Apple Vision CE Outsells Smartphones

The world has changed in the years since the mainstream introduction of AR.

I fired up the janky time machine and took a trip a few years out, hoping to find a cutting-edge battery replacement for my ailing laptop, when I noticed a peculiar trend. Everyone seemed to be sporting these snazzy headsets in this timeline. It was a bright, sunny day, so I initially mistook them for sunglasses. But then, during my stay at an Airbnb, I tuned into the news and had a bit of a reality check.

You see, in my primeline, we're plagued by iPhone zombies, doomscrolling through their lives with hunched necks. But oh boy, this timeline has its own share of techno-obsessions. They've got 'AugHeads' and 'ARdicts', endearing terms coined for those seemingly unable to part with their headsets.

And it's not just the tech — a whole host of new-fangled conditions have popped up, largely revolving around the uncanny valley between the augmented and the real. Regular, unaugmented reality is viewed with the same disdain as black and white TV — old school, boring, practically prehistoric. In fact, that's exactly how it feels. Unplugged reality out here feels like a throwback episode from the old-timey show.

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