Apple Vision Pro vs the office?
The horrible collision of VR and Return To Office working
I’m really quite bemused by Apple’s Vision Pro product release. For those that haven’t seen it, Apple describe it as “a revolutionary spatial computer”. The less charitable among us might call it the Apple HoloLens. Being first to market was never Apple’s jam. Their gig has always been polishing and refining ideas that other people dogfooded for them (hi iPhone), and there’s nowt wrong with that.
The ‘ideal’ product that wasn’t available to us during the enforced Work From Home era was truly natural and accessible ‘telepresence’. Zoom, Teams and Hangouts filled in for us in a HD, 2D way, but imagine if we had the promise of Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3 to really give us the feeling of working, remotely together. Wouldn’t that have made the whole pandemic better?
I can’t help but think the boat has been missed. Apple themselves ordered a return to the office last year, and latterly even (allegedly) threatened action against their non-compliant staff. Twitter, Amazon, Dell and Meta have followed suit in demanding their staff work at least 3 days from the office, citing increased creativity, higher productivity (especially with more junior staff members)
