Digital artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann, famous for his characteristic lack of subtlety in his digital workminced no words in a scathing review of Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, disparaging the device as “a crappy product that doesn’t fit the market.”
“[It] doesn’t solve real problems in the real world or move the ball forward in any meaningful way in the field of spatial computing,” the artist further wrote Tweet late Wednesday.
Beeple, a well-known technology enthusiast, made headlines around the world in 2021 after one of his NFT artworks sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s. The work, “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” remains the most expensive NFT ever purchased by a single buyer; its sale had a significant impact on the increase global awareness of NFTs, a new class of technology at the time.
In addition to his prominent art career, Beeple says he has long been an avid collector of VR headsets and an advocate of augmented reality (AR), which he believes will shape the next computer age and revolutionize human existence in the next twenty years will dominate.
okay, first of all I want to start this Vision Pro review with some background information.
I’ve owned pretty much every major VR headset since the DK1. I also spent a few years working on concepts for Magic Leap, and am EXTREMELY optimistic about AR as the next era of computing. I see this as… pic.twitter.com/Lt3GXsCleG
— beep (@beeple) February 7, 2024
But even given that level of enthusiasm – and stated love for Apple products – Beeple is confident that neither the new Vision Pro nor any other future version of the headset will. ever contribute significantly to the rise of AR.
“I don’t think there will even be a meaningful version two of THIS product,” Beeple said. “This form factor needs a complete reboot to become something that everyone will wear or use regularly.”
Why so much hate? For Beeple it’s all about functionality. He says the Vision Pro’s large shape and physically taxing weight have been both noted by most critics – will forever discount the device as a novelty, and prevent it from being meaningfully integrated into everyday life.
“For AR to succeed, it ultimately has to be BETTER than what we have now, and not just a gimmick,” the artist emphasized. “The V1[s] of iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch succeeded because they were actually BETTER than existing products, not ‘gadgets’.”
The path to humanity’s inevitable AR-infused future is through simple, easy-to-use glasses-like devices that can eventually scale and become more complex, Beeple believes.
“The way forward is for smaller glasses to get bigger, not for bigger glasses to get smaller,” he said.
To that end, Beeple found himself praising Meta’s Smart glassesbuilt in collaboration with Ray Bans, as an example of a viable path forward.
ZUCKERBORG’S NIPPLE-FREE TECHNO-UTOPIA #everydays pic.twitter.com/nPGlLkemie
— beep (@beeple) October 9, 2019
The compliment was apparently difficult for Beeple, who regularly denounces Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his artwork.
“I’m shocked that I’m saying this,” Beeple joked.
Edited by Andrew Hayward