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Back to the Future: Apple Vision vs. Meta Verse
Travelling to the past to discover the future of personal computing.
Andrew
August 13, 2024
40 years ago, Xerox, Apple, IBM, and later Microsoft, laid the foundation for the way computers would be used for decades to come. Now, with the launch of Apple Vision Pro, we could be entering the next era of personal computing. Let's travel back in time to better understand the present and discover the future
Buckle up.
Past
1978
On 18 October Steve Jobs makes “Lisa Proposal #1” to the Apple board and a dedicated team starts working on a concept of a new computer aimed at the professional market.
1979
Several months later, the former head of publications and quality assurance, Jeff Raskin conceives an alternative project, an affordable, easy-to-use computer for the masses and names it after his favourite type of apple, “Macintosh”.
The first Lisa interface concept, prototyped on Apple II, appears to be consistent with existing business equipment of 1979, but doesn’t generate the same enthusiasm as the emerging, graphic-oriented video games industry and programs on the Apple II. So the team continues to search for and test new ideas.
In late 1979, two major events help Lisa team to make a breakthrough.
In September Motorola launches its 68000 microprocessor, which should have enough performance to support both high-resolution display and an interactive user interface. And in December, Raskin, gets Bill Atkinson, his former student, to convince Jobs to visit Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC).
By then, the PARC team became tired of holding open doors and tightened security at the facility. But Jobs had precisely what was needed to open these doors. He approached Xerox's venture capital branch, and proposed:
I will let you invest a million dollars in Apple if you will sort of open the kimono at Xerox PARC.
Xerox knew they could not manufacture Alto computers cheaply, because of their union contracts and the way they’ve built the machines. Their idea was to start with an investment and perhaps buy Apple after a while, thus learning about cheaper manufacturing methods, maybe even have Apple do the manufacturing. So they agreed to show the computer system in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares at the pre-IPO price of $10 each.
Later Jobs would share his impressions on the Xerox PARC visit in one of the interviews:
I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life. Now, remember, it was very flawed — what we saw was incomplete, they’d done a bunch of things wrong, but we didn’t know that at the time. It still, though they had — the germ of the idea was there and they’d done it very well. And within, you know, 10 minutes, it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday.
Interface Apple team saw in PARC
Apple returned from the PARC visit with inspiration, some “borrowed” ideas, like windows and heavy emphasis on the mouse, but also empowerment from a belief that their vision is possible. Not less important was attracting talents, several months after the visit few former Xerox employees joined Apple, including Larry Tesler.
1981
In January 1981, unexpectedly for Jobs, senior leadership officially removes him from the Lisa team due to his poor project management skills and constant micromanagement. So Jobs decides to take over the Macintosh project from Raskin, and starts gradually shifting Macintosh towards a less expensive version of Lisa.
On April 27 Xerox eventually introduces a commercial version of their computer (produced on their own) - Xerox Star. It is the first computer with a graphical user interface with a whopping 17-inch display 1024×808 pixels resolution, a mechanical mouse, an eight-inch floppy disk drive, and an Ethernet connection.
The price though isn’t as attractive as its specification, with a starting price of $16,595 and it isn’t a stand-alone computer. A typical office would need to buy at least 2-3 machines along with a file server and a name server/print server, spending at least $50,000. Within 4 years Xerox would sold just around 25,000 units of these machines.
On August 12 Big Blue makes its move and introduces its 5150 PC with the pricing starting at $1,565. The computer has a 4.77 MHz processor from Intel, 16KB or 64KB RAM, up to two floppy disk drives and an 11.5-inch display. Just by the end of the year it reaches sales of 50,000 units.
Big Blue took an alternative approach, both to pricing and architecture. They tried to make their product as affordable as possible and made a bet on the open architecture, non-proprietary components and software, and sales through retail stores - all against IBM standard practice. This opened the door for the debut of PC-DOS, the first operating system from a small company called Microsoft.
