Meritus Park Fly Thru
Here’s a fly-through of Meritus Park, the future home of the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars.
With 80% of people walking down the street having their noses buried in their cell phone screens today, it’s a leap to think that everyone you see in your neighborhood has some sort of air fryer strapped to a dome. Not.
Of course, this is Apple Vision Pro, an amazing and amazing piece of technology that does some things.
Cool, very cool, there’s no arguing about that. You can tell by the army-sized army of technology writers recently posting articles trying to find what they like about Apple Vision Pro. The main thing they say is that this device is useless, but since it’s an Apple branded product, it’s much more sophisticated and nice looking than all the other virtual reality goggles that have come out so far. That means it’s useless.
Oh, sorry, this isn’t “virtual reality”, it’s “augmented reality”.
what’s that? What’s the difference?
Oh, brother, I can tell you that you are not a technical person. If you’re a techie, you’ll understand that virtual reality is what we call virtual reality, whereas augmented reality is clearly an augmented reality. Not virtual. And that’s how you can tell the difference.
However, here’s the problem. I don’t want to come across, say, in 20 years as one of the idiots who thought the iPhone was a pile of steamy roadkill that would never sell, and wrote a long, loud letter deriding it like I do today. It reads like the medieval kings who doubted Copernicus.
However, there is one other point. iPhone is built on the basic utility of making phone calls. So if all the other amazing junk didn’t work, you still have someone to talk to.
It was a Swiss Army knife. You may never use scissors, leather punch, toothpicks, etc., but you were still able to cut things.
Vision Pro? I don’t know. It basically appears to function as a laptop an inch from your eyeball. But let’s hear what the experts have to say.
“When you get into the swing of things, Vision Pro can be thrilling,” writes Chris Velazco of the Washington Post. “But when things don’t work as expected, as they often did for me, you may wonder why you didn’t just stick with your existing gadgets.”
I already have a lot of gadgets. That’s the problem, right? Apple offers five of the same features, all as different gadgets, but in reality they are not. It’s the Taco Bell of technology.
Of course, Apple won’t be too fazed by a cursory review. And heaven knows it’s not as bad as Tesla, where the words “self-driving” and “severe collision” appear multiple times in the same sentence. I think the good thing about augmented reality is that you can experiment without dying.
Did we mention the Vision Pro costs $3,500? If you want a convenient carrying case, you’ll have to pay an additional $200. It seems like a lot. Regarding the benefits of Vision Pro, Velasco writes: “I hand wash my dishes a lot and it’s very messy. But when I have a YouTube video of him floating above my sink and I can operate it without getting my phone wet or touching my earphones, it’s so much more. No problem.”
That’s great, but you can buy about nine dishwashers for the price of the Vision Pro.
However, the bigger hurdle is whether the public will get used to having the device attached to their head. To watch a movie, OK, okay. But all day? And does this mean we will no longer be able to tell what people look like?
Indeed, bar closing times can be like Russian roulette. When I get back to my pad, I realize I’ve been hitting Peppermint Patties all night.
I hope she doesn’t drive a Tesla.
Tim Rowland is a columnist for the Herald Mail.
If you missed the Super Bowl, don’t worry.Live stream is here
Leave it to Congressional Republicans to wrench defeat from the jaws of victory.