Abstract
Introduction
In February 2024, Apple released its “first spatial computer,” the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) and entered the extended reality (XR) market to compete with other head-mounted displays (HMDs) like Meta's Quest and Microsoft's HoloLens. As part of its marketing campaign, Apple created six videos about the AVP. We argue that this promotional content communicates a corporate sociotechnical imaginary (Jasanoff, 2015) presenting idealized and techno-utopian visions of spatial computing that frame the AVP's mediations and data capture as normal and desirable for users who are constructed as affluent, able-bodied tech enthusiasts participating in a digital economy that blurs work and leisure.
Within the platform politics of XR devices (Egliston and Carter, 2022a), the imaginaries presented by technology companies are an important site for understanding how they seek to frame the discourse around new technologies to further their business goals, not only through the sale of material and digital products, but also through forms of consumer attention, sociocultural interaction, and the normalization of new forms of data collection and monetization. Even as a corporation's imaginaries present only a limited and partial perspective within their visions of everyday life, the platformization (Poell et al., 2019) of novel HMDs suggests that devices like the AVP are also proposals for the continuation and expansion of the systems, infrastructures, politics, and policies of Apple's network of technologies and manufacturing.
We begin by providing an overview of research that situates contemporary immersive and spatial media within the broader questions of platforms and data capture, as well as questions about the situated and experiential contours of immersive media. This background provides a thematic foundation for our analysis of the promotional content, which we organize across three overlapping focal points that have been important to cross-disciplinary understandings of the spatiality of computing: the sociocultural, the material and embodied, and the interconnected. Drawing on additional related material published by Apple to supplement the analysis, our approach is sensitive to what is present and what is absent in the AVP's sociotechnical imaginary, especially as the AVP signals a pivotal shift toward explicitly embedding spatial and embodied forms of data capture into the fabric of Apple's “ecosystem.” Moreover, we show that the absences, elisions, and assumptions within these visions of spatial computing reveal critical opportunities for further analysis of XR and its platformization. As XR technology is increasingly framed as an extension of spatial computing, our approach and analysis contribute to broader discussions on the platform politics of XR technologies, bridging critical perspectives about ubiquitous computing, spatial media, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), and the ethical contours of new media technologies and platforms.
Literature review
In this section, we provide an overview of some of the key literature on the social, cultural, material, embodied, and interconnected aspects of spatial computing and immersive media. We discuss older as well as contemporary research from a range of disciplinary perspectives, highlighting how specific spatial contexts and spatial thinking in relation to places such as the home, public space, and computing raise important questions about how novel technologies and platforms can impact everyday life. We draw on a diverse range of fields, such as new media and communication studies, digital geographies, computer science, and cultural and political–economic studies of platforms, to highlight the many existing lenses through which the spatiality of computing can be understood and extended, especially as new XR devices are integrated into varied social and technological contexts.
Spatial computing redux: spatiality as systemic, structural, and interconnected
Many of the underlying goals of spatial computing were expressed in the speculative project of “ubiquitous computing” proposed by well-known computer scientist Mark Weiser. Weiser (1993) argued that there was a need to make computers “invisible” and to get computing devices “out of the way” to better integrate them into everyday environments. For Weiser (1993), this was not just a problem of the digital interface, but “a property of the whole context of usage of the machine and the attributes of its physical properties: the keyboard, the weight and desktop position of screens, and so on” (p. 76). Years later, as these proposed ubiquitous systems were increasingly actualized, Dourish and Bell (2011) offered a critical historical and cultural account of computing to emphasize that these early visions did not (and could not) effectively account for the present-day social and cultural impacts across global, heterogeneous environments. Drawing on geographer Doreen Massey's conceptualization of “power geometries,” Dourish and Bell (2011) argued that we must contend with how particular spatial arrangements and infrastructures are necessary to enable ubiquitous computing technologies, especially as these arrangements can “exploit and reproduce a range of power concentrations and relationships” (p. 42).
More recently, considerations around platformization and infrastructuralization (Plantin et al., 2018) have been a further indication of how (dominantly American and corporate) technological power and control are consolidated with new technological development. The interdisciplinary platform studies research of Egliston and Carter (2022a, 2022b, 2024) is instructive when it comes to placing this change in the context of XR devices. VR, for example, has possessed a “dominant imaginary” primarily as a gaming device, but in examining the Meta and Oculus Quest line of VR HMDs, Egliston and Carter (2022a) argue that Meta has sought to shift the imaginary of the HMD toward an everyday device for communication and social interaction. Especially as modern HMDs become mobile technologies that are no longer physically tethered to large cables or computers, these new interaction contexts suggest that XR devices are a new vehicle for additional forms of corporate data capture, including embodied interactions at a more intimate scale (Egliston and Carter, 2022b, 2023). The expanding forms of spatial and ubiquitous computing that are possible with the latest devices such as the Quest 3 (Meta) or the AVP (Apple) continue to invoke broader systems of platform power, where Meta and Apple's respective platforms are dominant models for organizing infrastructural, economic, and social aspects of computing and the internet (Poell et al., 2019).