12 days after IBM PC debut, Apple responds to the debut with a daring full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal.
Glimpse from the future: 35 years later Slack would make a similar move to welcome Microsoft and their product Teams.
1983
On January 19, 1983, after 4 years of development, Apple releases the Lisa computer.
The computer is marketed as a “Business assistant” to support secretaries, managers, business owners, and professionals, like bookkeepers with routine, daily tasks.
One of the main value propositions the product targets is improving person’s productivity while reducing the cost of paper with built-in tools like spreadsheet, drawing and graphing tools, word processor and project management programs. Partly as a consequence of that management anticipates graphical user interface will be a major reason why Lisa is chosen over other machines.
Lisa becomes the first stand-alone personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) shown on the 12-inch bitmapped display with high resolution (720x365 pixels) and mouse on the market. It uses a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 5 MHz, has 1MB of RAM, two 871K floppy drives, and an optional external 5MB hard disk.
Lisa keyboard and mouse
Minimal user training and fun to use were some of the key requirements for the product:
LISA must be fun to use. It will not be a system that is used by someone "because it is part of the job" or "because the boss told them to." For this reason, special attention must be paid to the friendliness of the user interaction and the subtleties that make using LISA rewarding and job enriching.
Lisa keyboard doesn’t have arrow keys pushing you to use the mouse. The mouse has only one button, as this appeared to be easier for novel users. That made engineers invent a double-click, which would become a standard.
Per the model team developed, a typical Lisa user would be frequently interrupted, thus Lisa as (one of) the first computers that support multitasking, allowing to safely run several applications simultaneously.
The GUI of the computer is based on the metaphor of a desktop with icons, folders, and windows. It introduced elements like drag and drop, pull-down menu, waste basket, and copy-paste, which would become the standard alongside double-click. To help users understand all these concepts Apple even created a demo video:
But, as with Xerox Star, the technological revolution had its cost. Upon debut, Lisa costs $9,995 (equivalent to $30,000 in 2024), which is twice as originally planned and 6 times more than the basic version of the IBM 5150 PC.
But despite the costly hardware, it didn’t had enough power to run the sophisticated operating system smoothly. The computer was running too slowly, what even inspired a popular joke. Moreover, the floppy drive was unreliable - designed in-house per Jobs’s insistence, despite a lack of respective competence in the company.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
[15-second pause]
Lisa
Last but not least, Lisa had a pretty limited software library. Inconvenient development process requiring switching between Lisa OS and Lisa Workshop operating systems, a comprehensive suite of applications bundled with OS successfully limited third-party development efforts.
All these factors contributed to unsatisfactory commercial results and sales reaching just 10,000 units overall.
On the other hand by the end of the year IBM PC market share rose to 26%, leaving Apple behind with 21%. Later this year Microsoft announced the first Windows and started its path as one of the dominant players in the industry.
1984
On January 24, 1984, one year after Lisa’s release, Apple introduces a brand new Macintosh computer.
It has the same processor as Lisa, a graphical user interface heavily based on the Lisa OS, the approach Apple called “Lisa technology”, and one of the first sound capabilities (8-bit), but a single floppy drive, no hard drive, and smaller 9-inch display with a smaller resolution of 512×342 pixels.
Mac also has 8 times less RAM (128KB vs 1mb of Lisa), which meant savings around $2 000 just on RAM. This reduction, though required to get rid of multitasking and to introduce an alternative approach for graphics memory management and writing software in Assembly, which was more time-consuming - hence Macintosh has only two bundled applications: MacWrite and MacPaint.
The price of Macintosh was something Apple executives argued until the last moment. After all savings, the standard Apple’s markup and $15-million aggressive 100-day advertising campaign, kicked off with the 1984 commercial during Super Bowl XVIII, the price was set at $2,495 (equivalent to $7,300 in 2024).
