好英语网苹果Vision Pro值3500美元吗
I got a sneak peek into Apple’s vision for the future of computing on Monday. For about half an hour, I wore the $3,500 Vision Pro, the company’s first high-tech goggles, which will be released next year.
周一，我得以一窥苹果构想中的未来计算。我用半小时试戴了售价3500美元的Vision Pro，这是该公司首款高科技头戴设备，将于明年发布。
I walked away with mixed feelings, including a nagging sense of skepticism.
它留给我的感受是喜忧参半，其中包括一种挥之不去的怀疑。
苹果公司周一发布了新款Vision Pro。该设备将于明年上市。
On one hand, I was impressed with the quality of the headset, which Apple bills as the beginning of an era of “spatial computing,” where digital data blends with the physical world to unlock new capabilities. Imagine wearing a headset to assemble furniture while the instructions are digitally projected onto the parts, for instance, or cooking a meal while a recipe is displayed in the corner of your eye.
一方面，这款设备的质量给我留下了深刻的印象，苹果称它是“空间计算”时代的开端，在这个时代，数字数据与现实世界融合在一起，释放出新的功能。想象一下，戴着头戴设备组装家具，说明书被数字投影到零件上，或者做饭时，食谱显示在眼角。
Apple’s device had high-resolution video, intuitive controls and a comfortable fit, which felt superior to my experiences with headsets made in the last decade by Meta, Magic Leap, Sony and others.
苹果这款设备具有高分辨率视频、直观的控制和舒适的佩戴感，比Meta、Magic Leap、索尼等公司在过去10年生产的头戴设备体验更好。
But after wearing the new headset to view photos and interact with a virtual dinosaur, I also felt there wasn’t much new to see here. And the experience elicited an “ick” factor I had never had before with an Apple product. More on this later.
但在戴上这款新设备查看照片并与虚拟恐龙互动后，我也觉得这里没有太多新东西可看。这种体验引发了我对苹果产品从未有过的“厌恶”之感。稍后会详细介绍。
Fit and control
拟合与控制
Let me start from the beginning. After Apple unveiled the headset on Monday, its first major new release since the Apple Watch in 2015, I was permitted to try a preproduction model of the Vision Pro. Apple staff led me to a private room at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters and sat me on a couch for a demo.
让我从头开始说。苹果公司周一发布了这款头戴装置，这是自2015年苹果手表发布以来该公司的首个重大新产品，我获准试用了Vision Pro的预生产模型。苹果公司的工作人员把我带到公司硅谷总部的一个私密房间，让我坐在沙发上试用。
The Vision Pro, which resembles a pair of ski goggles, has a white USB cable that plugs into a silver battery pack that I slipped into the pocket of my jeans. To put it on my face, I turned a knob on the side of the headset to adjust the snugness and secured a Velcro strap above my head.
Vision Pro看起来像一副滑雪护目镜，它有一根白色的USB线，可以接入揣在我牛仔裤兜里一块银色电池。为了把它戴在脸上，我转动了设备侧面的一个旋钮来调节舒适度，并把一条尼龙搭扣带固定在头上。
I pressed down on a metal button toward the front of the device to turn it on. Then I ran through a setup process, which involved looking at a moving dot so the headset could lock in on my eye movements. The Vision Pro has an array of sensors to track eye movements, hand gestures and voice commands, which are the primary ways to control it. Looking at an icon is equivalent to hovering over it with a mouse cursor; to press a button, you tap your thumb and index fingers together, making a quick pinch that is equivalent to clicking a mouse.
我按下设备正面一个金属按钮，将其打开。然后我完成了一个设置过程，其中包括看着一个移动的点，这样设备就可以锁定我的眼球运动。Vision Pro有一系列传感器来跟踪眼球运动、手势和语音指令，这些都是控制它的主要方式。看着一个图标，就相当于用鼠标光标悬停在图标上；要按下按钮，你要用拇指和食指指尖轻触，做一个捏的动作，相当于点击鼠标。
The pinch gesture was also used for grabbing and moving around apps on the screen. It was intuitive and felt less clunky than waving around the motion controllers that typically come with competing handsets.
“捏”的手势还用于抓取和移动屏幕上的应用程序。它很直观，比起竞品头戴设备通常需要挥舞配套的运动控制器，感觉没那么笨拙。
But it raised questions. What other hand gestures would the headset recognize for playing games? How good will voice controls be if Siri’s voice transcription on phones currently doesn’t work well? Apple isn’t sure yet what other gestures will be supported, and it didn’t let me try voice controls.
但这也引发了一些问题。在玩游戏时，头戴设备还能识别哪些手势？既然Siri在手机上的语音转录功能至今效果不佳，那么语音控制还能有多好呢？苹果还不确定还会支持哪些手势操作，而且它也没有让我尝试语音控制。
All the many uses?
“许多用途”就这么多？
Then came time for the app demos to show how the headset might enrich our everyday lives and help us stay connected with one another.
然后是应用程序演示，展示这款头戴设备如何丰富我们的日常生活，帮助我们与他人保持联系。
Apple first walked me through looking at photos and a video of a birthday party on the headset. I could turn a dial near the front of the Vision Pro counterclockwise to make the photo backgrounds more transparent and see the real world, including the Apple employees around me, or turn it clockwise to make the photo more opaque to immerse myself.
苹果首先带我看了一下头具上的生日派对照片和视频。我可以逆时针转动Vision Pro正面附近的转盘，让照片背景更透明，看到真实的世界，包括我周围的苹果员工；如果顺时针转动它，降低照片透明度，就可以沉浸其中。
Apple also had me open a meditation app in the headset that showed 3-D animations while soothing music played and a voice instructed me to breathe. But the meditation couldn’t prepare me for what was coming next: a video call.
