The Future of Spatial Computing: Insights from Industry Experts

As we navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of spatial computing, it's essential to understand the current state of this technology and its potential applications. In recent years, companies like Apple, Samsung, and others have been working on developing spatial computing systems that utilize AI and other technologies to create immersive and interactive experiences.

One of the most significant developments in this field is the emergence of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices. These devices use a combination of sensors, cameras, and displays to create immersive experiences for users. The Apple Vision Pro, for example, is a high-end VR device that uses spatial computing to create a sense of presence and immersion in virtual environments.

However, the field of spatial computing extends far beyond VR and AR. It also encompasses other technologies such as machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. These technologies can be used to analyze and understand spatial data, which is becoming increasingly important for applications such as navigation, mapping, and object recognition.

The Apple Vision Pro is a significant player in the field of spatial computing, but it's not the only device that's being developed. Other companies are also working on creating their own spatial computing systems, including glasses and headsets. These devices will offer users a range of experiences, from gaming to education and healthcare.

One of the benefits of spatial computing is its potential to democratize access to advanced technologies. The Apple Vision Pro, for example, could potentially make it easy for people to integrate spatial data into their daily lives. This could lead to new applications and use cases that we can't even imagine yet.

Despite the excitement around spatial computing, there are still many challenges to be addressed. One of the biggest hurdles is the cost of these devices. The current Apple Vision Pro is priced at $3,500, which is out of reach for many consumers. However, a cheaper version of the device is rumored to be in development, with a price tag of around $1,500.

The prospect of more affordable spatial computing devices is both exciting and challenging. On one hand, it could lead to increased adoption and usage of these technologies. On the other hand, it also raises questions about the potential impact on industries such as healthcare and education, where access to these technologies is often limited.

In addition to the Apple Vision Pro, there are other companies working on developing spatial computing systems. For example, Samsung has announced plans to release a new VR headset that incorporates AI-powered features. Other companies, such as Meta, are also working on developing more advanced spatial computing systems.

As we look to the future of spatial computing, it's clear that competition will play a significant role in shaping this field. With so many companies vying for market share and attention, we can expect to see a wide range of new devices and technologies emerge over the next few years.

According to industry experts, we can expect to see a surge in new hardware releases in the next six to 18 months. This will include more advanced VR and AR headsets, as well as other spatial computing devices such as glasses and smartwatches.

The development of spatial computing systems also raises questions about their potential impact on industries such as education and healthcare. For example, virtual reality can be used to create immersive learning experiences that enhance engagement and retention. Similarly, augmented reality can be used to provide patients with more accurate diagnoses and treatment plans.

In the coming years, we can expect to see a wider range of applications for spatial computing systems. From gaming and entertainment to education and healthcare, these technologies have the potential to transform many industries and aspects of our lives.

For individuals and organizations looking to get started with spatial computing, the advice is simple: just jump in and try it out. The current Apple Vision Pro, for example, can be used as a starting point for exploring this technology. With its advanced features and capabilities, it's an excellent device for testing the waters and seeing how spatial computing can be applied in different contexts.

According to industry expert Arena, "spatial computing is not rocket science, you don't need to be an expert to use it." He emphasizes that the current Apple Vision Pro is a great starting point for anyone looking to explore this technology. Additionally, reading books such as Kathy's latest release can provide valuable insights into the role of AI in spatial computing and help individuals understand its applications and potential.

