100: Apple’s Vision of the Future

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• Episode 100!
• Apple’s Vision of the Future

Vision Pro from Apple’s Website

Marques Brownlee: Apple Vision Pro Impressions!

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• 0:00 Episode 100!
• 0:48 Apple’s Vision of the Future

Transcript

(upbeat music) - Welcome to In the News for June 6th, 2023.

It is a special edition, the day after Apple's keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

I'm Brett Burney from Appsinlaw.com.

- And this is Jeff Richardson for iPhone JD.

It's our 100th episodes, Brett, and wouldn't it be nice if Apple came up with something just a little different for us to talk about for episode 100.

- I don't know if we have anything to talk about for episodes for our 100th episode.

First of all, congratulations, my friend, and thank you, as I always do.

100 episodes, that's quite a milestone, and I really appreciate it.

And wow, thank you, Apple, for acknowledging this along with us.

(laughing) Some really exciting news.

Yeah, go ahead.

- I mean, of course, the real thanks goes to everybody that's been listening to us for all these episodes, which is great.

And so what we're gonna be doing today is just focusing on this brand new product, the Apple Vision Pro.

Wow, this thing is wow.

Where do we even start.

- So just so everybody knows, yesterday as Apple is normally that they do, they have a keynote address for the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Now, most of the time when we talk about this, it's a lot of focus on what's the next operating systems that are gonna happen for the iPhone and the iPad and the TV, Apple TV and all.

And boy, Heidi, we got a lot of that, right.

In fact, we're gonna have another show That'll be this later Friday.

We'll talk about that.

But, uh, Apple spent an hour just talking about all of the updates on that.

So we'll get to that, but we weren't done, but wait, that's not all.

Apple had yet a second hour, Jeff, where they, they introduced something that we were all have been anticipating.

It is, I I've heard it all kinds of things that it being described, Jeff.

It has been the goggles, the virtual goggles, virtual reality goggles.

I think Joanna Stern at the wall street journal called it the nerd helmet.

We're all looking forward to the Apple's nerd helmet, but Apple chose to call their virtual reality goggles, Vision Pro.

And wow, it's something else.

Lots of thoughts and ideas here.

- The actual introduction, first thing that Tim Cook said was the famous phrase, "One more thing.

" Which is interesting 'cause people that have been around Apple long enough know that that's a phrase that Steve Jobs came up with to sort of, have something special to introduce at the end.

And some of his one more things were bigger than others.

But I thought it was interesting before we get into this, Tim Cook has not used that phrase very often.

He used it back in 2014 when he introduced the Apple watch, which of course was a brand new platform and not as transformative as the iPhone and iPad, but it was a pretty big deal.

He used it the next year, only a year later, 2015, to introduce Apple music.

You know, Apple music was something new.

Streaming music is a new thing.

I think he probably could have avoided it at that time, But I will admit some of my bias might be that if you remember that presentation back in 2015, it was actually one of the less effective Apple presentations of the last decade or so, because the people on stage went on for too long and stuff like that.

But then the other time that he did it was in 2017 for the iPhone 10, which was a brand new type of iPhone with no button at the bottom, the new interface.

In many ways, the iPhone of today is still just a different version of the iPhone 10.

So I thought that that one was appropriate.

And so this is the fourth time that it's happened.

In fact, back in 2017, Tim Cook made a comment when he introduced the iPhone 10.

And when he said one more thing, he says, "We have great respect for these words," one more thing, "and we don't use them lightly.

" And so it's taken another five years since 2017, before, six years actually, six years since Tim Cook felt it was appropriate to use the words again.

- Right.

- And this one was appropriate.

I mean, let's just start with the name.

There was all of this speculation as to what it might be called.

Some people called the Reality Pro, some people thought it might be some letters or numbers.

I think Apple Vision Pro is perfect.

I think that vision is great because it's a great word.

It's the Vision OS, it's the Apple Vision product.

I'll even, I mean, before we even talk about the substance of this, I think, and this is just a guess, but my sense of it is they're coming out with a first high-end product, the Apple Vision Pro.

And you know how Apple often in the future will come out with like an SE version of the iPhone.

That's a little bit more low end.

I predict that we're going to see something similar that, you know, maybe after a year or two, things that are now in the Vision Pro will be in a lower cost item, perhaps just called the Apple Vision.

And then the Apple Vision Pro, much like the iPhone Pro and the iPad Pro, will have, you know, the next generation, whatever the technology is.

You know, I think Apple realizes that they're selling something that's expensive and they're starting at the top, which is different from where Apple often starts.

They often start at the middle and then build up to the top and build below.

But I think now they're really building at the top.

Everyone that has reviewed this thing, and there haven't been that many of them yet, but I've read so many reviews of people that have tried it out and they have said, there's nothing, you can't compare this to anything, because although there are, we have had Google Glass way back when, and Facebook/Meta makes their stuff that they bought from Oculus.

But it's not even in the same category.

It's not even the same.

So, and as you said, it's almost like It's a new platform.

It's a new computer.

You could literally use this just as your computer, as a computer.

So, but that price, I mean, $3,500, that's a substantial price.

What are your thoughts on that $3,500 price.

- Yeah, well, I mean, obviously the price, a lot of people had anticipated it at $3,000.

Honestly, when I started viewing the keynote yesterday, Jeff, I'm like, oh, this is 5,000, easy.

Like, I thought they were going up we can get into some of the specifics.

But just to kind of underscore even some of the things you're talking about, there was a new phrase that Tim Cook used to describe this in several people, which is spatial computing.

