Apple AR headset arrives
“Introducing a new era: spatial computing”
APPLE HAS INTRODUCED its long–anticipated Augmented Reality headset. Apple Vision Pro, available next year, will transform the way you interact with apps, experience movies and TV shows, connect via FaceTime, and view photos and media content.
Like Meta’s Quest Pro mixed-reality headset (but unlike other VR gear out there), Apple Vision Pro is designed to seamlessly blend digital content with the physical world around you. App windows float in front of you, casting shadows that dynamically match the actual light conditions in the room, creating scale and distance that make them feel physically there. You can reposition and resize them, and add as many more as you want, giving you infinite virtual screen space — and although the device has support for Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad, it can all be controlled using your eyes, hands, and voice.
Remember Tom Cruise in Minority Report manipulating virtual photos in the air? It’s like that, but without the control gauntlets (or controllers like the Meta Quest Pro’s) — using its built–in array of sensors, Vision Pro tracks your eye and hand movements, enabling you to browse through apps by looking at them, tap your fingers together to select, and flick your wrist to scroll, as well as speak to dictate. Apple calls this new way of working in a virtual space “spatial computing.”
You can choose to mask the room you’re in using immersive virtual Environments — and with a twist of the Digital Crown on top of the headset, you control how much or how little of your physical surroundings you can see. A feature called EyeSight helps you stay connected with people around you: If someone approaches you, even if you’re immersed in an Environment, you can see them and the front of the headset displays (a rendering of)