As we continue to navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of spatial computing, it's clear that this field has tremendous potential for growth and innovation. With advancements in AI, machine learning, and other technologies, the possibilities for this technology are endless.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI think we're going to continue to see not only gaming but big Hollywood IP Embrace spatial Computing very early on but changing I think the way people engage that human computer interaction in the sense that you know we've been really passive recipients or passive users of technology in some ways us adapting to technology I think technolog is going to start adapting to the physical world so that's where these new content formats whether it's the Mayo as a game in spatial Computing or what Marvel is going to bring us uh is going to start to make us a little bit more of an active part of what is happening in these stories hi Irena and Kathy welcome to the show glad to have you both here thank you thank you just to kick off like what are the high level is spal Computing so like is it the same thing as ented reality or is it something different yeah it is a little bit different in terms of theory so basically spatial Computing is comprised of computer vision and and stuff like augmented reality and virtual reality and it basically denotes anything and everything that could move through space that's um digital or you know has that kind of uh capability so that it also includes robots Okay so that's a pretty broad definition then so you mentioned like the computer vision and augmented reality and robots so plenty to talk about today that's good news I I would say Richie like the way we've been kind of talking about is a a an evolving 3D Centric form of computing that it's core uses computer vision AI extended reality and other Technologies to blend virtual elements or virtual experiences into into someone's experience of the physical world um but it also means kind of a change in human to human Communications and human computer interaction that's kind of exactly what I was referencing it includes robots it includes all these like you know virtual beings and robots navigating the world alongside us so um so yeah it's way more than just augmented reality okay uh that's very sound very cool uh lot lots of impact there uh all right so uh why are we here now like what has changed recently that has made special Computing a viable thing well I would say it's always been viable I mean I've been talking about spatial Computing since 2018 before the term was really broadly used at all um the reason why the term has and also I wrote a book in 2020 uh which used the word spal Computing in it but um what's really bringing this all along right now is that Apple came out with the Apple Vision Pro and apple is using the terms spatial Computing uh versus metaverse versus xrm you know AR VR that kind of thing so it's kind of the Tipping Point now in really bringing this technology and understanding what it is forward okay as it does seem like whenever Apple gets into the game it means like something's about to go mainstream so yeah hopefully this is a a different point for spal computing yeah I don't think I mean I think they any everything Apple does strategic right from a marketing perspective they don't do anything they don't step into anything lightly so the fact that they chose spatial Computing as a term and that they describe the Apple Vision proc a spatial computer I think is very powerful um and just like Arena I mean I've been in the space for quite a while actually worked at Magic leap which in my perspective is one of the original spatial Computing companies we using the term spatial Computing before most people were um but I definitely agree it's it's a really interesting moment that we arrive at um with the term and I think for many people listening to the podcast it might have been the first time they heard spatial Computing when Apple launched the Vision Pro and you know ushered in the era of spatial Computing even though it's already been in the works and said the world you know and told the world this is a spatial computer uh so it does definitely sound like we're at the the Custer something uh interesting um okay so I suppose um gaming has maybe been hyped as like one of the big use cases so we'll perhaps cover that first and when I think of like spatial Computing games I'm thinking fancier Pokemon go uh but this is probably just scratching the surface so can you tell me like what would spatial Computing bring to gaming well a lot okay so basically uh the gaming that has existed up until now has used a lot of the time spatial Computing because it uses computer vision and you need computer vision to do spatial Computing so computer vision allows um um technology to be able to see in front of it and be able to gauge what's what's in front of it the environment and if you're moving where are you moving in that kind of thing location um so Niantic has always used uh spatial Computing um there other games that let's say me meta that use less spatial Computing so it's a matter of degree um and that's why it's really interesting that this term is now becoming um hopefully think it's going to be broadly used but in actuality the technology has always been there so it's nothing really new in terms of gaming um the new thing that might blow everything apart is generative AI which allows people to create their own images and videos and if you pair that along with spatial Computing and also make a game with that that really makes it fantastic yeah so I think um spatial comp sorry uh computer vision was sort of it was kind of okay maybe like uh mid 2010s and now it's getting point where you can reliably do object detection on an awful lot of things so it yeah yeah it just seemed like that technolog is maturing yeah Richie I think it's about creating that spatial awareness that arena is mentioning um and you know and and like AI now understanding the physics of the space and the physical world so these digital elements have um you know have um spatial awareness right I think that that's that's kind of where it starts to become really interesting and from a game gaming perspective if you look at everything that's happening in that space for example very recently resolution games launched de Mayo which is kind of really going to be a a big title coming to the Apple Vision Pro so I'm hoping to see kind of how more people start to game in the device and granted it's a device that not that many people have but you know as a proud owner of one I'm looking forward to doing some more gaming with it and Deo is one of those titles that is kind of the first to arrive that is truly kind of in the in the kind of spatial Computing gaming space okay so it sounds like maybe the gaming industry has a bit of work to just figure out well what sort of games do you need to make in this medium yeah and also um Marvel for example Disney and marble on May 30th um are going to be launching or will have launched depending on when this airs um kind of new immersive experiences and new storytelling formats for their Marvel universe so I think we're going to continue to see not only gaming but a big Hollywood IP Embrace spatial Computing very early on but changing I think the way people engag that human computer interaction in the sense that you know we've been really passive recipients or passive users of technology in some ways us adapting to technology um I think technolog is going to start adapting to the physical world so that's where these new content formats whether it's the Mayo as a game in spatial Computing or what Marvel is going to bring us uh is going to start to make us a little bit more of an active part of what is happening in these stories that's really interesting the Marvel angle so does this mean we're going to expect like new um forms of like TV shows and other uh entertainment media I think so I think it's giving way to spatial video um throw three Centric depth content like Beyond 3D Beyond just 3D TV right like I I want people to understand we're not talking about like old type of 3D TV where you wee these cookie glasses um it's more you know once once this virtual content is facially aware you can start to engage with it in different ways because it's going to understand your the physical world around you um so I definitely think we're going to see new content type spatial video um definitely from everything I'm hearing people are getting more and more interested in spatial video which is video that has depth so right now with like my iPhone 15 Pro Max I can shoot spatial video um video that has depth the video that I can see in 3d that feels a lot more more volumetric it feels more like like what I live in in a daily basis um so I can shoot it with my phone but then I can watch it back in my vision Pro um so you're going to start to think I you know Sports entertainment all these sorts of new formats new new all the sort of these new Industries embracing these new formats to start to experiment with what might come next um but I me I don't know if you want to add something regarding kind of like the depth element of of of video and what's coming well I mean Apple has really played up the entertainment angle and I mean it makes a lot of sense they've got you know Apple TV plus you know to be able to put on their own um their own shows so I'm looking forward to see what they produce and I know it's going to be quite a bit I mean right now they do have some sports on there they have soccer you know and and and basketball and stuff like that so they really wanted to play up the sports angle in 3D um and they tried to get the NFL to join but they weren't able to do the contract unfortunately so yeah I just want to add that um it's there it's it's kind of there are new forms that people might think would be needed for spatial Computing but I think that the Apple Vision Pro is just pushing forward in better quality what has come before okay yeah I'm certainly as someone who spends way too much of my life just staring at screens it' be interesting to have like things go back from like 2D to 3D again uh yeah that's really I certainly imagine you have something like uh a horror genre where you got things moving at you that's going to be like even more terrifying um all right so uh let's move on from entertainment talking about proper work stuff so um it feels like any of the industry where you got physical objects or things like man manufacturing or Logistics special Computing ought to be viable there can you just talk me through some of these use cases where in Industries where you have got physical objects well you did mention in the write up manufacturing so manufacturing actually has used augmented reality since around 2008 um so it's it's kind of like it's just better now than it was before um the resolution is better the capabilities of um you know texting and speaking uh commands and stuff like that and visuality with computer vision so um along with manufacturing there's Logistics that goes hand inand with that so it's a it's a no-brainer that it would be really helpful not only for creating stuff making things but also fixing fixing machines and also teaching people how to do things so with the Apple Vision Pro it like augmented reality it overlays um the information and visuals onto what's existing in in front of you in your environment so you can imagine how helpful that would be I mean there's a ton of different use cases um I had mentioned that spatial Computing includes robots so robots are going to be able they need to use spatial Computing to be able to move through space so anything and everything that exists now in terms of computers that exist and will exist in the future will be using spatial Computing so it's a really huge deal and you could also use robots in manufacturing and you could use it um use them at home for consumers um there's a whole range of other Industries um spatial Computing uh for training goes along the whole gamut in retail Industries teaching people how to do certain things um an education teaching students how to you know to learn better basically so and in fintech um you know teaching people and Traders Etc how things are moving um one of the one of an interesting use case is in the Apple Vision Pro you can have as many windows up as possible so I mean if you want to put up 25 Windows it allows it allows you to do that but you probably wouldn't but it's certainly more than what um a Trader would have in front of them which would be like four to eight screens basically and you can move them around and you know do what you want with them so that's a really impressive use case for uh for spatial Computing yes so on that last point I always have way too many browser tabs open I can't see find again so yeah having lots of different screens open at once uh if there's a better way of like managing them then that that sounds like it might be pretty useful uh so lots of use cases there I don't know Kathy have you got any more um use cases that you're particularly excited about yeah I think that there's one that I usually mention from um our friend Shelley Peterson who used to be at lock Martin now she's at Microsoft um and it was with the Microsoft hollowland which was a spal computer you know an early spatial computer uh where they where Shell's team at Loi Martin used the device to build the Orion capsule for Artemis and I think the the the the data they got back was really impressive I think it was like 90% reduction in labor hours in labor cost which you know 90% is pretty pretty amazing um amount of data so that's one of those use cases I don't think a lot of people talk about but very very very important when they're talking about how to use you know spatial Computing in the manufacturing side and obviously it's a it's a very specific use case because it's one capsule um for something like emis but still very very relevant um and and I think it's probably one of the reasons ended up going to Microsoft afterwards from Lockheed um but yeah I think it's it's a great use case uh on on how it can be used for labor and you know to augment the workforce really in some ways what arena mentioned is like giving you know the worker can now see all this data overlaid over them this data layer that we can't really tap into unless we have a device I'm sure I've seen this before in movies this this feels like um the the Terminator view like this is going back to like the 1980s movies so I guess that the concept has been around for a while yeah I I prefer Jarvis to be honest like this is a discussion I have very often is I rather not do not think Terminator I rather think like Marvel Jarvis you know when Iron Man's wor like his glasses Jarvis that kind of like overlay all this data on top um I think that's a better example but yeah I mean okay yeah maybe maybe JS is the happy example compared to Terminator I'm not as dystopic all right uh so um I'm also your so since you mentioned robots um now I'm um imagining like those Boston Dynamics like dancing robots and things is this the kind of thing that you have in mind for spatial Computing or there other sort of robot use cases here oh there's a lot of different types of robots but yeah it includes those robots for sure I mean you can have like humanoid robots that really kind of resemble you know have two legs and two arms and the head might be there but it might not be as descriptive as as what we have you know in human nature um but those have those have a use case or use many many use cases from being workers you know because they can walk around um to being in the home washing your dishes and doing your laundry and stuff like that um or delivering food you know walking and delivering food to you at your at your door um but there are all kinds of other types of robots they're robots that are cobots that work um next to workers uh currently