Unlike the Lisa, the Macintosh was targeted for the mass market in mind and designed with a fourteen-year boy in mind as a user and though the price was not as low as originally planned, $500, it was a much more compelling proposition for the “person in the street”.
Alongside Macintosh Apple released Lisa 2, with the basic version priced at less than half of the original - $3,495, without bundled software, half of the RAM and a single floppy drive from Sony. Despite improving sales, it would be discontinued the following year though - by the man who brought it to life, Steve Jobs.
Macintosh and Lisa advertisement
Mac sales had a quick start, reaching 72,000 units just after 100 days, slowed down soon and reached 1 million units only 3 years later. The numbers were significantly better than Lisa, still, it wasn’t a match for skyrocketing IBM PC and compatibles.
Personal computer sales 1984 - 1987:
In the mid term, IBM undeniably won the PC race. However, in the longer term, the number and competitiveness of the compatibles (computers from third parties compatible with IBM PC standard, also referred to as clones, Compaq for example), decreased its relevance, starting the era of Microsoft and Intel dominance, sometimes referred as “Wintel”. Something that Jobs would summarise later:
The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.
Interestingly, in 1986 Gates offered to sell part of Microsoft to IBM, which could create a giant leading both the hardware and software market. But IBM declined, fearing it might trigger antitrust concerns.
Present
On June 5, 2023, after 7 years of development and 40 years after the Apple Lisa release, Apple announces its first new major product category since the Apple Watch and perhaps the most revolutionary product since the iPhone - Apple Vision Pro.
Apple Vision Pro introduces a new way of interacting with computers. You don’t need a mouse as an intermediary to interact with objects here. To select elements, you just look at them and pinch two fingers together, to drag and drop - just move pinched fingers. And thanks to passthrough video and spatial multitasking you can place and interact with apps anywhere in the space around you.
Casey Neistat made an impressive demonstration of how it works:
Inside the headset, there is state-of-the-art hardware: Apple M2 SoC (processor and graphics card combined), 16GB RAM, two micro-OLED displays from Sony with resolution 3660x3200 per eye, 12 cameras, Lidar and eye-tracking, 6 microphones and a dedicated chip Apple R1 to process all the sensor data.
Each revolution has its price, which is as much as $3,499 for Apple Vision Pro (an inch away from Lisa 2). But Oculus VR founder, Palmer Luckey believes this is the right direction:
Before VR can become something that everyone can afford, it must become something that everybody wants.
But there is another opinion on the topic.
Just 4 days before Apple’s announcement, on June 1, 2023, a major technology company with a blue logo, unveiled the next version of the competitive product developed in its research center. This company is Meta, the unveiled product is Meta Quest 3 and the research center, now called Reality Labs was founded by Luckey.
Meta Quest 3 has less impressive specs: a less powerful SoC, lower per-eye resolution of 2064×2208, 2 cameras and lower passthrough video quality, twice less RAM, and no eye tracking. But it is priced at $499, what is 7 times less than Apple’s product.
US Inflation rate and computers releases. Data source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via Trading Economics
On April 22, 2024, three months after Apple Vision Pro sales started, Meta decides to bet on the open ecosystem approach and enable third-party developers to create their products compatible with Meta Horizon OS. The first three hardware partners to join are ASUS, Lenovo, and Xbox from Microsoft.
This appears to be a radical shift in Meta’s strategy, considering Zuckerberg’s previous battles with Luckey over the openness of the ecosystem and insistence on complete control over both the hardware and software, akin to Apple’s approach.
Here’s how Zuckerberg sees this situation:
The reality is every generation of computing has its open and closed model. And yeah in Mobile Apple's closed model won. But it's not always that way. If you go back to the PC era, Microsoft's open model was the winner. And in this next generation Meta is going to be the open model, and I really want to make sure that the open model wins out again. The future is not yet written.
Future
Apple Vision Pro (AVP) received a great amount of interest at first, but after the early adopter’s wave faded it seemed to struggle to reach the wider audience.
