外刊精读| week.5 苹果头戴显示器| Apple's Vision ...

202-6-10

（1.）No one shows off a new gadget quite like Apple. But the device that Tim Cook unveiled on June 5th was billed as something more significant. The Vision Pro, a pair of sleek glass goggles, represents “an entirely new spatial-computing platform”, said Apple’s boss, comparing its launch to that of the Macintosh and the iPhone. Apple’s message is clear: after desktop and mobile computing, the next big tech era will be spatial computing— also known as augmented reality—in which computer graphics are overlaid on the world around the user.

只有苹果公司会那样展示新产品。但蒂姆·库克（Tim Cook）6月5日发布新产品时，宣传其是更为重要的东西。苹果头戴显示器（Vision Pro），一副时髦的玻璃护目镜，代表着“一种全新的空间计算平台”，苹果公司的老板说到，将该头显产品发布与麦金塔电脑和苹果手机的发布相提并论。苹果公司传达的信息非常明确：在台式计算机和移动计算机之后，下一次的重大科技时代将是空间计算——也称为增强现实技术——该技术能使电脑图画呈现在用户周围的世界。

（2）The presentation was both jaw-droppingly impressive and oddly underwhelming. The Vision is stuffed with innovations that eclipse every other headset on the market. Clunky joysticks are out, hand gestures and eyeball tracking are in. Instead of legless avatars, users get photo realistic likenesses, whose eyes also appear on the outside of the glasses to make wearing them less antisocial. The product is dusted with Apple’s user-friendly design magic.

此次发布会既令人瞠目结舌、印象深刻，却又非常索然无味。苹果头戴显示器配置创新技术，使得市面上其他头戴产品黯然失色。笨重的游戏操作杆已经被淘汰，取而代之的是手势和眼部追踪。与没有四肢的游戏化身不一样，用户的外形非常逼真，眼睛会出现在眼镜外面，使他们看起来不那么反社会了。这款产品充满了对苹果用户友好的设计。

（3）Yet the company had strangely uninspiring suggestions for what to do with its miraculous device. Look at your photos—but bigger! Use Microsoft Teams—but on a virtual screen! Make FaceTime video calls—but with your friend’s window in space, not the palm of your hand! Apple’s vision mainly seemed to involve taking 2D apps and projecting them onto virtual screens (while charging $3,499 for the privilege). Is that it?

然而，对这款神奇的产品的用途，苹果公司却没有创新的建议。看图片时--变得更大！用微软产品时--投屏在虚拟的屏幕上！脸书视频时--对方窗口出现在空中，而不在是手掌上。苹果公司的头显似乎主要是将2D手机应用投射到虚拟的屏幕上（这种特权价值3，499美元）。就这？

(4)Patience. Mr Cook is right that spatial computing is a new platform, but it will take time to exploit. Consider the iPhone’s launch, 16 years ago. Like the Vision, its technology sparkled, but its dull initial uses were inherited from earlier platforms: make calls, write emails, browse the web, listen to music. It was years before developers found mobile computing’s killer use-cases: group chats, ride–hailing, short video, casual gaming, mobile payments and all the other things that today persuade people to spend $1,000 or more on an iPhone (whose $499 launch price in 2007 was considered shocking).

耐心点！库克先生说得没错，空间计算是新的平台，但是仍需时间进行探索。就像头显一样，16年前苹果智能手机的发布也是如此，技术蓬勃发展，但是最初枯燥的用途依然源自于之前的技术：打电话、写邮件、浏览网页、听音乐。几年之后，开发者们才发现了移动计算最出彩的功能：多人聊天、打车服务、短视频、休闲游戏、移动支付以及其他功能，让人们愿意花超过1000美元购买苹果手机（2007年发布时的价格是499美元，非常震撼。）

(5)Other platforms have taken just as long to reach their potential. Television producers began by filming people appearing on stage. Internet pioneers started off by sharing files, before spinning the web and much more. Apple’s own smartwatch was a damp squib until consumers decided that it was a health and fitness device. It now sells 50 m watches a year.

其他的许多平台也是精活长时间以后才发挥出潜力。电视机制造者最开始是拍摄舞台上的人。在发展出网络之前，因特尔网最初用于分享文件。苹果公司自己的智能手机曾被是为一个无用之物，但是后来消费者将其视为健康和健身的设备。现在，每年苹果智能手表销售量达到5千万只。

(6)No one yet knows what spatial computing’s killer use-case might be—or if it even has one, though that seems likely. It could be commercial (surgeons, engineers and architects have dabbled in the tech) or educational (Apple previewed a “planetarium” in its demo) or in entertainment (Disney made a cameo with ideas for immersive cinema and sports coverage). Vision Pros could even become high-end porn goggles, if Apple relaxes its ban on such things. Artificial intelligence will allow programmers to make eerily realistic content in all these categories, and many more (see Business section).

没有人知道，空间计算的最惊艳的用处到底是什么--或者它似乎有，这是极有可能的。可能用于商业（外科医生、工程师和建筑师们已经开始涉猎空间计算技术），或者用于教育（苹果公司在演示中预览了一家“天文馆”），或者用于娱乐（迪士尼制作了一个小片段，提供身临其境的电影和运动体验）。如果苹果公司放松对色情行业的禁令，这款头戴显示器甚至能作为高端的色情眼镜。人工智能将允许程序员们加入各种各样怪异又逼真的内容，并且会越来越多。

(7)The way to speed up this process is to get the hardware into the hands of developers—and that is the real purpose of the Vision. Apple will not sell many of the expensive first-generation units, and doesn’t care. Its aim is to get the product to the people who will work out what spatial computing can do. It is uniquely well placed. Meta, its chief rival in the headset game, lacks Apple’s links with developers, who like making software for Apple’s best-in-class hardware (and its richest-in-class consumers).

尽快找到使空间计算发挥最大潜力的办法就是把头显交给开发者们--这也是头显的真正目的。苹果公司第一代昂贵的头戴显示器或许销量并不高，但是没关系。该公司的目的是让这款产品到那些能够开发出空间计算用途的人手中。它处于独特的有利地位。头戴设备竞争中，苹果公司主要竞争对手Meta公司缺乏与开发者的联系，该公司主要为苹果公司最好的硬件（和最富有的中产消费者们）提供软件。

(8)The flawed but extraordinary Vision shows that the technological struggle to make spatial computing a reality is being won. The next race is to discover what it is for. Apple has just fired the starting gun.

苹果头戴显示器虽然有不足，但依然是卓越的，它的出现意味着在科技变革中，空间计算变成现实是已经取得成果。接下来就是开发它的用途。苹果公司打响了这场战役的第一枪。