Devices and the Type of Computing it Ushered in

Apple I – Personal Computing
Macintosh – Graphical Computing
iPhone – Mobile Computing
Watch – Biometric Computing
Vision – Spatial Computing

Personal Computing

I learned to program on an Apple ][, when BASIC was taught to us 6th graders on Saturday mornings by Mr. McKinney. I was the first student to finish all the assignments (even the extra credit ones). I learned to defensively program to prevent unwanted crashes. I had a lot of fun programming, but was too poor to afford an Apple ][ or any personal computer. Yet, the experience was personal and powerful. As a preteen, I wrote code and the computer ran that code. I told it what to do and it executed those commands exactly as I wrote them, regardless of how good or bad they were. Emotionally, it was empowering even if fleeting since I could only do at school.

Graphical Computing

I don’t remember the first Mac I used. I do remember the first Mac app that blew my mind though: Myst. It took me to another world where I was in total control to explore. There were no enemies trying to kill me, no rushing to complete a level, just me slowly exploring this mystical world. Outside the game, I remember the concepts of the Mac that were also by then found on Wintel machines such as folders, menus, and overlapping windows that you could click and drag via a mouse. What I never liked was how the tactile feelings were disconnected from the screen, meaning my interaction with the screen happened off-screen via a keyboard and mouse. I dragged a mouse, not the windows themselves to move and resize them.

Mobile Computing

My first iPhone was the iPhone 4, because I didn’t want to switch cell providers. I remember the first app I made for it, a very crude tic-tac-toe game. I clearly remember tapping the screen for the first time and having it react to my touch. The tactile feelings were no longer separated from the software. It was like I could now touch my software creations directly vs having a mechanical middleman. It was magical and I was hooked. I went and declared to my friends that I was going all in on mobile. Now, that wasn’t some dramatic prediction, since it was pretty clear by then that Apple was going to win the mobile race. Many people feel the iPhone succeeded because it was the first computer that fit in your pocket, but Palm Pilots and Blackberries did too and while popular, they were never iPhone popular. I feel the bigger reason for iPhone’s success was that you touched it and it magically responded to you better than any other device ever had before. That sort of magic is addicting. I’m sure everyone remembers scrolling, just to see it scroll when you first got an iPhone. I know I did.

Biometric Computing

On this very blog, I put down my thoughts after I got the watch. It was very clear to me that biometric data would be the watch’s strength. Once I easily had my heart rate info, it became very natural to track my health with it. I didn’t wear anything on my wrist before the Apple watch and I’ve never been without an Apple watch ever since. I remember telling the WatchOS team at their first WWDC lab, “You realize you know when people are dying, right? You know their heart rate is slowing and you can predict that they’re likely going to die. You can prompt them to call someone or send someone a message for one final time.” Their stares of shock and horror told me they had not. It’s scary, but only because death is scary. However, facts are facts, all emotions aside. We’ll all die someday, the only difference now is a device will record that fact.

Spatial Computing

When I was a writer (late high school/early college), I wrote several thousand pages worth of material. While some was other worldly fantasy or sci-fi, most of it was stories involving fictional characters in a real world setting.

I get wanderlust and need to see new places. Sometimes, it’s just a new block around my home, a new city/state or, on rare occasions, a new country. It’s a basic human desire for us to experience new things. In a similar vein, having people over for a get together also has the effect of turning our familiar home setting into something fun and different.

My kids don’t understand computer UI paradigm anymore. Countless videos show kids being amazed when they learn the save icon has an actual real world implementation, trying to use a non-mobile phone, or having to watch TV which doesn’t show what they want but rather what is “on” with non-skippable ads. They don’t use folders, don’t have desktops and don’t understand what files are or why we need them on our computing devices.

All of this is to say that computers don’t reflect our real world. They don’t reflect how we humans understand the world around us. Our personal world doesn’t exist behind the glass in our mobile phones or computer monitors. It exists everywhere around us. Think of your house. You may have an studio, an office, a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. Each room is a cognitive experience tied to what you’re doing there. An art studio is more conducive to creativity than your home office. Your bedroom is a space for personal reflection of the day than your kitchen is. I want games to exist in the world around me, not bound up in my phone or TV.

Being able to step into a physical space and perform computing tasks tied to that space will be a game changer, because those computing spaces will persist just like the decorations and furniture you put there to encourage a particular type of thinking. Now your computing tasks, your computer work, will be blended with memories within that physical space.

I want to see new places when I’m computing. I don’t want to have to return to where a monitor is, whether in a room, in an office or to wherever I left my laptop. I want to be in places of work or play, walking around but still being able to stop and switch contexts immediately.

Lastly, I’m sick and tired of the desktop metaphor and all the baggage associated with it. I’m tired of the 2D representation of things I create and how they’re stuck in a 2D plane of glass. VisionOS appears to kill off the desktop metaphor and that alone is worth the price of admission to me.

Apple Vision Pro allows us to move away from the 2D, both in UI and in the glass we use to display it. Computing will no longer be in our hand, in our lap or on a monitor. It will be everywhere and have contextual understanding. What does that mean and why does it change things. I have way too many ideas to cover in this post, but I’ll give you one simple example.

“Apple Vision Pro is a gimmick. You’re not seriously believing in it?”

I know many family and friends will say the above to me. However, remember earlier in this post, when I spoke of the emotions involved with being empowered, touching my app and knowing when people will die? All of that came full circle for me during the keynote. What seemed like a silly gimmick to some, and the butt of many jokes, brought tears to my eyes. It was the spatial photos and videos.

I do have 2 young daughters, but I wasn’t transposing them into that video clip. Instead, I’m thinking of my mother who is in the middle stages of dementia. I won’t bore ya with all the details, but we basically have a year or two of her being somewhat aware of us and who we are. It’s too late to capture spatial videos of her before she was sick, but if fate blesses us, we may be able to capture some spatial videos of her during one of our weekly game nights. She likes to joke with the kids by making the “L” symbol with her hand and saying, “Losers!!!” when she wins. She cracks jokes about my dad being horrible at games and laughs harder than anyone else at those jokes. I hope I can capture all THAT one time before she completely fades away mentally. I hope I can record that and play it back for her, my dad, myself, my brother and my kids.

So yeah, I’m a big believer in Apple’s vision for spatial computing. It’ll increase my productivity and take computing to the next level of emotional connection. It’ll change how we work and how we use computers. Aside from all that, it will help us remember and relive moments with loved ones when they’re no longer with us.

I’ll be posting some stuff about actual implementation details and how that affects businesses. If you care to follow along, by all means do.

Also, if you are going to want to be a part of Launch Day with your own app, you need to start now. 6 months is not much time to ideate, plan, build, test and launch. If you don’t have the developers to help you get it done, let’s start chatting now.