Apple Vision Glasses will be irresistible

I’ve written about my long-term belief in spatial computing, and how visionOS 2 made small but notable progress. After using Apple Vision Pro for a year, the pieces recently clicked into place to me for what an AR glasses version of Apple Vision would look like, and how it will change us. We don’t have the technology, hardware-wise, to build this product today, or we’d already be wearing it. We need significant leaps in batteries, mobile silicon, and displays to make this product work. Leaps in AI assistance, cameras, and computer vision would make this product better, too. But the industry is hard at work at all of these problems. This product feels inevitable.

The basic pitch: augmented reality glasses with transparent lenses that can project more screen than you could ever own, wherever you are. The power of real software like iPad/Mac, an always-on intelligent assistant, POV photos/video/audio, and listening to audio without headphones. Control it like Apple Vision Pro (with your eyes, hands, and voice), optionally pairing accessories (primarily AirPods and any of stylus/keyboard/trackpad/mice work for faster/more precise inputs). It’s cellular (with an Apple-designed modem) and entirely wireless. It combines the ideas of ambient computing that Humane (RIP) and Meta Ray-Bans have begun, including a wearable assistant, POV photography, and ambient audio with everything you love about your current Apple products.

Even if the tech isn’t yet possible, the pitch seems too alluring to not build. It perfectly—and not coincidentally—combines Apple’s current focus areas: powerful & efficient Apple Silicon & modems, excellent displays, cameras, & audio, cross-platform software and services, and (Apple) intelligence. It will exemplify the use cases they love to talk about, of staying “connected,” productive, and entertained. On-the-go calls with 3D personas & POV video and unmissable notifications will keep you connected. The best workspace ever invented, with professional software, spread out with virtual content, and more accessories¹ for precise input than an iPad or laptop could dream of. And the best consumption platform, both for casual watching/listening and theater-like immersion, with support for new types of spatial/immersive content.

The road to glasses

Software-wise, Apple needs to figure out a few key problems. There needs to be a levity and speed to interactions visionOS has not yet mastered; I need to quickly get things out, share them, dismiss them as easily as pulling out my iPhone & setting it aside already is. While visionOS apps today are designed to follow iPad apps, I expect more phone-sized experiences to make sense on AR glasses; I don’t want my weather app to be the size of a TV.

We need lightweight sharing of virtual content in physical spaces. I already feel spoiled by watching TV on Apple Vision Pro, watching shows (namely Severance) at spectacular scale on it. While high-end surround sound systems are superior to Vision’s built-in speakers, high-end TVs are not superior to its display experience, and they’re locked in one place, making your home ugly when not used. If you & your housemates have Vision Glasses, the ability to put on a show in a physical place then share that object/experience with anyone else in the same room would be superior to owning a physical TV.

The virtual social experience is critical to get right, too. While they haven’t exited the uncanny valley entirely yet, Apple’s progress on virtual avatars in the last few months has made them far more realistic. (Unlike competitors.) Though it’s strange how virtual avatars don’t show your face/body as it currently is, calling friends with them is liberating in that you don’t have to worry about how you look minute-to-minute (and you can’t see that anyway). I can easily envision something between FaceTime and the ill-fated Walkie Talkie app on Apple Watch, where you pop in & out of little conversations with friends throughout the day, with clear spatialized audio and without the burden of holding your iPhone in front of you for FaceTime. You can switch on the POV video feed to show your surroundings anytime. I expect long-running chats with friends that blend texting & audio & 3D personas to become socially normal.

Right now, the bulkiness of Apple Vision Pro, its limited battery life, and the quality of the passthrough restrict how often I can wear it even around my apartment; it nearly mandates sitting/lying down to use. It’s frustratingly limited in a multitude of ways. But I frequently wish I could wear my Vision more often and take it on more trips. Today’s Mac Virtual Desktop, with a wrap-around desktop display anywhere, has already shown a virtual display can be superior to a beautiful Mac display. Not needing to put on AirPods at home, simply listening to music directed at my ears, is more comfortable. The focus areas for future iterations are clear.

