The worlds, as it were, of MacOS and iOS (or Windows, or Android, or whatever) are defined and limited by the displays on which they run. If MacOS is a place I go mentally when working, that place is manifested physically by the Mac’s display. It’s like the playing field, or the court, in sports — it has very clear, hard and fast, rectangular bounds. It is of fixed size and shape, and everything I do in that world takes place in the confines of those display boundaries.
VisionOS is very much going to be a conceptual place like that for work. But there is no display. There are no boundaries. The intellectual “place” where the apps of VisionOS are presented is the real-world place in which you use the device, or the expansive virtual environment you choose. The room in which you’re sitting is the canvas. The whole room. The display on a Mac or iOS device is to me like a portal, a rectangular window into a well-defined virtual world. With VisionOS the virtual world is the actual world around you.
This is why I can see myself dropping a wad of money on this system. (Well, this, and the fact that for me, at least, it would be a big fat tax deduction). This is not a device you would wear out of the house. It's not even something you would wear out of the room in you’re most likely to use it; my office, or at a stretch, my library. Even with that weird almost-lifelike image of your eyeballs floating around inside the headset for outsiders to freak the fuck out at, you’re still cut off from everyone in this thing. You’re cut off because you are completely fucking immersed inside it.
In the same way that the introduction of multitouch with the iPhone removed a layer of conceptual abstraction — instead of touching a mouse or trackpad to move an on-screen pointer to an object on screen, you simply touch the object on screen — VisionOS removes a layer of abstraction spatially. Using a Mac, you are in a physical place, there is a display in front of you in that place, and on that display are application windows. Using VisionOS, there are just application windows in the physical place in which you are. On Monday I had Safari and Messages and Photos open, side by side, each in a window that seemed the size of a movie poster — that is to say, each app in a window that appeared larger than any actual computer display I’ve ever used. All side by side. Some of the videos in Apple’s Newsroom post introducing Vision Pro illustrate this. But seeing a picture of an actor in this environment doesn’t do justice to experiencing it firsthand, because a photo showing this environment itself has defined rectangular borders.
This is not confusing or complex, but it feels profound. Last night I chatted with a friend who, I found out only then, has been using Vision Pro for months inside Apple. While talking about this “your real world room is your canvas for arranging your application windows” aspect of the experience, he said that he spent weeks feeling a bit constrained, keeping his open VisionOS windows all in front of him as though on a virtual display, before a colleague opened his mind to spreading out and making applications windows much larger and arranging them in a wider carousel not merely in front of him but around him. The constraints of even the largest physical display simply do not exist with VisionOS.
It's the immersion I would pay for. One of the things about writing a book is that when it gets going, it feels like you get lost inside the story. You lose track of the world around you and getting lost is what makes the process so compelling. The flow state. It's very addictive. It takes dominion over your imagination, not just while you are physically writing the book, but for almost all of the time you are creating it. The story, the characters, the world are the last things you think about before you go to sleep, and often the first to fill your mind as soon as you wake. It's not unusual to dream about books on deadline.
It might seem weird that I’d pay good folding money to amplify this process, to remove myself even further from the world of real things, but it’s at that remove where the process of writing and imagining happens with the most power and effect. I can easily imagine that the flow state achieved would be deeper and stronger than you would get standing in front of a screen. The only time I can remember coming close to something like that on a sustained level was the two or three weeks I spent in a weird near-delirium channelling the first draft of Weapons of Choice. I would write for hours, for whole days, without getting up from the table, without eating or drinking. I was that deeply embedded in the story world.
This thing feels like it would take me back there.
Jun 8, 2023·edited Jun 8, 2023Liked by John Birmingham
While I’m excited by this first iteration, I’m more excited about where this product could be in 5-10 years. The first iPhone was…ordinary, but look at where we are now. That Gen 1, iphone 2g (lol) was released in June 2007. The vastly more polished, refined and IMHO gorgeous slab of glass known as the iPhone 4 was released in June, 2010 just 3 years later.
