This week, Apple unveiled its latest creation, and it’s got us feeling like we’ve stumbled through a time portal to the future. Remember how space-age the augmented reality tech in films like Terminator 2, Iron Man and Ready Player One seemed? Well, although VR/AR technology has been around for a while now (although with limited uptake), Apple has raised the game. And unnerving Black Mirror connotations aside, it’s pretty exciting.
What is the Apple Vision Pro?
The Apple Vision Pro is a wearable AR/VR headset that lets you interact with digital content like it’s physically present in the space around you. It basically makes your environment into an enormous canvas for your apps, gaming and workspace, which you control using voice, eye movements and hand gestures. (Pretending to be Tom Cruise in Minority Report is optional.)
Interestingly, Apple have managed to ditch the need for the separate hand controllers common to many other VR headsets but have been unable to entirely relinquish the tethered battery cable.
What will the Apple Vision Pro mean for marketers?
Naturally, as marketers and web designers, we started thinking about the impact on our industry if this tech really takes off.
From a developer perspective, it seems clear that this technology sets a new standard for immersive digital experiences and could well shape the way developers build in Web3. It certainly opens up some interesting possibilities for enhancing the user experience on digital products, apps and websites. Not to mention the immersive marketing opportunities that could blur the lines between traditional and experiential advertising.
Then again, experts suspect Apple doesn’t mean for the device to have mainstream consumer use, at least not yet – the usage cases Apple demonstrated seem more developer focused. Plus,with its slightly prohibitive RRP of $3,499 and an initial US-only release date sometime in 2024, it’s fair to say we’re still some way off understanding the full impact of the technology.
So, as an industry, we have some time to think through how we can adapt our marketing and advertising to take full advantage… but it’s an interesting prospect.
