Discover more from be radical Briefing
Apple’s Vision for the Vision Pro
Read on for our take on Apple’s Vision Pro headset (and the firm’s general take on AR/VR/XR).
I’m Pascal Finette, co-founder of be radical – and this is our weekly Briefing. We share our latest insights, analysis, and articles we read; all focussed on the future of technology and business. Just like a good banana, it’s easy to digest. nutritious and yummy.
Decode. Disrupt. Transform.
“$500? Fully subsidized with a Plan? That is the most expensive phone in the world. And it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine.”
Those were the words barked by then-CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, after Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on June 29th, 2007. As the saying goes: Famous last words. The iPhone went on to become a game-changer in the smartphone industry. Similarly, Apple’s recent release of the $3,499 Vision Pro headset has received mixed reactions due to its high price tag. Nonetheless, early reviews have praised the quality of the hardware, the user-friendly interface, and the immersive experience. As an avid Apple user, I am confident that Apple will continue to innovate and refine the product to make it more accessible to a wider audience.
The real question is how we will use this device and what impact it will have on our lives. The Vision Pro has great potential for professional use, such as in medical imaging, design, and data visualization. However, the bigger issue to me is user acceptance. Apple’s promotional photos depict individuals isolated from the real world, lost in their headsets. AR/VR technology is inherently anti-social, and how users will integrate it into their daily lives remains to be seen.
In Apple’s vision for the future, you lounge on the sofa, goggles strapped to your head, working on a presentation while FaceTiming with your family and scrolling through a personalized newsfeed. When your wife walks up to you, your headset momentarily turns transparent so you can look at each other into the fake eyes projected on the outside of your pair of Apple Vision Pros. The moment she turns away, your environment switches back to the calming Japanese forest you picked from a near-endless list of options. The FaceTime call returns, and your family’s avatars laugh about something you didn’t catch…
It’s dystopian – and yet precisely what Apple’s high-gloss pictures and demo clips project. In the end, this might be the much bigger hurdle to overcome, rather than the (currently) high price. (via Pascal)
The Thin Wisps of Tomorrow
Chirper.ai is the first social media for our AI overlords – no humans allowed. It looks like Twitter, it feels like Twitter, and it has accounts posting and commenting – yet something is different: Every single account on Chirper.ai is an AI. The way it works is that users (actual humans) set up AI accounts, give them a persona complete with interests and character quirks, and let them start posting. The AI generates posts, including hashtags – which other AI bots start commenting on. It’s a fascinating view into how fully autonomous cyborg societies might work. Here is a good summary of how it works and what’s going on in Chirper-land.
UK rental car service delivers cars via remote control. Getting to Ithaca, the fabled destination of the long journey of Odysseus, was never the point. Similar to the famous story of the trials and tribulations of our Greek hero, in technology we oftentimes fixate on the end state and ignore the journey. Point in case: Self-driving cars. We might well be decades away from truly fully autonomous vehicles – waiting for this end state might prove to be costly. Yet, on the glide path toward full autonomy we develop highly reliable remote controls for vehicles. Turns out – that is good enough to solve many consumer pain points. Fetch, a UK-based rental car company turns this idea into reality by delivering your car to your doorsteps via human-operated remote control.
What We Are Reading
🏃♂️ What Will Working with AI Really Require? Racing with and against the machines: How humans and AI can work together in the workplace like a track team competing in various events. Jane ⇢ Read
🤗 The Purpose Of Life Is Not Happiness: It’s Usefulness Most people are constantly chasing happiness as if that is THE goal in life; it can be, but more so, we should be chasing how to be useful. What are you doing to make a difference? Mafe ⇢ Read
🗺️ Welcome to a World Without Endings In a world where everyone can create, true expertise and an eye for craft lie in the ability to recognize when something is complete. Do we possess it? Julian ⇢ Read
📺 Netflix Password Crackdown Drives U.S. Sign-Ups to Highest Levels in at Least Four YearsNetflix has managed the challenging task of implementing restrictions on the number of users per household and introducing ads quite effectively. As stated in the article, the company’s performance in this regard is “not bad at all.” Pedro ⇢ Read
🕚 Every self-help book ever, boiled down to 11 simple rules Stop wasting hours of your precious life! Discover the 11 simple rules that every self-help book swears by, and start living your best life today. Pascal ⇢ Read
Around The Horn
Tipping point: The world is spending more on solar than oil production.
Globalization is far from over – as a matter of fact, it is still growing (and ever-evolving).
Lessons learned from building production-level AI systems (hint: it’s harder than you think).
The future of higher-ed (hint: It was never about teaching, but rather certifying students’ employability).
OpenAI’s tips on how to create better prompts.
Ars Technica on the Apple Vision Pro. And John Gruber’s impressions.
Some Fun Stuff
Turn your old Apple Watch into a mechanical watch masterpiece. ⌚︎
Postscript
We changed the format of our Briefing up a bit – in addition to our long(er) think piece (“Decode. Disrupt. Transform.”) we added a few paragraph-long comments on signals we spotted and cleaned up some of the other sections. We hope you like it!
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