Vision Pro? Please, No.

It's time to start asking why

Image: Apple

Look at the image above. No, it’s not a snapshot from the latest Black Mirror series; it’s a screen grab from the marketing video that accompanied the launch of the Vision Pro headset. It features a man watching the delight of his children playing through the lens of a headset. 

If you’ve just asked yourself why, you’ve entered the exclusive club of people stopping to consider that fundamental question. Why do we need this? One thing is certain; the companies jumping on the headset grift shift sure as hell aren’t asking that question. If they are, they’re deluding themselves with whatever conclusion they’ve come to. 

I’ve been consumed with thoughts about Apple’s latest product release, most of them critical. 

I understand there’s some amazing use potential, like immersive gaming experiences or visualizing design concepts. Apple showed us a few of these (of course, all in a ‘faked’ demo, not in reality.) Apple also showed us some more pointless applications, like people trying to browse the web or do their fucking excel spreadsheets. Nobody wants to be pinching through their emails that have exploded to the size of their living room. We’ve agreed we need space from our emails, not to have them permanently popping up in front of our eyes. Why do we need this? 

Many praised Apple for going down this route. I read tweet after tweet along the lines of “see, this is why Meta failed. Apple is making the headset for specific application use, and not something you’d strap on all day.” Did they watch the same conference? One example showed a woman using the device in her home, watching a movie, while a friend sat right next to her without a headset. This is where they revealed that rather than take the damn thing off, the headset can just display your eyes so the person knows you're paying attention. How intimate. Why do we need this? 

The other example was even sadder. It showed a dad watching his kids. But rather than enjoy the moment, he was strapped into his headset. Sure, he was watching… until the next notification popped into his vision and distracted him from reality. You can only imagine the problems. “I don’t now how it happened. I was watching them and then… suddenly I was watching Disney+.” Why do we need this? 

And what about the work environment? There have been all sorts of discussions on the office of the future; open, airy, collaboration-friendly, designed to make us feel at home. The headset paints a far more dystopian outlook; rows of humans, alone, with something strapped to their heads. Why do we need this?

Apple can market the Vision Pro as a tool for collaboration and shared experiences all it wants, but let’s be clear: it will be a device you use by yourself in a safe space. Let’s also be clear: it’s a $3500 product designed to isolate you from your environment and strap a screen to your face, so you can make the tech companies more and more money. Meta may have jumped the gun with its attempts, but it had one thing right — this is the next playground to extract data and sell us ads. Over recent years, we’ve become worried about being on our phones too much. We’ve started to grasp the downsides. Apple even announced features to reduce the risk of nearsightedness developing in kids who stare at screens too much. They are fully aware of the problem. Yet, in the same breath, they’re also going to try normalizing wearing some high-spec ski goggles that literally put a screen in front of our eyes? Why do we need this? 

It’s a strange conundrum. There is no doubt that the engineering of the device is out of this world. To make a headset do these things is truly groundbreaking stuff. But at the same time, I hate everything about it and every image being used to promote it, and I’m horrified by the thought that this is a glimpse into our very future. It fills me with dread to see that technology continues driving us apart. With each invention that promises to “connect us,” we become more isolated, more divided and more alone. 

In his latest newsletter, Paris Marx hit the nail on the head;

Tim Cook and his fellow Apple executives clearly asked themselves whether they could create a headset as their latest hardware product, but don’t seem to have spent as much time considering whether they should. Apple was essential in popularizing the smartphone, and while smartphones are virtually indispensable today, they’re also an individualizing technology that has made us more connected to the internet, but arguably less connected to one another.

So, why do we need this? 

The truth is we don’t.

But the tech giants don’t care. They’ve seen the writing on the wall and know that old frontier of the internet and smartphones has a shelf life. They are going to pursue this new vision because, well, money. Lots of money. Tim Cook can call it “spatial computing” if he wants, but much like the Metaverse he tried so desperately to avoid mentioning, the outlook is the same — this is our future, whether we want it or not.