[HN Gopher] Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple g...
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Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right
Author : wolverine876
Score : 755 points
Date : 2024-03-15 03:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hugo.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (hugo.blog)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The author is former head of Oculus at Meta, Hugo Barra
|
| The full title, which of course wouldn't fit:
|
| _Vision Pro is an over-engineered "devkit" // Hardware bleeds
| genius & audacity but software story is disheartening // What we
| got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right // Why Meta could
| finally have its Android moment_
|
| I think my edit is the best summary.
| dang wrote:
| Yes you did a great job with that, which probably helped it get
| attention, too--a good thing, since it's an interesting
| article. Thanks!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I saw you reposted it (or whatever that mechanism is) so
| thank you.
| pavlov wrote:
| Great article. It's so long, the four-part title is deserved and
| necessary to understand what's here.
|
| I found this part somewhat funny or perhaps disingenuous:
|
| _> "I admit Vision Pro is the ultimate tech toy, but since I'm
| not an active developer I can't justify the $4,049.78 price tag
| (512GB model + California sales tax) simply for keeping up with
| the VR market, so I returned my Vision Pro for a full refund
| inside the 14-day return window."_
|
| Mr Barra has held VP positions at companies like Google, Xiaomi
| and Meta since 2008. He's obviously a multimillionaire just from
| stock awards. Surely he can afford a $4k toy...
| Almondsetat wrote:
| it's about not indulging in useless purchases, which is one of
| the ways you stay wealthy
| diab0lic wrote:
| Being a multi millionaire isn't really relevant here. If you're
| not the type of person who spends $4k on a tech toy then you'll
| have a hard time justifying it.
| chongli wrote:
| I think even at $100 the AVP is hard to justify for most
| people. It's a solution in search of a problem (which I feel
| is generally the case for all VR tech).
|
| Overall though I think the issue is common across consumer
| tech. The space is extremely saturated. People have so little
| time left it's crazy. Devices monopolize people's attention.
| I wonder if we'll figure out a way to move past this, as a
| species, and get back to more meaningful interactions.
| mikedouglas wrote:
| He explains earlier in the article that he tries to apply a
| "consumer" lens to all tech purchases, so he can more honestly
| evaluate them.
|
| The point being that he's applying a bunch higher bar than
| someone with his interests and net worth would otherwise apply.
| KLejmooo wrote:
| He wrote "can't justify".
|
| I need to call myself also 'rich' (because of values i hold but
| can't liquify and i earn enough that i could buy more expensive
| toys without thinking too much about it) but this doesn't mean
| my mindset changed.
|
| I have to remind myself that i can afford certain things or i'm
| wasting too much thought about prices of products.
|
| This probably shows a more realistic, less material and proper
| upbringing of Mr Barra than 'not being able to afford it'
| noneeeed wrote:
| Likewise. I could absolutely afford one, but I can't justify
| one.
|
| I'm the same with a smartwatch. I'd like one, but if I got
| one it would need to be cellular so I can leave my phone at
| home most of the time. But I just can't justify the cost for
| the utility I would get.
|
| In some way, this is probably one of the reasons I'm in the
| situation that I can buy these things, because of all the
| other things I have not bought in the past.
| tombert wrote:
| Just an FYI in regards to a smart watch; if you're in the
| US, check your health insurance. Some of them have an offer
| of "if you go to the gym N times, you can have an Apple
| Watch for free or at a discount".
|
| It sort of makes sense; the calorie counting feature on my
| Garmin has actually been really helpful in me losing
| weight, and I think the insurance companies feel like
| nearly anything to help people lose weight is probably
| going to save them money in the long run.
| tombert wrote:
| I'm hardly "rich" but I do alright, but similarly there are
| plenty of toys that I certainly could "afford", but can't
| really justify.
|
| For example, I would really like a real pinball machine, but
| a nice refurbished one or brand new one cost anywhere between
| $3,000 and $10,000. If I wanted, I could save up for a bit
| and buy one, but it's really hard for me to tell myself that
| $5,000 for a toy is "worth it", so I never have.
|
| The most extravagant toy that I've purchased in the last few
| years with the MiSTer, and even that was a little hard to
| justify.
| pookha wrote:
| He's been heading up a small health-care startup since 2020.
| I'd be surprised if he was swimming in cash and liquidity (like
| he's used too). Companies can no longer write off R&D for the
| year that they've spent it. Countries like China have major R&D
| sectors because they allow softare development to be a tax
| write-off. The US killed this in 2022. Maybe he -- like many of
| us -- just can't justify spending money on luxury VR goggles
| given the circumstances.
| zht wrote:
| I have found that many of the affluent engineers that I know
| exhibit this sort of... line of thinking. this how should I
| say, false frugality, that at the end of the day doesn't really
| move the needle much (since they're making 200-300+K TC
| minimum) but makes them feel good
|
| people who will, instead of directly using their subsidized
| subsidized clipper card benefits, will load their clipper card
| with credit cards for the 2% cash back, and then manually
| submit an expense, creating an operational burden for their
| company finance team so that they personally can read the
| benefits of... $25 a year in cash back
|
| people who will take UberPool/Lyft Line to save 4-5 dollars for
| their commute home at the expense of an extra 20/30 minutes
| instead of either a) just taking public transit or b) taking a
| regular uber
|
| people who will buy take out containers and bring them to work
| to take company-provided catered food so that they can save $20
| a day
|
| people who will use credit cards to buy gift cards at grocery
| stores for 5% cash back (obviously if you buy a $1000 gift card
| for $50 cash back, that's great but you run the risk of either
| losing the card/and thus losing cash/losing the credit card
| purchase/price matching benefits/etc etc)
|
| all in all I think regardless of income/net worth sometimes
| it's not about the money. they can afford it. but it just feels
| _good_ to save a little bit of money relative to your net worth
| way more than the actual financial impact
| the-rc wrote:
| Those all pale compared to Buffett taking Gates to McDonald's
| while they were in Hong Kong. And paying with coupons.
| blitzar wrote:
| He flew him there on a private jet for the meal, it was a
| $500,000 trip to mcdonald's.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| Rich, literally headed Oculus at Meta, extremely relevant to
| his career and interests, spends many hours writing at least
| one article about the device. But no, can't justify the
| purchase. If this guy can't justify the purchase who can??
| jrmg wrote:
| I balked at this too - more because the idea of returning
| something I bought that arrived in perfect condition, after
| I've given it a fair amount of use, just because I decide I
| don't like it never occurs to me. It feels vaguely entitled and
| unethical. In my head, you can't return things you've used!
|
| In this situation I'd either keep it and use it infrequently
| (or maybe it'd grow on me), or perhaps sell it.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's a legitimate form of "try before you buy" for online
| purchases. Even when buying in-store where you can try it
| before purchase, the demo is rather limited in time and
| exploration freedom to really make an informed decision.
| Companies like Apple know that their lenient return policy is
| worth the extra purchases it generates.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I like my Oculus Rift. But the software is so bad. It is
| confusing, after a month not using it, I don't know where each
| setting is. Sometimes I misconfigure, and there is no easy way to
| reset it and move everything into view again. Hardware is fine
| for my needs (playing Alyx), but the software looks like somthing
| bought from seven sources and glued together.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Is there something inherently difficult or novel about VR
| operating software that would make it difficult to design or
| implement controls? I can understand tracking hands is
| difficult, but I mean the problems you have.
|
| It seems crazy that after investing so much in the 'hard part',
| the VR hardware and software itself, they'd drop the ball on
| what seems mundane - basic design of UI controls.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| No I don't think so. They just miss the Apple attitude of UI.
|
| It's like the Windows setting system. I'm using Win11/WSL,
| and while it works, the Windows settings are a mixture of
| Win95/Aero/3rd Party Plugins (Nvidia)/Win11 and some things
| that just look like Win3.1.
|
| Googling to change DNS settings: Step 1: Open
| the Control Panel. ... Step 2: Open Network and Sharing
| Center. ... Step 3: Choose the connection. ...
| Step 4: Change adapter settings. ... Step 5: Choose
| Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) ... Step 6:
| Click on Properties. ...
|
| So I don't think it has anything to do with VR
| vel0city wrote:
| This is old Windows. On Win11:
|
| Settings
|
| Network and Internet
|
| Choose either your wifi or Ethernet
|
| Click Edit next to DNS Server Assignment
| thfuran wrote:
| Have they finally unfucked the settings and brought them
| all into a consistent ui, or have they just moved that
| particular one to yet another new layer?
| mavamaarten wrote:
| It's definitely not all there yet. When fumbling with
| sound devices, the first thing I do is try to find the
| old menu which is luckily still there.
| jorvi wrote:
| Yep. Microsoft has taken a lot of effort in the last two
| years to empty out Control Panel and get everything into
| Settings, along with unifying everything into the Win11
| Fluent (or whatever it is called these days) style.
|
| To be honest, in a lot of cases when you need "Advanced $
| Settings" it still kicks you into the old Control Panel-
| style pop-up windows, but at least it's almost all in one
| place now.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Let's not give them credit for having two subsystems
| called 'control panel' and 'settings'. That it happened
| even once is an embarassment, and I think they started
| that with Windows 8.
| int_19h wrote:
| That is indeed when it is started, but that's the one and
| only time - it's just that this transition is _still
| ongoing_ , after 11 years. By now everything that a
| casual user might need is in the "new" settings, and much
| of the advanced stuff is as well, but it's not complete.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It's a new UI paradigm, not just a new UI toolkit or
| something like that. I think those are quite difficult, I can
| only think of like 4 in the computer space: text & terminals,
| windows mouse and keyboard, menu driven (consoles & cable
| boxes), and smartphone.
|
| We don't come up with totally new ways to interact with our
| computers often. And Facebook has never stood out for their
| UI brilliance.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's gone through so much reshuffling and clearly been kicked
| around internally between managers/PMs.
|
| The earlier versions were much easier to use and the later ones
| can become quite a nightmare to setup navigating the
| oculus/meta/facebook account silliness then ultimately it all
| feels a lot jankier than very early versions of the software
| both in Rift and Quest respectively.
|
| Think if Zuck believes in this going forwards it would be wise
| to focus on removing some of this platform bureaucracy
| friction, took me 15-20 minutes to get my Quest up and running
| and logged in after not using it for 18 months.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah it's wildly, embarrassingly bad - to such a point it
| feels like Zuck must not be using it. Maybe most of his
| attention is on the AI stuff and the Ray Bans?
|
| There's a ton of half-baked old ideas in the UI, it's
| extremely confusing. Even basic stuff like trying to add my
| dad as a friend is super hard to do.
|
| Literally every person I've helped set it up has also had to
| do a full manual restore (holding down hardware buttons to
| reset from a boot menu) because they app fails to connect
| during initial setup or there's some bug with adding payment.
|
| Someone really needs to go into that team and rip lots of
| stuff out.
|
| Their touch controllers and basic UI navigation are good
| though.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Attaching a computer-tethered VR display _should_ be as
| much of a non-event as plugging in a monitor. The Rift's
| software experience is so unnecessarily sad.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It would also be nice if a company as big as Meta could
| invest enough to make the Mac experience not literally
| "go and buy a different machine."
| veidr wrote:
| Did Mark Zuckerberg _ever_ actually use it? I felt like it
| got shitty after John Carmack left FB. I don 't think he
| was direct in the UI side much (more like increasing
| framerate in software updates) but I got the sense that as
| VR CTO or whatever he was able to say "Hey -- what, come
| on, fuck that shit get rid of it" but now there is nobody
| to do that job.
| esafak wrote:
| I hope he said it just like that!!
| ramboldio wrote:
| > The Apple Vision Pro is the Northstar the VR industry needed,
| whether we admit it or not
|
| I think that sums it up pretty well. More companies should launch
| products like that!
| theodric wrote:
| Incomplete, with a poor launch app ecosystem, dependent on
| owning another of the company's devices to scan your head to
| get a rather variable quality of mask fit, and when that phone
| guesses wrong it costs the customer a further $300 for a second
| guess? As long as the fans keep paying, I suppose you're right.
| dylan604 wrote:
| you just described the first iPod, iPhone, and iPad. they
| _were_ right about them. you could see where they would
| assume the magic would happen again just from hubris.
| ulfw wrote:
| None of them cost even half as much as this thing. What's
| with the endless comparisons with previous Apple products
| that were completely different in a completely different
| market and competitive environment.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| They are being compared because the criticisms are the
| same or very similar.
|
| The iPhone was form over function, no keyboard, no apps,
| and too expensive. You can't even use a stylus with it!
| It doesn't do anything that my phone and ipod don't
| already do better.
|
| The iPad was absolutely roasted for just being a giant
| expensive iPhone with a dumb name, it doesn't even have
| its own apps. It doesn't do anything that my iPhone can't
| already do.
|
| The iMac was underpowered and overpriced, didn't even
| have a floppy drive, didn't have real connectors just
| something called USB that no one had ever heard of, it
| wasn't compatible with 99% of the software on the market.
| It doesn't do anything that my PC doesn't already do.
|
| We see all these products as unmitigated hits now, but at
| the time they launched, it was still very much up for
| debate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you read the unwritten subtlety of the phrasing, you
| can see I'm not exactly comparing these devices. Instead,
| I'm providing an example of where the company's ego would
| allow them to think that whatever device they do release
| would eventually be a smash hit. I intentionally didn't
| list all of the ways these devices are not the same, as I
| assumed that the audience would be able to put 1+1
| together. I guess I'm yet again reminded of why it is bad
| to assume
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Also, as with the iPhone, etc., they appear to have solved
| the fundamental problems: in this case, screen quality, UI,
| and hopefully presence in the surrounding environment.
|
| From here they hardware will get cheaper, the bugs can be
| worked out, and everything will become more refined.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| It's not though. It has all the problems of previous VR
| headsets. Heavy, digs into your face, gets warm and sweaty,
| field of view is limited.
| whynotminot wrote:
| It has many of the problems, but it also has crucial
| improvements (mostly nails the user interface, vastly better
| pass-through, massively better screens). Did you read the
| article or just immediately come here to drop comments?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The author is also delusional, having pushed Oculus before
| VR was ready for the masses. It wasn't then. It isn't now.
| The technology won't be good enough for a decade.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I don't think anyone is saying the AVP is a mass market
| product, and neither were the early Oculus products.
|
| VR as a category is niche. Apple will expand the public
| consciousness of it, but at $3,500 AVP is also niche.
|
| There's nothing wrong with that. If it takes a decade for
| the tech to be good enough so be it--I'll be glad people
| were innovating and experimenting in the interim to get
| it right, and that the folks willing to sign up as beta
| testers helped push progress forward.
|
| People get mad about this stuff--you don't have to buy
| it! I still haven't and probably won't until it feels
| more ready.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| No matter how much I contemplate about it, there was still no
| "killer" app that affords me to buy a VR set. I've tried them,
| it's nice. But it really has no place in my life. And how could
| this change? Even with better displays etc. the whole idea of
| disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings is
| so strange to me that it seems irreconcilable.
|
| Can anybody relate?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. I have no desire for these. If anything,
| I'm trying to reduce my screen time and increase my access and
| accessibility to the real world. This feels like the exact
| opposite.
| reportgunner wrote:
| The killer app for VR is the novelty of putting it on for the
| first 15 minutes / first 2 hours (depending on if you suffer
| from motion sickness or not) imho. Thiking about it we would
| have VR predecessors in shape of screens attached to our
| forehead if this way of using technology was useful. We don't
| have that though so VR has nothing to replace.
|
| PS: I bought a VR headset to check my bias and I don't use it
| because it's just uncomfortable to wear.
| idontknowifican wrote:
| i felt this way too. i did buy the AVP because of the 14 day
| return policy. i ended up using it four hours a day, which is
| all of my non meeting work time.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Same.
|
| The tech is interesting but I am still waiting for the software
| to show me something that doesn't feel like a gimmick.
| grecy wrote:
| Absolutely, and it's interesting to realize the same was true
| for the first couple of iPhone versions, iPads and Apple Watch.
|
| As long as those apps come, it could be great
| Almondsetat wrote:
| >disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings
|
| which headsets are you referring to? surely not the ones in the
| article since they have very good passthrough
| adastra22 wrote:
| Passthrough will never be good enough so as to get rid of the
| sense of disconnect.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| You seem to speak from experience, which headsets have you
| tried?
| adastra22 wrote:
| It doesn't matter. A perfect form factor like a contact
| lens or sunglasses would have the same issue. It'd
| psychologically be like walking around with a phone
| strapped to your eyeballs. Having screens be localized in
| physical space is a FEATURE.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| I own 2 VR headsets, primarily for gaming. I've had a lot of
| fun with stuff like Beat Saber or Superhot VR, and Half Life
| Alyx is an incredible experience that could only exit with VR.
|
| Despite that, VR is pretty much just a cool toy. Yes there are
| cool and interesting experiences in VR, but there are also a
| lot of limitations, not all of which are technological. I think
| VR will stay around for a while, but I don't see it moving past
| the "cool toy" stage anytime soon.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| The fact that superhot is mentioned so little here tells me
| what i should think of the opinions of these posters. Q3 +
| superhot is an amazing experience. It's fun for social game
| nights and also decent exercise.
|
| AVPro is the best thing to happen to Q3 because the Q3 is
| ready for prime time at a price point people want and,
| despite metas reputation, with an open enough platform to
| support general computing. If you aren't a gamer or aren't
| consuming 3d content, yeah VR isn't for you. But otherwise,
| yeah it's a pretty cool experience for the price.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm going to relate in a different way / non VR user way:
|
| Once in a while I want to get into VR, but understanding all
| the options and etc makes my head spin and I quit on it, go
| back to other hobbies. Much of the discussion online, news
| stories (with any detail) and etc is all very "already knows
| the VR lay of the land / knee deep in it". It makes it
| difficult to understand / get the lay of the land. I'm almost
| burnt out just thinking about looking into it again.
|
| Now if Apple provided a more affordable route in in the future,
| I know my consistent user experence with Apple would make that
| choice potentially a lot easier.
| jsheard wrote:
| I'm open to the idea of VR gaming but the industry just can't
| seem to break out of the chicken-and-egg problem of hardly any
| content being made, because hardly anyone has the hardware,
| because there's hardly any content. Even with Meta and Sony
| throwing money around for exclusives their libraries are
| barren, and PC VR is even worse since Valve isn't interested in
| subsidising game development beyond their one big first party
| title. It's been this way for years with little change and it
| stands to get even worse when Meta finally gets tired of losing
| billions of dollars each year to keep Reality Labs afloat.
|
| Apples current approach to VR doesn't seem like it's going to
| help the gaming situation much either, since they opted to rely
| entirely on hand tracking which is much less accurate and
| capable than the standard-ish controllers used on every other
| VR platform. Releasing a game on Apple Vision opens up more
| potential buyers, but comes at the cost of having to
| accommodate a very limited lowest common denominator input
| method.
| paxys wrote:
| Same. Every time I try a VR headset (starting from the Oculus
| Rift dev kit back in the day with that rollercoaster and other
| demos) I am blown away by the experience, but then I take it
| off and never think about it again. VR/AR simply isn't
| something that is missing from my life, and a decade+ later the
| software still hasn't made the case for itself.
| whiterknight wrote:
| I think it's partly generational. We don't see as much value
| because traditional computers are familiar and get the job done
| for us
|
| But younger people won't have the same attachment. Young people
| already use mobile phones for things we would never do outside
| of a desktop. There is no question that the range of
| experiences you can have in AR/VR.
| rauljordan2020 wrote:
| I found the killer app for me with AVP: working. I have my
| screens in front of me while I'm in front a roller-standing
| desk with really nice passthrough being able to see my garden
| outside. Everything looks crisp and the music quality is
| excellent
| _justinfunk wrote:
| What kind of work do you do?
| rauljordan2020 wrote:
| Software eng. It's been amazing to have my terminal, IDE ,
| github in Safari on one side, apple music in the back, news
| tickers above the screen, and being able to resize, bring
| them anywhere with me
| _justinfunk wrote:
| Thanks.... I was hoping you'd say something that wasn't
| going to tempt me further.
| divan wrote:
| I'm not a gamer, but I found shooter games in VR to be
| extremely cool for procrastination. I can play Contractors for
| hours.
|
| Last winter I had limited opportunities to excercise, so I
| tried FitXR and it turned out to be insanely engaging. Reality
| can't give that level of engagement and multisensory feedback.
| I did boxing and HIIT daily, and while I don't like to sweat
| like crazy in my living room, that was extremely positive
| experience that helped me get through the winter.
| jwells89 wrote:
| This is a bit of how I feel about Beat Saber modded with
| community maps.
|
| It's engaging and challenging in a way little else I can do
| at home is, and it's pretty good for getting some movement
| and cardio in to boot. The days I play it's almost always for
| an hour and if it weren't for physical exhaustion I could go
| longer (once when live-streaming my play to and audio
| chatting with a family member, I played for closer to two
| hours straight thanks to having something to distract me from
| my tiredness).
| divan wrote:
| Oh yeah, I listen Prodigy only in Beat Saber now :)
| divan wrote:
| Shooters are less energy demanding though. Even a bit
| disappointingly so. I even used to put gym hand weights so
| my muscles get more work to do while playing (also helps
| with stabilizing the gun, as I don't have gunstock).
|
| Contractors demo:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gjRRoYwPTQ
| compscistd wrote:
| For someone who lives in a very small apartment, my WFH setup
| takes an annoyingly large part of my living space. If I can
| build a comfortable work environment in VR/AR, I can get rid of
| my work desk entirely and keep a strong separation between work
| and my personal life (take headset off and put it + keyboard +
| mouse away in the closet => done with work). I get to even take
| it with me so I could work at any desk (in a hotel room, at my
| parents', etc.)
|
| Even now, I'd love a solution to easily put up and teardown a
| monitor on my dinner table so I can get rid of my desk.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Yeah, the last thing I want is the scurge of Apple, Meta, or
| any other big tech parasite directly on my face.
|
| They are soulless, passionless, sterile companies with only the
| goal of market dominance and investor growth. VR is never going
| to flourish here though I'm sure that won't stop the iSheep
| lapping it up and buying what marketing tells them to, like the
| Apple watch.
| bernds74 wrote:
| Racing sims are the killer app, because depth perception really
| helps with sense of speed, and tight corners on a monitor are
| often outside the field of view and you can't just turn your
| head to look at them.
|
| Even then, it's not something I can do indefinitely. I've
| played GT7 on a friend's PSVR2, and sometimes elevation changes
| in particular tend to mess up the brain for a moment. It's
| somewhat disconcerting. Also, as someone who wears glasses,
| there's just no way to make the headset fit entirely correctly,
| and it tends to slip over time and the view becomes blurry.
|
| Outside of that... control schemes are the major issue for me.
| You can't just blindly walk around in your room without falling
| over things, so movement is highly unnatural in VR unless
| you're in a cockpit. And the various attempts at making the
| player manipulate something with those hand controllers are
| just embarrassingly bad. I think this is one of the reason why
| so many VR games feel like toys you play with once before
| discarding them as a failed experiment.
|
| The only other killer app are pinball simulations. It's
| surprising how much depth perception can make it so much
| clearer what the ball is doing, and the downsides of VR don't
| matter because you're stationary and only need two buttons.
|
| I like racing sims, so I was interested in VR in the early
| days, but after experiencing it, I decided for now that I just
| don't want the associated hassle.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| No offense, but I think you either don't understand how niche
| racing sims are or don't understand that "killer app" is
| meant to convey an app which justifies the existence of the
| device for a broad segment of the market.
|
| And, if anything, Half Life Alyx remains the killer _gaming_
| app (and it probably isn't either if I'm being honest).
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| While Alyx is definitely up there in the best VR gaming has
| to offer, the real killer app has clearly been Beatsaber
| (hitting both the "gaming" and "workout" use cases). Some
| quick googling suggests that _half of all Quest users_ have
| bought a copy, which is insane.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Ah, indeed I forgot about Beatsaber. You're definitely
| correct there.
| starky wrote:
| Mind that the two racing games I've tried were Redout and
| Trackmania Turbo, which have some more extreme movements like
| loops and high speeds, but being sitting in a VR headset and
| not feeling the accelerations that match your movement is
| just a recipe for motion sickness even if you don't normally
| feel motion sick. Add in the shitty FoV in all current VR
| headsets and I think we are a far way from that being a
| killer app.
|
| For me the only apps that kept any of my interest are rhythm
| games like Beat Saber or Pistol Whip.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > the whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes -
| from my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems
| irreconcilable.
|
| to me, this is the entire point of VR. you want to virtually
| see something other than what your eyes can see in reality. a
| situation where you want to be fully immersed into this other
| space. i totally buy into that.
|
| the confusion of use to me is the AR aspect of it. that's where
| the limitations take center stage. the limited FOV can't be
| ignored in AR. my brain buys into the suspension of disbelief
| for VR, but for AR my brain _knows_ it 's my real world, just
| limited.
| noneeeed wrote:
| In terms of straight VR I'm completely with you. As someone who
| doesn't game they hold no attraction.
|
| The disconnection is also my big issue with VR.
|
| However, as an AR platform, whether it's pass-through or some
| future passive system, I can see a time when I might get one. I
| can imagine a significantly better version of the VisionPro
| that replaces my laptop as my "big" computing device.
|
| I think the form factor _is_ the feature. In the same way that
| my tablet doesn 't do anything my laptop can't do, but it's
| form factor makes it useable in different scenarios. I know
| people who exclusively use iPad Pros as their all-purpose "big"
| computing device, never touching a laptop.
|
| Before it becomes widespread I can see it being adopted in
| specialist situations, many of the same things that the
| Microsoft AR hardware was never good enough for. Hololens was
| amazing to experience, but no where near amazing enough to
| actually be that useful. Passthrough AR like the VisionPro
| might actually manage it.
|
| I don't think it will become something everyone has, but it
| will fill a slot in the mix of technology for some people,
| along with smart-watches, phones, tablets, laptops and
| desktops. Each appeals to different people.
|
| Now, whether the technology ever quite gets there is the big
| question for me. I think a lot has to improve in the hardware
| if they can ever make it something I would want to use on a
| daily basis.
| klenwell wrote:
| I think the killer app will be online meetings. Online
| socializing really.
|
| I work fully remote and Zoom/Meet works fine for meetings. But
| I kinda dread things like team happy hour and find you have to
| keep them structured like a meeting to work with group video
| calls.
|
| Visuals aren't even the key factor here. It's audio. I find the
| obstacle to casual socializing is not being able to
| directionally focus audio so overlapping conversations are
| possible.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from
| my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems
| irreconcilable.
|
| FWIW Apple's fundamental concept is to address that very
| problem - to not disconnect your eyes from your surroundings;
| they work very hard so that you can see your surroundings and
| that others can see your eyes, and so that their apps tend into
| integrate your surroundings.
|
| (The article talks about it, and the author thinks they are
| shortchanging VR.)
|
| > Can anybody relate?
|
| The way I personally relate is the old, seemingly fundamental
| human instinct I have that shows up especially when new tech is
| incompatible with my existing life. It forces change if I adopt
| it, which I don't appreciate, and worse I might be compelled to
| change if it becomes a normal part of life - if it's necessary
| competitively or to sufficiently fit into society (e.g.,
| smartphones).
|
| So it's the old story: First I laugh at it (we seem past that
| for VR); second I say it conflicts with the orthodoxy (my
| established life, in this case); and third, someday, I'll say I
| knew it all along. :)
|
| I'm kinda in the second stage, and maybe you are too? As a
| technologist - that is, as someone whose job is to evaluate and
| adapt new technologies - I can't afford to indulge that 3-step
| cycle or I will be giving people advice based on those
| instincts (1. 'that's ridiculous/vaporware/useless, don't worry
| about it', 2. 'it's not compatible/applicable for your
| business', 3. 'it's what everyone is doing!') and fail to be
| ahead of the curve. Plus, those instincts limit me as a person.
| So I've needed to learn to recognize that cycle and not act on
| it, but to evaluate new tech on its own merits.
|
| That turns out to be hard even after lots of practice - it's
| hard to ignore all the instinct and the constant signals from
| everyone else, and think for yourself. We're social animals. So
| it's hard to imagine the killer, high value apps until they are
| out there, until everyone else signals their value. But some
| that stand out as possibilities to me:
|
| - AR: Data and metadata on things in the world around me. It
| seems especially good for work with physical objects: Showing
| me their specs, diagrams of how they should look, alternate
| perspectives. Imagine working on your car with AR.
|
| - 3-D VR work rooms: A room with all of your electronic
| documents, videos, applications, etc. for a project. Also you
| can have virtual objects - the live control panel from the
| router, copies of the physical object you are designing, etc.
| The room can be as large as you want. It seems especially great
| for teams, where people can bring in documents and objects to
| share and work on together with everyone else. This seems so
| much better than current collaboration.
|
| - Presence at things like sporting events: Seats right on the
| sideline or even views from the field itself: Watch Messi's
| dribbling and goal form the goalie's perspective. Watch the
| pitch from the batter's perspective (or the referee's, for
| those controversial calls). Also for theater, etc.
|
| - 3-D, immersive films and games, of course. Art seems to have
| great potential, but will need some time to develop, as artists
| learn the nuances of the medium (and as only games get
| funding).
| sunflowerfly wrote:
| I believe he nailed it with the live sports argument.if Apple
| can get that going people will buy it for that alone.
|
| I have personally wanted VR for flight sims. It is jarring to
| have a screen full of instruments or looking out the window,
| but difficult to do both without a crazy physical setup that I
| do not want in my office. VR solves this by simply moving your
| head, the same as pilots do in real life.
| BryantD wrote:
| Live sports is potentially huge. I am sure companies like
| Second Spectrum are thinking about how to use their player
| tracking tech plus traditional video coverage to provide a
| real time PoV shot from anywhere on the court/field.
| ecoquant wrote:
| I made a pointless cube with a square in VRML a long time ago
| and VR is ultimately going to be the biggest tech
| disappointment of my life.
|
| The killer app is what I have when I get lucid inside a dream.
| To only cover vision is missing so much. I can remember being
| in a war in a plane and getting shot down in a dream. The
| decent felt unbelievable. That is the killer app for me. That
| had nothing to do with vision.
| chaostheory wrote:
| I used it to workout. It's much less boring and repetitive than
| doing normal cardio
| rswail wrote:
| There's no consideration of the other "killer app" for VR/AR,
| porn.
|
| Porn is what got VHS to succeed over Beta. Porn is what got CC
| payments working online. Porn drives a lot of Twitch and other
| platforms.
|
| Apple won't allow porn on its platform, but someone will.
| duped wrote:
| The first is a joke from Tropic Thunder, the second isn't true,
| but the third is accurate.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| I'm not really disputing your broader point, but this:
|
| > Porn is what got VHS to succeed over Beta.
|
| Is just not true. For one, porn absolutely existed on Beta. But
| more broadly, by the time the content available on each format
| mattered, VHS had already won the format war.
|
| That's because both Beta and VHS were primarily developed and
| marketed as a way to record TV to watch later. Tapes were way
| too expensive to make selling pre-recorded tapes viable when
| both systems launched. Pre-recorded tapes eventually did become
| popular, especially in the rental market. But that only
| happened well after VHS clearly won the format war, mostly due
| to VHS's longer recording time.
|
| For more details, Technology Connections has a long rant about
| this misconception in this video:
| https://youtu.be/hGVVAQVdEOs?si=X-FYCRAzowXOdqBb&t=931
| MarkSweep wrote:
| The Meta Quest already has porn, at least in Japan:
|
| https://www.meta.com/experiences/1990852827683397/
| 93po wrote:
| I found a single VR porn website that worked with the AVP. It
| was super finicky (around 30 seconds to load a page and
| actually get it playing, involving 6 button presses). Also was
| a paid website.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| VR porn is a neat gimmick.
|
| It's not that immersive because you either get a video that you
| can't interact with where you get to play the part of dead fish
| wearing a camera rig, or it's absolutely insanely bad 3D models
| that will only ever get deeper into the uncanny valley. The
| videos are also terrible quality because making VR porn is
| expensive, and if you prefer somewhat amateur content, you are
| completely out of luck, because couples moonlighting porn
| aren't buying those camera rigs.
|
| I have shown VR porn to many people. They go "woah". I tell
| them they can have a similar experience literally on their
| phone with a normal $30 phone holder "headset", none of them
| buy the headset. None of them even try it ever again.
|
| Very very few whales are optimizing their porn experience. The
| vast majority of human beings simply scroll through pornhub for
| 12 minutes and watch half of two videos and then continue their
| lives.
|
| "Immersiveness" is not a strict benefit for everything.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot on.
| It's also a beta product in many way.
|
| Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product, they
| have made no attempt to make it even remotely affordable to most
| people. But they also know that every aspect of the hardware will
| improve over the next decade, and as it does they will have
| ironed out many of the problems with how we use AR/VR and will be
| ready for it, based on the real life experiences of actual
| owners, rather than years of in-house testing.
|
| The screen will get bigger (I hear FoV is pretty poor at the
| moment), the CPU/power/thermal performance will improve, battery
| density goes up, cameras and sensors get better and cheaper and
| many parts will get smaller/lighter. And in that time they will
| learn by doing, making it better/cheaper/lighter and working on
| the software and interaction model.
|
| Hopefully at the same time it will really spur on the rest of the
| industry and we will see more competition and experimentation.
|
| I can't see myself buying something like this for the next 10
| years at least. But something like the VPro that is better,
| smaller and lighter and doesn't cost the earth could be quite
| tempting for late adopters like me.
