An iPod, a phone. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device and we are calling it iPhone. Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. That moment, that revolutionary unveiling wasn't just about a phone. It was about breaking barriers, about redefining our very interaction with technology. As I watched Steve Jobs speak those now infamous words in what is perhaps the greatest product announcement keynote of all time, I knew we remember a pre-iPhone world and a post-iPhone world. And now we stand on the brink of another revolution. But to understand where we're going we first need to appreciate where we've come from. So, let's rewind. Way back. Before the world was connected by the instant gratification of today's digital age, there was the Pony Express. Daring writers racing across the continent carrying messages that would take weeks to deliver. Imagine needing to tell someone something and your message taking literally weeks to reach them. Well, fast forward to 1876 and Alexander Graham Bell utters the first words through an electrical wire, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you." Overnight, the concept of distance began to crumble. Bell's telephone was a marvel. Sure, it was a cumbersome piece of technology but its significance wasn't in its size or makeup. It was in its ability to collapse vast distances into mere whispers. This device didn't just evolve, it revolutionized. From bulky boxes to sleek rotary phones. From cordless to cellular. Each iteration was a step closer to an unimaginable future. Each version, each leap forward brought us closer and made the world a little smaller. And then came the iPod. A device that put a thousand songs in your pocket. This amazing little device holds a thousand songs and it goes right in my pocket. But it wasn't just about the music, it was about the potential. About what was next. And what was next changed everything. The iPod wasn't just a music player. Looking back on it, it was a journey. A journey from carrying a thousand songs in your pocket with the original iPod to the miniaturization marvels of the iPod mini and then the nano. From wheel to touch wheel to click wheel. Each version while getting smaller and thinner than the last was preparing us for something bigger. Something that would once again redefine our interaction with the world. But don't forget about the internet which was like a digital wild west. Initially it was just a landscape of text based websites that required bulky desktops and slow clunky modems that would tie up your phone lines to connect. The concept of accessing it from our pocket seemed impossible. But then an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator, are you getting it? When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone it wasn't just a product launch. It was the dawn of a new era quite literally. The convergence of seemingly unrelated technologies. Bell's vision of voice communication started with that gigantic telephone. That original bulky iPod's promise of having your personal soundtrack with you wherever you were. And that wire cluttered internet. All of this was married into a device that fit snugly in your hand making the entire world accessible with just a tap. This was an impossible convergence. Not to those who were alive during the iPhone announcement because somehow the unimaginable became routine. But to those who saw that original telephone 131 years prior way back in 1876 and as impressive as the iPhone was this was just the beginning. Today we stand on the brink of a new frontier with the Apple Vision Pro. Much like the iPhone it's not merely the sum of its parts we should marvel at. It's not just about the hardware, the sleek design or even the cutting edge technology packed inside it. And that's despite what just about every tech reviewer wants you to believe. It's the doors it opens to uncharted experiences. The barriers it breaks down and how it's set to redefine our reality once more. While many will fixate on its hardware they miss the essence of its existence. The original iPhone needed the iPod to introduce a thousand songs in your pocket and in turn the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac were all precursors. All slowly setting the stage for the Vision Pro's grand entrance. Now just as the telephone once did the Apple Vision Pro is poised to redefine our concept of connection and presence. It's easy to get caught up in the specifications and the price tags and the physical entity of technology. But the true marvel lies in the experiences it unlocks the human connections it deepens and the world it brings into view. To understand the true potential of Apple Vision Pro we must look beyond the surface. So are you ready to see beyond the specs to explore not just what the Apple Vision Pro is but what it represents? It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing. Nowhere is that more true than in these post PC devices. And a lot of folks in this tablet market are rushing in and they're looking at this as the next PC. The hardware and the software are done by different companies and they're talking about speeds and feeds just like they did with PCs. And our experience in every bone in our body says that that is not the right