Apple finally launched its Vision Pro “spatial computing” device in early February. We immediately saw TikTok memes of influencers being ridiculous. I wrote about my hope for the Apple Vision Pro back in June 2023, when it was first announced. When preorders opened for Vision Pro in January, I told myself I wouldn’t buy it. I couldn’t justify the $3,500 price tag. Out of morbid curiosity, I would lurk in the AVP subreddits to live vicariously through those who did take the plunge.

After about a month of reading all the positives from users about the device, I impulsively bought an Apple Vision Pro. I placed my order online at noon and picked it up just two hours later at an Apple Store near me.

Many great articles and YouTube videos have already been produced, so this post won’t be a top-to-bottom review of the Apple Vision Pro. Instead, I’ll try to frame it from my standpoint as someone who has designed user experiences for VR. 

After years of rumors and speculation, Apple finally unveiled their virtual reality headset yesterday in a classic “One more thing…” segment in their keynote. Dubbed Apple Vision Pro, this mixed reality device is perfectly Apple: it’s human-first. It’s centered around extending human productivity, communication, and connection. It’s telling that one of the core problems they solved was the VR isolation problem. That’s the issue where users of VR are isolated from the real world; they don’t know what’s going on, and the world around them sees that. Insert meme of oblivious VR user here. Instead, with the Vision Pro, when someone else is nearby, they show through the interface. Additionally, an outward-facing display shows the user’s eyes. These two innovative features help maintain the basic human behavior of acknowledging each other’s presence in the same room.

I know a thing or two about VR and building practical apps for VR. A few years ago, in the mid-2010s, I cofounded a VR startup called Transported. My cofounders and I created a platform for touring real estate in VR. We wanted to help homebuyers and apartment hunters more efficiently shop for real estate. Instead of zigzagging across town running to multiple open houses on a Sunday afternoon, you could tour 20 homes in an hour on your living room couch. Of course, “virtual tours” existed already. There were cheap panoramas on real estate websites and “dollhouse” tours created using Matterport technology. Our tours were immersive; you felt like you were there. It was the future! There were several problems to solve, including 360° photography, stitching rooms together, building a player, and then most importantly, distribution. Back in 2015–2016, our theory was that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sony, and Apple would quickly make VR commonplace because they were pouring billions of R&D and marketing dollars into the space. But it turned out we were a little ahead of our time.

I recently came across Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by former software engineer Ken Kocienda. It was in one of my social media feeds, and since I’m interested in Apple, the creative process, and having been at Apple at that time, I was curious.

I began reading the book Saturday evening and finished it Tuesday morning. It was an easy read, as I was already familiar with many of the players mentioned and nearly all the technologies and concepts. But, I’d done something I hadn’t done in a long time—I devoured the book.

Ultimately this book gave more color and structure to what I’d already known, based on my time at Apple and my own interactions with him. Steve Jobs was the ultimate creative director who could inspire, choose, and direct work. 

I have always liked writing. I don’t fancy myself a professional writer in any way. Still, I like having an outlet (or outlets) for my random musings as I work through understanding the world, be it design, technology, or whatever. While I have published various blogs in the past or written articles and essays on Medium, I want my content hosted on a platform I own and control. So, I’m consolidating everything here on my personal site, which may become a haphazard amalgam of subjects.

This is officially the first post on this site, but I will be bringing in posts from the various past platforms and backdating them to their original publication dates.

I will also use this site to post links to stories and articles I’m reading. It will inevitably be an assortment of design, tech, Apple, and politics.

This post was originally published on Medium.

I have longed cringed at how the mainstream media reports on the technology industry to the public. From use of randomly-selected synonyms to just downright misunderstanding of particular technologies, it’s sort of embarrassing to the reporter (usually someone who calls themselves a “technology reporter”) and the publication.

The latest examples come courtesy of The New York Times. I was alerted to this via a piece on BGR by Yoni Heisler titled, “The New York Times’ latest Apple hit piece is embarrassing and downright lazy.” Disclosure: I am a subscriber to The Times because I support their journalism. Their political reporters in particular have done a tremendous service to our country over the last couple of years. I usually trust what The Times writes about politics because I am not an expert in it. But the two pieces mentioned by BGR, about screen-time apps, and the editorial about Apple’s supposed monopoly are downright silly, because I do know a thing or two about technology and Apple.

From an advertising standpoint, I believe Apple has been on fire recently. (Disclaimer: I have been an Apple fanboy since 1985 and used to work there many years ago.) Beginning with the “What will your verse be?” iPad ad that debuted in mid-January, they’ve continued with the “You’re more powerful than you think” iPhone 5S that began airing recently.

