Apparently the last week of online discourse around Meta’s new Orion prototype struck a nerve with me because I posted an all-timer in terms of snark recently. This comes after years of two general frustrations with how some people cover and talk about technology online (especially on social media):

1. Tech that isn’t shipping to general consumers isn’t worth talking about, let alone getting excited about.
2. A general “how dare you want more” response when someone proposes products could be better or more powerful.

Both of these are general things you’ll find online, and I often see them in the context of Apple, which is a company who makes products I love, but that I vocally ask to improve things that I think could be made better. A few times over the years I’ve snapped back at people on Twitter and Mastodon with some variant of, “why are you even looking forward to WWDC if you seem to think every feature Apple isn’t shipping today is an intentional omission?” I wrote about this a few weeks ago where I said:

[T]he iPad wasn’t supposed to have a file manager until it got one, the iPad wasn’t supposed to be used with a mouse and keyboard until it did, the iPad wasn’t supposed to have overlapping windows until it did.

On a related note, it became clear to me years ago that iPad Pros should have the front-facing camera on the long side of the device so that it would be higher and centered when using the iPad in that model’s native orientation. I asked for this many times over the years, and without fail, each time I would be told that it wasn’t possible due to physics. You simply couldn’t have the magnets needed to attach an Apple Pencil near the cameras otherwise the cameras wouldn’t work. Even if Apple agreed this would be better, it wasn’t possible due to “physics”. A few times this wasn’t told to me nicely, it was more in the “are you dumb? Don’t you know that magnets and cameras can’t mix?” And yet, I’m writing this on an iPad Pro with the camera centered on the long side of the screen, with an Apple Pencil magnetically attached to the same spot. Obviously they needed to rearrange things in both the iPad and the Pencil to make this work, but that’s my entire point: the world can change and we can usually get what we want if we try. My perspective is that as a user and a commentator, my job is to ask for what I want and it’s Apple’s (or whoever’s) job to make it happen.

I rarely quote Steve Jobs on this blog, but this might be my favorite, and most impactful thing I ever heard him say:

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. […] Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

This brings us to the Meta Orion, a prototype pair of glasses that displays 3D interfaces in the world around you. It’s not shipping to customers, but even still I think it’s a really exciting piece of tech. Some have suggested that “obviously” Apple has the exact same thing in their labs (and it’s probably better!), but do they? I have no idea, but maybe…all I know is that Meta showed me something I’ve never seen before and I think that’s cool and worth thinking about.

I’ve been following VR for many years, from when the Oculus Rift kicked off this whole era of VR revitalization in 2012, to the HTC Vive, the Valve Index, the Quest line, and most recently the Vision Pro. Back in 2016 I wrote about how the PlayStation VR was the VR headset to beat! But the PSVR and all those other headsets had similar experiences with consumers, a few people used them regularly, but it seemed the large majority of buyers used them for a little bit and then they started collecting dust. This was true of the gaming-focused headsets and anecdotally it seems to be true of the Vision Pro as well.

I think everyone should go and try out a Vision Pro in an Apple Store because it really is an amazing experience. I bought one, and the first 30 minutes of wearing one was one of the most impactful 30 minutes of my computing life. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Vision Pro is remarkable hardware with very good software, but it takes some serious novelty to get me to use it for anything. My Quest 3 suffers the same problem, as I love Beat Saber, but it’s such a burden to put these chunky headsets on to do anything. I think this has been one of the challenges VR has had getting off the ground all these years, and it’s the simple fact that the headsets fucking suck and people hate wearing them. Whether it’s a plastic Meta Quest 3 or a metal Vision Pro, it’s a huge annoyance to deal with it compared to the other ways we all have to do computer stuff.

And yet VR keeps happening and people keep thinking “this is the one” even though they are probably buying another headset that will live in their closet next to the older one. I think there’s something here that people want to be real, they just don’t have it in hardware that’s palatable enough for them to put up with it on their face regularly.

This is the world the Orion glasses come into, and I think they’ve gotten a lot of attention because while they are far from perfect (or affordable or on the market at all), they seem far more palatable than the headsets we’re used to seeing. Do I like watching movies on a giant screen in the Vision Pro? Mostly! Would I like it even more if I could wear lighter glasses that looked more like normal frames? 1,000 yes% Do I like the idea of having a desktop monitor with me when I’m away from home? Of course! Do I like the idea of being able to do that without having my headset take up over half of my travel backpack? For sure! What the Orion demos showed me was that people are out there getting us closer to that reality. Much like I can get excited for a spaceship launch I’ll never be on myself or a $100,000 car with features I won’t see in my mid-range sedan for another 5 years or more, I am a fan of technology and I like seeing what’s on the bleeding edge of possible. I dare to dream of what technology can do, even if it’s not here for everyone today.

I guess what I’m ultimately saying is that I think it’s very reasonable for people to see a product, even if it’s just a prototype, and get excited if it shows them something new that they may get to enjoy one day. On the other end, anyone making an “Apple is falling behind Meta” post because of this prototype is being silly (although Meta is also shipping more headsets to the market than Apple today, so Apple's certainly not the market leader here). If you saw the Orion glasses and went, “fuck yeah, I can’t wait for something like that!” then you keep on rocking.