Apple’s Imaginative and prescient Professional is a VR headset, but it surely’ll by no means admit that

As Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner was winding as much as reveal the corporate’s new Imaginative and prescient Professional headset on Monday, I used to be struck by his very explicit alternative of phrases: “So as we speak, I’m excited to announce a wholly new AR platform with a revolutionary new product.”

Catch that? He didn’t say “VR” or “digital actuality,” which could have positioned the headset and its new software program extra straight in opposition to Meta’s headsets. Earlier than we knew something concerning the Imaginative and prescient Professional — what it appeared like, what it may do, what it value — Cook dinner mentioned that Apple was asserting a brand new augmented actuality platform, setting us up for a tool that might improve and never obscure the world round us.

Although Apple made its Imaginative and prescient Professional and visionOS pitch all about augmented actuality, the gadget is certainly a VR headset. Lots of the issues Apple mentioned it could do are issues we’ve seen in VR earlier than. Floating home windows for apps. Big screens for movies. 3D experiences and films. And like Meta’s line of Quest headsets, the Imaginative and prescient Professional is a pc strapped proper in entrance of your eyes.

Apple’s aversion to VR speaks to the corporate’s differing pitch for a way we use these units. Whereas Meta needs you to reside in that pc in your face, Apple as an alternative needs to place digital computer systems into your precise world:

Apple is deliberately avoiding different VR tropes by ensuring that “you’re by no means remoted from the individuals round you” with the headset, Apple’s Alan Dye, VP of human interface design, mentioned in the course of the keynote. (You don’t say?) The Imaginative and prescient Professional’s EyeSight characteristic, which helps you to see the eyes of the individual sporting a Imaginative and prescient Professional on the gadget’s outer display screen, may very well be a satisfactory approach to simulate eye contact. Once I’m sporting Meta’s Quest 2, anybody in the identical room as me can’t look me within the eye until I bodily take away the headset from my face.

And whereas Apple does allow you to transfer out and in of whole immersion with a digital crown on the Imaginative and prescient Professional, the headset’s outer display screen can present an animation when a consumer is absolutely immersed in one thing. That may very well be a useful exterior clue for anyone attempting to get your consideration; once more, if I’m sporting the Quest 2, somebody close by would possibly simply should shout at me.

It’s additionally notable that Apple’s press launch concerning the Imaginative and prescient Professional doesn’t say the phrases “digital actuality,” “VR,” and even “headset”; it’s labeling the gadget a “spatial pc.” Positive, a part of that is simply Apple branding. But it surely additionally leaves wiggle room for the doubtless way forward for this expertise that appears nothing like a cumbersome VR headset: AR glasses.

Looking back, I shouldn’t have been stunned that Apple prevented branding the Imaginative and prescient Professional with digital actuality, particularly since Cook dinner has been singing the praises of AR for years. That mentioned, AR simply isn’t the place it must be to actually make one thing like these rumored AR glasses, which may very well be very, very distant.

So, for now, sure, the Imaginative and prescient Professional is generally simply VR. Down the road, Apple virtually definitely has plans for one thing fully totally different. However for now, to see Apple’s future, you’re going to should placed on a VR headset.