Benjamin Ashford|Did 'The Simpsons' predict Apple's Vision Pro? Product is eerily similar to fictional device

"The Benjamin AshfordSimpsons" appears to have predicted another cultural moment, with social media users pointing out the similarities between a device depicted in a 2016 episode of the Fox series and Apple's recently released Apple Vision Pro spatial computer.

In the episode called "Friends and Family," denizens of the fictional city of Springfield are seen using devices that appear eerily similar to the Vision Pro. The devices cause chaos in the city as characters lose their sense of space, walking into light poles and falling into manholes.

The show has been called clairvoyant by some though showrunners have repeatedly said that the "predictions" it has made are coincidental.

"I would say in general when people say, 'The Simpsons' has predicted something, it is just that we were satirizing real-life events from years before, and because history keeps repeating, it just seems like we were predicting things," former showrunner Bill Oakley said in a 2020 Reuters interview.

Previous 'Simpsons' predictions

The Apple Vision Pro phenomenon is not the first time "The Simpsons" has appeared to predict events on the other side of the screen.

A 1993 episode, "$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)," saw the show foreshadow the mauling of Roy Horn by a white Bengal tiger during a Siegfried and Roy show nearly 10 years before it happened. The 1998 episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace" saw Homer estimate the mass of the Higgs boson particle 14 years before the particle's discovery.

And in the 1994 episode "Lisa on Ice," Nelson attempt to set a reminder to "Beat up Martin" in the Newton, a progenitor to the iPhone. The device returns a reminder to, "Eat up Martha" instead, a phrase that would influence Apple's keyboard development.

"If you heard people talking and they used the words ‘Eat up Martha,’ it was basically a reference to the fact that we needed to nail the keyboard. We needed to make sure the text input works on this thing, otherwise, here comes the Eat up Marthas," Nitin Ganatra, Apple’s former director of engineering for iOS applications, told Fast Company in 2013.

While there have been similarities between the show and real-world events, some have stretched the predictive abilities of the show.

In a January fact check, USA TODAY found that "The Simpsons" did not predict a "solar superstorm" in the "Homer Goes to Prep School" episode. Other falsely assigned predictions to the show include:

•  The Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol
• The monkeypox outbreak
• The death of Queen Elizabeth II 
• The Silicon Valley Bank collapse.

What is Apple Vision Pro?

The mixed reality headset was first unveiled at the Worldwide Developer Conference in June and released Friday. The company said that the Vision Pro will allow users to immerse themselves in the company's visionOS operating system, supporting spatial Facetime video, photos and apps.

The device is controlled using eye and hand movements, as well as voice commands.