In fact, I remember a quote.

I can't remember if it was Tim or somebody.

They say, "The Mac introduced us to the personal computer or personal computing, right.

The iPhone introduced us to the mobile computer or mobile computing," which I thought was interesting.

the time, my iPhone is my personal computer.

That is the first computer I turn to.

And the Vision Pro will introduce us to spatial computing.

We'll get into that just a little bit more.

But I really appreciated that, or liked the way that they kind of presented this aspect.

'Cause like you said, this is a new computing platform.

Some people even speculated that this was just gonna be some simple goggles that connected with your iPhone, right.

And so it's gonna show everything on the iPhone, it's just gonna be the way I look at you at your iPhone.

But man, no, I mean, as you have said, people are kind of blown away at like sort of, I guess, the spectacle, if you will, of how, you know, or even just the ramifications of what this means from the idea that you can put all of this information on, you can interact with some of this digital information in such a different way.

I really think it has blown away a lot of people that were even sort of anticipating where this was gonna go.

I mean, $3,500, that's a lot of money.

One thing that I know just because we're on the legal side, Jeff, at the very end, I think Tim Cook even said, they filed over 5,000 patents associated with this thing.

I mean, that alone, before we get into even the specifics, tells you the amount of ingenuity and time that has been spent on this, which I just think is amazing.

- Let's talk about the hardware first.

You know, the device itself, you're showing it on the screen, It looks very Apple, you know, the front of it is very smooth lines.

I mean, it, it really feels like something that would feel good in your hand that goes around the part that sort of looks like the ski goggles, you know, it's got very nice curves to it.

It's got the button that you turn, which we'll talk about in a second.

It's got another button that you press and the part that goes around your head, that back of your head to hold it on.

Um, I've heard some reviewers say it reminds us, it reminded the reviewer of how Apple makes these great bands for the Apple watch that are so comfortable, whether it be the polyelaster bands or the more cloth ones.

And this, the thing that holds it to the back of your head seems like the same sort of thing.

It's very comfortable.

It's made to hold the device really well.

Each one of the things in your eyes, each eye is getting a, basically a 4k display that's super, super tiny, which means that everything looks incredibly realistic and when you're looking at like a webpage or a document, one of the things that all the reviewers noted is you can actually read words, even in tiny print.

When you use the existing goggles, the Facebook type things, they're nice for pictures and for games and like a monkey that's jumping around, but you're not gonna be reading things in it because they're just not precise enough to do it.

Whereas this thing apparently can.

- Just, I know I heard a couple of people say, I think it's like, it's millions, millions, and millions more pixels than even on the iPhone, right.

because these are screens, literally 4K screens that are like an inch away from your eyeball.

And they obviously invested a ton of time and effort into making sure that these screens are, up to the quest of making sure that you can see as much as you can.

I gotta be honest with you, Jeff, the first time they showed it, my thought was, that's huge.

That is honking big.

I mean, I knew it was gonna be pretty big because of everything that had to pack into it.

But I mean, that's my first thought and I still can't get over this.

Believe me, I'm amazed at what it can do.

But my first thought was, man, that is huge.

But you know, that even goes back, I think, to your point and we've heard some other reviewers talk about this.

I mean, this is not, I don't think that Apple means this to be, you know, the general consumer model, right.

You mentioned like that as the mode model or something else along the, I mean, this is meant to be that first generation.

We're gonna test the waters.

We're going to see what people can come up with and can do.

And, and then we'll, and then we'll build from there.

Right.

And I mean, we've seen that obviously with the iPhone, we saw that with the, the Apple watch and Apple is just going to continue to dominate this market.

I think obviously, I mean, as, as much as people are impressed with it now, I just cannot wait until five years from now.

I think it'll get smaller.

It'll get slimmer.

It'll get even better than what it's doing today.

- Yeah.

That's one of the things that excites me so much is when I saw the presentation and the things we're about to talk about, you know, I was really blown away about how impressive it is.

And then I remind myself, think back at what the first generation iPhone from 2007.

Nowadays you look at it and you're like, oh, it had so many shortcomings and flaws.

The original Apple watch, oh my goodness, it was so horribly slow, but you had to start somewhere.

And so if this is just the introductory, the part one or maybe even the part zero, wow, boy, do we have a lot of places to go from here.

And then again, hopefully it'll become cheaper and stuff over time too.

One of the questions I had when I looked at the hardware as somebody who wears glasses and you of course do wear eyeglasses, you know, how is that going to work.

Because this thing is so tight in your face.

In fact, it's so tight just to mention that you have the goggle part in front of you, but then right behind the goggle, there's sort of a cushiony part that holds it against your face.

And one of the things that Apple told reviewers yesterday is that right now they only had a couple of those, like those are removed, you can have different sizes.

And they say that when it comes out next year, they're going to have tons of different sizes because they want it to be to have a perfect fit right around your eyes so that when you're looking at it, everything just looks is it basically fills your field of view.

And I noticed that one of the reviewers, I think it was John Gruber was mentioning that on a podcast he does that when he looked at it, he's like, it totally filled my field of view.

And then another person, Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal, she said, you know what.

It didn't fit tight on my face just because of the shape of her face.

And she said, as a result, if she looked in the corner, she could sort of see the black.

It didn't completely fill her field of view.

And what Apple told her was, well, that's because we don't have all the different sizes yet.

So much like you can get some Apple watch bands in a ton of different sizes, that's gonna come here too.

But because it's so tight in your face, to get back to what I was saying, you can't wear your eyeglasses under this.