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| Hopefully you're right, but the cynic in me thinks we've been
| saying the same thing about every VR headset that has come out
| in the last ten years.
| 65 wrote:
| I'll only buy a VR device if it's in the form of glasses, not
| big goggles I need to strap to my face.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| glasses won't take over your entire fov though so it suck
| for VR. maybe better for AR
| someguydave wrote:
| Yeah but glasses are probably fine for the display
| replacement market
| int_19h wrote:
| If all you want is display replacement, you don't even
| need VR with head tracking.
| lolinder wrote:
| There's nothing that says that a pair of glasses can't
| have panels on the sides and top to provide full coverage
| [0]. The main obstacle is miniaturizing the necessary
| compute and display technology.
|
| [0] A random example: https://www.amazon.com/Vision-
| Driving-Around-Sunglasses-Pola...
| hedora wrote:
| My main concern with the vision pro is that all use cases I
| know of (other than gaming) work better with some sort of
| pass through HUD display like the HoloLens.
|
| They spent a ton of company resources, weight and power
| making the wrong form factor emulate the right form factor,
| and are shipping with zero killer apps.
|
| You can't even let your friends play with it without
| getting it re-fit to their head at the Apple Store, which
| basically kills social/word of mouth marketing. It
| certainly isn't a fashion item / status symbol to be seen
| in public like all their other stuff.
|
| Maybe the "real" product is sitting in the wings and will
| be ready to ship in a few years, but the current form
| factor seems like a non-starter to me.
| basch wrote:
| But their work on the software side transfers seamlessly
| to a pass through device later. It still serves its
| purpose as a beta (beta meaning data collection and
| improvement process, not its modern "we just don't
| support this" definition.
| outworlder wrote:
| > and are shipping with zero killer apps.
|
| That's ok. That's exactly why they released the 'pro'
| first.
| lolinder wrote:
| "Pro" is a misnomer here, though. "Pro" normally means
| "with extra features for professionals", where here it
| means "it's more of a dev kit than it is an actual
| product".
| j2bax wrote:
| My opinion, and its very naive because I've only really
| tried the Vision Pro for this type of content, but
| immersive video is the current killer app for the Vision
| Pro. Sitting in the studio with Alicia Keys warming up
| for her tour was almost equal parts uncomfortable and
| amazing.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The main use case Apple presented, productivity, works
| much better with an opaque screen, not pass-through.
| There's a reason we don't make transparent screens, nor
| transparent windows on our screens: text and images are
| much easier to read if they are opaque.
| parasubvert wrote:
| Translucent terminals are a very commonly used feature?
| Just saying, I've used them on Linux and Mac for 30 years
| astrange wrote:
| If you want glasses the friend problem would be even more
| complicated, not least because of US regulations on
| selling prescription lenses.
| the_duke wrote:
| There were lots of rumors that Apple was working on both
| AR glasses and VR goggles, but had to focus on the latter
| because the tech just isn't there to do glasses right.
| mettamage wrote:
| First Oculus headset versus Quest 3 right now? Quest 3 wins.
| There's progress. Perhaps not as fast as we'd want. There is
| progress though. I suspect that progress will continue.
| int_19h wrote:
| Even Quest 1 vs Quest 3 has very visible improvements in
| terms of image quality, FOV, and overall comfort.
| mettamage wrote:
| I went from Quest 2 to Quest 3. Even just that! Having a
| pass through at all is near revolutionary for my use
| cases
| gpm wrote:
| The cynic in you is overly cynical.
|
| Ten years ago was pre oculus rift. We weren't saying anything
| about VR headsets.
|
| Five years ago was pre valve index. We didn't have CPUs in a
| headset. Nor a battery. Cameras were only used for tracking.
| The things we were saying would improve is "screen door
| effect" and "tracking", both of which have.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| The optical pathway is pretty much locked in. LEEP was
| invented in the 80s, and that's still the optical system
| used today. Compare the size to NASA's VR system from the
| early 90s.
| https://images.nasa.gov/details/ARC-1992-AC89-0437-6
|
| It's been 30 years of massive improvements to all of the
| rest of computers, and VR has only shrunk a couple inches.
| There's not much else we can do to make it smaller.
| outworlder wrote:
| I am looking at that picture and to me it definitely
| looks like way more than a couple of inches.
| veidr wrote:
| lol, indeed, that is the full monty
| serf wrote:
| it's not much different in size than a vision pro or
| quest 3, it's just kinda un-wieldly.
|
| the photo of it sitting in a display case gives a decent
| sense of scale, I think.
|
| http://briteliteimmersive.com/blog/remembering-nasas-
| view-vr
| ok_dad wrote:
| Look at the bigscreen vr headset!
| rightbyte wrote:
| Maybe it doesn't feel like you are staring at your nose
| as much in NASA's 92 head set?
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| There's an insane amount of tech in the Vision Pro.
| Eyesight probably occupies a big chunk. Then there are
| more sensors than they need. Also the CPU and 100%
| processing is happening literally strapped to your face.
|
| This is like having two 5k displays powered by a mobile
| device*.
|
| * 2 x 5k = 28 million pixels, compared to Vision Pro's 23
| million pixels.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| This is like comparing an oscilloscope to the iPhone 15
| because they both have a screen.
| dmix wrote:
| I'm still amazed Quest 2 was affordable as it was vs the
| entertainment I got out of it. Heavily with the novelty of
| being my first VR device.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Didn't Microsoft's hololens first launch around 10 years
| ago? It was AR rather than VR, but it was absolutely
| pitched as an early product meant for very specific use
| cases to act as a proof of concept before consumer
| versions.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I personally used a HoloLens for a few minutes and it had
| severe problems with field of view and brightness of the
| display. AR works for enterprise or the military to train
| people or present information at least the US military
| for the HoloLens [1]. Google finally axed the Glass
| Enterprise project in 2023 which was much longer than the
| original version.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/13/23871859/us-army-
| microsof... [2] https://support.google.com/glass-
| enterprise/customer/answer/...
| _heimdall wrote:
| Google Glass was pretty slick honestly, ahead of its
| time.
|
| I had a friend that worked on the team for a couple years
| when it first started. The use case of a headsup display
| for directions while driving was a great experience.
| al_borland wrote:
| I had a friend get Google Glass. I tried in on for a few
| minutes and was pretty disappointed. It was a tiny
| Android window stuck in the upper right of my FOV.
| Looking at the hardware, I guess it makes sense, but it's
| not what the marketing seemed to be selling, and I
| expected a more custom UI that would get out of the way,
| rather than what looked like a tiny phone screen.
|
| It wasn't mine, so maybe there was more to it that I
| didn't get from my brief interaction, but it didn't leave
| me wanting more.
| elwell wrote:
| I like your username.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Yeah the UX definitely wasn't immersive. I liked the idea
| of a heads up display and have never really wanted a full
| display experience, Glass would have fit really well for
| me.
|
| These days I don't even want that, but that's almost
| certainly of a combination of getting older and over
| reacting to how pervasive tech and displays have become.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I loved my Google Glass.
|
| See, for example:
|
| https://youtu.be/gAkfPhlvSn8?si=fSObULo52MAvcBoR
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Imo headsets will be long obsolete before they are viable
| and will be replaced with something else entirely.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Ten years ago was pre oculus rift.
|
| The Rift DK1 is almost exactly 11 years old, released
| 3/29/13.
| gpm wrote:
| Oops, you're right.
|
| The list on wikipedia [1] doesn't include it, I guess
| because it was a "development kit", and I just naively
| assumed the "Oculus Rift" was the DK1 not the CV1.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_reality
| _headse...
|
| Edit: Went ahead and edited the wikipedia page so the
| next person won't make the same mistake.
| giobox wrote:
| > Ten years ago was pre oculus rift. We weren't saying
| anything about VR headsets.
|
| Rift DK1 was released in ~2013, and lots of gamers bought
| it throughout 2014. We got the first "consumer release" for
| the original Rift in 2016. I think its more than fair to
| say 10 years - we were absolutely talking a lot about Rift
| DK1 in 2014.
|
| > Five years ago was pre valve index
|
| Valve's first consumer VR headset was the HTC vive,
| released in 2016:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Vive
|
| "The first-generation Vive was announced in 2015, as part
| of a collaboration with video game studio and distributor
| Valve Corporation, and implementing its VR software and
| hardware platform SteamVR; the first-generation consumer
| model was released in April 2016."
| eclipxe wrote:
| I don't get your second bullet. The Vive is not the
| Index.
| giobox wrote:
| It demonstrates Valve have been at this longer than the
| ~5 years of the Index, and closer to a decade again (the
| point OP disputes and uses Index as evidence of).
| andthenwhat wrote:
| not OP but it does seem like you're nitpicking details
| instead of engaging with what seems to be the intent of
| the response: AR/VR has come an incredible distance since
| DK1, the last 10 years have seen it go from a barely-
| discussed completely unavailable/fringe dev-kit-only
| technology to being an clearly viable spectrum of mass-
| market products.
|
| edited: grammar. still feel like I've failed to produce
| readable english, but I'm giving up
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is wrong. VR =/= AR
|
| I've been in AR since 2010
|
| The AVP is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were
| collectively technically back then
|
| But I don't see us appreciably closer to the goal of
| ubiquitous persistent headworn see through visual computing
|
| It's a social expectations and data problem it's not a
| "technical" problem
|
| It's probably gonna be decades before we see any
| regularized mainstream adoption, because the form factor is
| such a different thing that we're not even close to make it
| a simple transition for the least savvy consumer
| goatlover wrote:
| There's been talk about VR and some kind of headset since
| the late 90s, even if it was cardboard, or some computer
| science professor wearing large goggles and backpack around
| campus. Google Glass came out in 2013.
| cheschire wrote:
| Heck, nintendo even tried marketing a stereoscopic
| gameboy headset as virtual reality in '95.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy
| joenot443 wrote:
| There were a lot of tablets before the iPad but it wasn't
| until the iPad that tablets really took off as a serious
| market segment. Ditto with AirPods and Bluetooth earbuds.
|
| In the past, once Apple started pouring R&D money into a
| specific product type, the entire industry around it tends to
| advance very quickly. I'm optimistic about the Vision Pro,
| and I actually think the n+2 Meta release will be much better
| off for it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do
| this, over and over? Why are they the only ones who seem to
| be able to knock a product category out of the park and
| legitimize it? Is it just the vast amount of money? Are
| they the only ones who can create products? Is everyone
| else that bad? Competitors work for ages and ages fighting
| each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then
| suddenly Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the
| whole industry scrambles. Why does this keep happening?
| noneeeed wrote:
| They seem prepared to go in at higher price points.
|
| Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of
| getting as many features on the side of the box and then
| compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of
| everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing.
|
| I often maintain that so much technology is 80% of the
| way to being amazing, but is stymied by commercial
| concerns that cause companies to cut corners and cheap
| out, or they hobble their own product to create barriers
| to interoperability.
|
| While Apple still have to strike the right balance
| between between features and cost, and also like to make
| their own walled gardens, they are able to go for the
| higher price points, and also integrate really well
| between a wide swathe of products. They are prepared to
| let specific products be less competative in general (e.g
| Homepod), because they know that they integrate well into
| their overall ecosystem.
| fouc wrote:
| Yes, "stymied by commercial concerns" is a great way to
| put it. I get the feeling that many companies/managers
| don't have enough courage to make a different set of
| tradeoffs.
| ryandrake wrote:
| A lot of the replies are pretty vague, like they're just
| "good at product" or they just "understand this or that"
| as if it's some kind of mysticism. But why, and how? What
| is the formula? I think this reply chain starts to get at
| why.
|
| I'm imagining a typical business school 2-axis chart
| where one axis is "willingness to take and commit to
| risks vs unwillingness/noncommittal" and the other axis
| is "acts independently vs. reacts to
| commercial/competitive pressures". I guess what I want to
| understand is why is Apple kind of all alone on that
| plot, where the rest of the industry are clustered
| together far away from them? What are the business
| processes that lead to their position? Can a company
| follow a playbook and change their culture and have
| similar results? Are there other examples?
|
| A lot of our industry are so extremely risk averse, have
| tunnel vision trying to copy each others' feature
| checkboxes, rush things to market to try to make money
| before they are fully baked, and then give up when they
| aren't instant successes. Everyone seems to follow this
| playbook.
| skydhash wrote:
| As someone who is deep inside the Apple ecosystem after
| making enough to afford the devices, it's because they
| make it pleasant to use. Before my first MBP, I had a
| Dell Inspiron which has good specs, but it was heavy, the
| plastic was flimsy and the screen was not good. The
| trackpad was abysimal. In my last work position, I got a
| Dell XPS and it was the same, so in the span of 8 years,
| nothing changes to show that they care for me as a user.
|
| Most people don't want to think about how to do something
| or care about optimizing it when they can get it done and
| not think further about it. But companies seems to want
| to put a lot of barriers into what I want to get done,
| like popups, complicated screens, ugly interfaces. For
| the majority of user workflows, Apple offers a simple,
| unobstrusive way to do them. Starlink routers are almost
| the same in that regard (the mobile app could use some
| work, and perhaps add a desktop interface)
|
| My advice (as a user) is for to simplify the usual
| workflow to the point you only ask the few (0,1-3)
| indispensable questions, and then get out of the way.
| Further options can be buried inside Preferences and
| Settings. And then you perfect the apperance, ease of
| use, and general enjoyment of using the
| application/device.
| whstl wrote:
| Being pleasant to use also requires some courage to
| remove features, make compromises and spend extra time on
| the right things, rather than box-ticking.
|
| In the end you need courage both to make it pleasant to
| use and to give it a big price.
| WWLink wrote:
| Apple makes devices for the users. Dell makes them to
| sell as part of a service contract to a company.
| Microsoft makes an OS to sell to enterprises to provide a
| heavily managed experience for their employees so they
| can maximize productivity and profit. Apple makes an OS
| for people to use. (and get a 30% cut on almost every
| purchase the users make with it lol)
| jimbokun wrote:
| My personal machine is an M1 Air, and have to use PCs for
| work. The time it takes the PCs to wake from sleep until
| I can do actual work is a constant annoyance. The MacBook
| Air wakes just as quickly as an iPhone.
|
| It's details like that, which set Apple apart.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| There's a Jobs story about that one.
|
| The MacBook team had this whole presentation planned for
| him, a usual dog and pony show about better specs and
| batteries and whatnot. Instead he just put an iPhone and
| a MacBook on the table, "woke" them both up, and said
| "why can't this (the MacBook) do that (the iPhone)?" End
| of meeting.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Apple has in house expertise for everything from
| designing their own processors, writing their own OS and
| applications, world class designers, manufacturing at
| scale, and sourcing parts and negotiating favorable
| pricing.
|
| No other company has all these competencies at the same
| level.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I think they view design, especially of new products, as
| an intensely iterative process to identify and solve
| every problem they can find. And let that process lead
| them to a new very cohesive product definition.
|
| That takes a very wide set of skills, to follow the
| series of discovered problems to be solved wherever they
| lead.
|
| Other companies look at what parts are available, define
| a product from that, design have different teams build
| the different parts, each maximizing specs and reducing
| cost.
|
| For the vast majority of already well defined products,
| the second path is the right one.
|
| So that path is very familiar to every level of
| management at every corporation, and doing something
| completely different from the ground up isn't easy or
| natural in that context.
|
| For Apple, the other holistic discovery path is their
| mission.
|
| Even "big" differences like being super vertical are a
| second level strategy for Apple, in service of being able
| to more easily follow problems to product definitions.
|
| But even for Apple, that path is very risky. They have
| had a few half baked lemons in products that didn't get
| as much discovery and attention as they needed.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| You're getting close. Over the past 30-40 years, American
| corporations have focused more and more and more on
| profitability, and "making the numbers go up." They have
| sacrificed employee retention in order to pay executives
| eye-watering packages to focus on eliminating literally
| everything that doesn't contribute to that goal. They
| gutted all the R&D they can, years ago. Apple seems to be
| almost alone in retaining enough business acumen to think
| further out than the next quarter. It's not magic.
| They're just continuing to do what places like IBM and HP
| were famous for, decades ago. It's like the quip in Days
| of Thunder (and I have no idea why it sticks with me):
| "I'm not going faster. Everybody else is going slower."
| Wall Street has killed the future of America, and slowed
| human progress around the globe, in order to buy a bunch
| of already-filthy-rich people even more stuff.
|
| Not that I'm bitter and jaded, as an engineer, or
| anything.
| WWLink wrote:
| TL;DR: Apple builds to a standard while everyone else
| builds to a price.
| manquer wrote:
| Apple can afford to build to standards, It is not like
| everyone else is dumb , they simply cannot pull it off
| the brand strength Apple has is without peer in the
| market.
|
| If another brand launched first at same price points they
| simply will not get the traction Apple does.
|
| Even with $3,500 price Apple likely needs sales hundreds
| of thousands of units to break even , no other
| manufacturers cannot pull it off
| halostatue wrote:
| I think there are a lot of smaller companies that can
| build to standards, and then they either exceed their
| original vision or things explode to the point where they
| feel they need to move faster.
|
| I _love_ my Apple Watch (on my second one now) and I didn
| 't like wearing watches. Except the Pebble that I bought
| (I _think_ that I got the first generation Pebble colour,
| but it 's been a while). After that product, things went
| sideways for Pebble for a lot of reasons. But the initial
| products were great and the build quality was good (not
| great, but good). The same applies to the first few
| generations of the Palm Pilot (and to a lesser degree,
| the Treo), although I think that the _best_ PalmOS device
| built was the Clie NX70.
|
| With respect to Apple's break even...I suspect that the
| research they did is going to produce benefits across
| _all_ of Apple 's product lines for the better part of
| the next decade (part of it already has, with the Apple
| Watch Double Tap hand gesture, although that is movement
| detection not camera-based).
| manquer wrote:
| > to the point where they feel they need to move faster
|
| They feel the need because unlike Apple others cannot
| wait years to release a product or upgrade to a
| successful one and still sell enough. Everyone else have
| limited brand recall, if they don't move fast a
| competitor will and they loose relevance.
|
| The point is nobody else can _sustainably_ build to
| standards the way Apple can, because Apple can take its
| time enter a industry late and still win big.
| WWLink wrote:
| Ya know the funny thing about Pebble, looking back as
| someone who is on his 3rd apple watch: At the time, I
| honestly thought Pebble was doing it the right way! And
| in hindsight, I still think that at launch, they had the
| perfect idea - for that point in time. Their initial
| success even matches that.
|
| When the tech advanced, and use cases evolved, and users
| had become accustomed to the limitations of the apple
| watch style of smartwatch - which regarding battery life
| STILL HOLD TRUE... once all that was the case, Pebble had
| to deal with the "and now what?" and they couldn't.
| chaostheory wrote:
| > Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of
| getting as many features on the side of the box and then
| compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of
| everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing.
|
| This is a good summary of Windows Mixed Reality headsets,
| or Kinect
| ayewo wrote:
| Steve Jobs is on record that Apple doesn't care about
| being first (to market). They care about being the best.
|
| This is why secrecy is a huge part of their culture: it
| allows them to spend years doing R&D work on multiple
| prototypes until they land on something they think is
| better than what is already out there.
|
| If they can't make it work due to the laws of physics
| (e.g. Apple AirPower) or indecision (e.g. Apple Car),
| they can shut it down without much fanfare and move on to
| the next secret R&D project.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Is it just the vast amount of money?
|
| No, it is the vast amount of risk they are willing to
| take. Microsoft/alphabet have vast amounts of money too,
| but no appetite for risk.
|
| Apple is willing to dump tens of billions and years into
| R&D for physical products, fail, and then try again.
| Microsoft half asses it, and then pulls back instead of
| plowing through (see them shutting down Microsoft retail
| stores and windows phone). But they have that Excel and
| Windows B2B gravy train they can ride for the foreseeable
| future.
| alt227 wrote:
| Please feel free to share what these amazing risk taking
| products are which Apple R&D have come up with.
|
| As far as I can see its all the same thin, flat device
| with a screen, just different sizes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have no interest in convincing anyone else, maybe they
| are only risky according to me.
|
| But I do know they seem to result in net incomes that
| others would seemingly find envious, and yet the others
| are not able to replicate, so the empirical evidence
| doesn't make it seem so easy.
| parasubvert wrote:
| The M series of chips? That was a major risk.
|
| AirPods/pro/max? They've taken major presence a space
| owned by Sony, Samsung and Bose.
|
| Apple Watch Ultra?
|
| Though it's thin and flat, The iPhone X was a huge leap
| in specs, contrary to the entire market analyst sentiment
| that people wanted cheaper phones. Apple made a big bet
| that people would want the opposite: more expensive
| phones, and they were right.
| astrange wrote:
| Microsoft is actually doing great right now, but the
| thing they're doing great at is Azure and cloud services
| like 365, plus some very lucky AI investments.
|
| Shutting down their bad products was a good move, even if
| they should've made good products in the first place.
| alt227 wrote:
| Because they have spent decades building a brand which
| most people see as premium and desirable. Doesnt matter
| what the product is now, if it has an apple logo on it
| the majority of people will want one.
|
| Other companies trying to compete with Apple in any space
| will automatically have this disadvantage that they are
| seen as the inferior choice because Apple have repeatedly
| positioned themselves as the most premium player in the
| market, and so thats just what people expect now.
| skydhash wrote:
| Have you seen the competitors?
|
| OS: Windows is a add-riddled and always ignoring your
| preferences and getting in the way of your work.
|
| Tablet: Android tablet are slow (or soon to be) and not
| much applications designed for them
|
| Laptop: Windows and never a good mix of great components,
| perfomance, and weight.
|
| Phone: Only a few do not add uninstallable junk, and
| these days, they all try to copy the iPhone which is not
| something I want is I'm trying to move away from the
| iPhone.
|
| Speaker System: If I want a homepod alternative, I will
| not be looking to get inside another closed ecosystem.
| And I'd want lifetime support (airplay has been reversed-
| engineered). The last time I used Sonos, it wanted me to
| use its music player or something.
| alt227 wrote:
| All of that is only your opinion, there are no objective
| facts in there at all.
| theshackleford wrote:
| You are both sharing only opinions. What a bizzare
| statement.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Apple aggressively focus on low-volume high-margin
| opportunities, have been doing so for some decades, and
| have a giant war chest to make bets with. In many ways,
| they work like the very very large version of a
| successfully bootstrapped business.
|
| Most of their peers pursue maximum volume in an attempt
| to dominate a market and drown all competition,
| inebitably at much lower margins. It's the continuation
| of the VC launch-or-bust rocketship model most of them
| were born from.
|
| The difference then means that Apple can try making
| something really unique and compelling and call it a
| profitable success based on much much smaller sales
| volume. And if it does happen to launch like a rocketship
| (as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad each did) all the better.
|
| But their peers set a _much_ higher mark for sales volume
| when thinking about what 's a success or failure. If a
| product is only lightly taken up, even if nominally
| profitable at their margins, it's more like a distraction
| or clue rather than a success in itself. So they scavenge
| the project and move on to an alternative market or a
| parallel product idea.
|
| This all sets Apple up to make slow, well-considered bets
| on quality and design coherency instead of strictly
| trying to race to market and outmaneuver everyone for
| volume.
| alt227 wrote:
| Apple have only had 1 successful product, and thats a
| flat device with a screen for media consumption. iPod,
| iPhone, and iPad are just different sizes of this device.
|
| The only thing Apple have done which elevated themselves
| above their peers is have marketing which positioned them
| higher in the market.
|
| Remember those Black and White ads of Steve Jobs next to
| Ghandi, Malcolm X, and Charlie Chaplin? They are paying
| off now in spades.
| swatcoder wrote:
| That interpretation seems pretty out of sync with their
| financial history across divisions, their operating
| margin across divisions, their customer loyalty across
| divisions, and pretty much everyone's experience of the
| world, but maybe you're right.
|
| You may not like their products, and you may think their
| customers are idiots hypnotized by villianous marketers
| or something, but that's kind of the point of it all: by
| targetting high margins and precisely volume instead of
| low margins and maximum volume, they really don't need to
| care what you think. And that lets them approach products
| differently.
| alt227 wrote:
| >You may not like their products, and you may think their
| customers are idiots hypnotized by villianous marketers
| or something.
|
| Thats quite a stretch to assume that opinion from my
| comment?
|
| I actually love Macbook Pros. IMO they are the best
| Laptop ever built. However in the global market of
| laptops they are not patrticularly successful. The
| entiety of the MacOS ecosystem (of which Macbook Pros are
| a small percentage) barely breaks 20% of the market
| share.
|
| Are their products more reliable, more fully featured,
| and objectivley better than their competitiors? No they
| are not. The reason they are regarded as a more premium
| option in the market is not because they make less
| product with more profit margin, its because they have
| had an incredibly clever marketing department for the
| last 20 years meticulously curating their brand presence
| and public perception into being the most premium tech
| company which produces the best products.
| mcphage wrote:
| > The entiety of the MacOS ecosystem (of which Macbook
| Pros are a small percentage) barely breaks 20% of the
| market share.
|
| Market share is the goal, making money is the goal.
| Market share helps, but it isn't the same thing. MacBooks
| do pretty well.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| That's the difference in strategy. Apple only cares about
| profits not about market share. Market share only matters
| when margins are low and you need volume to bring revenue
| numbers up. When your margins are high, you can have a
| much smaller market share but also use that to create a
| more opinionated brand image and drive brand loyalty.
| alt227 wrote:
| Thats fine until your revenue growth stagnates. Its then
| that your shareholders come knocking demanding growth, at
| which point market share becomes incredibly important.
| When that happens, opinionated brand image needs to
| become much more generic brand image to start attracting
| more of the market.
|
| This is what happened with Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, and it
| will happen to Apple too.
| onethought wrote:
| It already happened to Apple in the 90s and Jobs
| explicitly killed it as a strategy and culture in Apple.
|
| I think if they went back to that they've lost a serious
| bit of their DNA.
|
| You mentioned Mac only having a 20% market share. Who has
| the bigger one?
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft were unable to stay innovative.
| All three brands had huge missteps entering emerging
| market categories. Xerox stumbled during the PC
| transition, IBM with commodity servers, and Microsoft
| with mobile. The risk of building a brand is building an
| _inflexible_ brand that doesn 't have the agility to
| change.
|
| It's true that trying to enter every market and own a
| huge market share in it can lead to lower risk of having
| to stay ahead of every innovation (as we can see with
| Google and its inability to productize AI properly) but
| since Apple's turnaround its execution has been top
| notch, and that was 20 years ago. With products like the
| Vision Pro Apple is explicitly trying to avoid losing the
| innovation race that Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft did.
| philistine wrote:
| Do you even realize that Apple owns most of the
| above-1000$ laptop market and makes something like 40% of
| all computer profits because it sells so few computers at
| such a high price?
|
| I'd love to be not successful making a luxury product
| that sells at commodity volume.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > Are their products more reliable, more fully featured,
| and objectivley better than their competitiors? No they
| are not.
|
| This is _your_ personal opinion. My personal opinion, is
| very much the opposite.
|
| > The reason they are regarded as a more premium option
| in the market is not because they make less product with
| more profit margin, its because they have had an
| incredibly clever marketing department for the last 20
| years meticulously curating their brand presence and
| public perception into being the most premium tech
| company which produces the best products.
|
| I've heard this same boring claim now for about 20 years.
| It was wrong as a broad statement twenty years ago, and
| such a statement I would hazard is still wrong now.
|
| I've had a twenty year career in IT. Starting with PC
| repair and working for a PC OEM, however the vast
| majority of my career has been spent in fields involving
| Linux. (Linux Administrator/Systems Engineering/DevOPS
| through to executive leadership). I know how computers
| work, I know how the hardware works, I know the relative
| value of parts that go into things, yes I can, always
| have, and still will build machines including using on a
| regular basis all major operating systems in place today
| and despite all of this, I still remain an Apple customer
| and its not because im some dumbo non technical
| individual tricked by apples fancy marketing voodoo.
|
| It's because for those twenty years Apple has
| consistently conducted themselves in a way with _me_
| personally that for the vast majority of cases, has
| served _me_ best as a user and as their customer. As
| opposed to some third party who is paying them to exploit
| me through their operating system or some mass of adware
| shipped with their operating system, not just this years
| profit margins, not just for as long as im in the store
| and to which afterwards im left alone once ive paid them
| with a "fuck you, got mine."
|
| Just a few of the events of the past twenty years that
| have kept me as an apple customer:
|
| * 2006ish era macbook. HDD dies at random just outside of
| warranty. No local apple stores at the time. Local
| authorised repairer spends two weeks dicking me around on
| a fix, nothing. I push it to Apple who was not even local
| at the time. A week later I have a _BRAND NEW_ macbook,
| not just a drive, outside of warranty, complete with
| brand new warranty, an additional year tacked on top and
| an apology for the service I had received. (We now have
| apple stores so this would not occur again I imagine.)
|
| * 2014ish iPhone. Much like the macbook I start having
| issues outside of warranty, it is unable to be debugged
| in store. Dude wanders away, comes back. "Have you got a
| backup?", "Yes?", "We'll just give you a refurb, newer
| model, with warranty, are you happy with that?" "lol, yes
| I am."
|
| * 2012 15" MacBook pro retina battery replacement -
| Battery dies outside of warranty in around 2017 and im
| informed no stock currently exists in the country, and
| that i'll be waiting months if I wanted a replacement. I
| am immediately informed that if I do not want to wait, I
| can instead have a significantly more powerful, and
| higher specced refurb model, complete with brand new
| warranty in place of waiting the month for a replacement.
| I took the replacement. Again, this machine was OUTSIDE
| of the warranty window. That one retina MBP purchase due
| to this replacement saw my laptop needs covered for a
| decade.
|
| This is only touching on a tiny amount of the
| circumstances that have led to me remaining to continue
| investigating the purchase of products from Apple. Not
| everyone will have had these interactions, or come away
| from Apple positively, and perhaps one day, I also will
| not and my opinions will change. But at this point, from
| the day I became a customer through now, I have received
| a better long term support experience as a customer from
| Apple, then I have from any other organisation on the
| planet.
| hnfong wrote:
| > > Are their products more reliable, more fully
| featured, and objectivley better than their competitiors?
| No they are not.
|
| > This is your personal opinion. My personal opinion, is
| very much the opposite.
|
| Yeah, the GP's personal opinion seems very much the
| opposite (like yours) as well. Quote:
|
| "I actually love Macbook Pros. IMO they are the best
| Laptop ever built."
|
| Not sure what caused the dissonance. Seems like trying to
| prove they're not an Apple fanboy or sth.
| astrange wrote:
| MacBook Pros are a highly differentiated product from
| other laptops; for instance they have an entirely
| different OS and CPU architecture.
| astrange wrote:
| That's not what marketing is. Marketing is knowing what
| products people will enjoy buying, not just making ads
| after the fact.
|
| I also don't think most customers are old enough to
| remember those ads.
| matwood wrote:
| > Apple aggressively focus on low-volume high-margin
| opportunities
|
| It's hard to call anything selling 200M+ units/year low
| volume.
| swatcoder wrote:
| That's the happy accident. That's the point.
|
| They didn't _need_ those numbers for the iPhone to be
| worth their original R &D effort, but winning those
| numbers is even more advantageous for them because of
| their core philosophy around volume and margins.
|
| Meanwhile, Microsoft/Google/etc are playing a whole
| different game. When they succeed, they also saturate a
| market, but that's the only time they call it a success
| and so they approach the whole product design process
| differently.
| matwood wrote:
| Because Apple is great at product. They have product
| built into their DNA. Specs and technology are only there
| to deliver a product experience. Few companies in the
| technology space think this way.
|
| Other companies are also really bad at product. Google
| can't convey a coherent product strategy to save their
| lives. Great at technology (and building chat apps lol),
| terrible at product.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I think Apple is in a unique situation.
|
| First, we cannot ignore Apple Fanboys (and I am not using
| that in a negative sense). They have a large base of
| users who will jump at nearly anything they put out.
|
| However they also have a track record of doing things,
| both big and small, and pushing the industry to go a
| certain way. Dropping CD drives is a great example of
| this, this was an inevitability with more and more
| distribution through the internet. This would be a risk
| for a manufacture to try with a random computer because
| consumers may just ignore it. Apple has the power to say,
| well you want a Mac? here are your couple options and we
| are doing this anyways.
|
| Sometimes this fails, see all USB-C Laptops.
|
| But I think it also often comes from thinking about the
| entire experience. Take them removing the head phone jack
| (the debate on whether or not they actually needed to do
| that aside), at the same time we got the AirPods.
|
| Or the iPhone wasn't just simply, without a physical
| keyboard. It emphasized the advantages of this throughout
| the entire OS.
|
| But regardless of all the above, I think the simple fact
| that they just happen to generally sell a lot of devices.