When I first saw “Your Verse” on TV it stopped me in my tracks. Using audio of Robin Williams speaking to his class in Dead Poets Society, it features footage of people using the iPad around the world for making music, photography, tracking tornadoes, playing professional hockey, and more. The haunting melody combined with the breathtaking images and Robin Williams’ voice really struck a chord with me. It evoked a deep sense of wonder and faith in humanity. These were real people doing extraordinary things with this product. In the mere three years that iPad has been available* it has created a whole new category of devices and enabled millions of people to do ordinary and extraordinary things.

The Apple Mac turned 30 years old today. I got my first Mac in 1985 actually after weeks if not months of convincing my father to spend his hard-earned money on it. Every weekend and after many school days, I’d take the bus over to Computerland on Van Ness in San Francisco and just play with the Mac on display for hours at a time.

Embarrassingly this is one of my first MacPaint paintings. Bear in mind that I was 12 years old at the time.

Yesterday Apple announced its third-generation iPad, simply named “iPad.” Buried in MG Siegler’s excellent take on the press event is this statement:

What's more likely — 5 years from now, your primary home computing device is a PC? Or 5 years from now, your primary home computing device is a tablet? Just two years ago, this question would have been an absolute joke. Now it's a joke to think it will take a full five years.

In the post-PC world, tablets are becoming the new normal more and more. In just the two years since the iPad was first introduced, we’ve seen it pervasive on airplanes to entertain children, many executives in Silicon Valley walking around with them instead of lugging laptops, and even the President of the United States receiving his Presidential Daily Briefing via iPad instead of a sheet of paper.

I have been a Mac user since 1985, when I was in the seventh grade. For months I lusted after the Mac on display at Computerland on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. I'd go there after school just to play with MacPaint. It simply captured my imagination. Finally, after many weeks of begging, I got my dad to buy me a 512K Mac. Thus began my love affair with Apple.

Imagine how lucky I felt when I actually began working on the brand and on Pixar in 2001-2002. It was such a privilege to be so close to the magic and to Steve Jobs himself.

The Steve Jobs I knew was human. Not a god. Not someone who could distort reality. Just a man.

With everyone sharing their sweet Steve moments, I have to share mine.

I was working at Apple in the motion graphics group within the Graphic Design department. I was assigned to work on the intro animation for the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther setup assistant. We went through the normal design process with our stakeholders (people in charge of “MacBuddy”) and got to an animation that was essentially swarms of dots that formed each of the different translations of “Welcome” on the screen. And then we showed this nearly-final animation to someone higher at the top—forgive me, I’ve forgotten who this was—and he killed it because the dots looked too much like sperm. OK, they kinda did. (Think about swirling points of light but with motion trails. We tried increasing the motion blur, but it was no use.)

It was back to the drawing board and I presented more ideas. Eventually, Steve got involved and started looking at the animations. Each week my boss would show Steve a new revision of it, and each time we got a little closer. Then on Round 14, the week my boss was on vacation, I had to go present it to Steve Jobs.

This post was originally published on Bow & Arrow from PJA (my employer) on February 3, 2011.

The New York Times recently published an article about how apps and web services are enabling consumers to customize how they read their online content. From apps like Flipboard and Pulse to services like Readability and Instapaper, users are increasingly demanding to consume content whenever, wherever and however they want.

When Apple introduced the iPad a year ago, many print publishers saw it as a panacea for their dwindling readership. By creating digital editions, they hoped to recapture some of the eyeballs lost to aggregators and RSS feeds. One of the pioneering publication apps was the WIRED Magazine iPad app. Because of its novelty, its debut issue sold 73,000 digital copies in nine days, almost as much as on newsstands. There is a clear desire from users to read magazines on their tablets.

Customer and user experience is not always about the website, the phone call, or person-to-person interaction in a store. It can also come through the form of packaging.

I just bought a Mac mini recently (for a living room media server) and was blown away by the unboxing. Apple has always been really great about their packaging. Having worked at Apple, I’ve seen the extreme extent of explorations that go into creating the outside of the box (over 500 comps were created for the Power Mac G5 box). (Incidentally, I worked on the second generation iPod package that featured musical artists like Jimi Hendrix.)

What really impressed me about unboxing the Mac mini was not the outside (although nicely designed), but the inside. The package anticipated my every move. How? Let me illustrate.

The New York Times published a story today about the Genius Bars in the Apple Stores, and how they are the “souls of the stores.” Mentioned within the article is the video loop that plays behind the Bar, which I had the pleasure and privilege of designing!

Invariably in their 20's and 30's, and predominantly male, Apple's experts do keep lofty company. Behind each bar is a screen with a rotating display of quotations from half a dozen better-known intellectual luminaries, like Leonardo da Vinci ("The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding") and Michelangelo ("If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all").