After waiting 30 years for the Apple Vision Pro, I finally got one
When I was around fourteen years old I read a book called Snowcrash that honestly changed my life. Yes, I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but it really did rock my world. Snowcrash introduced me to the concept of the Metaverse (fun fact — it was actually the book that coined the term) and I thought — in the next few years this is going to become a reality.
Fast forward almost thirty years later and we’re finally getting there, but holy moly did it take a lot longer than I was expecting. After I read Snowcrash I tried to do everything I possibly could to experience the Metaverse, no matter how crude it might have been at the time.
I started with the Oculus DK2 in 2014, remember this thing?
It was big, heavy, and required a decked out gaming PC to run but back then, ten years ago, I was giving people who came over to my tiny apartment their first VR experience.
As a lifelong Apple user I knew that if anyone was going to really do it right, it was Apple, and when the Oculus Rift came out two years later I thought — Apple can’t be far behind.
I kept buying every Oculus product that came out, and while I really enjoyed them, none became a device I used daily, they were more of a novelty and a glimpse into the future. What I saw as the main limitation was the “windowpane effect” that all Oculus products have even today. These tiny black dots that, sure, got smaller over time, broke the realism of the experience and always made your phone and computer screen look incredibly crisp in comparison.
At the same time, I was also looking at the progression of AR with solutions like the Hololense and Magic Leap and was starting to think that AR would likely beat VR to the punch when it came to consumer adoption. It really felt like Magic Leap was on the right track, they had built an all star team, had some pretty stellar demos, but they just weren’t able to close the gap.
What I think both Oculus and Magic Leap proved is that making a consumer VR or AR product was almost impossible given the current constraints in both technology and the funding needed to really do it right. At the same time, I knew this was inevitable, there was no way we were going to be using physical screens for another 30-years. I gave a talk at TedX in Rome about a world where screen no longer existed and commerce would take place in AR and VR.
After I gave this talk so many people asking me the burning question I had been asking myself all these years — when will this actually become a reality. I had the same answer I always did — when Apple does it.
The day that Apple announced the Vision Pro was a bit surreal for me, I was incredibly excited, but at the same time I also felt shocked that it took this long. And up until this weekend, as I’ve told so many people who laugh a bit when I say it — I feel like we’ve all been living in the past. But this weekend, my world changed — I picked up my Apple Vision Pro from the Apple store and just like that, I was living in the future.
As you can probably imagine, the device has been pretty much glued to my face since the moment I got it. I have so many thoughts to share, and in all honesty, when I first put it on at the Apple store I got a little teary eyed, it finally happened — Apple did it.
While I’m going to save my full initial review of the Apple Vision Pro for another article, what I can say is that what Apple has done, again, is truly transformational, and like the iPhone, it’s going to change all of our lives.
I will remember this weekend for the rest of my life, and I think as more and more people slowly but surely onboard into this entirely new ecosystem, they’ll have a similar experience. And while the Apple Vision Pro might not be for you, spatial reality is for everyone, these are still the early days but the world is changing and those pesky screens, they’re finally going away.