that kind of Aid the workers so they're not taking the place of the workers they're helping them and they're usually pieces they're like arms or whatever they're not whole humanoid beings um also there are these little robots that do deliver food that maybe you've seen um they're in specific locations that roll down the street where uh if you enter a code you open the top and you get your food so those aren't humanoid robots but they do have the capability of you know moving through space like spatial Computing um and then they're robots that um that have been experimented that there's an experimentation with Amazon and um certain other companies that have stopped because it's a little bit too expensive currently to to try to experiment with them but there're these robots that uh leave the leave a car and are able to go up steps and are able to open doors at the same time so um I'm sure those will those will come back in addition drones are considered robots so um there's lots of experimentation done now uh Walmart is doing it and a couple of other companies in delivery for uh any kind of you know objects that aren't too large to be able to bring it down to the person and and the person pick it up so yeah there's there's a ton of use cases for for robotics okay yeah so it certainly sounds like any organization where they've got like a big Logistics component to their business they're gonna need to start thinking about this if they haven't already yeah there's also another um one more use case that I just thought of um you know how Boston Dynamics has that dog looking robot or the spot thing yeah yeah yeah okay so there are other companies that have robots like that too and um depending on how um large they are you know there could be smaller ones they could go into dangerous areas and dismantle bonds or go into areas and find survivors of earthquakes so um that's another use case as well okay uh yes so places where you don't want to send a human on that note I did see this company was selling it was like that that sort of the the dog sort of robot but it had a flamethrower attached to it and it's supposed to be for like dealing with wildfires but it also sounds like a Dy nightmare as well oh um okay so well government use cases because a lot of our listeners work in data what are the sort of use cases for spatial Computing in the field of uh working with data well I can tell you that I'm actually working with a company right now uh to be very transparent it's called datas technology and that's exactly what we're doing for the Apple Vision Pro we're creating data visualizations and and you know ways to be able to portray data using spatial Computing so um obviously I'm a big believer in this and I think um the display of data not only in columns and rows but also in charting and other kinds of things if you apply AI to it is is very is is very exciting that's very cool so actually I have I have a maybe nerdy question about this but for a long time uh the idea of 3D plots has been frowned upon because it very difficult to like determine anything useful from 3D plots because you have weird perspective issues does spatial Computing solve this are 3D plots going to become useful or cool again oh yeah it's it's the reason why before it was kind of looked down upon was because the resolution wasn't good and you wouldn't you weren't able to zoom in um very well on in the 3D plot you can do all of that right now and you can manipulate it and turn it whichever way you want so it's it's really f okay so once you can spin it around things you can get the right perspective your question yeah okay all right I'm G have to update all my data visualization advice now I think that's very cool that that's changing and I think another important part and I I agree with Irene on like when you're in the Vision Pro and you're in spatial Computing you can actually see the 3D plot in 3D right it's a totally different experience at a flat surface trying to see something in 3D which is just seems unnatural even though we use it all the time um so that's one thing I also think from a data perspective um what what spatial Computing in some ways allows us to do through computer vision and through new hardware especially is see that data layer that we can't really see with our eyes right our phones our computers like everything's giving off data in ones and zeros we don't see it right because we're humans we don't consume it that way but what you're going to start to see with these devices is that you're going to be to see that data layer right so the the data layer that the robots in the autonomous vehicles and the drones are navigating using we're going to be able to see that right in in annotations or Holograms all sorts of things so I do think it opens up the access to that new data layer uh that we have not been able to see as humans for a long time and um I even use that I even use the term like it's where we're going to meet the machine because we're all going to be able to see the same thing we you know they're going to see it differently than we do but we kind of are going to be able to see that data layer that we haven't been able to kind of navigate through before okay so just better representations of the data are going to make things a little bit more understandable seem just incredibly useful yeah plus when you think about right now if you're going to look at some let's say that data layer that I mentioned you're probably going to look through it through a phone or you know through a computer like it's this is very small right but when you're talking about actual devices that have a bigger field of view and everything it starts to open up that that aperture quite a bit right um I always I always do it I always joke and I say like I hate when I when I go to like a a Beyonce concert or a Taylor shift concert or whatever concert you want to go to and like everyone's living through their phones right they're they're taking they're they're watching this concert but through the phone which is a very small kind of device in reality but once we have this newer Hardware like you're going to be kind of experiencing things a little bit more present um and I had that experience recently uh when I was on Safari I left my phone many times uh at the hotel at the Villa and I brought my Rayban metag glasses like the multimodal smart glasses that they put out and I was actually you know being present and taking images of the of the animals as I was seeing them but I was being present and that to me was really transformative in the sense that I wasn't living through this little rectangle um I I was wearing the device and everything taking pictures but I was present I was able to kind of engage with what I was seeing in the physical world in a new way and and I think from a data perspective that's something we're going to start to see definitely I have to say all those people that concerts with this hold their phone the whole time very very annoying so if that goes away then that's that can be a brilliant development for society um and so uh beyond that sort of um uh data visualization aspect are the other ways do you think that um spatial Computing is going to change like um this sort of technical work who working with data working with code all that sort of stuff well the interest a very interesting thing and what some people actually don't like is that when you're in the Vision Pro it collects a lot of data on you on the person that's that has the headset on however apple is really into privacy so um everything will be on the local network versus going to the cloud at least they say there's some things that would have to go to to the cloud um let's say if you're using um an llm and there's a very difficult question or whatever and it it has to do compute power it goes to the cloud but then it would be anonymized so that's kind of interesting that you know the the data that it actually gets that is really amazing is uh it could see where you're looking exactly it's very very precise and based on where where where you're gazing where you're looking that's how you actually Choose You know the app that you want to go into um or whatever else that you want to choose what to do so and then obviously other kinds of biometric um understanding of your f and Etc that kind of thing um so yeah it it picks up on your own data which makes a big difference for corporations I think that are allowed to if they're allowed to get that data yeah I can certainly see how that sort of things like eye tracking and being able to understand like a lot about like your your personal state that could be very powerful um so I don't know guess you see something horrendous it's going to pick up on it it's going to uh is going to be able to give you some feedback but from a corporate point of view yeah I can also Imagine that's going to cause some privacy issue in Arena's other book uh a Wonder of her books called the infinite retina it's a fantastic read by the way but like these devices SC scan your retina and by looking into someone's eyes you actually know what they're going to do before they actually do it right so there's that level of intent uh which from a biometric standpoint can be quite scary but I could imagine you know this is an example I use often let's say you're on the airplane and you're going to use the free Wi-Fi and you got to watch the the ad never no one watches the ad right just like okay you look away and then 20 seconds is over and you got your free Wi-Fi but with these devices like they know where you're looking they know if you're paying attention so like you can't get away from not looking at something because they will know you're looking at it or not right um so there is that level of let's say of intrusiveness of sorts right from a biometric standpoint um I I don't know if there's anything else you want to add from like retina the retina scanning side um no not from that perspective but I I did want to add from the um from another perspective if you attach an llm or use an llm um or any kind of other AI besides also computer vision um when you're looking at something and let's say everybody knows like if you ask like what kind of plant this is and then it gives you back an answer right well this is going to go way beyond that it's going to be able to see the Panorama of where you're standing the environment and it's going to be able to take in uh what you're looking at and if you ask an LM question about your environment it'll be able to answer you so in that way data is at your fingertips now I'm wondering like what happens like who gets ACC St access to this data then if you're in a work context so it's just G to be a case of like your boss knows your Biometrics all the time if it's like some kind of corporate headset like it feels like there more okay so that's certainly possible like they know when I'm not concentrating when you're not looking at your computer there's a lot of companies that do that now through a computer that if you're not looking at at your computer you're not typing away you're not working so and people get fired over that so I'm sure that that'll be you know something that people wouldn't want but that corporations will use absolutely I mean think about logistics if you know you got to be working your like it it at Amazon you got to be working your tail off they know when you take breaks I mean it's it's down to less detail of what that person does every day okay so there's this sort of dystopian like real optimization of worker productivity possibilities but are there any I don't want to complet the episode so are there any like good ways in which spatial Computing is going to help with productivity well like I said if if you look in front of your in in in your environment M it could tell you what's there so if I use Logistics again now on the positive side it can tell you to to a degree it could read tiny tiny little numbers and it could tell you if the package that you're looking for is you know 150 feet away or something like that and which is like supervision right so in that way it's it's a great positive and anything where um your environment is important for your job like on an oil rig or um any any kind of thing where you're outside and looking at something and even inside when you're looking for something uh it's a very positive thing also as I said um for manufacturing and also for for teaching capabilities it can see what's in front of you and it over it overlays how to you know fix something or overlays how to actually work something so it's it's a teaching computer that didn't exist before and now it has wonderful resolution and wonderful color and it's really easy to use and that's what Apple brings okay uh so I like the idea of sort of teaching computer they going to support you through things and just help you find out stuff that you didn't know before actually so I remember when Google Glass first came out one of the sort of use cases they were pitching for this was that you could it could recognize other people and remind you of like their names and things like that I don't know whether it worked at the time is this something that um is now viable like being able to see someone and the technology tell you who this person is because I meet a lot of people and I'm like I'm not sure whether I know this person or not so this seems incredibly useful for me at least um go um yeah I'd say that it's it's so much better than it used to be uh as long as people opt in to it right um you'd be able to and there's an if there's an app for it currently there's no app that exists for the Apple Vision Pro as far as I know that does that but I can imagine that if you allow and others allow you to to do that that it' be super easy and so we talked a bit about um increasing worker productivity I guess the other maybe um use case this would be something to do with improving customer experience are there any ways in which spatial Computing can be used to uh make things better for your customers rather than just directly like for your workers uh for your customers I it's an interesting question I guess if you're on the floor of a retail shop and you're looking for something and the customer is looking for that object and they can't find it it could help you find it so again it's kind of like a location device that um works for the customer uh unless the customer actually puts the headset on I wouldn't say that it's exactly for the customer it's for the worker helping uh the customer customer and doing their job okay uh so that's interesting that um it's most about like locating things and it's kind of quite close to Logistics aspect so you mentioned like a customer putting a headset on can you imagine any situations where that might be a good thing you going to go into some Store and put a headset on and show you something sure there could be several I I thought about entertainment so it's not even a store but like if you if you have some kind of movie or some kind of whatever is come out out you can have an AR experience where it overlays something on on top of something else so that's not a customer experience but um yeah let's say um and there's been a lot of tries at this and it hasn't really worked very well let's say you want to see how a blouse fits you without putting it on so you'd be able to do that with an app you know and it wouldn't be expensive right now it's really expensive to do something like that they have these big obtrusive um screens where you do that it doesn't work very well so I could see that happening very easily and another good example the Richie that I'm starting to hear a lot from the fashion industry is like the stylists that work with celebrities and normally they have to send them photos or videos of some of the outfits that they're choosing for them if they're able to do that in spatial Computing where it has depth and the the you know the star Starlet or whoever can actually see it with a little bit more