It's interesting that HN is completely overloaded right now...with people coming to announce how unimpressed they are and how it isn't for them.
The displays in this device are crazy. I honestly didn't think they'd be able to put together a value proposition, but I think they legitimately did. It's super expensive, and some of the cost of the device seems kind of silly (if I heard correctly, the display on the front is 3d and gives different perspectives based upon the viewers), so obviously they're going to have a lot of room to improve value in subsequent generations.
But it's going to be a hit. HN is going to be swamped with "How I used Vision Pro to..." posts when it comes out.
One element that didn't get a lot of play (if any...though I was distracted with work) -- did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac? I'd love to use a real keyboard mouse interacting with flexible Mac displays.
> It's interesting that HN is completely overloaded right now...with people coming to announce how unimpressed they are and how it isn't for them.
Agreed, polarization is a good sign that this is going to make an impact. Ironically "unimpressed" is communicated by a lack of response, not by a negative one (which more likely indicates people's beliefs are being challenged). The only way this would be a flop is if they shipped something really buggy and worse than the competition (which at the time will be the Meta Quest 3). Otherwise...
> it's going to be a hit. HN is going to be swamped with "How I used Vision Pro to..." posts when it comes out.
100%!
> did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac? I'd love to use a real keyboard mouse interacting with flexible Mac displays.
Looks like it's going to be a standalone device that you can pair with a magic keyboard and trackpad. Considering it ships with an M2 I expect iPad/Air level performance (assuming the spatial stuff is solely handled by R1). I can totally see myself using it as "the one device" (pun intended) and get rid of my Macbook, assuming there's an easy way to share content with someone who's next to me, e.g. on my iPhone.
> Agreed, polarization is a good sign that this is going to make an impact.
Virtually every new Apple product is going to generate this sort of response, and while many Apple products have had a large impact, just as many haven't, I don't know how much predictive strength "this new Apple product generated a lot of conversation on HN" has.
Exactly. Especially in this case, where we knew this was coming for months. It's generating a response because people have been waiting to talk about it since the rumors started.
For myself, my "unimpressed" reaction is because the experience they're selling is the same as what Meta has been trying and failing to sell for years now. It's definitely typical Apple—wait for the tech to mature and execute better than anyone else—but I'm unconvinced there's an actual need being filled here.
The iPhone took a market that had already taken off in business—PDAs—and blew the roof of of it by revolutionizing the tech. The VR-for-productivity market is practically non-existent, and even in gaming it's still very niche. Neither are anywhere near where PDAs and Blackberries were when the iPhone made it big.
I'm just not convinced the "execute better" strategy will work when there is no proven market.
The YouTube stream I watched mentioned it can detect when you are looking at your Mac and offer the screen up in the googles with full sizing and layout control. Your Mac appears just as another app and you can multitask as ususal.
If you can put up all the windows from your 3 display workstation, why would you want to simulate displays?
There’s a similar approach available for the Meta quest 2 (and I’m sure the quest pro and quest 3) but it takes a little reorienting to stop thinking in terms of “screens”
Wow, this makes me think of the fabled zooming interface[0]. Why limit yourself to a "monitor" or a set of windows when the sky's (literally) the limit? With a ZUI you could have the entire world at your fingertips. Browser history (or git commits) could just be further away from you in the Z direction. Or maybe it's behind you and you just have to turn around to see it.
An old, ancient term for it is "Spatial UI". The window you need is right where you left it in the other room; navigating between your apps becomes like navigating around your house. Your coding apps are in your office and your social media apps in your bedroom and now you won't get the two confused and "accidentally" scroll social media while working.
In some ways this is particularly great, because humans involved to have a lot of spatial memory in this way.
(It's an interesting footnote here that the early pre-OS X Mac OS Finder was sometimes much beloved [or hated, depending on your OCD predilection and/or personality type] because it was a Spatial UI. Files and folders would "stay" where you placed them and you could have and build all sorts of interesting muscle memory of where on your desktop a file was or even a deep tree of folder navigations, with scenic landmarks along the way. Apple discarded that a long time ago now, but there was something delightful in that old Spatial UI.)
Check out the “Platform State of the Union” video stream for more detail on that. They discuss windows, volumes, shared space, spaces.
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/102
Ah yes, but those apps appear to be just some kind of iOS type thing, so at least for me I couldn’t really use them for productivity. (The lack of coding tools on iOS also really kills any possible productive uses of my iPad in this way, unfortunately)
(That’s why I was focusing more on the mirror-your-Mac functionality)
We might be at a point where that could change. This device seems like it could be close to providing the performance needed to start running productivity apps, and it also provides the screen real estate. Those types of apps have to be coming to iOS in the next few years.
I don't think it can simulate any app. Likely, it is a feature akin Continuity, and you have to have corresponding app installed on your Vision Pro to pick it up from Mac and continue working on a headset.
While they did confirm Continuity would work across visionOS they also showed direct footage of your Mac monitor being displayed as an app while using your Mac.
I don't get this. There is no live demo so far, only a pre-rendered ad. So you have no idea what the actual experience will be like (in an industry famed for over-promising and under-delivering; remember Magic Leap?). The use-cases are also dubious: you can... watch TV alone? Scroll through photos alone? Take pictures? Only the virtual desktop thing was something that I thought "that's useful".
I'm unimpressed so far, maybe that will change maybe it won't. But right now I don't see anything worth being impressed by.
They gave 30 min demos to WWDC attendees the following day.
I'm excited mainly for two reasons: fantastic eye and hand tracking (according to reviewers such as MKBHD) and replicating my office/entertainment setup wherever I am (except for shared experiences, that is).
I think Apple tried to nail the seamlessness of the experience, rather than give you some amazing use case nobody ever thought of. That will be a good challenge for developers.
>Agreed, polarization is a good sign that this is going to make an impact. Ironically "unimpressed" is communicated by a lack of response, not by a negative one (which more likely indicates people's beliefs are being challenged).
To quote Elie Wiesel: "The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference." It's an extremely good barometer.
It's interesting that every single top HN thread is mostly unanimous praise for this device (which presumably no one has yet seen or used), while also painting themselves as the minority opinion.
Techcrunch concluded "The price reveal turned any ‘would buy’ in the room into a ‘definitely not’ without hesitation."
Anyways, bookmark the threads of folks calling an Apple product dead on arrival for a revisit in a few years.
The ipod, the iphone, the watch, the airpods... they've had a pretty good record and almost all these have had harsh criticism out the gate (while then going on to absolutely PRINT money for apple).
Apple is sitting on lots of cash and investment with operating cash flow of something like another $100B a year? Why aren't they allowed to take some risks on products like this. Facebook certainly has burnt billions in a similar space.
I remember hardly any significant negative criticism of the iphone, watch, or airpods.
Someone below brought up "when the iphone first came out it was 2G, was only on AT&T" - well, yeah, and those were very valid initial shortcomings that Apple pretty quickly rectified.
With the Vision Pro, I see very few comments putting down the actual technological achievements here. Comments seem to be pretty universal in thinking this is the best VR device there is. But the valid question is people are still having a difficult time imagining real, extended use cases where it doesn't feel like a novelty.
Personally, I think it's great Apple took a swing at this. I wouldn't be willing to bet one way or the other on its success, I think there are lots of unknowns, but I don't really have anything but high praise for the folks that built this.
Watch was criticized for its poor battery life and lack of usage other than health/training management. Now battery life is improved a bit and more health features added, but I think the OG criticize point is still valid. Why is it sold well is that it seems that many people care about health device than we expected.
Also the watch launched with a bunch of expensive ultra-luxury options that were mocked. Ive tried to lean heavily into fashion which was quickly dropped in later revisions.
Apple Watch also isn't really the game changer that something like the iPod or iPhone (or various Macs throughout the years) was. Sure I see people wearing them, but not a tremendous amount, and not completely out of line with something like a FitBit or a Garmin.
Apple created a very competitive product in an established market with the Watch, they didn't change the game.
Which is where I could see the Apple Vision Pro ending up, but I'm sure that's well short of Apple's expectations.
The iPhone wowed everyone but its price was heavily criticized. Apple later got into the exclusive AT&T deal which "subsidized" the price. People just ended up paying more over time.
Let's not forget Steve Balmer laughingly mention that no serious business user would ever use a phone without a physical keyboard. People here are negative for the sake of it.
I bought one after using a blackberry and I was instantly sold on it because you could browse websites as if it was a computer, zooming in to the text section with a double tap. I remember my daughter wouldn't entertain the idea because it didn't run blackberry messenger which was the killer app for kids at the time.
I just want to point out: At the time of the iPhone launch, AT&T's business model (and every other telecom up until this tipping point) was to sell "minutes" which was essentially micro-charges for consumers who want to make calls or send texts.
This was mostly an infrastructure problem that Apple innovated on and helped AT&T solve- carriers would no longer need to sell "minutes" but could instead sell Data, which was a much better value proposition. There's a quote in the movie Blackberry along the lines of "the problem with selling minutes is that there's only 60 of them in a minute to sell".
I can only assume this attributed to the global adoption of the "data sale" model (and the iPhone with it) since the profit ceiling was exponentially higher for every carrier.
Data plans existed before the iPhone. And Europe was much more hardcore with minutes than the states at that time (I remember that ATT standard plans were not unlimited talk at that point, something that was unheard of in Switzerland where I was living in 2007). In fact, I think the innovation was something like unlimited data?
I've never spent more than $400 for a smartphone, always bought second hand Android phones. My income went up in the last couple of years and a few months ago my phone broke. I bought a $900 iPhone.
If it's good people will buy it. I will buy it. No doubt about that.
It was definitely in the upper range of prices for over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones, not like this even matters, because people just _did not_ pay $500+ for headphones before the Maxes dropped.
Just wanted to piggyback on this. I was just commenting today to my coworker on the number of people I see walking around Manhattan/Brooklyn with AirPods Maxes on. I swear I see at least a pair or two every other minute while walking down the street.
Most of these people, like you said, we’re likely not blowing $500+ on headphones before Apple made that concept mainstream.
Honestly, nah. I don’t think the majority of these people were blowing 400 or 350 or whatever on alternatives beforehand.
Granted, this is 100% anecdotal, but I’m seeing way more people rocking AirPods Max around the city every day than I remember ever seeing rocking over the ear headphones, let alone expensive ones.
I see airpods more often, but sure, apple did discover a huge market here (and not so kindly pushed people towards it by the removal of jack ports). But I don’t fault them, the airpod pros are really cool and the comfort of noise cancellation especially on public transport is a godsend and it makes sense that many people actually cough together the price for that.
> $550 for a pair of headphones is a lot, but it's not even close to top of the range
It's top of the range for typical consumers. The people who wear Apple's $550 headphones aren't people who are buying Sennheiser HD800s'. Before, people would've spent $200 or up to $300 on the Bose ones. Apple got them to spend an extra $200-250.
I'm surprised by how often I see these headphones. They were basically nonexistent in the Bay Area but I see them often enough in NYC.
I did the same quest and I'm happy with the AirPods Max. I remember reading Apple originally wanted to make them better but they would have been more expensive so they didn't, I wish they had.
I have more expensive headphones than the AirPods Max but these are what I use the most.
You'd be surprised how popular they are. Certainly they're overpriced, but the noise cancellation/sound/build quality/etc is very good. They've also apparently become something of a celebrity "it" item: https://www.vogue.com/article/are-the-airpods-max-the-latest...
Wow fascinating. How much better than AirPod Pros are they? I tend like the minimalism of the AirPod line. Super discreet, can easily stash in your pocket, can be listening to music anywhere and no one even really notices, etc. Oh and they work just as good on the treadmill or while running.
You would just have to try out the AirPods Max to find out :)
Personally, I cannot say as I have never owned nor used any of the other AirPods. If you are looking for mobile usage, the Max aren't the best choice. They are large and heavy and there is nothing discreet about them. Also, I wouldn't even consider running with them.
I use them at work or at home where all of this is no issue and I just want to enjoy the best music experience.
If this is you use case some Audio-Technica ATHM50XBT would probably have way better sound at a 3rd of the price. For over a decade it's the most used headphone set in professional studios for a reason.
P.S. not saying there aren't better headphones, just that the price ratio is great with these ones and the sound to my ear is better than on airpods pro. No noise cancellation though.
I don't doubt that there are other great headphones. However looking closely you will find that the AirPods Max offer an interesting combination of features. Like noise cancelling, which can be quite a big help in certain situations. Even with modest background noise, the noise cancelling can just increase the music listening experience, as you just hear the music and no background noise.
Also nice is spatial audio. Especially for movie watching. And I have grown fond of the build and looks of the Max.
Here's what I know: Apple's wearable business (Airpods, Apple Watch, Airtags) is $41 billion annually, most of which is Airpods.
I see Airpods Max everywhere: on the street, in the office, on zoom calls, and on airplanes. they're recognizable and common. I see other headphones also, and white airpods/airpods pros the most.
Of people I see sitting at a computer, few are using them.
For everyone else, airpods far outnumber all other kinds of headphones combined. Whether it's the grocery store or an airport.
I can only speak to my experience. This is a subjective, bias-loaded anecdote. For example it could just be that they're newish, so I notice the novelty more. Or the design is easier to see. Etc etc.
iPhone 3G was released in summer 2008, right in the middle of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Arguably, this was the beginning of iPhone's rise in popularity. The original iPhone was released in 2007, and the cracks in the economy were beginning to show then...
But it cost $500 ($700 in today's dollars) and the day-to-day utility of cellphones/blackberries had already been established for a decade. Your example doesn't seem that comparable.
All those phones did cost 200-300 IIRC. 500 was outrageously expensive. For this device it's 3500, will be much cheaper for non pro version plus production of critical components will scale up significantly. Sony can produce less than a million displays for that thing per year, it is understandable why they are expensive.
Sure, but again… it’s like 10x the price of a competing piece of equipment which is still regarded as pretty niche. In the case of an iPhone, 2x the price for 1000x the functionality was a clear “buy”. There’s a reason that among basically everyone I know (mid class millenials) scoffs at watches and iPads but is a complete iPhone addict - the value proposition is just that good. For all the talk of these ancillary/luxury devices, the fact remains that the iPhone (or Android knockoffs) is still the absolute Crown Jewel of tech that cuts across demographics in a way that their other products do not.
And to be honest, a handheld magic cube that fits in your pocket and can display anything and be interacted in any way really is as magical as it sounds. Plus it is a quite good camera as well.
I really think that smartphone design is close to the optimal sci-fi tech for humans, exactly due to it being handheld. We rely on vision and touch the most and I think it combines those well. I am almost sure that VR would even in theory get as popular as smartphones, all else being equal.
The people that can afford this aren’t impacted by the economy. It’s a professional tool and the expense can be justified. It’s not a product for ordinary consumers yet. On top of that it’s not out until next year - who knows what the economy will be like then.
That you use to look at family photos, use iPhone apps in a giant window, watch movies, and play with VR Mickey Mouse? The presentation seemed to lean more towards the consumer than industry applications.
They did but that mostly seemed silly to me. Multiple monitors was the main thing that jumped out as an actual good use case. They need to market all aspects of it but they’ve named it “pro” for a reason and I feel like there was a lot of focus out on productivity uses (conference calls, browsing, multiple displays, 3D Models).
Marketed to the general public but will be used by pros.
The goal is excitement and investment in the app ecosystem so, when they figure out the form factor, the cheaper/lighter/more useful future device is a bigger hit.
Yes, I feel a lot of people are too tied down to their biases and social bubbles. I'm working in the area and you see great use of these devices from medical, to architecture, and mechanical engineering.
I understand the skepticism, but sometimes our perception of the world is quite narrow. Given that most of us are developers, even more so.
I don't mean to be condescending, I just feel that way a lot with both myself and my colleagues when exposed to fields and constraints that we haven't seen before.
It is the first version of the Vision Pro and I would expect it to fail due to its price.
The second or third version maybe something worthy of the consumer having a look at. This is directly competing against the Quest Pro, and the Vision Pro is still at prices like the HoloLens.
Apple will probably announce a 'Lite' version which will directly compete against Meta's cheaper Quest VR headsets.
> Facebook certainly has burnt billions in a similar space.
And their Quest VR headsets already outsold Xbox Series X/S. [0]
How do you define failure? I reckon that if people start to make apps for this device, then it’s served its purpose. The next generation, or “lite” version will arrive to an already-populated ecosystem. Meanwhile Apple will have a lot of data about what worked and what didn’t to tweak their direction.
> The ipod, the iphone, the watch, the airpods... they've had a pretty good record and almost all these have had harsh criticism out the gate (while then going on to absolutely PRINT money for apple).
Looks like you and me have a completely different memory on this? iPod, iPhone were almost unanimously praised at the moment of announcement, thanks to Steve's magic. AirPod also received generally positive reactions. Apple Watch had a genuine issue on its product positioning and its success came after fixing that issue.
The reaction to the iPod that everyone remembers was "No wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame", never mind the criticism of an apple only device, or the cost (honestly, the mac mini and maybe the m1 airs are the only two devices I can think of apple has released that people didn't complain about the price).
The iPhone in addition to pricing was also widely panned for being 2G only, for being AT&T only, for requiring a data plan, for not having a physical keyboard, for not having a stylus and for being something no one needed because our phones and ipods already do all of that.
The iPhone did get a better reception than the iPod, but that's probably owed to the success of the iPod in proving Apple might just have an idea or two about how to make a new piece of cool tech, but it had plenty of poo-pooing by the tech class too.
Not claiming it's a minority opinion, but early on there were multiple submissions that were dominated by people rushing to proclaim that it was DoA. One claimed it was the end of Apple. There is a huge disparity between people who click an arrow and people who comment.
And you are absolutely correct that the enthused haven't used this device, or even heard from a non-Apple employee that tried a beta. I am hugely concerned about long term comfort, particularly in the eye fatigue realm, for instance, and will be watching to see what the sentiment around that is.
If it were many other companies I would honestly be much more skeptical about it, but I mean Apple has a pretty good track record of actually delivering products that meet or exceed their promises. And they really promised the moon with this reveal.
I completely agree with you about the tiredness of the eye or fatigueness of the eye. It's really hard to imagine someone wearing this kind of device for a very long time without feeling any pain. I'm not sure exactly the reason why this pain came from. But I think the question we face is going to be maybe the next big thing for humans, which is going to directly connect all those sensors directly connected to our central brain without using the eye. But that's kind of a science fiction thing. I'm not sure I'm going to have a chance to experience those things.
Ditto. I can’t see this being used portably so do wonder if the 2 hour battery life is a clue on how fatiguing the experience might be.
2 hours I guess covers a commute, but it’s hardly handheld form factor - how much bigger would it need to be to get “all day wear” battery life? It doesn’t feel like a real spatial constraint, so can only presume >2hrs is not required in actual use.
I see the pattern is that C is complained by most of people. And there is another type of programming that is that, which people never talk about. So just by talking about, regardless it's positive or negative, there is a tension in there and it's expectation, it's our will to kind of devices or this technology came into being. So eventually it will become part of our life and I hope that day comes sooner and this company will not disappoint us.
There's a famous macrumors forum post of people raging against the iPod, saying it will be a massive failure. We've seen the same reaction from every Apple hardware announcement since.
TBF, there's an equal amount of "I haven't touched the product, nor even read reviews of people handling it in their hands, but I'm totally gonna buy this only based on the marketing material"
I kinda loved how Accidental Tech Podcast's host joke about not having even heard of the product yet but they'll probably buy it for personal use either way.
The pendulum has fully swinged the other way for the a sizeable chunk of people I think.
I bought a used newton from the lead engineer on the newton. I loved the device and used it regularly until my then girlfriend stepped on it and broke the display. Needless to say that relationship wasn’t long after that ;-)
I later had a palm. It was garbage compared to the newton even if it was 1/8 the size. I’m glad to see the newton essentially return as the iPhone/iPad.
I'll admit to being quite skeptical of the iPad and was wrong about that.
That said, despite owning a Quest 2 and eagerly awaiting the Quest 3 release, nothing in this headset particularly appeals to me. (Am mainly into rhythm games and am guessing those wouldn't be nearly as fun without the haptics in into other headsets' controllers which this seems to lack).
> But it's going to be a hit. HN is going to be swamped with "How I used Vision Pro to..." posts when it comes out.
I'm not going to predict whether or not this is going to be a hit, I just don't know.
However, remember when Google Glass came out there were tons of these "how I use" posts and I remember people even changing their LinkedIn profile pictures to be with Google Glass. And, we all know how that turned out.
So, early posts by self-styled influencers or wannabe's are in no way predictor of success, or failure, of a product.
I'm actually curious about this, and how the displays will actually feel. The ads/keynote all talked about how they're "more than 4k for each eye", which sounds like a lot when you're talking about TVs or monitors, but... stops sounding quite as impressive when you realize you're talking about IMAX-sized screens (which is the main "wow" draw for watching movies in VR), or when talking about augmenting reality.
Yeah, 4K per eye stops being impressive when it's five inches from your retina and you're trying to read fine text. Pimax has had a 4K/eye device for years already: it's nice but still nowhere near good enough to do things like replace your computer monitor. They're planning to ship a 6K/eye device next year, which will probably still not be enough. The real world has a very high pixel density!
They have eye focus tracking for sure in this, so maybe they can render in adaptive resolution mode je only highest rest in center of vision? Who knows?
Adaptive resolution rendering doesn't add more pixels to the display -- if you want high resolution for the spot the user is currently looking at, you need that resolution across the entire display.
Theoretically, you don't really need it across the entire display - this is achievable with eye tracking paired with fancy actuated curved micro-mirrors (so-called DMDs) that can dynamically make part of the matrix concentrated in a smaller focus area (viewed through a curved mirror) at cost of peripheral picture quality. But it's extremely complex tech and I'm not aware if it's available in any consumer-grade devices. The alternative is liquid lenses, but I think micro-mirrors are more researched topic (I'm no expert in either, it's been ages since I last studied physics and I wasn't good at it even then).
It is remotely related but different from "classical" foveated rendering (which is just a way to get better framerates), as it's an actual optical system. With DMDs you also need foveated rendering (and fancy transformations, as displays are no longer projected uniformly over time), but foveated rendering alone is not sufficient.
They already listed foveated rendering in the features (which I believe is what you're describing). It use the graphics performance budget efficiently, but it can't physically add more pixels.
It's really cool technology anyway, and according to PSVR2 reviews, it seems to work well.
I think resolution will be important the smaller (or further away) the movie you’re watching is. And for things like text in apps.
If you’re watching an IMAX-size screen in AR, the resolution of the content will be the main factor, I think, rather than the density of the goggle displays.
I have 2 4k screens in front of me right now. I can close one eye, and without moving my head make out the entirety of both screens. They cover most of the non-peripheral horizontal field of view, but you could easily fit in another 4k screen on top of each vertically. I can make out individual pixels (when there is a gradient, like with a small font) on the screens. Higher resolution screens of the same size at the same distance would let me read slightly smaller fonts.
That is, at a resolution in which pixels are still perceptible, I can make out more than 33,177,600 pixels (4 4k screens, equivalently 1 8k screen) per eye. This device has less than that. Less than half that per eye. It's not "at the maximum limits of detail an eye can see" even assuming they just have no wasted pixels in your peripheral vision.
7.5 microns means nothing without knowing what lenses it goes through.
That said, I think it might be enough pixels to be useful for reading text. Unlike the index I own, where that is just unpleasant.
Assuming they're square. Roughly calculating (23 million pixels between the two with no space between 7.5 microns,) that's 25.432mm^2. they've said they're the size of postage stamps. This ties in.
I think it's near safe to assume there's no real gap between pixels and thus indiscernible. The lag might be a thing.
Once again, the absolute size is irrelevant - postage stamp or otherwise. It's optically scaled to fit your field of view - essentially under a microscope. There are VR devices with 4k screens already, and it's still not enough to be indiscernible to the eye - especially for things like text.
This is an over confident audience very sure that their experiences and perspective is representative of the mainstream. See the rsync vs. Dropbox meme.
The execution is all that matters here not any speculative flaws. If it’s a delightful, polished, responsive experience for the stock applications, other use cases will come. I don’t want to bet against Apple achieving that bar. They’ve done it over and over again before.
Every. Single. Apple product launch post. “Meh”, “I can’t see the use case for this”, “it’s all already been done before”. Like clockwork. Then they’ll sell a million of these, and by v3 it’ll be much smaller / better / cheaper, and gain mass adoption. It’s like people have an “apple event reaction” algorithm going, and it never changes.
It sure can be used as a display for a Mac. Just stand in front of a Mac, and the screen will go dark and the windows will be moved to your Vision Pro.
I'm wondering if a similar trick will be used with iPhones and Apple Watches that are within view. Will they bother with the camera reading the screen and then rendering to the visor, or will they just seamlessly talk to the phone and watch to get the screen imagery. I'm assuming that would improve the quality.
I agree 4k in each eye sounds insane. But eye strain that's going to be the big determinant. I initially thought it was transparent OLED at the start but to my disappointment it's just screens. Perhaps they've got the focal adjustment thing Magic Leap was trying to do right.
The best an eye can discern is roughly 20 microns, but generally far higher at 100 microns. They said 7.5 microns per pixel (X3 for RGB is 22.5 so roughly there without space).
Assuming they're square. Roughly calculating (23 million pixels between the two with no space between 7.5 microns,) that's 25.432mm^2. they've said they're the size of postage stamps. This ties in.
I think it's near safe to assume there's no real gap between pixels and thus indiscernible. The lag might be a thing and focus, but this might actually not be a problem.
> The best an eye can discern is roughly 20 microns
The size of an object doesn't matter. What matters is how it gets projected onto the back of your eyes.
There are 120 million rods (black and white) and 6 million cones (color) in a single eye. You would need at least as many pixels. But photoreceptors are not evenly distributed, so to account for moving your eyes across the screen, you would have to have even more pixels.
What if the would move the screens? E.g. Similar like they have in camera optical stabilization they slightly move the sensor array. They could make screen with not uniform pixel density but more dense in center and then do eye tracking and shift those screen mechanically depending where eye will be focused. Probably not easy to pull off as camera optical stabilization (need bigger movements and screens more heavy than weight of camera sensor) but maybe not completely impossible? Oled screens are very tiny and flexible just probsbly hard to make it non fragile.
The pixels may be 7.5 microns but you’re forgetting that they are viewed through a lens. The point stands: 4K pixels for the full field of view, which is a lower density than 4K for a small screen.
The lens can be directional focusing your vision onto a certain point, also your peripheral vision cannot discern as much detail.
They've stated it is on a chip the size of a postage stamp. So we'll have to see how the lens directs it, when it's released.
Edit:sort of a Magic Leap type thing. The further out you look from the centre of the lense, the more the lense curves back to the focus your eye on the centre. With the eye tracking changing the image to compensate for your eye movement.
What if they shift screens mechanically in response to eye movement? Similar like apple camera optical stabilization works by shifting slightly camera sensor array? And if the screen pixel density is not uniform but more dense in the center? Hard to pull off but I guess not impossible.
There’s Sightful’s $2000 device you can buy right now https://www.sightful.com/ I’ve used an early demo of this and was very impressed. After the demo I had the strong feeling Apple is going to build something similar and I was right
The human eye has an approximate pixel resolution of 120 million pixels per eye. On top of that, our brain constantly processes and integrates the output of our eyes. This creates an even higher perceived pixel resolution of about 480 million pixels per eye. Some estimates are even higher.
I'm not saying Apple created a bad product...but I wouldn't expect a mere 23 million pixels to be indistinguishable from reality.
The human eye actually has terrible resolution. We only see in high resolution in the fovea in the very center of our eye -- basically the single point of primary focus. Resolution beyond that drops off dramatically (1/7th and much worse).
I've seen people claiming on sites like Reddit that people who watch with CC on simply read it in their peripheral vision while focused on the action, and that just isn't possible in most situations for the reason I mentioned. You actually only see high resolution in the middle 1 degree of angular view.
So to come up with such a number someone took the entire FOV of the human eye and assumed that you focus your fovea on each and every angular degree of it.
