When I began programming many years ago (now 55 and counting!), computing was in its infancy. We wrote programs on blue coding sheets, had them converted into decks of punchcards, and queued them on a shelf for “batch processing”. Usually the reward was a program listing with some obscure error messages like IEC107D, and I would mentally step through the program, repeating the process until being rewarded with a working “run”. I soon found employment at the local university, where more often than not I could run my program deck through myself and figure out things faster — and later on, in the wee hours, even use the huge mainframe computer as a primitive but enthralling personal device.

After some years the first video terminals came out, where you could view all lines of the program in glowing green rows, edit them directly, and enter the program into the batch queue. Was this the future? Well, there still was much to come. Very soon I realized I could buy one of those new Apple IIe computers along with a small TV and program/debug in the comfort of my home. And, miraculously, people actually paid me to sit at a computer keyboard and program.

And then the future arrived. When I saw the reports of the first Macintosh — a full graphics screen and a mouse — I knew that was it! The point-and-click user interface was the best. No more command lines. No more moving a clunky cursor around with the keyboard. It was heaven! And it only got better: color, larger screens, huge amounts of RAM and storage, networking! And then the internet came in, wonder of wonders.

It took years to evolve the expected standard behaviors of mouse gestures and UI conventions; application programmers had a library of items to use, so that pretty soon everything worked as expected and programs that flouted those conventions were downrated.

I was in the audience, in 2007, when Steve Jobs introed the first iPhone as a combination cellphone, iPod, and internet device. I wasn’t very impressed; I already had an iPod which I used little, had no plans of getting a cellphone (and indeed, held out until 2016 to buy one!), and the internet part was cool but the screen was small, the browser was limited and my laptop Mac had a much better feature set. OK, it wasn’t as portable but I always had it with me…

The real revolution here was the multitouch interface, an evolution of the point-and-click interface but with your fingers standing in for the mouse. It took years to evolve, and as with the Mac, Apple offered standard UI items to developers, which could then concentrate on functionality instead of reinventing the wheel.

But then in 2010 the first iPad came out and I bought one right away. Now here was a portable computer good enough to use as a personal device, and latter versions became more and more impressive. My iPad today is my main device for reading, listening to music and casual browsing, although I still fall back on the Mac for developing and writing longer texts. With my recent eye troubles I tend to fall back on my 77″ TV for watching movies, though, and programming has been curtailed.

Now the future has arrived again. I have no doubts that Apple’s Vision Pro — and, of course, “spatial computing” — is the Next Big New Thing.

Oddly enough, one of my arguments here is the sheer volume of vitriol about the device that one can find on the social networks: it’s unwieldy, it’s expensive, the external battery sucks, it’s been done already by others, it’s isolating and dystopian, it’s one more dragon in Apple’s evil ecosystem… Apple is doooomed, I tell you! Sound familiar? (And I’m not even on most of those networks!)

Hey, all those negatives were also rolled out in the past — and before we had Apple’s evil ecosystem, we had IBM’s evil ecosystem, remember? Every time such a futuristic device is sighted, it is clunky, expensive, power-hungry, and so forth. But also, if conditions are just right… the next version appears just in time, and it’s lighter, easier to use, and we can’t live without it anymore.

The real futuristic paradigm is now look-and-click, evolved from the old point-and-click way, and many other gestures are possible; standardisation is no doubt in progress. Why hold a mouse, or a control, or lift your hands unnecessarily, when you can convey all with small, subtle gestures? And our brains are evolved for a 3D environment — all our language and thinking is constructed around 3D metaphors.

Now, finally, we have a minimum viable system to explore 3D user interfaces. Discussing whether the Vision Pro is AR, VR or XR is besides the point; those are just implementation details and will evolve along with the UI.

Details on the hardware are scarce as I write this, and some may even be uninteresting — this thing is a self-contained computer on your face and the only relevant spec will probably be how much SSD space is left for user data. Everything else will be just good enough to be effectively transparent. And that’s the major point about the Vision Pro hardware: it’s a 3D input device for your brain, the first with sufficient quality to be transparent. Who needs holograms?

But, people will ask, what is the use case for this thing for the normal user/gamer/TV watcher/whatever? My answer: we don’t really know! Apple has, of course, selected some classic cases for the previous tech: FaceTime, games, 3D photos/videos, widescreen movies, Excel spreadsheets hanging in space (ugh), etc.; they had to do it, to get people’s attention. But between now and whenever this comes on the market in early 2024, developers will burn the midnight oil to build compelling use cases, most of which nobody (not even Apple!) had thought of before.

And this is where the Vision turns Pro. I believe that, rather than just designating a higher-capacity device compared to a non-Pro version, the Vision’s Pro name indicates that, at least until the 2nd or even 3rd generation comes out, this is a device for professionals. This is not (yet!) for casual gamers, zoomers or moviewatchers. Here’s a partial list I and a few friends came up with in a few minutes:

  • Architects, engineers, designers (as usual)
  • Doctors, dentists, psychologists, therapists and researchers in general
  • Educators and grad/postgrad students
  • Technicians in hitech fields like power generation, aircraft maintenance
  • Industrial applications are boundless
  • Astronomers, archaeologists, artists

And most of these can afford (or their companies can) the current $3499 price.

Com to think of it, I’ll probably buy two; it’ll still come in cheaper than paying for a huge 3D TV, multiple big screens/projectors and a couple of M2 Macs.

More as details emerge.