volume they might get a better idea of what what it looks like so definitely starting to see the fashion industry really get interested in figuring how how to use you know spatial Computing okay um that's pretty interesting use case celebrities trying on clothing uh all right so I'd love to get into some of the technical details of how this works you mentioned like some of the techniques like this computer vision and um some of the sort of spatial aspects of things so um what what are the tools and techniques that are involved under the hood uh oh I mean it ranges um all the machine learning and AI I mean from Deep learning reinforcement learning you know the whole gamut it's it's not just one thing I mean it depends on on the app exactly what it uses but it could use a combination of different um machine learning AI techniques um and computer vision uses a lot of this type of thing as well but in in in the guts of what it's doing for computer vision itself um but yeah that's that's a quick answer to your question okay so lots of machine learning um Kathy I don't really had anything else to add to that like uh on what the what's going on I would say like at least with the Vision Pro it's at least 12 cameras there might be more I can't remember how many cameras exactly right but at least 12 cameras which are pointing out well they're they're pointing in they're pointing out but they're physically scanning the world in real time on a constant basis right so that's I think very very powerful technology um that allows for that computer vision to happen so um I always I always comment and say like The Vision Pro as a device for example definitely has $3,500 worth of technology in it it doesn't have $3,500 worth of value to the regular consumer yet right because it's not it's not for it's not a mass Market product just yet but eventually it will be um but yeah the technology that's in the device um is extremely powerful those cameras um and then also all the computer vision and AI that's happening in the device is pretty impressive what's interesting is Apple doesn't like to use the word Ai and they will be using it very shortly for something else for llms but when it comes to Hardware they've shied away from ever using the term Ai and they always use machine learning which is very very interesting they want to make sure that people aren't afraid of using their Hardware because anytime you say AI up until recently it was kind of sometimes scary for some people uh yeah we're going back to to but yeah that's interesting that um that that machine learning is considered um a better term here so like quite often um I spent a lot of time talking about machine learning and we have to put AI in the marketing stuff because then more people listen to it because AI is cool right now so it's interesting that apple have gone in the other direction there um all right so um let's talk about uh implementing this in business said like it's not really a a consumer thing as much at the moment it's more of a sort of business um proposition so for organizations who want to get started with spatial Computing what is step one I I think anyone listening to this needs to understand that that we're not going out we're not telling you go out and buy a Vision Pro today right but one of the ways to start kind of thinking about what this means is when Computing starts to understand the physical world how does that change your products and services so starting to think about that you know reading our book is a first easy step right to start to think about how you start to impl implement this um I think we're going to start to see like Arena mentioned um Apple bringing more announcements and more things that might force people to really rethink what spatial Computing is and try to take it more seriously so those are some of the things I would say kind of try to understand the shift that's happening here um but by no means are we saying go buy 100 Apple Vision Pros I think I don't think that that's what we're we're alluding to Arena yeah recently Tim Cook said that 50% of the S&P 500 companies have bought Apple Vision pros and they're currently evaluating them so that's really in that's interesting if he didn't say that people really wouldn't have a clue right I mean that's a that's a lot of companies that's a lot of power so what are they doing with that well they're you know onboarding some people to figure out what the power of the Apple Vision Pro is what it could bring what the use cases for the particular companies um how easy it is to use which is super easy to use and what are the limits of it use so the whole range of you know how does this piece of Hardware work and how does software get integrated in it and they might even be thinking about well what kind of software would we build for this thing for a use case Okay so it sounds like most companies are in uh very much sort of prototyping stage at the moment um I'm curious as to who needs to be involved in this like so which teams or rol should be thinking about well do we need to adopt spatial Computing or not uh well it would start with it in Innovation so there's a lot of people in major corporations that are ahead of innovation so it would basically come from there it can even come from higher up you know the SE suite and then they tell the Innovation person hey we really want to do this it's your you have to now have a plan and figure out how to get this used and then the head of innovation goes to it and then it goes down from there so basically the the power spot for this would be the Innovation person and I've definitely had really great conversations with like cios CTO even CMOS uh that have like like asked their teams to look into this um so definitely there seems to be interest from the sea Suite but definitely head of innovation down to the tech teams okay so it sounds like um from an executive point of view it's going to be the chief technology officer who who ends up as like head of spatial Computing as well or are there other Executives that need to stop worrying about this yes those would be but even CEO might say you know it depends on on how Innovative the CEO is all right so yeah I guess it depends on the level of innovation within your organization and how sort of forward thinking you need to be um all right so um I guess most of the applications of this are only going to be as powerful as the data um that's sort of put into them so what sort of data should organizations be collecting in order to be able to make use of spatial Computing in the future it could be now I'm thinking of combining it with an llm again so if you put in all kinds of data and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of data which you could carry into spatial Computing headset um and then you apply an llm to it to Crunch the data um there's just I'd say there's no limit to what can be done with data these days I mean without the llm I would have said sure you know there is a limit and um we don't know what that is but there's a limit to it and it's going to be much slower but right now um considering that you have llm capability with spatial um I mean it's just it's just amazing I think okay lots of possibilities um I guess the tricky part is going to be trying to figure out like which project to start off with and some of the stuff like you suggested like okay let's have a fleet of delivery robots it sounds like quite an expensive first project is there anything simple that you think um a lot of organizations might be able to get started with as like a first spatial Computing project um yeah I'd say if you go back to Logistics and for Logistics I wouldn't say the people that are on the floor exactly I'd say the person in charge so it' be management because you don't want to outfit the people on the floor with $3,500 headsets even $2,000 headsets um right now the people on the floor could do very well with $300 headsets and do their job so we're talking more about management uh capability and using the headset they would be able to locate where workers are they would be able to locate where um pallets are and what's going on uh with their scheduling and all that kind of stuff so and that's not a hard thing to build they already have stuff like that but it's it's on a flatty Surface you know uh versus a 3D capability once you put in 3D on there and also um being able to do things with your hands to be able to control things with your fingers and and your eyes and everything it becomes so much easier so much faster to do your job when you got expensive technology you probably want to think about management use cases before like everybody use cases that that makes sense but there's also another one that is being used in right now um that you might say is not that simple but it makes jobs there's my cat here go get down geez wants to be in the frame um um okay so for surgeries um there are a lot of Surgeons right now that are using the Apple Vision Pro both for prepping they have people that are prepping for the surgeries taking a look at visuals and then helping the surgeon go through those visuals and also overlay during surgery so there were surgeons that were using the Microsoft Hollow lens to do this before but the resolution on the hollow lens was just not good at all and you know in terms of mistakes that can happen that's a very expensive mistake that you don't want to make so um I think that this will be used very very quickly in a whole bunch of different surgeries and they already have software to do it it's just they have to implement it into the appion pro okay yeah I can certainly say the cost of getting a surgery wrong is just incredibly high and so certainly reled for the cost of an apple headset so so uh yeah that seems like a great use case uh Kathy do you have any examples of um like good sort of getting started use cases well I I definitely want to talk a little bit about the medical side like Arena was um at an event I spoke recently we did a live demo of the Apple Vision Pro on stage and um I chose an app called anares which shows you a 3D model of a beating heart both in a healthy State and a not non-healthy State um and when we were doing that the fact that I could manipulate the heart make it bigger make it smaller I could go into the heart like there was so many things I could do with it that I could hear the crowd going oo ah like so it definitely from a from a perspective of the medical um professionals is extremely powerful I also think from the perspective of the patient can be extremely powerful because I'm going to be able to kind of meet with my doctor and better understand what is this procedure I'm going to have what is it going to do to my body like how do I better educate myself before like a procedure right because all of us to go and go down the web and then you know we might get all these cra crazy ideas but if we're actually have this 3D model and I'm in in a virtual space with my doctor kind of understanding what this procedure could do or what is going to be happening I think that's a very powerful tool both from an education perspective for the people that are uh the medical professionals but also for patients um so I do want to say that I find that kind of an interesting use case for sure yeah definitely I mean certainly there been a lot of occasions where you go to the doctor and they give you a load of jargon about what's going on with your body and then you have to go and look it up and it's a time consuming process just being able to actually see what happens inside yourself that I'm sure that can be like a powerful uh well first of all an educational to but also like for lifestyle change stuff like you want to see what your liver actually looks like maybe you go on the drinking after that well technology nowadays you can create virtual twins right you can start creating virtual twins of someone with like the MRI scanning everything that's happening you can start creating virtual twins of people so um so yeah like I think that there's extreme power in that and kind of how you start to look inside right and and educate yourself about what's going to happen in a procedure or something so so I'd like to talk a little bit about um business risks and regulations of things so are there any regulations around spatial Computing and particularly the ones that affect businesses that's a really good question I actually um know quite a few lawyers at Perkins Cy I've I've brought up that question especially having to do with privacy and um right now there are no real specific laws like if you're talking about ey gaze there's no law that talks about ey gaze or regulation that talks about what the limits are there it's basically the corporations that have to come up with their own procedures and their own regulations and then have the Buy in from their own customers people who are using their products to understand how far it goes but I I believe in the future yeah there's uh once this stuff is around long enough and people who who aren't even using it uh have a need to be able to regulate it um there's going to be very precise kinds of Regulation about it people people especially that haven't used it could be quite afraid of what it offers once if you if you're using it you know exactly what what it entails but if you're not it it's hard to tell like how far it goes I I I also want to add the state of Colorado for example just passed a law um protecting people's brain waves um so like that's a like a presidence in in some ways right this is a very like it's just a state law Etc but I think that that might come into play when you have these neural interfaces right that are tapping into intention um so I think that that's interesting and from a regulatory standpoint I live in Washington DC and I'm having really interesting conversations around virtual air rights like who owns the air around me uh because with with spatial Computing what you have is the physical world becomes a canvas right for the device it becomes you know canvas but at the same same time it becomes real estate so there in lies kind of that you know that issue of like well who owns the space around me and who can actually advertise there what are they going to be able to put in front of me because yeah like with some of these devices what you're going to start to see is that everything within eyesight and ear shut of you becomes a canvas but also real estate so that in itself ushers in a lot of questions around privacy like Arena's mentioning that sort of reminds me of the early days of the internet where there was just Banner pop up at s everywhere and it feels like if we repeat that with spatial Computing and there's adverts floating in front of my gaze all the time that's going to be horrendous I'm I'm hoping no one's like seriously considering that but Kathy is is anything happening in that area then well I I don't I don't think anything's really happening with virtual air RS just yet it's really early and I don't think lawmakers are quite wrapping their heads around that there's so much more they're wrapping their heads around around right right now um but we'll have to see I mean it's definitely we have a whole section in the book where we talk about some of the you know some of the considerations Etc so I definitely recommend as a you know as a a thought you know a thought experiment to definitely tap into that part of the book and think about well what what does this mean right for the future if you're if you're a lawmaker for your future constituents all those sorts of things I do imagine that in the future in the very near future though there will be advertisements that pop up in front of you but you would have to opt into that you know it's not going to just show up and then you're going to have to opt out at least that's my hope that that would happen and I'm pretty sure that that's that's the way it's going to go okay that's slightly reassuring um so just on this sort of privacy note so