In this sense, any individual HMD is connected to, and evocative of, a much larger system of operations. In their examination of Meta's Messenger app, for example, Nieborg and Helmond (2019) describe Meta as a “
Despite Apple's emphasis on calling the AVP its “first spatial computer,” it is relevant that spatial imaginaries of computers and computing paradigms have a much longer history, in terms of both technological development and research. As Harley (2024) describes in an examination of contemporary discourse about VR, the “discursive newness” that positions XR technologies as novel and exciting also serves to depoliticize the technology's historical development and to deemphasize the ramifications of current corporate control. Computing has always been spatial, but the extensions and effects of its spatiality are shaped by the specific and interconnected contexts of platforms and their infrastructural reach.
Contemporary contexts: social, cultural, material, and embodied formations
Across several disciplines, social, cultural, material and embodied contexts have also been central to interpretations of “spatial computing.” Geographers Osborne and Jones (2022), for example, argue that VR represents an attempt to dominate space, to blur the boundaries between the material and the digital, work and leisure, and to shape spaces so that they are fully visible to corporations. Similarly, in digital sociology, Saker (2018) has argued that the use of VR and AR in public spaces creates new spatial experiences that are “coconstructed through a confluence of physical and digital interactions” (p. 98). Design and communication scholars (Heemsbergen et al., 2021) describe the use of AR in the public sphere, which creates new “augmented publics” that have their own spatial and temporal generativity and prioritize computer vision in public spaces over natural perception, shaping attention and focus and thus changing the physical and social experience of spaces. These examples emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary and/or cross-disciplinary perspectives that examine how technologies merge with specific sociotechnical environments, and how they shape or reshape interactions and perceptions.
Comparing imagined and actual use in these varied contexts can serve as a critical point of reference for XR technologies. For example, when Green et al. (2021) provided families with VR HMDs to explore how these devices could be integrated into their current media practices, the authors found that participants perceived VR HMDs as providing asocial or predominantly individual experiences, contrasted with what was deemed a shared, family-oriented, or social experience of gathering to watch television. These types of real-world considerations begin to reveal social, material and embodied forms of spatiality that are not adequately represented in corporate depictions of XR use. For example, media and communication scholars (Gilmore and Blair, 2024) found assumptions about VR users embedded into documentation and instructional videos, with users framed as able-bodied, with upper-middle-class homes providing ample space for VR setups that are both “convenient and unrealistic” (p. 7). Beyond their use for leisure, these technologies are often viewed as a means of optimizing productivity, as a substitute for goods and services, or as a supplement to the tasks of social reproduction (Sadowski et al., 2021). Huws (2019) describes this as the increasing proliferation of platforms and digital technologies in the home to “fix” the time scarcity of adults who are overworked and exhausted in their paid work.
To summarize, related work in this and the preceding section draws attention to a range of social, cultural, material, embodied, and interconnected factors that are relevant to an analysis of the AVP. These factors are not new dimensions for media studies or other analyses of XR, but they collide in interesting ways as Apple enters the XR market using the banner of “spatial computing,” an intentional naming that can be understood as definitional work that serves to demarcate Apple's notions of what might otherwise be considered forms of AR or VR interaction. Prior work, therefore, offers a lens to consider the multiple imaginaries and implications of the AVP's spatiality. As Leszczynski (2015) argues, spatiality is “the
Approach
Inspired by recent work that examines Meta's role in shaping the sociotechnical imaginary of VR (Egliston and Carter, 2022a; Nagy and Turner, 2019), our goal is to examine how Apple's early promotional content communicates a sociotechnical imaginary of “spatial computing.” Our approach applies theoretical and analytical considerations leveraged in prior work, grouping these considerations into overlapping analytical categories. We test these analytical parameters using a purposive selection or “bounded analysis” (see Gilmore and Blair, 2024) of promotional materials that Apple released leading up to the public availability of the AVP, supplementing these with a selection of responses across other media (e.g., journalism, technology reviews, and social media). We do not claim that these materials represent a comprehensive search or a comprehensive representation of Apple's strategy, nor do we claim that the following offers a comprehensive analysis of the AVP. Indeed, more research will be necessary to include additional sources that target other audiences more directly, including business-to-business materials and materials presented primarily to developers. As higher-profile public-facing material, however, this early promotional content is also part of Apple's communication strategy for audiences beyond the initial consumers of the AVP.
The six videos about the AVP on Apple's official YouTube page are our primary sources for analysis. Collectively, these videos have generated over 100 M views, demonstrating a widespread audience for this content, if not for the AVP itself. The reach of these videos offers an indication of the impact of Apple's advertising for the AVP, and of their efforts to generate interest and to communicate the key functionality of the device. For easy reference, we summarize these videos in Table 1, organized by release date (note that the official release date for the AVP in the US was 2 February 2024). The full details of the specific videos and supplementary material from Apple that we analyzed are listed in Appendix 1. 1 Importantly, as with our analysis, our descriptions of the videos are interpretive, revealing our own (i.e., the researchers’) biases and assumptions as we name relationships, contexts, and/or actions that are often unnamed in the videos. In line with critical orientations to research, this also suggests another layer of reflexive analysis, in which our positionality and subjectivities are seen as offering valuable context for our approach. Although this form of corporate discourse offers only a limited insight into Apple's broader ambitions for spatial computing, we argue that it reveals a striking image of the imaginary in the front-facing idealized notions of the technology, its spatiality, and the spatial norms that are constructed or reinforced within the content.
Overview of AVP YouTube videos used for analysis.
AVP: Apple Vision Pro.
Note: The number of views here is as of March 2024.
