“Everything in this product has been invented,” Alan Dye, Apple’s Vice President of Human Interface Design, says on Design Matters with Debbie Millman. “This has been the most, by far the most challenging design program we’ve ever had — [with] 5,000 patents.”
“Only Apple could make a product like this,” Dye continued. “Some of the ideas were really hard to get to, but big. Like the idea of like one of the big ideas we have is connection, staying connected to your world, but then also connecting with those that aren’t with you.”
William Gallagher for AppleInsider:
Apple design chief Alan Dye says showing a Apple Vision Pro wearer’s eyes was “a UI for those around you,” and took years to create.
“So we worked really hard at allowing people to stay connected to the world that they’re in… [which is] why this is very much an AR product,” said Dye. “That’s why we worked so hard to make it such that when you put it on, what you see is your world… and people see in, and it’s just like you’re wearing goggles.”
“We created a user interface, our first user interface, for the rest of the world, right?” he said. “So a product that has a UI that is actually meant for those around you.”
Dye says that being able to let someone see your eyes as you wear the Vision Pro was “a huge deal for us and took literally years of invention to come up with,” because “we believe so fundamentally that you should not feel isolated, right?”
MacDailyNews Note: You can listen to the entire Design Matters with Debbie Millman podcast via Apple Podcasts here.
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All those years of work and all those patents won’t prevent Samsung and others from copying and reverse engineering it all. A copycat product will be produced in mere months and the courts will not uphold the Apple patents, but a Texas court will find Apple infringed on a patent of a never produced product held by a patent troll company. Apple will have a shorter runway than one might anticipate. I remember Steve Jobs saying, they patented the heck out of the iPhone. Little good that did.
Remember the quote from Steve himself “They were copier-heads who had no clue about what a computer could do,” Steve Jobs recounted during a 1996 interview, “Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry… [But] Picasso had a saying. He said, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal. ‘ And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”
I’ve always thought it amusing that even after stating that quote, Steve never truly believed it ‘right’ for Apple to also be stolen from by another ‘great artist’.
Can you name a few examples? I can only think of copycats.
Subjective. Every company with a strong R/D department probably feels they are ‘great artist’ material.
I don’t think so.
The hardware, software, operating system(s) and developer tools needed to pull this off are far beyond the capabilities of all but perhaps one (MS) or two (maybe one day Google) other companies.
As I understand it, patents cover a method of implementing an idea and not the actual resulting function/product. Though “Apple patented the heck out of the iPhone” as long as others have a different implementation of a technology that may result in an identical product, the patent has not been infringed. Court cases serve to give an opportunity to prove/disprove any infringement in question. There may be varying degrees of interpretation depending on the type of infringement (e.g. functional, look-feel, etc.)
“being able to let someone see your eyes as you wear the Vision Pro was “a huge deal for us.”
It’s this mentality and value-pursuit that makes me a sticky customer. Apple seeks to be profitable, but not at the expense of human growth and well-being.
Almost a decade ago Google filed and received patents for smart contact lenses. One branch of research was meant to monitor glucose levels for diabetics. Who knows how far the research has come in Google’s X labs for the main branch. Contact lenses would negate any need to display a pair of eyes on the outside of the product.
A neighbor who retired a few years ago from the US Air Force has severe MS and is confined to a wheelchair. His fingers have very little range of motion. There is no doubt that he would benefit greatly from the Apple Vision Pro. Being able to engage with the world through eye movements and small gestures would be a godsend. I truly hope Apple and vendors and health care service providers recognize just how valuable this can be for handicapped people and find it possible to reduce or to subsidize the cost for these people. Do the right thing, Apple.
As someone who has been a caregiver for 5 years I know that severely disabled people require heavy and nearly continuous care from a rotation of several people. The “magical technology” marketing is good for Apple but it rarely reflects the reality of what the tech can truly provide and the massive amount of effort required from other people to troubleshoot, adjust and continuously monitor its use.
Apple didn’t even hint at this for the Vision Pro and that’s good, until they can provide something with concrete benefits for disabled people they shouldn’t get their hopes up. My guess is that your neighbor’s condition is too severe for the precise coordination of movements that the VP requires. Child’s play for a healthy person, but a virtual impossibility for others.