3 reasons Apple Vision Pro is going to change everything

3 reasons Apple Vision Pro is going to change everything

June 5, 2023, will go down as the day Apple started something big. It's different from what the world expected. It's more expensive, it's more ambitious, and it has a much longer runway.

But while the Apple Vision Pro looks like a set of magic ski goggles, it's actually a computing platform that might eventually take over a lot of what we do today on smartphones, tablets, and computers. That's because Apple made augmented reality the core of the product, rather than virtual reality.

At WWDC 2023, when Tim Cook announced that the Vision Pro was an AR headset rather than the expected VR headset, the live audience of developers and journalists at Apple Park fell into a shocked silence -- and for good reason.

Here are my first impressions from on the ground at the event.

AR is a much bigger deal than VR

Most of the expectations swirling around the launch of an Apple headset centered around it being a VR device with a touch of AR thrown in. The reality was exactly the opposite: Vision Pro is an AR headset that includes some VR-like capabilities.

VR is naturally constrained by the fact that you are largely cut off from the world around you when you put a VR headset on. That makes for immersive experiences that can transport you to another place, but it also limits the amount of time most people will spend in a headset to 30 minutes or less per day.

On the other hand, AR glasses could shrink considerably over the next decade and become a digital display that is overlaid on top of the majority of your daily experiences.

Tim Cook called it "the first Apple product you look through, and not at."

It unites the digital world and the real world

Vision Pro is actually a mixed-reality headset. It combines AR and VR. But since the world already barely understands AR and VR -- even though we've been talking about them for over a decade -- it's helpful that Apple didn't confuse people by introducing a whole new term.

Instead, Apple talked about new ways that Vision Pro can unite the online world, where so many of us now spend so much of our time, with our everyday life. Cook characterized it as "seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world."

Again, because AR overlays digital information on top of the real world, that opens up entire categories of content and experiences where developers can build on existing activities, professions, hobbies, and passions rather than having to digitally recreate them in VR.

"Vision Pro blends digital content into the space around us," Cook summed up.