苹果还让我在头戴设备中打开了一个冥想应用程序，它会播放三维动画，同时播放舒缓的音乐，还有一个声音指示我呼吸。但冥想无法让我为接下来的事情做好准备：一个视频通话。
A small window popped up — a notification of a FaceTime call from another Apple employee wearing the headset. I stared at the answer button and pinched to take the call.
一个小窗口弹了出来，是另一位戴着头具的苹果员工打来的FaceTime电话通知。我盯着应答按钮，按了一下接电话。
The Apple employee in the video call was using a “persona,” an animated 3-D avatar of herself that the headset created using a scan of her face. Apple portrays videoconferencing through the personas as a more intimate way for people to communicate and even collaborate in virtual space.
视频通话中的苹果员工使用的是一个“角色”，这是一个她自己的三维动画化身，是头具通过扫描她的面部创建的。苹果把通过角色进行的视频会议描述为人们在虚拟空间中进行交流甚至合作的一种更亲密的方式。
The Apple employee’s facial expressions looked lifelike, and her mouth movements synchronized with her speech. But because of how her avatar was digitally rendered, with the uniform texture of her face and the lack of shadows, I could tell it was fake. It resembled a video hologram I had seen in sci-fi movies like “Minority Report.”
这位苹果员工的面部表情看起来栩栩如生，她的嘴部运动与她的讲话同步。但由于她的头像是通过数字技术渲染的，她的脸部纹理均匀，没有阴影，我可以判断出这是假的。它就像我在《少数派报告》(Minority Report)等科幻电影中看到的全息影像。
In the FaceTime session, the Apple employee and I were supposed to collaborate on making a 3-D model in an app called Freeform. But I stared at it blankly, thinking about what I was seeing. After three years of my being mostly isolated during the pandemic, Apple wanted me to engage with what was essentially a deepfake video of a real person. I could feel myself shutting down. My “ick” sensation was probably what technologists have long described as uncanny valley, a feeling of unease when a human sees a machine creation that looks too human.
在FaceTime会议上，我和苹果员工本应在一个名为Freeform的应用程序中合作制作一个三维模型。但我茫然地盯着它，思考我所看到的一切。在疫情期间，我大部分时间都与世隔绝，而三年后，苹果公司希望我参与到一个本质上是真实人物的深度仿造视频中。我能感觉到自己正在关闭起来。我的“厌恶”感可能是技术专家长期以来所描述的“恐怖谷”，也就是人类看到一个看起来太像人类的机器造物时，产生的一种不安之感。
A technological feat? Yes. A feature I would want to use with others every day? Probably not anytime soon.
一个技术杰作？是的。一个我希望每天都与其他人一起使用的功能？可能暂时还不会。
To wrap the demonstration with something fun, Apple showed a simulation of a dinosaur that moved toward me when I reached my hand out. I have seen more than my fair share of digital dinosaurs in virtual reality (almost every headset maker that’s given me a VR demo has shown a Jurassic Park simulation in the last seven years), and I was not excited about this.
为了给演示画上一个有趣的句号，苹果公司展示了一只模拟恐龙，当我伸出手时，它会朝我移动。我已经在虚拟现实中看到了太多的数字恐龙（在过去七年里，几乎每个给我做VR演示的头戴设备制造商都会展示一个侏罗纪公园的模拟），我对此并不感兴趣。
Real people
真实的人
After the demo, I drove home and processed the experience during rush hour.
演示结束后，我开车回家，趁着堵车的时间，我回味了刚才的体验。
Over dinner, I talked to my wife about the Vision Pro. The Apple goggles, I said, looked and felt better than the competing headsets. But I wasn’t sure that mattered.
晚餐时，我和妻子谈起Vision Pro。我说，苹果的头戴设备外观和感觉都比竞品要好。但我不确定这是否重要。
Other headsets from Meta and Sony PlayStation were much cheaper and already quite powerful and entertaining, especially for playing video games. But whenever we had guests over for dinner and they tried the goggles on, they lost interest after less than half an hour because the experience was exhausting and they felt socially disconnected from the group.
来自Meta和索尼PlayStation的其他头戴设备要便宜得多，而且已经相当强大且具有娱乐性，尤其是在玩视频游戏时。但是，每当我们邀请客人来家里吃饭，他们戴上头具不到半小时就失去了兴趣，因为这种体验让他们筋疲力尽，他们觉得自己与群体脱节了。
Would it matter if they could twist the dial on the front of the headset to see into the real world while wearing it? I suspect it would still feel isolating, because they would probably be the only person in a room wearing one.
如果他们可以拧一下头戴设备前面的刻度盘，戴着它就能看到现实世界，这重要吗？我怀疑这仍然会让人感到孤立，因为他们可能是房间里唯一戴着它的人。
But more important to me was the idea of connecting with others, including family members and colleagues, through Apple headsets.
但对我来说，更重要的是通过苹果头戴设备与家人、同事等人联系的想法。
“Your mom is getting old,” I said to my wife. “When you’re FaceTiming with her, would you rather see her deepfake digital avatar, or a crummier video call where she’s holding the phone camera up to her face at an unflattering angle?”
“你妈妈年纪大了，”我对妻子说。“当你和她Facetime聊天时，你是更愿意看到她的深度仿造数字化身，还是看着她的手机从一个别扭的角度对着自己的脸，在糟糕的画质下跟你通话？”
“The latter,” she said without hesitation. “That’s real. Although, I’d much rather see her in person.”
“后者，”她毫不犹豫地说。“那是真实的。不过，我更想直接去见她。”