That's neither here nor there are your point is as valid -- where you're focused on will have a pixel density below "reality" for your fovea, however it presents lots of optimization potentials in software (e.g. no need for fine rendering outside of the focus) and in hardware. There are already devices which use tiny mirrors and optics to basically concentrate the pixels wherever you're looking and render a distorted view to match.
It will definitely not be indistinguishable from reality, but might be good enough to fool us after a short getting used to, similarly to how even 24fps is enough for continuous motion. Of course you will see 60fps as more “fluid”, but only in comparison. And afterwards the differences quickly plateau and not many people can see any difference between 120 and higher.
It is probably similar with this as well, the question is where apple stands on this scale.
I think it’ll be 5 generations before it’s a real product. I’d note the first iPhone was kinda garbage as was the first iPod. For the iPhone the App Store was empty and the apps that existed for years were pretty rudimentary. It couldn’t hold a phone call open. It was clunky and comparatively terrible hardware. Apple has the ability to invest and innovate on an idea for decades incorporating advances, fostering investment, and building an ecosystem.
The jaded take to my ears sounds a lot like the LLM / generative AI take - looking at the first real generation and claiming it’s an evolutionary dead end of hype monsterism. I feel sad that people that likely got into this field as a dreamer of what can be are stuck seeing what simply is.
Will this usher in rainbows end within the next 20 years? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m always happy to see there are still nerds that can dream of what can be, even if they’re often drowned out by the chorus of what today isn’t.
I do see your point and it is true that every product is going to be more mature, more complete for the later publication. But things of a first generation product like this is going to be a huge risk for a lot of people. But the things I want to talk to myself is probably if I can pick up one thing or maybe one or two things that this device can solve that probably doesn't have a good solution in the market, then just go for it. And if it is affordable, then go definitely do it. The upside of doing this is you cannot change your workflow in the early stages. So if you consider the time you put into that product in this new workflow, the things or the productivity you gain from this early experiment is going to be more productive. But gain, it's a risk.
Yeah I think first generations of apple products are for the curious, the rich, and the engineer seeking to build the next generation of apps on their new platform. I never look at them as “a good deal,” or a mature product. I think that’s foolish for any 1.0 of anything. Generally 3.0 is where maturity begins, and 5.0 is where incrementalism starts.
Wow a reference to Rainbow’s End! IIRC that novel was set around 2026. I don’t think we’ll have Vinge-style AR/VR contact lenses for many years to come. Certainly not by RE’s fictional timetable… :(
It’s ok. Error bands on SF are wide and shifted right. Mostly because jaded skeptics that cling to the constraints of the present kill the dreams until someone has the wherewithal to ride out the skeptics. Say what you will about Musk, apple, etc - they set absurd goals and fail half way, but that half way is the stuff of science fiction.
The fact this thing has an M2 makes me surprised Apple didn't try to sell it as a Mac.
I feel like at the price point, this device makes much more sense as the kind of thing that could replace a laptop/desktop than as a companion to it.
If you can check connect a magic keyboard/mouse to it, this thing could conceivably be a MBA and badass multi-monitor setup rolled into one. And to me, that's really the only way this form factor makes sense.
> It is a viable first entry as an AR computer. Does it need to be anything more than that?
It needs to do what HoloLens and Google Glass didn't.
Sell well enough to attract developers and improve manufacturing economies of scale.
For what it's worth, I think Apple has a chance here - there were smartphones before the iphone, but apple made the first one good enough to take off. Perhaps this will be the same?
I too have trouble thinking this is truly “cool” - it’s basically a self-contained Plato’s Cave. I feel like the “cool” of the next decade will be distinctly luddite-inflected, but who knows.
Yes, the presentation shows it used as a display for a Mac. Incidentally, you can also do this with the cheaper Quest Pro headset (or any headset in the Quest line, so $300-$1000 price range - but you don't get as many pixels). There are a few options for the software, VRDesktop (https://www.vrdesktop.net) being one.
> the presentation shows it used as a display for a Mac. Incidentally, you can also do this with the cheaper Quest Pro headset
You may be technically be able to do it on Quest, but it's mostly useless because text at non-massive sizes is completely illegible on current headsets.
The product may be good, but I am talking about its price, and how it sold like hot cakes anyway. Consumer goods don't sell as much without marketing, which influencers / celebs provide for free to Apple.
I'm predicting right now that it's going to have performance problems with that display. While they haven't released exact resolution numbers per eye, 23M would give it a slightly higher resolution than the HTC Vive Pro 2, a headset which requires a GPU. While mobile chips have really impressive CPU performance, I don't think they're nearly as competitive in the graphics space.
Knowing Apple, they're also not going to support anything else besides Apple Hardware so you won't be able to hook it up to an actual gaming rig like you can with the Meta Quest 2. While this isn't a big deal for a lot of people, Apple is taking a huge risk releasing a very premium product like this without supporting the largest established VR market (gamers).
> Apple is taking a huge risk releasing a very premium product like this without supporting the largest established VR market (gamers).
This reads like "Apple is taking a huge risk releasing a new smartphone without supporting the largest established market (BlackBerry device users).
The VR gaming market is microscopic compared to what Apple is likely aiming for here. They do not give a single flying fuck about this "established market", nor have they for any other market they've entered. The entire Apple ethos is to completely change the narrative for whatever product category they enter. They did this for phones, for bluetooth audio, for watches, and—whether or not they're ultimately successful—you can bet your ass this is their intent for wearable headsets.
What's the eventual end goal for these devices? I'm not sure yet, but I'm certain it will become clearer in the coming years. My expectation is they anticipate this will come to replace fixed displays for a huge number of office workers. Maybe not with this first revision, but by gen 3 that's my bet for the market of this device. If you assume it get lighter and comfortable, higher res, and better battery life over the next few iterations it's clearly something that could just be your work machine with a paired bluetooth keyboard.
VR headsets are very personal from a cleanliness perspective. I would never share one. There's a reason why the padding around the visor is removable and washable.
To chime in on the last part, I imagine that it could be beneficial for Apple’s offices alone; every employee is able to create their preferred workspace while using less physical space; only really needing a desk, keyboard, mouse, power & internet source and a seat
> The VR gaming market is microscopic compared to what Apple is likely aiming for here. They do not give a single flying fuck about this "established market", nor have they for any other market they've entered. The entire Apple ethos is to completely change the narrative for whatever product category they enter. They did this for phones, for bluetooth audio, for watches, and—whether or not they're ultimately successful—you can bet your ass this is their intent for wearable headsets.
Apple is also the company which released https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton back in the day… They turned out to be right at the end but still had to renter the market entirely from scratch after 10 years. So far Apple has been great in “perfecting” products that already exist by doing the right thing at the right time.
They weren’t the first or the second to release a smartphone, smart watch, tablet, BT earphones etc. all of those had established markets and somewhat clear use cases Apple “just” streamlined and turned them into something that normal people would actually want to use. It’s seems a bit to early to do that for VR yet. So in a certain way they are in somewhat uncharted territory.
Whether or not they're successful is irrelevant to the question of what their intent is. But I find it telling that your initial reaction is to reach for a device that failed thirty years ago as if it has any relationship to modern Apple.
They didn't "just" streamline the smartphone. They destroyed virtually overnight the existing dominant players in the smartphone market and within a few years essentially ended the existence of non-smartphones as a market category entirely. They didn't "just" streamline the watch. Again, within five years of entering the market they overtook (in units) shipments of the entire traditional watch industry. Both of these examples are significantly larger and more entrenched than the existing VR gaming market.
Of course not every product of theirs is successful in doing this. But without question, this is their aim a majority of the time.
Telling what? My point was that Newton was a brilliant idea yet the hardware wasn’t there yet and it didn’t have clear use cases. Both concerns apply for Vision Pro so at this point it’s still closer to the Newton than the iPad
> They didn't "just" streamline the smartphone
They did exactly that which is why it was so brilliant. You could do everything you could with an iPhone with other devices before it came out. It’s just that the experience was quite poor and all other devices were underdeveloped and had serious flaws in comparison (to be fair the first gen iPhone was a pretty lackluster device too).
You could browse the web, watch video content, send messages/emails, listens to music, play games, make video calls. Did Apple invent any of that? The iPhone was a just a device which could do it all with much nicer UX than anything on the market.
Let's contextualise this ... they have so much money in the bank there is literally no way to spend it. This could completely flunk and have zero impact on them. There's no risk here for Apple. Perhaps the question is why they aren't being more adventurous, or pushing this harder by subsidising the gen 1 device to get it off the ground.
Yeah it's clear their focus isn't games. There's no way the GPU can push those pixels with the graphical fidelity expected by gamers. But I'm sure it will have no problem pushing the raw pixels as long as you stick to mostly graphical compositing-level graphics like all the productivity/lifestyle stuff they were showing in the demo.
Performance wise, in the Platform State of the Union, they mentioned that they will use eye tracking to choose which parts of the "screen" to render at high resolution. That should help a bit.
Yeah, although the part about it just had someone use it to extend the native monitor.. I'd be curious how deep that integration went... more than a large virtual monitor, to have you able to spawn multiple/infinite windows of any of the mac apps on it, that'd be killer!
Early to tell. No point predicting who will say what, when people will say everything on the scale eventually.
People have different needs, and use cases and are affected by the way things become implemented. The details of usability, impossible to tell just now.
Probably one thing is easy to tell, is that chatting with a helmet on while moving around in the room is not going to work. : ) That's just stupid marketing crap.
I am looking forward its feasibility for external virtual screens of a Mac - or even a PC! -, with physical keyboard and mouse, that sounds attractive. But with patience, let's see how it works first in long run for the masses. And if it gets to a more realistic price tag sometime.
> if I heard correctly, the display on the front is 3d and gives different perspectives based upon the viewers
This effect probably relies on a lenticular lens overlaid on an OLED screen. This was similar to the method used by the Nintendo 3DS to create a stereoscopic image without glasses.
Taking a positive sign because now the consumers expectations are high and if they not deliver what they promised here then they're gonna have a huge trouble so as a consumer it would be nice if the consumer can provide some our expectations to say how to show our interest and kind of motivate them to build a better product.
They did share that it can be used as a display for your mac. It sounded like you're limited to 1 screen (i'm guessing because of bandwidth limitations; also guessing that upgraded macbooks may have the necessary hardware to stream more pixels)
> did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac?
Actually the did:
> bring the powerful capabilities of their Mac into Vision Pro wirelessly, creating an enormous, private, and portable 4K display with incredibly crisp text
They mentioned the device can detect when you are using your Mac and show the desktop as an app in your headset. So yes that will be possible as well as just using normal bluetooth mice and keyboards.
They explicitly said in the keynote, that you can bring up the screen of your Mac as a virtual display. So it looks like you can use this to work with your Mac.
> 23M for both eyes doesn't seem that far off from [...] 9.3M
It's almost 2.5x the pixels [edit: was ~~resolution~~ which is incorrect]. How is that "not far off"? It's more pixels per eye than the MQ2P has for both!
2.5x the pixels is more like 1.5x the resolution in terms of the smallest features that can be seen - remmber that displays are two-dimensional and in order to halve the width of the smallest discernable detail like say a line you need to double the pixels in both directions for a total of four times as many pixels. On the other hand, it is going to be close to 2.5x the rendering cost.
you can (over simplified, tech people yell at me or whatever, but) display your macbook screen inside Apple Vision as a screen/monitor/window, whatever it's called same way you would an app.
Hmmm, I don't get that. Apple builds personal computers. That has been there mission from day one. This is easily the most personal computer they have ever created. I don't see how it could be more Apple.
It would very obviously be useful for work if you can actually get high res, effectively unlimited monitor space. Maybe not for everyone, but people already spend $3500+ on monitor setups somewhat regularly (and employers definitely do this). Apple themselves sell a single monitor that costs $2300 when fully spec'd out (5k, but the point is that they know what people spend on monitors). I can't figure out why that wasn't the highlight of the demo, since that's just very clearly the easiest way to sell a $3500 device with this specific set of features.
The recording video of a kid's birthday was one of the most ridiculous thing's I've ever seen. I'd maybe record my kid with something like this every once in a while, but I certainly wouldn't be wearing ski goggles while he blows out candles.
This "unlimited monitor space" is a complete non-selling point for me.
Being a wealthy software engineer, my monitor space is not bottlenecked by my budget or desk space, but by my literal neck. Constantly rotating my head back and forth from one monitor to another is, quite literally, a pain.
For me the sweet spot is a single curved monitor right in front of me. If I need more "desktop space" I add another Space with Mission Control. And with keyboard shortcuts I can move between Spaces nearly as fast as I can rotate my head around.
So what am I going to do with a VR headset if I ever got one? Put the active app straight in front of me just like I do with my normal monitor. I'm not going to put my terminal at some odd angle 25° above my head and crane my head back when I want to run a command in it. I won't put the Weather app 90° to my right, obscuring what is currently a nice picture window looking out on my yard.
For me, VR needs that "killer app" to justify the high pricing and inconvenience of use, and I just don't see one yet. I don't expect one any time soon either; if VR was going to get a killer app, it would have shown up by now.
You sound like someone who has a very stable and spacious office. Have you considered that "having more desk space than there is space in the room" is the killer app for many (wealthy!) people who either 1. travel a lot, or 2. live in countries like Hong Kong where space is at a premium?
The travel point is a legitimate one. This is less a device to look at code, and more a device to look at people and presentations. Practically every Fortune 500 executive will have one of these because they'll be able to immerse themselves while jetting around the world - neither limited to a laptop screen, nor to a cartoon environment where people don't have legs, but in a truly effective war room that interleaves live video conversations, presentations, dashboards/visualizations, and their physical travel companions.
Or, at least, they'll want the ability to brag to their peers that they can do these things! It's the Apple playbook, and it will create a tremendous amount of envy. If it's at a price that's profitable, it can sustainably anchor their reputation even if it never goes mainstream.
F500 executives tend to have people who will show these presentations on big screens, in rooms they can just stroll into (and out of). And they don't want to strap anything to their face, particularly something that might (horror!) upset their carefully-placed hair.
Yeah that comment is desperately out of touch with reality. I presume the person never actually met/dealt with these folks, for them it would be humiliating to wear it and to be seen wearing it, Apple badge or not doesn't matter. For those levels, carrying >100k watches and having plastic ski goggles on your head? Forget it, anywhere where others can see them. Maybe this mindset changes in decade or two, but not earlier.
Generally on the topic, its rather underwhelming release of device that is searching for its market (while usual Apple echo chamber here on HN sees it as second coming of Jesus). No wonder they scrapped the release few times in the past, it must have been properly underwhelming when compared to competition. And pathetic 2h battery life at best? That makes it useless for any longer flight (I am sure you can plug powerbank and continue but it will look pretty bad and annoying as hell).
I am sure Apple will tune software to perfection, but I can't see it being enough, market is tiny considering the investment, well saturated and from what I heard rather shrinking. But I hope they will push the market in some good direction long term with their creative approach, so we all can benefit eventually.
My dude, that's what they have when they actually arrive at their destination. We're talking about what they do on the plane, or in their hotel room.
Or, perhaps easier to picture, when they're on vacation on a beach in Tahiti. They could be chauffered 20 minutes back into town to a "secure workspace" in order to have a five-minute call where someone back at their HQ [where it's the middle of the night] briefs them on a screen... or they could go into their cabana, strap this thing on, have the five minute meeting right then and there, and then go back to sipping Mai-Tais.
Executives already make this choice, this way, right now. This choice is the reason that the iPad Pro has traditionally had better "stuff" for teleconferencing than the MBP does: the iPad Pro is — or was — the thing Apple most clearly marketed to executives. Right now, executives take out the iPad Pro to take that quick cabana video-call.
For this use-case, the Apple Vision is just a one-up to everything the iPad Pro is already allowing them to do. It's more secure (nobody can watch the presentation over their shoulder); it gives the presenter back at HQ more visual field to work with to make their point; it's more discreet in how it presents them in video calls (i.e. if they're calling in while laying naked on a massage table, that won't be reflected in their 3D-model recreation); etc.
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More realistically, though, ignore the F500 CEOs. I have a feeling that I know exactly who this was built for — and it's not them. Apple engineers aren't any more in love with the idea of serving the needs of executives than anyone else is. They throw them a bone now and then, but they have other things in mind when building the core of each product.
Now picture this: you're an Apple hardware engineer who wants to work remotely, but you were forced to work-from-office due to not just the secrecy around the Apple Vision project you're on, but also the collaboration benefits. (It's currently basically impossible to review 3D models for "feel" on a laptop; you need either a big bulky 3D TV, or some other company's big bulky HMD setup. Neither of which travels well.) But your dream? Your dream is that you can figure out a way to do everything you're currently "doing better" by being in the office — reviewing and collaborating on 3D models of the new hardware, for one important thing — while on vacation in Thailand, sitting in your rented condo, on the couch. No need to also be paying for time at a coworking space (or to even be in a town large enough to have those); the HMD is the coworking space. As long as you have wi-fi, you can do everything the engineers back at Apple HQ can do.
This sounds a lot like the use cases stated for the office metaverse thing FB was pushing that failed to materialize.
The last thing executives want is a "more immersive" PowerPoint or Zoom call. It's either Zoom or in-person with all the trimmings, e.g. nice dinner, round of golf.
I mean if every single one of them buy only one of them, that's only $175 million dollars right there. Totally not worth it for Apple to bother even trying
Apple's first year sales of their watch was a failure with 10 million units sold instead of the projected 40 million. Apple now has 34% of global market share. Now remember Steve Ballmer laughing at it.
It is not the 1st generation of most of their products, but the follow ons.
I'll wait to see what the first months of hands on reviews and perhaps a personal demo. How heavy is that headset and how long is the battery life (I thought I saw 2 hours)?
Good example. When the 1st gen watch came out, I knew I wanted to have one, but I also kind of knew I wouldn't want the first generation. Lucky me, because I had quite some GAS at that time, the 1st and 2nd gen watches were never really easily available where I am located. Then, I conveniently forgot about the desire to own one. For years. I now have my first watch, 7th gen, and love it. Well, it is more like with a cute pet. You love it, and you learn to love its quirks. So even after 7 generations, the software is still not flawless, nor are the sensors. This is the first thing I would be worried about, if I had any inclination to use a headset: How distracting are the bugs they definitely will have? Since I totally stopped to install anything below iOS #.2 I wonder how "fun" it is going to be to use this product once it comes out :-) I have no trust left in their QA, shipment date is more important then user experience... :-(
Apple only truly started competing against Garmin recently. Improved running metrics, low power mode, better battery (Ultra) etc only showed up recently while Garmin and others had them for years. Even GPS wasn't on the first iteration.
I am not looking for a fitness tracker, so Garmin is not even close to competition for an Apple Watch to me. Why? I use VoiceOver. Garmin does not have any speech output at all, so they can not even be compared for me. I do a lot of FaceTime Audio from my watch, another use case where Garmin doesn't even come to mind. Dont forget that products these days have a pretty diverse feature set. Assuming everyone is looking for a fitness tracker just because this is the new hype is rather, erm, unimaginative.
They are not (yet), but target group doesn't care about raw stats, or price/performance ratios. But I love them, because they will push Garmin making even better watches, so everybody wins.
Not sure how you can say they are not competing. Anecdata but I considered a garmin vs apple watch. Biggest driver was cellular to call either my wife or 911 when kitesurfing alone (yeah I know I just shouldn’t do it) so chose the apple watch 3 when it came out. Now have an ultra and that’s really starting to catch up with some of the other features I wanted. Seen several people in the kiting community pick apple vs garmin and vice versa for a myriad of reasons.
The Apple Watch has truly succeeded in the smartwatch space, but is the smartwatch space even worth a damn yet? Or is it perpetually waiting for the opportunity to monetize users’ health data and other tracked biometrics, for it to really be profitable.
Maybe this “space” thinking is wrong. Don’t worry about the “smart watch space”. Worry about making a product that will make a bucket load of cash. Does it matter if the sector is worth much overall when you rake it a butt load of money for yourself?
By that measure, the iPhone is a total failure, together with the smartphone market it created. It pales to insignificance compared to the market for food! And don't even think of looking at the market for shelter, then it's hardly even a joke, why bother. Or maybe that that's not really a meaningful angle of looking at markets?
What exactly is the "all that money" you talk about anyways? If Apple's watch division was a separate entity on the stock market and they had inexplicably high valuation I might enthusiastically agree with you, but it's not.
Neither butts nor boats are all that large though. Even if Apple has made both boat loads and butt loads of money, we would need to be talking about gigabutts or kiloboats to get anywhere meaningful.
I'll agree that smartwatches seem niche and not particularly useful. (I've never had a smart watch other than Fitbits, but I really don't see much value beyond tracking steps and heart rate. The notifications on my wrist aren't useful; maybe controlling music would be, but I'd rather just do that on my headphones.)
That said, it's probably a lot easier to switch to Android if you have an iPhone vs. if you have an iPhone + Airpods + Smartwatch + iPad + Apple laptop. The smartwatch as one additional small tether could make it worthwhile for Apple all by itself.
All of these depend on the individual. I've never had a wrist watch since I finished college(used for timekeeping in exams). Mostly because never needed it. Mobile phones were out by then, and you had a watch and much more in it. Its just that use case for me died out. I'm also into swimming, and other exercises(kettlebell), but the fitness features don't seem to be attractive to me either.
I didn't find the steps tracker etc wearables attractive either. It felt most people wearing them were interested in measuring and reporting things, than doing the actual workout.
But I just looked up now and the Wikipedia page for Apple watch says they sold more than 100 million units so far. And now have a fairly large portion of market for watches world wide.
Different people have different use cases, likes and dislikes. And there's also the additional public mood factor which is very hard to measure and understand. Based on that this product could be a huge success.
Agree 100%, most folks I know have Apple watches to appear sportive, because its such a cool crowd to be in currently. The guys actually doing some proper trainings almost never have them, including me. There is also category of pros/semi-pros/hardcore amateurs where it actually makes sense to use some form of it(but I never saw pros training ie in Chamonix to wear Apple brand for that, and those folks all have chest straps), by measuring any small deviations, progress etc.
For me, it actually distracts me from workouts and activities. I used my wife's Fenix 6 pro twice for running to get the idea how long my usual trail run in the forest is, and how much elevation I gain/lose. What I estimated from my feeling was anyway 95% correct (although I don't think watches measure small variations of natural terrain very precisely). But it was distracting, looking at heartbeat you subconsciously want to push/keep yourself in some perf bracket (ie just below or above anaerobic threshold for me). Vibration after each km (probably can be turned off though).
After that measurement, running again without them was so liberating, and had this nice feeling of extra freedom in the nature, just me and the trail. I feel very well when I cross anaerobic threshold, perform above it or being close to it, don't need gizmo to tell me so.
Of course all of this depends on an individual. But apple is a for profit company that spent a tremendous amount of money on the R&D of this device, and I don’t see a good return of investment here, as not many people need it, let alone can afford it.
I don’t think F500 execs spend as much time looking at monitors and slides as you may think. Also people travel to see them, so face to face is unlikely to be a benefit to them.
Also, it’s a huge expensive gadget in a time of austerity. If your 100+ execs get one of these, it won’t look good to shareholders IMO.
They will sell much, much more than this. All the wannabe startups and bigwig CEOs will line up to buy this, even if they can't afford it. All that matters is the image.
But I'm genuinely curious, why would the bigwig CEOs buy this if they didn't buy the Quest 2 or other previous headsets that could do the same things? You could do the cinema and virtual desktop and zoom calls with the Quest. Why is the market much larger for the Apple headset compared to the others? Except for the initial hype of "I need this new apple device" I mean.
The other headset manufacturers have been searching for the killer apps for years, both in gaming and pro usages, both with AR and VR. I didn't see anything in the Apple presentation that was new. It seemed contrived, like this woman who accidentally had the big headset on her head while she was packing a bag and therefore could take a call that hovers in the air. I just don't buy that (and neither does the various YT influencers I've seen reviewing the Vision Pro).
what? I have a occulus quest. it definitly does NOT have 4k per eye. I've actually tried to use it for a multi monitor VR and the resolution was too slow and latency too high to be workable.
> why would the bigwig CEOs buy this
Because the Apple device looks like a desirable item instead of just a functional toy. It's the wealth signalling and image that count.
Because Quest 2 doesn’t “do the same things.” You’re acting like Vision Pro is just another version of Quest. It’s not even in the same time zone. It’s like saying “why does anyone need iPhone when a Palm Pilot is perfectly fine?”
What are the things Vision Pro can do that Quest cannot though? Genuinely curious as I don't know much about the Quest - and others above are saying it already supports floating virtual desktops/windows and video conferencing.
Quest doesn't broadcast your eyeballs onto a front screen obviously, but is that the only major feature difference? If not what other things are new capabilities?
> What are the things Vision Pro can do that Quest cannot though?
Quest's resolution and optics are not good enough to make text legible unless it's blown up to billboard(Ok maybe just poster) sizes. The iGlasses may be the first headset with adequate resolution to make text comfortable to read, making it possible to use for work.
And all the diehard mac fans, YouTubers and such that will be talking it up for the next 2-3 years, building up the hype train, until Apple drops a $400 version for consumers.
Like the OP, I found I was more efficient/comfortable on a single screen compared to the 3 or 4 I have had at one point. Now in my 40s, I find myself more comfortable on a 13" laptop compared to a 34" screen. It's just easier to concentrate.
IMHO ideal computer use is to move things in front of your eyes instead of moving your eyes/head. Your area of focus is quite small with almost no value to filling your peripheral vision.
39 here, but I really cannot imagine ever leaving my triple-screen [tie-fighter](https://i.imgur.com/DkqkER7.jpeg)-style setup, unless it was for an unlimited number of unlimited-resolution screens.
If I could have one screen per application and surround myself in a galaxy of windows, I definitely would.
Would I look at them all on a regular basis? Of course not. 80% of them I would only look at once every hour or so.
I'm a fan of two monitors, my main horizontal (though I got one with much more vertical resolution than most 4:3), and one in portrait somewhat to the side.
So many big wins. I can do a zoom screen share on my main window and have notes, private stuff on the side window, I can read documents that often are vertically formatted on the side window.
I do a fair bit of comparing type work where I need a reference index doc on the side, then I got through the individual docs for tieback on the main.
It's game changing to have multiple monitors and particularly have one portrait and one vertical.
I hear you, I'm 38. I've been using a 14-in screen for the last ten years. Clients will ask why I don't use more monitors, but I can really only focus on one thing at a time, and my field of vision isn't that big. If I need to look at another screen, I just three-finger swipe.
Maybe your eyes are better than mine, but I have a real hard time working on a 13" screen. Trying to do Excel work on a tiny screen drives me up the wall. Either I'm sitting too close squinting at tiny text, or have to enlarge everything and fall into scrolling hell. With my 27" monitor I can enlarge the text and still have lots of screen real estate to do my work.
Well, it works for me right now... but that will surely change. I'll just make smaller and smaller functions until I need to get a bigger screen, haha.
Random insert point, but all this 1:1 comparison to the existing extra monitor concept of operation is emblematic of resistance to XR in general. I see it as trying to shoe horn today's use cases as a template for something that is literally a phase change of capability -- much like how the first automobiles were framed by the lense of horseless carriages.
3D in 3D is different. And when you put 2D screens into a 3D digital space viewed as embodied in 3D XR you still get affordances you didn't have before. Sure you need to reimagine and rewrite from the ground up these long established and stable 2D apps, but there are places where real gains are there to harvest.
Exactly. Seeing people talk about "unlimited number of monitors in VR" is kind of frustrating. Monitors are containers for apps, portals into your digital desktop. You don't need monitors in VR. The monitor is a skeuomorphism! Just put app windows wherever, unbounded by monitors.
The problem is wide monitors. Nobody need really wider monitors for work. Mostly you want to have more vertical space.On work I have a 32" monitor, at home even a 43" monitor. The cool thing is the vertical space. 16:9 is bs for work. A large 4:3 would be much better choice today.
That's so different from here. I'm 35 and when we finally got a large size TV last year I never went back to the small screen. Well except when I have to.
My wife and I literally live out of 4 suitcases. We “nomad” 7 months out of the year and when we are “home” for five months, we still can’t accumulate anything that we can’t take with us since our condotel [1] unit that we own gets rented out when we aren’t there.