um I don't like basically most personal data are protected any kind of medical data about yourself is protected I'm not sure about things like is your location does that count as personal data and things like I guess you talked about like it contract the state of your retinas that feels like it ought to be medical information that's predicted but I have no idea are there any sort of limits to like what is protected what isn't the retina um there there's certain regulations that are talking about retina scans that are in place right now but they're not laws yet so it's still in motion um the location uh location doesn't necessarily have to be anything too bad as long as it's anonymized so you don't know who's at that location but you know there's somebody there so that that that could be perfectly fine and in fact if you ask Apple this they'll say that all the information that is available is anonymized so that they don't know unless you want to unless you have an app that you've allowed to be able to go into your data and you'd have to opt into that and apple allows apps to be able to do that um they wouldn't know who it was but yeah um you can imagine Apple uses thre a scan so it's like that's got to be really carefully uh carefully under lock and key that no one gets access to that for sure absolutely I guess I don't want all that my rest scan being made public that's sounds weird and a bit uh intrusive um okay so uh let's talk a bit about um how spatial Computing is going to change people's jobs so I guess to begin with like what skills do you need in order to take advantage of spatial Computing it depends on what perspective you're talking if you're talking about uh someone who uses a spatial computer um that could go the gamut from at no education whatsoever because the uh Apple Vision Pro is extremely easy to use and in fact um they've done obviously lots of testing about it and they found that almost anyone can use an apple Vision Pro so uh from a user perspective it could go from really easy to quite difficult depending on if you have a special app on and you have to learn what that app is for the corporation uh now if you're a builder if you're a builder of software I'd say it's it's just along the same lines of of someone who knows CGI you know or has been building for iOS because the the operating system for an apple Vision Pro is very close to an IOS operating system which is your phone you know for your phone um so actually people who are building for the company I'm working at datos technology have built iOS uh stuff for iOS devices and they've had to learn Swift UI and a couple of other things that Apple uses but they're very easily building the app right now so that's not even hard either the things that could be a little difficult are since um the Apple Vision Pro operating system is is quite new there are things that aren't um that obvious that you need to ask someone like a developer relations person you know I really can't figure this out there's no documentation can you help me and in fact we do have uh a developer relations person and are able to answer to ask these questions that are answered by them so I'd say it's really if if you're a developer it's really not that difficult to just you know decide to now do the Apple Vision Pro and is it important to have um skills in like spatial data analysis or spatial statistics do you think that's going to help people adopt um spatial Computing I'd say those are completely new areas um spatial data is something that is Uncharted you know it's like we're building now this whole thing about spatial data yes there are companies like virtualis that virtual virtual litics that have done spatial data but they do it in a different way and there's some other companies but it's not um out there in the populace that hey there's this thing it's called spatial data right how do I learn what to do with it so I I think that um the Apple Vision Pro is going to democratize this um to an extent that it'll be really easy to figure out how to use spatial data it'll be really easy to integrate the data into something and then have something else come out of it that is spatial but right now um it's a it's a totally new field all right um and just to wrap up so we' talked a lot about um uh the Apple uh platform it feels like um The Vision Pro is like sort of the V1 like viable uh platform what are we going to see in the future how are things going to change are they going to be competitors like what's going to come next um Kathy I think and I think a lot of people agree that we're going to see a campign explosion of new hardware over the next six to 18 months especially with everyone trying to put AI into everything um and some of these devices are going to be spatial computers right so we're going to continue to see meta advancing and some of the things that they're working on Apple as well uh Samsung um so I think we're going to continue to see a lot of new hardware types for sure and definitely new software okay uh so competition coming soon uh that's that's good to know competition is good for the consumer uh and Arena um what what's in your Crystal Bowl what are you forecasting is going to happen soon so it's been um leaked out by several people that the apple apple is building two different new Apple Vision Pros one that is more simplified and less expensive to the tune of something like $1,500 and another one which is the second version of the Apple Vision Pro that's currently out there uh in terms of timing when this is going to come out originally it was supposed to be next fall and now they're saying that it's sometime in 2026 or something like that we'll see um I can't really add any more to that even if I knew more to that I do actually know um but yeah uh so I'd say that it's really great we do need a cheaper version that $3,500 price uh tag is way too much for a lot of people and is not going to be able to make it easy for uh most people to buy or nor they would they want to buy it at that price um other other things apple is working on Apple glasses so sometime in 202 7 28 they're going to come out with glasses they've been working on glasses forever um so I I wouldn't say that it would eat into uh the Apple Vision Pro because they'll be for very different things with the glasses you can go running um you could play sports you could do all kinds of things um and it'll have a different use use case I mean even if the Apple Vision Pro becomes lighter right now it's a bit too heavy um you certainly don't want to go outside although people have done done that for pranking or whatever go outside and wear it and and you know walk through traffic with it but with the glasses you'll be able to do a lot of different things um but as Kathy said there's a whole bunch of other companies that are coming along that have been working on both headsets and glasses and we're going to see both those variations coming within the next three years it sounds like we can have the sort of um distinction then between the consumer space and the the business space um for spatial Computing I i' say that um the Apple Vision Pro with the cheaper model at around $1,500 can very easily become a consumer thing all right um and then Jeffy final advice for any individuals or organizations who want to get started with spatial Computing I'd say that it's super easy to just jump in and do it besides the price tag just buy the headset and use it and see how actually it works and how you don't need to teach anyone how to use it and that there are lots of use cases for it and it's just the beginning so don't be afraid to jump in and try it okay I like it just go and jump in and Kathy what's your final advice yeah I agree with Arena jump in test it out and definitely you know definitely read our book I think that'll help you kind of get a more grounded understanding of what spatial Computing uh is and the role AI plays in it all right super uh that's a a bit of homework then for the audience is just jump in and try this thing out for themselves uh all right wonderful uh thank you Arena thank you Kathy it's been great having you both on on the show thank you thank youI think we're going to continue to see not only gaming but big Hollywood IP Embrace spatial Computing very early on but changing I think the way people engage that human computer interaction in the sense that you know we've been really passive recipients or passive users of technology in some ways us adapting to technology I think technolog is going to start adapting to the physical world so that's where these new content formats whether it's the Mayo as a game in spatial Computing or what Marvel is going to bring us uh is going to start to make us a little bit more of an active part of what is happening in these stories hi Irena and Kathy welcome to the show glad to have you both here thank you thank you just to kick off like what are the high level is spal Computing so like is it the same thing as ented reality or is it something different yeah it is a little bit different in terms of theory so basically spatial Computing is comprised of computer vision and and stuff like augmented reality and virtual reality and it basically denotes anything and everything that could move through space that's um digital or you know has that kind of uh capability so that it also includes robots Okay so that's a pretty broad definition then so you mentioned like the computer vision and augmented reality and robots so plenty to talk about today that's good news I I would say Richie like the way we've been kind of talking about is a a an evolving 3D Centric form of computing that it's core uses computer vision AI extended reality and other Technologies to blend virtual elements or virtual experiences into into someone's experience of the physical world um but it also means kind of a change in human to human Communications and human computer interaction that's kind of exactly what I was referencing it includes robots it includes all these like you know virtual beings and robots navigating the world alongside us so um so yeah it's way more than just augmented reality okay uh that's very sound very cool uh lot lots of impact there uh all right so uh why are we here now like what has changed recently that has made special Computing a viable thing well I would say it's always been viable I mean I've been talking about spatial Computing since 2018 before the term was really broadly used at all um the reason why the term has and also I wrote a book in 2020 uh which used the word spal Computing in it but um what's really bringing this all along right now is that Apple came out with the Apple Vision Pro and apple is using the terms spatial Computing uh versus metaverse versus xrm you know AR VR that kind of thing so it's kind of the Tipping Point now in really bringing this technology and understanding what it is forward okay as it does seem like whenever Apple gets into the game it means like something's about to go mainstream so yeah hopefully this is a a different point for spal computing yeah I don't think I mean I think they any everything Apple does strategic right from a marketing perspective they don't do anything they don't step into anything lightly so the fact that they chose spatial Computing as a term and that they describe the Apple Vision proc a spatial computer I think is very powerful um and just like Arena I mean I've been in the space for quite a while actually worked at Magic leap which in my perspective is one of the original spatial Computing companies we using the term spatial Computing before most people were um but I definitely agree it's it's a really interesting moment that we arrive at um with the term and I think for many people listening to the podcast it might have been the first time they heard spatial Computing when Apple launched the Vision Pro and you know ushered in the era of spatial Computing even though it's already been in the works and said the world you know and told the world this is a spatial computer uh so it does definitely sound like we're at the the Custer something uh interesting um okay so I suppose um gaming has maybe been hyped as like one of the big use cases so we'll perhaps cover that first and when I think of like spatial Computing games I'm thinking fancier Pokemon go uh but this is probably just scratching the surface so can you tell me like what would spatial Computing bring to gaming well a lot okay so basically uh the gaming that has existed up until now has used a lot of the time spatial Computing because it uses computer vision and you need computer vision to do spatial Computing so computer vision allows um um technology to be able to see in front of it and be able to gauge what's what's in front of it the environment and if you're moving where are you moving in that kind of thing location um so Niantic has always used uh spatial Computing um there other games that let's say me meta that use less spatial Computing so it's a matter of degree um and that's why it's really interesting that this term is now becoming um hopefully think it's going to be broadly used but in actuality the technology has always been there so it's nothing really new in terms of gaming um the new thing that might blow everything apart is generative AI which allows people to create their own images and videos and if you pair that along with spatial Computing and also make a game with that that really makes it fantastic yeah so I think um spatial comp sorry uh computer vision was sort of it was kind of okay maybe like uh mid 2010s and now it's getting point where you can reliably do object detection on an awful lot of things so it yeah yeah it just seemed like that technolog is maturing yeah Richie I think it's about creating that spatial awareness that arena is mentioning um and you know and and like AI now understanding the physics of the space and the physical world so these digital elements have um you know have um spatial awareness right I think that that's that's kind of where it starts to become really interesting and from a game gaming perspective if you look at everything that's happening in that space for example very recently resolution games launched de Mayo which is kind of really going to be a a big title coming to the Apple Vision Pro so I'm hoping to see kind of how more people start to game in the device and granted it's a device that not that many people have but you know as a proud owner of one I'm looking forward to doing some more gaming with it and Deo is one of those titles that is kind of the first to arrive that is truly kind of in the in the kind of spatial Computing gaming space okay so it sounds like maybe the gaming industry has a bit of work to just figure out well what sort of games do you need to make in this medium yeah and also um Marvel for example Disney and marble on May 30th um are going to be launching or will have launched depending on when this airs um kind of new immersive experiences and new storytelling formats for their Marvel universe so I think we're going to continue to see not only gaming but a big Hollywood IP Embrace spatial Computing very early on but changing I think the way people engag that human computer interaction in the sense that you know we've been really passive recipients or passive users of technology in some ways us adapting to technology um I think technolog is going to start adapting to the physical world so that's where these new content formats whether it's the Mayo as a game in spatial Computing or what Marvel is going to bring us uh is going to start to make us a little bit more of an active part of what is happening in these stories that's really interesting the Marvel angle so does this mean we're going to expect like new um forms of like TV shows and other uh entertainment media I think so I think it's giving way to spatial video um throw three Centric depth content like Beyond 3D Beyond just 3D TV right like I I want people to understand we're not talking about like