One of the most brilliant engineers who conceived many of the uses we give 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-and-copy-paste, the basics of the Internet, overlapping windows, and more technical advances such as object-oriented programming. They were able to look ahead and invent what did not exist. Is the future in augmented reality like that proposed by Apple with its Vision Pro viewer, presented on Monday?
Kay explained that in order to move forward it was necessary to detach oneself from the conditioning of the past, to stop looking back. Augmented reality, which creates virtual worlds on real scenarios (nothing to do with the closed universes of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse full of legless avatars), is one of the avenues that some of the big tech giants have been exploring for years.
Apple has just introduced Vision Pro, but its first patent for this product is 15 years old. Another giant, Microsoft, has had its latest model of HoloLens 2 on sale for three years – curiously, at the same price that the apple firm has announced its own, $3,500 – and Lenovo, among others, he also sees a future where physical screens do not limit the ability to work.
The proposal of all these systems is to use a kind of viewer – Apple does not want to call it glasses, but a space computer – that turns the space of reality around the user into a three-dimensional canvas on which all kinds of things can be deployed of applications without the limitations of a flat screen.
Unlike virtual reality, these viewers do not "disconnect" users from the environment around them. In what Meta calls metaverses, the spaces are closed. As long as one "lives" in the worlds proposed by Zuckerberg, one does not see anything that surrounds one. Devices from Microsoft, Lenovo and Apple, on the other hand, place applications on top of the real world.
Microsoft's proposals have mainly focused 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 caused the rejection of some company workers, is a supply for the United States Army.
Apart from any ethical considerations, it makes a lot of sense to use three-dimensional computing systems on demand in combat situations, because a viewer like the ones proposed offer privileged information with the user in motion. The HoloLens system for the military, details of which, for obvious reasons, are not released, has caused dizziness problems in some soldiers, according to US media.
In any case, the fundamental purpose of this device is not military. Microsoft focuses on four professional activities: manufacturing, engineering and construction, health care, and education. The customers of Redmond's technology belong to all kinds of sectors, but the automotive sector 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 go on sale until early next year in the United States, have the biggest advantage, because in sophisticated viewers, full of cameras and sensors, they add a key element: an ecosystem of their own apps and an app development game for third parties to find and commercialize new ways to use them.
Apple unveiled Vision Pro on Monday during its annual developer conference, with several thousand developers in attendance live and hundreds of thousands more online. At the headquarters, the Apple Park in Cupertino, a large giant marquee has been built with several rooms that simulate living rooms, where the demonstrations take place.
Apple will be able to use this to show its product to representatives of various sectors for months before Vision Pro goes on sale. When it comes out, the world will have a clear idea of 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, can be one of the biggest barriers to the popularization of this technology. Many have remembered these days that, when Apple's Macintosh went on sale in 1984, the 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 in computing. In any case, despite all the advances, the computer led by Steve Jobs was not a commercial success, while those based on Windows ended up imposing themselves on the market.
The use of augmented reality viewers leaves no doubt about their technical excellence. The Apple device has 12 cameras. One reads the user's iris as a biometric identification method. Multiple sensors manage to anchor virtual apps to the real world as if they were stationary. The demos are absolutely stunning and leave you speechless. The success in the popular adoption of these systems is, for the moment, an unknown.
One of the keys to these new technologies is natural user interaction. They don't need extra devices to select an action, because a glance is enough, or to activate it, because it works with a gentle gesture of the fingers.
Mark Zuckerberg seems to have seen the wolf's ear. According to the website about technology The Verge, in a meeting with Meta workers, the founder of Facebook said after Apple's presentation that they are different visions.
right In Meta, he pointed out, "it's about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways". Zuckerberg pointed out that his “also looks to be active and do things”, but that the apple, in “all the demonstrations they did, were of a person sitting alone on a sofa. This could be the vision of the future of computing, but it is not what I want." Apple's viewer, since it always represents reality, 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 another virtual one. The public will tell.