But I still have plenty of screen real estate that I can set out at my desk at home or in a hotel room between my 16 inch MacBook, my 17 inch USB powered/USB video portable external display and my iPad as a third monitor.
The resolution might be sufficient, but all of my attempts across quite a few VR headsets has been sad when it comes to text. The crispness you really need is possible on static glasses (i.e. Nreal Air), but all of the anti aliasing on projected textures has often made long term work in VR hard for me.
But the displays are pretty high res. Guess we'll see.
Crisp text is also Apple's bread-and-butter. They've been typography nerds since the 80s, I've long assumed that their headset is this late to the game because they needed display technology to catch up to text rendering in VR
Yeah, getting a more flexible work environment seems like the only non-gimmicky selling point here. But there are much cheaper and lighter devices for that. Like NReal Air. (Haven't tried it but reviewers seem fairly happy)
I feel like an 13" MacBook Air is the ultimate in flexible work environments. Incredibly light, powerful, goes anywhere, long lasting battery. Perhaps I'm just a philistine and haven't yet gotten a taste of the new world yet...
I make it a point to do all my work on a laptop like this. That way, I’m 100% productive anywhere like in a hotel for example. I never miss giant external monitors because I don’t have any.
I have a 13" Macbook Air, try to travel as much as possible. At home I have a single 27" 4k screen. Both at home and remote I work with just one screen so I'm able to keep my workflow exactly the same. Honestly, I think my productivity on my 13" does drop somewhat, but nowhere near the 50%. I would say I lose 10% of my productivity. For me that 10% is totally worth it to be able to work remotely and travel more.
Hongkonger here. Lot of people can spend USD$3500 for a watch, gadget, or computer, AND still live in 200-300sqft apartments in HK. Doesn't make them "wealthy".
I don't know any world where spending that much in gadgets isn't for the wealthy. Yes, there are richer people out there. That is still a lot of money.
It's really not. Growing up, I had plenty of classmates who spent more than that on superficial car modifications while working a minimum wage job and whose family was on food stamps.
Having a 3k+ credit limit isn't that common, is it? And I don't know any consideration of the topic that doesn't treat credit cards as a problem/bad idea. Especially at that level.
Maybe cultural difference issue, but your logic sounds odd to me.
Surely with $2000/mo income (which you describe as average for HK) one can afford an occassional one-time purchase of $3500, after some saving (or, although I wouldn't personally do this, with a loan).
Or even more than that: my country has a similar average income, and average people spend 20K on a car without a second thought. And no, it's not that the car is needed as opposed to the headset, because the need of going from A to B can be satisfied by a 5K second-hand car, no one actually needs a new one.
How about everyone taking a long flight or just staying at a hotel etc?
That IMO is where VR glasses are actually a pretty good fit. Carry lightweight laptop through the airport and still get to use a 32” monitor on the go. Granted the current hardware not exactly ideal, but it’s close enough to be a reasonable option.
Don't underestimate the unwieldy shape of these headsets, they aren't very bag-friendly. The Apple design seems to do some compromises to decrease bulk but it still won't nicely slip between other stuff. Portable displays on the other hand, they are wildly underappreciated because so many still haven't the slightest idea that product category exists. They offer a very favorable bulk/utility trade-off and allow day on day scaling between the extremes of the smallest laptop you can find and what could be considered a mobile workstation.
These devices are currently bulky, but you can easily but them and a a bunch of other stuff into an under seat airline bag. The weight and volume is annoying but not a dealbreaker.
Also, I think we can all agree the form factor is likely to improve over time. Portable displays meanwhile have inherent limitations in use ie an airline seat.
Not only swiveling your head around, but doing it with a couple pounds strapped to it. People's necks are going to be swole.
That being said, I've always wanted a wearable monitor so I can lay in bed (or stand, or lay in my hammock, or just have some variety). The chair is bad, and I've spent way too many years (literally) in it. I need options.
I'm a terminal nerd, though, so I don't care too much about all the 4k etc.
The ops folks at a company I used to work for tried a VR workspace to put all of their graphs and terminals in a big sphere around you. With 2k screens, the text got too pixelated to read very quickly. 4k should improve that somewhat, but I'm not sure it will be enough for a great text-based workflow.
Even at 4k per eye, if you imagine a screen at a typical viewing distance, the "dot pitch" of the display is going to just be massively less than a good quality high end monitor sitting on your desk.
We've been waiting like 10 years for that to change since Oculus Dev kit days, and its still not solved today. Advances in pixel density in this space have been incredibly slow.
I think it could be a very long time before a headset can simulate a really great display well enough for me, but other's mileage may vary.
Even with "foveated rendering" the peak dotpitch (the highest pixel density it can acomplish) simply isn't going to be good enough for me - it can't be any sharper than the dot pitch of the panel in front of the eye.
A 5k iMac has 14.7 million pixels - the pixel density needed to do this as well as a "real" display in VR could be pretty massive.
I agree completely. A few months ago, I purchased a Meta Quest Pro. Relative to the Quest 2, the Pro’s resolution blew me away. And it’s still not even close to usable for real work on virtual monitors.
It's not 4K, though. They're not giving a lot of information, but "23M pixels" for two eyes is 11.5M pixels per eye. 4K is 8.2M, so this is 40% more pixels than 4K.
11.5m per eye is still far short of what would be needed to approximate pixel pitch of many of Apple's "retina displays" at typical desk viewing distance display well, FWIW. This a really hard problem with tech we have today.
Whether its 8m or 11m or even 15m pixels isn't the point with regards to using it to replace desktop monitors - the point is the necessary density to compete with excellent real life physical displays is really high.
Your VR monitor only ever really uses a subset of the total pixel count - it still has to spend many of those pixels to render the room around the display(s) too.
The display system boasts an impressive resolution, with 23 million pixels spread across two panels, surpassing the pixel count of a typical 4K TV for each eye.
Thats still enormously less than the dot pitch of a good 4/5/6k monitor in meatspace/real life today - remember, a virtual monitor only ever uses a subset of the total pixels in a VR headset, which is why the pixel count has to be sky high to compete with real life.
Yeah, with VR headsets you generally only get to count the pixels for each eye since parallax vision means that you only have that many degrees of freedom to produce a color.
Was this before the advent of VR headsets that do eye-tracking + foveated rendering? With the tech as it is these days, you're not looking at a rectangle of equally spaced little dots; almost all of "the pixels" are right in front of your pupil, showing you in detail whatever your pupil is trying to focus on.
For what it's worth, this was with an HTC Vive of some kind. However, the screen pixel densities don't change when you do foveated rendering, it's more of a performance trick - the GPU focuses most of its compute power on what you are looking at.
> the screen pixel densities don't change when you do foveated rendering
That's the limited kind of foveated rendering, yes.
Apple has a system of lenses on a gimbal inside this thing. Which is precisely what's required to do the (so-far hypothetical) "full" kind of foveated rendering — where you bend the light coming in from a regular-grid-of-pixels panel, to "pull in" 90% of the panel's pixels to where your pupil is, while "stretching out" the last 10% to fill your peripheral vision. Which gives you, perceptually, an irregular grid of pixels, where pixels close to the edge of the screen are very large, while pixels in the center of the screen are very small.
The downside to this technique is that, given the mechanical nature of "lenses on a gimbal", they would take a moment to respond to eye-tracking, so you wouldn't be able to immediately resolve full textual detail right away after quickly moving your eyes. Everything would first re-paint just with "virtual" foveated rendering from the eye-tracking update; then gradually re-paint a few hundred more frames in the time it takes the gimbal to get the center of the lens to where your pupil now is.
(Alternately, given that they mentioned that the pixels here are 1/8th the size in each dimension, they could have actually created a panel that is dense with tiny pixels in the center, and then sparse with fatter pixels around the edges. They did mention that the panel is "custom Apple silicon", after all. If they did this, they wouldn't have to move the lens, nor even the panel; they could just use a DLP mirror-array to re-orient the light of the chip to your eye, where the system-of-lenses exists to correct for the spherical aberration due to the reflected rays not coming in parallel to one-another.)
I'm not sure whether Apple have actually done this, mind you. I'm guessing they actually haven't, since if they had, they'd totally have bragged about it.
I'm guessing from this comment that you may not know much about optics or building hardware. Both of the solutions you have proposed here are incredibly bulky today, and would not fit in that form-factor.
> The custom micro‑OLED display system features 23 million pixels, delivering stunning resolution and colors. And a specially designed three‑element lens creates the feeling of a display that’s everywhere you look
They have advertised that there are 3 lenses per eye, which is about enough to magnify the screens and make them have a circular profile while correcting most distortion. That's it - no mention of gimbals or anything optically crazy.
I'm thinking there is confusion with the system used to set the PD (distance between eyes). Of course there are not many details, but it does look like there's a motorized system to move the optics and screens outwards to match the PD of the user.
I think the key to that would be a design of interface which is a step beyond "a sphere of virtual monitors" where zooming was not just magnifying but rather a nuanced and responsive reallocation of both visual space and contextual information relevant to the specific ___domain.
Therein lies another problem with workspace VR, you still need a keyboard if you are doing any meaningful typing. So you still need a desk, or some kind of ergonomic platform for a lounge chair.
It is a great alternative for gaming in that sense however. Being able to game and be standing up and moving is great.
With screens detached from the input device, it should be perfectly possible to make a good keyboard + trackpad combo for use on your lap, on just about any chair/bed/beach.
With such a big terminal screen you might even recreate what an 720p screen can, with 256 colors!
I never really understood why we like to hack character arrays into pixels, when.. we can just manipulate the pixels themselves? I mean, I like and actually prefer the cli interface of many programs, but can’t ever imagine replacing a good IDE with vim.
I'm not mad about your IDE or anything. I've used some that I could like okay, with vim keystrokes. But vim lives where I live, in the terminal. I can't run your IDE in my environment. I can run vim anywhere.
I use a 32" QHD for a more limited but similar effect. 32" 4k and the text was too small and thus the extra resolution just complicated everything but 32"QHD and a tiling window manager is awesome, I don't use a second monitor anymore after years of doing so.
I am probably an edge case as I use a tiling WM on linux, there is little UI to be scaled. The only metric I am worried about is max text at my personally readable size. I could change the font sizes on a 4k monitor, but websites are the only non-text UI I interact with and they don't care about your OS settings. Zooming is hit or miss on if it breaks the layout or not. I don't doubt MacOS would be better in general, but for me a QHD 32" is plug and play, most websites work well and no settings faff or zooming.
it doesn't work great, elements are comically too big on 32" 4K or just too big on 27" 4K, you need to scale it to 1080p but then it's too small. MacOS is made for 5K 27" monitors for high DPI (Retina) resolutions or non-high DPI 27" 2560x1440. The only high-DPI 4K screen that works great OOB is the 21.5" 4K Apple display.
32" 4K feels like the sweet spot now, 32" 8K would be a good future upgrade, but we need DisplayPort and HDMI to catch up. 120hz is very nice for desktop usage, as is HDR. Now that my main rig is a 55" 4K 120hz HDR OLED, most other monitors look bad. 14" is still the best size MBP, as sitting closer with the high PPI screen works well to have text take up about the same amount of my FOV. 27" feels small, esp at 16:9. 16:10 was awesome and I'm glad that it and 4:3 are coming back. 16:9 was made for watching movies. 16:10 allows 16:19 content to fit with a menu bar + browser top bar + bottom bar, or just gives extra vertical space. Those ultrawide monitors, especially the curved ones, are just gimmicky. Just give me a gigantic 16:10 or 4:3 rectangle, tyvm.
> the sweet spot is a single curved monitor right in front of me
So you can have that. Exactly the right monitor size, curvature, ___location - in every room of the house, on the train, at work, in the cafe etc. People with ergonomic challenges are, I would have thought, a perfect market for this.
Yup, this is the reason why I bought an Oculus Quest 2, to use Immersed[0]. The idea to have a huge multi-monitor setup that I could use on the go - carrying it in my backpack - felt really appealing[1].
With the pandemic I didn't really end up needing it that much, plus I had some lag issues which I never bothered solving (by buying a separate wifi dongle) so my usage never really took off, but the idea was solid.
The Oculus headset is a bit heavy/sweaty. Not a dealbreaker per se but with something lighter I could definitely see myself giving it another go.
[1] I work on a single 13" laptop, for portability. I like the setup but I do see the benefit of having large screens. It's just that I can't really move them from one place to another so I'd feel crippled on the road.
Yes I use Immersed regularly, commonly for a couple of hours each day with a Quest Pro. It's pretty good and quite usable. Definitely resolution is one area where improvement would be huge. It's ok currently but I need the monitors very large which creates its own issues (you get to the point where you need to turn your head to read across the screen and realise it's an ergonomic nightmare).
I enjoy it for an hour or two as a nice change, but I couldn't work there all day.
yeah, the friction is key. This is a step forward, I'm sure it'll be amazing that you can just literally put it on and look at your laptop and it pops up as a big screen in front of you. But I think the strap is a barrier. Like you say, glasses form factor is so much better than "strapping" it onto your face. It's rumored Apple has that in its sights for a future model.
No one will create the killer app because they won't have enough people to buy it. They aren't going to sell 100 million of these things. They will sell 1 million to prosumers. But you can't make a killer high-end game on a completely new system with completely new features with such a limited market, they would need to sell it everyone to make money. That's the real problem with AR/VR. You need critical mass in the number of users to justify people building mass-market appeal games and apps. The goggles need to not have a cord, be 1/3 as heavy, and 1/4 the price, and then we will get mass adoption. My gut says we are 3 generations away. But it will happen.
Yes, they are going to sell 1 million. In this generation. Next generation will have non pro model. You can sell ten millions of that. It is not going to kill phones, but it will absolutely slaughter laptops. This generation is basically just devkits.
Yep. This is huge for those who travel. It’s huge for those who do cad work. And the power available in such a small form factor really opens the door to previously impossible tasks
It seems awfully convenient that the laptop folds down nice and flat. It takes up very little space. Headset like this is still kinda big to carry around with you... Maybe just a preference on my part, but I quit carrying my big can headphones around with me because they were too bulky. I'd never carry around a headset like this. Plus you look like a dick wearing one.
You do. I’m 100% sure that flickering your fingers in the air simple (besides looking like an absolute moron) doesn’t have enough information to accurately type. Also, your arms will fatigue immediately.
If you can position things in AR, you can put keyboard keys down on wood grain and the device can tell where your fingers land.
If you can escape the skeuomorphic trap, many things are possible. A mechanical keyboard is certainly not the universally optimal means of character entry.
Maybe not in this rev, probably not at launch based on the video, but keyboards as we know them are due for an overhaul.
> A mechanical keyboard is certainly not the universally optimal means of character entry.
Funnily enough, I think that this is basically the ultimate limit of touch based systems — humans rely very much on touch, and touch screens’ smooth surface removes every physical hint from the system. Just remember back to how we could compose a whole message blindly in our pockets with feature phones, yet I can’t write a sentence correctly nowadays without constantly looking at the screen.
Now you would even take away that? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the keyboard layout or anything is the optimum, but it is sure as hell closer to it than randomly hitting the table. The mechanical part is funnily being the key part.
It does seem to me there are strong parallels with the iPhone/Blackberry keyboard conversation. Some people will hang on bitterly until the end.
I can thumb touch-type on a cap touch screen with the help of autocorrect. With continued improvement of predictive text and new input methods I think all kinds of things are possible.
Maybe with another technology iteration of haptics you would get positional feedback?
> If you can position things in AR, you can put keyboard keys down on wood grain and the device can tell where your fingers land.
You'll get carpal tunnel syndrome faster than the battery drains if you're actually doing that. One of the main points of keyboards is actually the fact that they absorb some of the shock of typing.
It's actually extremely plausible that the keyboard is the best possible text input method - at least until we find a way to read brain signals non-invasively and decode those into text directly.
Eventually, maybe. In the keynote, there was a vague outline of a virtual keyboard, but (unless I missed it) we never saw that virtual keyboard in use. Instead, the demo pivoted to using a paired Magic Keyboard.
Just lay down in bed and put physical keyboard with touchpad on your legs. Many times I work from airbnb or hotel that doesn't have proper chairs or workdesk or from coworking hotdesk when travelling.
If we agree then why are we arguing? I said it would take 3 more generations to hit 100 million, and I said it would happen. My point is that it won’t attract big time developers until then because it will be not be economical for them. But I think apple can grind it out, make it just good enough to attract just enough value to grow just enough hit big numbers in 5-7ish years.
It will attract "big time developers" in version 1 because being first to market on a new platform is an enormous advantage, even if that platform won't have significant market penetration for years.
Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, etc. were not particularly revolutionary apps and would never top the charts if invented today. But because they were some of the first games on iOS they became multi-billion dollar franchises.
It will "attract" a few. As in, Apple will pay people to develop apps for it, and will basically buy teams to develop apps. I have heard of these deals happening. But you won't be able to make a bunch of money off it for many years, so how much developer talent can they actually attract? The iphone was waaaay different. There was instant utility for the phone that attracted millions, it wasn't insanely expensive like the vision pro, and the apps you could develop were simple and useful. Yes, there will be a bunch of AR apps from iOS you can use instantly on vision pro (I assume, not actually sure), but to develop a full featured app that takes advantage of the interface will be quite hard, and thus quite expensive.
No one bought an iPhone to play Fruit Ninja, though. They bought it to get access to the internet on the go. Essentially the browser was the killer for a phone.
To be honest, I see much more financial constraints ahead in 5-7 years for the average (even Wester-only) people to think about spending anywhere close to this amount on a luxury device and with the amount of hardware needed even with generational advancement I don’t see it changing.
Apple isn’t the only one with an XR device. Devs can still hone their ideas now that they have UX direction. The Apple AR SDK has been out for years now too.
The first iPhone also only had 1.4 million in sales. I’m not even sure the App Store was even out until the 2nd Gen.
- you’re looking at some kind of physical thing in the real world you’re “working on” (whatever it may be)
- your goggles are pointing out important aspects, telling you what to do next, etc etc.
I always thought something like this for auto repair would be really cool. Of course we need the software to catch up in this regard, since it would have to recognize and overlay fairly complex visual spaces.
Sports referees could also benefit, instant replay. Once there’s a cheaper, lighter versions you’ll see mums and dads running on the soccer/hockey fields with these.
I just think you are thinking of the monitors in an overly literal way.
Imagine a calendar on the wall, but with your meetings and everything dynamic instead of just a static calendar. And it adjusts to show your next meeting extra large as it approaches. No you see useful information in your periphery.
Or perhaps you have application monitoring dashboards on another wall. You don't look at them all the time, but a dedicated space wouldn't be a bad thing.
My windows phone could already do everything an iPhone could do at launch, and in 3g no-less. But there is something to be said about putting it all together well and having it all just work seamlessly.
This is first-and-foremost a tool for doing work. They show people using it in their living rooms, but I get the impression that the key use-case is to use it in a home office (where you'd already be intentionally isolating yourself to get work done) — or in some other room (e.g. a bedroom) to turn it into a home-office-alike space.
Fair enough though when I am home, I have half an ear for what's going on in the house whether its stuff outside; someone at the door; the cat doing cat things; the kid running around etc.
It's rare even at work that I would want to be so fully immersed. Kind of makes me feel vulnerable, not you?
Real estate costs more than this head set. I am a VR skeptic. But if someone truly solves the problems, a virtual desktop has obvious advantages even for the rich. I could literally clear out one room and shrink the remaining desk to fit a closed laptop, keyboard and coffee mug. And now my entire workstation is portable and exactly the way I want it where ever I go.
My immediate thought was working on a flight. This guy is like he's got some big curved monitor on his flight. No he doesn't, he's hunched over a laptop screen.
If I could work on a flight on a big screen I'd be thrilled. I really don't like the ergonomics of hunching over a laptop screen.
When I worked at Intel in 1997 we bought one of the first 42" plasma screens on the market to put in our game lab - and I put it on my desk and attempted to play Quake and Descent and other games on it and I couldnt handle it so close to me - it had ghosting and bad lag and poor angular visibility and it was $14,999.00
We turned it into a wall piece that rarely got used.
in 2016 I got a monitor for one of my OPs guys that was 4k and was ~34" and that was still to big to sit in front of - and my OPs guy gave it to me, I hated it and gave it to an eng, and he loved it.
Big screens are for certain people. I have a 70" screen in the living room that I never turn on, my brother uses it exclusively, and I use a 15" laptop as my personal screen.
But its very handy if you're a wealthy nomadic software engineer. I don't want to take monitors with me and I'd like to travel more while working. I'd like to do that with my 12" Macbook air.
Also being a wealthy software engineer, there still isn’t a better multi-monitor mobile solution than this at any price point. If you’re only working from home sure, but I like to cowork with friends in a variety of places.
I use 4 monitors arranged on arms to form a shape roughly like a curved 15360x 4320 display.
I also don't see how VR will come close to replicating the productivity I have in my home office, on any foreseeable timeline.
But when I go somewhere and just use my laptop screen, it's almost laughable how inefficient and annoying it is. The screen is tiny, I am constantly switching apps / virtual desktops, and there is no way to even see my debugger, documentation, and my app running at the same time.
To me, that's what I want VR to fix. The portable workspace. For us spoiled rich engineers sitting in our spacious home offices, the constraints that make VR (theoretically) appealing just don't exist.
(I'm skeptical there are enough people who want this badly enough to pay $3500 for it to fund an entire product category, though... I expected them to come out talking about fitness and health.)
The first question that pops into my head is why you’d work on a curved monitor (of which there still doesn’t exist a high resolution model) as a software engineer. Do you find the workspace on a single curved display sufficient?
My primary concern with the Apple headset is the relatively low resolution of 23M pixels. Our eyes can perceive so much more detail, and I’m afraid the low resolution will reintroduce pixellation as is commonly seen on low end and curved displays.
If it is 23M pixels per lens, that is still more resolution than a smartphone's screen. Each lens is smaller than a smartphone's screen and the resolution is per eye. I wouldn't be surprised if this actually exceeds the eye's ability to perceive pixels.
The difference between a monitor and the lens of a headset. If you look at a 4K monitor up closely within a region of the screen of two inches in radius, you are not seeing 4K in that region. 4K of pixel applies to the whole monitor not to the eye's field of view as it does to a headset.
If you were using the headset as a monitor, you could zoom in on text and the text can effectively have infinite resolution as it scales up into view.
> of which there still doesn’t exist a high resolution model
QHD 32" works great, it's not quite two monitors but if you are using a tiling window manager or spend all your time in editor windows it's perfectly practical.
But the pixels are visible, and text on those displays is so much less legible than on a 200+ ppi display. I simply don’t get how some developers find those monitors to be acceptable and at the same time disregard the Apple headset. Perhaps it’s just lack of vision.
Maybe you have really great eyesight, or sit a bit too close? I can't see them. I have used retina displays as well and while it's clear there is a difference, it's not a practical difference for me. Retina feels nicer but it's the same amount of UI and text on a screen.
4k in VR is very different though, it's 4k per eye not 4k in dots per inch. 4k in VR will feel like a massive downgrade if you enjoy high DPI screens, but I think it should be usable. The state of the art is 12k I think and for people who like working in VR I see 8k on the pimax as the most common recommendation for good text rendering.
Agreed about the non-selling point. I've only ever been able to get my eyes to focus on one thing at a time. So I prefer one monitor. CMD/Alt+tab works for me. If I need to have things side-by-side for some reason I use a window manager and some key combos to quickly rearrange windows. There are very few times that I wish I had another monitor.
Even beyond my neck, the limitation for me is my ability to keep track of the spatial ___location of that many things, and need to have them all displayed simultaneously. I've really just found the sweet spot to be two displays (with the cost sweet spot for me currently being 1440p, but I imagine 2x4k would be an improvement). Even a third monitor really doesn't improve my ability to do things, so I can't imagine "infinite" impressing either.
For me, the main appeal of VR is its potential for gaming, with a distant second place being more broadly "interacting with things in 3d" (such as 3d sculpting/modeling, or something like VR chat).
being able to spatially interact with disasm code inside IDA pro is going to be a game changer for those who like to take a more topological approach to the art
You can already spatially interact with 3D content on a regular screen. Thousands of CAD people do it all day for a living, they even have specialised peripherals for 3D navigation like the 3DConnexion stuff.
This. I used to be a multi monitor type of person but when desktop switching became good (I first experienced this in Linux) I started using a single larger monitor and never looked back.
Turning your head causes you pain? You need to go to the gym, get in shape, or figure out what the hell is causing a natural motion to induce pain and discomfort.
Sitting on a chair, at a desk, staring at a screen, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and then sitting in your car, and then sitting on your couch and never actually walking anywhere, isn't.
"Everyone" does not use 2 or 3 monitors. Certainly among the software engineers I interact with regularly (at top US tech companies), having multiple monitors is the minority, not the majority.
I agree with the parent that any setup that requires me to turn my head to see all of my screen space is a downgrade, not an upgrade. Even a monitor that's too big (above 30 inches or so at normal desk viewing distance) is bad.
If you like it, go for it, but don't act like it's the only or even most common way to work, even for developers.
I've worked at two out of the FAANG companies and many others. Never seen a workspace in the last decade that didn't either have a laptop and external monitor or multiple monitors.
And there has been quite a bit of research [1] on them with 98% of users preferring dual monitors.
> Never seen a workspace in the last decade that didn't either have a laptop and external monitor or multiple monitors.
I've never seen anyone using "a laptop and an external monitor" who actually uses the laptop screen. (Where by "use" I mean "looks at it." They might have it on, but it's usually just idle at the desktop.)
Really? I found this so shocking I just got up and checked and around here 7 out of 11 people have their laptop screen in use.
I use it as a screen for my slack/discord/email and have my two main screens above it. It's true I use my two main screens more, but if I didn't have my laptop I'd want a small third screen to replace it.
I'm with derefr, once I connect up to an external monitor, or two, or three, I close my laptop and put it in a stand. I never use it an extra monitor either.
Have you considered the ergonomics of doing this? I do know a few people who put their laptop up on a pedestal mount so it's in line with their external monitors, which is fine. (These people generally got the largest display-size laptop they could afford, so it makes sense for them.)
But if you have your laptop sitting directly on the desk — presumably because you use its keyboard to type? — then any time you look at its screen, you're straining your neck. There's a reason monitors are on stands that hold them up 8+ inches above the desk — it's so it doesn't hurt to stare at them all day.
I'm not a software engineer or anything like that and I still have three screens including a laptop screen at my desk. Almost everyone at the small NPO I work for have at least 2 monitors including the likes of finance, customer service officers, etc. When I visit other offices it's not unusual to see 2 or even 3 monitor setups. This is common even at government agencies. This may be specific to New Zealand however and not the same elsewhere in the world however I'm sure Australia is in the same boat going by what I've heard from my Australian friends. YMMV. Will be watching this Apple innovation with interest.
I'm a digital nomad. I miss having a spacious multimonitor setup. tried making it work with an occulus quest and immersed VR but the results were disappointing. If they can make it seamless and match the resolution so my eyes don't hurt after a minuite of actually reading code, Its going to be an immediate shutup and take my money moment.
Why wouldn't you use gestures to move the right monitor to be directly in front if you, maintaining some concept on what's on adjacent ones from UI hints?
Really the whole concept of "monitors" feels skeumorphic here. Shouldn't it just be a sphere where you're looking at a concave part with your current app, and can rotate as needed to pull other apps into view?
I can see it being nice if it's like Minority Report, where you can swipe small screens away, etc. Talk and it types. Glance to the left to see how the builds are going, etc. It could also be a nice virtual whiteboard. Usually it's hard to know how nice hardware can be without the apps. And you don't have to be in your office.
>"Constantly rotating my head back and forth from one monitor to another is, quite literally, a pain."
60+yo fart here. Same problem as well. After dicking with 3 32" 4K monitor setup a good while ago I am now down to a single monitor. It is still 32" 4K at 100% scale and feels comfy enough.