approach to this. That these are post PC devices that need to be even easier to use than a PC. That need to be even more intuitive than a PC. And where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way. But a great product isn't just a collection of features. It's how it all works together. How it makes you feel. Imagine someone very close to you. Your parents, your best friend, whoever. They're taking the trip of a lifetime to your number one bucket list destination. Now if this was me a few years ago it would have been Tokyo. A place that I love. Or maybe today it would be going on an African safari adventure. They plan all of their activities and excursions. They plan the things they want to eat and the sights they want to see. And they even include you and ask you what they shouldn't miss because they know you've dreamed about this and you've done the research and you're happy to help. They go on that trip. They have an incredible time and you can't wait for them to return so you can hear all about it. You want to see the videos they took. You want to see the pictures of all their amazing meals. You're so excited that you pick them up from the airport when they get back and you ask them to tell you everything. They proceed to tell you about their plane ride to Tokyo. They tell you about the model of the plane. They tell you about the jet engines on the wings and their thoughts on the cost of the plane tickets. They tell you about the comfort level of the airplane seats that they had to sit in for 12 hours while flying across the Pacific. And about the guy who was snoring super loud a few rows behind them for a couple of hours. They go into great detail about the meals they were served during the flight and about the views from the airplane window. They go on for a full 30 minutes talking about this without really talking about Tokyo at all. Now I know this sounds crazy. It's unimaginable because no one would do this. And yet this is exactly what I've seen time and time again whenever I click on a video where someone is purporting to review Apple Vision Pro. They focus on the hardware and by doing so they're focusing on the airplane. They're focusing on the means of transportation that gets you to your destination rather than the destination itself. Now I think it shows how formulaic these reviews have become and Vision Pro more than any other Apple product shows exactly why Apple's strategy of downplaying specs and instead focusing on experience has always been the right move. Because whether you sit in a private Learjet or in first class on a luxury airline or back in coach on a standard airline, the destination is the same and that's what matters. The destination with Vision Pro is Vision OS. Vision OS reminds us that it's not about the specs. It's about what the specs enable when combined with software. Imagine being able to virtually visit the vast halls of the Louvre. Not just seeing the artwork but somehow feeling that virtual sunlight and the texture details on the museum walls as you admire the Mona Lisa. This isn't magic. It's the power of Apple Vision Pro's dual high resolution micro OLED displays. With a combined 23 million pixels and a wide color gamut, these displays are so crisp and realistic that they legitimately blur the lines between the virtual and real. But the magic goes beyond just visuals. 12 integrated cameras with depth sensors capture your hand movements allowing for occlusion meshing. This means you can see your real self interact with the spatial environment reaching out to touch virtual objects or even playing a virtual piano with lifelike hand tracking. You can see and interact with objects that you bring into your real world that look so real and so natural. These objects even react to the lighting not just in Apple's pre-rendered environments but the actual lighting in the actual room you are sitting or standing in just like any real object in the real world would do. And it feels so natural and so immersive that you might forget you're wearing a headset. Now fueling this immersive experience is the powerful combination of the Apple M2 chip and the custom Apple R1 co-processor. The M2 is what delivers the processing power needed for smooth performance while the R1 handles the real time sensor data processing ensuring everything feels instantaneous and responsive. And when I tell you there is no perceptible lag when using Vision Pro, that isn't hype. That R1 processor keeps things locked to 12 milliseconds which is 8 times faster than the human eye blinks. When listening to audio, Apple took the time to get so many little things right. When watching a video, audio will sound like it's coming from that window. If it's in front of you, the audio is centered. Put it somewhere over to your left and it will sound exactly like it would if you had put a real TV to your left. Put it above you like I do when working on a document in front of me and it will sound like the video is coming from above you, angled down from the ceiling. Or there's the FaceTime example which is one of my favorites. If you bring people into Vision Pro for a FaceTime session, you can place the window wherever you'd like and you will hear them come from the direction where you place them. But it gets crazier. Apple