Just when we thought we had seen it all, Apple brings Vision Pro!  A future shifting from personal and mobile computing to a spatial one. Here are some of my thoughts from the WWDC conference.

1. Dropping of the prefix ‘I’ : Several early iterations of Apple products launched in the past had an “I” attached to it with the Mac, Phone and Pods. A naming convention that was supposed to stand for the internet. But didn’t “I” connote more? Could ‘I’ be the ‘individual’ as in ‘this is mine’? Today, products are shifting from being less about me to more about us. How can we make a difference as communities?

2. Addressing Isolation: ‘Eyesight’ is a feature aimed at building connection and tapping into emotion. When Vision Pro displays your eyes in your surroundings, it engages you with that person.There is an effort with this technology to offer a wholesome feeling rather than emptiness. An attempt to create a wonderful interplay between privacy and shared experiences. It is said, “If you are lonely when you are alone, it means you are in bad company”. True?

3. Spirituality: It can feel immersive by projecting large ‘Environments’ that clone a real-life scale in your physical space. Vision Pro creates calmness when it transports you spatially to ‘karmic’ spaces. You could wander around the Himalayas in your New York living room? It can be a potent virtual world with the ability to create mindfulness. A palliative tool for mental health?

4. Sensorial: Today’s world is replete with augmented reality experiences that are visual, auditory, and tactile. The logical next step is to embellish this offering or product with olfactory and gustatory augmented reality. For instance, what does this mean for the beauty industry? Will we soon sample fragrances and various oils through Vision Pro? Or for that matter a more immersive experience in the restaurant business? We’ve seen early traces of Meta Cookie mimicking taste. In a future world with a potpourri of all senses, will we sample restaurant menus before we place our online order?

I am fascinated by Vision Pro’s tipping point on technology and its significant relationship with being human. Am I hallucinating, or is it the future?