A few weeks ago, my wife told me about an app called Yuka. What it does is scan the barcodes of food products and cosmetics and then give you a health rating out of 100. You can also drill deeper if you'd like to better understand why a particular food item is healthy — or not healthy.

Since then, a few things have happened:

• I've told as many people as possible about it. (I have my parents scanning at the grocery store.)

• Grocery shopping takes a lot longer. (I have a colleague who has been mistaken for a store employee while using the app.)

• We've made meaningful changes to the food we buy.

And it's not like we weren't trying to shop healthy before.

It works a lot like France's Nutri-Score, except you have to do a bit more work. As soon as I see a low score, I no longer want the product and I move on to an alternative or I eschew it altogether. I can only imagine the positive impact that an app like this will have on our health and on the broader food landscape as our individual decisions compound over time.

It also feels like a perfect use case for augmented reality and spatial computing. Right now, I have to juggle my phone in one hand and a basket in the other. But imagine a world where I can just pick up a package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and my glasses will automatically tell me they're a 0/100. That world is coming.

If you care about the food you put into your body, I would highly recommend downloading Yuka on your phone. Ignorance is bliss until you're no longer ignorant.

I was at a family lunch this week and we got on to the topic of VR/AR headsets. Some of my relatives have the Meta Quest, but nobody has the Apple Vision Pro and nobody has even tried it. However, the comment was that the Meta one is already pretty convincing, so the Vision Pro must be that much more amazing. Like I do on this blog, I encouraged everyone to go and book a demo.

What is obvious, of course, is that Vision Pro is far from a mainstream product. Few people are buying it. It's too expensive. And I think most people can't imagine a world where it becomes part of their daily life. But as we were all talking, I was reminded that I'm dangerously close.

Here are 3 use cases that I'm already excited about:

• Watching movies and doing work on airplanes. I love traveling. But sitting on a plane sucks. If I could watch immersive movies and bury myself in work, I think I might actually enjoy having my femur crushed by the seat in front of me. It would be an environment free of any distractions. Already I have found reliable in-flight wifi to be a game changer for productivity.

• Experiencing live sports from seats I wouldn't pay for in real life. To be fair, I don't generally watch a lot of sports unless a Toronto team is in the playoffs. But selling an unlimited number of courtside seats (or their equivalent) to people via Vision Pro seems like an obvious use case. I would pay for this after experiencing Lebron dunk in my face in the demo, especially if it works with groups of people. And if it doesn't already exist, I'm sure there will be a way to stream live content.

• Walking through the BIM model of a yet-to-be-constructed building. The construction industry needs this. I need this. I walk all of our sites at least once a week. But imagine if it were possible to do this before construction actually starts and costly mistakes are found on site. That's always been the promise of BIM, but alas, it hasn't solved the problem of poorly coordinated drawings and too many site changes.

The list of great use cases is endless. These are just 3 that immediately came to mind and that wouldn't require the technology to be significantly better to spur greater adoption. In fact, the technology is already there and convincing enough. I also don't think the above requires the hardware to be as small, or as fashionable, as a pair of sunglasses. It just needs to be cheaper, a bit more portable, and have a few incremental features.

At that point, I'll be ready to buy. What about you?

Cover photo by Bram Van Oost on Unsplash

I know I'm late to the party on this, but I finally tried Apple Vision Pro this weekend. I was in the Apple Store at the Toronto Eaton Center getting the battery replaced in my phone, so I decided to do a demo. And let me tell you -- I was totally blown away. I messaged everyone I knew (after I got my phone back) and told them that they need to try it.

To be clear, though, very few people right now want to actually buy this computing device. Initially, Apple was thinking that it would sell upwards of 800,000 units this year. But now it expects to sell somewhere closer to 400,000. Maybe. The device is too expensive, too bulky, and the use cases just aren't there for someone to feel they need to buy it.

I also found that, when I was looking at the world around me, I could tell I was looking at a video. It wasn't exactly perfect. (Vision Pro creates a mixed-reality experience by recording the world around you and then playing it back to you.) But that's okay. The hardware will get better. The price will come down. And the developer community will build a bunch of killer apps that nobody has even thought of yet.

None of this changes the fact that the device is still an astonishing technical achievement. The eye tracking works perfectly. All of my hand gestures were flawlessly picked up. And the overall experience was entirely immersive -- from 3D videos (recorded on regular iPhones) to a butterfly landing on my hand and a velociraptor flaring its nostrils right in front of me.

What was most impactful to me is that I could easily imagine a future where all of this works. Is this a more exciting way to watch sports? Yes. I sat courtside and Lebron dunked in my face. Is this a better way to watch movies on a plane? By far. Will this be used to help build buildings and coordinate design & engineering disciplines? Yes, absolutely, among many other things.

It is also easy to imagine how spatial computing is likely to dovetail with other innovations such as AI and blockchains. Mixed-reality or extended reality blurs the line between physical and digital. And in my mind, AI becomes the way in which we will want to interact with this new computing world. (It's not easy to type on a virtual keyboard.)

At the same time, digital artifacts will come to be viewed much differently when they're all blended in. An NFT sitting in a cold wallet is going to feel a lot different than an NFT hanging in a fully immersive 3D gallery that is viewed by millions of people. This strengthens the case for blockchains, and the ownership of digital objects, products, and services.

Maybe this is really far into the future. I don't know. But regardless, if you haven't already, I would encourage you to book a demo at your local Apple Store. However cool and great you think it will be, it will be better. I'm not suggesting you should buy one, but I am suggesting that you need to try it out and see a glimpse into the future.

And if any of you are working on Apple Vision Pro software that is somehow connected to the design and construction industry, I would love to hear from you and learn more about what you're up to. I have complete conviction that this will form the future of our industry. The best place to reach out is here.