📔 Weekly Journal: The Apple Vision Pro Special
[6 min read] Your weekend guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier. Today, the usual market news as well as some ways that the Apple Vision Pro is making moves to mainstream adoption.
Welcome to this week’s Weekly Journal 📔, your guide to the latest news & innovation in emerging technology, digital assets, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 88 of the 520 weeks of newsletters I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge.
New subscribers are encouraged to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
- Ryan
🌐 Digital Assets Market Update
To me, the Metaverse is the convergence of physical & virtual lives. As we work, play and socialise in virtual worlds, we need virtual currencies & assets. These have now reached mainstream finance as a defined asset class:
🔥🗺️ 7-day heatmap below, showing the current share of the market for the top cryptocurrencies, and their change in price over the last week.
🎭 Crypto Fear and Greed Index is based on volatility, social media sentiments, surveys, market momentum, and a few other bits and pieces.
🗞️ Interesting news from this week
🥽 Apple has unveiled a series of new immersive video experiences for its Vision Pro headset, featuring a mix of original films and exclusive content designed to take full advantage of the device's advanced capabilities. Among the highlights is "Journey Through the Dynamic World," an Apple Original that explores various environments in stunning detail. Also premiering are "Ocean Odyssey" and "Infinite Skies," both of which deliver breathtaking, immersive visuals that showcase the power of Vision Pro's spatial audio and ultra-high-resolution display. Additionally, Apple has collaborated with celebrated filmmakers and artists to create a collection of short films and documentaries, offering audiences a unique way to engage with stories through the headset. Vision Pro, which blends digital content with the real world, is set to redefine how users experience entertainment, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in immersive storytelling. Looking forward to this tech coming down in price and going mainstream.
👜🧳 Apple's Vision Pro is expanding into the fashion industry with new apps from luxury brands Balenciaga and Rimowa. These apps take advantage of the Vision Pro’s spatial capabilities to offer unique, immersive experiences. Balenciaga’s app allows users to virtually explore exclusive spaces and view high-fashion collections, while Rimowa’s app provides a similar immersive experience centered around luxury luggage. This move follows similar efforts by other high-end brands like Gucci, which has also created Vision Pro content. The trend highlights how luxury retailers are increasingly embracing cutting-edge technology to enhance brand storytelling and engage with consumers in innovative ways.
👓 Read of the Week
This week I found a great interview with Digital Fashion Artist Suza Vos:
I was especially interested in the tools being used to generate fabric textures, very cool:
🎥 Watch of the week
I enjoyed this demo of the world's first-ever use of Apple Vision Pro by a patient implanted with its brain computer interface. An amazing milestone that proves a real use case for the technology.
AI 🎨🤖🎵✍🏼
In the Metaverse, AI will be critical for creating intelligent virtual environments and avatars that can understand and respond to users with human-like cognition and natural interactions:
This week is a practical illustration of how I have integrated Generative AI into my workflow. The task was to design a cover for the latest issue of our magazine, which has an article that refers to Bitcoin as “Digital Gold” (Store of value) and Ethereum as the “Digital Silver” (Less expensive, used to make things).
My prompt in Midjourney was: “[/Image] studio photo of the silver bar with Ethereum logo, and gold bar with bitcoin logo, pink pastel background, centre to the page, high definition”.
After a few attempts and further variation on the ones I liked, I came across a great one. I used the “Zoom out 2x” to create some more space, and upscaled it for 4K quality. I used Canva to erase the text on the silver block and viola!
Everything I used and much more in this excellent tutorial in case anyone is feeling creative
That’s all for the free version this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from learning about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Educational workshops are one of many consulting services I offer.
DCA With Me 🤑
Dollar Cost Averaging is an investment strategy in which an investor regularly invests a fixed amount of money into a particular asset/asset class at regular intervals, regardless of its current market cycle. By doing so, the investor can reduce the impact of market volatility and potentially earn a better return over time. Motto = time IN the market beats trying to time the market
To experiment with this, I invest $50 NZD into a Digital Asset every week. Each week I will choose an asset that seems underpriced in the short term and has positive long-term potential. My timeframe is 3-5 years. I don’t give financial advice but if you want to follow along with me you can use my easycrypto.co.nz referral link to support this newsletter. Let’s dive into this week’s pick:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Metaverse Field Guide to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.