Get ready to Zoom into the future – meetings are about to get a wild, sci-fi makeover with Apple’s latest strap-on gizmo, the Vision Pro headset. Coming to a conference room near you (well, virtually, at least) as of February 2nd, you can toss your tired old office attire and swap it for a digital avatar that can mimic your every smirk and eyebrow wiggle in real-time. Zoom’s gearing up to let you be your pixel-perfect self in meetings with its new visionOS app, all from the comfort of whatever reality you choose to be in.
Zoom calls are about to get whacky
Imagine dialing into your work status meeting not just from your cluttered home office but as a sleek avatar, complete with hand gestures and all. Your boss’s avatar might have a floating cup of joe, and your coworker’s digital self might don a virtual Hawaiian shirt – because why not? Zoom’s new persona feature is basically FaceTime on steroids for the Vision Pro, making you wonder if you’re in a meeting or a video game.
Credit: Apple
Credit: Zoom
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Turning you into a game character
But hold onto your ergonomic chairs, there’s more. Zoom isn’t just stopping at turning us all into glorified Sims characters. With the Vision Pro’s AR powers, video calls will pop up as floating windows in your real space, and soon you’ll be able to pin your colleagues’ avatars around your room like futuristic sticky notes. Forget about sharing boring old spreadsheets; 3D object sharing is on the horizon, so you can bring your latest 3D models to virtual life right before your eyes.
Credit: Apple
Apps you won’t see on Vision Pro at launch
Now, not all is perfect in a virtual paradise. Netflix and YouTube are playing hard to get, opting out of the launch party. So if you were hoping to sneak a Netflix binge during your budget review, you’ll have to settle for a less immersive browser experience. But with almost 200 other apps on board, including all the streaming heavy hitters from Disney+ to Crunchyroll, it’s not all doom and gloom.
Credit: Apple
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The Vision Pro: the next big thing or another tech fad?
The Vision Pro will cost you a pretty penny at $3,499, and the jury’s still out on whether it’ll be the next big thing or just another tech fad. But one thing’s for sure – with the new Zoom app, your work meetings are about to get a lot less predictable. So, strap on your headsets and prepare for takeoff, because the future of work is here, and it’s looking… interesting, to say the least.
Credit: Apple
Kurt’s key takeaways
The Vision Pro and the new Zoom app are promising to revolutionize the way we work and communicate in the future. They offer us a chance to escape the mundane and embrace the extraordinary, to express ourselves in new and creative ways, and to collaborate with others in immersive and interactive environments. But they also raise some questions about the impact of such technologies. Are we ready to blur the lines between the real and the virtual, the human and the avatar, the work, and the play?
What do you think of the Vision Pro and the new Zoom app? Would you use them for your work meetings or personal calls? Let us know in the comments below.
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