Vision Pro is constantly scanning your environment and it knows where your walls are and how far away they are. You won't notice this at first, but when people are talking to you on that FaceTime call, there's a slight echo. The natural echo of their voices bouncing off of your walls. But if you decide to switch over to one of Apple's environments, all of a sudden, that echo instantly disappears because now you're outside and the voices should no longer be bouncing off of your walls. Everyone's voices will sound like they would if you were all standing outside. So, here I am in my home as you can see. There are walls around me and I sound like I would sound naturally if I were indoors. But, turning the digital crown like so and check this out. Here between the mountains of Yosemite, you can hear how my voice has changed. It sounds like I'm outside, standing in the snow. And again, it's these little things that are so impressive. I'm sure you've heard by now how amazing the speakers are when watching surround sound content with spatial audio. And it is. But Apple took the time to get these little things right as well. And back to watching videos. The Apple Vision Pro is bar none the best way to watch video content that I have ever experienced. I'm talking movie theaters, high resolution Mac displays, hell, even my 83 inch LG G3 OLED, which I love. That TV is now relegated to playing video games and watching content when I have company over. In all other scenarios, I'm watching TV shows, movies, YouTube, etc. in Apple Vision Pro on a gigantic display that I can set up right in front of me or take with me through the house. And it is incredible. Not only can I make my screen as large as I want it to be, it'll also take on the correct aspect ratio of the content I'm watching. No black bars. And the 3D movie watching experience is next level. You have never experienced 3D videos like you do in Vision Pro with 4K HDR support. Now are you getting how the specs of this device aren't what's important, but rather what it allows you to experience? A feature that might confirm this more than any other is the spatial videos and images that you're able to capture and view in Vision Pro. This is content that truly lets you time travel back to a moment in time, reliving it in a way that you never could before. I started recording spatial videos on my iPhone 15 Pro Max when Apple enabled the feature prior to the release of Vision Pro. I tried to get small moments with loved ones that I thought would be cool to reminisce back to later and these moments can be unexpectedly emotional. Recalling back to the younger years of your children, special moments with your significant other, and especially times with loved ones who are no longer here. There are moments in my life that would easily be worth the price of Vision Pro if I were able to go back to them and experience them in this way. There are even apps that can take your non-spatial videos and photos and use algorithms to make them into spatial content. So we've got a device that is showing us the future, but also lets us travel to moments in the past. That's been a holy grail moment for a long, long time. Now, being able to do work, real, true work on the Vision Pro is something that I saw as the lamest part of Apple's marketing. Why would I want to wear it while working when I have a perfectly capable Mac? But mirroring your Mac display and bringing it into Vision Pro unlocks so many possibilities. To me, it's more freeing than constricting, because now I can spread out. I can have a gigantic Final Cut Pro timeline in front of me to edit videos on, with my messages window floating over to my right, and Safari, for reference, above me or over to my left. You know, when I tried the Apple Vision Pro for the first time back at WWDC, the day it was announced, I told you that it was the greatest experience I had ever had with a consumer electronic product, period. It was profound, and it wasn't about the tech. The moment I put it on and saw the home view for the first time, I knew I was experiencing something that would change the world going forward. And I also set it on stage, knowing full well that it was an incredibly bold claim to make, and that the haters were going to come out. You know what I do for a living? - Yes. - You're a tech reviewer. - And you know I've been doing this since 2005, so for a very long time. How many products that's been over time? - Hundreds. - This was the best experience I've ever had with a consumer electronic product, period. - Whoa. - In my life. - That's crazy. I don't think that in a vacuum, it was the production or the announcement type that made it look bad, I just think it's bad. At the very least, this headset should be able to do what the Quest 3 or the Quest 2 does. At the very least, and if they can't do the very minimum of that, they shouldn't say a word. It looks amazing, it works amazing, technologically. But unfortunately for me, it's not the idea, it's the implementation, and I feel like they missed the landing. - Did you catch that? And did you catch the response from my guy John Prosser? He couldn't believe it and thought I was insane, and that I was out of touch. I told him, "Once you use it, you'll come around within a week." Now, that