When I tried the Apple Vision Pro I was excited, but there were a couple of reasons I didn't hand my money over there and then. For one thing, I would have been late for my next meeting – one which turned out to be very, very significant. Still, important though that was, I'll never forget the surprised look on the face of the Apple demonstrator as I explained that "No, the goggles are very impressive but I really meant that I had to get to my meeting on time, so I'm going to leave now."
It's also a bit weird, it turns out, to try to look at your Apple Watch through the Vision Pro.
The other reason I didn't buy the glasses on day one, as I did with the first iPhone, was that Apple didn't let me as a British citizen. Those of us in England (and the rest of the UK) were not able to buy the goggles on day one because we spoke what Apple perceived as the wrong version of English. Missing out on that initial excitement gave me a lot more opportunity to make cold, logical assessments of need and value, and on a journalist's wage they don't tend to fall in favor of goggles twice the price of the your phone that can only do half as much.
How will the Vision Pro 2 change things?
The point of the Vision Pro was not, really, to sell in vast numbers. It was to draw developers into Apple's ecosystem for an emerging technology before everyone just followed Zuckerberg into his Metaverse. It was sensible business.
Even when the Vision Pro came out, most tech journalists were talking about the next steps, which makes the Vision Pro 2 even more interesting. Now we think we know from reliable leakers what those upgrades might be, and, well, it's not the future we were excited about. It's actually something else.
You see, the idea in the back of all of our minds is 'Apple Glass' – something a bit like the tech experience of Vision Pro in the form factor of the not-actually-AR, but very successful, Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. Of course, they're successful, you might add – as they cost a 10th of the price!
So we need to wait – AGAIN? Arrrrghhhhh..!
Well, yes and no. The point is that Apple has created a product category that has some niche merit in the Vision Pro, so it is improving that niche. If the niche is useful to you, it's encouraging to hear Apple is doubling down with high-spec improvements rather than abandoning the device.
The ever-reliable Mark Gurman – according to his Bloomberg 'Power On' newsletter – expects to see Vision Pro 2 come in two editions, shaving weight and with one of two variants gaining the unsexy – but enterprise-friendly – feature that is a wired connection for low-latency immersive video. This would further improve the ability to use the device as an effectively unlimited monitor which makes for a popular productivity use of the existing device, but could sidestep the data and battery limitations in a single stroke.
There should also be a price reduction for at least one of the versions (according to MacRumors).
In the long run, though, Tim Cook is apparently "'Hell Bent' on Launching True AR Glasses" – and before Meta, too!
In fact, there is a version of VisionOS, codenamed Atlas, which is being worked on already, according to some of Gurman's previous postings – and we've seen similar concepts being examined more publicly by Meta, too.
The question, for now, is will your future be Apple's improved high-end 'goggles' – or will you wait for the super-smart shades?
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I annoyed some people in the past by suggesting that "If anything, the problem with the Apple Vision Pro is that it's too cheap!"
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