So you can either wear contact lenses, that solves it.

Or they're gonna have a Zeiss, which is a very well-known company from Germany that does all sorts of lenses and, and you know, they're, they're a leader in this field.

They're going to have these optical inserts that are held on by magnets that you'll be able to, I'm sure you'll go to a website and say, here's my eye prescription.

And you'll basically be getting eyeglasses without the frames that will then go in here.

And because they're with magnets, I guess you can remove them.

So if you want to share it with somebody else, but that's an interesting solution.

I mean, hopefully that will work for enough people that, that, that it's, it's a, it's a good solution, but it was one of the first things I was thinking about.

- Well, let's talk about the eyes.

We can keep talking about the hardware too, but I gotta tell you, I'm still, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Vision Pro from the idea of, can people see you or can you see out.

I mean, I know what everybody has said so far, but this has just really been warping my mind, Jeff, because when you put it on, you're looking at two screens, right.

You cannot see through the Apple Vision.

But if somebody is looking at you, they can see your eyes, but it's actually not your physical eyes.

It's a rendering, a 3D rendering of your eyes on a screen that's outside of the Vision Pro.

I gotta tell you, I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around that, even though the Vision Pro is supposed to wrap around my head.

I gotta get my head wrapped around this.

It's just, it just is odd because Apple is doing this weird thing to make people think you're looking at them, but you're not really looking at them.

I mean, I gotta see it to believe it, obviously, and a lot of people do on this, but I just thought that was incredible, kind of the thing that they're doing here.

- So there's two types of technologies that are going on, maybe three.

One of them is, Apple has the name that they're calling it, Pass-Thru.

And pass through is the idea that the goggles themselves, the Apple Vision Pro, it has cameras that are looking at your outside world and they are reproducing on the two screens in your eyes, what's in the outside world.

So if I look to the left, I see a chair, not because I'm actually looking through the Apple Vision at the chair, but instead because the camera sees the chair, it reproduces it on the screen of my eye.

So I'm looking in the direction of the chair, I see the chair and the reviewers have said, everything looks real size.

It doesn't look bigger, smaller.

It looks exactly the size it would be in the real world.

And so when I'm using the device, it's as if I am looking through the device.

And because it has such amazing eye tracking technology, wherever you look, that's where you see.

Now, from someone looking at you wearing the device, that's a different technology that Apple's calling EyeSight.

And what they're doing here is the front of it, which sort of looks like a black glass, but it's not see-through glass.

It has another OLED display towards the front.

It's an OLED display that you as the person wearing it would never see.

It's only for people in the outside world to see and it sees your eyes, but it's not really your eyes.

What it is is because there are these cameras inside of the Vision Pro looking at your eyes, they are just like the pass-through is reproducing the outside world to you, your eyes are being reproduced to the outside world so that when someone comes up, they see it.

And Apple has said that whether or not you see the eyes depends upon the mode that you're in.

If the person wearing the Vision Pro has it in the mode where the pass-through mode, where they're looking at the outside world, that's a way that people that are looking at you can tell, oh, you know, Jeff is actually, Jeff can see me because I see his eyes, so I know he's seeing me.

But if I turn that dial, which reminds me of the digital crown on the side of the Apple Watch, if I turn it to get into more of the virtual reality, as opposed to the augmented reality world, so that all I'm looking at is just like a movie or something like that, well, then the person on the outside world won't see my eyes.

they will instead see it's sort of like some colors moving around or something.

It almost reminds me of the top of a HomePod, or HomePod mini, sort of cloudy and colorful.

And so that it's a way for the outside world to know, oh, this person can't see me right now.

But I have a question about it.

Apple has also said that this eyesight technology is a way to indicate to the outside world when you're taking pictures or video.

Because remember, one of the things that freaked people out about Google Glass way, way, way back when, is it's like whenever you saw somebody wearing one, like, well, you taking my picture.

Yeah.

You and you recording me.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Apple has suggested that there's something about what others will see on the front of the display that will indicate to them whether or not you're taking a picture or video.

And it's like, I don't quite understand what it is.

It's, I don't think it's just the fact that your eyes are there because your eyes are there just because you're in the augmented reality version of the world.

So that's just something that, you know, until more people play with these things, it's just an unknown question.

But, um, but all of the, but there's the pass through in the, in the, in the eyesight, that's the technology.

And it's the reason that this is very different from like the, the, the meta quest and stuff like that.

I mean, I've played, I was just using one last weekend.

My, my nephew had one that I was playing around with.

And again, it was some game where you're a monkey and you're climbing around and stuff like that, but it tries to sort of replace the outside world.

Whereas.

My sense of the Apple vision pro is they don't really see it as replacing the outside world.

It's really just sort of sitting on top of the outside world.

It's spatial computing words that you started us off with.

You're seeing different things in space in your world.

Now, if you're on a plane and you want to just tune everything out and just watch a movie, sure, you can move it into that full virtual reality.

You're barely even, you know, not even seeing the outside world.

But I get the sense from Apple that they don't expect people to be in that mode very often.

That's just my sense.

- I know that this is different from a lot of the other 3D virtual reality goggle things, because some of them don't even have like even glass on the outside, right.

It's just, it's plastic.

And so, you know that whoever has them on can't see you in the outside world.

And I think that's why this is both freaky to me, but genius at the same time, because while I'm not looking through the goggles, it kind of looks like I'm looking through the goggles.

So then I guess there's some level of interactivity or kind of even quasi intimacy maybe with the people.

And you may have already mentioned this.