We organize our analysis into three themes: (a) “the sociocultural,” to examine how social and cultural life is technologically mediated across physical and/or digital space; (b) “the material and embodied,” to examine how the actual and imagined use of the technology implicates bodies, environments, and physical interactions; and (c) “the interconnected,” to examine the effects, implications, and/or requirements of the broader networks of this technology. We acknowledge that grouping our analysis into three rough themes risks flattening a range of theoretical concerns while also creating the false impression that these themes are distinct categories. Yet, as prior work suggests, each of these themes is relevant to an analysis of the spatiality of computing and therefore offers an initial scaffolding to examine what is included or excluded in Apple's imaginaries of their “first spatial computer.” Moreover, as a critical approach, we emphasize that there is an important “messiness” to this kind of categorizing, with each theme revealing potentially overlapping considerations across a range of social, discursive, historical, situated, and other factors, each shaped by power relations that are regulating and structuring while also remaining open to transformation and contestation.
The sociocultural
Apple's promotional videos for the AVP, including those that purport to show “first-time” users or an experience “through the eyes of someone who has never tried it before” (AVP4, 0:16), all present imagined use cases that construct idealized application scenarios. While such constructions are expected in advertisements, especially as Apple strives to introduce the functions of the AVP to broader audiences, these advertisements also offer representations of social and cultural life according to Apple: imagined homes, imagined activities, imagined relationships, etc., each of which provide a backdrop to imagined interactions that suggest expected or aspirational sociocultural conditions for the AVP.
Although it is little more than a minute long, “Hello Apple Vision Pro” (AVP5) presents five separate use cases for the AVP. Briefly, this includes (a) a dad appearing to effectively balance work and leisure; (b) a man watching a movie while eating popcorn; (c) a woman receiving a video call as she is packing or unpacking; (d) a man looking at a panoramic image; and (e) a woman on a plane watching a movie. These five imagined users are each a snapshot of what could feasibly be Apple's design personas, that is, imagined users that function as an aspirational proxy for consumers as well as a framework of traits and “Pro” use cases for developers to create new applications. As such, the personas can be read as an attempt to solidify the projected contexts, needs, and interests of an imagined target user, with their commonalities and their specificities offering insight into how Apple is constructing the sociocultural dynamics of the AVP. As a luxury object that is inaccessible to most people (in terms of cost and, for several months after its first release, unavailable to everyone outside the US), the “Pro” signifier suggests that even if these are the first users and use cases, the imaginaries represented by these personas also constructs the social capital of the AVP that can be repurposed for the next, more affordable option (the Apple Vision “Air” perhaps). The social capital of these personas, in turn, presents imaginaries of affluence that are firmly situated in the capitalist contexts of the so-called Global North, and perhaps more specifically within an upwardly mobile American or North American set of aesthetics, capital, values, etc., throughout the range of activities, homes, and relationships that are presented. In this sense, no matter how “diverse” the actors within these spaces appear to be, their social, cultural, and economic commonalities suggest specific criteria that the ideal user represents.
In “Hello Apple Vision Pro” (AVP5) for example, each user is technologically proficient, each is relatively young (i.e., no seniors or retirees are shown here), and each home that is represented suggests varying degrees of affluence beyond the affluence required to purchase the device. Three of the five use the AVP as a tool to enable asocial time with their media: the second and fourth personas (both men) are alone watching movies or looking at photographs, while the fifth (a woman) uses the AVP to make herself feel alone by watching a movie on a noisy plane. A crying baby is heard (but not seen) just before she turns up the volume and fades out the other passengers with the turn of a knob. The third persona (a woman) is also alone until she receives a video call, with the visual representation of the caller “entering” the space on a large virtual screen. Of all these characters, the first persona (a man) has the most fully realized social life. He begins his interactions seemingly alone, opening three large displays with email, chat, and the visual design for a surfboard. He is busy in this work typing “Board Design” when he is interrupted by an offscreen shout (“Dad!”), and he sees the outline of his daughter behind his email tossing him a soccer ball. The blue, hazy representation of his eyes on the front of the AVP shows that he acknowledges this, and he is quick enough to kick the ball back to his daughter and score a goal on her. The dad returns to his virtual tasks, with gesture-based versions of interactions like copy-pasting and dragging and dropping. Then, having finished his work, he closes the windows, and simultaneously finishes his domestic duties by giving his daughter breakfast (“Toast!”—another culturally specific signifier for an on-the-go morning). She playfully sticks out her tongue and he returns the gesture, leaving the headset on for this exchange. This is a glimpse of social life as presented by Apple. Perhaps it is a weekend morning because the girl is not in school and is wearing her soccer gear. The mom is at a nearby table, seen only in profile, and perhaps her own work is encroaching on her breakfast (and her weekend) as she looks at papers and ignores the actions of the father and daughter. Viewing this scene from the father's perspective, this is all a win: a balancing of domestic responsibilities alongside a passion for work, the device enables an effective combination of work and personal life, a vision in which the blurring of work and home life is both normal and desirable. For the daughter, the blurring is literal, vying for social interaction with her parents, but her mother is too busy to look up, and her father only sees her through screens (Figure 1).
A domestic scene viewed through the AVP: a daughter seen through the scrim of an inbox; a mother working and eating breakfast (AVP5).