old type of 3D TV where you wee these cookie glasses um it's more you know once once this virtual content is facially aware you can start to engage with it in different ways because it's going to understand your the physical world around you um so I definitely think we're going to see new content type spatial video um definitely from everything I'm hearing people are getting more and more interested in spatial video which is video that has depth so right now with like my iPhone 15 Pro Max I can shoot spatial video um video that has depth the video that I can see in 3d that feels a lot more more volumetric it feels more like like what I live in in a daily basis um so I can shoot it with my phone but then I can watch it back in my vision Pro um so you're going to start to think I you know Sports entertainment all these sorts of new formats new new all the sort of these new Industries embracing these new formats to start to experiment with what might come next um but I me I don't know if you want to add something regarding kind of like the depth element of of of video and what's coming well I mean Apple has really played up the entertainment angle and I mean it makes a lot of sense they've got you know Apple TV plus you know to be able to put on their own um their own shows so I'm looking forward to see what they produce and I know it's going to be quite a bit I mean right now they do have some sports on there they have soccer you know and and and basketball and stuff like that so they really wanted to play up the sports angle in 3D um and they tried to get the NFL to join but they weren't able to do the contract unfortunately so yeah I just want to add that um it's there it's it's kind of there are new forms that people might think would be needed for spatial Computing but I think that the Apple Vision Pro is just pushing forward in better quality what has come before okay yeah I'm certainly as someone who spends way too much of my life just staring at screens it' be interesting to have like things go back from like 2D to 3D again uh yeah that's really I certainly imagine you have something like uh a horror genre where you got things moving at you that's going to be like even more terrifying um all right so uh let's move on from entertainment talking about proper work stuff so um it feels like any of the industry where you got physical objects or things like man manufacturing or Logistics special Computing ought to be viable there can you just talk me through some of these use cases where in Industries where you have got physical objects well you did mention in the write up manufacturing so manufacturing actually has used augmented reality since around 2008 um so it's it's kind of like it's just better now than it was before um the resolution is better the capabilities of um you know texting and speaking uh commands and stuff like that and visuality with computer vision so um along with manufacturing there's Logistics that goes hand inand with that so it's a it's a no-brainer that it would be really helpful not only for creating stuff making things but also fixing fixing machines and also teaching people how to do things so with the Apple Vision Pro it like augmented reality it overlays um the information and visuals onto what's existing in in front of you in your environment so you can imagine how helpful that would be I mean there's a ton of different use cases um I had mentioned that spatial Computing includes robots so robots are going to be able they need to use spatial Computing to be able to move through space so anything and everything that exists now in terms of computers that exist and will exist in the future will be using spatial Computing so it's a really huge deal and you could also use robots in manufacturing and you could use it um use them at home for consumers um there's a whole range of other Industries um spatial Computing uh for training goes along the whole gamut in retail Industries teaching people how to do certain things um an education teaching students how to you know to learn better basically so and in fintech um you know teaching people and Traders Etc how things are moving um one of the one of an interesting use case is in the Apple Vision Pro you can have as many windows up as possible so I mean if you want to put up 25 Windows it allows it allows you to do that but you probably wouldn't but it's certainly more than what um a Trader would have in front of them which would be like four to eight screens basically and you can move them around and you know do what you want with them so that's a really impressive use case for uh for spatial Computing yes so on that last point I always have way too many browser tabs open I can't see find again so yeah having lots of different screens open at once uh if there's a better way of like managing them then that that sounds like it might be pretty useful uh so lots of use cases there I don't know Kathy have you got any more um use cases that you're particularly excited about yeah I think that there's one that I usually mention from um our friend Shelley Peterson who used to be at lock Martin now she's at Microsoft um and it was with the Microsoft hollowland which was a spal computer you know an early spatial computer uh where they where Shell's team at Loi Martin used the device to build the Orion capsule for Artemis and I think the the the the data they got back was really impressive I think it was like 90% reduction in labor hours in labor cost which you know 90% is pretty pretty amazing um amount of data so that's one of those use cases I don't think a lot of people talk about but very very very important when they're talking about how to use you know spatial Computing in the manufacturing side and obviously it's a it's a very specific use case because it's one capsule um for something like emis but still very very relevant um and and I think it's probably one of the reasons ended up going to Microsoft afterwards from Lockheed um but yeah I think it's it's a great use case uh on on how it can be used for labor and you know to augment the workforce really in some ways what arena mentioned is like giving you know the worker can now see all this data overlaid over them this data layer that we can't really tap into unless we have a device I'm sure I've seen this before in movies this this feels like um the the Terminator view like this is going back to like the 1980s movies so I guess that the concept has been around for a while yeah I I prefer Jarvis to be honest like this is a discussion I have very often is I rather not do not think Terminator I rather think like Marvel Jarvis you know when Iron Man's wor like his glasses Jarvis that kind of like overlay all this data on top um I think that's a better example but yeah I mean okay yeah maybe maybe JS is the happy example compared to Terminator I'm not as dystopic all right uh so um I'm also your so since you mentioned robots um now I'm um imagining like those Boston Dynamics like dancing robots and things is this the kind of thing that you have in mind for spatial Computing or there other sort of robot use cases here oh there's a lot of different types of robots but yeah it includes those robots for sure I mean you can have like humanoid robots that really kind of resemble you know have two legs and two arms and the head might be there but it might not be as descriptive as as what we have you know in human nature um but those have those have a use case or use many many use cases from being workers you know because they can walk around um to being in the home washing your dishes and doing your laundry and stuff like that um or delivering food you know walking and delivering food to you at your at your door um but there are all kinds of other types of robots they're robots that are cobots that work um next to workers uh currently that kind of Aid the workers so they're not taking the place of the workers they're helping them and they're usually pieces they're like arms or whatever they're not whole humanoid beings um also there are these little robots that do deliver food that maybe you've seen um they're in specific locations that roll down the street where uh if you enter a code you open the top and you get your food so those aren't humanoid robots but they do have the capability of you know moving through space like spatial Computing um and then they're robots that um that have been experimented that there's an experimentation with Amazon and um certain other companies that have stopped because it's a little bit too expensive currently to to try to experiment with them but there're these robots that uh leave the leave a car and are able to go up steps and are able to open doors at the same time so um I'm sure those will those will come back in addition drones are considered robots so um there's lots of experimentation done now uh Walmart is doing it and a couple of other companies in delivery for uh any kind of you know objects that aren't too large to be able to bring it down to the person and and the person pick it up so yeah there's there's a ton of use cases for for robotics okay yeah so it certainly sounds like any organization where they've got like a big Logistics component to their business they're gonna need to start thinking about this if they haven't already yeah there's also another um one more use case that I just thought of um you know how Boston Dynamics has that dog looking robot or the spot thing yeah yeah yeah okay so there are other companies that have robots like that too and um depending on how um large they are you know there could be smaller ones they could go into dangerous areas and dismantle bonds or go into areas and find survivors of earthquakes so um that's another use case as well okay uh yes so places where you don't want to send a human on that note I did see this company was selling it was like that that sort of the the dog sort of robot but it had a flamethrower attached to it and it's supposed to be for like dealing with wildfires but it also sounds like a Dy nightmare as well oh um okay so well government use cases because a lot of our listeners work in data what are the sort of use cases for spatial Computing in the field of uh working with data well I can tell you that I'm actually working with a company right now uh to be very transparent it's called datas technology and that's exactly what we're doing for the Apple Vision Pro we're creating data visualizations and and you know ways to be able to portray data using spatial Computing so um obviously I'm a big believer in this and I think um the display of data not only in columns and rows but also in charting and other kinds of things if you apply AI to it is is very is is very exciting that's very cool so actually I have I have a maybe nerdy question about this but for a long time uh the idea of 3D plots has been frowned upon because it very difficult to like determine anything useful from 3D plots because you have weird perspective issues does spatial Computing solve this are 3D plots going to become useful or cool again oh yeah it's it's the reason why before it was kind of looked down upon was because the resolution wasn't good and you wouldn't you weren't able to zoom in um very well on in the 3D plot you can do all of that right now and you can manipulate it and turn it whichever way you want so it's it's really f okay so once you can spin it around things you can get the right perspective your question yeah okay all right I'm G have to update all my data visualization advice now I think that's very cool that that's changing and I think another important part and I I agree with Irene on like when you're in the Vision Pro and you're in spatial Computing you can actually see the 3D plot in 3D right it's a totally different experience at a flat surface trying to see something in 3D which is just seems unnatural even though we use it all the time um so that's one thing I also think from a data perspective um what what spatial Computing in some ways allows us to do through computer vision and through new hardware especially is see that data layer that we can't really see with our eyes right our phones our computers like everything's giving off data in ones and zeros we don't see it right because we're humans we don't consume it that way but what you're going to start to see with these devices is that you're going to be to see that data layer right so the the data layer that the robots in the autonomous vehicles and the drones are navigating using we're going to be able to see that right in in annotations or Holograms all sorts of things so I do think it opens up the access to that new data layer uh that we have not been able to see as humans for a long time and um I even use that I even use the term like it's where we're going to meet the machine because we're all going to be able to see the same thing we you know they're going to see it differently than we do but we kind of are going to be able to see that data layer that we haven't been able to kind of navigate through before okay so just better representations of the data are going to make things a little bit more understandable seem just incredibly useful yeah plus when you think about right now if you're going to look at some let's say that data layer that I mentioned you're probably going to look through it through a phone or you know through a computer like it's this is very small right but when you're talking about actual devices that have a bigger field of view and everything it starts to open up that that aperture quite a bit right um I always I always do it I always joke and I say like I hate when I when I go to like a a Beyonce concert or a Taylor shift concert or whatever concert you want to go to and like everyone's living through their phones right they're they're taking they're they're watching this concert but through the phone which is a very small kind of device in reality but once we have this newer Hardware like you're going to be kind of experiencing things a little bit more present um and I had that experience recently uh when I was on Safari I left my phone many times uh at the hotel at the Villa and I brought my Rayban metag glasses like the multimodal smart glasses that they put out and I was actually you know being present and taking images of the of the animals as I was seeing them but I was being present and that to me was really transformative in the sense that I wasn't living through this little rectangle um I I was wearing the device and everything taking pictures but I was present I was able to kind of engage with what I was seeing in the physical world in a new way and and I think from a data perspective that's something we're going to start to see definitely I have to say all those people that concerts with this hold their phone the whole time very very annoying so if that goes away then that's that can be a brilliant development for society um and so uh beyond that sort of um uh data visualization aspect are the other ways do you think that um spatial Computing is going to change like um this sort of technical work who working with data working with code all that sort of stuff well the interest a very interesting thing and what some people actually don't like is that when you're in the Vision Pro it collects a lot of data on you on the person that's that has the headset on however apple is really into privacy so um everything will be on the local network versus going to the cloud at least they say there's some things that would have to go to to the cloud um let's say if you're using um an llm and there's a very difficult question or whatever and it it has to do compute power it goes to the cloud but then it would be anonymized so that's kind of interesting that you know the the data that it actually gets that is really amazing is uh it could see where you're looking exactly it's very very precise and based on where where where you're gazing where you're looking that's how you actually Choose You know the app that you want to go into