was nine months ago. Go check out his review over on FPT and see if I was right. This is real magic to them. It's in those experiences, those very human experiences with InVision Pro where everything, the hiccups, the barriers, the build quality, the weight, the camera quality, all of it, all of it, everything that every tech reviewer tells you is important isn't. - Oh, and there's this, too. - Can I zoom into this web page? Can I pinch? - Oh, what? - Apple! Yes! Yes! Beautiful. - Wait, bro. Why is that not a demo? - To zoom is what you'd expect. Look where you want to zoom, pinch your fingers together, and pull both hands apart. - What? - Now, all of that said, I get it. Apple Vision Pro has a hefty price tag of $3,500, and when it comes to consumer electronics, people want to understand the power of the device that they're getting when they spend that kind of money. As you can see, Apple didn't cheap out on anything when it comes to this device. Apple Vision Pro is a technological marvel. As a piece of machinery, it's beautifully and meticulously designed. With that said, there's something that it needs to get better at to truly achieve its promise. - I believe that augmented reality is a profound technology. Blending digital content with the real world can unlock experiences like nothing we've ever seen. So today, I'm excited to announce an entirely new AR platform with a revolutionary new product. Vision Pro is a new kind of computer that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world. It's the first Apple product you looked through and not at. - Think about how we use our smartphones and iPads and our laptops and desktops. Active engagement, our attention captured and focused. When you use them, you are using them. But when you use Apple Vision Pro, you aren't really using it at all. I mean, you are. But you're using it in a similar way to how you're using your pants right now, or using your contact lenses. - Apple Vision Pro is where technology shifts from the foreground to the background, becoming a part of us like glasses or clothing. It's not about actively using a device. It's about living through it. The Apple Vision Pro aims to disappear, making its presence felt only through the experiences that it enables. And this is both the challenge and the promise of Vision Pro. To be there without being noticeable. To enhance without intruding. It's a leap towards a future where technology supports our lives without demanding our constant attention. And as groundbreaking as it is, the Vision Pro reminds us of its physicality regularly. In its current form, it's hard to forget it's there. By its very nature, as something you wear, the level of its physicality will be different for everyone. For example, you may have heard a bunch of reviewers saying to just forget about the Solo Knit Strap, just use the Dual Loop Band instead, because it's so much more comfortable. Yet for me, five minutes with this Dual Loop Band becomes painful while I can literally wear the Vision Pro with the Solo Knit Band for several hours per day. Not a couple, not a few. Several. Per day. With no discomfort at all. Some say they can use the Vision Pro for just 30 minutes before they have to take it off, and others can do the same for a couple of hours. For Apple Vision Pro devices to truly live up to the promise, that experience can't be so wildly different from person to person. It needs to become more comfortable in order for it to become invisible. There's also the tethered battery. A reminder that despite the marvels of augmented reality, we are still bound to the physical constraints of technology. You have to be mindful about where it is when using Vision Pro, especially if you decide to get up and walk around. You need a spare pocket or the Belkin battery clip if you don't just want to carry it around in your hand. It's a key area for improvement in future revisions, as we aim for greater invisibility and convenience when using the device. The Apple Vision Pro also introduces the EyeSight feature, another example of Apple's commitment to creating technology that's not just powerful, but also profoundly personal and respectful of the user's space. EyeSight ensures that when you're engaged in the virtual world, you're still connected to the physical one, allowing others to see your eyes digitally through the visor, thereby maintaining a sense of presence and connection. It enhances human interaction rather than detracting from it by respecting our natural human need for connection and acknowledgement in shared spaces. It's my belief that Apple Vision Pro as a device just needs to become more comfortable and more invisible to the user. If you want to focus on specs that need to be improved, those are the ones for me. But is Apple Vision Pro worth it today, right now? As I said, there are spatial experiences that have made it worth it for me because of how they made me feel to relive them. I've also got to watch people try Vision Pro for the first time. All you need to do is put this device on anyone and then just watch their face. You see smiling. You see open-mouth wonder. You hear joyful laughter. You witness someone experiencing something completely new. To me, this matters more than anything on the spec sheet. It