Although “Get Ready” (AVP2) features a short montage of clips from films and television (i.e., leveraging and assuming familiarity with American cultural production) in which characters put on helmets, visors, masks, goggles, etc., that link the act of putting on a headset with a determined purpose and a transformation from mundane to extraordinary, in all the other videos this purported transformation is situated within more mundane social worlds. In “First-Timer” (AVP6), for example, a man tentatively puts on an AVP, trying some of its basic features before dropping onto a couch to watch an American miniseries (coproduced by Apple Studios). Oblivious to all this, a woman scrolls on her phone in the background. This, too, imagines a social life: a day of leisure, with two young adults (perhaps a couple) “alone together” (Turkle, 2017) on their respective devices. Though there is no explicit relationship between the two, the gendered and racial connotations—a white man using an AVP, a Black woman using a phone—echo constructions of white male VR users represented as desiring and/or having the first access to such devices (Golding, 2019). As viewers of these advertisements, we only see the mediated reality of the protagonists: we see the virtual displays embedded in the environment because our perspective is aligned with the user of the AVP. As with all the promotional media to date, the person wearing the AVP is the only person using it within a given environment. Although there is the possibility of a “guest” mode (AVPS1) in which another user would also have to scan their eyes and hands to use the AVP, the technology is designed for solo use, with all the customization and personalization settings narrowing how many people are expected to use a single HMD within a household. This personalization, combined with the inconvenience of sharing a device, suggests that for everyone to participate in this technological future, they would all need their own AVP. For now, this is only implied as these use cases present the single owner of the AVP integrating its use into their social (or asocial) realities. In the case of the “First Timer,” the man integrates the AVP into his broader forms of cultural capital, defining norms while demonstrating specific cultural knowledge and taste in the media he consumes. Presumably, the phone that the woman is using is an Apple device, suggesting that the other device still plays a role in this attention economy, but there is no television and no other evidence of media in the room. The social possibilities of the devices are absent, and with neither person speaking to or acknowledging the other, the use of the AVP instead suggests a more perfect tuning out of the partner: first by enlarging the virtual screen (stopping just short of obscuring the woman) before launching into the couch (Figure 2), dimming the “real” environment, and turning up the volume. Whereas the woman on the plane (AVP5) tuned out nearby strangers, here we also see the possibility of tuning out those closest to us. As the room dims and the volume rises, the man smiles for the first time.
A domestic scene of a young couple using their devices alone, ignoring each other (AVP6).
The material and embodied
Layering the material and embodied realities into the analysis focuses attention on the physical characteristics of the environments, technologies, and bodies implicated in the direct use of the AVP. The sociocultural conditions described above are still present, but here, our attention is on the material and embodied factors that are imagined, required, constructed, and/or reproduced. Revisiting the promotional videos through this lens adds additional interpretive possibilities. While the sociocultural analysis may help to explain the social and cultural dynamics that are presented, or help to reveal the socioeconomic privilege of affluent and/or upper-middle-class personas and living arrangements that do not represent the broader social and cultural heterogeneity of North American contexts (let alone the contexts of the other regions where the AVP will and will not be shipped), in this section, the analytical considerations also turn to questions about what is in these environments, and how the material space between people is captured, constructed and/or (re)mediated. Similarly, although previously the actions performed may be interpreted as representing social or cultural phenomena, in this section, the attention is on the actions themselves and how those actions may be felt and/or experienced.
The ways that the AVP is depicted and the actions that users perform suggest several levels of material and embodied realities. When the “First Timer” (AVP6) throws himself onto a couch to watch a show, or when the dad kicks a soccer ball (AVP5), we might ask how the AVP appears to support or allow these forms of physicality, especially when the current applications presented in the videos suggest limited forms of movement across primarily visual experiences. Although these are relatively mundane actions that are not directly related to the AVP's apps or design, throughout the videos, the felt and embodied aspects of the AVP's materiality are absent or disregarded. As the users go about their daily lives, their physicality suggests the fantasy of a disappearing technology (Harley, 2020), in which the AVP and battery are constantly worn and always ready for use, but also forgotten. Before receiving a FaceTime call, the woman packing or unpacking her bags (AVP5) is shown simply wearing her AVP with no apps in use. She is presented as so unencumbered by the AVP that it is just as easy to wear the headset as not to wear it. Putting the AVP on when the FaceTime call rings is not presented as an option; it is better left on. Yet even as the device disappears for the wearer, it is also an object to be admired. It is described in the voiceover as “remarkably compact and beautiful” (AVP1, 5:38), with glass that “flows seamlessly into the aluminum alloy frame that gently curves to wrap around your face” (AVP1, 5:55). Phrased with the active voice and supplemented by adverbs that suggest grace, it is the agency of the AVP that personalizes the fit: “The soft frame gently flexes and conforms to your unique features” (AVP1, 6:13).
Despite this language and the assumed comfort of the AVP, none of the videos provide any clear sense of the embodied reality of wearing 600 to 650 grams of technology over the eyes and face. The ease with which the headset is worn is assumed despite the visible pressure on some of the wearers’ cheeks (AVP1). Similarly, the external battery, which weighs 353 grams and “slips easily into your pocket” (AVP1, 6:31) is quickly introduced and seemingly forgotten. In the videos, the wire that connects this battery to the headset travels from the pocket, up the wearer's back, and into the side of the headset. Other than its explicit reference for a few seconds in one of the videos (AVP1), the battery is otherwise not seen, and although the wire is often visible, it is implied and meant to be ignored. The presumed comfort across the videos suggests that the user will ignore the sensation of always carrying the battery, or will not notice having a wire dangling from head to pocket, and the user will forget the physical sensation of wearing the AVP. While it is reasonable to expect these videos to show people wanting to put the AVP on, the only instance where the AVP comes off is at the end of the Guided Tour (AVP4). Similarly, while we can expect that an advertisement would depict the AVP as comfortable, the implication is that Apple has solved ergonomic and experiential discomforts that are common to other HMDs. Elsewhere, however, some of these problems are acknowledged, like the range of discomfort associated with motion sickness while wearing the AVP (AVPS2) or the possibility of eye strain or visual discomfort (AVPS5).