I know that Apple was showing that even if you're in sort of that mode and you're looking into the goggles and someone comes into your space, right.

You can see them, but you're not looking at them.

You're looking at a video of them.

I mean, I'm almost saying that would be like me walking around, looking at the world through my iPhone camera, right.

I'm just walking around.

Like I'm trying to get my head to understand this, how this is going to work.

And obviously we've got to see it to believe it and see how it's, how it's going to work.

But it's just kind of ingenious that, you know, why, why did they go that far.

Like, why, why did Apple put a screen on the outside.

I think a lot of people are kind of asking that because I don't know if anybody ever thought about something like that before, but Apple did.

- Yeah.

I mean, I think it was just to sort of increase the acceptability of it.

I want to mention something you just talked about and people have talked about this, that let's say I'm looking at like, you know, whether it's a TV or a webpage or something in my virtual environment.

And let's just say that you're also in the room and you start walking towards me.

Apple has talked about this sort of, I think they may even use the word breakthrough for it as the technology, but Apple has a way of sort of making, let's say I'm looking at a Safari webpage that the likeness of you, Brett, you would sort of come through my Safari page almost as if you had walked through it.

And when I saw the demo of that, I'm like, okay.

But then when I heard the people that have actually put on the display, the Vision Pro sample units, they've said that the way that that happens when a real person steps into your field of view, everyone has said like, "Oh my goodness, it's like this magical thing.

" And I have to admit, I don't quite understand it 'cause I haven't seen it, but there's something about the way that Apple has implemented it that's caused multiple people who have tried it to say, "Wow, that was really cool.

" So again, until I have one myself, I don't know what it is, but it's clear to me that Apple has done something special.

again, so that you're not completely disconnected from the outside world.

- And one of the reasons all of this can happen, I'm showing this on the screen right now, you may know how many, I can't remember how many cameras, how many sensors, how many arrays, there's so much that's happening on the front of this, and we'll get into this in just a little bit more deeper too as well, because it can record 3D video, for example, or 3D pictures on this, but it's actually having all these cameras on the outside, And then of course, it has cameras on the inside similar to what you've been talking about.

- To track your eyeball and stuff, yeah.

- To track your, I mean, there are LEDs and infrared cameras on the inside of each of the screens that are constantly looking at your eyes.

And I know I was watching Marques Brownlee's video when he was talking about this.

And obviously he has used all of the virtual reality goggles and he just said over and over and over, this eye tracking technology is the best that he has absolutely ever experienced.

He said just how technical it was, how precise that it was, like there's a cost, there's a lot of cameras on here and a lot of infrared light that are getting shot at your eyeballs, but it sounds like it's working very well.

- Yeah, so for example, he said that if you're looking at a webpage, you can just look at the URL field.

And because you're looking at it, it will be selected.

And then you can just say, you know, iPhone JD.

com or whatever website or apple.

com, wherever you want to go.

And it will type it in that field.

And it knows because it's so precise, it could see precisely what you're looking at.

It can see that it's an area that you can type in.

So when you speak, it puts the words in there and then you just go, you know, that's the cameras on the inside.

The cameras on the outside that you were just showing on the screen here, one of the cool things about them is it's not just for showing the world around you.

It's also for seeing where your hands are because I've used those other devices where you have to hold the things in your hand and move them around.

And it's very crazy.

Am I pressing the right buttons and stuff.

But with this, the only, you know, go back in time when Apple introduced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said, you know, with the prior smartphones, he had the line that if you see a stylus, they blew it because the natural input technique for an iPhone and an iPad was just your fingers.

Here, the natural input technique is number one, your eyes.

What are you looking at.

And then number two, your hands, but not your hands holding anything special, just your hands.

You know, if you see something and you wanna, what we would call like a click on it, you just take your hands and pinch them together and your hands don't have to be in front of me.

They can be down on your side because the cameras can see all around you.

And people that have tried it have said, it's amazing that you can just sit on a couch and your hands are wherever it is comfortable for you.

And anytime that you wanna click, you just sort of pinch.

And if you wanna scroll through a website, you just sort of move your fingers in a scrolling motion.

And you don't have to, it's not like you have to hold your hands in front of you in a position that would make you tired after, you know, not much time.

Just put your hands in a comfortable place.

The cameras will find you.

And that combination looks really cool.

It looks like Apple's really nailed it.

- And again, everybody we've already read that has actually had it on for what.

30, 20, 20 or 30 minutes, right.

This is long.

- Right, all very short.

- Anybody who's kind of had it on.

But they say just how precise that is with your eyes and your hands.

A couple of things quickly on that.

they emphasize that you don't need any controllers or anything else, exactly what you said, Jeff.

Other virtual reality goggles require you to have little controllers.

You don't need any controller.

I thought about kind of the same thing, not the iPhone, but I remember Steve Jobs specifically when he introduced the iPad, that he said, "You don't need a keyboard.

"You don't need a stylus.

"You don't need a mouse.

"All you need is your finger.

" Now, Apple's kind of come around since then, which just makes me kind of think, are we gonna have to change that for the Vision Pro.

Probably not, because the other thing I thought of quickly is the Apple Watch, right.

The Apple Watch has some disability, accessibility features, right.

That you can like clench your fist, you can have different actions with the Apple Watch now, and it apparently works really good.

I don't use them very much, but I know other people that have said.

So anyway, I was fascinated about that.

And the reason that you can hold your hand around exactly what you said, Jeff, is because of all of those cameras, the hundreds, no, not hundreds, a couple of dozen cameras, I'm sure, and sensors that are in the front of these goggles are always looking around into your environment and they can see your hands and doing some of these gestures.