means that Apple is onto something. To discount it as a more expensive MetaQuest 3 or to look at it as just a cumbersome, heavy piece of tech is akin to looking back at that first iPhone and discounting it as the new expensive phone from Apple that doesn't support 3G speeds or copy and paste. Now of course, for many people, that won't be enough. You may see Apple Vision Pro as just an expensive toy. You'd be right. You might see it as an uncomfortable device that is a chore to wear for any extended length of time. You'd be right. Or you may see it as a technological marvel that opens new doors that you can't wait to walk through, no matter the cost. And you'd be right. This is such a personal device that whatever it is you think of it after wearing it, your truth is your truth. No matter how comfortable I am wearing it for hours, I can't tell someone else that they're wrong if they can only wear it for 20 minutes without feeling some pain. A few years ago, I told someone, if I had the opportunity to get that first iPhone, the very first one back in 2007, a year early in whatever form it was in and be one of the people who tested it prior to launch, would I have paid an extra $100? Would I have paid double? Would I have paid triple? I'm the kind of person who loves the journey of technology. I don't just love what it is. I love going on the ride to seeing what it's going to be. That's where I feel we are with Vision Pro. We're standing at the precipice. We see what it is today. What we know throughout its life cycle is going to be changing. And that is exciting to me. But that's not exciting to everyone. And that's why it's impossible for me to get across the feeling of using Vision Pro. And that's the most important aspect. As my friend Ken Kossianda said, "Imagine that I create a new cake recipe, and then I explain it to you in detail and show you a video of someone eating a piece. How well do you think you'll understand if it's any good or if you'd like it? Maybe somewhat, but obviously, nothing can replace trying it yourself." Apple Vision Pro is a testament to Apple's vision of merging technology with the human experience in a way that feels both intuitive and transformative. It isn't just about the hardware, impressive as it is. It's about the experiences the specs enable, how they dissolve the barriers between us and the digital world, making our interactions more seamless, more immersive, and somehow more personal than ever before. Reflecting on the journey from the first telephone to the iPod to the iPhone we have today, we see a common thread. The relentless pursuit of breaking down distances, whether they're between people or between us and our imaginations. The Apple Vision Pro, with its promise of an augmented reality seamlessly woven into the fabric of our daily lives, stands as the next leap in this continuous evolution of connectivity. We're on the cusp of a future where devices like the Vision Pro redefine our interactions not just with technology, but with each other and the world around us. Apple Vision Pro and devices like it hold the potential to enhance our capabilities, enrich our experiences, and perhaps most importantly, remind us of the magic at the intersection of technology and the human spirit. In a world increasingly augmented by technology, how would we ensure that these advancements bring us closer, not just to the digital, but to each other? How will devices like the Apple Vision Pro shape the future of human connection, creativity, and exploration? The Apple Vision Pro is not just a window into the future. It's a mirror reflecting our endless quest for connection, understanding, and meaning. And this is what I love most about technology, and it's why I've made covering consumer electronics my life's work. It's to embrace the possibilities with an open mind, ready to be part of a future where technology continues to make our hearts sing, bringing us closer to the essence of what it means to be truly human. The best aspects of the tech we incorporate into our lives doesn't lie in their specs. It lies in their ability to unlock new dimensions of our humanity. And there are so many other experiences you can have using Apple Vision Pro. I've seen so many people saying, "There's just no apps yet. There's just no use case yet." I have over 150 apps installed on my Apple Vision Pro right now, most of which I have heard no one talk about because no one took the time to look for them. They're there and they're waiting for you. Now, I do have to call Apple out on this because despite the fact that they're there, they are not easy to find in the App Store. You have to look on Reddit, X, Instagram, and other pockets of Vision Pro communities to actually find the cool stuff because Apple seemingly hasn't decided to show it to us in the App Store. Now, I've got a video coming that's going to show you my absolute favorite hidden gems, so if you want to see that, be sure to subscribe. And there are so many more hidden features, little things Apple has added that most people don't even realize are there. I've done two videos about these so far and I'll link them down in the description if you want to check those out. The question that remains is not if, but how we will navigate this new frontier together.