As someone who used to have a cheap-ish 3x27" monitor setup, I can confirm neck strain on big triple monitor setups is most definitely a thing. Imagine combining this with carrying the weight a pair of technogoggles like these,and I think it could get tiresome really quickly.
you, or someone in a situation like yours, might at times find it valuable to have like a giant whiteboard in front of you, that you can walk around in front of, and on which you could spatially arrange a bunch of details
Most VR goggles eventually cause pretty significant eyestrain due to vergence-accommodation conflict [1] and other issues all of which get significantly worse the closer to the user the virtual objects are.
Apple's display is, I guess, in best-of-class, but they have no special sauce at all on this, and no physical IPD adjustment at all, and so this device as previewed is basically only useful for media consumption and maybe something like a telepresence meeting, albeit not long duration. Without controllers it's unlikely to even work well for most games.
Basically this is the best of a huge crowd of not very good VR helmets with probably industry-leading AR camera-based passthrough.
IPD isn't that, they're talking about focus. All current VR headsets are focused at a fixed distance, typically around 2 meters away though earlier headsets focused to infinity. Anything outside of the 2m distance can look incorrect and it causes visual weirdness like depth of focus blur to instead look uncannily sharp.
Not fixable without varifocal lenses which adjust focus depending on what your eyes are looking at.
No I'm talking about IPD. Maybe someone else is talking about focus?
In the demo they showed a break out of the device which showed adjustable IPD width, with the displays sliding on little rods similar to many other HMDs.
> It would very obviously be useful for work if you can actually get high res
Is it even that high res for detailed monitor work? 4K per eye yes, but for your entire field of view. Does that meet Apple’s definition of a “retina display”?
I currently sit a few feet away from a 5K display, that’s way more pixels per degree of FoV.
Same goes for movie and TV watching. I sit maybe 8 feet away from a 4K 55” TV and I can absolutely tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. Surely the equivalent “projected” display on this thing is gonna be 1080 or lower?
Of course, as one of those 30% of people with myopia they referenced earlier in the video, I dread to think how much extra it would cost to be able to see anything at all through this thing.
Keep in mind that the display processor utilizes a foveated rendering pipeline, which appears to concentrate the highest resolution rendering where your eyes are focusing.
That doesn't speak to the overall resolution of the per-eye screens, however.
This doesn't increase pixel density at the point it is rendering, since that id a limit of physical pixels. Instead it decreases the rendering resolution of peripheral vision, but even that still has the same physical pixel density.
I am pretty certain 4k per eye still isn't enough for monitor like text rendering but it is pretty good.
I think what's missed here, in the absence of any better specs, is that they're saying "better than 4K per eye!" without mentioning that 4k refers to 3840x2160, and that it's the vertical dimension that they've exceeded. So > 2160x2160 per eye. Pretty good but not even close to good enough for a floating screen of text
They actually said 23 million pixels over both panels. So if taking that as 11.5 million each then at an equivalent aspect ratio that would be something like 4550 * 2560 per eye. Right?
The tech on this thing is so cool and so useless! People will buy them, try them out, and then a month later realize they didn't actually use it at all and return them to the store.
Most people buy products because they are usable, not useful. There is crazy amount of tech available today, and people strive to own most of them. The decision to purchase is usually based on wheter we can afford it and wether we will find some use for it.
The mere fact that goggles will enable users to communicate and consume media just as they can with devices they already own, will be the key argument to purchase this expensive headset.
But this incremental improvement we get after purchase of each-time-more-polished device finacnces future inventions and innovations, and then after some number iteration we get something that is truly useful. At least that's the trend I noticed regarding every tech breakthrough and hype in this century.
I am OP on the XDR Pro Display owner’s thread over in the Macrumors Forums.
Last week I asked XDR owners about their thoughts for possibly replacing their high end XDR monitor(s) with virtual displays in the Apple Vision Pro (I called it Apple Reality)
The question and replies cover some of the considerations around this replacement and there are ongoing replies now that some of the specs are known:
> but people already spend $3500+ on monitor setups somewhat regularly
I don't know a single person who has such an expensive monitor (or a set of monitors). And none of my employers, current or past, would ever agree to spend that much on a monitor setup.
You can buy a 4K OLED monitor for a fraction of that.
2007: ‘There’s no way I’d watch my kid’s entire school play through a 4” screen just so that I could get a recording of it.’
2023: ‘I certainly wouldn't be wearing ski goggles while he blows out candles.’
We — perhaps not you, but humans — have shown a remarkable preference for watching the live event through a tiny screen so that we can have a recording of it for later.
When I record something that I also want live I don't watch it through the screen, I just glance at the screen occasionally to make sure it's still pointed correctly.
Yeah the kids playing scene felt like a clip from Black Mirror. I would never want to relive memories like that when I can just go hug my kid, and if they weren’t alive it would destroy my mental health to see them in that high fidelity without being able to hug them.
It felt like strong "I am recently divorced, and also a parent of young children" vibes throughout. There was the value comparison to a large TV and surround sound system, which is only valid if both your home theater and AR device have the same audience size (to divide the cost by) of one person.
The vast majority of families are multi-city, and many are multinational. I don't see anything wrong with trying to improve on FaceTime, since millions of people already use that every day.
The catch is, they might have an impressive display of unlimited size, but it is still likely to be tied to locked down iOS (or whatever they call it on Vision devices), so the selection of productivity apps and their capabilities will probably be very limited.
Except when they find a way mirroring the Mac's desktop in this environment on a nice way. Straight up 'external display' mode (more like external 3D space), but with less constraints on how to position the windows and the taskbar ... and consequently more trouble on navigating among those. Desktop icons might be a burden too, also wonder what to do with fullscreen mode.
Anyway, if one app was used on its OS for mirroring the Mac environment on a nice way, that could be enough for me.
I feel that this feature looks more like Continuity than real desktop/app mirroring. You'll likely have to have a corresponding app installed on the device to run it this way.
> It would very obviously be useful for work if you can actually get high res, effectively unlimited monitor space.
Very big "if".
I already notice visual artifacting in REPLs on 1080p displays at 60FPS. That's nothing compared to the aliasing issues facing stereoscopic virtual displays. I can't imagine wanting to do hours of focused work staring at objects in an aliased virtual world.
I am not a fan of even the look of this thing but I am not sure why people are just talking about room and work. I think people will just buy it and watch films when lying down on their beds or sideways, when on the commode, or when commuting on a bus seat (assuming power delivery is sorted - and yeah if everything needed for it is portable enough).
Yeah that was silly, but aren't all of the new iPhone cameras 3D cameras? People take photos/videos all of the time. Now you can immerse yourself in them. I think it's pretty cool
Presumably the current and next iPhone Pros can capture 3D video.
I don’t know why this wouldn’t have been ridiculous, because it really is ridiculous to suggest this would be worn by a parent during a young child’s happy birthday singing and blowing out the candles.
This idea seemed like way too much of a stretch for this intro. They had to know this, so I am very curious what the reasoning was for why they included it.
> I don’t know why this wouldn’t have been ridiculous, because it really is ridiculous to suggest this would be worn by a parent during a young child’s happy birthday singing and blowing out the candles.
Do you not remember the 1970s-1980s, when "filming home movies" meant resting a 50lbs camcorder on your shoulder and looking through the eyepiece in a way that blocks anyone from seeing 75% of your head?
This was also my thought. My grandparents had a Panasonic VHS camcorder in the 80s. Everyone in the family took turns sharing it. I can see people using Vision Pro in a similar way to film short segments of family events in 3D.
Too bad we now live in the 2020s where no one wants to do that or look stupid doing that. A camera strapped to your face and you having to move your own face/body to zoom into something is way more ridiculous than the camcorders of those eras.
People generally didn't want to look stupid back then, either.
But dads finding ways to combine "being excited about their kids" with "nerding out about new technology" have eternally been the exception to the "people don't want to look stupid" rule.
That was literally the only way to capture video back then. Everyone has infinitely better cameras in their pocket, notice how few people buy and use video cameras outside of professional or hobbyist creators.
Current iPhone Pros? How would they? Their cameras are super close together and different focal lengths (or whatever the correct term is for "they're 1x, 3x and 0.5x").
I share your immediate skepticism that wearing one of these during any moments you'd like to relive later seems preposterous. May as well just be DVRing the "moments" with your goggles and be watching a movie on the inside, because that's how present you would seem. Unless the entire family all had their goggles on ("Apple Vision Pro Family, starting at $9,999!") and you are all actually experiencing a remote moment virtually!
> because it really is ridiculous to suggest this would be worn by a parent during a young child’s happy birthday singing and blowing out the candles.
I see people keep repeating this, but why is that? Most people take videos / photos on their phone, and because of that their eyes don't actually see the event happening, they are just looking at it through the screen. With this you'd actually be able to record while also not focusing on your screen but looking at them.
I don’t mean to make this personal, but have you raised a kid?
If someone is holding up an iPhone taking a video, especially up close it is a distraction.
Depending on how much they are aware of it and the person’s self consciousness, it can really take away from or alter a moment to have it so obviously recorded.
Kids can be extremely perceptive and sensitive.
Our kid is not even two and there is a subtle change when a phone is obviously out, pointed at them and capturing them.
I know it’s always better to interact without a phone in sight.
I still capture a lot of great stuff but sometimes something is so special I can’t bring myself to disrupt it by trying to record. My wife and I will look at each other and know something truly amazing is happening and both just live the moment.
Looking at the Apple Vision, as it is at launch—-it looks disruptive to both the subject and the wearer in the circumstances I’ve described above.
Perhaps in time they will become so ubiquitous a headset like this will be noticed as little as a smartphone.
But at the start, especially with the price and production volume expected this is very likely be an unusual thing to see around in the world.
Yet in the example Apple showed it appeared to be taken very, very close to the action.
I’d guess if someone tries to do this it will cause all the other kids to be looking at you, not your kid during their special moment.
Yes, I agree with this. I'll only be buying one of these if it means I can replace my work displays with it–I'd happily pay the exorbitant price if it meant being able to have the equivalent of an unlimited high-res display anywhere, at any time. The lack of sub-pixel rendering on macOS means that I'm already forced to buy an expensive 5K display for every place that I plan to do work; a headset like this is a bargain in comparison. Obviously this means that the headset will have to be comfortable enough to use for long periods of time and have high enough resolution to compete with a hiDPI display. I doubt that this device will be able to deliver on both of those fronts.
I can see how that would be a popular application. I imagine a software engineer that was forcefully returned back to the office would love the ability to have unlimited computer screens hidden from the prying eyes of busybodies around the office.
I feel the same, like glass, it has some real work (or peculiar situations) value, where augmenting the information at hand for important tasks would be a massive leverage. Electrical work, repair, medicine..
That would be a valid use case, but it's hard to imagine that this headset is miles ahead of all existing ones in resolution and clarity. In all present-day headset even simple tasks involving text are a challenge. They just can't legibly render more than ~10 lines of text in your field of view. To compete with monitors for day-to-day tasks, the perceived resolution has to improve by an order of magnitude.
4k monitor at 27 inches costs less than 400 dollars. Unless its 10 bit with 1ms response time for gaming. Who is spending $3500 on monitor setups besides gamers?
the second I want to show any of my colleagues what I'm working on to get a question answered I need a headset for each of them. That kind of kills the whole idea of VR goggles in general.
The weird price fixation and doomerism here is weird. People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it. $3500 is high but considering it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled into I'm pretty sure there's a more than sustainable market for it.
That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price.
I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory of "it costs more than many can afford to buy on a whim" instead of "it costs more than it should" of things like AirPods. Where the Pro Display XDR gets away with that is, at the end of the day, it's just a display for content the same as any other. Where the Vision Pro will need to do some fighting is traditional content is a much harder sell for a AR/VR device. I think Apple is trying their best to tackle that software problem head on trying to improve integrations and offer day 1 native options, which is what they always aim for, but it's still clearly going to have some penetration difficulty due to price and small target audience at first. Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.
I agree that it isn't in the "everyone and their grandmother will have it" pricing territory. It will definitely sell well at least within a niche but won't have the deep penetration other products have.
If you recall, for many years, an iPhone was a luxury status symbol; the equivalent of a mid-range hand bag or a low-end luxury automobile. Expensive, but still within the reach of the an average person with at least some disposable income. It's why everyone seems to have an iPhone and EarPods.
The pro display, like many VR headsets before it, is really a niche product that will be limited to a standard deviation of what I would call "enthusiasts" or "power users".
(1). Even pre-iPhone, having an iPod, especially a premium one, was a status symbol.
(2). Non-iPhone devices are generally scoffed at in many circles, green text message bubbles being associated with budget Android devices and not the expensive Android flagships.
My guess is that Apple will push A/VR into the mainstream and establish social norms with the category. Facebook and others will sell to the middle-to-bottom end of the market.
> I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory
It's the same price as Microsoft's Hololens 2, but the tech looks much more impressive, and Microsoft seems to have laid off most of the Hololens development team.
And how many people have Hololens? Vs How many people have a Meta Quest 2?
Again, the other things named above were just "Apple tax" expensive, i.e an extra 50% more. This is almost an order of magnitude more expensive. Doesn't Meta Quest go for around 400$, 350$ on sale? Literally a tenth of the price.
I'm not saying they're the same product, it's hard to convince something to pay 10x for a product.
How many times did Microsoft iterate on and improve the hardware before laying off the Hololens team and giving up? Once. The answer is once.
Apple is a company that releases a new platform and keeps iterating on it for year after year.
This version of Apple's hardware isn't intended to be the cheaper mass market consumer version of the tech. That will come later in what has been referred to as Apple Glass.
Someone in my coworking space bought a Pro Display XDR. He's a movie maker who is shopping around a documentary to some major OTT players in my country. He said his work pretty much demands a really good screen and Pro Display XDR is the best he can buy as an independent filmmaker - his previous employer, a large studio, had screens that were slightly better but cost $20k+
Apple also provides a credit card with no interest on Apple products. They could "hide" the price as cellphone providers hide the price, by rolling it into a monthly payment.
Pro Display XDR is also in a market segment where it's the last step before getting a calibrated display that's 10x the price. When looking at the specs it's actually a great display at a good price point.
> Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.
Like every other platform products, the V1's audience is... developers. Once there are a few killer apps, Apple will commoditize and unleash a much cheaper version.
There's a ton of hidden bias in this assessment. Have you considered that you either live in a wealthy area or are surrounded by people who are more prone to seeing having iDevices as a status symbol? Because
> People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries.
Is absolutely not true in my experience.
> People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know.
And how many of those laptops are corporate assets that were provided by their employer? How many of those professionals actually use Macs anywhere outside of work?
AirPods are not a status product for most, the quality and the way it works is why it’s selling like hot cakes. It does show people you know about quality stuff by wearing one. The AirPod Max I would agree it is in the show off territory
>There's a ton of hidden bias in this assessment. Have you considered that you either live in a wealthy area or are surrounded by people who are more prone to seeing having iDevices as a status symbol?
Obviously those people are going to be the ones buying this product, like all Apple products.
AirPods are popular, sure, but I have quite literally never seen AirPods Max in the wild. People in the market for premium noise cancelling headsets are all buying Sony or Bose.
And it isn't just about price. There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper, and they still haven't found product market fit. The problem isn't that they need more polish.
With Meta winding down its reality investments Vision Pro is pretty much the last shot this entire sector has. If this device fails then we have no choice but to accept that VR/AR is at best a niche hobby, not the world-changing technology that we so desperately want it to be.
Definitely going to be anecdotal here – around my neighborhood (brooklyn NY) I'm floored by how many Airpod Max's I see. It's by far the most common over-head wireless earphones I see.
Yes, but based on anecdata
from that same sampling, you can also conclude everyone’s profession is podcast host and primary mode of transportation is by fixie bike.
Fixies haven’t been hot out here in 10 years (or more) but I get your point. However I was providing anecdata as a corrective to the parent comment, in order to suggest that such observations aren’t sufficient to build an argument on.
Meta Quest Pro has much of what the Apple device offers while providing controllers for a significantly better gaming experience for $2500 cheaper. Considering the strongest consistent use case of VR thus far has been gaming, Apple has a huge miss IMO.
Apple will never own the type of old-school, enthusiast gaming that VR gaming has roots in (of course they do quite well in mobile gamin, but that’s something you do with a device you already own; you don’t buy a device for it). If the former type of gaming is the only application, they didn’t really have a shot to miss with. So, they are adding a bunch of extra functionality that isn’t directly related to gaming. Of course their device will not provide the best bang-for-the-buck in gaming.
If you are going to claim that Apple’s VR system needs to use meta’s style if controller in order to be successful at gaming, I think that’s short sighted.
It's standard for gaming with a regular screen. Not having VR controllers is a huge detriment for VR gaming. Yes there are some games which can work just using hands, but most existing VR titles will not work, and any titles developed for it will lack input complexity of ones which do support it.
Will they? It seems like tracking hands and objects directly provides much more information than gripping the two sides of a broken in-half Xbox controller.
Controllers also provide haptics (beat saber makes it feel like you're slicing a block with a light saber), a thumb stick, trigger and two buttons. we've got 40+ years experience with gaming with joysticks and buttons, this is hard to undo.
Lol what if they had to change their name again. Maybe something about having to come to terms with their revenue and expenses... face their books... Facebook?
I think the AirPods Max are a lot more hit and miss than the others... for myself and people I know, they were just too heavy/uncomfortable compared to eg the Sony WH XM series.
I'm wondering that too, but from the presentation it looked a lot more "iPhone" than "mac". The only thing they demo'd that looked like a real desktop was an actual mac being mirrored in the display. Everything else seemed like an app you had to install through a new app store.
Most people didn't say the M1 was overpriced. Most people said it was a good value for once. That's partly why it got so much attention. In this case, most people are saying this device is overpriced.
Yeah, I read/watched many M1 reviews when it first launched and the general sentiment was that M1 devices were an amazing value proposition for its market segment. Even the most staunch Apple critics admitted it was not just competitive; it blew the competition out of the water.
The response to AirPods was more in line with OP's description, but I don't think the AVP is comparable. Everyone had a need for earbuds, there was relatively little competition in the wireless buds space at the time, $159 was within the realm of possibility for most consumers, and Apple's removal of the headphone jack forced many peoples' hands. The AVP doesn't have any of that going for it.
I mean Apple hardly ever makes any budget price-to-performance stuff, the high end luxury overpriced market is more their thing. I'm not sure why people are surprised?
Apple's largely been affordable luxury that 100's of millions buy. They're more akin to buying Starbucks over Dunk donuts. Their products usually would be in the price range of 1.3-1.5x more expensive than competitors but offering something which is uniquely good. This product is 3.5X more expensive than the next comparable device while missing key capabilities.
Well depends on what you compare. Smartphones and tablets tend to be on the more affordable side, but everything else not so much. Their monitor stand is about 8-12x the price of a top of the line competitor while still just being a hunk of metal.
What? Millions of people have personal laptops that are M1+ Macbooks. For people who can afford it and aren't Linux people, why would you buy anything else?
(well some people have issues with buying things from Apple and I don't blame them but Microsoft is busy making Windows as unappealing as possible so Apple wins for me)
Have lots of layers, accountants, execs, and a few surgeons in the extended family, especially on my wife's side. Most of them use Macs as their personal computers, and some of them have already upgraded to M1 and M2 mac pros.
Lot's rich people out there, bro. Some of them probably suffered to adapt to Mac OS after years of using Windows, but since every new version of Windows is now a different OS from the UX perspective, they all adapted themselves to Mac OS, because they wouldn't want to be seen in an airport lounge or an expensive coffee answering their emails in plastic Samsung book.
Also, most people never upgraded their laptops, this is simply not an important selling point, and even less in the premium segment. Repairability? From the user's perspective, It is repairable, they have Apple Care, and they drop their broken laptop in a counter, and sometime later they collect a functioning laptop.
And why they wouldn't like the hardware? The CPU is fast, it hardly ever heats enough to spin the fans, the screen is great, the keyboard now is good enough, and the touchpad is still probably the best one on the market.
Your plenty of reasons don't seem very solid to me.
> Yeah but most people aren't paying for those: their employers are.
which is wrong, and you seemed to not be aware of that. Your reasons are all arguments why _some_ people don't buy them, and they're obviously correct, but lots of people also do buy them.
Er. I didn't try to argue everyone buys one. Just that 'most are bought by employers', as though people won't pay for them themselves, is obviously silly .
I like Apple. I'm find this new release quite cool. But you fanboys are a bit much. Sigh.. guess I'm going to do this.
> Who doesn’t like macos? Like it is objectively better than windows, and is able to actually work decently without set up pain (like linux)
Not really objectively better any more, no. With WSL2 developing on Windows is actually pretty darn great. It's the best of both worlds: first party support of most applications and devices that I care about, and a really good OS for development.
> Who doesn’t like the hardware?
Overall Macbooks are almost unbeatable with e.g. the screens or sound for instance. But I still find the port selection to be baffling. It's been many, many years since the release of USB-C and I still need USB-A ports.
I also really do not like the sharp edges on the new Macbooks. They're visually appealing, sure. But if I'm on a train and they're cutting into my wrists it's not great.
> What is unrepairable about macbooks? It’s not an iphone, i ve replaced hard drives, fans and other components on a macbook countless times.
Aha, please try "replacing your hard drive" in your new Macbook.
Also the attitude and track record of Apples behavior towards repair shops is abysmal.
> Who really wants an upgradable laptop? I’d give you desktop perhaps, but with laptops i struggle to see the usecase
You just said you have "replaced hard drives, fans and other components on a macbook countless times" so I struggle a bit with this one.
In general it's a good idea to make devices last longer. Y'know, with the planet being almost being on fire since we're over-consuming? No?
I promise i am not an apple fangirl. I am trying to be objective here.
I’m not claiming that windows is somehow “unusable”. Obvs not. But I can’t think of any beef anyone can have with mac os except that some software doesn’t run on it. But I don’t think this falls under the umbrella of “don’t like the os”.
Re: hardware. Again objectively apple has the nicest hardware. That doesn’t mean “perfect” for every user scenario, but I just can’t imagine someone who objectively prefers a chromebook to a macboo because of hardware. I could imagine that during the butterfly keyboard era though.
Re: repairability. You got me there i have not replaced shit in my new laptop. But i have replaced the hard drive and the screen housing on my 2015 macbook it was no more difficult than any ikea assembly.
My 2015 macbook still works totally fine with almost daily use. I recently donated my 2009 imac and it’s probably at the point when it’s unacceptable for any kind of professional use. But in all seriousness how long do you expect a computer to last? I don’t know the answer to that tbh, but I do think that macs are better in terms of longevity than other hardware
I believe all Macs are fully recyclable with very little waste in the process. Repairability comes at a cost that most customers don't want to pay (any one of: more $$, heavier, thicker, more prone to breakage, etc...). In the end these are devices that cost about the same as a couch, last a few years, and then are meant to be recycled for raw materials that go back into a more efficient device.
I don't like Macos. Windows without games and Linux without deep customisation, variety of choice, and visibility. It's not bad, just useless to me. It only runs well on very specific, overpriced, unrepairable hardware too. Lame.
The hardware is okay, but overrated, there are far sturdier laptops, especially for protecting the display.
The only macbook I ever had had soldered on RAM. Even the PS4 has a replaceable HDD. Being able to replace the storage is not impressive, it's table stakes. I want a laptop for which every sub-board is replacable(without soldering or a heat gun) so I can repair it indefinitely. Apple also have more expensive parts. This counts as less repairability to me.
I want an upgradable laptop because I like laptops. And I like fast laptops even more. Upgrading the laptop instead of replacing it means less money spent on parts I don't need to replace, meaning I can either save money or spend more on performance.
I suppose what is the difference between trading in a laptop for an upgrade vs doing it yourself. The number of people willing and able to replace parts on their computers gotta be not that large.
The upgradability comes with trade offs, in reliability, price, size and weight.
I totally understand how in a perfect world i could just swap parts on my macbook, but if it makes it twice as thick and heavy, with shitty plastic panels everywhere I don’t think I want it all that much
Doesn't matter whether you do it yourself or turn it in for repair. If it's harder to repair on your own, it's gonna be way more expensive to do through a shop too. Apple are notorious for designing their laptops in a way that one component dying means the whole board must be replaced.
And yes, it's possible to design repairable laptops without making them "twice as thick and heavy, with shitty plastic panels everywhere". This is a made up problem.
If apple are so much better at "design" than everyone else, why are they so much worse at repairability? Is it too hard for Apple? Is that really your argument?
Name me a piece of software that ain’t buggy, I’ll wait.
I work on both windows and macos. I haven’t seen the screen of death on a mac in literal years, but the windows laptop does it weekly.
I’m by no means saying that macos is perfect software. It took apple literal years to fix the airdrop for example. But i would not say it’s more buggy than windows or linux.
Mac/MacOS is piping hot garbage, I have one through work and I only ever use it as a 4th screen (aka Slack and Email machine) to the left of my actual work setup, since the thing shits itself whenever you try working with more than a single extra screen connected.
When forced to use it due to being in office or whatever I just ssh into my home setup & control it through Parsec, every time I have to actually use the thing I get the urge to toss it out of a window
I hate MacOS. I've used it as my daily OS for over three years, and never "grew to like it" (as everyone said, "just give it time"). I feel like a kid when using it, everything is hidden away to look fancy instead of usable.
The hardware is okay, I guess. I envy the M1 chips. But I don't like the keyboard layout (even after 3 years it feels off..), or how they've for years not have included necessary ports so it's a dongle-show. I also don't like the value per dollar of their hardware. If my employer pays it's fine, but I wouldn't pay the Apple tax myself.
I'm not here to start a flame war. Just to point out that you speak as if your preferences are a global truth, but plenty disagree.
I mean, yeah if you come to any os with an explanation that it works exactly the same as other os you are going to have a bad time.
I use windows for CAD work and macos for everything else and the switching is annoying for sure.
In terms of functionality (given you actually take time to learn the UI paradigms) neither windows or mac are inferior. You can do all the same things on both. So it all really comes down to familiarity such as “i hate using cmd key instead of ctrl”.
I don’t disagree with people saying “i am more used to windows” - it is true. But there is nothing about macos that is worth not liking.
Try opening finder and going to your home directory. Where is it? Heck if I know.
It's ridiculous that I couldn't right-click, click a folder hierarchy, search, or anything! No visible indicators, no hints, no way at all to just get to your dang home directory. I had to Google it and apparently the magic incantation is Cmd+Up. I quickly pinned it to my favorites so I don't lose my home directory again. Ridiculous.
For all of windows pain points, of which there are many, at least I can click "My Computer" and actually see the contents of my computer. Even Linux (Ubuntu) doesn't hide it from you.
Yeah but the vast majority of people don't actually use home dir directly and the people who do also know enough to enable it in finder options, search for it using help or the help search soertcut, bookmark or search for it using spotlight.
Spotlight (cmd space) also means you pretty much never have to navigate to a file/folder.
Fyi home is cmd + shift + h which you can find in the go menu or by search for home in the help menu.
TIL. Sometimes it's very frustrating trying to transition from Windows to Unix, and menu bars being at the top of the screen is one of those things that still doesn't quite stick with me. Hopefully it'll stick this time :)
Most people would like to have a macbook. That they can't afford it is a different point. Most people who get a macbook can adapt to macos. Those who can't are the minority. I never said that macbooks are number one selling laptops in the world.
Apple is successful no doubt, but the point is, that its OS doesn't appeal to everyone. I also can't stand it and get used to it. The weird docking behaviour, mouse acceleration, annoying jumping animations, weird window management etc.
Can't find anything with spotlight. Spotlight results jump when I'm about to pick something. Glitchy window resizing animations. With multi display, windows keep disappearing from me when moving from one display to the other etc.
Windows 11 remembers my window positions. MacOS forgets my monitor configuration and also requires resetting my dock weekly for some reason to recognize my monitors.
Consider that there are also many people who won't even consider that. I'm saying having that opinion or knowing those differences about operating system and devices is already a specific somewhat invested subset of people.
Many people literally only know windows and office and haven't even used a Mac.
A laptop that can’t be upgraded likely also can’t be fixed by the user.
I’d like a realistically user-fixable laptop - especially as I (unfortunately) bought a 2017 MB Pro which has had a screen failure, a prematurely dying battery, and the well-known butterfly keyboard issues.