- One thing you just mentioned in a way that the Apple Vision Pro reminds me of the iPad is that you can use an iPad with just your finger, works great.

But there are times when you want to have a keyboard or a mouse, it's optional, but there are some times where, but depending upon the task that you're doing, it makes a lot of sense to do it.

And this is the same.

But the Apple vision, you don't need anything except for your eyes and your fingers on your hand.

But if you want, because there can be a virtual keyboard, if you want it to type a virtual keyboard or you can just speak, just, you know, just accept voice input.

But if you want to connect a Bluetooth keyboard, like to type a longer email, you totally can.

And if you want to have a game controller, like an Xbox controller, because you're playing some game in a virtual screen, you can use it if you want to.

And I think that's the perfect way.

You don't need to use these devices, they're not required, but depending upon what you're doing, maybe you actually do want to use it for a little bit.

I think that's- - Yeah, 'cause let's get into some of the content because obviously we can come back to movies and sports and concerts and even gaming they talked about.

But I am very glad quickly first, that they talked about sort of the productivity aspect of this.

They had somebody in an office environment, which I know you and I were texting back and forth, like, "Well, I don't know if I want to wear this around the office too much.

" But it can be.

And to the point, to your point, just quickly, since you were mentioning it, that virtual keyboard.

They showed like using pages, they showed using keynote, they showed the fact that you can interact with some of these productivity type apps and you can do that, you can even include a trackpad.

They talked about a trackpad and a Bluetooth Apple Bluetooth keyboard that you can connect and that will connect and use that.

In addition to this, we don't have to go too deep into this, but you can actually use this with your Mac as well.

So they showed where somebody opened up their Mac with the Vision Pro goggles on, and they were able to use their Mac and put their Mac screen huge in this spatial computing aspect on there.

So I know we'll get to some other content quickly, but I really liked the fact that they talked about the desktop productivity side.

- Yeah, 'cause let's talk about that because I work in a law office, although there's nothing unique about law offices, many business offices are the same way.

One of the transitions that I've seen over the last, gosh, I don't know, decade, certainly last 20 years, was it used to be everybody just had the one monitor.

And of course, way back when it was a CRT monitor, so it was huge.

And then we got to the thin LED monitors, but the big trend among offices, and it's one that at my own law firm, is now you don't just have one monitor, people realize that you can be more productive with two monitors.

And it's not just a small monitor, but people realize that when you have a larger monitor, if you go from 18 inches to 24 inches, maybe even at 27, you can do more, you can have more windows there.

And the Vision Pro is of course taking this to the nth degree, because you can have unlimited monitors and you don't have to spend a lot of money on a fancy monitor because you can say, I want this monitor here, I want this virtual monitor to my left, this one to my right, I wanna make this one really big, I wanna make this one really small.

And when you start to think of the ways that people, justify the price of this first unit, the $3,500 unit, and of course they're gonna have future ones that cost less.

But if you start to think about the money that you would spend on having all these different monitors to set things up just right amongst yourselves, that's exactly what you can do with this product, just virtually, so that you can have your email to the left, you can have your Word document in front of you, you can have your communication stuff on the right and just move things around.

That's really interesting to me.

And because you're sitting at a desk, although it's got that battery pack that only has like an hour of battery charge, you can just plug that in and you can use it all day long, subject to eye fatigue of, I don't know if there's a limit to, can you wear this for eight hours a day without getting too tired.

I don't know what, you know, people will be revealing that as soon as they have them in real units in their hand.

But there's definitely from a product, you know, we already know in the real world that having more screens is better.

In my personal office, I've got two real screens plus my iPad that I have set up.

- Exactly, me too.

- Plus actually my iPhone.

So in a way I've got four different screens showing stuff.

Heck, and you got my Apple watch too that tells me when I get a text message.

So you could almost argue I've already got five different screens.

And so the future that the Vision Pro is promising, I guess in a certain way, I'm actually already living there.

So I'm already buying into the idea of having multiple screens around me.

- That's where the phrase spatial computing made the most sense to me, Jeff.

That's exactly what I was envisioning.

I'm like, I don't wanna be constrained to the real estate of the couple of monitors that I have.

You know, I know several years ago when we used to talk about this, when we presented together all the time, we would tell people, "Hey, consider a second monitor.

They're not that expensive.

Like here's what it can do for you.

People would be like, oh, I don't know if I need that.

That's a little too much.

But as you said, today, people have come around on this.

I want to have that quasi unlimited space.

Like I want to see my email all the way up there in the corner.

I want to have my web process here, my Word documents here and PDFs.

And I want to be able to move them around.

We've done some of this, right.

Today I have multiple monitors and I park things in different monitors but I'm constantly doing command tab or alt tab, right.

they switch back and forth between applications.

Or on the Mac, we have different desktops that you can swipe back and forth to, right.

I don't use those as much, but I know people that do.

So in a way, we're trying to like squeeze this in.

And I don't know, to me, that really hit home.

Like I love that idea from the spatial computing phrase that I can now have an unlimited place where I can park, again, from a productivity standpoint.

But of course, Apple didn't stop there.

In fact, I think Apple put more emphasis, and I think rightly so, on things like watching a movie, right.

- Yeah.

- Or being in a sports game or playing a game.

And that is going to be truly, truly impressive, I know.

- And I have two thoughts on this.

One is people are saying that when you have a huge movie on this beautiful screen, because the technology is so good with the Vision Pro, it's like you're in an IMAX theater.

