Security Bite: Is Apple Vision Pro a game changer or a potential privacy nightmare?

Apple’s first new flagship product in almost a decade is just around the corner, with pre orders for beginning next Friday. The company is promising a new spatial computing era, but is the mixed reality (XR) headset a game charger product or a potential nightmare? Answer: Maybe both… . Apple isn’t new to spatial computing.

For years, the company has pioneered on smartphones since the introduction of an ARKit in 2017 and later RealityKit in 2019 for creating, rendering, and interacting with 3D objects in physical environments. With some of the first adopters being the wildly popular Pokémon Go and the cosmic mapping app, .

Apple Vision Pro and its platform take this to a new level. The headset itself is a technological feat, consisting of an array of sensors used for features like audio ray racing and TrueDepth for real time 3D mapping, six microphones, eight cameras on the front for passthrough, capturing images and video, head and hand tracking, as well as four cameras on the inside for eye tracking, Optic ID, and EyeSight—more on these below.

While sure, Apple claims it’s the era of spatial computing, in other words, bringing together digital and physical worlds. It’s better described as the era of data collection. Mixed reality isn’t a new concept, but before the launch of Apple Vision Pro, it has recently been gaining steam thanks to and its (hey, credit where it’s due).

And to be able to use these devices, you have to give up a lot of personal data. What this data can say about users is more than you may think. For example, distance from the ground measured by depth sensors can determine a user’s height. The sound of a passing train could help point to a physical location.

A user’s head moments can be used to determine emotional and neurological states. Data collected on the user’s eyes is arguably the most concerning. Not only could this lead to targeted advertising and behavioral profiling, but it could also reveal sensitive health information. It’s not uncommon for eye doctors to help diagnose patients for ailments simply by looking at their eyes.

Apple’s three leading security and privacy claims: From what I can tell Apple does appear to continue its commitment to user privacy and personal data control. However, with even more data available in real time from Vision Pro users using third party applications, it’s concerning what developers could collect and infer about people.

It’s still early, and I’m eager to get my hands on Vision Pro come February 2..