My brain may be tainted by years of consuming depressing news through social feeds, but the first thing that caught my attention in Apple’s demo video for their upcoming Vision Pro headset was the soft, hazy light. The video featured elegantly dressed individuals, mostly alone in their sparsely furnished homes, indulging in immersive content through these $3,500 ski goggles made of aluminum alloy. Despite the impressive features, what captivated me was the warm glow emanating from the windows in Apple’s meticulously designed demo environments—a glow I’ve come to associate with the golden hour sky tainted by smoke from wildfires.
As many experienced last week, it’s impossible to forget the feeling of being surrounded by thick smog. I moved from New York to the West six years ago, and since then, smoke seasons have taken a toll on me physically and psychologically. Weather patterns come to a standstill, and everything feels stagnant in the acrid haze. It’s not just about stinging eyes and a scratchy throat; it forces us to retreat indoors and disconnect from the outside world during the longest and most cherished days of summer.
I understand that this wasn’t the intended message Apple’s meticulous design geniuses aimed for when they unveiled the footage. The demo was clearly lit to evoke a sense of intimacy and warmth during the late evening, as light softly enters the double-paned bay windows of an idyllic California bungalow—not the sepia-tinted haze of a 400 air-quality index. I reminded myself to calm down, stop being such a pessimist, and move on. However, about 18 hours later, I woke up to images of the East Coast covered in that familiar climate-apocalypse Instagram filter. My mind drifted back to the Vision Pro, an advanced technology designed to protect our eyes. A remarkable device for a world in peril.
Last week was an odd time to introduce a future where those with disposable income can escape the physical world and immerse themselves in the gated-face community of a 360-degree iPhone screen. It’s easy to overanalyze the peculiar aesthetics of Apple’s presentation or the dystopian features of the Vision Pro headset, like the outward projection of your eyes to indicate when you’re looking at someone rather than playing a game like seven-dimensional Angry Birds. Connecting a marketing video to climate-disaster avoidance may be uncharitable, but I struggled to watch the leading technology company outline its vision for the future of computing without feeling a sense of cynicism and even a touch of impending doom.
In Apple’s demo, there’s a scene where we see a wearied woman on a crowded plane with a crying baby in the background. She adjusts her Vision Pro headset, and the chaos of the plane fades away as she immerses herself in premium content. This full immersion undoubtedly has its appeal, but it also represents a complete surrender to screens, as New York’s John Herrman eloquently pointed out. I see the Vision Pro as a bid to capture the last remaining territory of visual space: our peripheral vision.
For a corporate behemoth worth nearly $2.9 trillion, this is a sound strategy. It carries a sense of conquering the final frontier—total sensory colonization. However, it also marks a rather disheartening departure from Apple’s previous vision for its products. Historically, the company marketed its revolutionary products as tools that empower users to navigate the world. In sleek promotional videos, iPhones and Apple Watches were not mere intermediary screens; they propelled individuals through life, enriching every moment. Maps, Siri, calendar apps, and other features supported the idealized, highly productive “Apple Man” as he efficiently and fully embraced his daily life. The Vision Pro offers a different proposition. It beckons users to turn further inward. It’s not a means to navigate the physical world but a means to tune it out.
Evaluating new technology is challenging without considering the world it’s introduced into. In the case of the Vision Pro, we’re discussing a world grappling with inescapable climate emergencies, as illustrated by recent events where large parts of the country were unprepared. Even the optimists in Cupertino have acknowledged this broader context, introducing Apple features like crash detection, satellite emergency calling, extreme weather monitoring, and mental-health insights. These features aim to help us stay safe and survive in an increasingly hostile world.
This tacit recognition perhaps makes the company’s pivot towards inward-facing technology feel cynically calculated. How else should we feel when we hear a tech executive proclaim, “Your entire world is a canvas for apps?” What I do know is that transformative technologies immediately capture our imagination and evoke strong emotions—a deep understanding that something new is possible. In this regard, the Vision Pro succeeds for me. However, when I gaze upon it, I feel a strong and sudden pull in the wrong direction—an inclination to surrender to screens at a time when many signs suggest we should challenge and reevaluate our relationship with them. As I look towards the future, I sense anxiety and uncertainty, knowing we face a series of challenges that demand a clear and unwavering gaze. The Vision Pro may be an expensive gadget and a gimmick, but it symbolizes a rationale that seems comically ill-suited to our current moment—an invitation to narrow our collective perspective when we should bear witness and confront the issues at hand.
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