The first iPad was hilariously basic by today’s standards, however today the form factor is similar yet beefed up and refined to something I, for one, would miss like a lost limb.
I suspect in 5 years there will probably be a Vision for the masses. The revolution WILL be televised, and it will be in glorious 3D…
On Fruitflavored Swimming Goggles: I must concur with Dave that I won't be an early adapter. I am waiting for what El Goog makes of this. Oh wait they already did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass .
But seriously it will need to be something wireless and portable, with mature augmented reality features would I invest in it. Sure a massive screen is great, but if and when I'm writing I want to disengage from the screen quickly to gather thoughts. This would be great as a navigation aid or a fitness implement. Say coupled with a watch that monitors your vitals (heart rate and rythm, INR, glucose levels etc).
To my earlier point. This guy in the attached YouTube link may be described as an Apple fanboy, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
We are at stage 1. First iteration.
The iPad was soundly mocked when it was introduced as “just an iPhone with a bigger screen…” and it turned out to be the template for a whole new indispensable product category.
As age is making my eyes become less useful as input devices, I'm especially interested in how "prescription" functional the Zeiss lens inserts that they mentioned are. I'm suspicious of the notion of doing detail work spread across poster-size displays at various apparent distances. I do like the idea of being able to spread out over a large area. Reminds me of printing out pages and spreading them across the floor, for review.
One of the big uses, apparently, for the VR-only goggles currently available (like the HTC Vive) is "wellness": meditation in various picturesque places. With this thing you could do something like the video conference thing of swapping out your background, but for your workspace. You could swap out your physical room for a beach, or nebula. Maybe only for short periods.
While I’m excited by this first iteration, I’m more excited about where this product could be in 5-10 years. The first iPhone was…ordinary, but look at where we are now. That Gen 1, iphone 2g (lol) was released in June 2007. The vastly more polished, refined and IMHO gorgeous slab of glass known as the iPhone 4 was released in June, 2010 just 3 years later.
The first iPad was hilariously basic by today’s standards, however today the form factor is similar yet beefed up and refined to something I, for one, would miss like a lost limb.
I suspect in 5 years there will probably be a Vision for the masses. The revolution WILL be televised, and it will be in glorious 3D…
On Fruitflavored Swimming Goggles: I must concur with Dave that I won't be an early adapter. I am waiting for what El Goog makes of this. Oh wait they already did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass .
But seriously it will need to be something wireless and portable, with mature augmented reality features would I invest in it. Sure a massive screen is great, but if and when I'm writing I want to disengage from the screen quickly to gather thoughts. This would be great as a navigation aid or a fitness implement. Say coupled with a watch that monitors your vitals (heart rate and rythm, INR, glucose levels etc).
Isn’t this just Minority Report sans Tom Cruise?
OK that makes it way more compelling than anything else I'd seen/heard about it
The idea of expanding your virtual workspace from a single limited rectangle in front of you to encompass your entire physical workspace.
Also prob be good for you physically, get you moving around more
great - all of a sudden three monitors on the desk at work sounds constraining
Check out the latest goggles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0AlNLloC8A&ab_channel=GreenTV
To my earlier point. This guy in the attached YouTube link may be described as an Apple fanboy, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
We are at stage 1. First iteration.
The iPad was soundly mocked when it was introduced as “just an iPhone with a bigger screen…” and it turned out to be the template for a whole new indispensable product category.
https://youtu.be/l7Mmopp-4_M
As age is making my eyes become less useful as input devices, I'm especially interested in how "prescription" functional the Zeiss lens inserts that they mentioned are. I'm suspicious of the notion of doing detail work spread across poster-size displays at various apparent distances. I do like the idea of being able to spread out over a large area. Reminds me of printing out pages and spreading them across the floor, for review.
One of the big uses, apparently, for the VR-only goggles currently available (like the HTC Vive) is "wellness": meditation in various picturesque places. With this thing you could do something like the video conference thing of swapping out your background, but for your workspace. You could swap out your physical room for a beach, or nebula. Maybe only for short periods.