One of the major obstacles was the lack of compelling enough reasons to buy and use the expensive product. The same was the issue with personal computers, which struggled in the early days. Jef Raskin described it this way in the Macintosh project document:
There are very few potential uses of the personal computer per se in the home at the present time. The question "What do you do with it?" still haunts the industry.
While balancing checkbooks, playing chess, and writing letters are all viable uses, it is likely that a true mass market cannot be supported on the basis of such applications.
In the face of this problem, most manufacturers, seeing the hobbyist and technophile markets becoming saturated, have turned to marketing business systems. The business system market is big and legitimate opportunities abound there, but the volume can never be as large as it would be for an item that goes to consumers in general.
…
It is clear that one answer to the question: "What do you do with it?" will probably be: "I use it to send birthday greetings to Aunt Tillie." More to the point there are a number of easily foreseen potential uses for a network: of personal computers. What is more exciting is that, as has happened with the computers themselves, there is the potential for many unforeseen applications.
Apple Vision Pro launched targeting 3 key usage areas: productivity, connections, and (3d) video content consumption. Let’s take a look at them in retrospect.
Video content
Willingly or not, this way Apple created “headphones for the video”, a device allowing to consume video privately with full immersion, as opposed to more public consumption on TV and cinema.
It was also a strategic move for Apple. For years before, they have been increasingly available in the industry, with both distribution and production of video content via Apple Originals. And AVP brought an additional channel for Apple TV+ and a playground for experimenting with new content.
Connections
One of the bundled apps coming with the device was Facetime with 3D avatars integrated into the apps world. The reactions were mixed at first, as the image landed at the bottom of the bottom part of the Uncanny valley, but it was closest to the natural face look on the market and it could be only better.
With the move Apple overtook Meta in this race, which had more advanced technology available, but needed complex, external equipment for scanning.
Productivity
Despite “Pro” in the name of the device, professional use of the device lagged behind.
Eye tracking, virtual keyboard, and iPad-based interface with lower than monitor effective resolution didn’t provide a precise enough toolkit for the work. Additionally, the weight of the device didn’t make long sessions comfortable. Last but not least, the software selection leveraging the advantages of the device was scarce.
Apple Vision
Although Apple Vision Pro was a significant step forward compared to Meta Quest, it hasn’t changed the world.
Per the creator of Life Times X, more emphasis on creativity and bringing connectivity to a new dimension could change that. If done well, it would have provided a meaningful incentive to use the device regularly, on the one hand, and create a flywheel effect related to apps and content on the other. The last approach was smartly used in the Ray-ban Meta smart glasses connected to Instagram.
But Apple wasn’t going to give up. After collecting feedback from the device owners they started working on the Apple Vision for a mass market - Macintosh for Spatial Computing.
Specific improvements Apple worked on included:
Connecting the device to the new Mac Pro instead of the computation pack
Support of the 3 Mac screens projection instead of the single one initially, and a steering device.
Removing motion blur thanks to better optimization and a new CPU.
Improvements of the Facetime avatars, cooperation, and number of quality apps
I.a. removing EyeSight, moving more processing to the computation pack, less expensive displays, and design simplification - to reduce size, weight, and price (aiming for a price tag of $1299).
One of the gaps in the Apple Vision Pro, which wasn’t clear whether it would be addressed, was the user interface. Life Times X author argued that Apple cut corners by basing it on the 2D iPad interface, with foundations laid back in the 1980s. Eventually, a 3D World will require a 3D interface.
After a litte over a year of intensive work they were ready to announce a new product. Will Apple Vision be good enough? Who will win this time, “Blue”, “Black/White”, or perhaps some other colour company? Make your bet in the survey: https://forms.gle/ZX1fzSCWBsrGiF8C7
This post wouldn’t be possible without you.
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What the Oculus Rift Inventor Thinks About Apple Vision Pro (inverse.com)
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The Macintosh Project - Selected Papers, Feb 1980
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