I mean, you could take it's immersive.

There's a difference between, even in a big screen, there's a difference between looking at something and being a part of something.

And I'm not even talking about 3D, although I'm gonna get to that in a second, but just having a huge screen in front of you can really make things so much more dynamic.

Apple was showing that, of course, for a movie that's true, if you take panoramic pictures, which I've been taking with my iPhone for a long time, those panoramic pictures are gonna be amazing in an Apple Vision Pro because I could see, you know, all around me, the Grand Canyon or the wine country or whatever I took the panoramic picture of, that's gonna be amazing.

Of course, 3D movies, I've heard people say that this is the first time that a 3D movie actually works, you know, because you don't have to worry about it being too dark, like sometimes in theaters.

I'm sure James Cameron is loving this with his avatar moving and stuff.

So this is all good.

But then also I go back to the price idea that we were talking about, because even at this initial price of $3,500, how do you justify that.

Well, you know, it was a couple of years ago, Brett, that we were ready at my house to get a new television.

And we ended up getting this beautiful LG 77 inch TV that was like $2,900.

Even today, it's only, it still costs $2,700 two years later.

So there are people will spend upwards of 3000 to get something.

And that was the 77 inch version.

If I had gotten the one step higher, which was the 85 or 88 inch version, it's 3,500 bucks, which is the same price as this.

So people that are already willing to splurge to get a big screen and that's 80 something inches.

I think that someone said that this can, this can create a virtual 100 foot screen, You know, as if you were sitting in the front row of an IMAX.

So if big screen size is important to you, you've already, and if you can budget for that, you're already there.

And of course it's a screen for one, as opposed to a screen for many, like you'd have in your house.

But you know, these are the ways that people can say, you know, the original Macintosh cost a lot of money.

You know, new technology costs money.

A big screen TV costs a lot of money.

Portable entertainment.

You know, you don't have to add up much to say, well, maybe the price does sort of make sense.

- Yeah, right.

- So it's interesting.

- Right, because you can do more.

You know, I didn't think about, they talked about the movies, they talked about sports.

I gotta tell you somebody, I don't know that Apple focused on this too much, but somebody was just talking about concerts.

How great would that be if you could record a concert.

You know, I mean, we've talked about spatial audio and I love it.

You know, when I listen to jazz, I just love being able to, it feels like I'm sitting in a small, intimate jazz club and I can hear all of the music around me in spatial audio, but I'm like, man, I want that.

- You want it for your eyes, spatial audio for your eyes.

- Exactly, I'm just, I'm really looking forward to it even from a concert perspective, but obviously even in sports, I mean, there's-- - Oh, can you imagine.

I mean, it's gonna be-- - It's gonna be incredible.

- It's like you've got courtside games for every NBA game or one of the demos that they showed yesterday was in a baseball game.

And they said that the camera was as if you were basically in the dugout and you're seeing things around you.

But if you wanna jump over here or jump over there, And of course, Apple has what, you know, US major league soccer for the next 10 years.

What do you think the chances are that Apple is gonna have their very special cameras out there at the soccer games, and they're gonna have amazing games that you can view on the Apple Vision Pro.

There's no question that that's coming, no question.

- Let me ask you, I think the one controversial thing that I know people have been talking about is- - I know what you're gonna say, go ahead.

- As a dad, Jeff, would you like to record your kids having a special birthday memory with these big fat Vision Pro goggles on your face.

I know where they're going with this and I love it, but it's like, I wanna see my kids, I don't wanna be looking through camera.

Anyway, what do you think about this.

I know this is the thing a lot of people have been talking about.

- I had the same thought when I watched the demo and I was listening to the Upgrade podcast with Jason Snell and Mike Crow yesterday.

And I think it was Jason who said this, I'm like, I think he actually has this one figured out.

And this is this.

So the demo was Apple was showing that like your kid's birthday party, you can, instead of just looking at a photo from that party years later with the Apple Vision Pro, you can look at a 3D video of the party.

- Right, right.

- As you watch your daughter blow out the candles because it's in 3Ds, it's like you're actually there.

It's so much more immersive.

You're really in the moment.

But then the natural question was, well, how did you get that 3D video in the first place.

And they said, oh, well, you know, you could record 3D video with the face, with the Apple Vision Pro, which is like, okay, fine.

But like what dad is going to be wearing this thing at their daughter's birthday party.

That's horrible.

What Jason speculated, and I think this might be true, wouldn't it be cool if a next generation iPhone, maybe not the one that we get this year, but maybe next year or the year afterwards, as we get better and better optics, wouldn't it be cool if you could take your pictures and your videos with your iPhone, just like every dad does now, but have it be 3D.

So that when you later go back to look at it, years later.

And it's the same reason, you know, I have often splurged on the nicer iPhone because I know that if it takes a really good picture of my son when he's four years old, you know, 15 years later, I will appreciate having that high definition picture because, you know, the technology will catch up to the point where I'm glad to have the better quality.

And this is the same thing.

You know, it would not surprise me if the Apple Vision Pro will not be the way that people really take these 3D videos, although you could, but it will be the way that you consume them and other products will be what you use to take them.

So that's just a thought.

- Interesting stuff there.

How about communications.

Or I think I like the way that Marques put it in his video.

He was talking about it's computing, which we've talked about a little bit.

It's content, which like movies and stuff, but then he called it connections or communications.

Because how great would this be to be on a Zoom call or a FaceTime call and use the Vision Pro goggles.

I keep calling them goggles.

I guess it's just gonna be called Vision Pro.