From glasses onwards

Like AirPods before them, these glasses will cost a fortune to start, and be ridiculed. But they will become irresistible. All your screens, all your friends, all your content, and your intelligent assistant, with you all the time. Who needs an iPad, a desktop display, a TV when you can project a screen of any size anywhere? Foldable displays are just a step on the way to virtualizing all our screens.

Having screens of all sizes overlaid onto our fields of view will erode the concept of “screen time” into the modern way we live our lives, and evolve (read: erode) our social norms about distraction. The advent of wireless AirPods, more recently buoyed by their incredible abilities as hearing aids, has wholly normalized having conversations while wearing AirPods. Glasses you can see through will make everyone simultaneously present but constantly distracted.

The clearest warning sign, if subtle, of Apple’s complicity in our screen crimestime is the design of notifications on visionOS today: they appear in the center of your vision, utterly distracting you and requiring physically averting your gaze from the fresh temptation. For texts, a reminder notification two minutes later requires even more willpower to ignore. When I strap into my Vision, I reliably use it for hours longer than I planned; the lack of a clock or any grounding elements keep me immersed in content and services.

The built-in input mechanisms, especially for text entry, do not lend themselves to precision. They require buying and pairing dedicated accessories for doing anything more precise. (This currently includes the Mac as an accessory to provide advanced software.) Apple is happy to support those use cases, too, but the simplified versions of apps it chose to ship with Vision tell a story of designing for consumption first. And imprecise inputs can encourage using generative AI to fill in the blanks, or to generate custom software on-demand.

Apple will continue finding more ways for us to consume, and pay for the privilege. Nearly every service they already make, from Apple TV+, Music, Arcade, Fitness+ would be best experienced on these glasses. Watch, listen, work out wherever you are. The more hours you spend able to use software & services, the more you’re willing to pay. You can Apple Pay on Vision today with just your eyes. The device, software, and services keep you literally immersed in the brand, looking and buying.

TikTok’s ban couldn’t last in the U.S. because the systems of power have all found deep utility in it: a distracted populace will readily accept authoritarian creep, its constant shopping increases demand for consumer goods and therefore oil, the addicted watchers will keep buying iPhones with brighter displays and better cameras and fresh batteries to keep watching. Vision Glasses will allow us to watch more, film more, stay more “connected”—that nebulous term tech giants love to use with a positive connotation, when we all know the toll the double-edged sword of “staying connected“ has taken on our mental health, politics, and creative productivity.

I would buy Vision Glasses immediately if I could. The pitch is too good: an always-with you computer that’s better at each capability I care about? A breakthrough virtual workspace, the ultimate memex. A camera that can instantly capture what I’m looking at. An assistant that can literally see my worlds, virtual and physical. Immersive social hangouts with my friends that don’t require staring back at my iPhone’s FaceTime camera for hours. A stunning display for watching video and ambient speakers to listen to anything.

But I can’t shake the feeling that for every incredible use case and astonishing feat of human engineering that goes into this product, we societally won’t come out better on the other side. Would my life be better if I took more videos, talked to AI, could work anywhere, had a portable TV, was distracted by virtual content and audio wherever I was? None of those sound aspirational. I couldn’t have been more excited for Apple Watch, then for Apple Vision, to launch. Now I find myself in a deeply conflicted headspace about this product, years before it even comes to market, sensing the inevitability with which we are marching toward it.

Footnotes

1. The inability to handwrite/draw precisely is a key issue with Vision today, and the stylus is a key form factor advantage of tablets. I take notes by hand daily, in classes and work meetings, plus my own journaling, and there’s no combination of tablet stylus or physical notebook with Vision that works well today. But Apple can invent something better. Connecting Apple Pencil seamlessly, so I can handwrite precisely on a 2D plane in my physical space on a virtual Notes/Freeform/etc board, would make the expansive virtual workspace feel more malleable/flexible than any combination of desktop monitors, printed pages, and notebooks ever could. If we see windows able to snap to physical surfaces like walls and tables in a future version of visionOS, it will be a first step. ↩