| Enough that it can normalize a decision for consumers and
| then other manufactures can follow without risk.
| generalizations wrote:
| Because they're able to understand what is actually
| valuable to their customers, and they'll go the extra
| mile to make sure that what matters is done properly.
|
| It's comparable to why 'Google Video Search' lost out to
| youtube way back in the day. The google engineer nerds
| couldn't understand why no one liked their product: it
| had all these options for uploading video with the best
| quality and all these formats, while youtube had worse
| quality and few options. They missed the point and didn't
| understand the users, and were caught up in the tech
| rather than what was actually valuable to the users
| (basically: dead simple to 'just upload a video' -
| quality doesn't matter as much as that).
|
| Kinda like how Mark Z. has been talking about how the
| Oculus has similar resolution. It's not the tech specs
| that make the product - those are necessary but not
| sufficient. If the product is supposed to be AR: then it
| needs to actually be AR. And that means. e.g., that
| details like virtual shadows on real surfaces MUST be
| included, and must actually work properly. If it's not,
| then it's only kinda-AR. That's the kind of long tail
| that Apple understands, and other companies don't. The
| tech must fit the users, and the experience must be
| complete.
| comandillos wrote:
| This. I consider myself a VR/AR enthusiast and I've had
| many VR headsets since the DK1, included Hololens 2 (and
| now Vision Pro). The day I started using Hololens 2 I
| just though "Wow, I could wear this for hours and even do
| real work on this if the displays and performance were a
| bit better". The product was simply amazing but it had a
| few issues (mainly performance) that it limited the
| device to very specific use cases.
|
| Microsoft decided to mostly abandon the project,
| move/fire most of the team and give up rather than keep
| spending resources on a product that had an incredible
| potential... What would happen if Microsoft released a
| headset like Hololens 2 capable of running Windows apps
| for consumers at a similar price to AVP? They have
| Windows Mixed Reality, an almost infinite software
| catalogue, and the capabilities to do it... buy they
| simply don't (think about the Surface).
| dagmx wrote:
| my generalized thoughts (and there are exceptions so
| don't bother replying with "what about XYZ" because its a
| generalization):
|
| 1. Apple focus on customer story for every product. They
| may get it wrong sometimes but every product is sold with
| "this is how it will impact your life for the better".
|
| 2. Apple understand brand and fashion. Unlike other
| companies, they don't typically rush out the gate with a
| million variants to try and capture every part of the
| market. They don't let it cheapen their brand and they
| avoid brand fatigue.
|
| 3. They stick with things for longer . Other companies
| tend to throw products at the wall early and hope they
| stick. Apple comes in later and then doesn't relent for a
| long time compared to competitors.
|
| 4. They try and not focus on just specs. Other brands
| focus on features, and do a really bad job at telling you
| why you need it.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >They try and not focus on just specs.
|
| If I could focus on specs, I wouldn't need spectacles!
| kergonath wrote:
| > Is it just the vast amount of money?
|
| It's not the money. They did it with the iMac when they
| were headed for the ground, and with the iPod when they
| were in a better position but still without infinite
| funding. Reality is actually quite simple: they spot
| technology advances, and integrate them into a neat,
| well-designed package that people actually want to buy.
|
| The first iPod was a fancy shell around an IBM 1.8'' hard
| drive. There were MP3 players before but they were very
| bulky, or could store only a handful of files. They saw
| the hard drive coming, did the math, and went all in.
|
| Same thing with the iPhone: there were smart phones
| before, but they spotted the capacitive digitizer that
| was orders of magnitude more accurate than the
| competition, and boom, multitouch.
|
| Same thing with the AirPods: the killer feature being
| their fancy Bluetooth chip, which made the experience
| much better than the competition that was established for
| a decade at that point.
|
| It is quite interesting that they do it over and over,
| going as far as saying what they do in interviews, and
| some people really don't see it for what it is.
|
| > Are they the only ones who can create products?
|
| They are not. They just have a vision of what they want
| to do, and once they start they put the effort needed
| (sometimes killing advanced designs before release).
| Then, they iterate relentlessly generation after
| generation. They play the long game, and often introduce
| their first generations at higher price points and keep
| improving and driving their price points down even if it
| is not an initial resounding success. Any company can do
| it, if they take design seriously and optimise for long
| term strategic goals rather than short-term economics.
|
| > Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other,
| refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly
| Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the whole
| industry scrambles.
|
| If you look closely, when Apple comes in, it's because
| they have found a differentiating factor that they think
| will make the difference. They always have a compelling
| message about why you should choose their product above
| the competition. And it's never "same product, but
| cheaper".
| brookst wrote:
| Agree. And in a world where most technical people assume
| differentiation means better specs, Apple repeatedly
| prioritizes better UX: easier and/or more fun to use.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Except when you will try to use Finder on MacOS. That
| whole thing is just a massive UX failure
| brookst wrote:
| Agreed. I wasn't trying to say Apple gets every bit of UX
| perfect (or even acceptable) in all products.
|
| But they do have a history of disrupting markets by
| leveraging superior UX. Mainstreaming the GUI, the click
| wheel, the all-glass multitouch phone, etc, etc.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Apple is AFAICT the only company in the world (outside of
| ultra-luxury brands) that actually cares about user
| experience enough to spend however much it takes to make
| it good.
| jimbokun wrote:
| According to this article, the differentiator for the
| Vision Pro are the tiny, high density OLED screens.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Their competitors are shockingly incompetent.
|
| Consider Google. A couple years ago, a reporter
| documented the nearly (iirc) 20 attempts Google has made
| at a messenger. Meanwhile, Apple made one and ground away
| at it until it became great.
|
| Google is a company that -- and this is true -- dropped
| trou and put apps on my phone called "Google Meet" and
| "Google Meet (Original)." And don't forget Duo. See also
| having "Google Pay" and "Google Wallet."
|
| With a side of Android is kinda meh and look at pics of
| various Google execs at industry events. There's a solid
| chance there's an iphone in their hands.
| alt227 wrote:
| Are you aware that Google Pay and Google Wallet are
| completely different products, and that Apple has exactly
| the same counterparts even named the same?
|
| https://www.apple.com/apple-pay
|
| https://www.apple.com/wallet/
| epcoa wrote:
| It is not the same at all. Google Pay used to be called
| Wallet for starters. https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel
| /comments/12979ja/google...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wallet
|
| Apple does not have this level of product or branding
| confusion.
|
| So you don't like Apple, fine. But using Google as a
| poster child of consistent product marketing is a fool's
| hill to die on.
| int_19h wrote:
| Apple does have similar level of branding confusion
| elsewhere. Look at Apple Music vs iTunes Store. How many
| people understand the difference between the two
| subscriptions?
| x0x0 wrote:
| Apple has it in a handful of places.
|
| With Google, it's endemic to their products.
| parasubvert wrote:
| Anyone who has been around longer than a minute in the
| ecosystem. The iTunes Store isn't a subscription service,
| it's an a la carte store. Done!
|
| More importantly: it's not confusing because no one
| really cares or needs to care. New folks use the Apple
| Music subscription, old folks that know the difference
| use either.
| int_19h wrote:
| There is, in fact, an iTunes subscription called iTunes
| Match. That's the one that lets you upload your own
| tracks to the cloud, scans them to match against the
| catalog, and then gives you _DRM-free_ high quality
| downloads of it.
|
| On the other hand, with Apple Music, there's a
| _different_ subscription that also lets you upload your
| music to the cloud and scans them for matches, but what
| you get back out of it is _DRMed_ downloads. Which don 't
| work outside of the Apple ecosystem, and stop working
| even on it if you cancel your Apple Music subscription.
|
| On top of that, the way matching works is different for
| the two services. iTunes Match actually analyzes the raw
| data of the track to do the exact match, while Apple
| Music seems to prefer metadata. Which means that, with
| the latter, you'll often get a _different_ variant of the
| song, in cases where multiple versions exist.
| epcoa wrote:
| I am still scratching my head what exactly you're
| referring to as an "iTunes Store" subscription, you'll
| have to explain this one better.
| esafak wrote:
| Apple is and always has been a product company. They
| invent technology to serve the product, and they don't
| particularly talk up the specifics of the technology,
| preferring to talk about what it enables. For example,
| the numerous interaction features introduced by the
| iPhone, such as swiping, pinching, and tapping. And the
| high resolution display they demanded for their Vision
| Pro.
| quitit wrote:
| It's because the majority of tech firms with sufficient
| capital are not willing to invest in the development of a
| full product, nor frankly, do they have the leadership to
| do so. I also believe they don't have the smarts to
| capitalise on disruption, so they'd much rather maintain
| the status quo by swatting competitors.
|
| However the c-levels at those companies are happy to
| chase $$$, and will closely copy whichever hardware and
| software is deemed the best in the market at the time.
| Some also do this because they see the product as a
| threat to their core business.
|
| There will also be various cheerleaders who exalt that
| apple's ideas are trivially obvious and were always the
| pre-destined pathway for the category. Seemingly ignoring
| the long floundering that occurred before Apple's entry.
| anon373839 wrote:
| One of the reasons for this is that Apple is a design-
| centric company. They really prioritize aesthetic and
| functional design, and they have a customer base that
| will allow them to flex these muscles in building luxury
| lifestyle products. Consumers respond to that. Products
| like that tend to have a segment-defining quality.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do
| this, over and over?
|
| Because they don't just treat things as hardware, but as
| a complete ecosystem. Sure, they price things at a point
| where they can afford to make a quality product, but it's
| more than that... There are times when things aren't
| perfect, but overall everything works together and is
| very high quality. When I've tried in the past to buy
| non-Apple gear, things tend to be clunky, incomplete, and
| put a high burden on me as a user, even in cases where
| the specs might be better than Apple gear.
| freetinker wrote:
| One word: culture. Apple just seems to care more, and
| sweat the details more.
|
| In my experience, at other companies, product development
| is run on a spreadsheet by MBA PMs. Apple doesn't operate
| that way.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the entire industry
| had decided separate software and hardware companies were
| the superior business model. With Intel processors,
| Microsoft software, and a huge number of PC compatible
| manufacturers.
|
| Jobs doubled down on the combination of hardware and
| software designed and implemented under one roof. That
| bet paid off past anyone's expectations.
|
| So Apple now is far ahead of everyone else, when it comes
| to creating products deeply integrating hardware and
| software and design.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Why does this keep happening?
|
| Apple has invested in developing the full stack for their
| products. Not only do they have the full stack of
| components for the products but the entire toolchain to
| _develop_ those products. This gives them a very strong
| foundation for pretty much any product they want to
| pursue.
|
| The AppleTV and HomePod both use older A-series SoCs and
| run iOS with a custom shell on top. They get all of the
| iOS media and peripheral handling capability "for free".
| Both projects can focus on TV or speaker features since
| the base OS is largely a solved problem for them. If they
| need some special consideration from somewhere in SWE
| they just file a Radar. They don't just get binary blob
| dumps of firmware from outside vendors and have to beg
| for bug fixes and hope their contract is big enough to
| get some consideration.
|
| The Vision Pro leverages their ARM SoCs, base OS, and all
| the motion coprocessors that have been in their phones
| and watches for a decade. Novel improvements from the
| Vision Pro's development will just feed back to those
| components and make it into the next phone, watch, or
| whatever.
|
| Most other companies don't actually own their whole
| product stack. Even Microsoft is at the mercy of their
| suppliers with the Surface line. They get what Intel,
| NVIDIA, and AMD have to offer. Smartphone manufacturers
| are grabbing Qualcomm and Samsung SoCs which are
| collections of Cortex cores then slap Android on top
| hoping that Google's latest version is better than the
| previous version.
|
| It's hard to really make leapfrog products when you're
| shipping the same shit as your competitors and trying to
| compete on price.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Correlation or causation?
|
| Apple tends to jump on the bandwagon late but then turns
| thing mainstream. That worked well for ultrabooks (e.g.
| sony vaio, then MacBook air, nowadays every laptop) or
| earbuds.
|
| The AR/VR or visionsomething^TM case is a bit different in
| that apple actually has to implement a new market. Thus far
| they don't seem to be trying that hard.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| They don't really have to implement the market themselves
| - they just have to create the marketting buzz. Then
| they'll happily let Meta build the volume market where
| the profit margins suck (much as Android did for the
| iPhone business)
| bradly wrote:
| Apple has a history to sticking with things like this. Watch
| and HomePod were both seen as over-priced and sold poorly the
| first iterations. Apple leadership had the confidence to see
| through those initial versions. This was part of the internal
| culture during my time at Apple.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Watch is my go-to comparison for the Vision Pro. That took
| several generations before people started to buy in large
| numbers.
| dmarcos wrote:
| Fitness trackers (Fitbit), traditional and sport watches
| (with GPS) were popular categories when Apple Watch
| launched.
|
| Apple Vision Pro is a different beast because AR/VR don't
| have product-market fit yet besides a few game genres
| that Apple doesn't care about.
|
| Apple is good at improving existing product categories
| less so at finding product-market fit that usually
| outsources to others.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > This was part of the internal culture during my time at
| Apple.
|
| From a management perspective, how do they handle the
| people side of that - keeping good people on the team and
| keeping them motivated to do something extraordinary?
|
| People don't like spending time on unsuccessful projects
| and don't want their names associated with them, and don't
| want to work extra hard on something that won't come to
| fruition.
|
| Maybe Apple management has enough internal reputation that
| employees are willing to take that risk (but even Apple
| management has flops - the car seeming to be a recent
| example). But that doesn't feel like a sufficient
| explanation to me.
| euroderf wrote:
| So basically they have the patience, the cash stockpile,
| and the management culture to support large multi-year
| product field testing with non-employees.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I know this is anecdotal but my brother uses the Vison Pro
| daily ever since we have had it. He got a Oculus DK1 and a
| Oculus Quest 2 (I bought the Quest 2 off from him) and if he
| wasn't wearing it so much I have worn it and the best
| experience from it is media consumption. Its really a iPad
| with a ridiculous screen.
| baby wrote:
| The Quest line of VR headsets are amazing, just saying.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Given my age, I would say the same applies to all headsets I
| have seen since 1994, when I saw someone using one to play
| Doom at the Lisbon computer fair.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| The problem with every headset over the last ten years was
| that they just didn't have the technical commitment to really
| overcome the major problems. Making good VR is a VERY tech
| heavy endeavor. Apple has shown that they can make hardware
| which really begins to solve those issues (good resolution
| and quality pass through being one, having a nice OS being
| another). The AVP is truly starting to make a difference in
| what is possible with VR. It's not just more optimism.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I haven't heard anyone say they were going to work
| exclusively on their Occulus Rift,
|
| Having even a few people saying they are already doing that
| on the Vision Pro seems significant.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I think, crucially, Apple also invented a price anchor for VR
| computing. Previously, only the extreme high end of VR broke
| $1.5k.
|
| Now if apple puts out an Apple Vision SE or non-pro or whatever
| at $1,999 it will be seen as an absolute steal.
| evan_ wrote:
| No it won't. It will still be seen as 4x the price of the
| Quest 3.
| hedora wrote:
| It could play out like the iPhone where it costs N times
| more than the competition, but lasts 2N times longer, and
| has better resale value. (For iPhone, N is ~1.5)
|
| I'm having a hard time imagining that level of planned
| obsolescence for VR displays though. If anything, I'd
| expect the quest 4 (or 5, or whatever generation matches
| Apple specs) to last longer.
|
| Of course, it's a moot point for me and the large
| percentage of the population that will never strap
| Facebook-controlled eye trackers to their head.
| i5-2520M wrote:
| iPhones on average don't last 3 times as much ib people's
| hands as Android phones that cost 66% as much. Better
| resale value is fair, but I am contesting that 2N figure
| strongly.
| hedora wrote:
| I regularly replace my screen 1-2 times between iPhone
| upgrades, and have never kept one until end of security
| update support. I've never managed to replace an android
| screen, and have only replaced one android phone that
| still had security update support (I've only bought
| flagship androids.)
| bashinator wrote:
| I replaced my iPhone X this year, with a 15 that I
| anticipate owning at least another 5-6 years.
| ngokevin wrote:
| I'm still on iPhone X, runs super smooth. The older
| iPhone X runs better than my test Galaxy S20 which is
| newer than the iPhone X by many years.
|
| I also have a Galaxy Edge from the same year as the
| iPhone X. The Samsung is completely unusable. Every tap
| takes seconds for anything to respond.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Looking at the number of articles which compare m3 macbooks
| against "intel" but mean "the intel macbook from years
| ago", I totally expect to read lots of articles which
| pretend non-apple devices don't exist.
| esafak wrote:
| Given that those Intel laptops run Windows, which today
| is worse than any old version of MacOS, can you blame
| them?
| int_19h wrote:
| Worse for what, though?
|
| If you do a lot of gaming, for example, macOS is in many
| ways worse than Linux even.
| serf wrote:
| I hate windows as much as the herd, but OS choice isn't
| always as clean as "better or worse".
|
| I _need_ to run Windows in some form for various industry
| specific needs that a VM or emulation simply cannot meet
| at the moment. I don 't like it, but that isn't going to
| change the state of things.
|
| It's a delight to be able to choose what and where you
| work with, but it's not the reality a lot of us have to
| deal with.
| MBCook wrote:
| In some ways that's understandable and can be very
| helpful. Because if you're a Mac person looking to buy a
| new Mac then that may be what you have. Newer Intel Macs
| don't exist.
|
| If you're a PC user looking to switch to Mac, or you're
| looking for a machine and don't care about which
| operating system it has, then it's less useful.
| veidr wrote:
| So what? the iPhones have 4x the price of mid-tier Android
| phones the whole time.
|
| The point is, for now the AVP is the only iPhone-tier (Pro
| Ultra Whatever) VR headset. Meta's crap (I have all of
| them) is analogous to the mid tier budget phones, in this
| metaphor. (Even the fantastically expensive Quest Pro is
| just like... an insult, even though it does have eye
| tracking which is now absolute minimum table stakes (and
| Quest 3 doesn't have it))
|
| The current price it too high to go mainstream, yes, for
| sure. But let's see the _next_. AVP 3Gs could fuckin '
| destabilize the fuck out of this whole nascent ecosystem.
| jamespo wrote:
| People can justify the price of an iPhone as they use it
| ALL the time.
| samatman wrote:
| People who want an Apple VR headset may not know, and
| certainly don't care, that Facebook also sells one.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's the first one. Apple packed a ridiculous amount of
| ultra powerful stuff in it. As the article says they may
| find out that they don't need some of that stuff. Also we
| know that everything gets cheaper overtime.
|
| And Apple put an absolute ridiculous amount of money into
| designing and building that thing and they're trying to
| recoup some of that. But by version two or three a lot more
| of it will have already been recouped and it won't be as
| necessary to keep the prices high.
|
| The first color televisions, cell phones, refrigerators,
| computers, and microwave ovens were not exactly cheap
| either.
|
| The price will come down.
| aaarrm wrote:
| There are many headsets much more expensive than that. They
| aren't as mainstream but for the hobbyist who is willing to
| pay more for better, they are definitely out there.
| astrange wrote:
| The Vision Pro costs less than Microsoft HoloLens did,
| considering inflation.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Personally I'm betting it's not even a dev kit for future VR
| devices, though we will almost definitely get an iteration or
| two of them before we get to what I think is their true goal,
| AR glasses. There's so much unnecessary stuff here if the goal
| isn't that, mainly the ridiculous outward facing eye screen,
| that makes sense if it's just to simulate as close as possible
| using AR glasses.
| nerdjon wrote:
| > Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product.
|
| I really feel like too many people are ignoring this. If anyone
| understands how to play the long game with a new product it is
| Apple. I mean the Apple TV was a "Hobby" for many years.
|
| Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before the
| "normal" version?
|
| I think it also helps the clear sharing of technology between
| this and other products. From using the M2 tech, to iOS and (I
| assume) built with much of the AR tech they have been showing
| off for the last several years on iPhone.
|
| I honestly kinda wonder how much of ARKit was directly made
| from work on the Vision Pro?
|
| This version of Vision Pro was never going to be a massive
| product, I expect they knew they would get returns (and they
| hoped to mitigate that with the in store demos but that only
| does so much). But it is setting the ground work for a long
| term investment.
| atommclain wrote:
| > Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before
| the "normal" version?
|
| Yes they introduced the MacBook Pro before the MacBook.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I did not know that, however that is a bit different since
| they had the Powerbook. So that's more of a rebranding than
| a new product.
|
| I do realize that the name change came with a switch from
| PowerPC to Intel.
| dagmx wrote:
| Even with the PowerBook, the PowerBook came before the
| iBook.
|
| The Mac (Pro) came before the iMac/Mini etc too
|
| The pro moniker is just branding but they usually start
| with the pro line for more expensive hardware.
|
| Even with the iPhone, the current pro line is a
| continuation of the main line iPhone that evolved via the
| X.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| They upgraded the MacBook (Pro) to the M3 chip while the
| Air had to wait (and skip the M2 at all).
| sweetjuly wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. There's definitely an M2 Air
| and an M2 Pro.
| sib wrote:
| >> Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before
| the "normal" version?
|
| The Lisa before the (original) Mac
| timcederman wrote:
| > Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before
| the "normal" version?
|
| HomePod is another one.
| amelius wrote:
| > I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot
| on.
|
| A devkit prepared for lock down. It's the old formula: let devs
| make the platform great, then pull a Sherlock or increase the
| platform fees. Count me out.
| gpm wrote:
| Aren't they already charging the 30% app store tax for the
| privilege of running software on the device you bought? I
| doubt that fees going to go up from there.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| What exactly are they going to Sherlock?
|
| iOS non-game apps aren't exactly innovative. It's Gmail. It's
| YouTube. It's social media photo and video scrolls. It's been
| more than a decade, and the most innovative thing I can find
| on top downloads and top grossing, Duolingo, is also kind of
| a game, like if you remove the game part of it it's kind of
| not much, is it? All the innovations in Google Maps are kind
| of tied up in backend technologies that aren't specific to
| the phone at all, indeed predated it.
|
| Once they figured out touchscreen keyboard and accelerated
| web browsing sort of everything else fell into place. Then
| the retina display was introduced, and software improved the
| camera. I don't know what roles 3rd party devs played in all
| of this, but those list of innovations happened years ago.
|
| They don't Sherlock games.
|
| Even then, is Apple going to approve a game with guns on the
| AVP? Time will tell. Beatsaber is an innovative game but it
| leaned on the basic premise of people doing something
| illegal, uploading non licensed maps and tracks.
|
| Hacker News commenters don't know much about making games -
| even when they work for huge game studios! - and they don't
| know much about VR - even when they work at companies making
| VR headsets!
|
| Hugo must certainly be aware of the Varjo XR3, which is
| actually the most comparable device to the AVP and even more
| expensive, but there were developers at Apple on the AVP team
| who never heard of it, and many more Oculus developers.
|
| At the end of the day this is a love letter to halo product
| positioning coupled with relentless vendor lock-in applied to
| helpless consumers. I agree with you that the locked down
| nature of the product makes it as DoA for developers as the
| Apple Watch was. People forget that the first apps for
| iPhones were delivered via jailbreaks made by hackers, who
| had unlimited access, and that plus Steam ultimately teed up
| what limited things you can do in iOS apps today, not
| brilliant strategy.
| bitwize wrote:
| I think of the Vision Pro as the 1984 Mac of VR/AR. The
| original Mac was next to useless and, adjusted for inflation,
| cost twice what the Vision Pro does. But it changed the world.
|
| (Yes, it was near useless. The original Mac had 128k of RAM,
| which allowed for only the smallest of applications. It wasn't
| until the Mac 512k came out that people could do real work on
| these machines.)
|
| The next rev of Vision products from Apple, or maybe the rev
| after that, will just be leaps and bounds beyond what anyone
| else is doing in the space. No new paradigm of computing truly
| begins until Apple starts it.
| MBCook wrote:
| Also, much like the Apple Watch, they took their best guess
| at what it's good for but don't really know yet. So they've
| kind of tried to prepare for everything.
|
| It's going to be interesting to see what it really shines at
| as more developers make different kinds of apps.
| lostemptations5 wrote:
| Not sure what the nay sayers are about. Anyone remember the
| ORIGINAL MacBook Air? Hyper expensive, super underpowered,
| overheated alot.
|
| And yet -- as Steve demonstrated -- it fit in an envelope.
|
| THIS is Apple launching a new product line (and trust me I'm
| not a fan boi).
|
| And shortly after (2-3 years?) the MBAs were powerful cheap and
| barely powered up their fans.
|
| Mind you the MBA was maybe Steve's last obsession. What is
| Tim's thinking these days?
|
| Still it all seems very Apple like...
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| My problem with the vision pro is that it doesn't do enough
| new, the iPhone and the MacBook Air let you use a computer in
| an area where you previously couldn't and made it accessible
| to normal people. The vision pro isn't that much better in
| terms of bringing the technology in a user friendly package
| to the masses than the quest.
|
| A good measure of an Apple product is if you can pitch a
| version of it to your grandma or dad who can't open PDF file.
| If something only appeals to tech enthusiasts it is not a
| good Apple product (except the professional line products
| intended to be used for serious work by professionals which
| the vision pro isn't)
| pmcp wrote:
| A good measure for an Apple product was for me always: it
| makes tech disappear. That was always the differentiator, I
| feel: it doesn't feel like tech and it doesn't look like
| it.
|
| Now, I guess, it makes reality disappear?
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| Sure but why does Grandma want it? She has an iPhone so
| this isn't an unanswerable question
| jaxn wrote:
| The first iPhone was a toy. It wasn't until the second
| version (iPhone 3G) + AppStore that is really caught on
| with existing smartphone users.
|
| I have a Quest and have used other VR systems, the Vision
| Pro felt like a huge leap forward compared to those.
|
| I walked away from the demo tempted. Not by what is
| available today, but by what I want to be available and
| what I want to create with it.
| dmarcos wrote:
| iPhone 1 was limited but extremely useful at launch.
| People like me that bought on day 1 couldn't get enough
| of it. Had an amazing unparalleled Web browser experience
| and email, an iPod replacement and Google Maps / Youtube
| in your pocket felt magical. Also got a Vision Pro on day
| one and used it just a handful of times. Use cases and
| value prop of AVP nebulous. Smartphones were a popular
| product category when iPhone launched in a way VR / AR
| headsets aren't today.
| eigen wrote:
| the first iPhone (2007) cost $499 and the second iPhone,
| iPhone 3g (2008), cost $199. while the 3g support and App
| Store helped, I think the much lower price led to volume
| increase from 1.39M to 11.63M YoY.
|
| https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology--
| media-a...
| MBCook wrote:
| They actually cost the same the behind the scenes the
| difference was the subsidy was available by the time the
| 3G came out when it wasn't available at lunch.
| MBCook wrote:
| One of the things I remember about it was someone, maybe Jeff
| Atwood, spent a fortune on a maxed out model with an SSD.
|
| Even though the SSD was much tinier than the hard drive and
| the processor in the machine was slow and under clocked to be
| able to manage heat, in combination with the SSD it was fast
| compiling code and ran smoother than a normal MacBook Pro.
|
| The flipside is I think the hard drive was a 4200 RPM model
| and performed absolutely abysmally.
|
| But if you didn't need much computing power, say you're a
| writer, it was extremely small and lightweight and easy to
| carry. It's not surprising it changed the industry.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > (I hear FoV is pretty poor at the moment)
|
| I thought it was pretty good - but nowhere near ideal of
| course.
|
| But discovered I could dispense with both of Apple's "Light
| Seal Cushions" and simply line the light seal with some 1/8
| adhesive foam. It took a little experimenting to avoid hard
| pressure points, and then make it comfortable.
|
| It is now very comfortable with the following benefits:
|
| 1. The field of view is noticeably wider. Yay! The immersion
| improvement feels cognitively significant.
|
| 2. I realized that greater peripheral vision downward is more
| important than upward. Being more aware of down makes us feel
| safer and is also where are our hands and keyboards live.
|
| So I arranged the padding to wear the head set slightly lower,
| allocating all the increased vertical FOV downward.
|
| 3. The combination of being 1/4 inch or so closer to the face,
| and firmer padding, reduced the feeling of weight on the front
| of my head.
|
| Warning - literally. I get an occasional popup warning that my
| eyes are too close to the lenses. The danger being if I were to
| fall I could potentially hit my eyes. I stay seated most the
| time, but occasionally walk through rooms, so it is worth being
| careful.
|
| I use my Vision Pro for 10 hours a day on many days,
| comfortably. I had to switch to the two-strap support to do
| this. But I have ordered an adapter that allows the original
| behind the heat cushion strap to be used with a second cushion
| strap over the head. I anticipate that working even better,
| given how much surface area weight will be distributed across.
| (Also turning a knob is easier for adjustments than messing
| with velcro.)
|
| Also, got some thicker (in width) lighter foam, to add some
| more light seal around the edges.
|
| This feels like a real upgrade, a year or so before Apple will
| release a bump.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Genuine question, what are you doing for 10 hours a day in
| there?
|
| Can you comfortable code all day in that? If you don't mind
| my asking, is it purely novelty or is it genuinely better
| than coding on a 5k monitor?
| onethought wrote:
| It's genuinely better than a 5k monitor.
|
| In the recent update it now lets you mouse off your Mac and
| onto vision apps just like iPad hands over. It made me
| switch my desk setup to have the desk attached to my chair
| so I can have 360 range of screens. The resolution is
| stupidly high.
|
| I've attempted a coding workflow in all of the quests and
| it just wasn't possible. It's awesome in vision
| Facemelters wrote:
| please take a picture of this setup
| disqard wrote:
| Unrelated-but-related -- your username is fantastically
| appropriate for this discussion. I'm imagining a website
| with the same name, filled with images of people whose
| headsets have permanently melted onto their faces, like a
| Dali painting :D
| onethought wrote:
| A swivel chair - with a desk across the arm rests. It's
| not an impressive looking setup... outside of vr.
| bigyikes wrote:
| Does it require light to work? What about space? Could
| you e.g. work in a dark closet, as an extreme example?
|
| Do those semi-realistic virtual avatars work for non-
| FaceTime apps like Zoom?
| fotta wrote:
| You can but you need IR lights for it to work
| antman123 wrote:
| they do work for non-facetime
| onethought wrote:
| No. Works in the dark. The vision has IR lights on it.
|
| No the personas aren't right. They just creep people out.
| They need more work, or some basic editablity. It
| generally nails your eyes perfectly at the expense of
| everything else.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Wow - I am going to try that.
|
| It takes time to absorb all the possibilities
| Nevermark wrote:
| For me it is not a novelty, it has completely stuck.
|
| Yes, on comfort for 10 hours. I have even worked 12 hours,
| then watched a long 3D movie (Blade Runner 2049, Dune I,
| etc.) without hesitation.
|
| I cannot imagine going back to only physical screens. I
| have a 98" monitor with two 55" monitors in portrait angled
| towards me on either side (heights all match), all wall
| mounted. Truly wonderful! But this has replaced that for
| me.
|
| I have even considered beheading a MacBook Pro.
|
| I love the following:
|
| * Never needing to put on or take off reading glasses to
| see far, or within inches.
|
| * I can have my main Mac "screen" whatever size I want,
| typically large. Also that I can lean into it when focusing
| on a patch of code, and it always looks perfect.
|
| * Having multiple Vision safari screens, or utilities,
| surrounding me. With the look and pinch interface being
| very nice for navigating.
|
| * Being able to tune out 180 degrees of my space with a
| natural scene so I am completely undistracted. Wish I could
| go 360 degrees, and still leave keyboard visible. (Either
| by having an unobstructed low circle, or having the
| keyboard "punch through" like hands do.
|
| * Flexible screen position lets me sit with great posture
| all the time. I tend to pull right up to my desk, push my
| keyboard far out and lean forward on my elbows a bit. Have
| the screen large but close enough that I can lean in to
| focus on something.
|
| * Two environments in one! I will put project organization
| and context notes on huge screens behind me on a wall.
| Personal mission control. In thoughtful moments I get out
| of my chair, walk around the room and see the large screens
| from anywhere, walk right up to it, make small edits with
| pinch and zoom.
|
| * The incredible ergonomics of being able to code
| comfortably in bed, on a couch, recliner, etc. with good
| ergonomics, due to the screens being flexibly placed. Being
| able to code in many places keeps my brain fresh.
|
| * I use a holster for the battery. Geeky, but after
| dropping it as I walked away from my desk 100 times I
| realized I need that. That elminated inhibitions about
| moving, and feelings of being chained down.
|
| * I haven't been in flow so consistently for so many hours
| for a long time. For me the Mac interface
| expansion/isolation chamber IS what Vision is for.
|
| Issues:
|
| * As noted, wish the keyboard and my drinks would "punch
| through" 360 degree scenes, or there was an optional lower
| circle of punch rough.
|
| * Keyboard and trackpad pointer are fussy when switching
| between Mac and Vision screens.
|
| * Wish I could have more Mac screens, and drag Mac windows
| out to their own screens. Also pull in iPad and iPhone
| screens. And push windows/app-states back out to those
| machines too. Or two other people's devices.
|
| * Wish the Mac screen operated with look and pinch. I do
| this a few times every day when in flow.