A device that is presented as always on and always worn suggests another level of materiality: a remediated materiality of the environment and the people in it (including the user), rendered through the AVP as a data-processing device. In “Introducing Apple Vision Pro,” the voiceover states that “3D mapping provides a detailed understanding of walls, furniture, and even people, so all experiences look, sound, and feel like they’re physically there” (AVP1, 7:56). Although this phrasing uses “experiences” to mean virtual experiences, it is a reminder that simply viewing the physical space through the AVP requires technology. The AVP is always powered so that the cameras and real-time three-dimensional mapping can “transmit over one billion pixels per second to the display so you can see the world around you clearly” (AVPS3). One imagined benefit of these remediated environments is the ability to control and populate physical space with spatial representations of existing applications, which “live” in the environment: “When you put on Apple Vision Pro, you see your world and everything in it. Your favorite apps live right in front of you, but now they’re in your space” (AVP1, 0:22). If there are other people in the same room, the “EyeSight” feature captures and casts a real-time representation of the users’ eyes on the front of the headset to allow “users to stay connected to those around them while wearing the Apple Vision Pro” (AVPS6). While EyeSight is presented as sufficient for in-person interactions, the “Persona” feature—a real-time representation of the user—remediates the wearer for remote or virtual social interactions: “your persona dynamically reflects your face and hand movements, so when you’re chatting, people see your eyes, hands, and true expressions” (AVP1, 6:49). Here, as with the other three-dimensional representations, the remediation is framed as just as “true” as the captured original.
The constant capturing of physical reality is also necessary for the interaction paradigm that the videos present. These are interactions that require relatively subtle movements and that are made possible with eye-tracking, hand-tracking, and speech-to-text. These affordances imagine an interaction paradigm that captures minute, personalized movements. Unlike smart home objects that require a “wake word” (e.g., “okay Google,” or “Alexa”) to begin sensing input, the AVP is constantly sensing the possibility of input to enable the “magic” (AVP1, 0:44) of interacting by selecting virtual objects with the eyes and with hand gestures that involve a pinching of thumb and index finger. Although the AVP has accessibility features for other input modalities, these videos present only the version of the interactions that require fine motor control within an ocularcentric paradigm that privileges sight and visuals. The capturing of spatial audiovisual data is presented as positive in both its passive (by the AVP) and active forms (by the user): when a (different) dad in “Introducing Apple Vision Pro” is shown kneeling, grinning, and staring at his children while wearing the AVP (Figure 3), he pushes a button to enable spatial data capture so that he can later “relive a memory” (AVP1, 2:09). Given that the next scene shows the dad, alone but still smiling, watching a different instance of spatial capture (this time outdoors), the AVP is shown to reproduce both the past and present across whatever environment the user inhabits.
A domestic scene in which a father uses the AVP to record a spatial capture his children playing so that he can later “relive” the moment (AVP1).
The interconnected
As we have suggested, the sociocultural mediations necessarily overlap with the material and embodied realities of the AVP. Although separating these considerations offers useful analytical possibilities with the opportunity to focus attention, in this section we are interested in the range of explicit and implicit connections that shape the situated reality of the AVP within a given context. Documenting the connections and contingencies across several scales of analysis (e.g., global and local, micro and macro) is an opportunity to examine the effects, implications, and/or requirements that shape the broader networks of this technology and its platformization (Helmond, 2015; Poell et al., 2019). In this sense, a single “platform instance” like the AVP within corporate forms of technical development is necessarily indicative of broader infrastructural development driven by capitalist expansion (Nieborg and Helmond, 2019). Given that we have relied on a bounded set of promotional materials, our attention has already focused on relatively small-scale scenarios of work and leisure because Apple has been doing the work of narrowing the focus to develop an initial narrative or (spatial) imaginary about the AVP. In this section, we aim to show that these small-scale scenarios are also imbricated with other forms of spatiality, which in turn suggest broader implications for the kinds of connections that they imply.
