Sharing some writing, and extra thoughts

I published a piece in Slate this afternoon on the heels of Apple announcing its new Vision Pro AR/VR headset (“Apple Is Ignoring Something Big About Augmented Reality,” June 8).

For that piece, I wrote about watching Apple’s announcement through my own experience teaching with Google Glass in the classroom almost 10 years ago. I am not dismissive of the entire product category. There were some really interesting gaming and information layer options Glass had that I could see being popular. My class also did some great work with video on the device.

My angle for this piece was Apple’s strange decision to not just breeze past the potential for awkward social interactions, but actively pretend they didn’t exist. The 10-minute short pitch is vaguely dystopian or Stepford, depending on your point of view (and possibly your age). None of this feels real, I kept thinking to myself, as Apple flashed images of people smiling at each other while someone wore glorified ski goggles. Apple’s marketing often invites you to suspend disbelief and believe in magic, but the social reality it sketched out was a miss.

The tell was how Apple handled the FaceTime demo with Vision Pro. For the wearer, you see faces as you would on a tablet, phone, or computer. But what about those not wearing Vision Pro? Apple had to create a whole new format for this, using machine learning and facial recognition cameras to render a person in Pixaresque animation so that other people on the call don’t have to stare at your goggle-wearing face. That this technology exists at all tells you something—people do not want to look at you wearing this device. FaceTime, a technology that works great, had to change because of a device. If Apple doesn’t think this works on a video call, why would they present real life as any different?

You have to admire the sheer chutzpah, trying to force you to see the story of a product through their perceived lens. It’s what you do when you’re launching a new product and trying not just to sell it but also to help buyers imagine themselves using it. Nobody does this form of marketing better than Apple. But in this case, while it’s a new device, it’s absolutely not a new product category. Glass created a cultural mood around these types of devices, and Apple is subject to it even though it is orders of magnitude more ready for prime time than Glass was.

I’m not down on the product category per se and truthfully am optimistic about this device as a media consumption possibility, but it’s an Alone Time gadget for watching movies or gaming. The screen looks amazing, far better than any VR device I’ve tried. But this nonsense of wearing it constantly around your kids and capturing memories is fantasy (seriously, just watch the video link above; it’s cringey at times). You won’t find many signing up to be the One Guy wearing it in a crowded social gathering, particularly at $3499 a pop. It’s a device for blocking out the world, not inviting it in. That woman on the plane ignoring everyone was the best use case they gave us, but that might be more of a testament to how miserable flying can be than it is about how great Vision Pro is. Outliers will wear it in public, but they’ll get the same scornful treatment Glass wearers got after the initial curiosity wore off.

So Apple’s social connection pitch doesn’t land with me. My students figured it out years ago with Glass, and from a those-around-you perspective, there isn’t much difference between Vision Pro and Glass. You’re still just staring at someone wearing a camera on their head, for all intents and purposes, and wondering if you’re being recorded against your will.

Glass did have some positives, and I wrote about it years ago for PBSMediaShift. The Slate piece also has links to a couple fun videos my students made with it. I still think there is a lot of education potential in products like this, and there is some real accessibility potential for people if done right. I’m not averse to spending $3500 of someone else’s money to test its limits and potential as we did with Glass. So Apple’s device isn’t DOA on the whole, I just don’t buy the social vision that Vision selling.

Jeremy Littau is an associate professor of journalism and communication at Lehigh University. Find him on Mastodon or Twitter.