um or whatever else that you want to choose what to do so and then obviously other kinds of biometric um understanding of your f and Etc that kind of thing um so yeah it it picks up on your own data which makes a big difference for corporations I think that are allowed to if they're allowed to get that data yeah I can certainly see how that sort of things like eye tracking and being able to understand like a lot about like your your personal state that could be very powerful um so I don't know guess you see something horrendous it's going to pick up on it it's going to uh is going to be able to give you some feedback but from a corporate point of view yeah I can also Imagine that's going to cause some privacy issue in Arena's other book uh a Wonder of her books called the infinite retina it's a fantastic read by the way but like these devices SC scan your retina and by looking into someone's eyes you actually know what they're going to do before they actually do it right so there's that level of intent uh which from a biometric standpoint can be quite scary but I could imagine you know this is an example I use often let's say you're on the airplane and you're going to use the free Wi-Fi and you got to watch the the ad never no one watches the ad right just like okay you look away and then 20 seconds is over and you got your free Wi-Fi but with these devices like they know where you're looking they know if you're paying attention so like you can't get away from not looking at something because they will know you're looking at it or not right um so there is that level of let's say of intrusiveness of sorts right from a biometric standpoint um I I don't know if there's anything else you want to add from like retina the retina scanning side um no not from that perspective but I I did want to add from the um from another perspective if you attach an llm or use an llm um or any kind of other AI besides also computer vision um when you're looking at something and let's say everybody knows like if you ask like what kind of plant this is and then it gives you back an answer right well this is going to go way beyond that it's going to be able to see the Panorama of where you're standing the environment and it's going to be able to take in uh what you're looking at and if you ask an LM question about your environment it'll be able to answer you so in that way data is at your fingertips now I'm wondering like what happens like who gets ACC St access to this data then if you're in a work context so it's just G to be a case of like your boss knows your Biometrics all the time if it's like some kind of corporate headset like it feels like there more okay so that's certainly possible like they know when I'm not concentrating when you're not looking at your computer there's a lot of companies that do that now through a computer that if you're not looking at at your computer you're not typing away you're not working so and people get fired over that so I'm sure that that'll be you know something that people wouldn't want but that corporations will use absolutely I mean think about logistics if you know you got to be working your like it it at Amazon you got to be working your tail off they know when you take breaks I mean it's it's down to less detail of what that person does every day okay so there's this sort of dystopian like real optimization of worker productivity possibilities but are there any I don't want to complet the episode so are there any like good ways in which spatial Computing is going to help with productivity well like I said if if you look in front of your in in in your environment M it could tell you what's there so if I use Logistics again now on the positive side it can tell you to to a degree it could read tiny tiny little numbers and it could tell you if the package that you're looking for is you know 150 feet away or something like that and which is like supervision right so in that way it's it's a great positive and anything where um your environment is important for your job like on an oil rig or um any any kind of thing where you're outside and looking at something and even inside when you're looking for something uh it's a very positive thing also as I said um for manufacturing and also for for teaching capabilities it can see what's in front of you and it over it overlays how to you know fix something or overlays how to actually work something so it's it's a teaching computer that didn't exist before and now it has wonderful resolution and wonderful color and it's really easy to use and that's what Apple brings okay uh so I like the idea of sort of teaching computer they going to support you through things and just help you find out stuff that you didn't know before actually so I remember when Google Glass first came out one of the sort of use cases they were pitching for this was that you could it could recognize other people and remind you of like their names and things like that I don't know whether it worked at the time is this something that um is now viable like being able to see someone and the technology tell you who this person is because I meet a lot of people and I'm like I'm not sure whether I know this person or not so this seems incredibly useful for me at least um go um yeah I'd say that it's it's so much better than it used to be uh as long as people opt in to it right um you'd be able to and there's an if there's an app for it currently there's no app that exists for the Apple Vision Pro as far as I know that does that but I can imagine that if you allow and others allow you to to do that that it' be super easy and so we talked a bit about um increasing worker productivity I guess the other maybe um use case this would be something to do with improving customer experience are there any ways in which spatial Computing can be used to uh make things better for your customers rather than just directly like for your workers uh for your customers I it's an interesting question I guess if you're on the floor of a retail shop and you're looking for something and the customer is looking for that object and they can't find it it could help you find it so again it's kind of like a location device that um works for the customer uh unless the customer actually puts the headset on I wouldn't say that it's exactly for the customer it's for the worker helping uh the customer customer and doing their job okay uh so that's interesting that um it's most about like locating things and it's kind of quite close to Logistics aspect so you mentioned like a customer putting a headset on can you imagine any situations where that might be a good thing you going to go into some Store and put a headset on and show you something sure there could be several I I thought about entertainment so it's not even a store but like if you if you have some kind of movie or some kind of whatever is come out out you can have an AR experience where it overlays something on on top of something else so that's not a customer experience but um yeah let's say um and there's been a lot of tries at this and it hasn't really worked very well let's say you want to see how a blouse fits you without putting it on so you'd be able to do that with an app you know and it wouldn't be expensive right now it's really expensive to do something like that they have these big obtrusive um screens where you do that it doesn't work very well so I could see that happening very easily and another good example the Richie that I'm starting to hear a lot from the fashion industry is like the stylists that work with celebrities and normally they have to send them photos or videos of some of the outfits that they're choosing for them if they're able to do that in spatial Computing where it has depth and the the you know the star Starlet or whoever can actually see it with a little bit more volume they might get a better idea of what what it looks like so definitely starting to see the fashion industry really get interested in figuring how how to use you know spatial Computing okay um that's pretty interesting use case celebrities trying on clothing uh all right so I'd love to get into some of the technical details of how this works you mentioned like some of the techniques like this computer vision and um some of the sort of spatial aspects of things so um what what are the tools and techniques that are involved under the hood uh oh I mean it ranges um all the machine learning and AI I mean from Deep learning reinforcement learning you know the whole gamut it's it's not just one thing I mean it depends on on the app exactly what it uses but it could use a combination of different um machine learning AI techniques um and computer vision uses a lot of this type of thing as well but in in in the guts of what it's doing for computer vision itself um but yeah that's that's a quick answer to your question okay so lots of machine learning um Kathy I don't really had anything else to add to that like uh on what the what's going on I would say like at least with the Vision Pro it's at least 12 cameras there might be more I can't remember how many cameras exactly right but at least 12 cameras which are pointing out well they're they're pointing in they're pointing out but they're physically scanning the world in real time on a constant basis right so that's I think very very powerful technology um that allows for that computer vision to happen so um I always I always comment and say like The Vision Pro as a device for example definitely has $3,500 worth of technology in it it doesn't have $3,500 worth of value to the regular consumer yet right because it's not it's not for it's not a mass Market product just yet but eventually it will be um but yeah the technology that's in the device um is extremely powerful those cameras um and then also all the computer vision and AI that's happening in the device is pretty impressive what's interesting is Apple doesn't like to use the word Ai and they will be using it very shortly for something else for llms but when it comes to Hardware they've shied away from ever using the term Ai and they always use machine learning which is very very interesting they want to make sure that people aren't afraid of using their Hardware because anytime you say AI up until recently it was kind of sometimes scary for some people uh yeah we're going back to to but yeah that's interesting that um that that machine learning is considered um a better term here so like quite often um I spent a lot of time talking about machine learning and we have to put AI in the marketing stuff because then more people listen to it because AI is cool right now so it's interesting that apple have gone in the other direction there um all right so um let's talk about uh implementing this in business said like it's not really a a consumer thing as much at the moment it's more of a sort of business um proposition so for organizations who want to get started with spatial Computing what is step one I I think anyone listening to this needs to understand that that we're not going out we're not telling you go out and buy a Vision Pro today right but one of the ways to start kind of thinking about what this means is when Computing starts to understand the physical world how does that change your products and services so starting to think about that you know reading our book is a first easy step right to start to think about how you start to impl implement this um I think we're going to start to see like Arena mentioned um Apple bringing more announcements and more things that might force people to really rethink what spatial Computing is and try to take it more seriously so those are some of the things I would say kind of try to understand the shift that's happening here um but by no means are we saying go buy 100 Apple Vision Pros I think I don't think that that's what we're we're alluding to Arena yeah recently Tim Cook said that 50% of the S&P 500 companies have bought Apple Vision pros and they're currently evaluating them so that's really in that's interesting if he didn't say that people really wouldn't have a clue right I mean that's a that's a lot of companies that's a lot of power so what are they doing with that well they're you know onboarding some people to figure out what the power of the Apple Vision Pro is what it could bring what the use cases for the particular companies um how easy it is to use which is super easy to use and what are the limits of it use so the whole range of you know how does this piece of Hardware work and how does software get integrated in it and they might even be thinking about well what kind of software would we build for this thing for a use case Okay so it sounds like most companies are in uh very much sort of prototyping stage at the moment um I'm curious as to who needs to be involved in this like so which teams or rol should be thinking about well do we need to adopt spatial Computing or not uh well it would start with it in Innovation so there's a lot of people in major corporations that are ahead of innovation so it would basically come from there it can even come from higher up you know the SE suite and then they tell the Innovation person hey we really want to do this it's your you have to now have a plan and figure out how to get this used and then the head of innovation goes to it and then it goes down from there so basically the the power spot for this would be the Innovation person and I've definitely had really great conversations with like cios CTO even CMOS uh that have like like asked their teams to look into this um so definitely there seems to be interest from the sea Suite but definitely head of innovation down to the tech teams okay so it sounds like um from an executive point of view it's going to be the chief technology officer who who ends up as like head of spatial Computing as well or are there other Executives that need to stop worrying about this yes those would be but even CEO might say you know it depends on on how Innovative the CEO is all right so yeah I guess it depends on the level of innovation within your organization and how sort of forward thinking you need to be um all right so um I guess most of the applications of this are only going to be as powerful as the data um that's sort of put into them so what sort of data should organizations be collecting in order to be able to make use of spatial Computing in the future it could be now I'm thinking of combining it with an llm again so if you put in all kinds of data and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of data which you could carry into spatial Computing headset um and then you apply an llm to it to Crunch the data um there's just I'd say there's no limit to what can be done with data these days I mean without the llm I would have said sure you know there is a limit and um we don't know what that is but there's a limit to it and it's going to be much slower but right now um considering that you have llm capability with spatial um I mean it's just it's just amazing I think okay lots of possibilities um I guess the tricky part is going to be trying to figure out like which project to start off with and some of the stuff like you suggested like okay let's have a fleet of delivery robots it sounds like quite an expensive first project is there anything simple that you think um a lot of organizations might be able to get started with as like a first spatial Computing project um yeah I'd say if you go back to Logistics and for Logistics I wouldn't say the people that are on the floor exactly I'd say the person in charge so it' be management because you don't want to outfit the people on the floor with $3,500 headsets even $2,000 headsets um right now the people on the floor could do very well with $300 headsets and do their job so we're talking more about management uh capability and using the headset they would be able to locate where workers are they would be able to locate where um pallets are and what's going on uh with their scheduling and all