One example of these broader implications can be seen in the digital, technological, and infrastructural “ecosystems” that the AVP extends. Throughout the videos, the physicality of the main affordances is subtle enough to suggest ease of use as well as a seamless integration into a broader suite of Apple devices: “Because you see the world around you, you can glance at a notification [on an Apple Watch] and even connect to your Mac [a laptop] simply by looking at it” (AVP1, 4:44). This combination of devices (inaccessible to many at a cost of roughly 6500 USD, not including the latest iPhone that is used to create spatial videos to be viewed in the AVP, or the various accessories, like the 200 USD carrying case) suggests economic contingencies within this expanding set of technologies and learned interactions. In this particular instance, the woman shown using these three devices is doing this for work: “You can create the perfect workspace, no matter where you are” (AVP1, 3:44), suggesting that the “perfect workspace” is one in which the user is physically alone but able to call up “life-size” (AVP1, 4:32) collaborators on FaceTime while using a combination of virtual and physical screens placed throughout the environment that ping the user with notifications. These “work” scenarios, which either take place in the home or in large empty spaces, present a single remote worker who is often completely alone in their physical environment (Figure 4). For Apple, the “infinite canvas for apps at work and at home” (AVPS6) suggests not only that Apple's iMusic, iMessage, Notes, and Safari are all integral and default apps for the modern worker but also that the modern worker is an avid participant within a particular sphere of the digital economy. This is a digital designer and prosumer who needs the AVP because it gives the user the ability to place multiple virtual screens and Apple apps throughout the environment, presumably offering “all-new ways to multitask” (AVPS6). For this worker, a designated workspace or a desk is not enough; the entire environment must be used as a permeable “canvas” for increasing digital work, allowing any (and every) space to be overlayed with Apple's applications.
A scene depicting the modern worker in a large empty hotel room looking at an Apple Watch through a Vision Pro with a MacBook nearby (AVP1).
These expanding “ecosystems” imply additional considerations around data collection and privacy. In “Introducing Apple Vision Pro” (AVP1), a woman is interrupted from her screen time by a friend asking for a lunch order. Over their banter, the voiceover claims: “Foundational to Apple Vision Pro is that you’re not isolated from other people. When someone else is in the room, you can see them and they can see you” (AVP1, 1:18). A sociocultural implication of this scene may be a presumed sociality between people wearing HMDs and others who are not—that is, an invocation of social norms before they are established—and a material and embodied analysis may read another instance of an HMD that is always worn and that is not expected to be removed. A consideration for interconnected factors might turn to the effects and implications of an expanding set of sensing capabilities that such scenes present, which requires data capture of environments, the user, and other people within that environment (whether by the device to enable the “people awareness” mode, or by the user to capture spatial videos and images). While the promotional videos do not refer to privacy or data tracking in any way, the initial press release (AVPS6) notes that eye tracking, camera data, and sensor data is stored and processed on the AVP, rather than Apple servers or by third-party apps and websites. While this is promising, a longer term issue is the normalization of these forms of data collection, and the fact that enabling such tracking by other apps is still possible in service of a “more immersive experience” (AVPS4).
In a recent study on user perceptions of privacy concerns with XR devices, Hadan et al., (2024) note that not only do XR devices present similar privacy concerns to a range of other technologies (e.g., Internet of things (IoT), mobile, and web), but also new types of privacy concerns that were less understood by the participants (and not as clear a concern) because they had not yet experienced newer forms of data tracking made possible by XR devices. Moreover, participants felt “a sense of privacy resignation because they believed they had already lost their privacy on other devices” (p. 13), suggesting the same is likely to be true for AVP users given that the use cases present them as owning many other Apple devices. Similarly, an HMD that is “designed for all-day use when plugged in” normalizes the always-on headsets and devices that have concerned designers for over a decade as they imagined the future of AR. As Roesner et al. (2014) describe, “always-on, always-sensing” AR devices create a variety of privacy and security challenges, including deception attacks in which the rendered real-world input is manipulated. In these cases, the authors call for systems that provide a “trusted return to reality,” which becomes more difficult because “future wearable systems may be difficult or impossible for users to remove” (p. 91). With the implied uses of the AVP, concerns and considerations within increasingly normalized present-day use cases connect to the concerns and considerations of past as well as future devices.
Where and how far these interconnected forms of spatiality extend is partially demarcated by the global reach of Apple as a corporation. For example, “Making Apple Vision Pro” (AVP3) shows a series of clips depicting mostly robotic manufacturing of the AVP. Gloved human hands are seen briefly before the machines once again take over, shaping, polishing, and assembling. Although the video seems to suggest an almost entirely automated assembly line, elsewhere Apple proudly declaims its reliance on multinational labor (ACR5). Within these broader contexts, Apple's “ecosystem” of devices and applications is actively shaping many other systems and environments. For example, in their 2023 Conflict Minerals Report (ACR1), Apple notes that despite its broader goal to increasingly use recycled materials, they must still source conflict minerals. In an effort to assess “a broad range of risks beyond conflict, including social, environmental, and human rights risks” (p. 2), Apple developed a scoring methodology to produce “material impact profiles” (ACR2), which include “environmental” considerations like the use of hazardous chemicals, to “social” considerations like the risk of child labor and forced labor, or the risk of corruption and conflict within a given region. As with previous reports, the 2023 Report notes how many smelters and refiners had to be removed from their supply chain because they did not or could not meet the required expectations for conflict minerals. As Apple strives for its goal of carbon neutrality in 2030 (ACR3) and promotes those efforts in broader advertising (ACR4), considerations for where and how materials are sourced, processed, and manufactured have broad geopolitical and environmental significance.
Sociocultural, material, embodied, interconnected: imaginaries and absences
Applying our analytical categories to the AVP's promotional videos directs attention to ways that Apple is constructing sociotechnical imaginaries of spatial computing. The sociocultural implications show a presentation of imagined work-home configurations and their social and cultural contexts; the material and embodied conditions show imagined comfort, ease-of-use, and an expected physicality of a head-mounted wearable technology that is controlled with gaze and gesture; and the interconnected factors present imagined ecosystems for the AVP to integrate into and expand. In each case, it is also the absences within these promotional materials that extend questions about the human costs and implications of spatial realities that are social, cultural, material, embodied, and interconnected. Each of the sections above also offers glimpses of the ways that these categories of analysis can overlap to help develop new lines of analysis—the categories are never distinct, but they do offer relevant areas of focus that can be used individually or in combination. As an analysis attempting to examine several facets of a platform's power and mediations, our approach is purposely wide-ranging, but the limits of the data at the heart of the analysis—promotional videos produced by Apple—also help to reveal additional areas of inquiry related to the technology, its discourse, and its possible use.
