VR headsets are having a second. And now that Apple is making one, the issues would possibly even stick round for some time—assuming sufficient individuals really need to put on them.

Apple adopted up per week full of digital actuality information—Meta has a new headset, so does Lenovo—by debuting its personal mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, throughout its WWDC keynote yesterday.

Nearly a decade after Google Glass was mocked relentlessly online, Apple’s announcement has roused an analogous refrain of questions—like “Why?” and “OK, really, but why?” Apple’s aluminum goggles look finely engineered, however the examples the corporate confirmed of the Vision Pro getting used aren’t the varieties of eventualities the place a face pc can be sensible or comfy.

Apple fell into the identical entice as Meta—which inspired individuals to put on a VR headset to business meetings—by exhibiting how the Vision Pro headset may put the wearer entrance and middle in a videoconferencing work name. Even if Apple captures the creativeness of the hustle tradition and finds a consumer base keen to strap on a $3,499 headset to situation columns in AR Excel, wearability would nonetheless be an issue. Apple hasn’t stated how a lot the Vision Pro will weigh or precisely how lengthy its battery will final (a few hours, perhaps much less), however we will inform from the movies and pictures it did share that the machine is cumbersome and tethered to an exterior battery pack.

“People’s tolerance for wearing something on their head for an extended period of time is limited,” says Leo Gebbie, a VR analyst at CCS Insights. “If it’s something that people are going to wear all day, it needs to be slim and light and comfortable. No one has really achieved that just yet in the VR world.”

Apple’s headset, like others earlier than it, is a mixed-reality machine, which means it permits customers to work together with digital components whereas permitting among the actual world to bleed by means of. That real-world video pass-through is one thing Apple targeted on through the Vision Pro’s reveal by positioning the machine as one thing you might put on whereas strolling round, with out continually bumping into furnishings, counter tops, pets, and youngsters. But Apple’s AR imaginative and prescient continues to be packaged in a VR headset, a wraparound machine that obscures your whole field of regard.

Tuong Nguyen, a director analyst on the tech evaluation agency Gartner, says it results in the “head-in-a-box” drawback. Something like Google Glass or Meta’s Facebook Ray-Bans is probably not as feature-rich as Apple’s Vision Pro, however at the very least you may see round their frames. Apple’s headset has a bodily knob that permits you to regulate how a lot of the display is taken up by digital components, however you’re nonetheless counting on a display to pump the true world visuals in.

“Video pass-through is essentially your head in a box,” Nguyen says.

Also, the screens we already use each day aren’t completely dependable. You’ve most likely had the expertise the place you need to snag a photograph or video of one thing, so that you launch your telephone’s digicam app, solely to see the picture stutter or the app crash. Now think about that occuring together with your whole field of regard.