I can't get over how badly MacOS works with external monitors; I have a fiddly 5ish minute Mac boot cycle process somedays because there it just refuses to output anything.
FWIW, that's really not the usual macOS experience with external monitors, and you should try doing standard connectivity troubleshooting like replacing the cable, etc.
I've been using multiple monitors (more than 1 simultaneously) with Macs forever; the experience has gotten smoother with the Apple Silicon Macs, but it worked OK on Intel, and PowerPC before that, and the old classic Macs before that.
The pace of renewal / refurbishment for work related and personal may not have the same frequency for most folks.
Work laptops updated every 3 years approximately (at least in tech). Personal use may be 5-12 years. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2012 for myself. The next personal purchase I made was 2022 when I bought the mac mini. For everything else I used the computer which was given to me at work.
Depends very much on the person and the company, I've known many people in similar situations as you, but also many people (in business, rarely roles like developers) stuck on old, slow work laptops - even managers in companies like Dell - while having shiny new personal devices they'd bought themselves (and would, if their company allowed them, use those for work where possible - ofc companies like Dell that's a no-go, but many smaller companies are happy when their employees work on their own more expensive and more productive computer).
Yeah people buy those too. Do you think they don't?
When my current MBP dies, I'll be buying the one with the latest chip on the market (although admittedly a lower spec version than I would presumably get from work --- but that's just because I'm not doing planning on doing huge compilations or video editing on it).
I realize that they have had many failures in their long history but it seems like they have been on a roll since the iPod release 22 years ago. Do you know of any product flop from Apple in the last two decades? I'm genuinely curious.
- AirPower. That was straight-up cancelled.
- The larger HomePod was pretty crap.
- Butterfly switch failures
- Apple Maps was garbage upon first release
- Ping was 13 years ago, but it was one of those things that everyone knew was doomed to fail
- The trashcan Mac Pro was not really made for professionals. I don't remember many selling.
I don't see this as one of them. The only thing thats an issue is the price. The tech looks streets ahead of everyone else. With time the price will come down and the features will grow like all Apple products.
For comparison the original Macintosh was $2500 in 1984, equivalent to $7000 today.
If this is as good as the demo was showing for pro applications it's revolutionary as a computing interface.
Since you can use it to view your mac's screen it seems there are no app restriction per say, but the built in app I imagine will be like all other Apple walled garden apps only loaded via the app store.
Did people really say that the original Airpods were overpriced?[1] IIRC back in 2016 BT earbuds (that weren't connected by a band) were mostly pretty shitty, which I think was the root of most people's skepticism, not the price?
> People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it.
The salient difference between those devices and this one is: none of those require software developers to do anything special to support them.
Granted, Apple had some success in the past telling developers considering a Mac port of their software "these are not the droids you are looking for."
In theory this does not require software developers (other than Apple's) to do anything special to support it either. visionOS has windows and kb/mouse support which means there is potentially no barrier to entry.
I'm guessing "full-screen" or similar deep integrations with visionOS will require some custom code. But it seems like most sites + apps could potentially "just work".
I don't know what, if anything, will be the killer app that makes this thing take off. I know that it needs a killer app, and I highly doubt it will be a two-day port of a regular mac app.
There's a huge difference between the lifetime of a pair of headphones and a VR/AR headset (or at least there should be). Bluetooth will be around for a while. This the second generation Vision Pro is going to absolutely kill the first generation... so why even bother getting the first if it's at such a high price?
> Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval?
I’m sure we all know the answer to this.
> web engine that's not WebKit?
rofl
The AirPods, Pro Display XDR, even the iPhone were just improved and streamlined improvements of a established products with clear use cases. This is something completely different.. At this point this is just an expensive gimmick. That might change when people figure what they can do with it or it might not.
> it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled
But there were already tons of people using earbuds, headphones, laptops, and monitors. They brought a high-end product to an already mature market. Whereas here, they are introducing a very expensive device into a segment, VR goggles, that has flopped over and over again with consumers everywhere. Apple might be able to pull off their magic, who knows, but it's way more dubious than with the other things you mentioned.
> That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price.
This is where the product gives me pause. I am very happy to early-adopt this thing but if I cannot "do what I want" then I will pretty disappointed as I would not expect a comparable product to enter the market for another 5+ years as all this specialized hardware experiences commoditization.
I am very happy using my Linux desktop, slightly less happy with my Linux laptop (fingers crossed the 15" Framework changes that" and am not kidding myself by holding any expectations for what the F/OSS A/VR future will look like in the near-to-mid-term.
I think you probably see more than the national average. It's a fantastic pair of headphones if you're using them a lot. It's the only pair I've seen that had consumer grade features "normal users" care about while having pretty close to audiophile audio quality.
Do you honestly think the price fixation is “weird”? $3500 is insanely expensive for a consumer product - so expensive that it is flat out unobtainable for many Americans, and an extremely hard sell for many more.
And they were almost a pro only market at that price. Personal computers were c64, atari or amiga, personal pc arrived when they were much cheaper, mid 90
Emphasis on progressive web apps in macOS is a good hint with the first wave of apps this will have. Similar to how iPhone first didn't allow for third party apps, this will take the first year to sort out all the HCI before allowing for app store uploads.
This is very much nReal but polished, and those goggles are dim and not as immersive as this. Magic Leap went with the wrong direction it turned out.
this opinion seems more influenced by the writer's environment than not.
i will be cautious to oversell its current use case. like it has been speculated by some youtubers, this might be more of a mvp like scenario like with apple watch in the best case scenario.
although i am glad this is making quest 3 look more acceptable.
Including 3d video recording, which is under-appreciated in many of the threads.
Two GoPro Hero cameras + rig would cost minimum $500, and you might have to edit photos and videos in post. And Apple does this automagically for you.
Probably be a little wary on just doing a casual visual inspection. There's a wide range of airpod knockoffs at this point which are much cheaper but look almost identical at least at first glance.
there's no doubt that with is onw appstore and os is more like the iphone and
you will not be able to install anything that Apple has not approved, neither buy anything without Apple taking its cut
Yes, and that's really obnoxious. But the ability to use it as a display for your Mac (and presumably PC via VNC or similar) should mitigate that to some extent.
It's neither a phone nor a laptop. It can provide some of their functionality in limited situations, but it's considerably less flexible or portable than either.
It also captures a new kind of content: spatial video. Upper middle class families with toddlers are going to want this. To relive the children's childhood forever.
Given you can use your mac’s screen on it, it’s almost moot depending on the app or latency involved. But knowing Apple it’ll probably be more iPhone since they’ve even been pushing App Store on Macs more too
The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. Airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. That's what driving the sales.
No one will be wearing this in public. And if anything, the person in the office using this first will look dorky. So I can't see it having the same appeal/free advertising.
> The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales.
Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.)
Not sure this tells us anything much about the Vision Pro, though--except, perhaps, that some people will happily use the product even if it looks dorky, if the user experience is on point.
Precisely. I prefer the AirPods Pro because they’re even smaller and are less visible. I use them because they’re mine blowingly convenient and nice. They’re one of those few products that really brings joy. I wear them constantly both on the go, and at home.
But why did so many end up on exactly that model, when there are so many other brands? Because they're vastly superior, or because we're social animals and seeing lots of other people wearing them signals that they're a safe bet and will keep you in the in-group?
My point here is that the visibility of them on others help drive the sales. "If so many wears them, they obviously can't be bad". For this headset, you will not get that same kind of influences from others.
I agree with the point that seeing people using AirPods serves as a sort of social endorsement of the product. (Which is fairly different from your original assertion that "The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement.") Though I think the much stronger endorsement comes from talking to people you know and trust. The problem with merely "ambient" signaling (as in, you see people wearing them on public transit, etc.) is that you don't know anything about the preferences of the people you see wearing them. I see (or at least used to see) lots of people wearing Beats too, but I only ever heard bad thing about them from people I know and trust and, therefore, never considered trying a pair.
Vision Pro may not benefit from the latter (weaker) form of social endorsement, but it should be able to generate plenty of the former (stronger) kind.
Do you own a pair of AirPods? My Gen2 AirPod Pros are what I consider to be the best purchase I have made in the last 10 years. The small package and ANC is fantastic. Before purchasing AirPods I would walk around with ATH M50X (Great headphones; not fashionable) and these have replaced that.
> The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales.
Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know, FWIW. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.)
I don't know about that. My AirPods just work in a way that no other wireless headphones do with my iPhone. Using them is delightful. I still rock a Gen 1 pair which would no longer be "cool"
Ok.. please you probably can "build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
How is the old dropbox dismissal relevant for my comment..?
What I'm saying is that airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. This headset will not have that effect.
Well, not the same, but people like to bash anything Apple. The Apple naysayers. usually they are heavy windows/linux users (there’s not much else)
I bought the AirPods because I wanted exactly that. Sadly the batteries died in 1.5 years, so I’m boycotting the AirPods for now.
Nobody I know bought AirPods because they look cool or because they want to show off they’re rich. AirPods are very affordable.. they just work really really well. Why is that so hard to believe?
And yes, people are more aware of items which are visible.. but that’s a different story.
WRT the vision pro, sure you won’t walk around outside with them, but if they work as advertised, they don’t have to.
The M1 air didn’t sell a gazillion times because of its looks. In fact, you couldn’t tell it from the older models, so that point simply is not valid.
People talk, people ask opinions, if the majority of the opinion from experience is positive yes it will result in more sales.
"The kids are playing, better record a spacial moment" was one of the most dystopic things I've seen in a long time. Same with the ad at the end, with the father wearing it around his kids.
I feel like the interface demands strapping something this futuristic over your head is just... wrong. Perhaps a few years of refining the tech can lead to something that feels more natural
Agreed for some reason I had a really repulsive reaction to seeing that as well. Feels like this is the next step in people turning more inward. A screen strapped to our face at all times.
If they can get it into a pair of glasses, it might help a lot. Yes, the screen will be there all the time, but people won't be staring down at their phones all the time either.
Imagine you realise that you haven't taken off your vision for a few months. You lift them up and you're just all alone with sores on your face, in your piss-soaked chair in your isolated flat in your decaying suburb of your polluted city. think I'll just put them back on...
You probably also don't want to take them off if everyone around you is going to wear one, not sure if AR is the right bet though for our dystopia. We don't want to augment the tent we live in the billionaire city, we want to replace the cardboard box we live in with a mansion to ease our embarrassment at not yet being a billionaire.
Future consumer electronics needs to focus on easing the transition of hundreds of millions of people in the western world into poverty.
You mean like how crowds of people at live music events ALL have their stupid smartphones up recording the same damn recording which they should be paying attention to and absorbing the experience and living in the moment?
Forget what people should do, look at what people actually do.
Steve wanted Jony Ive to have final say, and Jony Ive wanted the product to be fully mobile. I don't think that the wire will be present in version 4+ of the product
I like this idea, but how or what? The power brick is obviously critical, but I'm guessing they want you to put it in your pocket or on the desk or bed/sofa and largely forget it's there?
> People don't know what they want until you show it to them
You won’t know what people want or how to build it if you don’t _look at what they actually do_ first. There’s no other way of doing it, even Steve Jobs did it this way.
It sounds like a contradiction, but I don’t think it is. He’s talking about people’s biases about new products. Understanding people’s biases is part of watching what they do, as opposed to just considering what they say. He doesn’t say you’re supposed to come up with what people want out of thin air.
Yea... there were quite a few moments that felt rather cringe, dystopian, and weird at the same time. Honestly the entirety of the screen with your eyes for your viewers is a very interesting choice on Apple's part.
I do indeed want one of these and will likely buy it but I would definitely have opted for not having this outward screen functionality. I do not plan on wearing these ski goggles around my wife, kids, coworkers, etc. The fact they are trying to make it interactive for the folks around the person wearing it seems a little comical. That's like putting a screen on the backside of your phone so your kids can see your face while you are scrolling instagram. Wearing the goggles is an individual experience, why try to force everyone in the room into that experience like its going to be an accessory you will wear out and about?
Some day we will get to the point where we want the AR users to blend in a little more but we aren't at that point yet. You have a giant pair of goggles with cords hanging from it strapped to your face. Are people really going to be regularly interacting with Apple Vision users while they are in the matrix?
I guess if you are on a plane and the flight attendant asks you for your drink, they can see your eyes when you demand your coke... but come on, can't you just take it off to interact with people on the rare occasions?
I think it's just every time that you are using this feature, you should probably not be using this feature
Interesting thoughts about EyeSight. I agree that if I were using/wearing this, I would not care about the ability for others to see my eyes and gauge my reaction. This could've been added to a subsequent version of the device.
But it could be that testing showed that removing the device in work and home settings to deal with quick interactions was enough of a deterrence to devise a solution? Also, that being able to show the eyes was a huge differentiator from competing products?
I wonder if they had a few non-negotiables and this was one. They figured it was on the roadmap, so might as well lock it in from the start.
They’ll just slap two cameras spaced an eye distance apart on the back of the next iPhone Pro and bam, you can record your kids with your socially acceptable handheld device. Still won’t need to play with them though.
The new iPhone's design is pretty much completely leaked in CAD renders and the camera module looks pretty much the same as the past few years. So RIP to you I guess
This is the new version of parents holding phones up in front of their faces to record moments.
Now generations of kids will grow up staring at their parents' eyes through a VISION PRO instead of seeing the back of a phone in front of their face. Progress?
Really, what we need is a little 360 spatial drone that records important events like birthdays and what not and then you can relive them on a device like the Vision Pro. That's the best of both worlds and I think that's where things will head eventually. I think Google or Amazon or someone has made a security camera drone that flies around your house so it can't be far off.
Interesting, eliminate the drone part and that actually makes sense. Have a few very high resolution cameras at a distance, and you could NeRF a similar view unobtrusively.
This is where there's a notable disparity in this new product. "I need to grab my phone" behavior isn't any different than what people did with cameras for decades before that. The thing that changed is the technology became much more available, pervasive, and convenient. The use cases were immediately apparent and unlike this device, nobody was scratching their head around how they might actually use it in practice.
On the contrary, it would be wrong for a parent to not pause a special moment to take a picture.
Sure, memories are great, but I have scant memories of my early years. Whatever memories I do have are tied to the rare few pictures my family took. I cherish them because they're a little time travel capsule.
When my child is 35, I'd much rather give him high quality images of his 4th birthday instead of asking him to rely on the memorization capabilities of his still-forming brain.
Agree. My children love watching back videos of various events. The equivalent from my childhood was the occasional photo or very long-winded and boring home videos taken with a giant shoulder-mounted camera saving to VHS tape in a shoulder-slung module - maximum effort for meagre results!
I think the issue for me was how "real life" and "digital life" are basically on equal footing when looking through this device. So your kids are now competing with whatever youtube video you are watching and it's harder to look away from the digital distraction. The same is true today when you are watching a video on your phone, but it's way easier to get someone to look away from their phone when it's not life-size, constantly in view, and always on
To me the dystopian moment was when they revealed that an AI-generated rendition of one’s face will be presented during video conversations. We were worried already about the photographs taken with phones no longer being real, this brings the issue to a whole new level.
I've seen this sentiment repeated ad nauseam since this morning, but I can't fully understand it. The comparison isn't between Vision and full presence. Imagine watching the same video with Dad pointing his phone at everyone instead. The days of experiencing things worth remembering with full presence are already over for most people—this isn't any worse than pointing a big opaque block at the person. Either way, there's a barrier. At least this way we can see their eyes to some extent, right?
While that was an initial reaction for me too, it's also really just a reaction to different tech. Many a "special memory" was captured by dad (or mom) behind an 8mm camera or a camcorder. The entire opening to "The Wonder Years"[1] was designed to capture that "home movie" feel, which would have been conducted by a parent holding something like this[2]. Even into the 90's and 00's it would have been done with a mini-dv camcorder (and later digital), which while smaller was still a bulky device floating around infront of the image recorder's face.
It's only with the advent of proper video recording tech in a cell phone that this technology has gotten so small that it's (mostly) unobtrusive and since everyone has one on them all the time, it's not surprising when someone pulls it out and starts recording.
And many a larger family event usually has one (or more) family members dedicated to capturing on film / camera anyway, so what difference would it make what tech they were using to do it?
If this thing caught on, it would be no different from any of those others, with the two possible exceptions of
A) actually being more present for the recorder, as opposed to looking through a view finder wobbling in their hands, it's just whatever they're looking at through this thing already attached to their head. Additionally for child events, they could still be actively involved with both hands (as opposed to one or none with other camera equipment and trying to work through a view finder.
B) Being less obtrusive to the rest of the people. Sure, people "should" just enjoy the moment, but I'd rather be at a concert with a few thousand people using these to record their moment than a few thousand people holding their cellphones up trying to record it around everyone else's hands.
Another thing to consider are cases where this is used by people who are already professionally recording stuff. Sure, your wedding photographer you probably still want using a real quality camera setup, but would anyone be salty about the photographer's assistant going around and capturing 3d video and pictures of your wedding with this thing? I doubt it.
Holding a gadget is slightly different than having a HMD mounted on your face. It is different for the operator, and it is different for thoe standing around and participating.
Getting used to the HMD might be possible but would be harder and also sad when it does happen.
Also to capture a 3D photo you could also use just a hand held device with stereo cameras. We dont necessarily need a HMD for it unless we are going for that precise framing where a 2D preview doesnt cut it. I wish such a device was perfected for the mass market. It could be as simple as a pair of regular cameras mounted on the back of a smartphone -- separated by the inter-ocular distance.
I agree that it would be different, but I don't agree that it would be sad to get used to. In the long run, head mounted recording means the person doing the recording can be much more involved in the goings on. With both hands free, they can be an active participant instead of off to the side holding a camera and trying to stay out of the way. I don't know if the tech is built in yet, but since it already does eye tracking, an external camera that's recording what the user is looking at, instead of what the camera is pointed at means that the user can be more engaged because they're focused on what's in front of them rather than making sure the camera is in position. The view finder goes away and literally becomes your view period.
I see your point -- but at least in the current iteration the HMD doesnt let the user view the actual outside world directly with their eyes (there is no optical pass through). What the user sees with their eyes and focusses on is whatever the HMD presents on the internal 4K displays, one for each eye.
Similarly from perspective of others around, they dont see the real eyes of the user - just a simulation of that. So any "eye-contact" -- even with the best execution of technology with high fidelity and low latency -- will still be something different from real eye-contact. I am no purist but difficult to accept at this point for in-person interactions. We have already gotten used to it for facetime / video calls.
Something like Google Glass might be easier to assimilate, maybe?
8 years ago, I recorded by graduation ceremony with a 360-degree panorama. I did the same with my first live concert at Wembley. It's something I can view with a Google Cardboard headset.
But to this day, it remains my most powerful photographic memory and I'm glad I took it.
Very weird, but I can definitely see this becoming something you can capture on your phone eventually (and view on your VisionThing). If these take off then I'll bet money that capturing things for AR/VR on your phone will be a priority for Apple
It was the same thing in the 80s with camcorders. There was a stereotype of the crazy neighbor who followed his kids around with his camcorder recording every second of their lives. Then it was smart phones. Now it's this. People want to take photos and videos of stuff and it's more important to them than looking dorky for a few minutes. I don't like it very much, either, but I understand it, and it's pretty much human nature.
we just finished conditioning everyone to cover the bottom half of their face—suggesting now that one keep the top half of their face covered, around the home, around their children, is nothing short of horrifying, both in terms of brazen anti-human dystopia, but more importantly, in terms of childhood development. if this, or something like it, takes off in the "iPhone" way that many here predict, future generations are going to be so completely fucked from the perspective of anything resembling traditional social development—which, of course, the iPhone, by way of the iPad, has already fucked up pretty significantly!
face-detection is fundamentally important to interpersonal interaction in the baseline human experience (are you aware of the phenomenon of pareidolia?)—fuck with it at your own peril, both for children learning how to read expressions by observing adults, but also, for adults interacting with virtual "AI" simulacra, instead of real human faces! ignoring these basic observations is naïve as hell, regardless of Thanksgiving dinner conversation palatability (always a high watermark for intellectual discourse)!
thankfully, I don't see any reason to believe this will take off "iPhone-style".
Wrong, wrong and wrong again. This looks absolutely great I hope they make a kid size version so everyone can wear one. Anytime a grandpa complains that 'kids these days are fucked' they are demonstrated time and time again that they were wrong. Thousands of years ago people said the same things and they never came true. Have you not learned your lesson yet?
In a few years we will laugh at people not wearing these things just like today you are a weirdo if you do not have a smartphone in your pocket. Kids will be just fine. It's the grandpas screaming at the clouds who will not be fine and excluded even more.
The train is leaving the station. You either board it or remain in the darkness and cold. Forward, forward always forward. Anybody against progress will be trampled under our feet.
can't tell if this is satire or not, but assuming it's not, have you seen young children with their rubber-bumpered iPads these days? parents let them take them out in public just to shut them up, and they're always on the damn things, learning to tap and swipe to consume mindless content from well before their brains have fully formed. this is where personal computers have gone: from being useful devices that can be used (and programmed!) to produce or consume content, to being no-brain-required content pumps that you can use to turn your brain off and fill it full of inane drivel.
but I'm at least half-certain your post is satire, so...
I have. Those kids will grow up just fine. It's all in your head. Those kids will grow up to invent/innovate on levels you can't even imagine today. Like it has always been. Might as well just stop complaining about the "weird new generation" just because that "back in my day" it was better. It wasn't. It's just rose tinted glasses.
how is this possible, when all of the devices the "kids these days" are using are entirely geared toward content consumption, with the only "content" "creation" they permit is that of the most vapid and useless pointing-a-camera-at-my-face variety? The Youth do not know how to use computers to create new good things, they only know how to consume what is already out there. the only creation they aspire to do is that of insipid Content, built atop the foundations of others' platforms, for others to mindlessly consume.
in decades past, one would be forgiven for supposing that, once devices that could ostensibly be considered to be Personal Computers became pocket-sized and nearly universally ubiquitous, complete with access to a global network of information, that we would've reached the culmination of the technological empowerment that the personal computer revolution promised—but instead, we got TikTok, and kids who aspire to be Famous On TikTok. that's what all of this marvelous technology has wrought: brain-numbing slop piped right into your retinas, in exquisitely high definition, practically from birth, judging by the age at which I've seen kids on tablets in public alone!
It is absolutely possible and it's exactly what will happen. Back in my day parents and grandpas were horrified with these things called video games which sucked the lives out of their kids. And how repetitive and mind numbing it all was and how humanity was doomed. Guess what? Didn't happen. It didn't happen back then it won't happen now. Chillax and go watch a few tik tok videos. Not everything there is garbage. You just need to give it time in order to see the value.
It also seems like more and more people are unable to start their own life until later, living with parents longer, starting work later, etc. I assume there's a correlation.
The people I know that are addicted to video games into their twenties and thirties certainly fit the bill. They're going nowhere fast.
Hmm either their brains are melted or the entire world economy is tilted against the working class to a degree not seen in a hundred years, and it's hitting the kids the hardest. I certainly know which one I think is more likely...
You say they play video games because the economy sucks. I say the economy sucks because they're playing video games. Real chicken and egg situation we have here.
You should be a consultant for the Fed. Quite an economic theory you have there. I’m sure you have data to prove it too. Such as less hours worked (as they were busy playing games) and not less earned per hour. Now that I think about it, those Agatha Christie novels probably caused The Great Depression.
I don't disagree with you regarding the negative cultural shift caused by social media nor your concerns about stuff like kids wanting to be TikTok famous. Where I do disagree though is your suggestion that kids now are exclusively content consumers at a level higher than in the past and the idea that tech like smart phones and tablets have caused that to happen. If anything it feels like kids have access to way more ways to be creative and create new things than ever thanks to those devices.
When I was about 10 years old I wanted to make a movie (it was going to be a basketball version of The Sandlot) but my parents didn't own a camcorder and couldn't afford to buy me one so I was out of luck and never got to experiment creatively in that way. Last time I saw my brother's family his 9 year old was super excited to show me the musical she and her friends had recorded using her Amazon Fire tablet. My cousin's 12 year old has a bunch of (actually rather impressive) stop motion shorts on Youtube that he created and edited on the family's iPad.
In high school it was super time consuming and slow learning to program reading books and writing simple command line programs I could only run after being super careful installing a Linux distro from a CD in a magazine on my family's one PC cause the C book I bought was unix focused. Now my significant other's 16 year old niece is learning to program on an iPad with Swift Playgrounds, she was literally doing it sitting on the beach last time we went on vacation together. My sister's 11 year old meanwhile loves showing off the frankly ridiculous number of levels he built in Roblox just using an iPad.
Like yeah, theres definitely a lot of kids (and adults) that do not create and only consume content, and I've definitely seen all of the kids I mentioned doing the dead-eyed-stare-at-glowing-screen thing, but I don't think thats new, most kids and people in general have always been like that. And yes most devices are mostly used for consumption, but suggesting those devices limit the ability of kids to be creative just seems incorrect when I see them providing so many creative outlets that I never had access to because they didn't exist previously.
Just on a philosophical level: is it possible for a child to have a better or worse childhood, as measured by adulthood competence (critical thinking skills, EQ, IQ, whatever)? Like, assuming that iPads are awesome - is it necessarily true that all new technology always helps no matter what?
The neural implant episode of Black Mirror has a much better UX. You can help the mass and micro surveillance effort without the uncomfortable headset and be present with the kids.
The ads I see on billboards for apple have been getting very dystopian over the years. One was just a humongous iPhone being held in hand, completely blocking the actors face, with the wrist cocked at this very uncomfortably looking angle such that the apple watch face was perfectly squared to the phone. It felt like something out of Black Mirror, like if I moved the phone there would be no face or some sick grin. A far cry from the cute dancing earpod silhouettes.
This ad where she makes the real world disappear always struck me as dystopian. If I'm near a parade, I'd want to absorb that energy, not repel it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVW8-px4Ufw
Are you old enough to remember the big VHS video recorders? The shoulder mounted ones? This is minuscule and unobtrusive comparatively. Nothing dystopian about it.
It was an absolute flop, but I really appreciated how Google's "Clips" tried to solve this problem. Clip it on somewhere or stick it somewhere with a nice perspective, do your day and live in the moment, and afterward maybe it captured some special moments. A product that tried to let you be MORE in the moment. Fantastic idea.
Turned out to not work in practice. Shame, really.
i think the angle they are going for is that it’s exactly as isolating (airplane, the experience you MOST want to get away from), or un-isolating (being with kids, the experience you LEAST want to get away from), as you want. and it flubbed
As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500. To wear these on flights, in small hotel rooms, etc. is definitely a game changer. I have no use for video games so the Quest stuff with the controllers never made sense.
I think people that complain about the price are anchoring on the Quest price, same as people who anchored on MP3 player prices when the iPod came out at 10x the price. Even if the Quest was $100 or $50, I wouldn't buy it because its just not useful.
For sure I am an early adopter on this one, but as others have said, this is Gen 1. It will get cheaper, faster, smaller, better, last longer, have less bugs, etc. This is the way technology works. It makes progress.
So many unfortunate maximalist (bigger than the iPhone moment) or doomer (this is pointless and always will be) takes here. I'm glad companies still take swings in the face of the way people respond here.
EDIT: I don't see these as "metaverse" glasses or VR as much as a $3500 display which framed in that way is completely reasonable, it's $1000 cheaper than this https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/pro-display-xdr
I agree the simple monitor replacement use case is probably one of the best in terms of real world usefulness.
But it's also the one that is most open to competition because it has no ecosystem link. There are already half a dozen alternatives at $400-$1k type range that give you virtual monitors. eg: the XReal Air [0]. It's interesting that even while they are generating some interest, it doesn't seem to me that AR glasses as monitors on their own are taking off yet in a mainstream way.
So it's going to be a question of how much more it can add to that or do better than that. Is just branding it Apple enough? Maybe. But I feel like it needs at least something else than purely being a monitor to compete with the alternatives.
Yeah, I'm not sure even this one is going to really be high res enough to make a good monitor replacement, but the other hmds I've seen certainly aren't.
1080p per eye resolution[0], not really a proper display replacement.
Works pretty well for games and media though, these are semi-popular in the Steam Deck community.
