 "Apple’s Vision Pro")
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2023
Every successful Apple product of the past two decades has disappeared into our lives in some way, says an article by Lauren Goode on wired.com — the iPhone into our pockets, the iPad into our purses, the Apple Watch living on our wrists, and the AirPods resting in our ears.
But the Vision Pro, Apple’s newest product, doesn’t disappear. In fact, it does the opposite, says Goode. “It rests on your face and shields your eyes, sensory organs that are a crucial part of the lived human experience. The same is true of every other heads-up display in the world.”
Will this non-disappearance come in Apple’s way, or can the storied tech company revolutionise an industry once again?
Story of the week: The Apple of how many eyes?
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On June 5, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, announced the tech giant’s entry into spatial computing with the Vision Pro, which will go on sale in 2024.
Spatial computing is a hybrid method to merge the real world with the virtual through augmented reality. Apple Vision Pro can be controlled using one’s hands, eyes, and voice. It turns the surroundings into a canvas to use apps anywhere and in any size.
Anand Mahindra (readers of the Bites would know him) wondered on Twitter if this signalled the death of large TV displays, which would affect not just the companies making television sets but also social behaviours, such as community watching of sports. Replying to another Twitter user, Mahindra said it could possibly affect cinema theatres as well.
Does this signal the death of large screen TV displays? Wonder what the boardrooms at Samsung & Sony plotting in response… And what about community-watching of movies & sports matches? Will that now be replaced by a roomful of zombies wearing headsets? https://t.co/qQa8vwuy6Q
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) June 6, 2023
Dave Lee, writing for Bloomberg, said Apple had done what many technology observers had thought impossible. “It has made mixed-reality computing interesting and appealing.”
Wall Street was less impressed, probably because of Vision Pro’s high price tag of $3,499. Apple, after appearing to move towards $3 trillion in market cap in earlier trading sessions, lost ground after the launch.
The reaction from two of the more-talked-about tech titans resembled a no-holds-barred battle.
“The good news is that there’s no kind of magical solutions that they have to any of the constraints on laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of... It costs seven times more and now requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it,” said Mark Zuckerberg, as reported by The Verge. Zuckerberg’s Quest is priced at $499.
Elon Musk put out a meme on his Twitter handle showing a picture of a woman wearing Vision Pro alongside a picture of mushrooms. This is high-end stuff.
In other news…
The Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee decided to maintain the status quo on repo rate in a second consecutive review. The central bank decided to return to its primary objective of targeting headline inflation of 4 per cent, which was kept in abeyance in the past three years due to the pandemic and the war in Europe.
Four states have breached the 10% mark in electric two-wheeler penetration. Goa leads the way, albeit with modest numbers, followed by Kerala and Karnataka. Maharashtra is by far the largest state by the number of electric two-wheelers sold.
Airfares on certain busy routes from Delhi dropped between 14 per cent and 61 per cent, said Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, who had instructed airlines in a meeting on June 5 to keep fares reasonable.
Tech that: Word from the world of technology and start-ups
Byju’s skipped an interest payment of about $40 million on a loan from US-based investment management firm, Redwood, becoming the only Indian start-up to default on a US dollar loan. It also filed a suit against Redwood, challenging the acceleration of the $1.2-billion term loan facility.
Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar ruled out any threat of job losses because of artificial intelligence, saying the current form of AI was largely task-oriented and incapable of dealing with situations requiring logic and reasoning.
Watch it: From The Morning Show
Will the RBI’s pause turn into a pivot? Peer into the crystal ball here.
What is Suveen obsessing over?
The Gypsy was Maruti’s third vehicle in India. Coming in 1985, it added a new dimension to driving.
It would be an understatement to say it was a capable vehicle. With its resilient suspension and four-wheel drive, it could literally go anywhere. The Bites has heard eyewitness accounts of the Gypsy riding uphill in horrible weather in Ladakh while other vehicles, trying to climb, were sliding backwards even as their wheels spun forward.
That said, it would be an overstatement to say that the Gypsy was a comfortable ride. The Bites owned one for a while, and, speaking from experience, the Gypsy tried you in ways other vehicles could not dare to.
In the new Jimny from Maruti, starting at just under Rs 13 lakh, many see the return of the Gypsy. The difference is that Maruti sees the Jimny, with five doors, as a lifestyle product, not confining it to the three-door Gypsy’s loyal base of rally enthusiasts, off-road lovers, the police, and the armed forces.
Although the Gypsy started the off-roader market in India, Mahindra & Mahindra’s Thar has reinvented it. Seen that way, Maruti is trying to reclaim a market. That won’t be easy. Last heard, a five-door Thar was on its way to the market, which could be expected to go off-road a bit.
This is Suveen signing off. Please send comments, news, or views about anything — from bickering tech titans to vehicles going off-road — to suveen.sinha@bsmail.in.
(Suveen Sinha is Chief Content Editor at Business Standard)
