This week Apple unveiled the next big thing in tech: Vision Pro, a $3,500 headset that heralds the “era of spatial computing … where digital content blends seamlessly with your physical space.”
This isn’t quite the same as virtual reality, which blocks out the real world and swaps in a virtual one. Vision Pro is basically a set of digital goggles that work as a “mixed-reality” platform, allowing users to see and hear the physical world even as they interact and manipulate digital content in front of them.
Apple is putting all its clout into this idea of “spatial computing,” which the company has been reportedly working on for years. Announcing the new product, chief executive Tim Cook compared it to the way the iPhone introduced the concept of mobile computing. “It’s the first product you look through, and not at,” he said. “You can see, hear, and act with digital content just like it’s in your physical space. You’re no longer limited by a display.”
That’s almost true. In fact, you’re still looking at a display, it’s just a display of the real world, a digital projection of reality. The headset’s cameras capture the world and display it on two small digital screens directly in front of your eyes. So users aren’t really looking through the headset at the world, they’re looking at a digital recreation of the world around them. The world you see through the headset might seem real, but it isn’t.
Apple calls it “the most advanced
