Since Apple presented, last Monday, its Apple Vision Pro, the new device from Cupertino it has given a lot, a lot to talk about. This is logical and expected, since rumors and leaks about Apple’s leap into the field of mixed reality and artificial reality have been in the air for years, its presentation at WWDC 2023 was an open secret for months, And despite all that noise, it’s fair to say that Apple has surprised us all with a truly revolutionary concept.
I myself recognized, after his presentation, that I already understood the reason why Tim Cook had shown so much enthusiasm (according to the leaks) by Apple Vision Pro, and it goes far beyond being a simple viewer. With their ability to choose names, those from Cupertino have invented the category of space computer, to refer to a device with a computational capacity comparable to that of a computer, but which is used as a wearable, something for which we will only need the viewer itself and its battery or a cable to connect it to the electrical network. And yes, I know that said like that it may seem that we are talking about a laptop, but of course, with the difference that the vast majority of its components are located in a viewfinder.
Although, of course, there are opinions for all tastes, in general the reception that the device itself has had, as a concept, has been tremendously positive, and the first testimonials of the people who have tried it affirm that it truly has the potential to mark a substantial change in the way we interact with products, services and content. Yes indeed, As we already expected, nobody, neither in the event nor afterwards, has remembered the Metaverse. And yes, I say that we expected it because at the beginning of last year we already knew that the Apple viewer would not be a door to Zuckerberg’s proposal, something that became even more clear when Tim Cook spoke again on the subject.
This premeditated omission, even though it was predictable, must not have been funny at Meta and, as we can read in Business Insider, Mark Zuckerberg would have been dispatched criticizing Apple Vision Pro in a meeting with Meta employees, in a line of argument in which, without a doubt, the most notable element is that he attributed, to the presentation of the device, that what had been seen during it, all the time, was people alone and seated.
Although this is not completely true, because at times we saw people in work environments and interacting with other peoplethe premise is understood, and it is that it states that Apple Vision Pro is a device oriented to many individual activities, compared to the Metaverse proposal, which basically consists of a 100% social environment, in which we will always be interacting with other users of the same.
As a theoretical premise it’s fine, but let’s remember that Meta itself defined the Metaverse as a sad and empty place, which suggests that, at least in the current state of technology, a proposal in which individual activities prevail may have a much better fit than Zuckerberg’s. And regarding the fact that many of the activities are carried out sitting down… I am shocked, coming from the head of the company who took a year to announce that he was adding legs to the avatars, and to make matters worse, it wasn’t really true.
As I was saying before, the Metaverse is an open wound for Meta and for Mark Zuckerberg, and that Apple decides to ignore this space in its long-awaited debut in the world of virtual reality and augmented reality, can be interpreted as a good handful of salt. However, I am very afraid that the words of the founder of the social network attack, even unintentionally, more his failed project than Apple’s augmented reality viewer. Perhaps, in a few years, and probably after being reformulated, the Metaverse or an evolution of it will become something successful. But, at least for now, nothing seems to have changed in a bet that cost the company almost 20% of its value.