One key absence with this dataset, perhaps especially in terms of its interconnected forms of spatiality, is that it presents a world in which no other technology exists other than devices designed by Apple. Yet as Apple's first foray into HMDs, the AVP is also a technological statement in relation to, and in competition with other key players in the space, and the use of the term “spatial computing” rather than terms like AR and VR, is a strategic and discursive move to position itself as unique in the market. The ways that Apple appropriates, disregards, or extends prior conceptualizations of spatial computing and/or contemporary XR interactions can be understood as an effort to define and “mainstream” which aspects of XR interaction Apple views as essential. More direct comparisons to other existing HMDs may help to further reveal Apple's imaginary of the AVP. For example, as an HMD that provides some forms of contemporary AR interactions, the AVP offers a consumer-oriented contrast to Microsoft's Hololens HMD, which is marketed for multiple enterprise applications (Microsoft, 2024), and which has been under a multibillion-dollar contract with the US military since 2018 (Clark, 2023). These use cases provide an important contrast to those that the AVP presents, not only because of their specific business and government relationships, but also because the Hololens is presented as enhancing tactile, hands-on labor in multiple settings, while the AVP is presented as offering immaterial interaction with personal virtual screens, with tactile interaction only when a MacBook keyboard is connected.
Similarly, as a device that offers both “passthrough” features and fully immersive content like a VR HMD, Apple's efforts can be put into conversation with Meta's dominance in the space, especially as they released the Quest 3 only five months prior. Before and after the release of the AVP, review sites and discussion boards compared the relative merits and uses of the Quest 3 and the AVP (e.g., Stein, 2024). After Apple's first promotional video in June 2023, Mark Zuckerberg responded in a companywide meeting in which he derided the primarily seated use cases in the videos, a vision for computing that he framed as representing differences in “values” rooted in a “philosophical difference” in approach (Heath, 2023). Once the AVP was released, Zuckerberg posted his own review video that served as a promotional advertisement for the Quest 3, ultimately claiming that Meta represents the “open model” of computing, while Apple represents the “closed model” (Spangler, 2024). This echoes a discursive strategy that Zuckerberg has employed for over a decade, in which his emphasis on platforms like Facebook making the world “open and connected” obscures Meta's forms of control and capitalization (Hoffmann et al., 2018). Interpreting how much either of these models is open or closed is a reminder that there are many other lines of comparative inquiry: just as our examination of AVP imaginaries draws on Egliston and Carter's (2022a) examination of the imaginaries of Meta's ambitions for VR, their related work on material politics of mobile VR (2022b), or the political economy of Meta's expanding Reality Lab ventures (2024), or the surveillance structures embedded in privacy policies (2023), can provide a blueprint for future examinations of the AVP. These and other examples of related work raise questions about how imaginaries of the AVP are interwoven with the corporate and technological imaginaries that have previously attempted to shape VR, AR, and other computational media. Similarly, situating Apple's discourse as part of a larger push for global market dominance is also an opportunity to relate these technological developments to new forms of digital colonialism (Kwet, 2019), especially when positioned alongside other parallel and related advancements that are in development or on the horizon, whether those be related to artificial intelligence or neural interfaces.
Another important absence in this dataset is any evidence of how people actually use or plan to use the AVP, or how their use of the AVP will be in negotiation with other aspects of their everyday lives. In the days and weeks following the launch, a number of viral posts and videos surfaced that purportedly showed real-world uses, some of which were staged as fodder for reactions, others that appeared to be enthusiasts excitedly finding use cases. In a collection of some of these for the VR news site,
Moreover, the cost and limited access of the AVP means additional scholarship will be needed to provide a comprehensive sense of actual use in workplaces, homes, or other real-world environments on a global scale. Given that the AVP was released only in the US in February 2024, the broader lack of access to this technology suggests that even if these promotional materials primarily targeted an American audience, these imaginaries will travel the world in one form or another: Apple later announced that the next countries to have access would be mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore in late June 2024, followed by Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in July 2024 (AVPS7). While there are likely a number of logistical and strategic factors that Apple uses to determine where and how the AVP is released, the delayed access beyond the US and the prioritization of countries that often represent the Global North is a reminder of how corporations enforce technological divides through degrees of access. At the same time, the inclusion of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore in the second phase of the rollout (i.e., the only areas in the current list traditionally considered as part of the Global South) also signals the need for future work to continue “dewesternizing” platform studies (Davis and Xiao, 2021) by emphasizing the “similarities, differences, and interdependencies” (p. 107) across specific regional contexts while also noting the differing hegemonies, state governance, regulatory systems, histories, ideologies, and other factors that play a role in technology adoption and use, as well as the multiple markets and capitalisms (Steinberg et al., 2024) that are implicated as the AVP extends beyond the US. This level of analysis is necessary for the broader project of adding greater nuance and specificity to what might otherwise become simplistic North/South or East/West dichotomies.
