Tim Cook has been finally pictured wearing the Apple Vision Pro headset. The photographs accompany a Vanity Fair article about the device, which leads on the digital cover of the magazine.
This is the first time the Apple CEO has been seen wearing the device since its unveiling at WWDC 2023 in June. Given that Cook is usually keen to model and be seen using Apple devices, particularly during keynote events and speeches, it's interesting that the company appears to have been a little more reticent to take the same approach with Vision Pro, until now.
The article includes interview quotes from Tim Cook, Greg Joswiak, James Cameron, Jon Favreau, and others on their experience with Apple Vision Pro, how the headset was developed, and more. Here are some select quotes from the piece, which was written by Nick Bilton:
You can actually lay on your sofa and put the displays on your ceiling if you wish," Cook told me. "I watched the third season of [Ted] Lasso on my ceiling and it was unbelievable!" When I got home and hooked up my own Apple Vision Pro, I watched Ford v Ferrari on my ceiling, and with the spatial audio it felt like Ken Miles’s Ford GT40 was in the room with me. "I think meditation is on a different level than anything I’ve ever experienced, and I've meditated for a long time," Cook said. I've always had trouble meditating, and he was right about that too. "And I use it for productivity," Cook told me.
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"I would say my experience was religious," the director James Cameron told me when I asked him about his first encounter with the Apple Vision Pro. "I was skeptical at first. I don’t bow down before the great god of Apple, but I was really, really blown away."
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If there's one consistent grumble about the Apple Vision Pro, it's about the size and weight. It's around 20 ounces, which might not sound like a lot, because you cook with ounces, you don't necessarily wear them. But that's the same as five sticks of butter—imagine walking around with five sticks of butter on your face all day. Carolina Cruz-Neira, a pioneer of virtual reality, told me that the way a device sits on your face really impacts how you respond to the technology. "I’ve been working in VR for over 30 years, and until we can get the scuba diving mask off your face and we make it less noticeable, we’re not going to make this a mass-adoption technology," Cruz-Neira said. "And the size and weight of these scuba diving masks are not going to be solved in a year."
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"There’s nothing we could have done to make it lighter or smaller," Richard Howarth [Apple VP of industrial design] explained. "This is the state of the art." Everyone else I spoke to at Apple proffered a similar sentiment. "It feels like we've reached into the future and grabbed this product," Joswiak said to me. "You’re putting the future on your face." As did Rockwell, who told me: "We packed just about as much technology as you could possibly pack into that small of a form factor."
You can read the full review on the Vanity Fair website.
Apple Vision Pro starts at $3,499 and launches in the U.S. this Friday, February 2. Apple has said the Vision Pro will launch in additional countries later this year.
