Check out Apple’s new video for the Vision Pro: It’ll definitely give you FOMO. Labeled a “guided tour,” the 10-minute video shows a newbie user testing the AR/VR headset for the first time.
You’ll see lots of moments where the newbie gasps with Steve Jobs’ famous childlike wonder. But while Vision Pro looks amazing for consuming media, the video suspiciously skips over work you might do with Apple’s new spatial computer. It’s mentioned, but briefly: Here’s your workspace, now let’s watch Godzilla!
Is Vision Pro good for work?
Released to coincide with the first day of Vision Pro preorders (which appear to have sold out the initial batch, estimated to be about 80,000 headsets), the guided tour proves pretty compelling.
An Apple product manager, Allessandra McGinnis, gently introduces the pricey headset to “someone who’s never tried it before” — a guy called Will.
Will’s unfiltered reaction when first selecting an app by looking at it and pinching his fingers together gives you a good sense of how magical the headset is. “Whaaaat!” he says with a big grin.
And he’s similarly delighted when he opens the Photos app. There’s a nicely animated sequence of Will enlarging a photo — the video does a pretty convincing job of showing what he sees.
“Wow, this is amazing,” Will says. And by heck, it looks it!
A minute later, he starts watching a movie on an enormous virtual movie screen.
“I feel like I have my own movie theater,” he says. “This is incredible.” This is the point in the video where I paused to check that my own Vision Pro preorder hadn’t been canceled. I can’t wait to watch movies on it myself.
No work, all play
Then comes the work part, which lasts about 30 seconds (I’m not kidding!). It’s comical the way the Vision Pro video skips over work. Will opens up his email, starts some focus music and opens a window in Safari.
“Wow this is huge,” he says, but he does no work. There’s no fumbling for a Bluetooth keyboard or pecking out emails with one finger on a virtual keyboard.
There’s no doomscrolling, no dreading opening his email. Will swiftly moves on taking some FaceTime calls.
A few moments later, he opens up his MacBook’s screen on the Vision Pro. Perhaps now he’ll start work?
Again, Will’s amazed that his laptop’s screen is right in front of him, but he looks at it for a second, before Allessandra cheerfully announces: “That’s enough work for the day!”
Wow, I wish my workday was like that.
Then, Will tries the Mindfulness app — which also looks very compelling — and gasps again when a virtual butterfly lands on his hand in the Encounter Dinosaurs app. Again with the childlike wonder.
Apple Vision Pro Work: Conspicuous by its absence
By this point, it’s clear the Vision Pro work experience isn’t as exciting as dinosaurs. Will spends more time playing with butterflies than email.
In fact, Apple last week switched its pitch for the headset from productivity to media consumption. The company suddenly began billing Vision Pro as the “ultimate entertainment device.”
At $3,500 it had better be. But this, of course, was the knock on the iPad when it first launched. Apple’s tablet was better for consuming media than making it. And many people balked at paying $500 for a device that was only good for watching Netflix. They wanted something productive as well.
But then again, the same thing was said about the original Mac. Thanks to its breakthrough point-and-click -interface, it was mocked as a toy Playskool computer for kids and playing on. And it cost more than $6,000 in today’s money. But look how that turned out.