|
| * Wish I could disconnect/reconnect my MacBook Pro screen.
| The headless MacBook Pro for Vision would be absolutely
| great. But having the option to use it as a laptop too
| would be great. Maybe remove my MacBook screen, but set it
| up so I can clip my iPad Pro to it too?
|
| * Need a Vision Spaces interface for setting up work then
| moving to a different context, but being able to come back
| to those screens. Being able to set up a space that is
| location sensitive, so always available in that room, seat,
| whatever.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _* Never needing to put on or take off reading glasses
| to see far, or within inches._
|
| Can you expand on this? Does it basically have built in
| vision correction? This actually sounds like a 'killer'
| feature if you don't need to mess with glasses.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You can buy optional magnetic lenses if you upload your
| prescription when you buy it.
| mort96 wrote:
| It has optics to correct for vision problems yeah, you
| give Apple your prescription when buying the Vision Pro.
|
| But more importantly, your eyes are always focusing at a
| consistent 1ish meter in front of you. That's why you
| don't have to switch vision correction ever when using
| the Vision Pro (or any VR display).
| rspoerri wrote:
| just for your information. there is only little knowledge
| about the influence of vr glasses on the vision. there
| have been reports of developers that worked in vr for a
| long time that had issues with theyr sight afterwards.
|
| problems can come from increased heat within the vr
| device, but also because every lighty our eye receives
| comes in at the same angle, and thus the eye never needs
| to adjust to different distances, as it would have to do
| in a real environment. while it appears / looks the same
| as in reality it really isnt. thats also the reason you
| only need one correction.
| mindentropy wrote:
| >I have a 98" monitor with two 55" monitors in portrait
| angled towards me on either side (heights all match), all
| wall mounted.
|
| What are these 98" monitors? Is this a TV or some kind of
| signage display? That truly is a huge setup.
| Nevermark wrote:
| The TVs are:
|
| SAMSUNG 98-Inch Class Neo QLED 4K QN90A
|
| SAMSUNG 55-Inch Class Neo QLED 4K QN95B x 2
|
| In my opinion, desk space taken up by displays is
| criminal!
|
| Also like to get out of my chair, pace the room, still
| see my work on a big screen as I think about it. Move to
| think
|
| And this setup encourages more collaboration
|
| Even a 40 inch 4k TV on a wall works great with a desk
| spaced suitably
| jaxn wrote:
| Thank you and damn you. I'm sold.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Doesn't wider FoV also decrease pixel density...
|
| Btw it'll be a few years before they update the Vision Pro
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The pixel density in the Vision Pro is high enough that I
| don't think this is a significant concern.
|
| The displays are really, really good.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I mean it is non-Retina for a reason, because the pixels
| are noticeable by eye so presumably less density would
| worsen that.
|
| It is obscured though by the softened out of focus
| presentation, maybe that blurring makes the difference
| unnoticeable.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Let me put it this way, then: having used a Vision Pro
| for two weeks (I bought one and returned it) I would
| gladly take a greater field of view in exchange for a
| slightly lower pixel density, and it would be a very easy
| decision.
|
| I had some major issues with the Vision Pro, but pixel
| density was not one of them.
| bombcar wrote:
| Narrow FOV means you have to keep your eyes "locked
| forward" and people don't realize how much they look at
| things by moving their eyes.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| When I did the AVP demo I was impressed by how quickly my
| eyes would relax and drift away slightly from looking at
| something after initially focusing on it. It took some
| conscious effort at first to maintain steady eye focus on
| an object whilst actuating it with a gesture.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is, coincidentally, one of my biggest issues with
| the Vision Pro. I never got used to it. I'd very
| frequently want to _select_ one thing while _also_ moving
| my eyes around to look at other things.
| bombcar wrote:
| You don't realize how often you click on something you
| had been looking at (but no longer) until clicking
| requires a constant gaze.
| sroussey wrote:
| I see the Vision Pro more like the Apple Lisa.
|
| The original Apple Lisa, which cost $9,995 in 1983, would cost
| approximately $27,905 in today's dollars, adjusting for
| inflation over the period up to 2023.
|
| So the VisionPro seems downright cheap.
| MBCook wrote:
| The original Mac was $2500 in '84 which is over $7000 now.
| paul7986 wrote:
| I am happy and avid user of Meta's recent Ray Ban Smart Glasses
| as Im a sunglass wearer (think a huge part of the population
| are too) and use my phone to take pics a lot. Now do that
| reliably through Meta's glasses and Zuckerberg just showed the
| latest Meta glass beta which you can ask "what mountain am i
| looking at," at it audibly tells you.
|
| Im betting Apple will release similar smart glasses like Meta's
| in the next year or two.
| MBCook wrote:
| I hadn't heard of those until yesterday but I saw a video
| someone took wearing them on a roller coaster in the front
| seat and it was very impressive.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > It's also a beta product in many way.
|
| I can't remember if it was here or somewhere else I saw the
| point made that the current Vision Pro is the _worst_ one Apple
| will ever make. All future Vision* products will likely be
| technically improved from the current model. So if the Vision
| Pro is _good_ right now it really can only be refined and get
| better.
| epanchin wrote:
| Interesting article. Does the average person distrust meta as
| much as I do? I wouldn't consider anything made by meta in my
| house - I imagine this is a common position it's a shame it
| didn't get a mention.
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| I doubt it's very common at all, most people just Facebook
| without putting much thought into it I imagine.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| After obsessing on thinness and weight for a decade on the iPhone
| and MacBook, Apple inexplicably did the opposite and missed the
| opportunity to focus on the major painpoint or VR : every headset
| hurts after 30 minutes. The Vision Pro is heavier than most
| flagship headsets.
|
| I have 1000 hours on SteamVR, but coming back is a chore. And my
| face is red after every session.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| The iphone was heavier than almost any phone on the market when
| it was released.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Yes about 10% heavier than the N95 and P1i, but the confort
| difference is neglible compared to strapping something to
| your face.
| idontknowifican wrote:
| isn't it 10 grams heavier than an oculus?
| arnaudsm wrote:
| 26% heavier (135g) than the Quest 3. And the default Apple
| single-strap band favors aesthetics over weight distribution,
| which makes it even worse.
| masfoobar wrote:
| I remember being sooooo tempted to buy a devkit just so I could
| play about, see if I can get it to work with my own 3D games.
| Would it be a pointless exercise? Yes. However, would I learn
| from it as a programmer? Yes.
|
| To this very day, I still dont have a VR headset. I am actually a
| tad behind with the latest ones, if I am honest about it.
|
| There is a VR place in our City which I take my children to (and
| myself) for some fun for an hour. I do enjoy it. We play together
| on those Zombie or Archery games.
|
| One of the main reasons I am tempted to get VR is to got the
| extra mile for _some_ games or.. more specifically.. simulations.
|
| I want to give my kids a slight head start to things like
| driving. With a decent simulator, steering wheel and VR, will be
| educational for them. I would need to build (or perhaps just buy)
| a new PC.
|
| Is all this worth it for a driving simulator experience?
|
| Interesting to see the future of VR and AR. I think these techs
| will merge in one way or another, ending up being small like a
| pair of glasses. I do think this tech as it evolves will
| eventually replace monitors. Things like this will be replaced,
| like giant mainframes are nothing compared to modern phones.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It's not worth it, you're better off buying them smaller
| electric vehicles and then moving them up to bigger things.
| blitzar wrote:
| Take them carting on the weekend; its how practically every
| F1 driver was raised.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Just do what everyone else does and teach your kid to drive
| your car in a parking lot whenever they can reach the pedals. I
| knew to drive by like 10.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I find it weird that people who are clearly interested will
| vacillate on buying a headset these days. Quest 3 is mind
| bogglingly cheap for what it is. It's selling in the millions
| and the Quest platform already has tens of millions of users.
|
| If you are from a developed country with decent wages and think
| of yourself as a tech enthusiast you should just go buy it as a
| professional investment to learn about the tech. Even if you
| don't want the gaming it is easily good enough to give you
| insight into the the broader tech (working in VR, social
| experiences, etc) and it's a pretty good standalone WebXR
| viewer which very easy to pick up.
|
| (I have the same logic that anybody who buys a Vision Pro for
| development is insane not to also pick up a Quest at 1/7th the
| price so that they can at least have a full perspective on
| where VR is at)
| saretup wrote:
| > Watching movies in Vision Pro is great at first but most people
| will stop doing it after the initial novelty excitement wears off
| Watching TV/movies in virtual reality seemed like such an
| incredibly compelling idea that we (the Oculus team at
| Meta/Facebook) built an entire product around that idea -- Oculus
| Go. Launched in 2018, Oculus Go was the biggest product failure
| I've ever been associated with for the simple reason that it had
| extremely low retention despite strong partnerships with Netflix
| and YouTube. Most users who bought Oculus Go completely abandoned
| the headset after a few weeks.
|
| You can't possibly extrapolate the movie watching retention rate
| from Oculus Go to Apple Vision Pro. That's like saying most
| people won't use ipod based on the data we collected from our
| walkman.
| mliker wrote:
| Agreed, I've had my Vision Pro for a month, and I still use it
| to watch shows/movies and as my portable external display. It
| has its daily and weekly use cases
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The OP says it's too uncomfortable (including too heavy) to
| wear for that long. What is your experience with that?
|
| > It has its daily and weekly use cases
|
| What do you do with it?
| 93po wrote:
| I loved movie watching with my AVP but I agree it's too
| uncomfortable, even lying in bed and having less weight on
| my cheek bones. I watched two hours of Guards of the Galaxy
| 3 and got tired of wearing it and finished the last hour on
| my 13" laptop screen
| outworlder wrote:
| The dual loop makes a world of difference to me.
| Interestingly, lying in bed makes it more uncomfortable,
| not less, since more of the weight is on the face.
| jacobsimon wrote:
| Why not? The device has a very similar form factor and the use
| case is the same, except they're missing the partnerships with
| Netflix and YouTube. The Walkman was also an incredibly popular
| device for years. Not to undersell the iPod, either, but I
| think the innovation was as much in the distribution channel
| (iTunes) as the product design.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| How do you watch a movie on the vision pro with your family?
| idontknowifican wrote:
| i am going to reply earnestly here:
|
| shareplay over facetime is wonderful. i have watched a few
| big movies with my buddies in this way
| whynotminot wrote:
| People keep vastly overestimating the amount of content that
| is consumed in group settings.
|
| I watch a show / movie with my girlfriend a couple times a
| week. A nice TV is still better for that obviously.
|
| But I watch stuff on my own every single day. Personal media
| consumption for me is probably 8x my group-based consumption.
| I would wager most people these days have similar habits.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| It's the opposite for me so I'm outside of your "most
| people"
| whynotminot wrote:
| Most people !== everyone by definition :)
|
| I do think my situation fits current society more though.
| Families under one roof consuming media only through the
| shared TV is less and less how the (at least Western)
| world operates.
| taeric wrote:
| I don't know. I have roughly 0 interest in watching movies with
| a VR headset. And I have a VR headset, such that I have tried
| it a bit.
|
| You are also kind of... ignoring the fact that the walkman was
| very successful. Ridiculously so, in fact. Such that, people
| did predict ipod like things would be a success because of it.
| There was a whole line of successful portable music devices
| leading up to the ipod.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I thought this was one of the most interesting insights because
| there is a lot of discussion around why Meta isn't / hasn't
| gone after media viewing as a primary use case. Understanding
| now that they really tried and it failed hard at Oculus
| previously adds a lot of insight to that.
|
| I do have to say, for me it does add up to one huge missing
| element for Vision Pro: why Apple didn't ship some kind of co-
| presence features on day 1 is totally baffling to me. I think
| it likely stems from the fact they clearly missed their mark
| with Personas and presumably they didn't want to then introduce
| cartoon style avatars like Meta did. They've decided to die on
| the hill of realistic avatars and they are actually dying
| there. It means people hate Personas, they don't have co-
| presence which is damaging the media viewing and preventing a
| lot of the AR and professional use cases from developing where
| co-presence is also a must, sometimes the primary feature.
|
| It's fascinating to me because Apple pitched so hard at their
| headset not being socially isolating, but they ultimately
| created the most socially isolating headset of all.
| sirjaz wrote:
| You need compare Hololens 2 against this
| eggbrain wrote:
| His point on the significant motion-blur / image quality issues
| that exists with pass-through is my biggest complaint with the
| device hardware-wise.
|
| I got the prescription lens inserts that Apple had suggested, and
| when I first put on the device I thought that either my eye
| doctor had gotten my prescription wrong, or something was
| defective with my device.
|
| The blur is distracting -- and looking further away makes it more
| obvious, as the objects in the background move around a lot more
| when turning your head vs items really close to your eyes.
|
| He also says you can read your screens through passthrough, but
| I've found that not really to be the case, at least for devices
| like the iPhone or Apple watch. I've had to take my Vision Pro
| off many times not only to read a phone notification, but also
| for anything that requires Face-ID (which doesn't work well when
| the Vision Pro is covering your face, which feels like an Apple
| ecosystem fail).
|
| I'm still enjoying it, and I bought it knowing it was a V1
| product, but it also shows how far have to go, even with a ton of
| engineering put into a product.
| blunderchief wrote:
| This actually helps me a little bit. I've also seen people say
| they can read screens, and that's not my experience. I also
| have the lens inserts, and I suspect that part of the problem
| is how they implement the prescription. I'm not knowledgeable
| enough about lenses to say this with confidence (please correct
| me!), but I wonder if this is because Apple prioritizes a
| farther away focal point for the inserts, so you literally
| can't focus on anything close up.
|
| I've noticed that I can almost read things if I hold my phone a
| little farther away, but I wouldn't call it usable by any
| stretch. I've considered getting contacts for the first time
| just to test all of this, but I'm extremely turned off by the
| upkeep of them (to say nothing of the idea of touching my
| eyeball to put them in).
| gen3 wrote:
| > I wonder if this is because Apple prioritizes a farther
| away focal point for the inserts, so you literally can't
| focus on anything close up
|
| VR is interesting all because all manufactures (that I know
| of) have a fixed focal distance for the screens. This is why
| you need inserts in the first place, even though the lenses
| are right in front of your eyes. For example, on the valve
| index this is set to ~6ft, so if you can see up to 6ft
| perfectly, you do not need inserts.
|
| Moving your phone around doesn't change this number, its a
| relationship between the lenses and the screens
| 93po wrote:
| Counter anecdote: I didn't find the blur distracting at all,
| and was able to read my iphone 13 mini perfectly fine. I
| beleive your experience of course, though.
| outworlder wrote:
| Stupid question: Are you wearing it in an environment with good
| lighting? Passthrough camera performance suffers a lot in low
| light, and the blur increases with the longer exposure.
|
| I can read screens "fine" while wearing it (fine as in, I can
| read them, I wouldn't want to do it for an extended amount of
| time).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > but also for anything that requires Face-ID (which doesn't
| work well when the Vision Pro is covering your face, which
| feels like an Apple ecosystem fail).
|
| At some point don't we need to accept the laws of physics and
| biology? That is, The VisionPro covers a significant part of
| your face, much more than a pair of glasses. Face-ID already
| has the challenge of needing to recognize you in tons of
| different conditions (lighting, pale/tan skin color, wildly
| different hairstyles, facial hair, etc.), while for security
| reasons nearly never letting someone else impersonate you. Is
| it really possible to get that level of forgiveness with
| accuracy if Face-ID only gets to consider the bottom half of
| your face?
| e28eta wrote:
| I think the complaint is that the vision pro can't
| authenticate the wearer to the iphone. Just like using your
| apple watch to unlock a mac, the vision pro will probably
| eventually be able to set up a trusted relationship between
| the user and their phone, and fix this issue. That's what I
| understood from "ecosystem fail"
| axus wrote:
| "Apple intentionally calibrated the Vision Pro display slightly
| out of focus to make pixels a bit blurry and hide the screen door
| effect "in plain sight"
|
| Makes me think of the blurring effect of phosphors on a CRT.
| rexf wrote:
| This is shocking to read. I tried the in store demo and my main
| take away was that the display wasn't as crisp or sharp as I
| expected for a $4k device.
| int_19h wrote:
| That would be the case blurring or no blurring. Apple managed
| to cram 4K displays per eye there, which is very impressive
| when you compare it against Quest etc - but that's 4K shoved
| right against your eyeballs. That is, it is the rough
| equivalent of sitting so close next to a 4K TV that it covers
| your entire field of vision. If you've ever tried that, you
| know that it's not exactly retina, and you can still very
| much see the pixels.
|
| But even that is a massive technological achievement when you
| look at raw numbers in the article - those 4K displays in
| Vision Pro are _already_ 3386 PPI.
| riwsky wrote:
| Gp's "4k" was referring to price, not pixels
| int_19h wrote:
| I'm well aware, and that doesn't change anything. What
| Apple gave us in Vision Pro is what you get for the price
| tag given modern technology. High-res VR is insanely
| expensive for good reasons, both the extreme DPI
| required, and the powerful hardware needed to drive it
| all at speeds fast enough to avoid motion sickness.
| skc wrote:
| I recently saw Dune 2 on IMAX.
|
| If the Vision Pro can soon replicate that experience they will
| print (even more) money and could lock the big film studios down
| forever pretty much.
|
| That is the killer use case. Everything else seems like fluff.
| adamors wrote:
| Solo-movie watching seems like _a_ usecase, but I'd argue most
| people don't watch movies alone.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| How difficult would it be to build an app where your friends
| could join remotely, watch the same movie, and appear right
| next to you? With good enough latency you could talk to each
| other like you were sitting right next to each other?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Given that they have that in Fortnite, I'm going to go out
| on a limb and say it wouldn't be too difficult.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I think with Shareplay, Spatial Audio, and Personas Apple
| already has the core pieces to do something like this baked
| into the OS.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I do think these kinds of "virtual presence" apps are
| possible and exciting - and also I think there are huge new
| challenges that come with the Vision Pro's better spatial
| computing. If you are in a video game (like fortnight) you
| easily forgive a lot of jank - your brain isn't expecting
| it. On the flip side, people will not like someone jumping
| around "in space" right next to them. Same goes for
| reproducing movements in avatars.
|
| You can always choose a lower fidelity co-presence, but
| again if you are doing that why are you wearing the heavy
| goggles? Just get a discord server and watch on there. I
| think there are very real technical challenges to combining
| all of the important aspects, but it is also the category
| of experience I am most excited by.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Those have existed pretty much since the start of VR
| multiplayer games. VR chat has them, RecRoom has them I
| think, there are dedicated apps for this, and many "screen
| mirroring" apps also have multi-user and presence.
|
| They aren't used that much because it's a silly gimmick and
| nothing more. People don't roleplay nearly as much in
| actual VR experiences. Real life isn't Ready Player One,
| and real people may say they want this, but then they try
| it and never do it again.
|
| It was neat to socialize with strangers in VR during covid
| lockdowns. It was instantly less neat when I could
| socialize with my real friends again. I don't have any
| friends from that period, and I was hanging out with VR
| strangers for tens of hours a weekend. There's just too
| many real, physical drawbacks to doing anything in VR that
| means unless you specifically crave the experience that
| ONLY VR can provide, like a driving simulator game, you
| don't really do it.
|
| I've gone clubbing in VR. It's just not that special.
|
| All the talk about AVP is full of people who seem to have
| zero understanding of what has existed for almost a decade
| in the VR space, don't seem very familiar with VR, and
| haven't tried to get friends and family to try VR. They all
| think Ready Player One, or The Matrix is right around the
| corner. Reality isn't magic.
|
| For reference, VR is literally a game changer for Sim
| Racing, and even there most people don't care about it.
| Even then, it's only brought out occasionally, or for
| specific reasons. Headsets just suck, blocking your eyes
| with some form of screen will always suck for a social
| species like humans.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| It's so easy there are probably a dozen apps that do it on
| Quest and other platforms. I sat in a theatre with 15 other
| people the other day and watched Jurassic Park in 3D the
| other day on my Quest 3. It was cool.
|
| So why isn't it happening with Vision Pro? Because Apple
| hasn't shipped proper co-presence features. Vision Pro
| lacks a proper Avatar system like every other platform has,
| so they can't have apps like this, ergo they are left
| entirely with trying to convince people that solo
| experiences are a valid value proposition, _all the while_
| attempting to sell their headset as non-isolating.
| anentropic wrote:
| au contraire
| blunderchief wrote:
| There's an immersive viewing setting on the Vision Pro called
| Cinema that's very close. It puts you inside a theater-like
| room without seats and gives you a pretty convincing feeling of
| looking at a movie screen -- way better than any of the stupid
| immersive viewing rooms in Disney Plus or whatever.
|
| Also, there's an IMAX app that actually simulates being in an
| IMAX theater. It's silly, but having the seats and railing and
| being able to look to the side and see the dim IMAX sign
| glowing on the wall goes a very, very long way. But for now
| there's not much you can do inside of it. I really,
|
| The only thing that's really missing is the sound. The built-in
| speakers sound fantastic, but lack that low-end, guttural
| rumble that you can only get in a theater or with a very fancy
| home theater setup (which I don't have because I have a family,
| with a partner who's very noise-sensitive, and a house that's
| just not big enough to watch movies in without waking up my kid
| -- I'd just never get to use it).
|
| I haven't actually tried watching it hooked up to my homepods,
| which I'd guess would help. But yeah, the visual experience is
| remarkable. They can get there if they keep putting effort into
| it.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Eh not really. What IMAX does with the sound matters too. You
| can't replicate that with Airpods. Also you do not feel like a
| weight is pushing into your face. That is a big part of an
| enjoyable experience.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Gotta have the kid kicking your seat from behind, and the
| dude a few rows up who's on his phone the whole time too.
| Just can't replicate that with AVP.
| outworlder wrote:
| > If the Vision Pro can soon replicate that experience they
| will print (even more) money and could lock the big film
| studios down forever pretty much.
|
| Visually? It looks far better than an IMAX screen. It's an
| order of magnitude better compared to watching 3D movies in a
| movie theater with '3d glasses'.
|
| All it is missing is sound. It's no slouch, but you don't have
| a subwoofer :)
| smitty1e wrote:
| I can only see getting into VR for very specific, limited
| duration tasks.
|
| Call me a Luddite, but I am increasingly disdainful of all the
| New Shiny stuff, and see society trending toward lower-tech,
| traditional pursuits.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| I think it's natural. With the end of the Free Money Era, every
| New Shiny Thing in your life is going to require a
| subscription, permission to harvest data on everything about
| you that can be measured, as many advertisements as users will
| tolerate, and gambling-tier microtransactions. It's tiring,
| demoralizing, and stupid. Walking away is liberating.
| throwaway74432 wrote:
| If people wanted to wear a phone screen taped over their eyes out
| in public, the technical limitations wouldn't barely make a dent
| in that desire. But the vast majority of people want to have real
| in-person human interactions when they're out in the world.
| That's what the makers of these devices fail to see. But they
| can't see that because they're self-described VR enthusiasts. If
| they talk to non VR enthusiasts (which is everyone else), they'll
| see that the limiting factor isn't the hardware.
|
| Think of it this way. Most people think it's rude to talk to each
| other indoors with sunglasses on. That's the slimmest form factor
| you're going to get, and it still steps on the toes of human
| connection.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I think the key to your last bit is "indoors." People don't
| consider it rude when talking to each other outdoors because
| it's mutually understood that wearing the device is beneficial.
|
| All it takes is to get to that point with AR. So it's more a
| critique of the state of AR's present usefulness rather than an
| innate, immovable reflection on society.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| I don't think it's just usefulness. I know that you can't
| possibly be watching something else on your sunglasses when
| talking to me indoors or out.
|
| At least with google glass it was trivial to see where the
| eyes were pointed.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I agree it is unfortunate that you can't tell where
| someone's eyes are at when talking with sunglasses on and I
| also agree that it detracts from the socialization
| experience.
|
| I do not feel that this loss makes it rude to have an
| outside conversation wearing sunglasses in a sunny
| environment.
|
| So, I still think that AR will find its way in. I'm not
| saying it won't reduce the socialization experience
| further. It'll just be perceived as semi-necessary,
| understandable, and life will move on.
| treflop wrote:
| Sunglasses may detract but they actually serve one
| purpose -- it's too damned bright out.
|
| Having AR glasses on is totally different.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Maybe for this generation, but give it time. I think
| expectations will shift.
|
| Children used to be told "don't sit so close to the TV"
| and now we're strapping monitors to our heads.
| veidr wrote:
| It's not totally different. It's very similar.
|
| The main difference is that there might be any number of
| equally-or-more-valid reasons to have AR/MR glasses on
| than "it's too bright".
|
| Like, "I'm on call for blahblah" or "I'm watching the
| baby monitor" or... whatever, a million possibilities.
|
| So yes, AR glasses detract, but no, it's not different.
|
| Also, lots of wearers consider that social interaction
| complexifier a feature, not a bug. Which is why you see a
| lot of cops wear sunglasses all the time, even with no
| sun. For a deep, heart-to-heart conversation with
| somebody important? Sure, take them off. For anything
| else...
| treflop wrote:
| Your arguments are from the PoV of the wearer. Sure, as a
| wearer, you know that you are paying attention to whoever
| you are talking to, but as someone on the other side, I
| don't know that.
|
| That's not a problem with sunglasses because it's
| inherently impossible for you to be doing something else.
|
| The issue that people have with AR glasses (and to some
| extent, people wearing sunglasses unnecessarily) is that
| AR glass wearers are thinking more about themselves than
| the perspective of other person. And then to defend AR
| glasses saying "I could be doing something important but
| actually I'm paying attention" is like doubling down on
| that lack of awareness.
|
| I'm not opposed to AR glassses. I'm just explaining why
| they are a bit of a faux pas and the people who think
| they are OK are also the reason why they are not OK.
| BytesAndGears wrote:
| Except what is the benefit that it's providing, that
| people asked to have solved?
|
| I feel like if you went up to someone and asked "how can
| we improve this social interaction?" Literally nobody
| would suggest strapping a screen to your face anywhere in
| the list of improvements.
|
| Here's some other technology improvements:
|
| What would make your TV experience better?
|
| * make it bigger * allow it to use the internet to watch
| infinite shows * make it cheaper * make the colors
| brighter
|
| What would make your analog home-phone experience better?
| * make it portable * make it smaller * allow me to save
| contacts within it * allow me to take other notes * now
| that I have this little thing in my pocket anyways, make
| it do more stuff
|
| Then when we think of the problems that lead to AR being
| the solution, it's almost entirely related to business
| problems. Surgery, manufacturing, carpentry,
| construction... all would benefit from a HUD that tells
| you what to put where. Those are real benefits.
|
| But anything that people would do in a social situation?
| Almost never will the answer to a human interaction
| problem to be "attach a screen to your face". In that
| scenario, all of the solutions are really in search of a
| problem.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I think a convincing example is to show a heads-up
| display of what two people last talked about as to enrich
| the conversation.
|
| I already do this but more manually. For example, I don't
| try to remember everyone's birthday. Instead, I put their
| birthday's in my calendar, get a notification when it's
| close, and use this information to enrich our
| relationship.
|
| It seems reasonable to believe this could be extended
| much further if the barrier to recording and recalling
| the information was reduced.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > I think a convincing example is to show a heads-up
| display of what two people last talked about as to enrich
| the conversation.
|
| Perhaps. It might be a generation or two before the
| "that's ... creepy" vibes fade. Reminds me a bit of that
| scene in minority report after the eye swap and the
| protagonist passes by a billboard and the avatar asks him
| about how the pants he purchased worked out.
|
| I do something similar to the calendar thing too. I reach
| out a few days ahead of time so it doesn't seem like I'm
| just doing it reflexively like an unfeeling robot because
| facebook prompted me to do so day of.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > Then when we think of the problems that lead to AR
| being the solution, it's almost entirely related to
| business problems. Surgery, manufacturing, carpentry,
| construction... all would benefit from a HUD that tells
| you what to put where. Those are real benefits.
|
| I think you're on to something. Glass was an expensive
| flop from the word "go" but the second generation did
| live on in these specialized sectors.
|
| I suspect that - at least for this decade - AR is still
| going to be the specialized/industry tech and that VR is
| going to be the consumer oriented tech.
| njovin wrote:
| The problem isn't the form factor, it's the purpose. Wearing
| sunglasses is beneficial because it protects my eyes and
| makes it easier to look at you when you're talking to me.
|
| Wearing an AR device is like telling you something more
| important than our conversation might come up and I need to
| be able to quickly shift my focus from you to it.
|
| Maybe it's my age (early 40s) but it's common for our
| friend/family group to shame each other (in a half-kidding-
| half-not way) when somebody gets into their phone too much
| during a social event. "If you're going to be here, be here"
| is a mantra we tease each other with. We hold each other
| accountable enough to where when my elementary-age son picks
| out a movie for us to watch, if one of the adults in the room
| starts scrolling on their phone he'll pause the movie and ask
| them if they're going to pay attention or not.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| My assumption is that this expectation will shift as time
| passes.
|
| I can see a future where people use AR, there's a setting
| that indicates "full focus" vs "distracted", and people
| will ask others to stay in "full focus" mode when talking.
| This would minimize the number of notifications the user
| receives in an effort to lend focus to the conversation.
|
| It'll be the same general expectation as what you're
| describing, but with a step towards concession and
| acceptance of the tech.
|
| There will also probably be an in-between period where
| people who remain glued to their phone try to take the
| morale high ground against those who are using AR goggles
| by saying they're giving more focus to the conversation :)
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Full focus mode would have to be passthrough with no
| notifications or external information. I feel like
| anything less would just be the current phone status quo.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I dunno. Some people have trouble reading emotions from
| other people's facial expressions. A heads-up display
| that conveys this sort of information in real-time could
| help improve the conversation. Or pulling up highlights
| from the last time a conversation occurred so you can
| more easily pick up where you left off.
|
| Of course, some people will feel like these changes
| reduce the humanity of the interaction because you're
| letting the device do too much of the work and others
| will disagree and say that the tech is just helping
| automate and improve a task they were already performing.
| Both camps will have fair points.
|
| These sorts of behaviors which augment the conversation
| seem distinct from concepts like "be shown new text
| messages while mid-conversation" which I do think should
| be able to be silenced and conveyed as being silenced.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I agree that a CRM mode would indeed be very valuable,
| but I'm skeptical of such a feature shipping given that a
| similar thing could be surfaced on the phone but I've
| never even heard of people using it.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I agree it would be breaking some new grounds. The only
| things that I can think of right now are tech like Babel
| Fish earbuds, which strive to translate conversations in
| real-time, and Google Lens for real-time visual
| translations.
|
| I did make good use of Google Lens when traveling to
| France last year. I found myself engaging with the world
| by looking through my phone's camera frequently as it
| made understanding restaurant menus much easier.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| We don't have that with phones now, what makes you think
| AR will be any different?
