I am only being partially facetious here. What I am getting ready to write about is the everyday research anyone in an office would do.*
Yesterday, I needed to compose one of those long, tedious emails (dreaded by reader and writer alike) that brought someone up to speed on the last six months of a project's activity. It was a trying experience that required searching through sent messages for what was said and archived messages to confirm dates and actions taken so that a timeline could be set down.
It was a process that, quite frankly, grew more annoying and irritating as it went on. This wasn't due to the task, which I could rationally see was needed and justifiable. It was the emotional response to the mental back and forth from one archived message to another archived message (saved in different folders) to trace multiple strands so I could paint a picture of events for someone was not a part of so that they could make a decision.
This morning, as I was reading and writing about other things, one way that irritation could be mitigated occurred to me: Having some of the reference material in a different and accessible space.
To be clear, I am not talking about a multi-window arrangement on a single monitor. I was using multiple windows at various times in the drafting process. I also had more than one screen in front of me. Specifically, I had an iPad Pro in front of me to search through email and access a web portal to the third-party platform that houses the project. The drafting of the message I needed to compose was being composed with an Apple Pencil on this iPad Mini. (Before anyone new to this blog comments, I prefer to compose with the Pencil when I can because of a different kind of efficiency.)
What would have made the process easier was not the ability to open more windows on the screens I had but the ability to open prior messages in different spaces that I could arbitrarily re-arrange depending on the thread of activity I was following rather than trying to remember which tab or instance of a particular browser held the information I needed.
Having that kind of a multiple monitor set up with VESA mounts would likely be more expensive than a tricked out Vision Pro. It would also be overkill most of the time.
I've come to the conclusion that I've been thinking of the Vision Pro wrong in this regard. I think it won’t be the "killer app" that makes or breaks the device — at least not in terms of computer applications. It will be how one can apply the device to a process (e.g., project management, research projects) like the one I was engaging in that will matter.
And here is where Apple's choice to focus on AR rather than VR will prove superior to prior headsets capable of this kind of spatial computing. A user will be able to interact with physical objects (e.g., a notepad, a book, an experimental apparatus) and not be constrained by a virtual world.
I suspect this may be another instance of Apple having listened past what users say they want and creatively address the core idea. It might have been easier to develop a for a solution rather than engineering an explicitly described technical feature but it wouldn't address that deeper need.
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* In case any of you are wondering, that kind of activity is why your schoolteachers and university professors made you write those research papers.