I got my hands on the Apple Vision Pro!

I got my hands on a real Apple Vision Pro! Do you want to know my thoughts about it?

It’s not what I expected.

And as always, at the bottom, you have a selection of the news of the week to stay updated and spark your curiosity, as well as cool tools and lessons that can enhance your life.

That’s damn right!

This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to visit London to see a good friend of mine and his family. Little did I know that I would experience the same excitement I felt as a child on Christmas morning. While I was aware that he had recently returned from the USA and had a penchant for technology, I didn't anticipate the thrill that awaited me when he mentioned, "I have a surprise for you."

Later that night, in a moment of excitement, he exclaimed, "Do you know what I've got from the USA? Oh, my God. No, man, it can't be possible." Our thoughts seemed to synchronize instantaneously.

The fucking Apple Vision Pro! (AVP)

What impacted me the most wasn't what I expected.

I am not going to do a technical review or talk about how well it looked, etc. Why? because I am shortsighted and I didn't have contact lenses with me, and all the stuff I saw was blurry as fuck. So why should you listen to what I have to say?

I want to focus on how I felt and the thoughts it provoked, to show you we are in a moment of change.

Prior to my first encounter with the AVP, I approached it from the perspective of a geek—someone who appreciates cinema, video games, the arts, and new technologies. I thrive on perfect lighting, sound quality, screen color balance, and comfort to enjoy a movie to its fullest.

However, these experiences didn't turn out to be the deciding factor for me.

I know there are a lot of people who think that this is going to be a failure for Apple, but I think they're wrong. Let me explain why:

First Contact

So, what did I try? Essentially, I experienced what Apple will likely showcase in their store: immersive demos, manipulating screens, watching a movie, and, of course, encountering the dinosaur. I didn't delve deeper into other features.

I didn't think the goggles were that big, or that they would be so heavy; they were comfortable.

The spatial understanding is remarkable. The eye-sight technology and the ability to position screens in space left me excited and in awe of their functionality. After 5 minutes, it felt like something we had used for ages.

But these aspects weren’t what gave me chills.

I am not going to talk about the ultra-creepy eyes in the exterior glass screen. Let’s say it doesn't look as sharp as in the commercial. Good job, Apple.

Use Cases

The first thing I tried was watching a movie on a big screen. The option to have a digital screen in front of you, wherever you are, is quite fantastic.

However, the claim in the commercial that you can resize the cinema screen to any size was really exaggerated. There seemed to be limits to its scalability.

Another thing that I can add is that you can see the black borders around the image. This could make you feel less immersed, but it didn't bother me at all.

My first unexpected feeling or shocking realisation was that the people who would want this device were not who I expected. 

In their promotional videos, Apple is promoting a social, shareable experience and is attempting to showcase the device's adaptability to various work and daily activities, wisely targeting their audience. I don’t think this is what is going to happen in the initial stage; it will be utilized individually and for the mainstream user.

Let me explain:

I was profoundly struck by how future life events like sports or concerts will be experienced. The feeling of experiencing the rehearsal of Alicia Keys, a football game from the best view, or a documentary of sharks under the water literally blew my mind.

Do you know somebody who wouldn't like to have the option to experience being on the top of Everest? Explore the pyramids, or walk around the Titanic before it went down to the bottom of the ocean? These experiences will undoubtedly appeal to everyone, and Apple knows how to tantalize our desires.

You can buy a huge TV screen or a projector and watch movies or play video games on it. You can imagine it in your mind, and it doesn't feel like the future. All of us have experienced, at least once, a huge screen in a cinema.

Being in the best position to see a live event in real time from your house feels like the future. But even with a lot of money, we will probably not experience an intimate situation like what I saw with Alicia Keys with your favourite musician.

This made me think about how we are going to interact with humans in the future.

The Internet has opened the doors to connecting us with people around the world that we will never have the opportunity to physically see. In time, when these experiences will feel undistinguishable from reality, this will be the norm. We will have the opportunity to interact with our "almost real" favourite people.

In conclusion, the moments in life that I thought people wouldn't want to change (like going to a sports or music event or talking to a real human) are the cases that I think are going to be the most consumed with these goggles, at least in their first years. I still think people will want to go to real-life events and feel the experience of sharing an almost religious experience in a real location with real people, even though in the future it may feel strange to interact with other brothers and sisters of our species.

But who gives a fuck? The opportunity to experience this shit at home is going to be amazing.

So, is it going to be mainstream and change our future lives, like the Iphone did?

Let’s continue next week with some conclusions and how do I see the future of this amazing device!

Thanks for your time

My News Picks

• Major companies use AI to snoop through employees’s messages.

• I Spent a Week With Gemini Pro 1.5 and It’s Fantastic

• Google to relaunch Gemini AI picture generator following mounting criticism of inaccurate images

• The rise of BadGPTs

• Apollo calls AI a bubble worse than even the dotcom era.

• Paris-based startup Mistral AI introduces Mistral Large, Microsoft backing it up.

• Figure AI, a robotics startup, teamed up with OpenAI and Microsoft to build next-level AI for their humanoid robots. Robot wars are coming.

• Lenovo’s transparent laptop coming soon?

• Adobe’s new GenAI music project.

Tools

• Discover Daily is a podcast by Perplexity and ElevenLabs covering tech, science, and culture.

• BookPecker contains 14509 books summarized in 5 bullet points

• Agent Studio by Hyperwrite AI. Just show it a task once by doing it yourself, and the AI can repeat it.

And that’s all. I hope these insights, news, and tools help you prepare for the future!

Have a really nice week.

Stay kind.

Rafa TV