These also have zero processing and require a device to connect to, there is no positional tracking either so the display floats wherever you move your head to.
That's still not capable of producing a central "work area" the angular size of a book at the reading distance with a reasonable angular resolution figure.
Speculating but what if this screen pixel density is not uniform but much more dense in the center and they use eye tracking to shift those screens mechanically similar like the shift camera sensor array for image stabilization?
>Saccades to an unexpected stimulus normally take about 200 milliseconds (ms) to initiate, and then last from about 20–200 ms, depending on their amplitude (20–30 ms is typical in language reading).
Are you sure? Seems like plenty of time - even current iphone camera since many generations have 240fps and most android even handle 720fps mode - current iphones should handle it probsbly even in software (except their camera has quite high latency last time when tested) but they handle it in hardware R1 chip anyway. Since they using probably something like truedepth IR pattern projector, with 720fps grayscale camera should be easy to have very fast motion detector just checking only regions around dots
Yeah definitely this would be the most tricky part, but someone mentioned here those screen are the size of post stamp - so if that's true they probsbly closer than lenses in standard correction glasses and the shift wouldn't have to be that big
If they alternate eyes rapidly, like active 3D glasses do, couldn't that double or nearly double the perceived resolution (if each eye is offset by 1/2 pixel from the other)?
Totally. Meta framed any VR device as a metaverse device, which I have no desire to ever participate in. I just want to use "VR" the same way I use my laptop.
With a big IF. If leak is interpreted as someone recording our screen from our back.
What about someone stealing it? Are we aware with our surrounding while using it?
The presentation talks exentsively about that. Default mode is complete passthrough and you can dynamically change how much of your surroundings you want to see.
Also, it scans your eyes for identification. Someone stealing your device probably won't bring them at all closer to your data.
1. Since it's an extended display over wireless, bandwidth limitations mean you're limited to just a single 4k resolution monitor floating in space (they mentioned that it simulates a single 4k monitor in the demo)
2. You also would have to bring your laptop with you
To me, one of the major value propositions for something like the Vision Pro would be that it could replace your laptop entirely. But it doesn't seem like that will be the case, at least based on what they've announced.
I'm about 80% sure they'll come up with an USB-C -> Vision cable you can use to plug in to your Mac.
Or the power bank is an USB-C bank and you can just detach the cable from it and plug it in directly and use the laptop's battery + get a wired connection.
Well you can have the laptop as a single screen floating in space and then other floating screens that are running off the Vision Pro, e.g. your web browser, docs, etc.
Quest Pro weights 722g while MacBook Air 15 weights 1.5kg. How can you expect it's twice heavier than Quest? It's completely unacceptable for most people's head.
Hmm, I guess you could take it that way. But things that light only really get tiring if the weight is poorly distributed. It's more about the size and sort of bag it's likely to be in.
Really? On flights? That struck me as a… weird use case I could never be confident enough to do. Strapping something to your face, noise cancelling headphones in, you’ve become basically unapproachable for anyone around you. Is someone that needs to get past you going to awkwardly tap you on the shoulder and you either creepily turn over to them with your projected eyes staring back, or watch in awkward silence as you disentangle the headset + AirPod max combo. I hope you don’t get the aisle seat!
This is no different to how many people behave on long haul flights anyway. Face mask on, eye mask on, ear plugs in. Isolated from everybody else as much as they can be, trying to sleep, and they manage it in isle seats.
Also, I remember TotalBiscuit talking about using an Oculus headset to watch films on a plane and it being a better experience than the screen in front for him (I don't quite remember why). So it's not a new concept and this device just makes it less cumbersome, I guess.
Many such system (that I've used anyway) play very low resolution movies, on bad screens, using the laggiest Android tablets you can imagine. And you have all the other things in your eyesight distracting you.
Not to mention that they pause constantly for in-flight announcements about duty free shopping, donating unused international currency, tray tables, dimming cabin lights, etc. That alone makes it worth bringing your own content on tablet or phone with your own headphones. If a host approaches about a meal choice, you'd see them through the headset. If there was an emergency, someone would tap you on the shoulder.
Being unapproachable on flights is a decidedly good thing IMO. Also, so many people already use noise cancelling headphones and/or sleep masks, how is this any different?
The audio isn't noise cancelling. The speakers are on the strap right by your ears so you'll still hear everything else around you. If anything my concern on flights would be that someone next to me can hear my audio, not that I can't hear them. (but maybe you can also use AirPods)
You can also adjust your "immersion level". As in, have the screen floating in front of you and still see the space around you, or have reality totally blanked out. Seems like at a low immersion level you'd have no problem turning to address someone trying to get your attention. The worst part might be how ridiculous you look talking to and addressing someone normally while wearing these. (though perhaps like the AirPods, the perception of it being a goofy look will fade with time)
Ah that totally makes sense and seems like it's Apple's way of tacitly acknowledging that people around you can hear the built-in speakers. With the immersion level turned down it seems like the noise cancelling AirPods will be a bigger hurdle to someone getting your attention than the headset itself. (putting aside the silliness you'll feel talking to someone while casually wearing it)
They also announced new feature to airpods something liked auto adaptive immersion that they detect what to noise cancel and what not dynamically depending on changing environment. On video they showed someone when someone start talking to you they will reduce immersion and the same when you start talking.
Similarly when when showed up close to you while you are in fill apple vision pro VR impression mode they will reduce it see this person slightly blended with your VR world
Using a laptop on a flight is very uncomfortable for me. Just being able to push the keyboard to the back of the tray table and push the screen out into the row in front of me would be worth a lot to me.
I'm introverted so it's actually a nightmare when people want to have conversations with me the whole flight. I do intercontinental flights (10-15 hour) every 2-3 weeks. I'm either sleep, have my headphones on, or both.
I don't think it would feel too much worse than waking someone on the aisle up.
> you’ve become basically unapproachable for anyone around you
Oh! you're not the captive audience of a strangers unwanted small talk then? That's been an undesirable part of traveling solo for a lot of people. The shoulder tap will still work fine if you need to get past somebody to stand up.
So I guess yeah small talk is normally bad and uninteresting, but essentially putting a blind fold on? People are that selective about who they’ll even consider socializing with?
To be fair I’m not regularly on planes/trains so maybe I’m just not annoyed enough by it.
Not everyone wants to "socialise" with random people.
I have a set amount of hours I can be social every day, I prefer to use those towards the people I care about. Not someone who's bored on a flight and wants to chat.
> As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500. To wear these on flights, in small hotel rooms, etc. is definitely a game changer. I have no use for video games so the Quest stuff with the controllers never made sense.
Eh? Things like watching videos on a flight were tried with Samsung Gear VR or Google Day Dream. It flopped. Want a virtual office on a flight? Well fire up Virtual Desktop on an Occulus today and you've got exactly that - no controller needed.
On a flight something like Occulus' passthrough mode looks perfectly adequate - after all, the whole point in that scenario is to isolate not to socialize. So the plain/train/bus usage seems questionable, and do you really want to travel with something that bulky?
GearVR was a precursor to the Oculus Go, which was quite successful. It showed that lots of people wanted a device to watch media and user retention was pretty good:
From Carmack's Oculus Connect 2018 talk:
> With Oculus Go, about 80 percent of usage time has been for viewing "media" and only 20 percent for gaming.
> Oculus Go and Rift are much "stickier," he says, with users that "come back... week to week and spend a lot of time in it."
What you say is technically true but you still need the controllers for setup and that is quite annoying if you travel a lot. I read OPs level of travel as > 8 hours in air per week and > 3 nights in hotel per week.
what's the virtual desktop on a plane situation you're describing ?
i thought it needed airlink to a local computer or a really fast internet connection to a remote computer but maybe i'm not up to date
if the vision pro gives me a laptop-mac experience in vr without needing a separate computer with me, that's a pretty compelling use case to me
good point
it's got a custom connector to the headset but hoping that it'll be possible to use a bigger battery pack or seat power outlets/usb will provide enough to keep it going longer than 2 hours
From the video, you can turn the headset into an external display for your Mac[0]. This is critical since I'm doubtful I'd be able to get much work down in visionOS alone.
The use case I imagine is that you still use your laptop keyboard and trackpad like normal, but now you just have a mirrored display floating above it in whatever the ideal size/position is for you. For this to work of course you have to still be able to see your laptop. But if the marketing is to be believed it'll do that quite well.
([0]: Apple already supports turning an iPad into an external Mac display and amazingly it works quite well. It sets up a direct device-to-device wireless link (awdl/llw) and there's no noticeably latency. I assume the headset will take a similar approach)
feel free to be optimistic about this and help the progress by being an early adopter.
although do not discount the skepticism made through objective observations. apple has tried ar for better part of a decade with limited success. ar/vr/mixed-reality headsets have come a long way but the realities of current technologies remain.
on the other hand, we've had established music players before ipod, people using internet-connected phones before the iphone.
in retrospect, google glasses wasn't a bad form factor all along than these ski googles!
Most economy long haul flights have power outlets. I do at least 20 ten hour flights a year and always sit in economy so for me, the battery power isn’t an issue.
So many technologies Apple has launched in the past 5 years seemed nifty & weird but were all being built to lead up to this:
- Spatial Audio - Is any one a huge fan of this? It doesn't matter a ton outside of AR but matters greatly within it
- Side Car - mirroring to a local apple device. It's useful as a second monitor but... mirroring your iPad or MacBook into VR and typing on it. Super useful.
- FaceID - is it really better than using your finger to unlock? I think it is now but it wasn't initially... This face scanning tech is an entry point into the whole "face as an avatar" integration into their ecosystem. Also keeping a secure local image of your face on device.
- Separating a subject from scene used live in iPhone "portrait" view and in photos to clip out w/ neural engine - sure that's fun, but in AR this is a lot more useful for presenter view they showed.
That's off the top of my head. This totally could fail but piece by piece Apple has been building and trying out the tech for this in their ecosystem. If it fails, it won't be because of a buggy ecosystem.
Actually, I still find side car buggy so it definitely could/will be buggy, but, it is a broad integration and feature set they've been working towards for a while.
I made a similar comment almost a year ago and it seems like it's panning out nicely:
> "Apple has been testing overengineered features that are suspiciously well suited for AR in broad daylight for a few years now. If they can't pull it off, I don't think anyone can."
They've reached a stage where outpacing the field is just a matter of reaching into their grab bag of miscellaneous technologies.
Gigantic fan. Listening to music or movies/TV on headphones without it seems almost painful now -- I sound like I'm exaggerating but I'm not.
Once you get used to audio always sounding like it's coming from outside of your head, going back to non-spatial audio that seems like it's emanating from inside of your head is jarring and positively claustrophobic.
And nobody's as surprised as me to find myself typing something like that. I always imagined it would just be a gimmick, but at least on the AirPods it's anything but. And it wasn't until the "Spatialize Stereo" toggle appeared recently that it worked with everthing, like regular tracks on Spotify.
the fact that the latest 100 gecs album has a spatial master was a big tell for me. spatial is definitely going to stick
even just their boiler room set in spatial sounded more realistic than any other live thing i've ever listened to. hearing the crowd around you is surreal
Maybe add the 3D scanner on the back of the Pro iPhones (and some iPads?) to your list? It’s cool, but I never understood why they bothered, especially as they barely supported it with their own software.
Yeah. Apple tech portfolio is serious great for this. You miss Apple Silicon chip. Its performance(/watt) is now a bit overpowered for iPhone/iPad, but it's critical for AR headset.
I can't wait for more 3D photography - I bet an iPhone in the near future is going to support stereocameras somehow so that even pictures you take off the headset will be 3d. And I bet they're going to have more ways to view them without the headset.
I think Apple TV+ may even be a part of this. On its own, its a below average streaming service. But as a proprietary production studio that can bootstrap a VR content library by force of will...?
Is Apple TV+ below average? I've liked all the original content I've watched on it, which is something I can't say for... literally any other streaming service.
I've never heard such breathless praise of nonsense before. every vr headset has had spatial audio. mirroring a desktop to vr has been doable on vive or oculus for years and years. faceid literally has nothing to do with this vr headset. etc etc.
Oh I am definitely not saying they came up with any of that. I'm just saying they were laying the groundwork for their own ecosystem.
And sure, desktop mirroring is in every headset but sidecar isn't "plug a cable in and mirror your screen" it's project your screen to another device you own without any cables. That's more attractive for someone with a few apple devices.
Also not saying others haven't done that, but it's an ecosystem and having the talent for a thing.
>And sure, desktop mirroring is in every headset but sidecar isn't "plug a cable in and mirror your screen" it's project your screen to another device you own without any cables. That's more attractive for someone with a few apple devices.
Just calling it like I see it, Boss. There’s so much praise of apple that’s just empty mental farts by people who haven’t escaped the grip of advertising, and the post I replied to in this thread is one of them.
The very first paper published by Apple's machine learning group, in 2016, was about using GANs to generate synthetic training data sets. The examples they used were eyes and hands.
3,500 seems SO worth it if this can be used to comfortably replace external displays for long periods of time.
If I don't need external monitors, I don't need my large desk, and I don't need my home office, which adds like 100k to the price of any home I'd consider. I'd just work from a bedroom, a closet, or my deck if I had this.
It would be amazing if I could use this to do more work outside, while benefitting from a larger screen without glare, even though "outside" might be watered down a bit. It would be excellent for nomading or work/entertainment from a hotel room.
This could be a great way to regain some privacy and focus in an open office environment, plus be able to personalize your setup. A digital beach backdrop is better than seeing my coworker scratch his crusty scalp 2 feet in front of me.
The benefits for air travel are obvious. People already swaddle themselves with large noise cancelling headphones and zany neck pillows. I don't think this would be weird plane at all. I'd kill for an immersive 4k display over craning at my phone or relying on flaky seatback entertainment.
> If I don't need external monitors, I don't need my large desk, and I don't need my home office, which adds like 100k to the price of any home I'd consider.
First thing my SO mentioned on seeing this was "wow, we can try more kinds of places to stay when we travel". Lots of VRBO / AirBnB can't work for remote work.
This expands the inventory of WR options for less than the price difference of a week's stay.
> 3,500 seems SO worth it if this can be used to comfortably replace external displays
Agreed, but that's a huge IF. The ergonomics problems with VR headsets are well documented - has Apple really managed to transcend them? I'm not gambling $3500 for a thing that probably ends up sitting in a drawer because it gives me neck cramps or eye strain or motion sickness.
If Apple wants to drive adoption they need to lower that risk. A way to have a trial period or a one-week rental would help.
I’m not sure why you got downvoted. Apple is a trillion dollar company. They certainly have looked into this, and many of the leaks supported this theory.
It would be a little silly, but lets be honest, you probably would be wearing at hat or something. Probably under an umbrella or other shade. I doubt anyone wants to sit in direct summer sun outside with this on.
But I've totally be on my patio in the morning with an umbrella up trying to work on my MBA. The screen just doesn't get bright enough to be easy to work with. I'd totally do the AVP if they worked brighter environments.
Thank you for this! While yes, it is expensive and I do think a bit wild I would pay serious, serious money to migrate away from my home office.
Ever since I began remote work I have been cooking up ways to code outside but the glare alone puts me off from it. I am a solo kind of person who enjoys media a ton and am already a huge fan of Apple’s displays.
I guess with all the naysayers here it makes me happy to see someone who understands the potential. This is awesome, and the first VR set I have wanted to purchase. The price is steep and I may even wait a generation. But if I had to bet, this will end up absurdly successful similar to all of their other recent home runs.
4~5K per eye feels like a lot, and it's impressive VR technology wise. But mapping a monitor at realistic size (let's say half of the field of view) at this resolution means we're below 2K to display text/images.
We've lived with 2K monitors for decades, so that sure could be workable, but the same way it's a clash to move from a Retina screen to an old 1080p monitor, I think it will clash to move from a current MacBook to this headset as a work monitor.
For games that's not an issue of course, but 3500 for a gaming device makes the calculation pretty different.
This is a bit disingenuous. The 2013 MacBook Pro (a single decade ago) was the first mainstream device with a resolution above 1080p and with scaling people effectively still had a 1440x900 screen anyway. 1280x800 was common at the time for 13" devices. High DPI has really only taken off in the last 5 years.
That MacBook was the first device to offer High DPI in that package (I wouldn't be surprised if there was some obscure Sony laptop on par with that, but doesn't matter). But weirdly enough CRT at that time had decent resolution for the distance they were supposed to be viewed at. I remember Iiyama having 1600+ px screens for sub 20" CRTs, at expensive but manageable prices (something around 500+?)
We'd accept many compromizes for laptops anyway, so a lower resolution/worst refresh rate to have LCD panels instead was part of the package.
Depth of desks could go from 2-3' to 1'. Offices could fit more desks.
But I think we'll see people using these with virtual displays, and then co-workers' personas bleeding in from the periphery. Companies will go from requiring in-office workers to being OK with staff WFH if they have a device like this. $3500 is going to be cheap when compared with office space per person.
I returned my Quest Pro due to annoying and frequent software bugs. It was a great device when it worked, although I'd prefer a slightly higher resolution.
> I don't need my large desk, and I don't need my home office
Idk man, I'd always prefer having a dedicated work space. I even have a separate 'tinkering' space in my garage purely so I have a frame of mind of 'what' I am working on.
What kind of work are you going to do on this without a keyboard, mouse, and a laptop nearby for tethering? And if all those are still a requirement then you're back to being stuck on your desk.
Stuck at a desk, sure, but as it stands I need a pretty big desk to hold my ultrawide monitor while still having enough room to hold regular physical things like notebooks, test hardware, and other tools. Being able to ditch the monitor and work with just a small 13" laptop would make small desks more practical.
Your laptop needn't be in front of you. You just need space for a keyboard and mouse/trackpad. That's "Stable Table" size, so works on the couch, dining table, kitchen bench, outside table, etc. Without relocating your external displays. Or your home office desk could be 12" deep rather than 2-3x that.
As they demonstrated, Bluetooth accessories like a keyboard and mouse can be used. I basically did this, during the pandemic, with my Quest 2, a TV tray, and my MacBook sitting on the floor, next to me. I used my closet.
No tethering required (It is an M2 based computer) and it works with bluetooth keyboard and mouse. So, to answer your question, you will do whatever kinds of work you do today.
I do think you're ignoring a huge part of the problem though, and that's software support. Because reality OS is iOS-based, we're likely going to end up with the same limitations, and many professional industries (software engineering, for one) just won't be able to take advantage of the device fully.
Of course there's workarounds (I used GitHub Codespaces for a while on my iPad and went without a Mac, and you could use the desktop streaming available on the headset), but they are no match for the same convenience you get by staying fully within Apple's walled garden.
I think I'll skip the first generation and wait for the resolution to become better. 4k is good for a 22" external monitor, but having 4k cover your field of vision will make have to move your eyes a lot for the text to look good.
It's nearly 5k per eye. The Reverb G2 is only 2160x2160, a bit over 1/3rd of that pixel density and is already quite usable for coding, so I expect the Vision Pro to be well beyond "good enough" territory.
Yeah I am curious to see how well this works in practice. Resolution and screen size is a delicate balance, and the face-mounted aspect of this throws conventional wisdom of what works well out the window.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to try it out in an Apple store but I don't have high hopes for anything text related. I'm also skeptical to the 12ms (83fps) refresh rate.
I was sceptical going into today that Apple were going to be able to make an AR product for $3000 that could justify that price point, especially when my XReal glasses only cost $399. I was even more sceptical when I heard they were going to be VR capable and goggles.
Well fuck me. This thing looks absolutely insane. It’s come in at $3499 and if it performs as good as those videos make out then, if anything, it’s a bargain.
I can’t believe they’ve managed to do away with controllers for everything except serious typing. I can’t believe they’ve managed to cram more pixels than a 4k TV on to the size of a postage stamp. And I can’t believe we’ll soon be reliving memories in 3d (just please put the same camera technology into the phones so the kids don’t have a childhood of staring up at goggle eyed parents until this tech become sufficiently miniaturised).
I puzzled how you can be surprised by all this. There's nothing here that wasn't well understood, expected. 95% of it is just showing things other devices have done for years.
> I can’t believe they’ve managed to do away with controllers
Meta has been shipping it for several years on the Quest line. It's now extremely good. I'm keen to hear if Apple have shipped something better and they may have, but it's hardly "can't believe" territory.
> I can’t believe they’ve managed to cram more pixels than a 4k TV on to the size of a postage stamp
You're repeating Apple marketing lines verbatim. That's just what a micro OLED display is - the tech has been around for a while. They aren't made by Apple, half a dozen other VR/AR headsets are shipping these.
Well fire the marketing departments of all those other companies then if that's true. Because I've seen their demos and none of them showed anything anywhere near what I saw today.
You can be salty if you want, but Palmer Lucky came out and said this thing is "so good" last week. He knows a thing or two about this stuff and I'm inclined to believe him.
> Well fire the marketing departments of all those other companies
Yes. Meta has been awful at it.
> You can be salty if you want
Unfortunate that you turn to that type of sentiment here. It sours otherwise interesting discussion.
> Palmer Lucky came out and said this thing is "so good" last week
You should definitely understand his history before taking what he says at face value. But nobody is saying this isn't good. It's really good. In fact it's great. But it's not surprising. It's just putting together the best quality of things we've already seen across multiple other products at a very high price.
So, like the iPhone did then? I’m not suggesting this will be a repeat, but I do remember similar commentary. VR has felt like a bunch of tech demo’s (you can see the potential, but no one’s managed to put it all together). I’m interested to see if Apple can make that ‘step change’ as they did with phones.
To be fair, only one other phone had a capacitive touchscreen, and Apple provided the first OS that could really leverage it. The situation between Apple Vision and the numerous long-running incumbents with similar technology is very different to the unveiling of the iPhone.
I actually went and booted up my Quest 1 today to check if it had the hand tracking. It did! I logged into HN with it and browsed around for a while. It all felt startlingly futuristic after watching WWDC hype it up so much, I'll admit that much. The experience without controllers is good enough that I question the diminishing returns at $1,500 for the Quest Pro, let alone $3,500 for the Vision Pro.
> Palmer Lucky came out and said this thing is "so good" last week
While we're talking bigwigs, Mark Gurman had some stuff to say about the Quest 3 too:
> I came away impressed with the mixed-reality focus of the Quest 3, the much-improved video pass-through capabilities, the faster performance and the large content library. Assuming the device costs about $500, it would be about a fifth as much as the Apple headset — while being more than a fifth as compelling.
Make of that what you will. I'm going to go watch Avatar in bed.
That's all the validation I need. When John Carmack and Tim Sweeney said the PS5 was "so good" it was the same thing for me. You can geek out all you want on the specs but you're wasting your time. Let the experts weigh in and shut the f*ck up.
The Quest 2 has a PPI of 780, and the highest out right now is the HP Reverb with a 1057 PPI. The Vision Pro is 4000 PPI, a substantial jump. That’s not “just a micro OLED display.”
Controllers are largely optional, but if you want to play most serious games they need a controller. I think Apple is largely ignoring the gaming segment with their headset, apart from Apple Arcade games, which sounds like they will be played with a paired Playstation or Xbox controller.
The Quest Pro (~$1300) has an upgraded resolution of 2,160 x 2,160 pixels per eye. If Apple's marketing is to be believed they are offering double the pixel resolution of the Quest Pro.
Low latency Video pass through so that you can actually see the physical surroundings and/or your own hands to grab something that somebody is handing to you without getting motion sickness.
Have you tried a Quest Pro? I had the opportunity to use one for a bit and the latency of the passthrough was really good. Apple's implementation will undoubtedly be better but they're not even the first "mainstream" option for low latency video passthrough.
I'll preface this by stating that I don't like Apple products and I love my Quest 2.
We absolutely need the 10x better in VR for "spatial computing". Right now the issue with the Quest 2 for work is that it's way too heavy/bulky, is not sharp enough, has jitters that make you dizzy and the integration with your computer is always a bit hit or miss (mine has trouble connecting through AirLink half the time).
The issue with the above is that they are experience breaking. I completely "buy" what Apple is selling here because the current solutions simply fall short. If I can't read code properly or my neck hurts after 1 hour it's a deal breaker and the headset goes unused. 4k per-eye and almost ski mask thickness with the battery in my pocket might actually bridge the gap.
I won't pay 3k+ for it, but we definitely need it to be 10x better because the 1x is still pretty far from a daily driver.
I will quite happily exchange more money for higher quality and higher privacy. Meta have crossed so many ethical boundaries and caused so many societal problems why anyone still wants to give them both their data and their money is beyond me. Do you really want that company to be able to track your eye movements? Any time you browse any product website that information is going to be logged, they're going to know exactly what you want and you're going to be bombarded with adverts wherever they possibly can.
You get what you pay for. If you pay less than what it costs to develop the technology then YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.
It's so atrocious with the Quest 2 as to be virtually unusable though.
It's black and white, low-res, incredibly grainy, and there are weird seams in a bunch of transition spots because the cameras are further apart than the eyes so it's doing weird reconstruction. It's legitimately hard to grab objects using it because your arms and hands aren't quite in the right place.
What Apple looks like they're doing makes it actually useful.
I've heard this expressed a few times but I find it perfectly usable for what I need it for. It is a free feature reusing the existing IR cameras for pass through. My home space is always the pass through home because it's so useful to see your surroundings.
It's definitely not AR but for reaching out and grabbing something (as I was replying to) or walking around it's perfectly acceptable. The 3D effect is perfect so you can actually reach out and grab whatever you want.
Wow, that's really interesting that we have such different experiences with it.
I really want to use passthru as my home space but the problem is that it actually makes me nauseous after a few minutes. I have zero nausea with the Quest 2 normally because everything aligns perfectly in terms of movement and depth, but the 3D in passthru is just off enough to make me feel sick.
Maybe just different people's sensitivities to things.
I wonder if there is variation in hardware. I have a newer Quest 2. I actually do feel sick with movement in VR but I find the 3D passthru to be basically dead-on so it's fine.
I participated in another thread about this and there was the same kind split: People either thought it was great or that it was completely unusable.
I don’t know, but I suspect that when dealing with immersive experiences there really is a breakpoint that matters deeply. It’s sort of like “retina” screens. You can improve pixel density, but there is a point on the scale where you really stop seeing the pixels and that gives you the “ah ha” moment.
Well for starters, this demo was so insane and full of tech that no one is even talking about the fact we’re all going to have realistic animated avatars that interpret our facial expressions in real time.
TIL! Perlis was got that from Wilde? That makes it even cooler. He was pondering over the Wilde quote and realized that it can be reframed to apply to Lisp.
Plus, it makes Lisp programmers the opposite of cynics, in a way.
If you only care about the cost of every computation, but not its value, then you're a kind of code cynic.
> just please put the same camera technology into the phones so the kids don’t have a childhood of staring up at goggle eyed parents until this tech become sufficiently miniaturised
This section of the video was just weird. The dad playing with the kids with a headset on points more to a sort of dystopian future than a groundbreaking innovation.
I think people are missing out on the point of that snippet. It was just about reliving some of the special memories of your kids, family members etc which/who you hold special. It’s most definitely not about keeping a headset tied to your head forever. But when you want to capture something, it is there.
And going by the history of digital devices anyhow, use-cases evolve drastically over a lifetime of a product. Let’s wait and see and perhaps experience first.
I didn't see that as being much different from the classic 80's and 90's dad brings huge camcorder on summer vacation. The difference being that now the person wears it as 3D goggle cameras rather than a single camera in one handheld package.
You wouldn’t watch movies or shows with this thing? I’m pretty sure this will make watching videos in tiny rectangles from our phones and TVs seem so outdated.
The tech is amazing, but also ridiculous. Think about how much time and cost went into developing these features:
- Creepy Eyes fake transparency (a work around for the fact that you look dumb wearing ski goggles on your face)
- The realistic 3d facetime avatar (a work around for the fact that you look dumb wearing ski goggles on your face, creepy eyes isn't a good enough work around for facetime, and you need an external camera to do facetime).
None of the use cases seemed to compellingly improve productivity or well being, they just close the gap between the digital and physical w/ no benefit. I'd have been more convinced if it was depicted helping a mechanic assemble an engine with AI annotations and advice, but instead almost all of the demos seemed dystopian.
