On Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled its most ambitious — and riskiest — new hardware product in years: a mixed reality headset called the Apple Vision Pro.

Apple CEO Tim Cook touted the Vision Pro, which combines virtual reality and augmented reality, as a “revolutionary product,” with the potential to change how users interact with technology, each other and the world around them.

The new Apple Vision Pro looks like a pair of ski goggles and lets people overlay virtual images on live videos of the real world. Cook, who has been talking up the potential of augmented reality for years, touted the headset as “the first product you look through, not at.”

According to Apple, once a user puts on the device, they’re able to see apps directly projected in front of them. At the event, Apple showed off a range of unique experiences with the product, including apps for medicine, productivity and entertainment. Disney CEO Bob Iger also joined the Apple event to discuss how Disney will create content for the new Vision Pro headset.

Unlike other headsets, the new mixed reality headset will display the eyes of its users on the outside, so “you’re never isolated from the people around you, you can see them and they can see you,” said Alan Dye, vice president of human interface.

But the product faces a number of challenges: Apple is diving into an unproven market littered with other tech companies who have tried and largely failed to find mainstream traction for their devices. Apple is also charging US$3,499 for the device — more than had been rumored, and a hefty amount at a time of lingering economic uncertainty.

While much of the focus of the event was predictably on VR, Apple said less directly about how it’s keeping pace with Silicon Valley’s current obsession: artificial intelligence.

In recent months, most of Apple’s Big Tech rivals have laid out ambitious plans for how to incorporate generative AI into their products following the viral success of ChatGPT. WWDC would have been a natural opportunity for Apple to do the same.

Instead, Apple spoke about artificial intelligence in a more subtle way. For example, Apple announced an update to autocorrect that uses machine learning and a language model for better accuracy and even “sentence-level autocorrections.” Apple will also expand its predictive text abilities.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【护目镜】hùmùjìng goggles close-fitting eyeglasses with side shields, for protecting the eyes from glare, dust, water, etc.

【接受度】jiēshòudù traction the extent to which a product, idea, etc., gains popularity or acceptance

周一在全球开发者大会上，苹果公司发布了其多年来最野心勃勃、也是最冒险的一款硬件产品：一款名为Apple Vision Pro的混合现实头显。

苹果首席执行官蒂姆•库克说，Vision Pro结合了虚拟现实和增强现实，是一款“革命性的产品”，可能改变用户与技术、彼此和周围世界的互动方式。

新的苹果Vision Pro看起来像一副滑雪镜，让人们通过镜头看到的现实世界实时情景上可以叠加虚拟图像。

库克多年来一直在谈论增强现实的潜力，他将这一产品定义为 “第一个穿透式混合现实头显产品”。

根据苹果公司的说法，用户戴上这个设备就能看到投射在他们面前的应用程序。本次活动中，苹果公司展示了该产品的一系列独特体验，包括用于医疗、工作和娱乐的应用程序。迪士尼首席执行官鲍勃•艾格也出席了活动，分享了迪士尼将如何为Vision Pro头显开发内容。

与其他产品不同，这款混合现实头显会显示用户的眼睛，因此“你不会与周围的人隔绝，你能看到他们、他们也能看到你，”人机交互副总裁艾伦•戴伊说。

但该产品面临一些挑战： 苹果公司正冲进一个未经验证的市场，许多其他科技公司曾在这里试水，但他们的产品没能被主流人群接受。苹果对该设备定价3499美元 —— 比传闻的还要高，这在经济充满不确定性的当下是一笔巨款。

正如大家所预期的，这次发布焦点在VR上，而对于目前硅谷痴迷的人工智能，苹果语焉不详。

最近几个月，在ChatGPT的病毒式成功之后，大多数科技巨头 —— 也是苹果的竞争对手 —— 都制定了雄心勃勃的相关计划，在产品中融入生成式人工智能。苹果本可以顺理成章在全球开发者大会上发布相关计划。

然而苹果以一种更微妙的方式提到人工智能。例如，苹果宣布更新拼写更正功能，通过使用机器学习和语言模型提高文本准确性，实现“整句话自动更正”。苹果还将增强其文本预测能力。

(SD-Agencies)