So what if you had the Vision Pro on and you were in a meeting, but wait a minute, how do people see you.

You can see screens of other people, but then how do they see you.

Well, Apple thought about that as well, Jeff.

- Yeah, so for the seeing other people, you mean unlike a Zoom call where unless it's just one other person that's full screen, you know, when you get to the Brady Bunch effect of having lots of different people, Your screen size is only so big, especially if it's an iPhone or an iPad.

But with the Apple vision pro you've got your entire environment.

So people's faces can be really big around you and you can, you know, have this interactive conversation.

Um, so then for you, here's what I expected Apple.

If I would have bet money, I would have bet good money before yesterday that what Apple was going to say is the people looking at you obviously can't see you because you're wearing the goggles.

So instead what they would see is Memoji.

And I'm like, this is the reason that Apple's been developing emoji for all these years.

- Right, exactly.

- And I was wrong because although I'm sure emoji will be an option.

I'm sure it will be an option.

Apple came up with something new yesterday that they're calling persona.

Don't call it avatar, call it persona.

But it's basically when you first use your Apple Vision Pro before you even put them on your face, you look at the cameras on the outside and it takes a picture of your face in 3D.

And it may even do this on the iPhone as well.

And it will basically map your face and create this digital version of your face so that when you are talking in a FaceTime call and you blink your eyes, the persona will blink its eyes.

When you move your mouth, the persona will move its mouth.

It doesn't look exactly like you.

The version that we saw yesterday-- - It's close.

- It's close.

I mean, there's that whole uncanny valley effect that it's not perfect, perfect.

It doesn't look right.

But then again, if it's smaller and stuff, maybe it'll be good enough.

And it will be nice that that way people can actually talk to you and see your face, even though your face is covered up by this $3,500 device.

So I was convinced that you were going to have to use Memoji.

You'd have to participate in your conference calls as if you were a shark or a turtle or this animated version, this cartoonish version of yourself.

But no, actually, Apple came up with it.

And of course, we all know the persona is going to get more accurate, right.

Two or three years from now, it's going to look so much more realistic than it does today.

So it's a clever solution.

- It'll be great.

- And that'll be the next problem, yeah.

- You know, the thing is, I do actually have good feels about this one because I do record myself, you know, as a talking chicken sometimes and send it as a text message to my wife or so.

But you know, with the phone, which only has limited front facing camera, it does a pretty good job of catching when I have my mouth open or my eyes open or when I'm grimacing or whatever the case may be, Jeff.

And so if you have many, many, many more cameras that can do a full 3D rendering, that's gonna be pretty good.

I mean, yeah, you're gonna be able to tell, but just like you said, it's gonna get better.

I mean, there's no question about that on there.

I am very interested to see how this is gonna work, you know, even from like a Zoom aspect or from, you know, Webex, because by the way, we really didn't even talk about this.

And I thought this was interesting and somebody pointed this out as well.

there's only Apple type apps available for the Vision Pro right now, right.

- For now, because they just showed it off to developers.

- Exactly, that's my point.

- But I think by the time it comes out next year, there's gonna be third party apps.

- Yeah, oh, absolutely, exactly.

And that's what I'm just saying.

Like I know, and of course, this isn't gonna be available till next year, right.

We're just gonna be hyped up on this for six months now, or at least.

But I know somebody just pointed that out, but I would also point out, just like we've been doing throughout, that the first iPhone only had Apple apps, right.

And look where we are today.

So it's just a matter of time on the- - First Apple watch too.

- Exactly, exactly.

- Apple watch did not have third party apps initially.

So yeah, it's coming.

- And to me, that is why this made sense that Apple announced the Vision Pro at the developers conference, right.

Typically for hardware stuff, we get it kind of in the fall, you know, looking to the holidays or so.

But I feel like it's not even available.

Certainly there are going to be several developers that, you know, higher, higher end developers, probably that already have a vision pro or Apple's going to get them one.

And they're going to be working on this for the next six to eight months, right.

I mean, that's the whole idea before it could even be available to the general public, you know, for the general public that has money to buy this, like that has the budget for it.

I mean, they want to make sure that there are going to be some apps that are going to be available to it.

But obviously today they were just showing off, you know, just some of the basic apps right now that you can get.

But I mean, even that's cool.

Again, you just have sort of this idea of the apps and you look at it and it even kind of like comes out in 3D, you know, kind of moves a little bit and then you use your finger and your thumb to tap together to select it.

- So cool.

- Anyway, just really, really, really cool.

So like I said, I'm very interested to see how this is gonna work with something like Zoom.

I mean, just even like virtual meetings, that kind of a thing, that'll be good.

All right, so have we covered everything.

That is, there's so much on this.

I mean, we've covered what we know.

I mean, the reality is that there's still questions that of course, we're going to have questions after the debut of something major like this, you know, how is it going to work.

You know, nausea is, you know, some people can get motion sickness when they have these devices.

People say that because the screen is such high quality and because you're not cut off from the outside world, that's supposed to address it.

And you know, some of the initial reviewers have started to talk about that, but like you said, Brett, they've only used it for 20, 30 minutes.

You know, we're going to have to have people that use it more to see how it works.

but of course Apple is cognizant of that risk.

- Absolutely, and to your point quickly on that, I think I know a lot of people, I haven't done a whole lot of the 3D goggles thing, Jeff, but I just know that some people have said, one of the reasons you get some of that motion sickness is because the camera doesn't kind of keep up with like your eye movement as much, right.

