If Apple Can't Do It...

The $3,500 Vision Pro goggles could finally make augmented reality a hit. A flop could bring a decade-long AR "winter."

- MATT WEINBERGER

BY NOW, YOU'VE probably heard all about the Apple Vision Pro, the iPhone maker's $3,500 headset to be released next year.

With the Vision Pro, Apple is once again walking a well-trodden path. From the original Google Glass a decade ago, to Microsoft's HoloLens in 2016, to Meta's Quest Pro-now just $999- there have been many attempts by Big Tech to make smart goggles happen.

It's the payoff for years of teases from CEO Tim Cook about Apple's big play in augmented reality (AR), the technology placing digital imagery atop the real world.

Leaders like Cook and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg have repeatedly said over the years that they see AR as one day supplanting the smartphone, enabling people to access their apps, make video calls, get sports scores or directions, and even buy things, just by looking through their lenses. In this vision, whoever nails the AR revolution stands to become the de facto hub for the next wave of computing.

Yet the headset revolution has not happened, at least not in anything resembling the mainstream. Generally speaking, headsets cost too much, do too little for the price, face tough technical limitations, and ultimately make anybody who wears them look like-for lack of a better phrase-a complete goober. Google and Microsoft have both hit turbulence with their respective augmented reality strategies, through winding sagas too long to recount here.

Still, it's rarely wise to bet against Apple, given its track record of entering a market late with products like the iPod and iPhone, and still managing to redefine an entire category. The industry consensus is that if Apple can't do it, nobody can.