Apple's Future for Us

 

Vanity Fair - "Why Tim Cook Is Going All In on the Apple Vision Pro"
By Nick Bilton

"I know deep down that the Apple Vision Pro is too immersive, and yet all I want to do is see the world through it. “I’m sure the technology is terrific. I still think and hope it fails,” one Silicon Valley investor said to me. “Apple feels more and more like a tech fentanyl dealer that poses as a rehab provider.” Harsh words, but he feels what we all feel, a slave to our smartphone, and he’s seen this play before and he knows what the first act is like, and the second act, and he knows how it ends.

I didn’t ask Cook about this because I didn’t realize it all until days later, but I did ask him if technology is moving too quickly. If all of it, AI, spatial computing, and our reliance on technology, if it’s all too much. “What does the future of it all look like?” I asked Cook.

“I think it’s hard to predict exactly,” he replied.

“But you’re making it,” I said. “So don’t you get to predict it?”

“What we do is we get really excited about something and then we start pulling the string and see where it takes us,” Cook told me. “And yes, we’ve got things on the road maps and so forth, and yes, we have a definitive point of view. But a lot of it is also the exploration and figuring out.” He concluded, “Sometimes the dots connect. And they lead you to some place that you didn’t expect.” (Letting connected dots lead the way was a theme Cook’s predecessor used to talk about.)

The question is, is the place we’re about to go, into the era of spatial computing, going to make our lives better, or will it become the next technology that becomes a necessity, where we can’t live in a world that’s not augmented? I think Joswiak had it half right when he said, ​​“It feels like we’ve reached into the future and grabbed this product. You’re putting the future on your face.” I think it’s the other way around. Apple is taking us into the future, into a new era of computing. Some of us are running as fast as we can to get there, and others are being dragged, kicking and screaming. But we’re all going. We’re going to the moon, and we’re going to look around at the ghostly luminescence of ancient dust under a black, star-studded sky, and we’ll just know that this is the future of computing and entertainment and apps and memories, and that this apparatus wrapped around our head will change everything."