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Can you clarify? I'm not sure I understand.
|
| iOS and Android both have Focus Mode:
|
| https://blog.google/products/android/android-focus-mode/
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-a-focus-
| iphd62...
|
| I guess I don't use this feature when having a
| conversation with another person because it would require
| me to get out my phone and change modes when the
| conversation begins. That's too much of a barrier. In
| some settings, though, like when going to watch a movie
| in public, there's a dedicated window where people are
| expected to shift their phones to a socially acceptable
| mode. I do respond accordingly in those situations.
|
| With AR, it would seem this process could be automated
| through facial recognition / voice detection. If there
| was a setting that said, "Don't notify me of text
| messages when the system detects I am conversing with
| another person. Do this automatically" then it seems
| quite practical to have that enabled. It also seems
| reasonable that it would be implemented because the
| concept of "disable notifications temporarily" already
| exists on phones.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This is the trap of when a company needs a user to buy a
| product more than the user needs the product.
|
| This was something jobs was adept at navigating around along
| with Jonny Ive.
|
| Tim Cook is a product idiot. Or maybe more to the point he is
| adept at making factories and has run out of products for them
| to manufacture. So what's more important to him his giving the
| factory more to do vs designing the right product.
| MR4D wrote:
| > But the vast majority of people want to have real in-person
| human interactions when they're out in the world.
|
| I think this statement is too strong. I see too many people
| every day in elevators, in lines, all sorts of different places
| that are on their phone and specifically avoiding eye contact
| with other human beings. That suggests that the term "vast
| majority" is probably too strong.
| taylodl wrote:
| Right? Eyes down at their phone, Air Pods in, it's not easy
| to get their attention even if you _need_ to. They 're
| essentially already connected to a VR headset, just a poor
| version of one.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| Seconded. One glance around coffee shops, buses, or the like
| is enough to show that screens dominate "out in the world"
| too. And looking at the trend lines for the past decade, it
| seems set to continue.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't buy this. So many people walking around absolutely
| glued to their smartphones. Neck crooked down, ignoring the
| world, even inside businesses, social situations, at home, at
| work, and the taboo is very quickly softening! I often notice
| couples sitting in a restaurant, basically ignoring each other
| in favor of their phones for an entire meal. No human
| connection going on here!
|
| People want human connections less and less, especially with
| strangers, service providers, "NPCs" as some would lovingly
| call them. I think good AR will accelerate this, not fail due
| to a shrinking taboo.
| px43 wrote:
| IMO people on their smartphones are generally experiencing
| 10-100x the human connections that people without their
| smartphones are experiencing. That's exactly _why_ they 're
| so addictive. Smart phones let people push themselves right
| to the very edge of Dunbar's limit for social connectivity,
| which is why it can get stressful and exhausting, and is
| probably damaging when done in extended periods.
|
| Putting your phone down for a few hours to stare at the
| trees, or the water, or the clouds passing by, and maybe
| chatting up a couple nearby people doing the same, _that_ is
| now the epitome of disconnected blissful ignorance.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> > But the vast majority of people want to have real in-
| person human interactions when they're out in the world._
|
| _> I don't buy this. So many people walking around
| absolutely glued to their smartphones._
|
| I think it is right-ish, and just needs refinement:
|
| Where people _have_ to have human interactions when they 're
| out in the world, the vast majority of them want them to be
| real in-person.
|
| If I choose to interact with someone, or accept their attempt
| at interaction, I don't want a device between me and them. I
| often don't choose that, but this doesn't minimise my
| preference for non-tech-filtered integration if interaction
| does happen.
|
| If I'm out on a trail run or trek I'm perfectly happy to
| exchange pleasantries with others out and about, I'm quite
| happy to give directions or similar assistance to a tourist
| while meandering locally (if asked politely, otherwise you
| will get sent well out of your way), but far less so if they
| are not looking me in the face.1
|
| _> especially with strangers, service providers, "NPCs",
| ..._
|
| ..., bloody survey people, charity muggers, those who think
| that because they believe [deity] loves me I'm somehow
| beholden to care, local press outside the station when I get
| off a train delayed by a significant incident, ...
|
| --
|
| [1] caveat: I'm away that some people are very uncomfortable
| with direct eye contact, that is quite different from not
| entirely paying attention because of a bit of tech.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I've always found examples like "couples sitting in a
| restaurant, ignoring each other in favor of their phones" as
| kind of hilariously judgemental. Almost in the same way that
| ignorant extroverts view introverts.
|
| If they're a couple, why would they feel the need to always
| talk? You don't need to always be talking to enjoy just doing
| your own thing in each other's presence. Even prior to the
| proliferation of smartphones this was pretty normal in my
| experience, you spend most of your time having the ability to
| talk to the people you like, at some point you run out of
| things to say and are comfortable enough with each other to
| just do your own thing while in each other's company. It says
| nothing about their connection with each other.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| _shrug_ I don 't spend my entire life in company. Reading a
| book is hardly a group event....
|
| Also, when shared experience hits the next version (or the one
| after that, or..) and I can watch Liverpool beat Man Utd with
| my brother on a different continent (with whatever lag being
| compensated for) I'll get _more_ of a shared experience than I
| could have today.
|
| This is a version-1 product. It's only going to get better - I
| have one of the original iPhones, and compared to the '15 Pro I
| have now, it's pitiful. Apple are generally a long-term game
| company, and they're not going to let this just drop.
|
| So sure, in company down at the pub, I won't be wearing goggles
| like this. Funnily enough I don't think that's the target
| market, making your argument a bit of a strawman one. Apple (I
| expect) will focus is attention on where it _can_ make a
| difference. And (again, I expect) it will.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| The second paragraph seems silly. Nobody thinks its rude to
| talk with normal glasses on, and that's the same form factor.
| Meta's AR glasses are already available as both sunglasses and
| normal glasses (though obviously lacking in actual AR).
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Meta AR glasses Beta software has actual AR:
|
| https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-launches-
| expanded...
|
| https://www.meta.com/smart-glasses/early-access-program/
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > But the vast majority of people want to have real in-person
| human interactions when they're out in the world.
|
| Is this true? Most of the time when I'm out and about I'm going
| from point a to point b and I'm not really interested in
| talking to anyone I dont already know. If I'm already at a
| specific place to do a specific thing... I'm not going to have
| a vr headset on and I'm not really interested in interacting
| with people I dont already know.
| w8whut wrote:
| these things change quiet quickly. Ask any zoomers (which i
| might add arent _young_ anymore either, the first ones 'll
| start turning 30 next year!) if its rude to glance at the phone
| mid conversation. Gen Y/X generally considered that extremely
| rude, while gen Z started to see it as completely normal.
| Retric wrote:
| > Most people think it's rude to talk to each other indoors
| with sunglasses on.
|
| Nobody finds it rude to talk to each other with actual glasses
| on. If AR had similar utility and minimal impact on seeing each
| others eyes, then the same would be true. Sunglasses prevent
| people from tracking where people are looking which is why they
| come off as rude.
|
| > That's the slimmest form factor you're going to get, and it
| still steps on the toes of human connection.
|
| The minimalist form factor for AR is contact lenses not
| glasses. Several companies are working on them though it's a
| long way from a consumer product.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Prescription glasses are a necessity. Sunglasses or AR
| glasses are not.
| Retric wrote:
| Reading glasses aren't.
|
| You may not have realized it, but the glasses on tip of
| nose thing where people lean forward to look at you is
| because reading glasses make things blurry at conversation
| distance. Basically this: https://levinsoneyeclinic.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/08/shu...
|
| However, sometimes people don't bother and they really
| can't see you very clearly. But, you can still track the
| body language from where they eyes are looking so it's
| fine, that's the difference clear lenses make.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > The minimalist form factor for AR is contact lenses not
| glasses.
|
| That is extremely unlikely to _ever_ be possible. A chip that
| size that did both high-bandwidth radio AND wireless charging
| (since you 're not gonna have wires dangling from your eyes)
| AND high refresh rate display would fundamentally have to get
| extremely hot, with anything resembling current electronics.
|
| You'd have to invent an entirely different transistor to do
| something like this.
| Retric wrote:
| You don't need a high bandwidth connection for AR. Vector
| graphics + text dramatically reduces the bandwidth
| requirements.
|
| That's not immersive 3D, but the useful bit of AR would be
| things like putting peoples names above them at a party as
| if you where in an MMO. Countdown timers over cooking pots,
| a map or just an arrow when walking somewhere etc.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| People used to think it's rude to stare at a phone screen too,
| but here we are.
|
| I'm not saying VR will become as normalised as smartphones,
| mind you, just that it's a possible outcome. That said, VR / AR
| as we know it now has been a thing for a while now and it
| hasn't taken off as much.
| The-Bus wrote:
| It still is rude... it's just become commonplace.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| It used to be extremely rude to not take off headphones when
| people talk to you. Nowadays it is quite accepted for earbuds
| and "transparency mode" is even a selling point.
|
| My guess would be that once AR allows easy sharing, e.g.
| showing others a funny AR cat video, it will quickly become
| socially accepted to wear frequently.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Nowadays it is quite accepted for earbuds
|
| Hard disagree. Except for brief interactions like ordering a
| coffee, I don't think it is at all socially common for people
| to keep headphones on when they talk with others. Maybe it
| varies by culture, or social circle.
| montagg wrote:
| It varies. I'm totally fine with it if it's clear the
| person can hear and interact with me, and the people I
| interact with a lot do it to varying degrees, and no one's
| offended.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| FWIW, I've observed in high schoolers that many leave
| their earbuds in all the time. At this point it's a
| fashion statement too.
| zpeti wrote:
| It's not socially acceptable to me. If someone talks to me
| with their AirPods in they are already at -100 in my opinion
| of them.
| ericd wrote:
| Not sure that's changed for millenials, maybe it's more
| acceptable in gen z/alpha?
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| There's an important difference: the subtle face mimicry is
| extremely important for sub-conscious (and conscious)
| communication. Having headphones on is rude because it
| indicates that the other person is not interested in hearing
| what you have to say. The problem with having an opaque visor
| covering your face is not that it's rude, it's that you
| completely lose the non-verbal part of communication. This is
| why email and phone communication can be so easy to
| misunderstand. Without seeing the face and body languages of
| the other person, your mind will have a tendency to overlay
| biases and prejudices on what is being communicated. A simple
| "sure, whatever" can be interpreted as obnoxiously
| dismissive, as a surrender, or friendly banter. If you can
| see the body language of the other person, the intent is
| usually clear. If you can't, it isn't.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| It used to be rude because people understood it to signal
| that.
|
| With younger people earbuds seem more like a fashion
| statement (you also don't take off ear rings to talk to
| people) and the noise cancelling/transparency will actually
| do the opposite: filter out background noise so that you
| can be heard more clearly.
|
| Similarly taking out a Nokia used to signal that you will
| not be paying attention for a while. Nowadays it might
| instead be you taking a nice photo, showing off something
| to others etc.
|
| VR headsets are definitely not at this point yet, but I am
| not so sure they never will be.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| My point is that with the current VR implementation the
| problem is not about rudeness, but fundamentally
| hampering personal communication.
|
| If I go and meet with someone in person, I generally do
| it because I want to see them up close, face to face. If
| we are both wearing VR headsets that hide our faces, the
| whole premise goes out the window.
|
| Eventually, VR headsets might overcome this problem by
| accurately portraying the other person's face in some
| way, but we are nowhere there yet.
| Findecanor wrote:
| I find that it is sadly getting socially acceptable to be
| _worse_ than that: to talk straight out loud with someone
| over the phone over the airbuds while around other people,
| even making eye contact with other people. When someone makes
| eye contact with you and speak, you can no longer expect that
| they intend to speak with you.
|
| The people with the worst behaviour are _pushing_ the norm.
| spookie wrote:
| What's wrong with AR glasses in a form factor akin to actual
| prescription glasses? It seems from my perspective a cool way
| to augment our perception about the world, not to diminish it.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I disagree, there is a difference between desire and
| practicality.
|
| For example, I would love and could easily justify the 12.9
| inch iPad but the logistics of traveling with it make no sense
| for me.
|
| I could justify the benefits of traveling everywhere with my
| high powered gaming pc but logistically it makes no sense.
|
| These devices are still largely impractical for long term use,
| and particularly outside use. They won't be until the hardware
| catches up with what we are working on with the software and it
| is an almost invisible technology except for a mostly standard
| looking pair of glasses.
|
| People already walk around with their phone almost attached to
| their face, it isn't hard to imagine wanting an AR headset.
| move-on-by wrote:
| > Most people think it's rude to talk to each other indoors
| with sunglasses on
|
| ...really? I have prescription glasses/sunglasses and I often
| don't bother switching them during a quick excursion- such as
| daycare pickup/drop off. It's never crossed my mind that I
| could be perceived as rude. I'm going to go out on a limb here
| and say that anyone with such opinions do not have the level
| prescription that are required for driving and just general
| consent use. And for anyone thinking transition lenses would be
| the solution- those do not work in vehicles with UV blocking
| windows.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| How many people have you seen wearing sunglasses inside an
| office, or talking at home?
|
| If you're having a quick interaction like popping in and out
| of a building to pick up / drop off someone or something,
| sure. But otherwise, it's quite universally rude.
| dmix wrote:
| Apple Vision wasn't designed to be used outdoors in public
| settings with moving backgrounds.
|
| Those were just viral memes of people using it like that for
| fun.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| That video of the guy in san jose wearing one of these,
| tapping at the air while crossing the road, was both
| hilarious and disturbing.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm confused by comments like this one. Apple very specifically
| designed Vision Pro to address this problem, going to great
| lengths to make the outside world visible to the user and the
| user's eyes visible to others, and marketing that they don't
| want to create isolation. It is also described in the article
| (where the author thinks they went too far).
|
| What do you think of how the Vision Pro addresses this problem?
| beAbU wrote:
| Most decent NC headphones have audio passthrough which allows
| you to temporarily easily hear the outside world without
| problem.
|
| Do you enjoy talking to a colleague while they still have
| their headphones on, even if you know they have this setting
| on?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The "user's eyes visible to others" part has been widely
| panned, even by the most enthusiastic reviews. There are two
| major problems with it.
|
| One, it's not the actual user's eyes, it's just a bad
| rendition of some eyes - without any of the extremely subtle
| facial expressions that happen with the skin around the eyes,
| and without any amount of certainty from the other that they
| are correctly reflecting exactly what you're looking at. We
| are extremely good at noticing exactly which direction
| another human is looking in, and when theire gaze shifts, so
| even minor inaccuracies or lag are jarring.
|
| Much worse, the screen they used is so bad that the eyes are
| barely visible in almost any amount of lighting.
|
| Either way, even if this "solution" actually worked, the
| visor still covers far too much of the face to be able to get
| a normal expression.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The OP didn't pan it.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This is why linux perpetually has <5% adoption. It's made and
| maintained by linux enthusiasts who are incapable of
| understanding how the average person wants to use a computer.
| veidr wrote:
| But, how the average person wants to use a computer is
| extremely, irreconcilably different from how the 5% (or 2%
| probably but whatever, doesn't matter) want to use their
| computers.
|
| So... _sniff_ _sniff_ what 's that smell? The market working
| is it then?
|
| Both Vitamix blenders and recumbent bicycles have less market
| share than desktop Linux. Is that because recumbent bike
| makers just really have no idea how people want to ride
| bicycles, or...
|
| yeah
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Gnome is the outlier with beautiful design and they get soo
| much shit from Linux neckbeards for it haha
| outworlder wrote:
| > This is why linux perpetually has <5% adoption. It's made
| and maintained by linux enthusiasts who are incapable of
| understanding how the average person wants to use a computer.
|
| No. That's a gross generalization. You have all sorts of
| people using Linux, including leading UX experts.
|
| What you don't have is a single governing body pulling
| everyone in the same direction, so efforts get diluted(even
| when prioritized).
| xcv123 wrote:
| > It's made and maintained by linux enthusiasts who are
| incapable of understanding how the average person wants to
| use a computer
|
| They understand, but they don't care. The 5% want to have a
| system that is designed for themselves and not the other 95%.
| elorant wrote:
| I wouldn't mind wearing glasses outdoors as long as the
| environment could provide me with useful information. From a
| nearby shop that has discounts, to real time traffic updates.
| What AR was supposed to deliver but never really materialized.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Yet.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Remember how stupid AirPods looked when they first came out?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They still do to be fair
| bookofjoe wrote:
| True, but it's a familiar stupid.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Why do you think VR makers think people are going to wear the
| thing all the time? Not being appropriate to use everywhere
| doesn't hurt computer monitors, or game consoles, or cars, etc.
| It's not going to replace phones, but that isn't what it needs
| to do to succeed as a product.
| mliker wrote:
| I would encourage you to try out both the Quest 3 and the Apple
| Vision Pro for an extended period of time. If you had asked
| people during the advent of the television, they would have
| expressed the same opinion about people wanting social
| connection instead of sitting in front of a box.
| coldtea wrote:
| And they would be right. Television did fuck social
| connection. And the smartphone did it much worse.
| swores wrote:
| No they clearly wouldn't be right. Even if we accept as
| fact the idea that both those things have had negative
| effects on society and on us, quite clearly huge numbers of
| people DO want TVs and smartphones, even if those things
| aren't leading to better, happier lives.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I'm not sure how we could possibly quantify and compare
| better, happier lives before and after TVs or
| smartphones, but it would be impossible to narrow down
| the metrics to peg the change over such a long period of
| time on just those technologies. The scale is just too
| big and the timeline to long to possibly know _why_
| happiness may have increased, if it did at all.
|
| > quite clearly huge numbers of people DO want TVs and
| smartphones
|
| This really ventures into the space of addictive
| behaviors. Do meth addicts really _want_ meth, or are
| they using for some other reason? Can we assume that they
| DO want the meth and that 's the primary driver simply
| because they keep using it?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Pretty sure meth addicts really want meth, based on the
| chemical reactions involved between the brain and meth.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I guess I just am not as certain that I'd classify
| chemical addiction as a true "want", but maybe that's
| wrong.
| echoangle wrote:
| That's shifting the goalpost, the original point was that
| nobody wants this, not that it's bad for society
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's true. But as far as business and popularity go, TV
| and smartphones were a huge success. In the end what makes
| money will be sold without regard for social consequences.
| ausbah wrote:
| i think the key difference is "out in public"
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I'm in my late 30's, and I was a high school educator for about
| a decade. Teenagers have become quite comfortable holding an
| entire conversation while wearing earbuds. As an ancient and
| outdated old person, my initial gut reaction was that it was...
| a bit rude(?); however, these teenagers just internalized that
| audio pass-through was a thing, and wearing earbuds didn't
| indicate a lack of attention to the conversant. My point being,
| we may not be comfortable having a conversation indoors with
| sunglasses on today - but that could change in a flash and only
| 'old people' would even notice.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| I appreciate this observation.
|
| It identifies that rudeness comes from lack of attention and
| that communicating attention can change within a cultural
| context.
| m463 wrote:
| Maybe at some point society will interact with goggles like
| people chatting at a masquerade ball.
| lm28469 wrote:
| But that doesn't mean it isn't a bad thing. Being a crackhead
| in a crack house feels like being a fish in water...
| iambateman wrote:
| Depends on your perspective.
|
| People living in the 1920's would say we are all
| crackheads.
| haswell wrote:
| Yeah, it could be a "bad thing", but it won't be a bad
| thing just because prior norms have been broken.
|
| We're already deep into the process of merging modern
| technology into every aspect of our lives, and in some
| cases it's been bad. In some cases it's been a necessary
| evolution to survive in a modern society. In some cases,
| it's been good.
|
| On the one hand, I worry that face helmets will further
| erode human connection, and people will live in a lower
| resolution reality than what is possible with direct human
| contact. On the other hand, the current reality is that
| more and more people are looking down into a slab of glass
| instead of up/out at the world around them.
|
| It could be that the ultimate version of AVP (some kind of
| glasses that are barely more noticeable than AirPods) is
| what gets people to look up/out again.
|
| The "bad thing" is arguably already here, and it's just a
| question of whether future tech will make it worse, or do a
| better job of merging the real world with the digital
| world, enabling people to participate in both instead of
| disappearing into their pocket computer.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The AirPods are really the first mass-market augmented
| reality device. It's so well done that no one even thinks
| about them that way. That's how it'll need to be with visual
| augmentation, but there's no reason I've seen that we won't
| get there eventually. I'm bullish on Apple being the first
| major player here in part because they _already are_ , by a
| huge, huge margin, the biggest player in augmented reality.
|
| Apple is IMO the only company that seems capable of
| simultaneously tackling the form factor, outside-viewer
| perception factor (AirPods are fully socialized, as you
| mention), inside-viewer perception factor (AirPods on
| transparency really do feel 99.9% fully "transparent")
| gizmo686 wrote:
| There is a major difference between earbuds and sunglasses.
| There is a lot of subconscious communication that goes on
| with facial gestures (including but not limited to eye
| gestures). This is where the sterotype of poker players
| wearing sunglasses comes from.
|
| Would the new generation be get used to it? Probably. But
| that does not mean it is healthy. We have gotten used to a
| lot of things that are objectively bad for us.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I think you could make the exact same argument about almost any
| tech device, like the iPhone itself which is wildly popular
| along with the spinoffs.
|
| Also VR isn't what companies, Apple at least, care about. It's
| a stepping stone to AR which is why the AVP does a "fake AR" of
| sorts as its primary mode of operation. You have to walk before
| you run which is also why Apple pushed VR/ARKit so hard even
| before they had a device to really take full advantage of it
| (as in a device that's not just holding an iPad up and pointing
| it at table, all of 5 people care about that).
|
| The Overton window will shift if people get true utility out of
| VR/AR in the same way it's shifted on everything else. Right
| now there just isn't anything compelling enough to force that
| shift but I think it will happen quickly when there is.
|
| And before "I find X compelling", ok, that's great for you, for
| the vast majority of people the tech and/or use-cases are not
| there yet.
| echelon wrote:
| > Also VR isn't what companies, Apple at least, care about.
| It's a stepping stone to AR
|
| I couldn't care less about AR. I want VR and only VR.
|
| I don't want digital overlays of the world around me at all.
| That's completely useless and will be filled with ads and
| noise. I want to live and breathe in imaginative fantasy
| worlds and escape the real world completely.
|
| I want to be a character in interactive movies. Have
| realistic D&D sessions with friends where the real world
| disappears completely. To create entire planets and universes
| and populate them with stories and adventures.
|
| I don't want labels on cooking ingredients, advertisements
| for Taco Bell while I walk around, or email notifications
| popping up during conversations. AR might have industrial use
| cases, but the real world implications are annoying.
| creeble wrote:
| And they'll all be in VR if it ever gains success too.
|
| But maybe there will be a few years of bliss, like the
| early internet. Or maybe that bliss has already happened.
| moolcool wrote:
| > you could make the exact same argument about almost any
| tech device, like the iPhone itself
|
| I don't think this is true. There was a massive appetite for
| the iPhone for decades leading up to its release, and there
| was no question that mobile was going to have a giant role in
| the future of computing. If you look back, most nay-sayers
| didn't doubt the value or utility of pocket-computers, but
| rather just that Apple specifically would be out-competed by
| established vendors.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| What we consider acceptable changes all the time. A lot of
| people have conversations with earbuds in. And in the 90s it
| would have been inconceivable to go out for dinner and have
| half of the people hacking away on their phones.
| cma wrote:
| Ok but compare it with a phone call. That's much worse than
| sunglasses.
|
| Whereas VR equivalent of a phone call with eye and face
| tracking and eventually full body tracking is much closer to an
| in-person interaction.
| arctac wrote:
| "devkit" at over $2000 is just mind-boggling and we are talking
| about Apple here.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Cost of two monitor stands? Sounds very reasonable.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They also sell some castor wheels for $700 plus shipping
| bunnie wrote:
| Maybe I'm old fashioned but one of the biggest barriers for me
| adopting VR/AR is there isn't a socially acceptable way to "duck
| out" of a VR experience you're just not into. I've been given a
| couple of demos of headsets by friends and more often than not by
| the end I feel trapped -- you're strapped into a thing that fully
| occupies your visual field, yet it's obvious and socially awkward
| when you take it off.
|
| And your eyes are both covered so there isn't a good way to non-
| verbally communicate waning interest levels...I suppose a
| solution is to simply care less if I hurt my friend's feelings
| but I'd also like a way to spend time with friends without
| feeling trapped.
|
| At least in an f2f or video call meeting that I'm bored of, I can
| zone out or look at my phone or tap on my laptop, or do anything
| but stare at the slides. With eye tracking, the headset knows
| (and presumably everyone else could know as well) when you're
| tuned out.
|
| The eye tracking thing also kind of weirds me out from a privacy
| standpoint. It's already bad enough that web pages track how long
| you engage with different portions of content. Now they know what
| parts of images I stare at, and can algorithmically feed me
| content based solely on my gaze alone. Does that prospect not
| weird anyone else out? Or are most normal users like "plug me
| into AR TikTok, but with gaze mechanics now!"
| andsoitis wrote:
| > And your eyes are both covered so there isn't a good way to
| non-verbally communicate waning interest levels...I suppose a
| solution is to simply care less if I hurt my friend's feelings
| but I'd also like a way to spend time with friends without
| feeling trapped.
|
| I hadn't considered those antisocial patterns that the
| technology is foisting on users, but I suppose one can also
| juts directly communicate verbally. Could work in low context
| cultures but not so well in high context cultures.
|
| > The eye tracking thing also kind of weirds me out from a
| privacy standpoint.
|
| Indeed. While I am less worried about Apple "going after me in
| a direct targeted nefarious way", I don't appreciate more
| levers for technology to disintermediate my manipulate my
| behavior, emotions, or interactions.
| anentropic wrote:
| > The eye tracking thing also kind of weirds me out from a
| privacy standpoint.
|
| I vaguely remember there being some stuff from Apple about this
| when it launched - the apps don't have a lot of access to that
| raw tracking data
|
| Had a quick google... the doc here has more details
| https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Apple_Vision_Pro_Privacy_...
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You're describing a situation where you're physically co
| located and someone is giving you the only headset?
|
| I don't get it. Why not just tell them? What do you do if
| someone hands you a controller for a tv game equivalent?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > What do you do if someone hands you a controller for a tv
| game equivalent?
|
| I'm not the GP, but as they said you have all your other body
| language for communication. In VR-world, you have your eye
| direction and hands - not even your full eyes, with all the
| muscles around them that may communicate more than anything
| else on your body. I suppose you could flip them off. :)
|
| It's an interesting point about how VR avatars, for all their
| 'presence', are very limited. VR video chat seems much
| better.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| If someone is showing you a tv show it seems extremely rude
| to me to not look at the show as a way of passively showing
| disinterest vs just saying it's not for you; no?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > If someone is showing you a tv show it seems extremely
| rude to me to not look at the show as a way of passively
| showing disinterest vs just saying it's not for you; no?
|
| Those aren't your only two options. There are almost
| infinite ways to communicate.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Like what? What's a polite, non verbal way to show
| disinterest that is not available to you when in VR?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I don't understand your question. That's how people
| express emotion, mostly. I'll trust you are not being
| argumentative:
|
| Facial expression - eyes (the muscles around them), mouth
| (smile, blank, frown, etc) - posture, legs, arms, etc etc
| etc. You can look disinterested, you can look like it's
| the best thing ever, or any other human emotion.
| baby wrote:
| That's a very interesting comment, because I've definitely felt
| that just playing a game on console (portable or plugged to a
| TV) or on PC. Sometimes games get so intense that I can't stop
| it and I have to force myself to get out of the world. I
| remember getting a massive headache playing Elden Ring and
| forcing myself to just stop the game.
|
| Also, I've played Catan in VR and felt like I couldn't leave
| "like that". I had to finish the game and shake hands with the
| strangers I played with before leaving the game, it just felt
| like I was really there and it would have been rude to leave
| the game like that.
|
| I did freak out the first time I joined a cinema room (can't
| remember the name of the game) as when I looked on my left side
| I saw people staring at me in the cinema room (which made me
| yell and it made everyone laugh, indicating to me that even my
| mic was on!)
| ugh123 wrote:
| IMHO Meta's #1 mistake with VR thus far has been presentation. No
| good press has ever come with screenshots of silly cartoon
| avatars (with or without legs). The focus on games highlighted
| its lack of utility. AVP _only_ highlighted utility, which draws
| instant connection to our daily lives.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Just speaking for myself here, but owning a Quest I don't
| entirely agree. The utility of it is kinda crazy - I can browse
| the web and OpenXR apps from my browser, or tether myself to my
| PC with the push of a button. Wanna sideload streaming apps and
| watch movies over SFTP from your homeserver? There are no
| guardrails in place to stop you.
|
| If I try to imagine myself living the same workflow on Apple
| Vision Pro, I get hung up on the cost. $3,500 is a big ask for
| a VR iPad with a lot of the same pitfalls as the tablet.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Meta severely underplays those capabilities. I've always
| known they're "there", but it's not their preferred
| presentation of the device. It also takes a bit of "power
| user" to be comfortable doing much of what you're describing.
|
| I'm not even sure if AVP can side load apps or watch movies
| over SFTP, but I don't think it matters at this point: the
| global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now, and
| personally I don't think it's the hardware driving the
| difference. Strangely, I think it came down to "look n feel"
| for a lot of it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| They definitely underplay it - Meta is big on services,
| selling people a quest for sideloading or Blu-Ray streaming
| probably threatens their bottom line. Hard to blame them
| when the hardware costs the same as a Switch though. At the
| price Apple is asking (and the hardware margins they
| enjoy), I'd expect more capabilities than just spatialized
| iOS. I'm not sure the Apple customers in my life would buy
| a Vision Pro _even if_ it was the same price as an iPhone.
|
| > the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader
| now
|
| Besides Casey Neistat and Mark Gurman, I'm really not
| hearing much from the "global mindshare" anymore. The Quest
| didn't really get any fanfare either, but it did move units
| and get market penetration from the start. Apple is on a
| slow roll right now, and until they get _Half Life: Alyx_
| or _MSFS2020_ -tier system sellers, I'm not sure the in-
| group will even consider them on-par with PCVR. Given
| Apple's audience, I half expect their biggest VR competitor
| to be Sony's PSVR2.
| ugh123 wrote:
| It's possible Apple isn't truly interested in typical
| VR/AR gameplay, or at least the way we (and Meta) have
| been thinking about it. The high price (as of now) and
| focus on utility leads me to think their long term game
| here is as a complement to macbooks, and AVP is a
| _Display_ replacement, rather than a standalone unit. I
| can see them pushing this on Enterprise customers a lot.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Time will tell. I worked at a startup that bought Apple
| Silicon build servers day-and-date with announcement
| (despite our stack not building on ARM). There is
| certainly a demand for anything with the "made in
| Cupertino" label.
| gryn wrote:
| I'm sure they get a lot more people if they just advised: hey
| you can watch 3D p*rn unlike elsewhere.
|
| it's nice for browsing the web, but you have to deal with ads
| inside their chromium fork.
|
| for working with it as a monitor for work though. it's usable
| but the resolution is not there yet.
| mech422 wrote:
| The killer for me was requiring a FB/Meta login...
|
| No way I'm going to buy a piece of equipment Zuck can brick at
| any minute...
|
| Apple seems to have a bit better reputation in this regard, but
| I'm still not sure I'd risk getting a device...