Potential variations across real-world contexts of use are a reminder that the promotional videos and our analysis of the technology's designed affordances do not present deterministic outcomes even as they valorize particular sociocultural, material, and embodied arrangements. Without losing sight of the overarching infrastructural implications of novel platform instances, the range of mundane and everyday uses that the AVP presents suggests that there will simultaneously be a need for ethnographic and other related approaches to understand how the AVP (or its future instances) might be integrated into the public and/or private lives of its users. How the technology is imagined by its everyday users is important, as Nagy and Neff (2015) argue, but technological affordances also exist within sociopolitical contexts, with users demonstrating use and misuse that can contest or challenge how technology is designed (Shaw, 2017). As Wallis and Ross (2020) note when describing Indigenous VR developers and users: “Their radical adaptation of this new technology is seen in the way VR is used to speak back to, subvert and provide new pathways through ongoing colonial structures with a frequent emphasis on the way Indigenous subjects can be placed at the centre of Indigenous-directed futures” (p. 14). Crucially, a theorization of spatiality that is processual, relational, and contingent emphasizes that an examination of the multiple possible factors that are simultaneously at play is an opportunity for both critical and transformational perspectives. Recognizing possible connections at several levels of analysis draws attention to the ways that those connections influence and/or are relational to one another while also opening space for new connections that can disrupt and/or intervene in hegemonic or oppressive systems.
Conclusion
As corporations seek to define the imaginaries associated with immersive HMDs delivering augmented, mixed, and virtual realities, an examination of the sociocultural, material, embodied, and interconnected elements of Apple's entry into spatial computing reveals important mediations. Our analysis of promotional videos for the AVP shows idealized visions of work-home configurations, seamless user experiences, and interconnected “ecosystems” of Apple products. Within the broader politics of Apple's platforms and the situated reality of immersive technologies, these imaginaries of the AVP show not just repetitions of normative conceptualizations across these dimensions, but more firmly entrenched techno-utopian visions of technology that disregard any distance between public and private, between work and play, or between connected and disconnected. Moreover, significant absences within these imaginaries—such as the lack of consideration for the complexity and heterogeneity of real-world spaces, or the diversity of embodied experiences—highlight important gaps in the narratives that Apple constructs.
Our work extends current critical examinations of the platforms and platform politics that shape XR technologies and, therefore, offers a primary contribution to this trajectory of platform research. Prior work within this context shows that as XR devices are increasingly framed as integral components of everyday life, they also reflect broader corporate trends of platformization and infrastructuralization, especially as mobile, untethered HMDs stand to extend the platform power of big tech companies like Meta and Microsoft. We show that Apple's proposed mediations and its emphasis on “spatial computing” follow these broader patterns of corporate strategy, with promotional material providing a vision of how XR technologies are expected to be integral to everyday life, while also demonstrating how the AVP leverages and strives to extend platform dependency across a networked suite of devices and applications. The initial advertising and the initial rollout of the AVP show how narrowly these social, cultural, and embodied visions for the AVP are constructed, revealing the human costs and assumptions that underpin Apple's infrastructural agenda for XR.
The cross-disciplinary scholarship that shaped our analytical approach also offers an ongoing reminder of the need for interdisciplinary considerations within platform studies, and perhaps especially to better understand the multidimensional facets of novel platform instances like XR devices. Although corporate imaginaries attempt to affix and stabilize particular meanings and interactions, the AVP is not a fixed and unchanging object. There are opportunities to trace how the AVP's imaginaries and culturally embedded signifiers change as it is sold and reshaped for new markets, and also opportunities to examine how the device itself changes with new applications, new application programming interfaces (APIs), etc. In this sense, combining the heuristic flexibility, or “messiness,” of our analytical approach with an examination of the absences that these categories reveal may offer an opportunity to respond to “emerging” ways that XR devices and their contexts change over time, strategically focusing on one or more analytical category without losing sight of the interrelationships and implications of the technology. As we have suggested, understanding the sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding the AVP requires attention not only to Apple's crafted narratives that we have discussed here, but also to how users, developers, and other stakeholders across regional and global contexts might shape or contest these imaginaries through their own practices and experiences. These considerations underscore the need for critical engagements with the evolving dynamics of XR technologies. As the AVP and other similar devices enter real-world settings, additional studies and critical analyses will be essential for uncovering how these imaginaries are enacted, challenged, or transformed.
Ultimately, our analysis shows that the imaginary of the AVP presented in the promotional videos is one that expects affluent and able-bodied consumers who have already purchased every other Apple device to integrate it into their home and work life. It is an imaginary that expects these consumers to ignore the embodied materiality of the HMD while also celebrating it as a status symbol. It is an imaginary that presents these consumers as alone, or in the presence of people who are similarly able to ignore the device's materiality and mediations. It is an imaginary that sees value in layering every facet of daily life with a digital sheen while also requiring novel forms of data collection and data processing to make that form of spatial computing possible. It is an imaginary that assumes that there is no need for work–life balance, and that today's worker is one who relies primarily on immaterial digital tools and applications. Importantly, although these imaginaries are not deterministic, and although the absences within these imaginaries help to reveal opportunities for future analysis, if the vision that shapes the AVP is uncontested, the spatiality that is implicated in the “first spatial computer” may seem mundane and minimal as subsequent “spatial computers” are released.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
Declaration of conflicting interests
Funding
ORCID iD
