paulalex

I think one thing that the article fails to mention is context. I'd be curious to know when Jony Ive made the following comment of "alienated users from other people by cutting them off from the outside world, made users look unfashionable and lacked practical uses." This statement was actually quite true in 2016 when the first generation of modern VR (ex. HTC Vive, Oculus Rift) came out. At that time, the VR hype was out of control about what VR could do, and Ive's reflections were spot on.

However, those issues that Ive speaks of are gradually being addressed with new tech/features such as pass-through cameras (ex. Varijo XR), smaller and lighter form factors (ex. pancake lenses), standalone models (ex. Quest 2), and an increasing number of social, game, educational, and business apps. Personally, I use a variety of XR (XR is a kind of umbrella term for all things MR-VR-AR-360) headsets, platforms, and apps for education and research.

That said, the future of XR looks bright. With respect to XR headsets, I anticipate that we'll be introduced to 3rd generation headsets within the next year (to note, an XR generation is currently about 3 years long). Companies such as Apple, Valve, Meta, Pimax and others are all rumoured to be working on various next-gen tech such as eye-tracking, foveated rendering, face and full-body tracking, and so forth. Even though recent articles indicate that Apple is struggling with their XR headset, I imagine that they are getting closer to finishing their headset, along with tweaking their operating system (ex. rOS) and XR app store. 

When Apple and other companies eventually do introduce their next-gen XR headsets, I suspect most of the issues that Jony Ive originally stated will be sorted out for the most part ~