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Like so much else with VR, it's a real challenge of perception.
| Because nearly everyone who actually tries it finds that those
| cartoon avatars are actually surprisingly good in giving you a
| real sense of co-presence with someone else. Especially when
| linked with good eye and face tracking. You really quickly just
| forget it's not the real person you are with. But I totally
| agree, every time you see a screen shot or even video of it, it
| just looks totally silly.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > Launch high-definition room scanning and unlock teleportation
| using technology that has existed within Oculus Research for
| several years now; it is time for Meta to make this future a
| reality where people can be remote but feel truly present by
| visiting each other's home, office or favorite place.
|
| This teleportation/telepresence is the thing that struck me the
| most. I'd love to pop into a friend's living room for a beer
| without worrying about them living in another country.
| treyd wrote:
| > I'd love to pop into a friend's living room for a beer
| without worrying about them living in another country.
|
| The way a large number of young people do this is just by
| seeing their friends in voice chat on discord and then joining
| on their phone.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Yeah, that sort of works, but I think there's something
| meaningful to be gained by bringing the embodied experience
| into it, even if it's just simulated.
|
| On a related note, we're probably also less than a decade
| away from telepresence via a humanoid robot at an affordable
| price.
| chaostheory wrote:
| It's not the same. Seeing your friend or family member
| trapped in a small box is very different from having out with
| a low fidelity version of them playing mini golf or ping
| pong. Immersion and presence are things that you won't
| understand if you refuse to try VR for longer than 5 minutes.
| treyd wrote:
| I own a Vive and used to use it regularly.
| twen_ty wrote:
| Multimillionaire tech bro returns a $4k VR headset because he's
| unhappy. The end.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| The current model is not going to work, but it is a large leap to
| the ideal state of the future world to come. Probably we will
| adjust but it will be an odd world to adjust to when we have this
| thing over our face all day
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I don't see it as an ideal future if they don't let you have
| root and run unsigned code. A dystopia created by the ad
| industry seems way more likely.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I'm going to die on the hill that gaze sucks. I really hate focus
| follows gaze and not having a workable keyboard or buttons makes
| it hard to actually use this for productivity. It's fine for an
| alt mode type thing but as the main form of input I kind of hate
| it.
|
| That said, forcing your hands to be full of controllers also
| sucks but at least you can play a game. I don't have a solution
| but it needs to get solved for these things to be seamless enough
| to wear and useful enough to want to.
|
| And I would call myself an enthusiast.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Have you tried the Vision Pro? Not doubting your take here,
| just curious if it's informed by the actual implementation.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yes I have. It's the best implementation so far but still
| very limiting.
| lobster_roll wrote:
| imo for AR purposes the gaze is a huge improvement than just
| pinching (a-la HoloLens). I agree though that for productivity,
| a more tactile device is needed. In practice I end up
| connecting my keyboard via Bluetooth, or just end up mirroring
| my MacBook, when I need to do real work
|
| For work purposes, the privacy factor is a huge benefit --
| nobody in the room can peek at your "screen"
| baby wrote:
| ^ agree with this take. If you're slow with tech, then this is
| amazing! And I think Apple has been great at making interfaces
| that are natural to use and easy to get into if you're not
| tech-savy. But for someone who's used to multi-task, or perform
| operations without looking at what I'm actually operating on,
| it sucks. I tried using keynote to create diagrams in Vision
| pro and the experience was so infuriating, I had to painfully
| look at everything and keep my focus on them while I also tried
| to repeatedly snap my fingers as the Vision Pro failed to
| detect it half of the times. I just want controllers.
| krrrh wrote:
| Can't you just use a mouse and keyboard as controllers? It's
| hard to imagine any hardware peripheral that would improve on
| them for making a keynote or we'd already be using it on our
| desktops.
| baby wrote:
| This was just one example, but yeah if the answer is always
| "just use a mouse and keyboard" then the experiences are
| going to be quite limited. I guess I'm used to the high
| interactivity of experiences on the Quest and the Vision
| Pro is just a glorified screen to me.
| twodave wrote:
| I liked the thumb gesture idea they presented in Peripheral.
| Enough movement to be discernible by a camera, but really only
| requires a small amount of energy and dexterity.
|
| Though ideally we probably want some sort of "force gloves"
| that allow us to feel the weight of and manipulate objects in a
| virtual world using. We need way higher resolution on inputs
| than we have today, though, which currently amounts to an x/y/z
| and some button presses.
| the-rc wrote:
| Fresh off the (pre)press:
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.23.581779v1
| RajT88 wrote:
| The blur is a great decision, btw.
|
| Something I observed in the late 90's/early 2000's with my
| experiments of outputting video from a PC to a TV is - something
| that looks really rough even at the same resolution on a PC looks
| significantly better on a TV. The reason being twofold:
|
| 1. TV pixels on a CRT are usually diagonally arranged, instead of
| side-by-side, which helps to hide jaggies.
|
| 2. The phosphorous illumination on the glass itself isn't super
| sharp on a CRT like it is on more modern displays.
|
| The result being - something a little fuzzier makes for a better
| viewing experience. You can perceive individual pixels (and
| resulting artifacts) less.
| fouc wrote:
| The author of this article and quite a few people in this HN
| thread all seem to be mainly looking at Vision Pro through the
| lens of VR gaming. Why else would the author return his Vision
| Pro?
|
| What makes Vision Pro truly interesting to me is that we can
| replace our laptop screen with a view containing a larger display
| and multiple ancillary displays.
| causal wrote:
| Except most reviews find the fov and resolution inadequate for
| desktop work, and eschewing gamers cuts out the majority of
| existing VR enthusiasts.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Except most reviews find the fov and resolution inadequate
| for desktop work
|
| I have not heard any such complaints.
|
| Sure, I heard some complaining that the FOV should be wider,
| but not being able to work because of it? Not a peep.
|
| The resolution is incredible, you can't see any pixels at
| all. There's zero screen door effect.
|
| If the concern is with the Mac Virtual Display, then it's
| understandable. There seems to be some compression going on
| and it doesn't look as crisp.
|
| Native apps though? They are _perfect_
|
| > eschewing gamers
|
| They are not doing that. It's the companies not porting games
| over (the ones that don't have issues with the lack of
| controllers). It may be simply a matter of time, as just
| porting games and keeping existing assets will make them look
| terrible with the higher resolution of the Vision Pro.
| layer8 wrote:
| The article explains that you can't see the pixels because
| the AVP is purposely blurring them. The effective
| resolution of a mirrored Mac screen is below that of a
| physical 4K screen.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I don't think you are accurately reflecting the article - the
| author is pointing out that Vision Pro is surprisingly weak in
| the area of "VR Gaming," which is the most successful
| experience category for headsets so far. He's not suggesting
| that's the only use - in fact he spends most of the article
| talking about other uses. He also goes into detail about his
| thoughts around displays and says that the Vision Pro will be a
| compelling alternative as a travel display in the near future -
| but that he does not see it replacing high quality physical
| displays.
|
| My sense is that the Vision Pro is certainly, at least, the
| best "travel monitor" ever built - and it's at a price point
| and comfort point where that is very hard to use to justify a
| purchase. That said, future work can improve both
| substantially.
| falcor84 wrote:
| The author of this article is looking at it through the lens of
| wanting to get consumers to buy it. He spends a very large part
| of the post talking about consumer sentiment and willingness to
| pay for different use-cases, including why the current
| generation headsets (including Apple's) are not quite there yet
| for daily productivity.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| You seem to have missed the entire 30-50% of the article that
| systematically breaks down its use for productivity including
| as a virtual display.
| liendolucas wrote:
| One of the things that I will never understand of the Vision Pro
| is why on earth they went to design and build the front of the
| headset to have that colorful alive gradient or a truly bad
| rendering of the user's face. That screams bad overengineering
| with undesired added weight and extra power consumption. Also it
| seems that the front glass from some batches crack exactly the
| same way. Again, why go with that at all? Why not use some better
| material? Carbon fiber seems like a good choice when it comes to
| weight though I do not know if it has downsides besides cost.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| This is apple. They see users break their phone screens and
| they go OK, lets make them more soap bar like and also give
| them glass on the backside too so you can't get lucky landing
| on that side. All to pocket your couple hundred dollars
| replacing it or in applecare coverage which probably costed you
| more than the one screen replacement did over its life.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _users break their phone screens and they go OK, lets make
| them more soap bar like_
|
| They also massively strengthened the glass. (I don't have a
| case on my iPhone. I drop it constantly, most recently on a
| double-black ski run while I was trying to get it to be a
| GoPro.)
|
| > _give them glass on the backside too so you can't get lucky
| landing on that side_
|
| Fair enough, just noticed mine is cracked there. Not
| bothering me so will leave as is.
| threeseed wrote:
| Vision Pro front glass weighs 34g. There are bigger weight
| problems than that.
|
| And they are anticipating a future where the weight is
| significantly lower and people are wearing them for many hours
| a day. And so they wanted a corollary for AirPod transparency
| mode i.e. being able to interact with people without taking
| device off.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| My two cents (as an owner of a Vision Pro): 1) This is a beta
| product and I wouldnt recommend it to anyone that is not a
| developer or in a position to create apps for it, 2) this is
| going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the computer or
| the internet did and every engineer or aspiring entrepreneur
| should pay it attention.
|
| This device is magical. Yes it's too heavy, yes there are not
| enough apps, yes sharing it with other people is a hassle. Every
| one of those issues will be solved in the next 2 generations.
|
| When the screen is 50% better and it weighs 50% less, 20% of
| knowledge workers will be tuned in daily. Technology isnt a zero
| sum game, but I genuinely believe the impact will be bigger than
| AI. AI changes the way you work, Apple Vision will change the way
| you live, which will change the things you consume, which will
| impact the work that needs to be done to serve you. Empires will
| rise and fall. Travel to beaches will go up, travel to tier 3
| towns and cities with minor attractions could get obliterated.
| Most TVs will disappear. My grand children will be able to
| experience memories with me long after I'm dead. After this,
| looking at my smartphone seems so analog. Anyway, I could go on
| for hours
|
| Lastly, on the topic of pricing, there is a great book titled
| Positioning by Al Reiss that highlights the rational behind
| Apple's strategy on pricing. They are a second mover in this
| space, they needed to come out of the gate as the absolute gold
| standard of this technology and position it as the best money can
| buy. They delivered on both the tech and pricing. Long after the
| price comes down, they'll still own that position of being the
| best money can buy. When you own the position, it takes a lot to
| lose it. It will be almost impossible for Meta to take that from
| them now. Big mistake on Meta's part.
| monocularvision wrote:
| As long as Apple keeps it locked down like an iPad, I don't see
| much of a future for the device replacing general purpose
| computers in the workforce.
| meesles wrote:
| Businesses are not their target market, never has been. They
| dominated the mobile phone market with their iPhone, and the
| iPad is still a gold standard product for tablets compared to
| the dozens of shoddy Android versions out there (coming from
| someone who leans more Android than Apple with their tech). I
| can see GP's point regardless of the rollout. Before the VR
| app stores become such critical masses, Apple will have
| plenty of time to delight users and capture market share.
| They have tons of cash and great execution.
| colinjoy wrote:
| https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/20/apples-enterprise-
| evolutio... (2018)
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I think both are right in different ways. Apple isn't a
| big enterprise player as far as (except for development),
| I give all my employees macs to do their daily work on.
| You don't walk into a bank and see iMacs sitting there
| usually. So from the desktop computer side, they are not
| that deep into enterprise. HOWEVER, iPhones, yes. Tons of
| companies issue iPhones as their company phone. Walk into
| a store, its getting more and more common that the
| cashier is using an iPad hooked up to some sort of
| payment processing device. That is where Apple has their
| business adoption. Or I take my kids to the trampoline
| park and the clerk hands me an iPad to fill out the
| waiver. Their enterprise isn't really that deep in
| desktops, but it for damn sure is in portable device
| (iPhone and iPad).
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > the iPad is still a gold standard product for tablets
| compared to the dozens of shoddy Android versions out there
|
| iPad are the best versions of "tablets", if we see tablets
| as a frozen in time "large iphone" version of the concept.
| Android tablets perfectly fit the category and Samsung is
| the only distant competion (yet Samsung has Dex, which is
| increasingly showing its teeth)
|
| But they're way behind in term of tablets as touch enabled
| computers. Chromebooks have seen more adoption as schools
| and orgs couldn't justify iPad's price, the top of the line
| is above what the iPad has to offer, and the Surface Pro
| took the spot of the North Star of the category, to use the
| article's metaphor.
|
| So yes, I'd agree with parent, Apple could have made the
| "what is a computer?" marketing campaign a reality, but
| didn't have the courage to canibalize their mac line.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| +1 if the iPad were less locked down it would already be
| cannibalizing laptop sales more significantly.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| And that's why Apple doesn't do it. They want you to buy
| _both_ a MacBook and an iPad.
| wraptile wrote:
| For each family memeber too! There's something incredibly
| sinister about how Apple operates that people just
| accept. All those dark patterns and control is just so
| icky I don't understand how anyone aware of this can
| submit to this. Just from sheer self-respect.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's why I don't buy Apple
| lefstathiou wrote:
| 50% of all our employees choose Mac over PCs. When you wear
| an Apple Vision Pro and look at your Macbook, it transfers
| the screen to Apple Vision and allows you to duplicate and
| extend. No other PC will have this level of integration.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >No other PC will have this level of integration.
|
| "640K software is all the memory anybody would ever need on
| a computer."
| pquki4 wrote:
| Oh, what's that called? Virtual monitor? Dude just go to
| Quest store or Google Play store and see how many apps
| exist out there.
| partiallypro wrote:
| > this is going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the
| computer or the internet
|
| I don't see how anyone can say this with a straight face. VR/AR
| just isn't there and won't be there for a lot longer than
| people think. Everyone always acts like we're -so close- but
| then we just aren't. Hololens and Oculus are over a decade old,
| and honestly when I first demo'd both ages ago, they were
| incredible (especially Hololens.) If I put on a headset now,
| sure it's better but it's still stuck on that same idea and
| seems to fundamentally misunderstand how humans interact.
| Apple's newest product is no different. I think the future of
| wearable devices looks a lot more like the Meta Ray-bans with
| some sort of small HUD than a full computer strapped to your
| face that you can't wear anywhere (without being socially
| ostracized or robbed).
| jmull wrote:
| One way to look at VR headsets is that it's a better computer
| display -- as large and immersive as you want, without
| physical limitation. People prefer retina displays and will
| pay for multi-monitor setups, so we know people value this.
|
| We also know that people are perfectly willing to wear
| something on their face to be able to see better, and willing
| to carry something around in their pockets to be more
| connected -- glasses and phones.
|
| So I think the only real barrier is technical feasibility:
| can you make it small enough, light enough, power efficient
| enough, and, of course, affordable enough?
|
| AVP and Oculus clearly aren't there yet. Relative to
| smartphones, I think we're at the "Palm III" or maybe "Palm
| V" level of things. I personally have no idea if a path
| forward to the "iPhone 3S/iPhone 4" level even really exists
| for VR headsets.
|
| But if it does and we get there, I think there's no doubt
| that these headsets (probably just goggles at that point)
| will take over the world, like phones have.
| partiallypro wrote:
| > One way to look at VR headsets is that it's a better
| computer display -- as large and immersive as you want,
| without physical limitation.
|
| I just don't agree, because VR's input system is
| fundamentally flawed. The Verge actually did a good video
| on this, the input of VR is just wonky. It makes you want
| to rip your headset off and just use your laptop/tablet
| (and I'm aware they can act as companions, but at that
| point...why do you need the headset?). I just don't see how
| that's going to change anytime soon. There also -are-
| physical limitations, for one, it's exhausting to wear for
| extended periods. You have absolutely no peripheral vision,
| and how is that going to be solved? Even if you made it
| light, unless it's as light as a pair of glasses, it's not
| going to be something I want to put on for several -hours-
| a day. You can't walk away from it; you have to physically
| remove it.
|
| The best move imo, for VR/AR is as a "background" tech, it
| can physically remove us from our devices and shouldn't be
| a new fully fledged computer I'm putting on my face. You
| also have to understand that generations after Millennials
| are steadily enjoying -less- "in your face" things, and I
| think that's the right. I think the future is going to look
| a lot more like "Her" and a lot less like "Ready Player
| One," at least on the mass market.
|
| This can change in 30-50 years, but right now? It's just a
| gimmick and junk drawer tech. Unless there is some crazy
| jump in the tech in the near future (I doubt given Hololens
| and Oculus and now Apple have only marginally improved it
| over a full decade,) I don't see it as anything that is
| going to penetrate my life.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > One way to look at VR headsets is that it's a better
| computer display -- as large and immersive as you want,
| without physical limitation. People prefer retina displays
| and will pay for multi-monitor setups, so we know people
| value this.
|
| Except it isn't, because the density just isn't there. The
| PPD is incredibly low, which is why you have to make things
| "huge" to compensate. And while huge screens are great for
| watching movies, it's not great for a lot of other things.
| It's not comfortable to move your head back & forth just to
| read a line of text.
|
| In a hypothetical future where these microled displays have
| 3-5x the density they do today then this starts becoming
| competitive with today's multi-monitor setups. Except those
| will also have had improvements to them as well. And even
| then, the number of people with multi-monitor setups is
| also pretty small. That's not a smartphone-level revolution
| or impact.
| skor wrote:
| Totally agree. Best thing about working a life-long career
| with computers is that you can get away from them quite
| easily, leave your phone at home, turn off your monitor.
|
| Every time I see an intent by companies to increment my time
| spent with a computer, to watch their ads, buy another thing
| I don't need ... I know that I should be doing the exact
| opposite.
| rurp wrote:
| VR is the most extreme case of a product that a subset of
| technophiles absolutely love and that the rest of the
| population is decidedly meh on. I think that you are vastly
| overestimating the amount of people who want to spend a large
| portion of their daily life with large googles strapped to
| their head isolating them from the people and things in their
| immediate environment.
|
| This isn't to say that VR won't improve and find some useful
| niches, but the idea that it could have anywhere near the
| global impact of smart phones seems wildly optimistic to me.
| baxtr wrote:
| _> I think that you are vastly overestimating the amount of
| people who want to spend a large portion of their daily life
| with large googles strapped to their head isolating them from
| the people and things in their immediate environment._
|
| I wish you were right. But, man, look around. People are
| immersed in their mobile devices. No one gives a shit about
| their surroundings anymore.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| > I think that you are vastly overestimating the amount of
| people who want to spend a large portion of their daily life
| with large googles strapped to their head
|
| For some reason this illogical phrasing that totally excludes
| the value proposition has become the standard phrasing for
| arguing why VR/AR won't succeed. It makes no sense. You
| haven't expressed any part of the value proposition of the
| product, only a negative aspect of it, so why are you
| assessing it's value based on that? I could assess the value
| of a car as "a metal box you are trapped inside of for hours
| on end" or a phone as a "fragile object that requires
| constant charging" and decide these products will just never
| make it.
|
| _Of course_ people don 't want goggles strapped to their
| face. But we already know they will do it, given a value
| proposition because humans do _exactly that_ : they wear
| glasses and sunglasses and hats quite happily, sometimes all
| day long.
| mirsadm wrote:
| It seems fairly obvious to me that no amount of improvement
| of the technology will make people accept that barrier.
| Even if every technical hurdle is solved I still firmly
| believe most people would rather not have a thing on their
| head and be isolated from their friends and family.
| saurik wrote:
| Did you own prior VR headsets? If so, what is different about
| this one?
|
| I also have been telling people that VR is magical and that
| while both current hardware and the current software has issues
| it will get better and that this stuff is going to have a big
| impact on humanity... only, I've been telling people this for
| just shy of a decade now ;P. I don't see the Apple Vision Pro
| as either the product that made any of this magical nor is it
| the product that made any of this viable... it is just yet
| another incrementally-improved product in a category that has
| been on the verge of getting it right for, well, forever.
| voiceblue wrote:
| Other headsets are like a DC film and the Vision Pro is like
| a marvel film before endgame. The differences (that matter in
| GP's context) are qualitative rather than quantitative, and a
| big distinction is the shift from VR gaming, which most
| incumbents and current VR fans won't "get" nearly as fast as
| the public will (once things get going).
|
| Somewhat ironically, I have no interest in showing people my
| AVP, I use it for hours everyday but showing it to people
| feels weird in the same way showing your neighbor your
| workstation and monitors feels weird. (Part of that is, of
| course, that I'm not going to give them my laptop to run Mac
| virtual display, which means they won't fully "get" it
| anyhow.)
|
| In contrast the quest devices are practically begging to be
| shown off but lie in disuse a majority of the time,
| especially if you don't have time for gaming.
| kimbernator wrote:
| I bought an HTC vive 7+ years ago and have middling opinions
| on its viability long-term as a major game platform. VR is
| fun and novel, but once the novelty wears off it can be
| tedious.
|
| It's worth doing a vision pro demo in an Apple store if you
| can. I'm not planning to buy one in its current state, but it
| was immediately obvious that this was entirely new territory.
| It moved a piece of technology from fiction to reality in my
| mind. The eye tracking is hard to believe without having
| experienced it.
|
| I'm not ready to say that this device will be responsible for
| such a large technology shift as the previous person, but I
| think it will play an large, perhaps pivotal role on our way
| to the next thing.
|
| Disclaimer: I know a lot of people compare this to a device
| that I can surmise was meant to do a lot of similar things
| made by Meta; I have not tried this and may be attributing
| first-mover credit to Apple for things that Meta may have
| done similarly well. My comment is made from the perspective
| of somebody who has never experienced eye tracking in any
| capacity before.
| Ologn wrote:
| I agree. It's obvious this technology has a big future, the
| question is, outside of the current $3500+ niche marker,
| when? The Oculus Rift was created in 2011, id Software was
| demoing it at E3 2012, and in 2016 consumer versions of HTC
| Vive and Oculus Rift launched, as did Microsoft HoloLens and
| Google Daydream.
|
| As it improves, I don't question that it has a future, and
| some people like it so much they're working on it and writing
| apps now. The question is how many years from now before a
| larger mass of people are using it?
|
| The OP talks about the Internet, but the Internet started
| some time between the 1969 first ARPAnet transmission and
| 1974 paper on the Internet protocol. Out to 1993 most people
| were not consciously using the Internet, it was a rather
| niche thing. With the release of the Netscape web browser in
| 1994, the inclusion of IP networking capability in Windows
| 1995 etc., this began to change.
|
| One could say this about AI as well. Up until 2019, Norvig
| and Russell's CS textbook "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern
| Approach" had only a ten page sub-chapter on neural networks.
| The now recognized as groundbreaking 2012 ImageNet
| competition victory by Krizhevsky, Sutskever and Hinton, was
| greeted with skepticism and disinterest on this forum (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4611830 ). The ideas for
| connectionist AI were there starting with McCulloch and Pitts
| 1943 paper, so that's a lot of development where things still
| weren't really happening until around 2012 or even 2019.
|
| Some people can see the potential in things decades in
| advance, but they can take time to move into the mainstream,
| and it is difficult to determine how long that can take.
| MBCook wrote:
| Lots of companies had made "smart phones" before the iPhone
| came along. The iPhone is what blew the market open.
|
| Other companies had MP3 players for a few years first. The
| iPod exploded.
|
| You listed some good examples yourself. Windows 3 was nice
| but it was 95 that really made it _big_. The Internet
| existed but it was Netscape that made it takeoff, followed
| by AOL.
|
| There's always an invisible threshold. You can make
| something in a category but until it passes that threshold
| it doesn't really change the world. It could be price,
| speed, ease of use, some new piece of technology, or a
| combination of all those factors.
|
| Existing VR headsets obviously sell well enough that an
| industry exists, but it's nowhere near ubiquitous. It
| hasn't hit that threshold (assuming it exists for VR).
| Apple clearly has set their own bar, much higher than
| others, hoping that they've hit that magical point or at
| least gotten close enough to it. Today that cost a lot of
| money like the original Mac.
|
| Going from the quest one to the two to the three has
| increased sales but I'm not sure it's done anything to
| really approach that magic inflection point. Who knows how
| long it would have taken to get there. Maybe the quest four
| or five would, maybe the eight. We still don't know where
| that line is.
|
| But Apple is really pushing and that makes it interesting
| to watch if nothing else.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > When the screen is 50% better and it weighs 50% less, 20% of
| knowledge workers will be tuned in daily.
|
| I don't believe that for a second. Even 50% lighter and it's
| still going to be more uncomfortable than _not_ wearing one.
| All so you can have a blurrier screen?
|
| If/when it gets to the weight/comfort of normal glasses then
| sure. But that's at least a decade away. Probably more.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > If/when it gets to the weight/comfort of normal glasses
| then sure.
|
| I'm not so sure about that.
|
| Even after 36 years of wearing glasses (current ones weight
| barely 20 gram), they still bother me, and I fiddle with them
| constantly.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I spent nearly 40 years of my life glasses-free. Now I need
| to wear glasses to read a computer display without eye
| strain. I'd go back to glasses-free in a heartbeat, if I
| could.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > AI changes the way you work
|
| AI does a whole lot more than that. I imagine that the vast
| majority of content people consume will at some point be
| created by AI perhaps with some marginal human input. Probably
| before your VR vision becomes a reality.
| userabchn wrote:
| > Travel to beaches will go up
|
| I am perhaps missing your point, but if people will be able to
| experience incredible VR worlds, couldn't people happily spend
| their time sitting in tiny windowless rooms rather than
| physically travelling to a beach?
| hendersonreed wrote:
| I think there might end up being a greater division between
| "IRL places you really need to be IRL to enjoy" and "IRL
| places that are good enough in VR."
|
| A beach seems like the former, and cities and minor
| attractions seem like the latter.
| tr3ntg wrote:
| > this is going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the
| computer or the internet did
|
| I see statements like this about AI too. How can something be
| bigger than the technology it is built on? The AVP is a
| computer. AI is a computer accessed through the internet... any
| computing device that accesses another computing device is
| further extending the "impact of computers and the internet." I
| don't get it. Maybe I'm too caught up on the semantics.
| int_19h wrote:
| By this logic, a computer is just a bunch of transistors. And
| transistors are just fancy electric circuits.
| visitor4712 wrote:
| and a human is this ...
|
| Element Symbol Percent mass Percent atoms Oxygen O 65.0
| 24.0 Carbon C 18.5 12.0 Hydrogen H 9.5 62.0 Nitrogen N 3.2
| 1.1
| tr3ntg wrote:
| yes, you're making my point. The companies that excel at
| this technology are the same ones that are dominating the
| general computing space.
|
| Edit: but point taken, we could go down the rabbit hole
| forever. Definitely not as cut and dry as I was making it
| out to be
| adammarples wrote:
| If you look at it as purely additive, then sure. If you look
| at it like this, the era or the horse drawn carriage ended
| with the motor car, it doesn't get to claim any of the car's
| influence, despite being a precursor, then no.
| archagon wrote:
| Having tried the VP out for a week, I categorically disagree
| that VR is going to have remotely this level of impact on
| humanity. Having to wear something on your head to compute is
| fatiguing and isolating. You can't bring your existing
| peripherals and audio equipment unless they're proprietary and
| wireless. Passthrough video is nauseating and blurry even at
| the highest refresh rates. The paradigm is also intrinsically
| inaccessible to the blind and disabled.
|
| The immersiveness for entertainment is neat, but this seems
| like a relatively minor use case in the grand scheme of things.
| And with gesture based controls, gaming is pretty much a non-
| starter.
|
| Do you really envision a future of families hanging out
| together on the couch, each member with their own VR
| goggles...? Halfway through my return period, I realized that I
| much preferred reality.
|
| FWIW, I love my Quest for the occasional gaming romp, but
| little else.
| sumedh wrote:
| > I categorically disagree that VR is going to have remotely
| this level of impact on humanity.
|
| This feels like a comment from Blackberry or MS making fun of
| the first iPhone.
| archagon wrote:
| Having actually tried the thing, and having used VR for
| several years before that, I'd like to think that my
| opinion is not just a simple knee-jerk response.
| jordanpg wrote:
| 100% agree. Until this tech has the same form factor as a
| pair of glasses and no wires it will be stuck in the realms
| of gaming and porn. Not a small market, perhaps, but hardly a
| seismic shift in life on Earth.
| Nathanba wrote:
| If they can't fix the ever so slight blurryness for everyone it
| will continue to be a niche product simply because only a small
| niche wants to accept such a thing. Or only a small niche of
| people has eyes that can deal with it. Btw I consider my Meta
| Quest 3 to be a terrible product in almost every way, from
| hardware to software, from blurryness, from weight, from app
| availability, from PC compatability, from having to buy extra
| cables, weight, the strap, passthrough, from even the simplest
| interactions like clicking on a button... everything was bad.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > the ever so slight blurryness for everyone
|
| As the article mentions, this is an intentional thing they've
| done to cover up the remaining vestiges of the screen door
| effect. The better the screens get, the less and less they'll
| have any reason to do it.
| gamepsys wrote:
| Increasing resolution increases computational complexity.
| This is especially true with the 100hz refresh rate of the
| display. Current Vision Pro resolution is higher than 4k.
| Imagine trying to build a 8k 100hz PC. You couldn't even
| use Display Port or HDMI to transport video data because
| those channels don't provide enough data.
|
| With the questionable state of Moore's law, and the battery
| powered nature of the device, it might be awhile before
| tech catches up. Faster components would use more energy.
| We need to balance performance with battery capacity, and I
| expect the product that really catches on will have more of
| both.
| Nathanba wrote:
| I'm not talking about blurryness on the Vision Pro, I mean
| blurryness in general. I found the Meta Quest 3 to be very
| blurry
| crooked-v wrote:
| That's the same root cause: display density.
| adastra22 wrote:
| > this is going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the
| computer or the internet did and every engineer or aspiring
| entrepreneur should pay it attention
|
| I predict it will go the way of 3D TVs. Most people don't want
| to walk around with half a kilogram of computers inside goggles
| strapped to their faces.
| pquki4 wrote:
| You have lived in your bubble for too long. Just talk to people
| around you -- could include other software engineers or tech
| enthusiasts -- and I'm sure most people don't think about the
| product the same way you feel. I'll put it sinply: most people
| DON'T want to put this thing on their face. Not Oculus Quest.
| Not Apple Vision Pro.
| candrewlee14 wrote:
| I experienced AR for the first time with the Vision Pro, and I
| came away with the same impressions; it's not quite ready for
| mainstream but "magical" really is apt. I was a big skeptic on
| AR/VR in general before, but the demo for Vision Pro convinced
| me. I wrote about it here.[1]
|
| [1] https://candrewlee14.github.io/blog/2024-03-07_apple-
| vision-...
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Can't believe such an obvious PR puff piece gets so much
| attention on HN.
| alex_young wrote:
| We already tried TV but mounted on your face a few times.
| Remember 3D TVs? No one wants this.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Vision Pro is a meticulously over-engineered "devkit" that is
| far too heavy to have product-market fit but good enough to seed
| curiosity into the world
|
| That's exactly what I think. And that's exactly why I bought it.
|
| I have:
|
| * Oculus Rift 1 * HTC Vive * Quest 2
|
| None of those made me want to write apps for them. They have nice
| games and I spent quality time with them, but just playing. I
| tried watching videos and it was ok, but it was still better to
| do that on my TV. I tried actually working with them, and the
| resolution was not enough.
|
| The Vision Pro? It's the opposite. Games, such as they are, are
| underwhelming. It doesn't even have many '3d' experiences,
| windows are mostly flat (for now). And guess what? It excel at
| all the tasks the others fail at, because it's an iPad with a
| different form factor. If you can work from an iPad, you can work
| from the Vision Pro. Even watching videos is a better experience
| due to the passthrough, as you can still interact with people
| around you(if you so choose) - you can passthrough with the
| Quest, but you have to choose between your content and the world.
|
| So now I'm spending my time learning how to work with it. It has
| _incredible_ potential. It is not the mass market device yet, but
| the next one should be transformative.
| jajko wrote:
| > If you can work from an iPad
|
| Sorry I can't and why the heck should I. I can get vastly
| superior work computer for 10% of the price (of goggles) that
| has none of the apple nor general tablet hard and massive
| limits. Huge constant time saving on work effectivity.
|
| I could do some work with samsung ultra series (mouse, keyboard
| and massive screen cinnectivity via single usbc out if box),
| but even that is massively subpar.
|
| Maybe we just do vastly different things, but all folks I know
| fall into my category, IT or not.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Many people have desk jobs where all they do is emails, web
| browsing, and editing Google Docs, a perfect scenario. And if
| you need it, it can show your mac in a virtual window while
| you have other apps open around you.
|
| But this is missing the point that, while it can do work
| things reasonably well, that's not its primary use case. All
| of the marketing focuses on content consumption - movies,
| reading, reliving photos and videos, facetime - and other
| things typically already done on an iPhone or iPad. For those
| use cases, it's pretty much perfect, with the text clarity
| being leagues ahead of any other production device, maybe
| except some enterprise-targeted Varjo headsets.
| FumblingBear wrote:
| I'm going to go against the grain a bit here and say that in my
| experience, the description of the Vision Pro as a dev kit feels
| pretty reductive.
|
| I was a day 1 purchaser who bought it fully expecting the device
| to just be an early access "dev kit" and have been shocked at how
| well it's fit into my day-to-day uses for a huge variety of
| things.
|
| Some of the things I like to do with it:
|
| 1. Gaming with friends: I play Baldur's Gate 3 with a group of 4
| every week and can very comfortably relax on my recliner while
| running a discord window and stream BG3 from Geforce Now with an
| app called Nexus+ just using a ps5 controller. It's a very
| seamless experience and one of the highlights of my week.
|
| 2. Reading comic books: I thing this is one of the most
| underrated things to do with the Vision Pro. Being able to adjust
| the size of comic panels to an enormous size helps me appreciate
| the linework and detail put into every page.
|
| 3. Software development/photo + video editing: I use my MacBook
| Pro + screen mirroring to get a larger screen in an immersive
| environment that I personally find less distracting to get into a
| focused state of mind for writing code or creative endeavors like
| photo + video editing.
|
| 4. Entertainment: Watching movies, tv shows, and 180 SBS videos
| like SliceofLifeVR's content has been awesome and incredibly
| immersive. I much prefer the Vision Pro to my TV for solo
| viewing. Obviously, this falls short when looking to share the
| experience with others, but a lot of my viewing is alone, so it's
| fine for me.
|
| Things that haven't really worked very well that I wanted to
| like:
|
| 1. Reading books + taking notes: I read a lot for book clubs I
| host and envisioned this being a great way to have a lot of
| available space to spread out notes and things during book clubs
| on discord and just find it to not be particularly enjoyable
| compared to reading a physical book or kindle.
|
| 2. VisionOS Native productivity: I've spent a decent amount of
| time editing spreadsheets and writing documentation with the
| VisionOS Native Microsoft Office Suite + PDF readers but find
| that there's a lot of minor things that add up to make it a less
| usable product for productivity outside of the context of screen
| mirroring. I'm going to keep trying to figure out a workflow that
| works better for me, but just haven't yet.
|
| For context, I'm in my late 20's and live alone currently, so
| there are a lot of people for whom this device doesn't make as
| much sense for--I'm solely describing my personal uses for it as
| a member of the likely target audience.
|
| Overall, I'm extremely pleased that it can do a lot of things
| that I find fulfilling and entertaining with little to no
| resistance. I can confidently say that for the tasks I listed
| above, it's my favorite way of doing them by a pretty large
| margin.
|
| Additionally, I use the Solo Knit Band (M) for all of my usage
| with no modifications and find it comfortable for around 5-6
| hours with no breaks in wearing it. I fully recognize that this
| isn't the normal experience for many consumers, and I likely will
| upgrade to some type of Halo band when a company like BoboVR
| release an AVP product line, but out of the box, the comfort is
| more than enough for me to use for extended periods of time with
| no mods.
|
| Since buying it on release day, I've used it probably 2-4 hours
| most days with some days of 10-12 hours and some days of no usage
| and it's become an integrated part of my lifestyle. If anyone has
| any questions for me, I'd be happy to answer about my experience
| with it.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > 180 SBS videos like SliceofLifeVR's content
|
| I thought the Vision Pro didn't support SBS video? And that
| that was the reason why the people who like to bring up porn in
| every conversation about VR said it would fail.
| FumblingBear wrote:
| It doesn't natively support it in the Photos app but 3rd
| party apps like Moon Player work for the content. None of the
| solutions are as robust as their implementations on other
| platforms (i.e. Meta Quest 3) but they're perfectly
| functional and are constantly getting improved.
|
| I anticipate within 3-6 months, other major offerings will
| have been ported over and have relative feature parity with
| their counterparts but with the benefit of the increased
| resolution and no screen door effect.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I got mine on day 1 (February 2) and have spent many hours using
| it and experimenting, trying to make the device as unobtrusive as
| possible so I can use it for hours watching movies/surfing the
| web/etc., activities which become enjoyable if you're not
| constantly adjusting your position/VP's position on your head and
| face.
|
| Here are my takeaways FWIW:
|
| 1. The only body position I find comfortable and compatible with
| prolonged use is laying down on a couch with my head elevated on
| the arm. This automatically relieves all pressure on the top and
| back of my head from the device, and transfers it to my face.
