One of the most brilliant engineers who has conceived many of the uses we put to computing, Alan Kay, is the author of one of the most used inspirational phrases in technology: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it. ”. The group of geniuses he was a part of, the Xerox PARC Lab, invented the graphical user interface, the mouse, cut/copy-paste, Internet databases, window overlays, and more technical advances like object-directed programming. They were able to look ahead and invent what did not exist. Is the future in extended reality like the one Apple is proposing with its Vision Pro headset, unveiled on Monday?
Kay explained that to move forward you had to get rid of the conditioning of the past, stop looking back. Extended reality, which creates virtual worlds on real settings (nothing to do with the closed universes of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse full of legless avatars) is one of the ways that some of the largest technology companies have been exploring for years.
Apple just introduced Vision Pro, but its first patent for this product is 15 years old. Another giant, Microsoft, has had its latest HoloLens 2 model for sale for three years –curiously, at the same price that the apple firm has announced its own, $3,500– and Lenovo, among others, also sees a future in the one that the physical screens do not limit the capacity of work.
The proposal of all these systems is to use a type of viewer –Apple does not want to call it glasses, but rather “spatial computer”– that converts the space of reality around the user into a three-dimensional canvas in which to deploy all kinds of applications without the limitations of a flat screen.
Unlike virtual reality, these headsets do not "disconnect" users from the environment around them. In what Meta calls the metaverse, the spaces are closed. While one "lives" in the worlds that Zuckerberg proposes, he does not see anything around him. Microsot, Lenovo and Apple devices, on the other hand, situate applications on top of the real world.
Microsoft's proposals have focused mainly on professional applications. Especially in fields such as medicine or education, where working with three-dimensional models can be a differential advantage. One of its most controversial applications, which has provoked rejection by some company employees, is a supply for the United States military.
Regardless of any ethical considerations, it makes a lot of sense to use on-demand three-dimensional computing systems in combat situations, because a viewer like the ones being proposed offer privileged information while the user is moving. The HoloLens system for the military, of which, for obvious reasons, details are not published, has caused dizziness problems for some soldiers, according to US media.
In any case, the fundamental purpose of this device is not military. Microsoft focuses you on four career activities: manufacturing, engineering and construction, healthcare, and education. The clients of the Redmond technology company belong to all kinds of sectors, but the automotive industry is one of the ones that uses it the most: Audi, Mercedes, Renault and Toyota.
Of all the systems that already have a practical application, Microsoft's and Apple's, which won't be sold until early next year in the United States, have the biggest advantage, because their sophisticated viewfinders, packed with cameras and sensors, add a fundamental element: an ecosystem of proprietary applications and an app development kit so that third parties can find and market new ways of using them.
Apple introduced Vision Pro last Monday at its annual developer conference, with several thousand developers in attendance live and hundreds of thousands more online. At its headquarters, Apple Park in Cupertino, it has built a large giant tent with several rooms that simulate living rooms, where the demonstrations are made.
Apple will be able to take the opportunity to show its product to representatives of various sectors for months before Vision Pro goes on sale. When you do, it will be clear to the world what to expect from the viewer. Unlike Microsoft, the Californian firm has focused on both professional and leisure activities.
The price, $3,500 in the United States and a higher amount in euros when it goes on sale in Europe, may be one of the great barriers to the popularization of this technology. Many have remembered these days that, when the Apple Macintosh was put up for sale in 1984, its price was equivalent to around 7,000 euros today. That didn't stop many people from buying it, because they thought it represented a leap forward in computing. In any case, despite all its advances, the computer led by Steve Jobs was not a commercial success, while those based on Windows ended up prevailing in the market.
The use of extended reality viewers leaves no doubt about their technical excellence. The Apple device contains 12 cameras. One of them reads the user's iris as a biometric identification method. Multiple sensors manage to anchor virtual apps in the real world as if they were fixed. The demos are absolutely stunning and leave you speechless. The success in the popular adoption of these systems is, for the moment, unknown.
One of the keys to these new technologies is natural user interaction. They do not need extra devices to select an action, because a look is enough, nor to activate it, because it works with a soft gesture of the fingers.
Mark Zuckerberg seems to have seen the ears of the wolf. According to the technology website The Verge, in a meeting with Meta employees, the Facebook founder said after Apple's presentation that they are different visions. TRUE. In Meta, he noted, "it's about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways."
Zuckerberg noted that his “also tries to be active and do things,” but that the one on the apple, in “all the demos they showed were of a person sitting alone on a couch. That might be the vision of the future of computing, but it's not what I want." Apple's viewer, by representing reality at all times, does allow you to scroll. They are two very different ways of offering possible worlds – and also other impossible ones. A real, transparent reality, and a virtual one. The public will say.
