Apple’s Vision Pro: A Glimpse of Adult Entertainment’s Future?

March 11, 2024

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Hands-on with the groundbreaking new mixed-reality headset

Compliments of my local Apple store, I was thrilled to experience the newly released Vision Pro firsthand. Naturally, I couldn’t judge its potential effectiveness when viewing/interacting with adult content. But even so, I feel I am more than able to give you a fairly good idea, whether it’s a look at things to come—or just high-tech smoke and mirrors.

Love (or maybe lust) at first sight

Despite my early and quite frustrating experiences as a Macintosh Plus owner in 1989, I’ve since remained a die-hard fan of the company and its products. Combine that with a near-obsessive fascination with Augmented Reality (AR), and you probably have a good idea of how flat-out giddy I was to see if the Apple Vision Pro lived up to its quite considerable hype.

In a word, it did, and then some. Its immersiveness is, perhaps being too clever about it, a sight to behold. Not to mention how intuitive and effortless it is to operate, needing the simplest of hand and finger gestures to open, close, resize, or position multiple windows with ease. I also have to applaud its ability to switch back and forth between augmented and virtual reality, making the Apple Vision Pro somehow even more impressively versatile.

But the Vision Pro has its fair share of rough-ish edges, notably its more-than-considerable weight, frustratingly short two-hour battery life, and brief moments of disorientation when I tilted my head up or down or twisted it side-to-side too quickly.

All of this didn’t change my overall positive opinion of it; it was just a couple of reminders that it’s first-generation tech. There are kinks that, considering Apple’s respectable track record, will likely be worked out when the next—or the next after that—model hits the shelves.

The naked truth

Any discussion, i.e., trying to use a Vision Pro headset to view any sort of adult content, must begin by addressing Apple’s less-than-welcoming stance towards anything even remotely explicitly erotic.

MapleSyrup postulates the issue might be less outright prudery and more how Apple is positioning the Vision Pro first and foremost as a productivity tool, noting also that “Explicit apps aren’t allowed in the App Store, so this could play into the limitation. It appears Apple isn’t necessarily blocking porn on the headset, it’s just that current immersive formats don’t work easily with the Vision Pro.”

To be clear, nothing prevents Apple Vision Pro users from watching 2D adult videos or playing browser-based explicit games. The issue is when trying to use the headset’s overwise-immersive technology with virtual reality content.

Oddly, Apple doesn’t have a problem with incorporating interactive sextoys into its new AR technology, as evidenced by Lovense’s announcement that a version of its Remote App is available for the Vision Pro.

VentureBeat quoted Lovense’s CEO Dan Liu as saying of the app, “It’s a big step towards transforming how people experience long-distance intimacy, and Lovense will continue to innovate in creating more emotionally connected experiences for couples, regardless of the distance.”

On the erotic horizon?

Of its many exceptionally cool features, I was particularly captivated by how I could fix one or more virtual windows in place, so when I moved my head, each would stay where I put them–which instantly conjured thoughts of living in an otherwise blank-walled environment, only to be revealed as packed with colorful art or looped video images when viewed through an Apple Vision Pro.

Leading to yet another idea: why not use the same technology to digitally overlay a fully customized face or idealized body over an otherwise featureless sexbot?

Possible? Certainly, but unfortunately, something the current Apple Vision Pro isn’t quite capable of—emphasis on current as it may be something subsequent models could easily handle.

Seeing what tomorrow may hold

If anything, the most remarkable thing about today’s Apple Vision Pro is how shockingly close to perfect it already seems to be, even with its number of early-development issues.

Increase the battery life, reduce the weight and size, fix its occasional tracking problems, and—of course—open it to adult content developers to take full advantage of existing and upcoming explicit/interactive entertainment platforms. 2025’s Apple Vision Pro might be what takes augmented reality from just a futuristic fantasy to a more-than-likely though still expensive reality.

Even that will presumably change, just as iPhones went from buy-to-show-off luxuries to affordable necessities. Give Apple another decade, and tomorrow’s sexbots or perhaps even consenting partners could be made to appear like anyone or anything. Our living spaces might be festooned with AI-generated explicit artwork, and meeting potential partners might be as easy as glancing their way to see who they are and what they’re into.

But until then, the Apple Vision Pro remains a promise—a very good promise but a promise nevertheless of what sex and erotica may well look like in the not-too-distant future.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

Tagsvirtualreality augmentedreality sextech immersive review

M. Christian

M.Christian (they/them) loves nothing better than exploring the intersections of sex and technology—and speculating on the future of both. A highly regarded erotica writer they have six novels,12 collections, 100+ short stories, and 25 anthologies as an editor to their name. Their non-fiction regularly appears in many sites, but they're most proud of being a regular contributor to Future of Sex.

Of their erotic fiction, Tristan Taormino said that “M.Christian is a literary stylist of the highest caliber: smart, funny, frightening, sexy—there's nothing [they] can't write about… and brilliantly.”

Reflecting their unique ability to sympathetically and convincingly write for a range of genders and sexual orientations, their stories have appeared in multiple editions of Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Books of Erotica, and others. Their collection of gay erotic fiction, Dirty Words, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award.

While a majority of their stories have been collected into books like Dirty Words, their fondness for combining sex and science fiction is clearly evident in collections that include Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, Skin Effect Effect, Bachelor Machine, and Hard Drive: The Best Sci-Fi Erotica of M.Christian.

As a novelist, M.Christian’s versatility is on full display with Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes, Painted Doll; and the somewhat controversial queer BDSM/horror/thrillers Finger's Breadth, and Me2.

M.Christian has worked on the industry’s production side as an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books and as a Publisher for Digital Parchment Services. The latter dedicated to celebrating the works of science-fiction legends such as William Rotsler, Jerome Bixby, Jody Scott, Arthur Byron Cover, Ernest Hogan, and James Van Hise.

Covering topics like BDSM safety, sexual education, senior sexuality concerns, queer and gender issues, plus reviewing a variety of sex tech products, M.Christian’s non-fiction has appeared on sites like Kinkly, Tickle.Life, Sexpert, Queer Majority, Sex for Every Body, and—of course—their ongoing work for Future of Sex.

If there’s anything M.Christian enjoys more than writing, it’s teaching. A featured presenter, sometimes with their friend Ralph Greco Jr, at national sex and BDSM events, they have lectured on kink play (with an emphasis on safety), polyamory, boosting sexual creativity, and erotica writing--for beginners or those wanting to go pro.

M.Christian is a cohost on two popular sex-education podcasts: Love’s Outer Limits with Dr. Amy Marsh and Licking Non-Vanilla with Ralph Greco, Jr.