|
| By finding just the right head position/angle, looking up and
| away, I can create a balance of downward forces distributed
| across my forehead/nose/cheekbones. If done just right, that 600
| grams (1.3 lbs.) of VP hardware then has an effective surface
| area of about 8 square inches of skin interface with the foam of
| the light shield cushion.
|
| Note: the VP with knitted strap weighs 600 grams; without the
| strap it weighs 550 grams (1.2 lbs.)
|
| Lying down while using VP, strap weight is irrelevant since it
| does not exert force on your head.
|
| Do this experiment: get bags of coffee beans/nuts/raisins/frozen
| peas/corn, or a steak or bacon or ground beef, whatever weighs a
| total of around 1.2 pounds, then lie down and put it over your
| upper face.
|
| Close your eyes and think about how it feels. Remember the VP
| interface with your skin will be soft foam -- NOT product
| packaging.
|
| Consider that when using VP, your attention will NOT be on how it
| feels but rather on whatever it is you're doing/watching.
|
| 2. For use in the supine position as detailed above, the knitted
| strap is far more comfortable and easy to use compared to the
| two-strap alternative that comes with VP.
|
| You don't even have to tighten the strap when you're lying down,
| since the seal against your face is provided courtesy of gravity.
| jebarker wrote:
| Doesn't laying down in a fixed position render much of the
| purpose of the device obsolete?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Not if your purpose is watching movies/surfing the web, which
| is my use case.
| iAkashPaul wrote:
| Meta wouldn't even officially sell this let alone have repair
| shops in India, unlike Apple's strategy of eventually rolling out
| worldwide
| nottorp wrote:
| > What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right
|
| Hmm so basically they say Apple massively overengineered it and
| doesn't expect to sell it to more than 3 people at that price,
| which is right.
|
| But Occulus has been owned by Facebook for a long time now, what
| stopped them?
|
| They could at least have an aspirational "research" device that
| they sold for 5000, in addition to the semi-affordable (minus
| privacy concerns) stuff.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What stopped oculus was the realities of a headset. Some of my
| friends were early adapters to oculus which I got to test out.
| They would use it as a toy really not as a main device (for
| gaming in this case) because you'd get nauseous before long and
| playing in VR is kind of an annoying gimmick once the luster
| wears off. Mouse and keyboard and a good monitor (or three) is
| more than fine and you can actually game for hours on that.
| nottorp wrote:
| I know, I'm one of the unfortunates that gets nauseous in 15
| minutes. Tested on a gen 1 PSVR that i was able to borrow for
| a weekend. I strongly doubt even the 3500 apple thingy would
| be much better.
|
| But when Facebook bought them, they could have afforded to do
| the same thing as apple. Make a very expensive "here's the
| future, now queue up in an orderly manner and wait while we
| make it affordable" Rift Mega-Giga-Something model.
| johnwbyrd wrote:
| What I want is a dollar for every evangelist and every early
| adopter that has told me that the ?R explosion is right around
| the corner. I have worked in the game industry for 30 years and
| would be well retired by now, had I made my money by listening to
| people tell me how ?R would be mainstream in Just A Few Years
| Now. The tech industry NEVER tires of telling that story and
| hearing it. Yet it never, ever, EVER happens as a mainstream
| product.
| kazinator wrote:
| Maybe the problem is that actual reality is very three
| dimensional, and incredibly detailed and immersive.
|
| The people who can afford thousands of dollars on VR gear that
| will be obsolete in three years generally spend their days in
| nice environments.
|
| If you want VR to catch on, make it dirt cheap, so that people
| in crummy circumstances can use it to escape from reality.
| baby wrote:
| Buy a Quest 3, VR is already here, not sure what you're talking
| about
| nox101 wrote:
| I'd add to the list
|
| (1) Quest is a game console
|
| Quest is clearly a gaming device. It boot straight into the
| store. The re-opens the store at every opportunity. This means,
| trying to use it for non-gaming means you're constantly reminded
| your on a VR game console. It'd be like trying to use a PS5 for
| work. I kind of get why they did it but I hate it. I'm happy my
| iPhone does not boot into the store and does not go back to the
| store every time I go to the home screen.
|
| (2) Quest doesn't care about productivity
|
| This is kind of the same as 1 but, ... I actually try to use my
| Rift-S with my desktop for certain activities almost daily. I
| press the right controller's system button, close the home tab,
| close the library tab, close the store tab, open the desktop.
| Then I interact with the a few desktop apps. I copy or move files
| and I run certain apps that I've written that work reasonably
| well with point and click controls
|
| But, I tried accessing my desktop on a Quest via the various link
| (wired and wireless) and it crashed 1 of 3 times. This is clearly
| a niche feature to Meta. Meta expects you're just playing games
| from their store.
|
| --
|
| You can certainly argue Meta didn't get those things wrong but
| for me, they are wrong. The more productivity I can do on a Quest
| the more useful it is it me any many others. There are more
| phones than game consoles. IMO they should make the device be
| general purpose, not sell a "pro" version for productivity. Phone
| game sales far out shadow game console game sales. They don't
| need to design the Quest around a game console experience.
| mavamaarten wrote:
| The Quest is a gaming device because productivity just doesn't
| work on screens that are so low res that it becomes annoying to
| read text
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Quests screen isnt good enough for reading so productivity is
| out. Its a gaming device because it cant really be anything
| else.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Quest 3 is good enough albeit barely.
| zaroth wrote:
| > _This also begs the question... what if you could completely
| offload the Vision Pro's compute to another Apple device?_
|
| Instead of a battery pack on your waist, you just plug in your
| iPhone. It can provide charge and a nice bit of compute as well.
| threeseed wrote:
| Vision Pro requires 13V so will never be able to be charged by
| iPhone.
|
| You could be able to plug the iPhone into the battery pack
| though.
| yayr wrote:
| I like the suggestion to "Launch Android 2D tablet apps natively
| on Quest". Imagine, that you can pin these apps somewhere fix in
| physical space or walk around with them with fix positioning
| while being in a high quality pass through...
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing
| about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost
| nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100%
| talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at
| the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which
| to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing
| here.
|
| In short: Apple has made a fully realized spatial operating
| system, while Meta has made an app launcher for immersive
| Unity/Unreal apps for vanilla Android. You can get away with an
| app launcher when all you want to support is fully immersive apps
| that don't talk to each other. But that fails completely if you
| are trying to build a true operating system.
|
| Think about what has to exist, to say, intelligently copy and
| paste parts of a 3D object made by one application into a 3D
| object made by another, the same way you would copy a flat image
| from photoshop into a Word document. The operating system has to
| truly understand 3D concepts internally. Meta _is_ building these
| features but it is stuck in a really weird space trying to wedge
| them in between Android underneath and Unity /Unreal at the
| application layer. Apple has had the advantage of green field
| engineering it exactly how they want it to be from the ground up.
| edvinbesic wrote:
| I think that's probably the reason for why they are not talking
| about it and focusing on specs instead, they know.
| jdprgm wrote:
| This has been my main complaint with Oculus all the way since
| the Rift days. At that point I assumed it was forthcoming
| within a few years yet here we are 8 years later and somehow
| it's not all that different. I don't understand how Oculus/Meta
| isn't drastically ahead at this point on software.
| IshKebab wrote:
| They _are_ drastically ahead. They have VR games, which are
| the only real reason to own a VR headset at the moment (and
| for at least 5 years).
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| They are drastically ahead in the VR gaming space. But the
| potential VR/AR market is hundreds fold bigger than that.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The potential market _in 10 years_. Apple has jumped the
| gun here. This is their Apple Newton moment for AR.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| That's probably a fair argument at the pace of innovation
| pre-AVP. Depending on how quickly they iterate in this
| (and as the article says, push developers), they may be a
| self-fulfilling prophecy to significantly reduce the time
| until this market exists.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There's a real chicken-and-egg recursion there: VR headsets
| are only good for VR games because the only thing made for
| VR headsets is VR games because VR headsets are only good
| for VR games because...
| numpad0 wrote:
| But VR only needed DK1 to take off.
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's not chicken and egg, it's simply the reality about
| the hardware. Even Apple, with all their resources and a
| $3500 price tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough
| on a very heavy headset. The hardware isn't ready for AR
| yet.
|
| Games are where it's at for the foreseeable future. Games
| don't need passthrough and they don't need especially
| high resolution.
|
| Look at how much of the vision pro is about giving people
| a connection to the real world while they are using the
| device. Games don't need that, people want to be immersed
| while they are playing a game.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Even Apple, with all their resources and a $3500 price
| tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough on a very
| heavy headset. The hardware isn't ready for AR yet.
|
| Hugo disagrees:
|
| > thanks to a high-fidelity passthrough ("mixed reality")
| experience with very low latency, excellent distortion
| correction (much better than Quest 3), and sufficiently
| high resolution that allows you to even see your
| phone/computer screen through the passthrough cameras
| (i.e. without taking your headset off).
|
| Even though there are major gaps left to be filled in
| future versions of the Vision Pro hardware (which I'll
| get into later), this level of connection with the real
| world -- or "presence" as VR folks like to call it -- is
| something that no other VR headset has ever come even
| close to delivering and so far was only remotely possible
| with AR headsets (ex: HoloLens and Magic Leap) which
| feature physically transparent displays but have their
| own significant limitations in many other areas.
| zarzavat wrote:
| I admit I don't own one of these things but reviewers
| seem to be unanimous that the passthrough on the Vision
| Pro is both the best of any headset on the market, yet
| also very mediocre compared to seeing things through your
| own eyes, especially in low light.
|
| Given that it's designed to be used indoors, poor low
| light performance is a big problem.
|
| There's a latency/acuity tradeoff whereby the more post-
| processing Apple applies to improve acuity, the worse the
| latency and more nausea they create. It's going to
| require a lot more research into hardware post-
| processing.
| jandrese wrote:
| Seems like the best passthrough was a fairly easy goal to
| achieve since nobody else was even really trying. Heck,
| the Quest applies quality degrading filters to
| passthrough video (add noise, remove chroma) to
| discourage using it.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| effectively though, they've created their own mini-
| innovator's dilemma. They can't do anything to alienate
| those users but they might _have_ to if they want to stay
| competitive in the long run.
|
| Innovator's dilemma is a great problem to have if you are
| dominating a profitable industry already. But it's a
| terrible problem to have if you are barely hitting break
| even or even losing money. Then you _really_ can 't afford
| to go backwards first to go forwards later.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR
| headset
|
| Because the rest of the experience is so unpolished.
|
| I have a Meta Quest 3 and overall it doesn't exactly feel
| like they invested _tens of billions_ into that ecosystem.
| The headset 's UI is basically a 2D desktop with taskbar
| and app launcher covering a small fraction of the field of
| view, including some buttons that are so small it's tricky
| to aim at them with the controllers. The Oculus desktop
| client fails to recognize it via USB and the official
| remote desktop app is still in Beta while Steam lets me
| play games or use the desktop remotely with two button
| presses. To this day I have not managed to just copy files
| directly onto the device, no USB connection (other than to
| Steam) works. Only some semi-reliable wifi transfer from a
| third-party application worked but that required enabling
| developer mode.
|
| On top of that they decided to ship it with a head strap
| that never fits well and gets painful within 30 minutes,
| and then made it unnecessarily complicated to swap. Yes, of
| course people aren't going to do more on that thing than
| play a few rounds of Beat Saber, because many simply don't
| want to jump through hoops like that. I think it's a great
| device overall but some things are just so...unnecessary.
|
| Apple not focusing on games might be a good thing because
| it means they can't just rely on games for free sales
| numbers.
| Jcowell wrote:
| > To this day I have not managed to just copy files
| directly onto the device, no USB connection (other than
| to Steam) works. Only some semi-reliable wifi transfer
| from a third-party application worked but that required
| enabling developer mode.
|
| To echo this today I wanted to watch something on my
| vision pro so I was on the tv app on my phone, saw a
| movie I wanted to watch, and then after a good amount of
| time moved over to my vision pro.
|
| Being the scatter brain that I am I forgot what the movie
| was, unlocked my phone and the movie listing view was
| there. In my head I was like "damn wish I could share
| this page over to my vision pro like I do for my ipad"
|
| And that's exactly what I did with Airdrop. The already
| existing way to share anything between apple devices. I
| would not be surprised if universal clipboard works as
| well.
| jajko wrote:
| You fail to realize that having such headset 8h a day is
| not the holy grail for most people, I'd never work in
| such way. Horrible for your eyes and overall health in
| many ways we already know and many that will be
| discovered after this betatesting runs for decade+.
|
| Entertainment maybe, but definitely no work- like it or
| not, outside few tech bubbles this is how world sees VR
| and its not changing anytime soon. Still, to sporty
| outdoorsy people this is kids toy (that shouldn't ever be
| on kid head), reality is and will be always better and
| healthier.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists?
|
| Also I'm pretty sure those VR games that are ran on a
| computer connected to a headset could display on any
| headset, Apple or Oculus. Cursory search reveals people
| have already been getting SteamVR to work on the VisionPro.
|
| Running stuff directly on the headsets is neat, but there's
| no headset on the market with enough power to match what
| you can have when plugging them into a computer.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography
| exists?
|
| On the Apple Vision Pro?
| chmod775 wrote:
| The point is that VR games are _not_ "the only real
| reason".
| parasubvert wrote:
| Through Safari, or forthcoming VR video player apps
| (Apple doesn't censor generic utilities).
| brookst wrote:
| The players are already there. Those who want VR porn
| have been able to view it on AVP since days after
| release.
| cthalupa wrote:
| VR porn is largely just WebXR on webpages or SBS VR 180
| videos. WebXR has been available on the Vision Pro since
| day 1 if you enabled it in the Safari advanced options
| and there are now multiple video apps that can handle SBS
| VR 180 playback.
|
| All the news about it not being possible on the AVP was
| largely a bunch of hyperbole, misunderstandings, and
| misinformation.
| chaostheory wrote:
| What's more insulting after the announcement of the vaporware
| known as "infinite office" is meta's total lack of attention
| on their PC software. The work related features of Quest are
| near non-existent if it weren't for 3rd parties
| parentheses wrote:
| I totally agree. While Apple has a north star with this
| device (or looks like it does), Meta's endeavors always
| seemed like diversification. Meta seems to be looking for
| the north star. Apple just pointed it out, so now everyone
| is going to head that way.
| brutus1213 wrote:
| Actually, MSFT made the same blunder when it came to
| HoloLens. Well .. they did start to build some of the core
| spatial context (and had a fabulous headstart). But somewhere
| along the way, they yielded to Unity/Unreal. This was mind
| boggling to me as giving away the keys to the platform to
| another party was literally the founding story of Microsoft
| (with IBM having made the blunder). I wonder if engineering
| leadership recalls history when making such strategic goofs.
| yterdy wrote:
| Layman's take: All of them are afraid of making the system
| that fulfills the promise nominally, but that lacks some
| key component or is on hardware that doesn't get adopted,
| only to have a competitor swoop in, clone that system with
| the necessary fixes, and essentially do what Apple did with
| MP3 players and smartphones. They're all trying to
| establish market dominance BEFORE giving us a reason to use
| the devices (bass ackwards) - and are even happy to see the
| market collapse, if it meant that, simply, _no one_ cracked
| that particular nut.
|
| Apple, Meta, Microsoft _like_ how things are right now.
| These pushes are much-hyped, but they 're made less out of
| real passion for the promise and more desperation to avoid
| being left behind.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Well it's easy to understand why. How could they build an MR
| ecosystem when their latest device is just barely MR?
|
| They can only just now move towards MR with the Quest 3 and
| really it'll need another generation to be MR native.
|
| They have a good relationship with developers and focused on
| what their current hardware is capable of, which is running
| one VR app. They spent the last 8 years on that use case and
| I think that was the right choice given the hardware
| realities at the time.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| He talks about how "Gaze & pinch is an incredible UI superpower
| and major industry ah-ha moment" but... if that's really the
| case, then it's quite an indictment of the VR industry:
|
| > The hardware needed to track eyes and hands in VR has been
| around for over a decade, and it's Apple unique ability to
| bring everything together in a magical way that makes this UI
| superpower the most important achievement of the entire Vision
| Pro product, without a shadow of doubt.
|
| So they had all the pieces, but only Apple put it together and
| realized that you'd need a VR equivalent of point-and-click? If
| that's actually true, it's sad.
| crooked-v wrote:
| It's almost exactly the same kind of conceptual transition
| that Apple made happen with keyboardless smartphones, too,
| which adds an extra sort of funny element to it.
| sumedh wrote:
| > So they had all the pieces, but only Apple put it together
|
| Its very difficult to change a mindset or culture in big
| companies. Existing VR companies were too invested in using a
| controller. Similarly back in the early smartphone days all
| the big companies thought that smartphones must have physical
| keyboard.
| tpmoney wrote:
| Sometimes you really have to decide to take the risk and
| ship without a standard controller before you can see if
| the new model will work. The iPhone was famously derided
| for a lack of stylus. Video game consoles for years have
| tried to incorporate motion controls in some form or
| another and realistically only the Wii succeeded in any
| measure because they ditched the classic controller instead
| of trying to shoehorn it in. Many times it doesn't work,
| but if you give developers and users an "easy escape hatch"
| to go back to what they're already comfortable with, so
| many of them will default to that no matter how much better
| your new option might be.
| MBCook wrote:
| On top of what the others said, there are two other closely
| related issues:
|
| If everything is designed for your controller, the eye
| interface may not work well due to lack of software
| optimization.
|
| Which means it's just an expensive battery hogging extra
| weight you don't need.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Maybe they realized they needed it, but Apple actually pulled
| it off.
|
| Apple has a stronger combination of hardware design, software
| implementation skills, and UX expertise, than any company in
| the world.
| interpol_p wrote:
| Putting it together is not as simple as it seems. I think it
| was an immense engineering and design effort from Apple to
| get it to the point where it feels effortless and obvious
|
| Not only do they have two cameras per eye, and all the
| hardware for wide angle out-of-view hand tracking, they had
| to consider:
|
| Privacy: the user's gaze is _never delivered to your process_
| when your native UI reacts to their gaze. Building this
| infrastructure to be performant, bug free and secure is a lot
| of work. Not to mention making it completely transparent for
| developers to use
|
| Design: they reconsidered every single iOS control in the
| context of gaze and pinch, and invented whole new UI
| paradigms that work really well with the existing SDK. You
| can insert 3D models into a SwiftUI scroll view, and scroll
| them, and it just works (they even fade at the cut off point)
|
| Accessibility: there is a great deal of thought put into
| alternative navigation methods for users who cannot maintain
| consistent gaze
|
| In addition to this they clearly thought about how to
| maintain "gazeable" targets in the UI. When you drag a window
| closer or farther it scales up and down maintaining exactly
| the same visual size, trying to ensure nothing gets too small
| or large to gaze at effectively
|
| There are so many thousands of design and engineering
| decisions that went into making gaze and pinch based
| navigation work so simply, so I can understand how it hasn't
| been done this effectively until now
| didip wrote:
| If what you said were true then this is a fatal strategic error
| on Meta's side.
|
| This entire time, they could have built a real OS, solidifying
| their first mover advantage.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Meta makes social media apps. Where as writing operating
| systems is Apple's core competency. Both companies are
| playing to their strengths.
| MBCook wrote:
| The problem is that by doing that they've limited their
| device's usefulness severely.
|
| If some kind of killer AR app shows up on the Vision Pro,
| could it be put on the Quest? Let's just assume it doesn't
| need a level of processing power that the Quest can't
| deliver. Would the software vendor just have to implement
| the entire interface from scratch or with Unity or
| something? Are there enough platform components on the
| Quest to be able to do the job?
|
| I don't know the answer. But I did see a number of
| developers mentioning online over the last year just how
| incredibly easy it was to get started with the Vision Pro
| compared to the quest. If you have a Mac you sign up for
| the Developer program for $99 and you get an IDE, compiler,
| simulator, performance monitoring, full UI library plus
| documentation. It's early days for some of that stuff, but
| all the batteries are included. From what they said it was
| far far easier to get to "hello world" than on Meta's
| platform.
| jandrese wrote:
| The funny thing is that the social media app for Oculus
| (Horizon Worlds) is total dogshit. The third party VRChat
| is far more successful.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Apple leveraged their existing OSX OS stack, for Meta this
| would mean either heavily forking android OR starting their
| own OS. Both would take 5+ years to get meaningful traction.
| Remember google fuchsia, the code-repo was public in 2016,
| intial release was 2021, and it's still not anywhere near
| where it'd need to be for a VR headset.
| MBCook wrote:
| I think that kind of under sells it. Yes Apple had all
| sorts of existing technology they could leverage. But they
| still built a completely new spatial UI paradigm for it.
|
| And an entirely new interaction model that hasn't been seen
| before. Using looking at something to replace a mouse isn't
| new but taking that combined with using a pinch gesture to
| "click" and some of the other things they've come up with
| is a unique combination that seems to work quite well.
| Thought there is certainly room for improvement.
| kungito wrote:
| Didn't oculus have pinch to click before Vision Pro came
| out?
| chris37879 wrote:
| I own one of each, and develop for the Vision Pro through
| my job, it's the very same story it's always been. Apple
| hasn't 'invented' much here, but the magic is in how it's
| assembled, even in its current state, using apps in a 3d
| space feels better than anything the quest has ever done.
| Even simple things like 'touching' a panel just feels
| more natural on the vision pro than the same experience
| on the quest, mostly because the quest does things like
| forcing the ghost hand to stop at the surface of the
| window, instead of continuing to track your hand through
| it and just using the intersection as the touch point.
| It's a small difference in the interaction that makes a
| world of difference in usability, which Apple is very
| good at.
| loeg wrote:
| VROS is already an Android fork.
| wangvnn wrote:
| VR needs performance..Android just cannot and will never
| deliver it.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| To be fair, you probably don't have to build your own
| kernel like fuchsia. You can almost certainly start with a
| bare bones freebsd or Linux kernel or what ever. You're
| still making a custom gfx layer and lots of user land but
| you're get a lot for free too.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Every game console comes with its own operating system,
| even though Sony and Nintendo are not in the OS business.
|
| Just take FreeBSD and add your own UI on top.
| WWLink wrote:
| They started to, and then they gave up on it.
|
| https://www.engadget.com/meta-dissolves-ar-vr-os-
| team-204708...
| loeg wrote:
| That operating system (a hard fork of Google Fuschia) was
| really designed for low-power AR wearables and made almost
| no considerations to supporting VR (or like, any existing
| software, which was one of the major drawbacks). Too many
| systems designed from scratch with no compatibility with
| traditional OS APIs. I don't think it would have been
| viable even with 5+ more years.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Apple has made a fully realized spatial operating system
|
| I'm not sure what you mean precisely. Apple doesn't seem to
| have done more than windows with persistent positions. This
| isn't nothing, but it's also not something that has tremendous
| value for a headset that you only wear 30 or 45 minutes at a
| time.
|
| And they have little to no management of these floating
| windows. I'm really not holding my breath for Apple to come up
| with breakthrough windows management given what they've done
| for the past decade.
|
| If you don't think in term of potential and promises, but of
| actual value to the user right now, I'd understand why Meta
| hasn't the gimmick.
|
| Is this a big lead for Apple ? Perhaps, the world mapping could
| be something difficult to reproduce. Or Meta could be at
| roughly the same point but decided it not to go there.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| It's kind of fascinating, because as you say, many of the
| capabilities are barely surfaced in the user layer yet. But
| the fundamentals are there.
|
| Take a look at this Reddit post for example:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1ba5hbd/the_most.
| ..
|
| The user is pointing out that that the real fridge behind
| them is reflected by the surface of the virtual object in
| front of them. And consider on top of that, the fridge is not
| visible to the headset at that moment. It is captured in the
| 3d spatial model that was created of the room. None of this
| is a pre-rendered or rigged or specifically engineered
| scenario. It's just what the operating system does _by
| default_. So one app that is totally unknown to another app
| can introduce reflections into the objects it displays. This
| is just so far beyond what can happen in the Quest platform
| by any means at all. And it can only happen because the 3d
| spatial modeling is integrated deeply into the native
| rendering stack - not just layered on the surface of each
| app.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm with you on how incredible it is from a technical
| perspective.
|
| The most fascinating thing to me is how we've gone from
| Apple being the pragmatic and real world product focused
| company, moving slower but making sure what they ship has
| undeniable practical value, and not promising much beyond
| ("we don't talk about future products and roadmap").
|
| Compared to the "wow look at that technical prowess, not
| much useful right now, but such potential !" that we're
| getting with this device. I don't see it completely fall
| flat, but it feels it's on the same course as the Apple
| Watch or the HomePod, to be the biggest in the niche
| category it defines (whatever it ends up be), and a smaller
| presence in the general space ("smart eyewear ?") with
| better fitted and more practical devices taking 70% of the
| market.
|
| The clunkier XReal probably keeping chugging along, being
| to the AVP what the Xiaomi or Huawei smart bands are to the
| Apple Watch. And Meta probably being the Samsung shooting
| at the target from 5 different angles.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| completely agree!
|
| I keep seeing people trying to shove this into the
| narrative of "Apple coming late but doing it better and
| solving real problems". But it doesn't fit that narrative
| well. Apple here is early to something else that just
| happens to look like the thing that people are viewing as
| the predecessor, and it's utility is highly questionable
| and full of all kinds of weird gaps. In a telling kind of
| way, they are actually in part leaning on the aspects
| they are not trying to sell (Here, look at these
| immersive experiences! But shhh don't call it VR) - to
| paper over the fact that the core of what they are really
| trying to build is just not ready yet.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its just a skybox with the cubemap of the room, no? The
| Quest 3 does a full room scan and can you get a 3d mesh of
| the room as well. They could provide a cubemap as well.
|
| Meta doesn't want to pass any of the camera feed to an app
| for privacy reasons so they don't make it available but its
| a legal issue not a technical one. They can (and should) do
| this for the browser model viewer.
|
| Apple enforces a single material model so they can inject
| the lighting data in a uniform way. Its a bit of a nuclear
| option to have a fixed shader pipeline. But I digress...
|
| Anyway, its not as out of reach as you claim.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| Other people will come up with the right way to do spacial
| windowing... but they'll fuck up somehow and Apple will take
| it, refine it, polish it, and "win"
| makeitdouble wrote:
| That's Apple from 2 decades ago.
|
| Current day Apple and its management launches products with
| weird twists ("send your pulse to your loved ones", "this
| method of input will stay in history alongside the mouse"),
| to then cut it down to only the features people really care
| about, shut it out from competiting OSes, still get the
| competition to execute better on that limited set of
| features, and get sued and forced to remove their most
| advanced feature after months of media humiliation.
|
| That's why people get back to the first iPhone 17 years ago
| when they want to predict a bright future for the AVP. I
| still want to see it push the field forward, but odds are
| not in its favor IMHO.
| georgespencer wrote:
| This is a keen insight I had not until now appreciated. Thank
| you.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| This was my immediate takeway from using Quest 3 as well. Zuck
| has stated forever that he wants a platform, yet when it comes
| time to do the hard work, we just end up with an Android distro
| running a React app.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| And how many billions did they spend on it?
| devit wrote:
| To support copy&paste all you need is a common format for 3D
| objects, like HTML is for 2D documents; glTF might be a
| reasonable candidate.
|
| The problem with the Apple approach is that there are no apps
| and games, and there probably won't be many given it's a 3500$
| device with few users that Apple exerts its tyrannical grip
| over (or if there will be, they will be ports of Unity/Unreal,
| PC or Android VR apps, not using any of the special features
| that the Apple OS may have).
| kevindamm wrote:
| Any scene description format would work (but please not obj
| or stl), it would be good to see a standard emerge for this,
| though. USD might be it.
| chris37879 wrote:
| I really hope USD is not it. Having worked with it trying
| to build stuff for the vision pro, it's a massive software
| library pretending to be a file format. It is inexorably
| linked to the source code that processes it to the point
| that making a processor for the format is a non-starter,
| and that seems to be by design.
|
| The codebase is dense, hard to compile, using outdated
| dependencies, and doesn't play nice with anything else.
| Documentation is sparse, often incorrect, and severely
| lacking in anything like a new user guide. Everything
| assumes you work for Pixar already and know the ins and
| outs of their pipeline.
| TylerE wrote:
| People have been trying to solve this problem since the VRML
| days in the '90s. I suspect you are underestimating the
| complexity of 3D data by a pretty huge extent.
|
| 3D is much, much, much more complicated than 2D, especially
| if you're trying to interchange between arbitrary
| applications that may have divergent needs.
|
| Start with this little thought experiment.
|
| What do you mean by 3d object?
|
| Do you mean a set of polygons, like in a traditional triangle
| mesh? A volume, like voxels? A set of 3d surfaces?
|
| Do you need to model interior details, or only the exterior
| envelope? Do you need to be able to split or explode it at
| some arbitrary level of detail? Do we need to encode sharp
| edges or creases in some way?
|
| etc, etc, etc
|
| This is before you have touched materials, texturing,
| lighting, any of that.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Stupid question... isn't all that wrapped in a container?
|
| Like in HTML with divs? So if you have a virtual lamp you
| want to copy, all the various elements that make up the
| lamp are in a VR equivalent object markup as <div id='lamp'
| />. If you want to copy specific elements you can, but
| you'd have specific actions, e.g copy color etc.
|
| Maybe I'm missing something though and it's more complex.
| TylerE wrote:
| Don't think about tag soup. Think about how you'd encode
| the geometry, and what that even means for anything but
| the most trivial object, like a cube.
| polyomino wrote:
| Ok now, I have a few separate colored lights pointing at
| the lamp. What color is the lamp? How about when it's on?
| richardw wrote:
| Interesting. I assume you'd copy the object not the
| lighting. If you move a real object into a different room
| or outside you don't expect the colour to stay the same.
| But if I'm pasting it into a word doc, I guess
| intuitively I might want it to look the same as source,
| but that breaks down unless I copy the whole virtual
| universe. A mirrored globe inside a room of mirrors is
| not going to look the same unless I copy the scene.
| People will learn this and maybe demand eg a choice of
| the copy scope. You might not even have rights to copy
| all objects. I can't just copy your palace and paste it
| into mine unless you allow it (say).
| TylerE wrote:
| That's the entire crux. What exactly the hell is "the
| object", and how does your target program DO anything to
| it, to include manipulating it, or getting it out to a
| GPU for rendering in some even vaguely terrible way - and
| you're probably trying to render it 120 times (or more) a
| second with a decent level of resolution.
|
| 3D is not like tabular data. There isn't some default
| resting state it naturally wants to exist in. It's all
| edge cases and special logic. Also, it's mind bogglingly
| vast amounts of raw data. Even a simple scene can
| contains hundreds of thousands of
| surfaces/polygons/spline patches/voxels/whatever
| representation.
|
| A VR environment is essentially running a high end 3d
| game engine at all times.
| araes wrote:
| The basic math is also dramatically worse, and much more
| challenging for entry level participants to grasp. The
| basic idea of matrix math grows dramatically more complex
| just in terms of sheer number operations. You might be able
| to get away with your entire app only needing a couple
| mults or adds for most interaction in 2D. Basic 3D, closer
| to 150 mults (usually 3 [4x4] mults at 49 mults per [4x4]
| pair) for the default.
|
| In 2D apps and games, you can often get away with
| incredibly simplistic calculations. Rarely much other than
| a translation. Many times 1D with naively obvious
| solutions. With 3D, you rapidly need to move to 4D matrices
| than can handle arbitrary scale, translate, rotate,
| perspective, clip volumes.
|
| Nearly every 3D app anywhere has to handle the model, to
| world, to camera, to clip space path, which involves a lot
| of complex math well beyond most 2D apps. Usually, 3
| different matrix mults with 4x4 matrices.
| v_world = M[?]v_model v_camera = V[?]M[?]v_model
| v_clip = P[?]V[?]M[?]v_model v_clip =
| [[P00,...,P30],[...],[...],[P30,...,P33]] [?] [V00...V33]
| [?] [M00...M33] [?] [m00...m33]
|
| It's one of the main reasons voxels have been the only real
| 3D implementation with large scale use. The amount of work
| necessary to develop, ... really anything that works with
| 3D is a large step upward in difficulty unless its totally
| regular and square. Otherwise, huge numbers of
| optimizations are no longer available. Plus, the
| compression cliff for normal users of effectively arbitrary
| 3D shape design and movement is really steep. Most first
| time users of an industry 3D CAD package (ProE, Solidworks,
| AutoCAD, Maya, 3DSMax, Blender, ect...) or similar have the
| "wall of difficulty" moment.
|
| Edited: dumb math error
| baby wrote:
| ^ exactly this. The problem with the Vision Pro is that there
| is nothing to do, whereas the Quest 3 is driven by cool
| experiences
| sunshinerag wrote:
| Tyrannical grip on users who paid 3500$? That indicates no
| understanding of said users.
| brookst wrote:
| "This all inclusive resort has a tyrannical grip on all the
| poor visitors who spent $10k to travel and stay at an all-
| inclusive resort!"
| zer0zzz wrote:
| I worked on an oculus team for close to a team that was charged
| with building a platform. The trouble at oculus was that there
| were multiple waring platform efforts.
| dangus wrote:
| I think you might be giving Apple too much credit for strapping
| the iPad OS on your face.
|
| Granted, an iPad is better than an app launcher, but so far I
| don't think the software is really "killer" in any specific
| way.
|
| Most of the in depth reviews I've seen mostly praise the screen
| resolution and the movie experience.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| Damn. Like I never thought of it that way. You _need_ that OS
| layer. That should be metas core competency if they want to
| win. Games are something that runs on top of other people's
| platform. I thought Zuckerberg did all this to _stop_ being a
| layer on top of somebody else's stack but all they did was the
| exact same thing with Oculus.
|
| That is what always bugged me about the pivot to "meta". They
| never had to find product market fit to succeed. They were
| never hungry. They could just throw money until something
| clicked... but money alone doesn't make a revolutionary
| product. You need somebody hungry enough to see the world in a
| different way and then execute the fuck out of it.
|
| Dunno how this relates to apple though. They have equal amounts
| of cash to throw at problems until they are "solved". Perhaps
| the "operating system" is a solved problem already to some
| extent and maybe there isn't anything truly new?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _Apple has made a fully realized spatial operating system_
|
| Said that out loud to a group of techies and they laughed so
| hard one of them fell out of their seat.
|
| Apple put the iPad on your face. And that's pretty much it.
|
| The few VP users that haven't returned the device don't use any
| of the "spatial" features like controlling the UI by pointing
| in space, since it's so inaccurate that it gives Swype a run
| for its money.
| tempodox wrote:
| > between Android underneath and Unity/Unreal at the
| application layer.
|
| So they want to build a new kind of device and a new kind of
| experience, and they seriously think they can do that by just
| plugging together ready-made parts built by others? No wonder
| this is going nowhere.
| la_fayette wrote:
| As a developer, I am acctually very happy that Meta went with
| Android. Reusing all the knowledge and tools is just great...
| jolux wrote:
| > Apple has had the advantage of green field engineering it
| exactly how they want it to be from the ground up.
|
| It's not quite green field on the software side, albeit mostly.
| Clearly they already have experiencing re-platforming a whole
| operating system multiple times. The underpinnings of macOS
| power everything from desktops to smartphones to watches to
| tablets already all with diverging user interfaces. They had a
| solid first-party foundation to build the interface they want;
| Facebook is ultimately a third-party to Android and is having
| to solve the same Android hardware integration problems as
| everyone else.
| in3d wrote:
| None of this matters compared to the number of apps available.
| Given the high price of the Vision Pro and the resulting low
| sales, it would make little business sense for app developers
| to invest in creating apps for it instead of for the Quest 3.
| thih9 wrote:
| Perhaps it matters because of apps. With OS that natively
| supports spatial features it could be easier to expand
| functionality of existing ios apps or interact with them in
| the ar/vr context.
| InfiniteTitan wrote:
| > Given the high price of the Vision Pro and the resulting
| low sales, it would make little business sense for app
| developers to invest in creating apps for it instead of for
| the Quest 3.
|
| For sure. That's exactly how it's played out in iOS vs
| Android. No developer makes anything for the higher priced,
| small market iOS, right?
| atoav wrote:
| And as an educator who thought an VR-development course at
| university for a few times since 2018 setting up and
| maintaining 15 Oculus Quest Mk I glasses was an absolute pain,
| with accounts that I have to setup, etc. Sure it worked
| somewhat like a android phone, but there was no real fast pass
| for users like me, a lot of the features and the UI changed
| over the time and it ultimately felt like the platform took
| itself too seriously and therefore had no problem wasting my
| time.
|
| When designing a concept the core difference is always whether
| your design respects the user or whether it does not and tries
| to make them do things, spend more time on the platform, spend
| more money on the platform, etc.