that kind of stuff so and that's not a hard thing to build they already have stuff like that but it's it's on a flatty Surface you know uh versus a 3D capability once you put in 3D on there and also um being able to do things with your hands to be able to control things with your fingers and and your eyes and everything it becomes so much easier so much faster to do your job when you got expensive technology you probably want to think about management use cases before like everybody use cases that that makes sense but there's also another one that is being used in right now um that you might say is not that simple but it makes jobs there's my cat here go get down geez wants to be in the frame um um okay so for surgeries um there are a lot of Surgeons right now that are using the Apple Vision Pro both for prepping they have people that are prepping for the surgeries taking a look at visuals and then helping the surgeon go through those visuals and also overlay during surgery so there were surgeons that were using the Microsoft Hollow lens to do this before but the resolution on the hollow lens was just not good at all and you know in terms of mistakes that can happen that's a very expensive mistake that you don't want to make so um I think that this will be used very very quickly in a whole bunch of different surgeries and they already have software to do it it's just they have to implement it into the appion pro okay yeah I can certainly say the cost of getting a surgery wrong is just incredibly high and so certainly reled for the cost of an apple headset so so uh yeah that seems like a great use case uh Kathy do you have any examples of um like good sort of getting started use cases well I I definitely want to talk a little bit about the medical side like Arena was um at an event I spoke recently we did a live demo of the Apple Vision Pro on stage and um I chose an app called anares which shows you a 3D model of a beating heart both in a healthy State and a not non-healthy State um and when we were doing that the fact that I could manipulate the heart make it bigger make it smaller I could go into the heart like there was so many things I could do with it that I could hear the crowd going oo ah like so it definitely from a from a perspective of the medical um professionals is extremely powerful I also think from the perspective of the patient can be extremely powerful because I'm going to be able to kind of meet with my doctor and better understand what is this procedure I'm going to have what is it going to do to my body like how do I better educate myself before like a procedure right because all of us to go and go down the web and then you know we might get all these cra crazy ideas but if we're actually have this 3D model and I'm in in a virtual space with my doctor kind of understanding what this procedure could do or what is going to be happening I think that's a very powerful tool both from an education perspective for the people that are uh the medical professionals but also for patients um so I do want to say that I find that kind of an interesting use case for sure yeah definitely I mean certainly there been a lot of occasions where you go to the doctor and they give you a load of jargon about what's going on with your body and then you have to go and look it up and it's a time consuming process just being able to actually see what happens inside yourself that I'm sure that can be like a powerful uh well first of all an educational to but also like for lifestyle change stuff like you want to see what your liver actually looks like maybe you go on the drinking after that well technology nowadays you can create virtual twins right you can start creating virtual twins of someone with like the MRI scanning everything that's happening you can start creating virtual twins of people so um so yeah like I think that there's extreme power in that and kind of how you start to look inside right and and educate yourself about what's going to happen in a procedure or something so so I'd like to talk a little bit about um business risks and regulations of things so are there any regulations around spatial Computing and particularly the ones that affect businesses that's a really good question I actually um know quite a few lawyers at Perkins Cy I've I've brought up that question especially having to do with privacy and um right now there are no real specific laws like if you're talking about ey gaze there's no law that talks about ey gaze or regulation that talks about what the limits are there it's basically the corporations that have to come up with their own procedures and their own regulations and then have the Buy in from their own customers people who are using their products to understand how far it goes but I I believe in the future yeah there's uh once this stuff is around long enough and people who who aren't even using it uh have a need to be able to regulate it um there's going to be very precise kinds of Regulation about it people people especially that haven't used it could be quite afraid of what it offers once if you if you're using it you know exactly what what it entails but if you're not it it's hard to tell like how far it goes I I I also want to add the state of Colorado for example just passed a law um protecting people's brain waves um so like that's a like a presidence in in some ways right this is a very like it's just a state law Etc but I think that that might come into play when you have these neural interfaces right that are tapping into intention um so I think that that's interesting and from a regulatory standpoint I live in Washington DC and I'm having really interesting conversations around virtual air rights like who owns the air around me uh because with with spatial Computing what you have is the physical world becomes a canvas right for the device it becomes you know canvas but at the same same time it becomes real estate so there in lies kind of that you know that issue of like well who owns the space around me and who can actually advertise there what are they going to be able to put in front of me because yeah like with some of these devices what you're going to start to see is that everything within eyesight and ear shut of you becomes a canvas but also real estate so that in itself ushers in a lot of questions around privacy like Arena's mentioning that sort of reminds me of the early days of the internet where there was just Banner pop up at s everywhere and it feels like if we repeat that with spatial Computing and there's adverts floating in front of my gaze all the time that's going to be horrendous I'm I'm hoping no one's like seriously considering that but Kathy is is anything happening in that area then well I I don't I don't think anything's really happening with virtual air RS just yet it's really early and I don't think lawmakers are quite wrapping their heads around that there's so much more they're wrapping their heads around around right right now um but we'll have to see I mean it's definitely we have a whole section in the book where we talk about some of the you know some of the considerations Etc so I definitely recommend as a you know as a a thought you know a thought experiment to definitely tap into that part of the book and think about well what what does this mean right for the future if you're if you're a lawmaker for your future constituents all those sorts of things I do imagine that in the future in the very near future though there will be advertisements that pop up in front of you but you would have to opt into that you know it's not going to just show up and then you're going to have to opt out at least that's my hope that that would happen and I'm pretty sure that that's that's the way it's going to go okay that's slightly reassuring um so just on this sort of privacy note so um I don't like basically most personal data are protected any kind of medical data about yourself is protected I'm not sure about things like is your location does that count as personal data and things like I guess you talked about like it contract the state of your retinas that feels like it ought to be medical information that's predicted but I have no idea are there any sort of limits to like what is protected what isn't the retina um there there's certain regulations that are talking about retina scans that are in place right now but they're not laws yet so it's still in motion um the location uh location doesn't necessarily have to be anything too bad as long as it's anonymized so you don't know who's at that location but you know there's somebody there so that that that could be perfectly fine and in fact if you ask Apple this they'll say that all the information that is available is anonymized so that they don't know unless you want to unless you have an app that you've allowed to be able to go into your data and you'd have to opt into that and apple allows apps to be able to do that um they wouldn't know who it was but yeah um you can imagine Apple uses thre a scan so it's like that's got to be really carefully uh carefully under lock and key that no one gets access to that for sure absolutely I guess I don't want all that my rest scan being made public that's sounds weird and a bit uh intrusive um okay so uh let's talk a bit about um how spatial Computing is going to change people's jobs so I guess to begin with like what skills do you need in order to take advantage of spatial Computing it depends on what perspective you're talking if you're talking about uh someone who uses a spatial computer um that could go the gamut from at no education whatsoever because the uh Apple Vision Pro is extremely easy to use and in fact um they've done obviously lots of testing about it and they found that almost anyone can use an apple Vision Pro so uh from a user perspective it could go from really easy to quite difficult depending on if you have a special app on and you have to learn what that app is for the corporation uh now if you're a builder if you're a builder of software I'd say it's it's just along the same lines of of someone who knows CGI you know or has been building for iOS because the the operating system for an apple Vision Pro is very close to an IOS operating system which is your phone you know for your phone um so actually people who are building for the company I'm working at datos technology have built iOS uh stuff for iOS devices and they've had to learn Swift UI and a couple of other things that Apple uses but they're very easily building the app right now so that's not even hard either the things that could be a little difficult are since um the Apple Vision Pro operating system is is quite new there are things that aren't um that obvious that you need to ask someone like a developer relations person you know I really can't figure this out there's no documentation can you help me and in fact we do have uh a developer relations person and are able to answer to ask these questions that are answered by them so I'd say it's really if if you're a developer it's really not that difficult to just you know decide to now do the Apple Vision Pro and is it important to have um skills in like spatial data analysis or spatial statistics do you think that's going to help people adopt um spatial Computing I'd say those are completely new areas um spatial data is something that is Uncharted you know it's like we're building now this whole thing about spatial data yes there are companies like virtualis that virtual virtual litics that have done spatial data but they do it in a different way and there's some other companies but it's not um out there in the populace that hey there's this thing it's called spatial data right how do I learn what to do with it so I I think that um the Apple Vision Pro is going to democratize this um to an extent that it'll be really easy to figure out how to use spatial data it'll be really easy to integrate the data into something and then have something else come out of it that is spatial but right now um it's a it's a totally new field all right um and just to wrap up so we' talked a lot about um uh the Apple uh platform it feels like um The Vision Pro is like sort of the V1 like viable uh platform what are we going to see in the future how are things going to change are they going to be competitors like what's going to come next um Kathy I think and I think a lot of people agree that we're going to see a campign explosion of new hardware over the next six to 18 months especially with everyone trying to put AI into everything um and some of these devices are going to be spatial computers right so we're going to continue to see meta advancing and some of the things that they're working on Apple as well uh Samsung um so I think we're going to continue to see a lot of new hardware types for sure and definitely new software okay uh so competition coming soon uh that's that's good to know competition is good for the consumer uh and Arena um what what's in your Crystal Bowl what are you forecasting is going to happen soon so it's been um leaked out by several people that the apple apple is building two different new Apple Vision Pros one that is more simplified and less expensive to the tune of something like $1,500 and another one which is the second version of the Apple Vision Pro that's currently out there uh in terms of timing when this is going to come out originally it was supposed to be next fall and now they're saying that it's sometime in 2026 or something like that we'll see um I can't really add any more to that even if I knew more to that I do actually know um but yeah uh so I'd say that it's really great we do need a cheaper version that $3,500 price uh tag is way too much for a lot of people and is not going to be able to make it easy for uh most people to buy or nor they would they want to buy it at that price um other other things apple is working on Apple glasses so sometime in 202 7 28 they're going to come out with glasses they've been working on glasses forever um so I I wouldn't say that it would eat into uh the Apple Vision Pro because they'll be for very different things with the glasses you can go running um you could play sports you could do all kinds of things um and it'll have a different use use case I mean even if the Apple Vision Pro becomes lighter right now it's a bit too heavy um you certainly don't want to go outside although people have done done that for pranking or whatever go outside and wear it and and you know walk through traffic with it but with the glasses you'll be able to do a lot of different things um but as Kathy said there's a whole bunch of other companies that are coming along that have been working on both headsets and glasses and we're going to see both those variations coming within the next three years it sounds like we can have the sort of um distinction then between the consumer space and the the business space um for spatial Computing I i' say that um the Apple Vision Pro with the cheaper model at around $1,500 can very easily become a consumer thing all right um and then Jeffy final advice for any individuals or organizations who want to get started with spatial Computing I'd say that it's super easy to just jump in and do it besides the price tag just buy the headset and use it and see how actually it works and how you don't need to teach anyone how to use it and that there are lots of use cases for it and it's just the beginning so don't be afraid to jump in and try it okay I like it just go and jump in and Kathy what's your final advice yeah I agree with Arena jump in test it out and definitely you know definitely read our book I think that'll help you kind of get a more grounded understanding of what spatial Computing uh is and the role AI plays in it all right super uh that's a a bit of homework then for the audience is just jump in and try this thing out for themselves uh all right wonderful uh thank you Arena thank you Kathy it's been great having you both on on the show thank you thank you\n"