The eye tracking technology involves shining infrared light at your eyes at all times - not an expert but I can't help but wonder if that is going to have long term effects. https://ehs.lbl.gov/resource/documents/radiation-protection/.... It is ironic that Apple Health is launching an eye-health initiative which reminds kids to keep their device far enough from their face to prevent eye damage, and then is releasing another device that is covering your entire field of vision at like 2 centimeters away from your eyeballs (Edit: this last part is a non issue because the focal point is not so close due to the lenses).
>It is ironic that Apple Health is launching an eye-health initiative which reminds kids to keep their device far enough from their face to prevent eye damage, and then is releasing another device that is covering your entire field of vision at like 2 centimeters away from your eyeballs.
That's not how this works though. VR goggles have the focal point at least 20 feet from your eyes, it's way better for you than having a phone in front of your face.
You can actually make an app that will help train vision by making you focus on a closest point and on the furthest point and keeping on switching between those in VR/AR
What kind of sucks about tech is you start realizing people mainly just do the same stuff they did 25 years ago with it. Only today, the hardware has to be 1000x as powerful to run all the shitty bloaty software that's still just serving email, rendering spreadsheets, chat, images, videos, news, online shopping, etc, as its ever been. It's like we've been in this arms race for sexier and more resource demanding window dressing, versus something that I actually couldn't do before, and there has been absolutely no letting up.
UX and general day to day quality of life has been improved dramatically in the last 25 years for 'regular' consumer things. I would take everyday a 'shitty bloaty' modern operating system if the alternative is to run something from that era. Especially for mundane things like the ones you mentioned. I can open a spreadsheet on my computer and instantly have it in all my devices or shared with anyone in the world. I can have 4k video and max res pictures backed up everywhere. Maybe you don't remember how clunky were computers 25 years ago and how low resolution everything was.
For 'professional' things (Coding, Game Development, Video Editing, Design, Photoediting, Architectural work) today technology simply allow things that were not possible even 5 years ago, 25 years ago are ancient times. I don't know what you do with computers, but there are plenty of things that you couldn't do just a short time ago.
I have a several copies of Windows 98 running on emulators.
The quality of life is not that different from a modern OS. I wouldn’t call it dramatically improved. The paradigms have just changed, and not even that drastically. Business tasks are particularly similar. Certain tasks are actually easier on something like Excel 97 than they are on Excel 2021. Applications actually adhered to human interface guidelines.
Man, I was trying to think of examples of cool stuff we can do now that we couldn't in the 90s, and came up pretty short.. It's quicker and easier to load up bite-sized games in the web browser nowadays, but that comes with a whole mess of really awful dystopian shit and a lot of 100x code speed de-improvements thanks to JavaScript, Design Patterns, etc.
I don’t know where I heard this analogy, but there are lots of things in life that don’t change linearly, but asymptotically to some target, and the analogy ad absurdum goes something like: “Thousands of years ago we thought the earth was flat, now we think it’s round, what’s next? A torus?”
The idea being that there is a period of massive change as we figure out how something ought to work, but then once we do, the change gradually slows and then stops. Spreadsheets are basically a solved problem, and they’re also very useful, so for certain types of work, changing it is probably only going to make it worse. Multiply that by all sorts of different types of software, and it’s hard to find any areas where we fundamentally need a new paradigm.
So it’s not surprising that 25 years ago, software was changing all the time, and since then it only seems like we’ve changed the window dressing. Because most of the time, we actually got it right 25 years ago, and there’s no reason to change it further.
There are a number of things that are possible today that would have blown people's mind in 1998.
Streaming music - I remember downloading my very first mp3 (maybe around 96-ish) and my computer not being able to decode it in real-life (the audio skipped/stuttered). It also took 40 minutes to download. Streaming a song with near CD quality fidelity on a computer would have been mind boggling. Streaming music to a wireless pocket computer was unthinkable.
Streaming 4k video - similar to music but even more insane. I remember the first time I streamed video over the internet. It was on CNN's website around maybe 98 or 99. It used the real player, was some silly low resolution (lower than 320x240), and was so pixelated that you couldn't make out people's faces.
ah, I meant use cases that were enabled by/tied to the bloat
I guess you could say that streaming content is a core part of the horrible software bloat we've been suffering under. Instead of being allowed to just download a good quality copy of anything, we have to 'stream' low quality DRM-laden copies again and again
Google Maps would work a lot better as a standalone app than embedded in a web browser, but I guess that and a lot of other apps are delivered via browser nowadays
Its an entire wasteful paradigm of pull everything, cache nothing. It just relies on the assumption that you'd always have perfectly reliable data; I can't get a good wifi or LTE signal in certain parts of my home on the other hand so I guess I am screwed.
You likely get a lot more infrared in your eyes by going outside, and also a much higher amount of UV which is what actually causes damage.
As long as it's just a gentle/diffuse flood there is no cause for concern. When they start introducing scanning lasers then it's time to sit up in the seat.
Personally I think it's going to be super awesome when you can join an online TTRPG and you can change your animation to match your character, as well as having all your character sheets, maps and a battle map in front of you all at once.
Imagine seeing the characters of Critical Role brought to life in real time!
> The eye tracking technology involves shining infrared light at your eyes at all times - not an expert but I can't help but wonder if that is going to have long term effects.
For what it's worth, infrared beams and cameras is standard for psychology research using eye-tracking. Psychological studies are only 30-minutes long, but I've never heard anybody mention risks of this, and IRBs do not require mentioning anything like that in consent forms.
The presence tracking technology in Face ID iPhones uses infrared beams (not sure if it's the same as what's in the Vision Pro), and some people's eyes are in fact sensitive to this, resulting in eyestrain when used over a long period of time.
You can turn this feature off to get standard idle lock screen timeout behavior, and still continue to use Face ID; I don't know if there's a workaround on the Vision Pro)
> Creepy Eyes fake transparency (a work around for the fact that you look dumb wearing ski goggles on your face) - The realistic 3d facetime avatar (a work around for the fact that you look dumb wearing ski goggles on your face, creepy eyes isn't a good enough work around for facetime, and you need an external camera to do facetime).
And transparency mode on modern headphones is a waste of time since you can just take them off. I agree both the demoed features suck and I don't want them in my conference calls, but stuff like that is a necessary bridge for a new product category. Hard to call that wasted effort.
> And transparency mode on modern headphones is a waste of time since you can just take them off.
Unless you want to continue listening to what's playing through the headphones. I enjoy listening to both the nature and quiet music when I go on walks.
I find it pretty hilarious that VR started off as a product for gamers, designed by gamers, and funded by gamers. And even before it made it to market, it was bought up by Facebook who said "no no no, forget games, we're going to give you experiences". And it's been a parade of uninteresting, nobody-actually-wanted-this products and ideas ever since.
By far the most compelling things you can do in VR are games. Modded Beat Saber is incredible (and a total pain in the ass now that Facebook bought the game and tries to release a mod-breaking update every few weeks), VR Chat (a moddable, nerd/furry/whatever/anything goes playground), and Half Life: Alyx, a AAA game delivered by a gaming company. EDIT: almost forgot Phasmophobia. Hearing all your friends (and yourself) scream like little girls in unison is a priceless experience.
I think Apple designed an incredible piece of hardware here, and I really would like to put on a headset and have as much virtual desktop space as I want while I'm sitting on a beach. But what I really want are games. That's what everyone has always wanted from this, and yet somehow the whole VR space has been taken over by these lame corporate execs who have never touched a game more serious than Candy Crush in their life, insisting they know better.
I am a huge fan of VR gaming: some of my best gaming experiences ever have been in VR (notably Resident Evil 7 on PSVR1 and RE8 on PSVR2).
Even still, I acknowledge putting on a VR headset comes with some notable downsides: those sacrifices are 100% worth it for some games because it enables an incredible experience you can't otherwise have. Sure, you can play a modded version of Half-Life: Alyx without VR, but you're going to have a much worse experience and a lot less fun. Same for RecRoom and plenty of other titles.
But for work? I'm 100% willing to put up with a little discomfort for an hour or two if I'm having a great time; I'm less willing to do that for 8 hours a day when my job can be completed in a far more comfortable manner.
Comfort no doubt could be improved upon, but even still, I like to see the world with my own eyes. VR is a nice brief escape, and it doesn't have to be a solo activity: playing RecRoom or Zenith with friends is a lot of fun! I even bring my Quest 2 over to my friends' house IRL and play Zenith in the same room with him. But it's not much of an escape if that's what you spend your whole day in.
There are many activities that are a ton of fun for short periods of time, but if done all day, are miserable. I enjoy gaming quite a bit, but I dread the idea of being a pro-gamer who Streams on Twitch 10-12 hours a day playing one title to get good: that'd suck all the fun out of the activity for me and I'd much rather just work a more regular job like web development. I see the same being true for VR: I enjoy it a lot for an hour or two a day at most, but being in it all day could cause me to hate it.
A question I ask of all VR gaming enthusiasts: how much time do you spend on VR games versus other games?
A while back I rented an Oculus Quest. For the first week, it was the hot property in the house. By the end of the second, the kids were back on their Switches and nobody even noticed when I returned it. Asking around, I know a bunch of people who own VR gear of one form or another, but I still haven't met anybody for whom it's a daily driver, or who spends most of their gaming time using it.
What is your setup? Is this for a virtual desktop or are you gaming?
The only reason I keep a Windows partition around is to boot into VR, and I would love to nuke it forever. But I just haven't been able to get happy with VR on Linux yet.
PSVR, not high enough resolution for a virtual desktop, but the headset is comfy enough to burn many hours of the day in flight sim (X-Plane) and watching movies, little escapes that keep me mostly sane.
I was only griping the other week that its a disaster that PSVR is still the best value headset for linux (you can pick them up for like $100, none of the current alternatives are worth spending more on) with no upgrade path, PSVR2 hopes were dashed, this apple headset looks like I'll be moving most VR stuff to mac, I'm already on a macbook air for mobile, not touched windows for like a decade.
It was a daily driver for me. I game in waves. Sometimes an hour or 2 a day, then I will take a break for awhile. I found a lot of really excellent titles on the Quest. I had an absolute blast, but recently gave the headset away after about 2 years of heavy use. I’ll admit that I was choosing VR specially because I wanted to get a good sense of what Apple and Meta are pouring billions into as a bet for the future of computing.
One conclusion for me is that great software is great! There’s not much of a library on Quest, but the few gems pulled me in like my first game console all over again, an addicting and polished game paired with incredible immersion.
Another conclusion for me is that VR is uncomfortable in many ways. You have to stand and move for long stretches. You perform repetitive actions that can hurt your hands, your arms, your shoulders. The current hardware is heavy and awkward. It cuts you off from the world, restricts your field of view and prevents you from eating or drinking. And maybe worst of all, it creates bizarre dissociations between movement and body, eyes and objects, reality and unreality.
I still think the tech has incredible potential. One day we will live in an immersive physical/digital environment that will respond to our slightest intentions. But I now think this tech is decades away before it becomes as easy and ubiquitous as a cell phone.
If you want a really good peek at computing in 2050, pick up this Apple headset.
I used to spend a lot of time in Pavlov. Was playing PavZ pretty much every day. Then one day I stopped, and haven’t really been back. There’s definitely a lot of activation energy that goes into “getting into VR” and once you’re out, you don’t really want to put in the effort to get back in. HL Alyx was a big motivator for me, but I haven’t felt like that for other games yet.
I still occasionally come back to Pavlov for some good old Search & Destory gameplay. It is like childhood nostalgia but relive in an unimaginable way.
The fact that you cant walk around in the games really is a dealbreaker. It would be a nobrainer for all consoles if it werent for that unfortunate detail
There have been some really good experiments in room scale VR, both with actual basketball court sized play spaces and with smaller play spaces that used tricks like redirected walking. Honestly it’s mostly uncomfortable and tiring to walk around. They joystick works better once you get used to the motion.
I use my Quest pro to play video games that trick me into cardio workouts. Due to my body tiring out and the battery life, I play a max of two hours a day.
It probably eats up less than half of my video game time. I find that I play less video games now since VR is a different experience from pupetting an avatar with a game controller. You tend to use your whole body, which is great if you cant find the motivation to workout.
One of the interesting questions for me is whether VR will get other platforms to take this use case more seriously. I have a Switch and regularly play Fitness Boxing. It's great in that I'm much more likely to stick with the workout versus just doing calisthenics on my own. But the fitness catalog is limited. I'd love for the next generation of the Switch to include better motion control so that movement games can be richer.
Good news: nearly every VR game on the Quest (that isn’t 3rd person) is a fitness app even though it’s unintentional. There is a ton of variety. Feel like boxing one day, slashing ninjas the next, rowing a boat, riding a bike, slashing boxes with lightsabers, dodging bullets like neo; all of that is possible and the variety is nice even with the small market VR has now. (I believe that will be the same with Apple Vision)
I think the quest 2’s price point is back to being close to the Nintendo switch.
As a personal anecdote, I lost 15 lbs playing VR video games. Every time I don’t have the motivation to workout, I just tell myself that I’m just going to play some video games.
Sure! But I would enjoy most or all of those the same way I play Fitness Boxing: with a screen. I think what makes VR good for fitness is the motion controllers, not the facehugger stereoscopy.
Conversely, when I rented the Quest, the kids ended up playing Beat Saber by sitting on the couch and twitching their wrists. They liked it, but they didn't find the motion part compelling. So although I totally believe you and others get fitness value out of VR, I just think that's not an intrinsic to VR.
It is for now for at least half or more of the current apps. The exceptions tend to be the driving or flying sim games. Developers do try to cater to less active users, but from my personal observation if you don’t like being active then you probably won’t enjoy VR in its current state, which your first hand experience supports. It looks like Apple will change it though, and I’m sure their competition will copy them shortly
When I say it's not an intrinsic to VR, I mean that one can have physical motion games without having facehugger 3D, which currently defines the VR space.
I'll note that Wii Sports came out in 2006, for example. And it sold 8.9 million copies. But I also note that motion games remain a niche interest. I like them a lot, but they're a small fraction of game usage. That suggests to me that VR can't bank on that as a big enough consumer interest to keep VR economically viable.
There are a trickle of games that are not first person. This will grow as the anemic VR AR market grows.
VR’s biggest problem isn’t 1st person interaction, which btw isn’t a gimick like the Wii. It’s that most adults are intimidated by the face bucket of isolation UX. People won’t even try it let alone buy it to use it enough. Until XR can get over this hurdle, I feel that we won’t really know what people like or dislike.
It’s also hard to make good predictions and assumptions about a technology that you’re not really using yourself
> It’s also hard to make good predictions and assumptions about a technology that you’re not really using yourself
I'm not sure being a dedicated user makes forecasting any easier. E.g., the cryptocurrency skeptics were generally much more accurate than its ardent users. Having bought in often makes proponents of people. And people who use something but don't study how others use it may overgeneralize their personal experience.
Regardless, I try VR on occasion. I just don't weight my own experience very heavily, because there are plenty of successful things that aren't for me, and plenty of things I love that are terminally niche.
It’s not a great analogy because it’s easier to understand crypto without using it, mainly because you can’t use it in most instances.
XR on the other hand needs to be experienced in order to understand it. Otherwise, you’re not going to know or even understand all of the benefits and problems. I see this time and time again online. Ie you can read about scuba diving all you want, but until you actually do it regularly you’re not really going to know enough to comment like someone who actually does it. Given the low cost and availability of modern VR headsets, there’s not really an excuse for techies unless you’re a student
Ardent crypto fans will of course disagree. They say that you have to really get involved in the space to understand the true potential of smart contacts, defi, DAOs, and many of the other places where active development is happening. Otherwise you're just not competent to judge the potential of crypto.
Regardless, I'm not sure why you're arguing with me, in that I agree usage can help understand a thing. My point is that being a dedicated user may not help much with understand the broader impact on the world. Lots of people love crypto and believe it will change the world. Lots of people love VR and believe it will change the world. In both cases, I think they often let their personal ideas and personal experience blot out the recognition that they are specific individuals with very specific takes, and that their experiences, however magical, may not match the majority, and may not be enough to overcome competitive solutions or the economics of the space.
> Regardless, I'm not sure why you're arguing with me, in that I agree usage can help understand a thing. My point is that being a dedicated user may not help much with understand the broader impact on the world.
Unlike crypto, VR is an experience that is poorly captured by text, audio, and video. Why? Because it is a new medium in of itself. People cannot hope to understand it without using it beyond 30 minutes.
Conversely, you can easily explain AND experience crypto via traditional mediums like text
About ~1h20m per day in a two-days-on-one-day-off interval in modded PC version of Beat Saber with custom song maps on a Quest 2 with "frankenquest" setup. It's surprisingly decent cardio. Been doing it for over a year at this point and have racked up several hundred hours of playtime.
Thanks! The fitness use case seems to be one thing that creates long-term users. It's surprising to me that's not a bigger part of VR marketing.
Although interestingly, I suspect this is less about facehugger 3D and more about motion-sensitive controllers. For example, consider this person who has been playing Fitness Boxing on the Switch for 3 years straight: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/t3sk6j/a_lo...
> A question I ask of all VR gaming enthusiasts: how much time do you spend on VR games versus other games?
My Oculus CV1 has been back in its box for several years now. I really enjoyed Eagle Flight, but that's about it. Turns out not that many games were designed for someone like me who wanted to play VR games with mouse and keyboard behind his desk, and those that were were mostly driving/flying sims. The experience of having a motorcycle helmet with a small and not very bright visor didn't help. If I buy another VR set, it will be the one where I'm finally allowed to use my peripheral vision.
Infinite is my answer. I sit down all day at my desk job. I like to move in my free time. VR gets me up and moving, I love that. I don't play console or PC games at all.
Maybe 3 hours a week or so depending on what else is going on. Fairly frequently I hop into VR for a game of contractors for 40 mins at the end of my day (instead if watching TV or whatever). I also exercise occasionally in VR, maybe once or twice a month using Thrill of the Fight boxing.
> but I still haven't met anybody for whom it's a daily driver, or who spends most of their gaming time using it.
I think the last time I grabbed my VR headset was when my neck was getting tired but I still wanted to use my computer (laying down on my back). It actually worked!
I have a vive original and played about 200 hours of vr games. Haven’t taken it out of the box for years though because I don’t have the space for it anymore and just don’t really care about VR gaming that much.
As someone who has >1000 hours in VR (and is also a game developer), the simple answer is that there really have been only maybe a dozen games. And lots of mostly identical alternatives.
Boneworks/HL:Alyx/Pavlov: Shooter, VRChat/RecRoom/etc: Social, Beat Saber/Harmonix somethingsomething: Rythm, The Room, Jet Island... Where each of those alternatives have lots of mechanical convergence, so it "feels" like playing the same game if you overlook the button mapping of the controllers.
The tech works perfectly fine, but there are so many caveats and limitations that the possible design space is quite limited, or there has been too much inbreeding. Plus, developing for VR is much more expensive as a baseline because of the increased limitations, so you end up with generally lower quality games than a traditional medium.
All in all, I would say that in a scale from "Pong" (1972) to "Outer Wilds" (2019) we are maybe just after "Wolfenstein 3D" (1992) in relation to the VR gaming landscape: Games are fun, but most of everything is really bad and played out of a lack of better options, or a clone of something actually cool.
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My point here is I don't entirely agree with you it's a novelty, I would say it's more of a variation that can become a staple with many people, but will never* be the main/only medium. Pizza, not bread&butter.
(And yes, that's half the definition of a novelty, but that's why I say I don't entirely agree with calling it such)
* Unless we invent the actual Matrix "full-body immersion with motor suspension" tech or something functionally equivalent (and I'm not even saying that's a good idea).
What strikes me as different from 1992-era games (and more like 1990s VR) is consistency of play. Even with the earlier generation of games, like NES titles or early Mac/PC games, you saw people putting in a lot of time over consistent periods. For many, video games replaced, say, board games. From what I see here and elsewhere, there are very few consistent VR users.
Maybe that's just down to the cost factors you describe. And maybe that's down to the competition being much better between modern consoles and the vast array of mobile games.
So I can believe you're right, it might be another way of gaming, coexisting in the same way that the PS5 and the Switch and phone games all coexist happily. But given the extra cost for both users and developers, it seems to me that it's also possible that there's a vicious circle ahead: High costs mean fewer games and fewer users. That leads to lower revenue, which means even fewer games, and therefore even fewer users.
At this point we must be somewhere near $50 billion invested in VR. If that level of subsidy isn't enough to get things going, I'm sure there are lots of CFOs asking exactly what it's going to take their VR units to become cash positive.
For the past 5 years or so, it has gone in spurts for me: no time in VR for months (sometimes even a year or more at a time), then nearly all my gaming time is in VR for a couple months or so.
Since the PSVR2's release, when I hang out with one of my friends, I play one of his VR games almost every time I'm there. That undoubtedly won't last forever, but it definitely has the best launch library of any headset so far IMO.
Maybe I'm just a really picky gamer, but for any given console generation, there are only a handful of games I truly love, but it's easier to enjoy a fine but not incredible game on a flat screen than it is in VR. A really good VR game makes you forget about everything else and gives you an experience unachievable outside of VR. If you're immersed in a story, a song, or intense gameplay, you forget about any discomfort coming from the headset being on your face. But if you're not enjoying it then you're going to get annoyed a lot faster than you would sitting on the couch looking at a TV.
That said, the PSVR 2 is looking to have the best library of VR games yet. Previously, you'd have incredible one-off titles such as Half-Life: Alyx release on Steam but then nothing for months or years, but Sony seems really committed to providing a large number of high-quality AAA experiences on the headset. It also has a ton of great games from smaller studios (most of which were already on Steam or the Quest, but with such big libraries on both of those platforms, they were kind of tough to find throughout all the mediocre titles: this isn't an argument in favor of stronger curation, just an observation.)
Nonetheless, I don't expect it to make up the majority of time someone would play video games anytime soon, and there are two reasons:
1. Most people don't have VR headsets yet, so even if I personally prefer Pavlov to other FPSs, only two of my friends have VR headsets, so it's not replacing those flat screen games. Maybe one day, but currently the most popular games run on nearly everything: Fortnite, Minecraft, Apex, Overwatch, CS:GO, LoL, DOTA2, Valorant, Rocket League, etc. I doubt those games' popularity stems entirely from the fact they're on tons of platforms OR have very low PC requirements (or are free to play, minus Minecraft), but it likely helps.
2. Nearly all VR gamers play flat screen games, but the majority of flat screen gamers do not have VR headsets. The Quest 2 may have sold around 20 million units, but nearly all of those owners likely have a Switch, PlayStation, Xbox or gaming PC. Medium-sized studios certainly are incentivized to create VR games due to less competition (getting a game released for PSVR2 nearly guarantees at least some sales, unlike releasing on flat screen), but large studios with huge marketing budgets looking to make a ton of money can make more by selling flat screen games. Maybe they'd get some additional sales by releasing it for VR, but it's not guaranteed (hopefully it becomes more profitable to port to VR as the number of users increases though.)
I’m the same way, for what’s it’s worth. I’ll put it away for a month or two and then get the urge to play Beatsaber or whatever and then oddly remember “hey, this is really freaking fun.” I’ll then play it every day for a while.
It’s weird how much of a barrier just putting on a headset (and maybe moving a coffee table) is. It would help if the Quest bootup/finding the play space was faster.
The market for what the tech world seems to be producing is people who can be easily swayed from their own vision to the company vision, and have little expectations of (actual) privacy, of actual utility, and just adapt to what they get.
It's hard to push back against this sort of thing.
Mindful people don't want to be limited by the scenarios the manufacturer has allowed. They don't want to ask permission, to be locked-in, to have subscriptions, to have surveillance, and advertisements.
This is certainly the future (VR) but I'm not really interested in it. I'm interested in just being outdoors (not indoors). I want to feel rain, and cold. I want to know I can't just escape.
Others not so much, and all you need is a little bit of money. The brain doesn't know the difference. Doesn't know you're in a dead neighborhood in suburbia in a house that looks like all your neighbors you don't talk to anyways, far from any restaurants or public spaces. We have this now. Food and other items are being delivered to our doors. So on and so forth - I'm not going to belabor my personal view of a future hellscape of rich tech countries.
It's astonishing how much you see this sentiment online, but no impact from it anywhere. Sure there is pushback on this sentiment online as well, but just from how much it's expressed online, you' expect at least like 30% of new developments to be more dense, mixed-use that encourages community, walking etc. Yet, somehow it feels closer to 1%. I wonder if that's because online is a small bubble or because the people engaged in zoning and planning are in a bubble or the venn diagram just has little overlap.
I mean real estate and development is a whole 'nother thing. Demand is wholly outstripping supply for places you want to actually live in, so you get what you get and you get to be happy about it.
If we're talking US real estate here, it's largely because of zoning making it de facto illegal to build anything except suburban single family homes or a downtown high rise, and because our public transit was dismantled long ago in favor of colossal (now decaying) highway and stroad systems, which we now have to build around.
Definitely. As I said though, given the push online and my social circle, I'd expected at least some higher percentage of areas to get much more relaxed zoning. Where I live there are a ton of new developments and they are all the absolute worst of both worlds. Hundreds of identical townhouses with nothing within walkable distance. It's too dense to feel rural and free, but has none of the benefits like being able to walk to a cafe or store and the density isn't high enough to make a massive impact on the market either. You even still hasn't neighbors you share walls with.
Unfortunately, this is the reality. Most people will choose the comfort over those discomfort. Just like the 99% moving matrix, going to select the blue pills over the red pills. Even the people who choose the red pill change their mind. It's just a big lever to enlarge those points.
But who is the target market for this? I like to think I am usually pretty good at saying this isn’t for me but it is for demo Y. It isn’t clear here, but if I take the marketing video and the price point and put two and two together the target audience is people with a trust fund. Not upper class, but multi-millionaire inherited wealth types. The kind that travel a lot and so something like this makes a lot of sense when on a plane or in a hotel room.
For everyone else though? It is too much money and too little utility. I am sure it will come down in price, but I still don’t see it unless they let you plug it into a PC and use it like a normal VR headset for games, because those are the only people that will shell out over a grand for a headset.
I am sure that plenty of "real ones" own iphones. I've met them. I've always had android phone but I haven't felt the urge to even change the background wallpaper for about a decade. Phones feel kind of underpowered, overpriced and anachronistic for my life.
The desire to customize your environment is not a pre-requisite for being _authentic_ and _true_ to making the blinky lights blink. Underneath all the artifice and baubles, all we need are to chain some magic words together, and to see if they do what we expect, over and over and over again. That's unaffected by whose logo is on your hoodie-vest.
I know quite a few programmer/hacker types, many of whom are cognizant of and responsive to contemporary security and privacy issues. Almost to a one, the smartphone is where they compromise most dramatically, carrying iPhones or, more bizarrely, stock Android.
The actual concept of VR was basically done the second the Vive came out. Now you can have really good immersion for a Flight Simulator game that won't come out for a few years and nobody really knew it would happen yet, and the couple driving simulation games on PC that somehow haven't died, and a smattering of immersive FPS games.
Nothing else really benefits from the increased immersion, and everything struggles with the discomfort, nausea, cost, loneliness, and extra development effort of VR.
VR isn't the next generation of graphics, it's just the display equivalent of a really powerful direct drive racing wheel with load cell brake or that airbus branded joystick that costs $500 bucks. It's for turbo nerds.
You're missing something. Yes it's for turbo nerds, but it's also for ultra casuals.
I have shown Beat Saber to probably around 30 people at this point. The game is set up in the living room with the TV mirroring the headset and the audio coming through the living room speakers. So it feels like a party environment with everyone trading off with watching and playing. Without even a single exception, every person who has tried it has absolutely loved it. Even several people who have never touched a digital game of any kind in their life, and took all manner of convincing to even try it at all.
In any other game you play, there is always some mapping of inputs into actions. Doesn't matter if it's MKB or game controller or touch screen; you have to learn that deflecting a joystick moves the player camera, or pressing "A" causes your character to jump. But in VR, at least in games like Beat Saber, you simple move your body in exactly the way you'd expect. You don't press a button at the right time to slice a block, you just slice the block. Couple that with the immersion you get in both sound and visuals, and it adds up to something that feels absolutely magical.