But here, we'll talk about in our next episode about some of the hardware announcements, but this Vision Pro has an M2 chip, which is the same chip that is in the MacBook Pros and even the iPad Pros, right.

I think there's an M2 chip in the iPad Pros.

And it has an R1 chip, which is a new chip that they've come out with that I think was specifically designed to help make sure that it stays up to speed with human eye movement.

And in other words, they're trying to address this issue, I think of like the nausea and the motion sickness from the fact that they've really put packed a lot of power into this thing.

- Yeah, and what I loved is that the people that tried out the demo units yesterday, and you know that these are still early prototypes, they said that the movements were perfect.

There was zero lag.

- Right, exactly.

- It was perfect eye.

- Very encouraging.

- If that's the test version from today, six months from now, hopefully Apple will have that completely nailed, the software will be ready, and then of course it'll improve over time.

So, you know, my hope is that this is something that people will be able to use for an extended period of time and be okay with it.

All right.

A few other questions.

They talked about a quote thermal system in the vision pro.

Some people speculate that means there might be a fan in this because this truly is a full computer, right.

This is not just a pair of goggles connected to an iPhone or so.

It's a full computer.

That's interesting.

No fan.

I think it's going to be much like the Mac mini and stuff like that, that these new Apple chips are designed to run cool.

It's one of the things that distinguishes them from the Intel chips.

And so they do have all of these holes and stuff for air to flow from the bottom to the top to the bottom.

It looks to me like they've designed it so that it's not going to need a fan.

Plus you wouldn't want that noise anyway.

How heavy is this thing.

Have you seen specs on this yet, Jeff.

I'm sure it's out there, but the real question is, is it too heavy.

And that's the thing that the reviewers that I saw have said that it either feels great on your head, at least for the first 20, 30 minutes, or one person said that it's felt a tiny bit heavier than other devices they've, they've used that have made a plastic, but not in a way that's uncomfortable.

But again, I don't think you can trust any of those reviews yet.

Again, it's going to, we'll have to wait until more people have this in their hands, even if it's just early prototype units.

But again, you know, Apple's thinking about this.

They know that this is a reason why they did not put the battery on the device, because is it would be that extra bit of heaviness.

They decided that even though it's inelegant to have a cord in a battery pack, it just addresses it.

And you know, five years from now, of course there's gonna be a version that the battery technology is light enough that it can be on the headpiece without having an external cord coming off the side of it.

But that's just the best they could do for now to make it acceptable weight.

- I had another question about the fit, but Apple has anticipated that.

There is actually a fit dial on the side of the back headband here, so that I guess it kind of tightens it up or make sure that it fits, and you could even, I guess, make sure that no light escapes or comes into that, which I think is pretty good.

By the way, here's a little Easter egg, Jeff, that I noticed.

We were just talking about that father that Apple was showing that was 3D recording their children.

If you go back and look at the video, there is an additional strap that is on the top of his head.

That's the only time that I saw it.

I know it's unlike Apple to let something like that go.

But anyway, you guys, all you listeners, you let me know if you see that on there.

That was the only time that I saw that additional strap 'cause I was looking very closely for something like that, which I thought was pretty interesting.

And then the other thing quickly, how do you make phone calls on this.

Because I understand there is no cellular capability in this, I'm assuming it's wifi connected, right.

It has to be, maybe there's gotta be Bluetooth connected, Maybe that's how it connects with the Mac on there.

But I didn't see anybody talk about a cellular connection, which I'm assuming that that means you might need to have an iPhone to make a FaceTime call.

- An iPhone in the same room.

- You know, I mean, right now I can make a FaceTime call through my computer.

I mean, I don't have to have my phone with me, but I know it's some kind, anyway, I was just thinking about that.

Like nobody's kind of mentioned that yet, and those are some of the things, obviously, that I'm gonna be watching.

- Yeah, lots of questions, but I mean, again, to end up where we started.

Wow.

I mean, we knew that this was coming.

It was, it was, everybody knew this was coming and yet I was still blown away.

I was still really impressed.

And you know, over time, you know, as people start figuring out some of the downsides and stuff, maybe that initial enthusiasm will wear down a little bit, but at the same time, the technology is going to get so much better in year two, year three, year four.

I think that Apple has something special here.

I really do.

And I think that there will be a time in the future where, you know, we'll look back to this point and say, gosh, can you remember that first generation of the Apple Vision Pro and how far they've come.

I really have the sense that this is what we're gonna be saying in future years.

So exciting times for Apple, exciting time for Apple users.

- Very good.

Well, okay, we'll continue to watch this and I'm sure we'll continue to talk about this for the next few months, maybe more than people would want us to actually on this.

But I mean, goodness gracious, I mean, this was the biggest splash that obviously has been made and I anticipate that people will be talking about this and reviewing it over the next few months as well.

So we'll report back to you on some of that.

Okay, so I think that's enough for now on the Vision Pro.

I want one.

I gotta start saving up now, Jeff.

I mean, just because, in fact, I wanna buy two, right.

One I wanna keep completely shrink wrapped and that'll be my retirement plan 'cause I'll sell it one day in 20, 50 years.

But the other one I actually wanna use.

So we're gonna do another session where we are gonna cover all of the other stuff that Apple talked about.

And by golly, gee, there is a lot to talk about with some of the updates to the operating system, all of the other announcements that Apple usually covers during the Worldwide Developers Conference, because that's what the developers are there to hear about, right.

They wanna know what some of the updates on there.

So great, well, we'll talk with you in a couple of days then, Jeff.

Thanks for joining.

- Sounds good.

.