You don’t have to choose.
In the grand debate on the future of computing, we’ve been led to believe that there was a choice coming, a new interface to replace the touch UI interface that emerged in 2007.
One camp believed that the future was ambient or intent computing where conversations and minimal interactions would replace taps and swipes and staring at screens. Apps would disappear as well as almost all visual interfaces. Devices would be not much more than microphones and perhaps earbuds. The initial instance was Amazon Alexa but more recently the quixotic Humane and rumors of a OpenAI pendant or tchotchke that linked us to the great mind in the cloud without messy screens.
The other camp dove into virtual reality so that everything we see is generated by computing. The world itself would be re-painted by the machine and every photon hitting our retinas would be computed and every move we make, every breath we take would be tracked as forms of input.
These are opposite ends of a spectrum: from minimal or almost no interaction to full immersion at the exclusion of passivity. From seeing nothing to seeing everything and from barely hinting intent to monitoring every muscle moved.
The passive computing seemed to be winning. The VR or Visual Computing was not catching on. Device sales are not great and prices too high. Worst of all, devices are too onerous for mass consumption. In terms of wearables, eyes were losing while ears were winning.
However lost in the WWDC news tornado was the updates of VisionOS 27. The list of updates is long and quite esoteric but it’s clear that there was a lot of work involved in expanding the power of Visual Computing especially in the creation of new apps and content. Also all AI advances are being applied to VisionOS and even adapted in clever ways: Siri AI can be activated by just looking at the glowing orb that embodies it in the spatial world.
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Clearly Apple is not deprecating Spatial Computing. It’s a remarkable creation and those of us who use it find it irresistible and irreplaceable.
What the update clarifies most of all is that there isn’t an evolutionary branching in the future of computing. The touch UI did not immediately obviate the need for traditional personal computing interfaces. The smartphone brought computing to more people and more contexts but keyboard and pointer computing cannot be fully replaced by touch. We have a situation where there is co-existence between touch and non-touch computing. Indeed we also have sensor computing in the form of Apple Watch and AirPods. Perhaps there were will also be Apple spectacles to expand the compute real estate on the body.
Intent computing will probably reside primarily with our phones and wearables but Spatial Computing will strengthen their position alongside keyboard computing. Spatial was always a “high commitment” interface. To use it you strapped in, settled down and became acclimated. Then you became productive. A session was going to last at least 20 minutes, perhaps even a few hours.
Intent computing is a few seconds of use. Perhaps a few seconds strung out in multiple sessions but it was far more “glance” computing than “sit down” computing.
So why not have all forms of computing?
As the diagram on the coral of life shows, evolution results in a multitude of “form factors”. Some do become extinct (see the scroll wheel iPod or the stylus PDA.) But most survive and coexist.
Spatial Computing is extraordinarily powerful. It will evolve and it will probably become the highest utility for those who create.