you could watch a movie as if there is a huge screen in your room. Or, you can just remove the room and place yourself in the middle of any other setting, say, a forest or a desert. Or, how about watching an IPL final sitting right next to the cricket field, with the players in 4K clarity nearby.

Consumption of entertainment is not the only thing the Vision Pro is targeting. The headset is a computer with Apple’s most advanced chips in them. You could just look at the screen of your MacBook and then it would transpose into the headset for you to continue doing your work. If you have an office video conference, there would be your team members inside the headset in real time. The headset can capture 3D photos and videos and you can experience the same moments again as if you are in the middle of it.

Marques Brownlee, one of the most popular technology YouTubers, called the Vision Pro almost telepathic in how it could follow vision to execute commands. It does this by advanced sensors tracking eye movements minutely. What also makes it astonishing is that there are no buttons. You do everything by looking, and then pinching and flicking fingers. To open an app, in the array before you in the headset, you look at the one you want and rub two fingers. A reviewer from the Wired wrote: “I first watched a clip of Avatar 2 in 3D. Then, in a teaser of a new dinosaur-focused series from director Jon Favreau, a dinosaur stomped dangerously close to where I stood in the room based on the positioning of my sensor-filled headset. A digital butterfly fluttered around the room before landing on my outstretched finger.”

The Vision Pro is being termed Apple’s biggest launch since the iPhone. Steve Jobs, the man who founded and later made it the most successful company in the world, might have an issue because the gadget has a battery attached on a wire, something that would have militated against his sense of aesthetics for a product. Brownlee points out that the battery only gives two hours currently, so how do you watch a three-hour movie without being plugged into an electric connection with a wire? When you do a video call with someone over the headset, it is not the other person you see but a 3D version that had been created and that takes away from the personal nature of such interactions. A New York Times reviewer wrote: “After three years of my being mostly isolated during the pandemic, Apple wanted me to engage with what was essentially a deepfake video of a real person. I could feel myself shutting down. My ‘ick’ sensation was probably what technologists have long described as uncanny valley, a feeling of unease when a human sees a machine creation that looks too human.”

This however is the first iteration. While other VR headsets have been around for a while, no one has brought in the level of technology that Apple has and it is not cheap. The headset will cost $3,499 or a little under `3 lakh when it comes into the market next year. That Apple is entering this field also means an entire ecosystem will flourish around it, making it evolve. There will be refinements year after year, making it more comfortable and portable. Competitors like Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet will bring in similar products. Work and play will be cooped up before your eyes at home and time will tell whether that is a good thing.

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