Unleash your virtual potential with Apple’s Vision Pro: Experience the Metaverse like never before!

Apple has done it again. The $3,500 Vision Pro headset takes all the major computing trends of the last two decades, places them around the eyes in a way that looks stylish and feels comfortable, and offers an intuitive interface that’s new and intimate.

Following AppleOn Monday, I was among the first to receive a 30-minute private demo of Vision Pro and had a chance to try out a variety of features, including a “killer app” not mentioned in Tim’s CEO keynote speech Cook seen by millions of people online.

Switching between apps using your device couldn’t be more intuitive thanks to eye and hand tracking. Click a button with your right hand and an iPhone-like home screen appears. Take a look at a photo or icon, then pinch your fingers to “double click”. You can scroll through photos with a swipe gesture or zoom in as if a giant smartphone were projected in front of your face.

The device can easily switch between virtual reality, in which the wearer is fully immersed in a digital world, and ‘augmented reality’, which overlays images onto the real environment. An Apple Watch-like face lets you manually fade between these two modes or, in some settings, the effect is automatic: if a person is standing next to you, just look at them and their image will slowly appear and become clearer over time.

Among the features that Apple couldn’t show in its presentation were the photos and 3D videos that the headset could capture. In my private demo, I could sit around a fire with friends or sit at the dinner table while the kids blew out their birthday candles to eerie depth.

Gene Munster, portfolio manager at Deepwater Asset Management, said this part of the demo blew him away. “3D memories will change the way we remember things,” he said. “I don’t want to shoot a video of a birthday party unless that’s the case.”

Apple has heralded a “new era” in “spatial computing,” suggesting that Vision Pro could do for AR/VR what the iPhone did to revolutionize mobile computing.

Wall Street, however, shrugged. Shares of Apple fell less than 1% after the headset was unveiled with its steep price tag likely making it unaffordable for many people. However, industry insiders were surprised by the sophistication of the headphones.

“All the other virtual reality companies are in big trouble because Apple raised the bar,” said Rony Abovitz, founder and former head of Magic Leap, a maker of augmented reality glasses. “They just threw down a gauntlet for companies like HTC, Samsung and Meta to chase. They overcame them all in one fell swoop.”

A few days before the demo, I attended AWE, a major mixed reality conference in Santa Clara, where startups showcased all kinds of cutting-edge technology that pointed to a post-smartphone future. But nothing was a must, few devices were consumer oriented and they weren’t necessarily cheaper.

The Magic Leap 2 goggles cost $3,200, while the high-end earphones from Finnish group Varjo cost $6,500. I came away thinking this type of technology had a future, but a distant one. The Apple event changed that.

Apple managed to demonstrate a vision of AR/VR that felt like the here and now, in stark contrast to the avatar-filled “metaverse” envisioned by head of Meta Mark Zuckerberg.

“For many, the metaverse concept sounds and feels too far away, leading to a lack of belief as to when it will ever materialize,” said Sam Cole, CEO of immersive fitness app FitXR. “What we saw today seemed natural, obvious, accessible.”

Deepwater Asset Management’s Munster said he was initially “shocked” by the $3,500 price tag and wrote a note to clients emphasizing his disappointment. After using it, he admitted that his perspective of him had “totally” changed. “I think it’s priced right,” he said.

Analysts pointed out that the headset felt “familiar”. The design of the device has elements of the Apple Watch headphones and AirPods Max, while the visionOS software resembles that of the iPhone and iPad. It features “Apple silicon” chips, further underlining how Apple’s drive to bring the design and manufacturing of much of its components in-house gives it another edge over its competitors.

“The thing that immediately grabbed me was that anyone who has used an Apple product will be instantly familiar with the device,” said Ben Wood, an analyst at CCS Insight.

As impressive as it is, however, it’s hard to argue that any consumer “needs” this device. It was fun to watch movies, view photos, and take a call, and I was amazed at how clear and comfortable it was to just read a PDF document. But Apple still has some big challenges getting a mainstream audience to invest.

Staging thousands of demos for prospective consumers in Apple stores around the world will prove challenging. But I couldn’t find anyone who was disappointed after trying it. Most testers were wildly enthusiastic.

“I saw the presentation and thought it was good, but I thought when we tried it, we would see the flaws,” said Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst at IDC. “But my demo was absolutely perfect. Everything worked, as if the product was ready to hit the stores. I was really impressed.

Jeronimo added that after 20 minutes he was ready to take it off. Despite Apple’s “EyeSight” technology — which shows the wearer’s eyes to others in real life so the device doesn’t look antisocial — he wasn’t sure he would wear it in a social setting.

“Even though the battery lasted all day, I don’t see people interacting with others in their office, with a screen in front of their eyes,” he said.

Some analysts argued that Vision Pro didn’t truly offer AR because, unlike Magic Leap, for example, the Apple device was immersive: everything was seen through the cameras, even the room it was in, instead of digital images superimposed on a real-worldview.

But the semantics of this distinction are unlikely to matter. Video feed latency is just 12 milliseconds, eight times faster than the blink of an eye, and your brain will have a hard time discerning the difference between the screen inside the headphones and its surroundings.

During my demo, I had a conversation with two Apple employees in the same room and a third appeared in a floating window via a FaceTime call. He was wearing the Vision Pro, but Apple made it invisible so I could see his whole face. Apple calls him a “character,” which sounds cartoonish, but even when I asked her to roll her eyes back and forth or make her laugh, her reactions were realistic.

Much to my embarrassment, I even screamed as a dinosaur emerged from the wall in the demo room, acknowledged my presence, and tried to bite my hand. I was told it had been happening all day.

Apple has also developed proprietary cameras to capture 3D video of sports games and events like a studio concert, allowing wearers to feel as though the action is directly in front of them. It was quite impressive to wonder if Ticketmaster was about to be discontinued.

The disappointment that the headset wouldn’t go on sale until early next year was palpable. Akash Nigam, CEO of Genies, an avatar tools company, said he was surprised that Apple made little to no attempt to gear the device towards Gen Z consumers. For example, there was nothing on social media or on dating apps.

But millions of developers now have months to create content. And once they do, Vision Pro’s potential could emerge in ways that even Apple doesn’t understand.