The Deeper Reason to Own an iPhone 15 Pro
The greatest leap forward in this generation of iPhones is also one of its least mentioned
It’s a common complaint of our tech companies that each year rarely brings much in the way of significant change. It’s not every year that our products improve by leaps and bounds.
Still, ad campaigns are effective at generating interest in each new iteration of products that these tech giants release. A well-crafted iPhone keynote will have people wrapping around stores across the world on release days regardless of whether the changes between models amount to anything notable.
But occasionally, the improvements between generations can bring with them paradigm-shifting innovations. The leaps between the first few iPhones were each so seismic that they changed what it was to be a smartphone owner entirely with each new hardware update.
People have grown more cynical of these consumerism titans, though. Over a decade’s worth of yearly releases has soured the public to the idea that our phones change much each year. They have their reasons to be skeptical. The Apple Watch 6 famously poked fun at itself when it pointed out that there was hardly any more we could ask of a wristwatch than what the previous model already provided. And we’ve seen 3 generations worth of updates since.
When we consider all that our phones can do for us already, it seems clear that there’s only so much more terrain for these pocket machines of ours to cover. It’s true that the changes they incur each year aren’t typically worth it for the average consumer to run out and buy a new miniature supercomputer.
But occasionally, the changes in single years are so extraordinary that there’s no sense in denying them. The iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max is one of those phones. And yet, in the months since their release, they’ve begun to fall victim to the familiar narrative that each year’s refinements are only incremental.
Many seem to have forgotten that one of this new iPhone generation’s improvements is the ability to take videos that we can reinhabit when we simply wear a headset. Even in the keynote introducing the new line of phones, the “spatial video” software, as they’re calling it, was mentioned as little more than a footnote. It became background noise to the trumpeting calls of Apple’s long-awaited USB-C adoption. Shockingly, the public’s takeaway from the product unveiling wasn’t the phones’ ability to record conscious experiences.
It may sound lofty to state those words so plainly. Apple would be reluctant to refer to the new feature in such disconcertingly direct vocabulary. But that is what spatial video aims to offer.
The videos we record on our iPhone 15 Pros today, we’ll be able to watch back with Apple Vision Pro headsets tomorrow. Effectively, we can relive memories with panoramic levels of immersion. We can enter the videos we record.
Vision Pro headsets are bringing this strange future to doorsteps already. But at its pre-tax $3,500 price tag, it’s become a matter of general public consensus that these products won’t be making it into the living rooms of average consumers for at least a few more years.
In that way, the spatial video feature still feels like a reach away from the public. For most, it can’t yet be appreciated in the present. The software is on new iPhones today, but unless you’re among the small minority to own a headset, too, these videos remain an eerie sort of investment in a not-so-distant future.
The reason to own an iPhone 15 Pro is the notion that we can one day return to our most valuable memories. It’s the idea that graduations and birthday parties and first words can live on as something more than videos — that we can pull even more from each moment.
One of the reasons that this feature has received the tepid reaction that it has is because its value is reserved only for that echelon of Apple aficionados who own Vision Pro helmets.
If appreciating the spatial video tool were as simple as opening the camera app, it would have likely been more the subject of front-page headlines by now. I can share still frames from my photo library today from these videos, but they’ll fail to impart the magic that Apple intends to provide.
The colors may appear on screen, but none of the dimensionality. We can glean a 2D glimpse into a place in time, but can’t inhabit it. That feature will remain set aside for those financially stable enough to fork over used car-level sums on what many still consider no more than a beta test.
Even though this new type of video recording is now available to the millions who own the latest and greatest iteration of iPhones, the early-adopting public still sees understandably little reason to use it. The videos taken through the software aren’t ones that can be simply shared with friends or posted to social media.
The argument for why someone might want to largely hasn’t been made. Society isn’t receptive to these sorts of persuasions just yet. Apple’s headsets are part of a future that people still aren’t sold on.
Apple’s promotional video for the headset illustrates some of the value that these advanced photography features may offer, but it’s hard to effectively demonstrate in a 3D video a service that will envelop users in a full panorama of photos, videos, and memories. The feature doesn’t translate.
Those who own the iPhone 15 Pros tend to ignore the goggles icon that has emerged in the bottom corner of camera screens. Many owners may not know its function at all. Some might prefer not to.
Another, broader reason for the limited public reaction to this uncanny new feature is our highway blindness. In this ever-moving technosphere we’ve created, we have a dulled capacity to truly grasp our achievements.
We’ve grown so used to exponential curves of innovation that we’re desensitized to what it means when the phones that once lacked selfie cameras grow the ability to record conscious experiences. We label and compartmentalize our advancements; we dash deliriously onto the next. Headlines of new phones and AIs and space telescopes have begun to feel like something humdrum.
One of the strangest aspects of our current technologies is that the products often represent more than purchases. They enter into philosophical territory. We don’t yet know what it means for a mortal species to begin reliving memories. The products we now can buy in stores push our biologies to their very bounds.
Even as someone quick to promote the feature to my friends, there’s a gravity around that goggles icon in the corner of my camera screen that leaves me feeling loathe to press it too often. It’s a doorway to a future I won’t yet open too widely.
Among the few videos I’ve taken are the experiences that I know will one day mean the world to revisit. An intimate moment with my father as we share our first total solar eclipse. A walk through the woods near my home with my playful little puppy. A serene moment of silence with the family I’ll one day miss dearly.
Maybe there’s a certain denial that the devices in our pockets can do all that they can. Maybe too much news about the bizarre world we’re pioneering would stir the public even more than the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Maybe we’d rather keep the conversation about this futuristic new line of iPhones confined to the action button, USB-C ports, and the innocuous few dozen grams of weight it shed since its body shifted metals.
Like the Vision Pro Headset itself, maybe this feature arrived before the world is truly ready to grapple with it.