Apple Vision Pro 2 could launch soon — here’s what a former Apple engineering manager says it must fix

Hands and eyes interaction was definitely one of, if not the most difficult challenge, on V1 of Vision Pro. AVP (Apple Vision Pro) is a controller-free device, which meant this feature had to work flawlessly. It’s one thing to get natural interaction methods working, but another thing to get them working as magically as required to meet Apple standards and the expectations of millions of customers. We were pushing the limits of machine learning to make it happen.

At this point, I think it’s fairly clear that a hardware revision is the best thing for broad adoption of AVP. The most common thing I hear from people using the device is that it’s too heavy and too bulky to wear for long periods of time. I’ve read rumors of an Apple Vision Air, which I think would be a great next step, and great branding!

I agree these are all barriers, but unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet, and I don’t see a single point in time when mass adoption suddenly happens. The forecast for VR market growth is ~30% compounded year-over-year, which I think is about right.

If there is a killer app, I think it’s sports and music, which is why I bet the farm on music. You can count on PulseJet to be the best source of totally indescribable, completely immersive music experiences across VR platforms!

I think what’s missing is that artists and studios don’t understand how to use the new format, which we call the spherical canvas.

TV became mainstream in the 1950’s but only in 1981 did MTV come along and “kill the radio star.” What we see studios doing now is just taking their normal cameras and adding a lens, which doesn’t really consider the opportunity to completely surround your viewer with an experience.

The biggest hurdle to adoption right now is for folks to understand the artistic opportunity. Cost is also a hurdle, of course, since only the top artists are able to afford things like motion capture and advanced CGI/VFX that make VR great.

I learned so much at Apple, and I really couldn’t be more grateful for everything I learned. I think what informs my approach today is the combination of everything I learned there and throughout my career that informs my approach today, including software and hardware development, operations, program management, marketing and more.

Obsessing over the details is probably the biggest thing I picked up at Apple. Now it’s a part of me, ingrained so tightly I’ll never get away from it.

The “aha moment” was the point at which I was just overflowing with so many content ideas that there was no way I could get them done at Apple, which is really a hardware/consumer electronics company. My ideas keep snowballing, and now funding and budget availability are really the only limits to what we can do.

The goal for the company is to be the platform consumers go to for rich immersive music experiences. I see so much opportunity in music that I think we’ll stay focused on that, although it is possible we'll veer off into movies or other forms of entertainment.

Artificial intelligence is a whole other ball of wax, and although there’s a lot of skepticism and cynicism today, I see it greatly accelerating the creative process. AI video generation is pretty incredible, and we’re using it for storyboarding purposes internally already. We’re careful not to publish any AI content today, being careful not to steal content or generate “AI Slop.”

The big guys like OpenAI need to figure out how to compensate source owners properly and respect artists' copyrights. There’s also a quality gap right now where, for example, 3D models are only 80-90% the fidelity of sculptured models. Once we get past these challenges, I think AI greatly accelerates many elements of the VR production process, which is super exciting!