Amber Neely
In a new interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook was pictured for the first time wearing the Apple Vision Pro, and discussed the inevitable road to the headset.
The Apple Vision Pro is set to start arriving to early adopters on February 2, after years of rumors about its arrival. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Cook discusses what it took to make Apple's spatial computing headset.
According to Tim Cook, the first time he experienced the Apple Vision Pro was more than five years ago. The prototype he tried, however, was not the sleek mask we've come to know today. Instead, it was a crude, large box with multiple screens and cameras and wires that stuck out everywere.
"You weren't really wearing it at that time," he tells the interviewer. "It wasn't wearable by any means of the imagination."
However, that first experience took Tim Cook and put him on the moon — and that's when he knew.
"I've known for years we would get here," Cook said. "I didn't know when, but I knew that we would arrive here."
The interview also examines other people's experiences with the Apple Vision Pro. Director James Cameron called his experience "religious." Technology Writer Om Malik said it was "amazing and incredible."
Even Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak, points out how people's first universal experience with the headset is awe.
"You know, one of our most common reactions we love is people go, 'Hold on, I just need a minute. I need to process what just happened,'" he told the interviewer. "How cool is that? How often do people have a product experience where they're left speechless, right?"
Apple is obviously excited about its product. Not everybody is.
"I'm sure the technology is terrific. I still think and hope it fails," one Silicon Valley investor told Vanity Fair. "Apple feels more and more like a tech fentanyl dealer that poses as a rehab provider."
Cook wraps the interview by talking about how creating future-changing technology is less about plans and more about exploration.
"What we do is we get really excited about something and then we start pulling the string and see where it takes us," Cook said. "And yes, we've got things on the road maps and so forth, and yes, we have a definitive point of view. But a lot of it is also the exploration and figuring out."
"Sometimes the dots connect. And they lead you to some place that you didn't expect."
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34 Comments
The main issue I see is the isolation, from watching a movie alone to the inability to work on a joint project. I have to believe the 'loneliness' aspect will be addressed. I assume Apple plans to include a collaborative environment in future updates.
Holy crud, the tech fentanyl quote investor should gtfo of the business entirely.
It amazes me the lengths these guys will go to build a fantasy around something in hopes that people believe they are committed to it. In truth Apple will drop Vision Pro entirely if it doesn't sell well enough. Presale data isn't good, and Tim's continued experiment to see how much he can convince people to pay for something is starting to unravel. Apple simply does not do low volume products. They either cancel them entirely, or they let them die on the vine for ages while the 8 customers who bought into the idea are left hanging in the wind. Given the general feeling toward VR headsets on the market, the presale numbers most likely reflect a huge chunk of the people even interested in buying a Vision Pro, leaving day to day sales from here out to be scarce. If Apple can't even sell half a million units in the first year, their interest in the category will quickly diminish. Everyone assumes that version 2 is a given, but that's a bad assumption. Apple does not throw good money after bad, and they've already spent exorbitant amounts of money on the development of something that has amounted to an iPad for your face that costs $3,500, and requires wearing an objectionable piece hardware that is heavy, uncomfortable for any length time, nausea-inducing for most people, tethered to the wall, and completely world-isolating. What other Apple product even comes close to having that many negative tradeoffs? There is almost nothing good that you can say about this product that isn't outweighed but its downsides.
Apple has said that AR is the future, and I agree. So they go and build a VR headset, something no one anywhere thinks is the future, and try to do AR with it.
AR is all about the view finder. We already have the ability in software to do amazing things with AR, but they're nothing more than a tech demo until we get the view finder right. And a VR headset is not it. No more closer than holding an iPhone up to your face and looking through the lens of the camera. Apple knows this, and knows that glasses are the wearable of the future, and that everyday glasses that can be powered by iPhone to project AR into your world are a game changer. They also know that the technology to do this well is still several years away, and Tim Cook knows he won't be CEO by the time that comes around. He wanted spatial computing to be part of his legacy so badly that he pushed a product onto market years before it was ready, bolstered by his successes with overcharging customers in the last several years. Things like raising the price of products every time a new feature is added is a Tim Cook invention that customers have rewarded him for, and it has led to some poor decisions...Vision Pro's release being the pinnacle.