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| To me the interesting bit is that an even a VR executive a
| decade plus into working in the field doesn't find this device
| compelling enough to own it.
|
| I get that the thesis is that this version is the devkit etc,
| but viable consumer product status (read: enough adoption for
| the device to be profitable) seems very far away
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > viable consumer product status (read: enough adoption for
| the device to be profitable) seems very far away
|
| He mentions a few short term use cases for the current
| hardware.
|
| For example: Productivity on the go (A laptop with the
| headset for multiple virtual displays) and Live Sports.
|
| > Apple Immersive on Vision Pro is a transformative
| experience in terms of video quality and its ability to
| deliver a real sense of presence. Watching a game in high-
| resolution VR has the potential to be legitimately better
| than a regular 4K TV broadcast by enabling hardcore fans to
| feel much closer to the action
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > For example: Productivity on the go (A laptop with the
| headset for multiple virtual displays) and Live Sports.
|
| Except almost universally, people talk about the screen
| display being "not great" for extended use as a screen
| replacement with dramatically lower effective resolution
| and blurring...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > people talk about the screen display being "not great"
|
| That's not what the reviews I have read had to say.
|
| > The Vision Pro can produce a virtual external display
| for any modern Mac... The virtual display feels
| responsive and works with connected keyboard or mouse
| peripherals. The text is highly readable.
|
| I don't have any complaints about how the virtual display
| itself works--it's great.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/i-worked-
| exclusively...
| PJDK wrote:
| I've heard the sport idea thrown around a few times, but
| I'm not sure I buy it.
|
| If you go to a sports event you are mostly buying the
| experience of being there, the energy of the crowd, the
| cheering all that stuff. The actual experience of seeing
| what's happening is not really better is it? That's why the
| stadiums have screens in them.
|
| Replicating that experience at home is more like getting
| people around to watch a game together.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > I'm not sure I buy it.
|
| "legitimately better than a regular 4K TV broadcast by
| enabling hardcore fans to feel much closer to the action"
| sounds like it offers something new.
|
| People who are sports enthusiasts have a proven
| willingness to drop thousands of dollars on large screen
| televisions, streaming services like NFL Red Zone, or
| thousand dollar Superbowl tickets, so the potential for
| sales is there.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| It's the crappy version 1. Just like iphone and ipad v1. They
| sucked.
|
| It's very obviously better to wait a little longer for a
| future version.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| iPhone 1 was way more successful than Vision Pro, and it
| didn't suck relative to what was on the market at the time.
| At launch, Steve Jobs famously said it was 5 years ahead of
| the competition, and contemporary commentators generally
| agreed.
|
| In its first week, Apple had sold 270,000 iPhones
| domestically.[47] Apple sold the one millionth iPhone 74
| days after the release.[48] Apple reported in January 2008
| that four million were sold.
| matwood wrote:
| Phones have more mass appeal which I think attributes to
| the larger initial numbers. It doesn't change that the
| original iPhone was not great in a lot of ways. I had one
| - 2.5g was slow, the screen was small, and it was missing
| basic features. But it catalyzed what the future was
| going to look like.
| kossTKR wrote:
| Interesting. Macrumors reports 200.000 sold vision pro's
| a few month's ago. So maybe 300.000 today?
|
| It's a type of gadget that hasn't become widely adopted
| yet and the usecases and killer features are almost non
| existent compared to the iPhones phonecalls + web
| browsing, music, videos, notes and many others.
|
| Really hard to gauge what success means here, but if we
| say that in a year it will sell 500.000 units, that's 1/8
| of the original iPhone, seems ok, or maybe not?
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| there is no killer feature where it sees mass adoption..
| 99.9% of the population cant afford to drop $3,500 on a
| computer screen for their computer.
| mulderc wrote:
| Idk, people spend absurd amounts of money on various
| hobbies and other pursuits that I bet a much larger % of
| the population can afford a Vision Pro than you might
| think. We don't really question when someone buys an ATV
| or boat that they use only a few times a year and easily
| costs as much as a Vision Pro.
| pquki4 wrote:
| Not comparable. I paid $7k for an upright piano (which is
| a rookie number not worth bragging about) which is my
| biggest purchase other than a car so far, plus ongoing
| $90 weekly lessons, but I won't ever regret because it is
| a very meaningful and valuable investment -- the piano
| easily lasts a decade, I practice every day and am happy
| about what it brings. People who blow $100k on a Steinway
| think the same. Vision Pro? Not a chance, even as a one-
| time purchase. Maybe after I have a big house and earn
| $1m in annual income and have too much money to waste.
| brookst wrote:
| 99.9% of the population can't afford to drop $100k on a
| sports car. They still exist.
|
| The first Apple Mac was $7500 in today's dollars.
|
| Armchairs are way over-indexing on price.
| kossTKR wrote:
| But that just makes it a bigger success right? Adjusting
| for the crazy price it's even more impressive if it sells
| almost 1/8 in the first year.
|
| My impression is that it's going to fall in price in the
| next iterations though i agree with you right now it's
| not even targeted for the masses.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, not holding my breath for a Vision Pro II to see
| the light of day.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Also, the iPhone cost $500 at launch. At the time, that
| was expensive for a smartphone, but even adjusting for
| inflation it was nowhere near Vision Pro-level expensive.
| (It would also be a relatively cheap phone in today's
| market.)
|
| If anything, the Vision Pro feels to me more like the
| original Mac: an impressive technological leap forward,
| with lots of interesting ideas about computing and UI
| paradigms, but also prohibitively expensive, and still
| underpowered relative to its lofty ambitions.
|
| Notably, the Mac didn't really end well for Apple.
| Eventually we got the iMac and OS X, but in between was a
| decade in which Apple nearly went bankrupt. And I'm not
| really convinced the Vision Pro is as innovative or
| compelling as the original Mac was to begin with.
| tpmoney wrote:
| >and it didn't suck relative to what was on the market at
| the time.
|
| That's going to depend on what things you cared about.
| The original iPhone was heavily criticized for no
| copy/paste, no 3g service, no MMS, no physical keyboard,
| its absurd at the time $700+ price tag, carrier
| exclusivity, lack of subsidized pricing model and number
| of other things. Plenty of commentators thought Apple had
| widely missed the mark and had just launched a multi-
| million dollar folly that was sure to sink them any day
| now.
| toddmatthews wrote:
| Not sure I agree. When I first saw the 1st gen iPhone I was
| so impressed with it, I went out and got one a few days
| later. This is before the App Store. Yes compared to today
| it might "suck" compared to the latest version, but the
| first iPhone was super compelling by itself at the time and
| started selling very well
| hattmall wrote:
| Yeah if the first version doesn't take off that's
| generally not a good sign. 1st Iphone did extremely well.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > 1st Iphone did extremely well
|
| Citation needed. The 1st gen iPhone sold 6 million units
| over two years. The Nokia N95 (not a super mainstream
| device, but in a similarish price category) sold 10M.
| Other Nokia phones of the time period sold 100+ million
| devices. BlackBerry, LG, and Sony/Ericcson was in the
| tens of millions per device model.
|
| Let's not forget:
|
| 1. The iPhone didn't support 3G, which essentially all
| other phones of a similar price point had
|
| 2. Was only available for AT&T customers in the US (then
| still known as Cingular Wireless)
|
| 3. Cost _significantly_ more ($500-600 w / two year
| contract) than the average consumer paid for phones
| (almost always under $150 with contract, but usually
| "free") at the time.
|
| 4. No App Store
|
| 5. No cut and paste
|
| 6. No removable battery
|
| 7. No physical keyboard (a positive for me, but was a
| deal breaker for so many back then)
|
| That's not to say the original iPhone wasn't amazing in
| many ways, but let's also remember the past accurately.
| tpmoney wrote:
| The iPod, iPad and Apple Watch are all products from
| Apple where the first version didn't take off. I'd say
| they did just fine and the iPhone is largely an outlier
| in Apple's history of new products. Even the initial iMac
| suffered relative to its later revisions.
| brookst wrote:
| > very obviously
|
| And yet people buy v1. It really depends on how much your
| time is worth. I bought v1 and I expect to sell it for
| $1000 or so when v2 comes out. $3000 to use this product
| for 12-18 months is totally worth it to me.
|
| So, not "obvious". At least to people with different
| priorities.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > It's the crappy version 1. Just like iphone and ipad v1.
| They sucked.
|
| iPhone 1.0 was incredible. There was nothing like it. iPad
| 1.0 (and following) has been lackluster. AVP is impressive,
| but lacking.
|
| The iPhone changed the world of tech in an instant. There
| were aspects lacking (slow internet, no copy paste, no
| third-party apps), but saying it sucked is rewriting
| history. The things you take for granted about phones came
| from that.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| I think there are more than enough higher income people who
| would pay 5k just for a thing to watch a movie in private,
| with much better immersion than any alternative, on a plane.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > watch a movie in private, with much better immersion than
| any alternative, on a plane.
|
| As someone who's worn mine to watch movies on multiple
| flights, the problem is two fold.
|
| 1. The device is ridiculously hard to get into "travel
| mode" on a plane. Especially if the device was powered off
| previously and you have to enter a passcode. Each time the
| "tracking was lost" notification is shown it forces you to
| start over with your passcode from the beginning. Those who
| believe in better security than a four digit passcode are
| brutalized. Then just getting control center open and
| selecting travel mode (needing like five pinch operations)
| can be insult to injury. I can't imagine going through that
| in economy in tightly packed seats. After going through
| that experience twice, I now insure it's ready to go on the
| ground before boarding, but that's also a hassle.
|
| 2. Wearing the device for the length of a movie is still a
| struggle. I have a ton of time on other VR headsets (which
| I also can't wear comfortably for 2hrs), so this isn't just
| a "getting used to it" thing. Unlike the previous problem,
| this one isn't really solvable without different hardware.
|
| That said, once the movie starts, it's the best movie
| experience on a plane ever for the first 20-30min.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| That's a bummer, wonder if a third party strap with a
| different weight balance could make it comfortable
| enough.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I recently gave it a try and it immediately prompted me
| to turn on travel mode after putting in the passcode
| (though, yes, that part was difficult).
| joyeuse6701 wrote:
| I'm one of the rare people who doesn't have an issue with
| wearing vr headsets for great lengths, but I suspect
| that's because I strengthen my neck for jiujitsu and that
| bleeds over into endurance with headsets.
|
| Too much to ask for the average user, but the problem can
| be mitigated by the individual.
| SergeAx wrote:
| Oculus is a gaming device and doesn't have a "productivity"
| ambition. I believe it is because 3D glasses has very limited
| productivity application. But who knows, for people who think
| that 13" laptop is okay for work, Vision Pro may become
| something better for comparable price.
| philwelch wrote:
| > I believe it is because 3D glasses has very limited
| productivity application.
|
| AR has tremendous productivity applications if the device is
| small and wearable enough. Imagine being up in your attic
| running cables and seeing a projection of the floor plan of
| your house so you can see where the different rooms in your
| house are. Or driving a car, except all the blind spots
| disappear and are filled in with vehicle-mounted camera
| feeds, with unobtrusive overlays for navigation or to
| highlight potential safety hazards. Imagine assembling some
| IKEA furniture except instead of puzzling through the
| instruction book, you have an app that can recognize all the
| pieces using machine vision and simply show you what to do.
| Imagine never forgetting a name or a face, because every time
| you see even a distant acquaintance, your glasses can run
| facial recognition and make their name pop up by their face
| in real life. Imagine noticing a weird rash on your arm, but
| as soon as you look at it, your glasses immediately diagnose
| it as a potential MRSA infection and pop up a notification
| allowing you to call an urgent care clinic that's open right
| this second.
| amelius wrote:
| > Imagine never forgetting a name or a face, because every
| time you see even a distant acquaintance, your glasses can
| run facial recognition and make their name pop up by their
| face in real life.
|
| This could work if they weren't wearing a VR helmet
| themselves.
| philwelch wrote:
| I keep saying "glasses" because eventually the technology
| is going to get miniaturized to that extent, and you can
| facial recognize people wearing glasses. But you could
| also have a handshake protocol for the devices
| themselves.
| nntwozz wrote:
| Software sells systems is the motto.
|
| Apple is enamored with vertical integration which gives them
| control on a whole other level compared to their competitors;
| feels like history repeating.
|
| What's different with AVP compared to previous products is that
| it starts off even better thanks to Apple's own custom chips.
| There's also the amazing network effects of their ever-growing
| ecosystem.
|
| Competitors don't have all this, so they will struggle to
| compete on the high-end. The intention of Apple is clearly
| indicated by the price of AVP, they want the profits at the
| top, let the rest fight over the scraps at the bottom with
| crummy privacy-invasive software and poor
| integration/interoperability.
| matwood wrote:
| It goes back to what I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread
| that Apple always thinks product first. Hardware specs are only
| ever in service of the product Apple is trying to deliver. If
| they could never list specs, they wouldn't. The industry forces
| some capitulation which is why Apple ever talks about specs at
| all.
| amelius wrote:
| Well, my desktop OS still treats my GPU as a second class
| citizen. In fact I'm not even sure if my OS has the concept of
| a GPU built in.
|
| So OS is probably not as important as you think.
| ses1984 wrote:
| I think they mean OS in the broader sense than just the
| kernel.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| For me personally, it's definitely the platform. Requiring a
| Meta / Facebook account for already-purchased Oculuses,
| retroactively bricking devices and deleting software which was
| bought before that requirement, has put Oculus firmly in the
| "hardware I will never consider in my life" camp.
|
| It's an incredible amount of goodwill to burn from a company
| with so little to spare, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up
| yet in this thread or in the blogpost. Meta has fundamental
| trustability issues.
| cade wrote:
| 100% this. I paid the increasingly common "privacy and
| control premium" for a Valve Index (which I'm very happy
| with) to avoid the entanglements of borrowing a headset from
| Meta for a large, up front, non-refundable fee.
| timschmidt wrote:
| Valve makes great unlocked hardware. I don't see the same
| argument working with Apple, however. Can't even upgrade an
| SSD in a recent mac not to mention individually
| cryptographically signed components like cameras and touch
| pads which can't be replaced without a visit to an Apple-
| certified repair person. Renting hardware indeed.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Thanks for your comment. I love just a few things on my Quest
| 2, and several times a week I take ten minute breaks for ping
| pong, something meditative, tai chi, etc.
|
| You reminded me of the negative aspects of the Meta/Facebook
| corporate mass, and they should clean up their act in
| privacy, etc. for VR in the same way they have basically
| purchased good will in the AI community for releasing LLM
| model weights.
|
| Apologies for going off topic, but Apple similarly really
| needs to trade a little profit for buying themselves a better
| "look" because they are looking a little tarnished also.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Requiring a Meta / Facebook account for already-purchased
| Oculuses, retroactively bricking devices and deleting
| software which was bought before that requirement
|
| You always needed an Oculus account and they didn't brick
| anything. You did have to migrate from an Oculus to meta
| account but a Facebook account was never required on a quest
| 1 (or 3). Is a meta account really that different from an
| Oculus account?
|
| The quest 1 has been deprecated yes but not bricked.
| ericmcer wrote:
| That isn't really what the parent is talking about at all...
|
| If your issue is with the device requiring connection with an
| external account, Vision Pro requires an AppleID which will
| tie it to way more of your digital things than a Facebook
| login.
| tw04 wrote:
| Apple's business model isn't selling your personal
| information. In fact they go out of their way to protect
| your personal info. Requiring an AppleID is significantly
| less concerning than requiring a Facebook account.
| timschmidt wrote:
| https://digiday.com/media-buying/apples-expanding-ad-
| ambitio...
| tw04 wrote:
| >In the meantime, Apple continues to work with ad tech
| vendors it trusts -- or rather, those with stated
| policies it approves of -- particularly when it comes to
| a cornerstone of the iPhone maker's brand: user privacy.
|
| >However, a key question remains: how will Apple ensure
| user privacy as its ad ambitions expose the iOS ecosystem
| to a sector of the media landscape with a chequered
| record when it comes to a cornerstone of its brand
| promise?
|
| >Earlier this year, it unveiled a tool it will use to
| police user privacy in the guise of Privacy Manifests
| (see video above), a measure that many interpreted as
| Apple's attempt to (finally) stamp out illicit user-
| tracking, a.k.a. fingerprinting.
|
| Apple has a vested interest in user privacy and talks
| about it constantly. Facebook has an interest in selling
| every piece of information they have about you to the
| highest bidder and has talked about how stupid users are
| to give them personal information.
|
| They are not the same.
| parentheses wrote:
| You're comparing a $300 product from a company that profits
| on analyzing their customers to a $3500 product from a
| hardware company.
|
| This is not a fair comparison. They're motivated differently.
|
| Furthermore, the "anti-account" viewpoint is making a privacy
| issue out of a pinch or friction point. Accounts are required
| for both devices. If you bought a device which allowed you to
| buy apps, the experience would be horrible without an
| account. If most people are willing and it's a better
| experience, it makes sense to force everyone into the same
| rails to reduce implementation cost. If it increases revenue,
| there's yet another reason to do it. It's ridiculous to be in
| an ideological minority and expect a company to bend to that
| when it's not in their best interest.
|
| While I prefer Apple products because <yada yada>, Meta and
| Apple are doing the same thing here. The only difference is
| that Apple has higher current trustworthiness. This is also
| the reason they can release a $3500 headset.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Why isn't that a fair comparison? If that's an important
| factor in their purchase decision that's completely fair.
| You can compare whatever you want when you're evaluating
| subjective criteria for a purchase decision - and the
| socioeconomic rationale behind the motivations leading to
| the decisions the companies made is interesting but not
| relevant to the comparison at decision point.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I've had a Quest 1 for years, it always required an Oculus
| account, and since rebranding as Meta it now requires a Meta
| account, which my Oculus account was converted into.
|
| It's not bricked and hasn't deleted my software, I'm curious
| what exactly you're referring to with that.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I was saying the same thing back during the first five years of
| the iPhone. There were so many ostensibly serious people who
| thought that BlackBerry or Nokia would have an "iPhone killer"
| just around the corner, and it's like... do you chumps have any
| idea how difficult it is to build an _operating system?_
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Well BlackBerry eventually did acquire QNX. But this was in
| 2010 which was far too late...
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| I get what you are saying, but that is why the Vision Pro is
| still an over engineered dev kit for a half baked OS.
|
| At least the Meta Quest for example has a lot of content and VR
| games. The Vision Pro doesn't seem to have much use apart from
| it curiosity, because such system hasn't been fully built out.
| It seems like a device that isn't really ready for prime time
| for a couple of years yet.
| bleepblop wrote:
| Thinking about it. If apple had dropped their vision pro with
| something like you can play Half Life Alyx on it like they
| did with Death Stranding with the M2chip/M3? they might have
| had a larger buyer pool.
| jwcooper wrote:
| They would have needed controllers and actually cared
| enough to support steam on it.
|
| There is zero chance Valve would release HL:Alyx without
| full steam support on the device.
|
| That being said, I get what you're saying - that a killer
| game could have helped the value proposition. They clearly
| didn't design it for that though, even based on how much
| lower their refresh rate is for hand tracking.
|
| It feels like a consumption device like the iPad, with some
| productivity mixed in.
| bleepblop wrote:
| The irony is I can use steam link with an ipad. On top of
| that I can use it as a second monitor for when I am on
| the go among some other productivity. From what I saw
| with the vision pro, nothing compelled me in that
| department. And I have to agree with you, not having some
| sort of controller interface was an additional no go as
| well.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > Think about what has to exist, to say, intelligently copy and
| paste parts of a 3D object made by one application into a 3D
| object made by another, the same way you would copy a flat
| image from photoshop into a Word document.
|
| I own an AVP and this isn't something that can be done with it,
| to the best of my knowledge. Please explain how this is
| possible with the existing OS and apps.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I have seen people download 3d model file formats (stl) and
| position/scale them in front of them, and then walk around
| the 3d model. I am not sure if they added anything to the
| Vision Pro but it was pretty impressive. I would not be
| surprised if it can handle common 3d formats and render them
| straight to your AR environment out of the box.
| dagmx wrote:
| Possible with the existing OS? Definitely. It's just
| clipboard data
|
| Possible with the current apps? None of them support a
| standard partial copy of 3D objects but they do allow copy
| pasting full objects between apps afaik. E.g I can drag a
| USDZ file from a message into keynote
| jayd16 wrote:
| I like that Apple is focusing on 3d widgets as an app primitive
| but is it really that hard to put that into Oculus/Android?
| Android actually does have widgets. What about the OS precludes
| it from what Apple has done?
|
| There's some hard decisions around forcing everyone into their
| custom material that Apple made so that they can handle the
| rendering more deeply....but is that really a core OS thing?
| Seems like it doesn't need a new kernel for that.
| brookst wrote:
| It's not so much difficulty as system architecture. Oculus
| just doesn't have an OS layer, at least not in the sense of a
| platform that helps applications share resources and interact
| with each other.
|
| The Oclulus platform is more like a classic video game
| console; there are system APIs, but they are designed to be
| used by single-tasking applications.
|
| And for the user, the Oculus system UI is really an app
| launcher /task switcher.
|
| It's not better or worse, just a very different design
| philosophy.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Huh? I'm very confused as to what you mean. It's a
| customized version of Android. All the Android multi-
| tasking and app pause and resume life-cycle stuff should
| still be in there. Most of their ecosystem is heavy duty
| games that use all the device's resources (kicking out
| other apps from the working set), but it's definitely a
| multi-tasking OS.
|
| I really do not think 3D widgets would require an entirely
| new OS. The main app switcher would need a revamp and they
| would need to re-purpose or build out some new app life-
| cycle callbacks to handle widget focus and interaction but
| it all seems very doable and not much harder than what
| they've already done.
| tempestn wrote:
| > Less so in a scene like this intimate music concert or sports
| game, but probably a lot more so in dramatic storytelling and
| _other types of more realistic films_.
|
| Presumably he has a specific type of film in mind here.
| exabrial wrote:
| Finally demod one of these things.
|
| Yes the VR experience was pretty dang sick, but to be real... the
| pass though is not as good your own vision. Is it ground
| breaking? Yes. But it's v1.0, details are fuzzy, the color
| palette was meh, and we've still yet to invent an instrument with
| the dynamic contrast of the human eye.
|
| I tell you what was quite fascinating: the audio. Nearly every
| clip they shot they must have used a head dummy spatial
| microphone and hired industry best to master the audio tracks. My
| eyes weren't fooled, but my ears were (other than a roll off
| under 142hz or so); mainly due to the phase and eq shifting and
| their use of multiple sources along the head band.
|
| I'd really like to see far more focus on the audio side.
|
| And as far as actual use cases? They need to go after live
| sports. Otherwise it'll stay a gadget of the technophile.
| it wrote:
| Isn't one of the biggest problems with these VR headsets the
| nearness of the display to the eye? It seems like prolonged
| exposure to this would result in myopia that would worsen faster
| than it does when exposed to screens that are farther away.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| No. Your eye is generally focusing on infinity in a VR display,
| that's why myopic people need to wear glasses in VR.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > Motion blur in passthrough mode ended up being one of the many
| reasons why I decided to return my Vision Pro, because it's just
| uncomfortable
|
| If I am in VR field, and wasn't very tight on the money (which I
| assume the author isn't), I probably will keep a Vision Pro with
| me even if it's a literal peace of junk just so I can play with
| it occasionally for my curiosity.
|
| I wonder what's the difference between me and him.
|
| To make it clear, this is not a loaded question but a genuine
| one. His decision is objectively more reasonable than mine
| (keeping unneeded junk around), but I just can't get it.
| elif wrote:
| I'm so glad he mentioned weight. I was worried that the
| competition would say 'okay, apple has this so we need this or
| better' when there is so much on this device that I really don't
| care for. I don't need curved glass, I don't need fake LED eyes
| draining my battery, I don't need a physical knob to slowly fade
| out reality.
|
| I would really prefer a device that is lighter, cooler, with
| longer battery life, more CPU available to the displays that
| matter, and probably cheaper by having less stuff.
|
| I don't think the fake eyes make any part of the experience less
| creepy in social interactions. Instead that energy could have
| been used to, for instance, illuminate 850hz IR light so the user
| would have superhuman night vision. Being in a dark place and not
| being able to read a menu is much more immersion breaking than
| having to tell someone "yes I see you" and in fact you have this
| conversation with everyone regardless of the fake eyes.
| sngz wrote:
| What you got wrong is meta
| gcanyon wrote:
| A very interesting video take:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg
|
| tl;dw -- reviewers are understandably focusing on the technical
| specs, but ignoring the much more simple metric: conceptually,
| does the device fool the mind into accepting what it sees as
| "real"? And the answer for the Vision Pro is yes. It will get
| lighter, better, cheaper, but even now, it's important to realize
| that the AVP can transport you to another _realistic_ reality in
| a way no other device has managed. I 've only done the in-store
| demo, but I understand what the video is saying, and it resonates
| for me.
| speg wrote:
| I found the demo a bit underwhelming, if only because it was
| guided. However I must admit the scene on the mountain, in
| front of the piano, and on the football pitch were amazing.
|
| If that is the future of content, sign me up.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Free advice for anyone going in for the demo: be comfortable
| in VR, read up on how the AVP works ahead of time, and tell
| the Apple person that. I got to see/experience a _lot_ more
| during my demo than a friend did because I was always jumping
| ahead and pushing the pace.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the link you intended? I see the iPhone
| keynote from 2007.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Ha, yup, silly youtube. I'll fix it in a second.
|
| Edit: there's a time limit on edits? Okay, I'm replying to
| that comment with the correct URL, and adding it here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krpbAMJlLTc
| gcanyon wrote:
| The correct URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krpbAMJlLTc
| petesergeant wrote:
| > This may be the first device category where Apple's [whatever]
| may simply not work as previously
|
| One day they'll be right, but it seems like a pretty risky bet,
| always
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| I mean the Vision Pro seems like an over engineered dev kit to
| me, like the article describes.
|
| The vision pro seems to miss the mark in some many areas and
| seems like it's ahead of it's time, which is odd for Apple and
| the Quest 3 seems to beat it in a lot of areas.
|
| In some ways I am surprised Apple released it and didn't keep
| working on it in the lab, but in others, I think they wanted to
| get it out in users hands and see how they use it and what devs
| start to build with it, they also wanted to normalise the idea of
| such devices, so when something more functional is out there,
| people will be happier to use it.
| cthalupa wrote:
| I've been using my AVP pretty regularly since release day. I'm
| using it less now that the novelty is wearing off, but still
| fairly often.
|
| Things I like:
|
| 1) It really is an upgrade vs. working on just my 16" MBP screen.
| I'm in the minority that actually finds the knit headband pretty
| comfortable, and can fairly easily go 3-4 hours with it on before
| it starts to bother me. I do wish there was the option to break
| specific OSX apps out into their own window or at least have
| multiple screens, but when I can put most of my work in a web
| browser or app that the AVP supports, it works extremely well. At
| worst, it's still more eyeball real estate than just the MBP
| screen itself.
|
| 2) ALVR/Moonlight actually work pretty well, if you have the WiFi
| infrastructure to support it. It works properly on my Unifi setup
| but it struggled a bit on a friend's wifi. But it's really cool
| to play PCVR games using such a high resolution display, as well
| as playing 2D games on a screen that appears far larger than even
| my 65" TV
|
| 3) 3D movies are insanely good on it. I've always wanted to
| really love 3D movies, but the downsides for both active and
| passive 3D really kept them from being a resounding hit with me.
| Not the case on the AVP. No compromise on brightness or FPS makes
| it a much nicer experience. 2D movies and TV are also quite nice,
| with the only real downside being the audio - it's reasonably
| good, and I can enjoy movies on it no problem, but it also
| doesn't match proper home theater audio. On the whole, though, I
| think it's the best _personal_ movie watching experience you can
| get for 3.5k. A projector that even approaches the visual quality
| /relative screen size of the AVP is $5k+. Obviously, though, a
| real home theater setup can be enjoyed with more people. The
| individual nature can also be a strength, though - if you want to
| watch something without disturbing your partner, you don't have
| to have a TV on in the bedroom.
|
| 4) I feel significantly less disconnected from the world when
| using it than I have my other VR/AR headsets. I can function with
| it on moving around my house, etc.
|
| Things I dislike:
|
| 1) I would love it if it was lighter and I could wear it all day,
| but it's not a huge deal for me.
|
| 2) The OS is miles ahead of my Quest Pro, but it still feels
| unpolished at times. When everything works it's perfect - but
| there are still some bugs. Until 1.1 released, something was
| going on with Safari that could bring the whole thing to it's
| knees until you rebooted it. Not sure if it was a memory leak or
| if it was something else, but if I had a web browser open for an
| extended period of time, it would eventually bring the whole
| system to it's knees. This is fixed, but I still have some (more
| rare) issues with apps going nonresponsive and not being closable
| via the usual X, etc., requiring a force quit. I'm sure this will
| all get fixed in time, but it's not the same level of polish I've
| grown accustomed to with Apple software.
|
| 3) I'd really like some way to sync audio to external sources.
| You can do some hackery with a Siri shortcut, but I'd love to be
| able to sit down on my couch, put on a movie, and watch it while
| making use of my sound system vs. being forced to go with the AVP
| speakers or bluetooth headphones.
|
| All in all, I like it quite a bit. I don't know that I would
| recommend it, with the pricing being what it is - I think if
| you're a good fit for it, you already are interested in it or
| will be interested in it when you hear about it in general.
| amelius wrote:
| What they both got wrong: allowing pr0n without tying accounts to
| real life names and looking over the user's shoulder.
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