Yes, many things do struggle with clunky movement, nausea, etc. There are many games that I have no desire to play in VR. But the stuff that shines bright shines really bright, and I think there's a huge amount of potential there.
I've played BeatSaber for the first time just last night, and had a similar experience: party atmosphere, everyone who joined in loved it, even people who don't game. It felt natural and fun.
And 30 minutes later, we were all bored, put the headset to rest, and forgot it even exists.
Everything I've seen from VR so far is on the ultra casual side, arcade games or slightly more. Nothing as complex as Minecraft, not to mention some AAA RPG or Action game, seems even slightly plausible at the moment. Even HL: Alyx is ultimately a visually stunning version of those old on-rails shooters more than a sequel to HL2's extraordinary gameplay.
I’ve had similar experiences with friends and Beat Saber, but how many of those 30 friends enjoyed the experience enough to get VR themselves? If your experience is like mine? Zero.
It is a cool novelty. Cool experiences while using it but the least popular gaming device in the house. Even my kids’ low end Atom-based laptops get more gaming use for chess.com and Minecraft.
Yes, I will "ultra casually" strap this thing on my face...
I think we have different definitions of "casual" -- when we used that term to describe Farmville in the 00's, we meant that you could refresh your fb page, click a link, click on 2-5 objects in the Farmville pane and come back the next day to do the same thing.
If you're strapping on an immersive experience to do the equivalent of five mouse clicks in 90 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Wrong from the client's perspective because you've got to boot the VR headset, launch the app in order to do the equivalent of those 5-7 mouse clicks. A heavy investment of time and effort for something that could be done with your finger and your phone. And wrong from the content perspective because if your virtual environment is limited to the equivalent of 5-7 mouse clicks... it doesn't sound all that compelling.
I think you’re really understating the nausea and discomfort. Maybe this is a first step towards mass adoption, but it will not happen unless significant improvement is made to the user comfort, now matter how great some VR experiences are.
It's getting there iteratively. The headsets are getting lighter and more comfortable.
The nausea won't be going away though. There will always be a class of apps/games that cause nausea for many people, because it's caused by a decoupling of virtual movement from real movement, not from any technological shortcoming. Any game or app that does this will make some people want to upchuck
No, just an oculus rift S that I used for about a week. It left me more disoriented than I've ever felt. I am not prone to motion sickness, love roller coasters, etc, but VR was too much. And I was _really_ set on loving it.
> Yes it's for turbo nerds, but it's also for ultra casuals.
If the $600 version isn't a smashing success for ultra casuals - then the $3500 version certainly will not be as well.
VR was a dream - and it's failed in spectacular fashion.
I have a Vive... and have used it maybe a handful of times. Once the novelty runs out, it's just a subpar experience that requires re-arranging your space/desk/room and becomes a huge PITA for normal things.
>VR was a dream - and it's failed in spectacular fashion.
My whole point is that VR is a smash hit for exactly what it was always meant for. One of the earliest integrations with the Oculus dev kits was Euro Truck Simulator 2. VR is basically essential if you enjoy sim racing. VR is an incredible experience for flight simmers. VR is awesome if you like gun games, as Hot dogs horse shoes and hand grenades has no equal in video gaming, and lots of first person shooters work great in VR.
But that's all it ever will be and all it can be for normal people. It's a peripheral, not a console in it's own right.
Maybe it can be good in enterprise setups, like architecture, or training, but that still leaves it in an incredible niche.
> VR is an incredible experience for flight simmers
It's not though... nobody enjoys 7 FPS in a flight simulator. No serious flight simulator is capable of achieving 90+ FPS on average, even with today's top tier pc hardware.
The "sims" that do work well in VR are not really sims - they're just arcade experiences. They are indeed fun, but they are not simulators.
I have no experience with sim racing, but I suspect the same from the serious ones.
Truck Simulator? I can expect that to perform well - there's not a ton of physics being calculated every tick after all. But even there, your average person can only stomach VR for maybe an hour or two.
Even when it's fun, it's a serious PITA to setup. You have to setup to use VR in some game, and that means often people get tired of it and wind up resorting back to their flight yoke or stick. It's a novelty, in other words.
If the $600 versions didn't catch on and go mainstream - then a $3500 version is never going to go mainstream.
Just make games! Its that simple. Those are the experiences, those are the killer apps, they are the metaverse! They literally just need to get out of the way with their corporate bullshit.
Yeah, actually you're on to something. I admired the hardware but you just nailed the feeling I was getting from this presentation but couldn't describe.
It's the old print magazine adverts for the Atari ST or Amiga or early PC's... and shown on the screen was a spreadsheet...(and don't get me wrong, I love a good spreadsheet, but.... )
I think any games released for that system will be crippled by the controls, like smartphone games. Gestures and eye tracking are probably just as imprecise as touchscreens.
No, like completely trashing OpenGL and OpenCL to make sure nothing ever runs on their machines unless it's specifically spon fed to them through Metal (while having like an 8% market share so it's not cost effective to do so). Even Linux is better for gaming with Proton.
They announced some tools that help testing and porting windows games to macos and some tools that supposed to convert opengl and DirectX shader to metal shaders.
I agree! What they should do is launch this at a developer event and provide some information and tooling, then get out of the way so that developers can release games through a proven distribution method with free/freemium/paid/subscription options...
That's a very good point. VR Chat is the magical quirky "META" experience, which is already there. Straight from either Gibsons novels or Ghost in the Shell. Apple seems to be more in line with more gated, streamlined and polished experiences, than what's in VR Chat. Its a similar story with the Sony VR HeadSet.
Apple themselves clearly know their bad reputation in the gaming community, and their lock down model for selling software will also not be embraced by many gamers. In this respect a $399 Steamdeck is a better device than Apple’s piece with 10x the price.
... released by Steam, a company with a lock down model for selling software. The gaming world has long embraced the App Store model. In fact, I'd argue the macOS and iOS App Stores were probably inspired by Steam.
Having an app store != locked down. AFAIK, you can run any software you want on a Steam deck without any hacking needed. Can you say the same for any non macOS apple product?
Steam and Apple models are extremely different. What you buy on Steam can’t be launched outside of Steam but Steam is happy to serve as a launcher for content coming from outside of it and will allow said content to use its extra functionalities (controller support and chat notably). Valve hardware is always notoriously open. The deck runs and allows you to access Linux.
Apple is completely different and outside of MacOS strictly controls everything.
AFAIK Steam doesn't require developers to use their DRM and there are absolutely games that you can purchase through Steam and launch independently with just the exe.
Right, you need to utilize the steamworks SDK to use DRM. And even if you use the SDK, it is actually possible to not implement the DRM. Specifically, you can just not run the drm wrapping tool, and not implement DRM directly though the Steamworks api calls. The wrapper in compatibility mode (used when wrapping with another drm scheme that supports after-compilation wrapping) literally just checks if launched through Steam, and if not, requests that steam start and launch the game, and if launched through steam, checks for a valid ticket. In non-compatibility mode, it adds some basic checks against the executable being modified, etc.
For offline games, the DRM is little more than an anti-(casual-piracy) feature, making the obvious copying of the game folder not work, with generic cracks being easy to get online. It is more like games requiring the disc to play back in the day, even when fully installed, as a measure to avoid casual piracy, especially before CD writers were a thing.
Interestingly, despite having a generic executable wrapping system, many games that choose not to use Steamworks DRM are the older ones where source code is no longer available to recompile, or there are concerns about recompilation. I’m not sure why the wrapper would be a problem, unless the games contained integrity checking code, or you want compatibility with modding tools that edit the binary. Alledgedly at least one publisher literally applied a crack they downloaded from a piracy site to their retail release, and uploaded that to Steam, and in that case, I could easily see the steam DRM wrapper not being feasible to apply, as residual checks from the old DRM could cause breakage.
Valve even went out of their way to conceptually decouple the SteamVR SDK from steamVR. Instead they made “Open VR”, an interface conceptually like OpenGL or Vulkan, which allows for more than one runtime implementation. However, SteamVR is the only runtime implementation. But in theory, if a VR game on steam did not use Steam or other DRM, and you had an alternate OpenVR runtime, you could take the game folder from Steam, and run it against said alternate runtime fully separate from Steam (if only such a runtime actually existed).
> What you buy on Steam can’t be launched outside of Steam
Not true. Steam has a lot of DRM-free games that can be bought on Steam Store and are typically started through Steam client but do not really require Steam to be running. They're simply not integrated with Steam in any way.
Not really an open market when one company has as large a share of sales as steam. Valve may have a different ethos from Apple, but both agree on principle of extracting monopoly rents.
> but both agree on principle of extracting monopoly rents.
Steam’s competitors like GoG also take 30% so maybe it’s a reasonable price for the service they provide? Only companies like MSFT or Epic can charge less since their stores are heavily subsidized.
Of course as long as games remain available on multiple storefronts it will remain a winner takes all market and Steam does have a significant moat (though not in any way comparable to Apple) due to it’s social features.
At the end the existence of Steam/(other centralized storefronts) seems to benefit both consumers and developers compared to any alternative option (less risk for consumers = higher long term revenues or developers)
Yeah Valve/Steam seem relatively decent/ethical now (eg. Steam deck being a PC u can install what u want on and modify and repair), but it's just cus the average tech company has gotten so bad. When I 1st saw steam I was appalled, its a DRM system, a program running on my system that has no function and I dont want, + a bunch of online or social features I dont give a shit about.. and none of that has changed.
Unfortunately, even beyond DRM, online competitive gaming is both an extremely popular hobby AND the most direct use case for trusted computing outside of top secret work. There simply can't be a fun, popular online competitive game without strict verification of the client software to keep out cheating, so Steam offers an extremely valuable service in this alone (as do other DRM schemes).
The alternative to Steam used to be limited use CD keys. Steam's not perfect but it's better than hoping you haven't re-installed the thing you paid for one too many times.
DRM in Steam is mostly up to the developers. They provide the API for it but hardly anyone implements it. I'm fairly sure I can launch most of my library without Steam even running.
The real money isn't in VR right now though. The real money is in AR. Does this fit that? Not sure, but there are hundreds of use cases for something like this in the workplace (and not just for developers/desk workers). Think the person who needs to reference a manual while working on something (machinery, car, top of a telephone pole, etc.). Just a single example, but I feel that is the kind of market that the executives are aiming at cause they know for businesses, the cost is immaterial if it solves their issue or makes it so 1 person can do the job of 2. Not endorsing it either, fwiw, just saying, that has to be part of the thinking. The gaming market just isn't big enough, especially when you figure in the cost of the equipment (even at half the cost).
That was the idea behind HoloLens, and they tried to make it work for a decade, but ultimately that flopped as well. No one wants to fix a machine or a telephone pole or whatever else with a massive headset strapped to their head. These are just pointless scenarios dreamed up by techies who have never done any of those jobs in their life.
If such a headset were to be commercially successful gaming and porn are the only areas that need targeting, but those are also ones that large corporations are least interested in.
Once this headset's form factor shrinks down to sunglass size it will be the next iPhone. Especially with innovators creating apps that enhanced current life experiences like...
- Play real life ping pong, tennis, card games, etc .. glasses keeps & displays score in your view
- Rewind ... how did this building look ten, twenty, 100 years ago
- Who am I talking to at a conference.. their name appears above them
- Lots more and better innovative ideas to come too
> Once this headset's form factor shrinks down to sunglass size it will be the next iPhone.
So true. The company that is able to do so will have such an advantage over the competitors it won't even be fair. I sure as hell will be developing apps for such device. Potential is unlimited
> I find it pretty hilarious that VR started off as a product for gamers, designed by gamers, and funded by gamers. By far the most compelling things you can do in VR are games.
Going to have to disagree with you there. The most compelling use case for VR is porn. The most compelling cover story for buying a device for porn will be games.
AFAICT the most prolific and reliably deployed cardboard (previous gen VR) experiences ended up being porn.
No, it's not about whether it technically works, there are already businesses going for few years. Looks like there are such stereo fisheye rigs, with a pair of m4/3 cameras, a GoPro for preview? and a 3dio packaged to go on a crane. And seems they're transitioning to 8K? Interesting...
Apple's reality distortion field could be the secret sauce that gets people to overcome many of the issues you described, and to purchase a VR product even if they don't make any sense to use.
Yeah, maybe for other non-VR. But at $3500,the Vision Pro is DOA for the most consumers. At $3500, it's going to take several iteration before they can price one that your average consumer that's normally willing to spends $500-1500 for a ipad/iphone/MBP would be willing to buy. I wonder what they'll leave out to get to that price.
The reality distortion field schtik is getting pretty old - Mac’s, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and AirPods are clearly class leading products that people buy a lot of. HomePods are not and people do not buy a lot of them.
If this is good people will buy it if not they won’t.
while I share the same sentiment, it is hard if not impossible, if gamers became permanently attached to VR/AR tech and then try to bring everyone else onboard.
that's why apple went in with high prices first, got to make it look sexy/cool/elusive while the tech matures, then only release to general public at affordable prices when it's 99% there; like macbook air.
It's because a lot of people moved to m1 after waiting years for transition to something new because of crappy butterfly keyboards for many generations, lack of innovation or regression (no functional keys, no Magsafe, no Hdmi, no minisd, still needed usb-a)
After lot of people bought m1 there was not similar significant improvement with m2 - and considering they could buy discounted m1
I really think this is a bad take, at least as far as the analysis of Meta goes.
If anything, they've focused on games too deeply and have kicked the can on building an _app_ ecosystem with the multitasking UX needed for a personal computer. This is understandable from a hardware constraint perspective...
However, Apple has done the legwork to build a framework that supports concurrent app usage in a mixed reality way from the ground up instead of deeply focusing on immersive game experiences like Meta has. On top of that, Apple seems to have put in more work to onboard app devs than game devs. That said, the reason Apple can ignore games is because they can leave that to Meta and Unity and they'll still get ports.
The input story for the Apple headset is real bad, though. You seem to think Meta doesn't care about games but at least they ship game controllers. Just wait until you try to play something with a pinch gesture and no haptics.
I think immersive experiences is the way to go. Imagine being able to experience a bunch of (idealized) historical events—celebrating Allied victory in WWII, walking through a market in Ancient Rome up to the Colosseum to watch a match, walking around your city before people settled it, etc.
The tech isn’t quite there yet, but we may not be that far off of some aspects of it with generative AI. Those experiences would certainly be boosted if you could walk up to anyone and they’d have a unique personality and would be able to have a full conversation with you.
Companies like Meta are trying to push what they want this to be about, and it's not games. Its ads, completely immersive ads and the addictive infinite feed model perfected by TikTok applied to VR and AR to push those ads. The ad market is significantly larger than the game market.
We'll see what Apple does with this. It's a chance for them to redeem themselves in the gaming market a bit if they make it good for games, which as you say is what everyone actually wants from this technology.
It’s a computing device like a phone or a laptop, anyone can make any game they want available for it. in the key note they mentioned gaming specifically and had time on a partnership with unreal.
I don’t care about games at all. Have never put on a VR headset. But I will likely pre-order Vision for a better productivity workflow. Apple will get the OS right, whereas Meta never had a chance.
Oh good, just wait until you get regular headaches from attempting to decipher the text on your virtual screen. It works terribly. VR is an awful, desperate, not fit for purpose replacement for even a single 1080p monitor.
> VR is an awful, desperate, not fit for purpose replacement for even a single 1080p monitor.
But for how much longer?
I can really see the benefit of having "more space" when working on a computer.
We're peeking through needle holes, small screens mostly covered by bars and menues.
If we're lucky the context we need for our task fits on two large screens.
I believe this strains our working memory more than we understand. Making us do thing slower, worse and with more effort.
VR has the potential to unlock much more "space" that we can navigate in a way that is much more natural to us.
Not sure if the tech is up to the task today or if it will be in 10 years. But the value proposition is clear.
Not to mention that the screen is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the mass of the computer. I wouldn't expect to like this first product but 5-10 years down the line it isn't unreasonable to believe that your computer is your phone, you take it everywhere with you, and your monitor is your glasses (benefit if you already wear glasses). That sounds pretty cool. Keyboard is the next big thing imo, because virtual typing sucks and I need something tactile. We'll probably need to rethink the entire concept though.
My main concern is about collaboration. Specifically, a fear with Apple lockin. When you pair program you can just sit down at either computer. Will we have an open protocol to share screens (or specific apps in screens like modern screenshare does)? Will is be semi-open like the current MMS system where Apple makes you look at a potato? My concern is about how these can be used to further isolate ourselves and break our fundamental social structure. But part of that will be how we use them, along with the decisions these companies make. I just hope Apple doesn't lock everyone in, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
AFAIK it hasn’t been accurate enough until recently. I’ve heard OpenAI’s whisper is great text to speech and I think I read today iOS 17 is updating their speech-to-text as well.
Also, I’m not an office worker but I would imagine working with speech to text around everyone else using speech to text would be a hellish and annoying scenario. Work from home alleviates that.
It reads that a lot of the control of visionOS is speech based as well and Apple should be smart enough to know if it doesn’t work well the entire product will flop and Tim Apple’s entire legacy will likely be over.
I tested SwiftKey recently and works quite well with speech to text when whispering very silently when you put you lips close to microphone but worked even well with airpods. This still might be culturally weird to everyone whispering but in office with fans and aircon and other ambient sound i think would be hard to hear anyone whispering when 2m away.
Oh that sounds like hell to me if I'm being honest. It would be okay for stnadard routines "write a for loop that increments variable foobar" (LLMs help here) but be a fucking nightmare for debugging or fine grained work.
20/20 vision is defined as 1MOA, or 1/60th degrees of angular resolution. Necessary resolution at typical FOV of 100 degrees is therefore 6k x 6k pixels. 4k x 4k per eye is not quite the "Retina" equivalent but actually not as off as earlier attempts at VR.
That's just marketing nonsense. You get 23MP if you combine both displays in the headset. Well guess what, they show the same picture, so the actual resolution is half that. And out of that only the pixels in the center are going to be sharp enough to be usable (notice that none of the demos ever extended the picture all the way to the edge).
It has nothing to do with resolution and everything to do with your eyes looking at a screen an inch from your face while a mask is strapped over them. That's just not comfortable and no fruit logo changes that.
There is nothing on the market that gets close to what Apple is releasing here. The total resolution is nearly three times 4k. They don't mention FOV, but the description implies something approaching 180 degrees, and this being Apple, plus foveated rendering as a feature, you can assume smooth rendering somewhere between 120-240hz.
It's not as simple as that though, with your head and eyes in constant movement and two separate screens with a high refresh rate. The G2 or Vive have 50% less density and it's already quite hard to distinguish individual pixels.
Consider trying any VR headset first, the interface has a few unanticipated effects for many people. Eg, nausea, headaches, dizzyness etc. A "productivity workflow" might only last half an hour before you're fatigued from its innate unnaturalness.
Having made a serious attempt at a virtual workspace for development myself, I'll just say: it's ok, but there are a lot of challenges.
To develop, I need an actual fully-featured operating system with a terminal, a full suite of tools and libraries, and an application ecosystem.
To date, proxying all of that through a desktop/laptop to a virtual display or virtual remote desktop is clunky at best. Reading in VR is unpleasant. Typing in VR is unpleasant. Juggling controllers in VR is unpleasant. Wearing a headset for more than an hour or two is gross - you will really need to spend time and effort keeping the bits that touch your face clean. Cords are a hassle and the weird constant slight resistance starts to drive me nuts after awhile. For me there wasn't a hard deal-breaking issue, just a death by a thousand cuts.
Don't get me wrong - you can absolutely do it. For myself, it fell far short of the friction-free space for deep productivity I was after.
Also, again speaking personally, there is no way in hell I'm going to show up to work video meeting as a cartoon avatar (or turn my camera off). So meetings sort of break the whole thing.
Maybe this product will solve a lot of those friction points. I think that would be great, personally, but I'm skeptical.
Better productivity workflow: a sweaty device you need to carry on your head, with a cable with a battery pack, for the spectacular 2 hours battery life, reproducing low-resolution virtual displays around you, which you are supposed to very productively operate by clumsily making finger gestures around the display (instead of on them).
Yeah, I'll keep my monitors, mouse and keyboard, and my smartphone, thanks.
Inability to overlay graphics over the real world. We only know how to do so additively (shine some light in the eye to make things bright), but AFAIK there is no solution to effectively and dynamically black out some part of the picture you see.
Also, at the time, people had freaked out about wearing cameras in public. (I wonder if I need to purchase some popcorn to watch how it'll go for this one, or if it's gonna be different.)
Magic Leap 2 has a segmented dimmer that works fairly well. It's a small probably-LCD panel that sits in front of your eye. It lets the headset black out part of your view, leaving a kinda blurry shadow around objects.
> Also, at the time, people had freaked out about wearing cameras in public. (I wonder if I need to purchase some popcorn to watch how it'll go for this one, or if it's gonna be different.)
My prediction is that it's going to be A Thing to wear this at all times, even if your battery is dead, similar to the way The Kids These Days have their airpods in 24/7. Pressure your mom until she finally gets you a pair ("free" with 10 year Verizon contract)
It’s possible in theory to add a transparent LCD display to a transparent OLED display, but neither is fully transparent, so you end up losing a lot of light. And then there’s the cost of having two displays.
>Up to 2 hours of battery life without the battery pack. (Yes, there's a battery back that can be attached to Vision Pro.)
Also: put yourself in the design team's shoes: why wouldn't you put a small battery in it? A small battery doesn't weigh that much; a small battery isn't much of a safety hazard; compared to all the other engineering effort put into the product, the engineering to put in a battery is a drop in the bucket (particularly since the organization has so much experience putting batteries in products).
There's a reason Kojima was on stage and it isn't just to announce Death Stranding is coming to the Mac. The key part was future games for Apple platforms...
Hum, AFAIK VR started off as aimless experimental tech, was repurposed for data visualization first, and only after a reasonable amount of success there it was pushed for gamers.
And then gamers unanimously rejected it, but it found a quite cozy niche in CAD.
That's just to say that it has probably a lot of other serious uses. But yeah, as soon as it's actually good, games will probably be most popular one. Anyway, I agree, the serious uses will almost certainly not include pretending you are in a circle with your coworkers' avatars.
Everyone read that one Vernor Vinge novel and decided to get on the gravy train before Chicago gets nuked. /s
Speaking more seriously: I think you're right in the short-term, wrong in the long-term, but getting at a fundamental truth, which is that *applications* are what will drive development and adoption. And they have to be fully-formed and wedded to the form factor, while still being accessible.
AR/VR will revolutionize general computing, but if you can't figure out how yet - clearly, they have not - the focus should be on the applications that are already well-envisioned (and, in the past few years, as you've said, well-executed) on the platform.
Further, it helps if the killer-app is emotionally engaging, allows and anticipates the failure of the user within the app's internal UX logic, and doesn't interfere with a user's crucial assets or processes (related to work, health, etc.) until the platform's kinks are worked out.
Sounds like games fit the bill quite nicely. It is truly weird that execs taking home eight figures or more can't (or refuse to) wrap their heads around that. Gaming is anathema amongst a certain portion of the population, I suppose.
People keep thinking that stereoscopic 3D will revolutionize things, but they've been consistently wrong about that for more than 170 years.
It starts with the Brewster Stereoscope [1] which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. [2] It was a huge success, and in following years hundreds of thousands of viewers were sold, with lots of content following. Eventually the fad blew over, ending up as antique-shop fodder.
Next up was the ViewMaster; the US Department of Defense bought 100,000 units because it was going to revolutionize military training. Then came the 1950s wave of anaglyph 3D movies, the 1990s VR boom and bust, the Avatar-driven resurrection of 3D movies in 2009, which was quickly followed by a wave of enthusiasm for 3D TV. Then, most recently we have the resurrection of VR, this time with the Metaverse attached.
I think 3D worlds have revolutionized a chunk of gaming, from Quake to Minecraft and onward. But the available evidence suggests that stereoscopic 3D interfaces are an idea much more popular in theory than in practice. As best I can tell, the most representative 3D technology is not facehugger VR, but those Magic Eye stereograms [3] that go in and out of popularity. They are a fun novelty, but they never transform everything. There's a big hype cycle and everybody gets excited, but after a bit of use they quickly go back to 2D and most are just fine with it.
Yeah, I said this about videophones in 2002 or so. I was sure I was right. Videophones had been reinvented five times over. You could only use it at home, sitting on the couch, giving it your full attention. Who would want to have regular conversations that way enough to pay for a videophone with limited compatibility?
Now I go to the supermarket and people are holding their phones out at arm's length having FaceTime conversations at full volume with their adult kids.
Once 3-D works and integrates with physical objects it's going to be a big deal. We just keep failing at that.
The reason I think videophones is a bad comparison is that video conferencing systems were economically successful in the corporate space well before you started saying that about videophones. There was a demonstrated value proposition; it's just that costs had to come way down for consumers to find it worth it. (Which I suspect demonstrates that that don't care very much about it, in that they pay $0 for video calls in both up-front and per-minute terms.)
But even if you were right, some social stuff changing isn't proof that other social things will change soon. It's just as plausible to me that the cost, in terms of money and inconvenience, will have to drop just as far for VR as it did for video calls. Meaning that it would have to be included in every phone or every pair of glasses for free and with approximately no additional effort to use. Which is something that we are surely decades away from.
>People keep thinking that stereoscopic 3D will revolutionize things
I'm not one of them. The revolutionary aspect of AR/VR/XR/MR/WhateveR (or, at least, one of them) is the ability to uncouple appearance or apparent make-up from function. It does for physical objects what the web did for paper.
> It does for physical objects what the web did for paper.
I don't think that's the case. The web was a pure addition to paper, taking most of the existing design vocabulary and radically adding to it through interactivity as well as by dropping the marginal cost of publishing and delivery to zero. The informational content on every piece of paper in the world could appear on a tablet the size of a slim book.
WhateverR of current and plausible near-term hardware is hugely subtractive. VR turns existing physical objects into things you can't see but might trip over. The rest at best adds a gloss of appearance, but a loss of touch, dexterity, and much of the normal interactivity of objects. I've seen interesting ideas for, say, MR board games, where you have some carefully chosen generic objects that get a visual gloss via facehugger image overlays. But I have a hard time seeing that be anything other than a highly niche experience; it's not clear that it would delivery notably more fun than games on the standard living room 2D screen. It's much, much more limited than what the web did for paper.
On the other hand, isn't it quite typical for good ideas to be recognized as such many times before the technology is actually mature to implement them properly?
Edit: most morbid example that comes to mind - flying machines.
That can be true, but you see the same pattern with bad ideas. Look at perpetual motion machines. People keep trying to invent them, but that doesn't prove they'll eventually succeed.
We could also consider jetpacks and flying cars and food pills. People have been inventing and re-inventing them for years. I'm sure if I looked I could find new generations of people taking another swing at it who haven't really reckoned with why all the previous waves failed.
> but that doesn't prove they'll eventually succeed
Of course it doesn't prove anything. But there's certainly a difference between the "hardness" of designing sufficiently high quality 3D glasses using well known technology, and doing something that breaks a physical law.
My point with perpetual motion machines isn't that good VR violates physical laws. It's that some ideas are attractive enough that people will keep trying and failing to make them real, without bothering to look at why the other attempts failed.
My impression is that even 2D screens are still rather lacking (they're big, heavy, very bright, need a big power source, rather expensive, sometimes difficult to interact with). In many situations a book or some papers are still superior to "virtual 2D reality".
Not sure if this indicates VR is conceptually flawed or if it means we're just still early in the development of the technology.
In my opinion, the other attempts happened because people think 3D is cool. Both as a concept and as a novel experience. And the other attempts failed because they went out and built a lot of stuff based on that coolness, without testing to see whether there was lasting value.
And we certainly see that repeating here. Magic Leap burned $3.5 billion. I'm not sure how many tens of billions Meta has spent on their vision of a Metaverse. But what's pretty clear is that so far there's very little long-term usage, very little value creation.
Might it work someday? Sure. But it's perfectly plausible that it will remain a practical failure until something like the holodeck or programmable matter becomes a reality. So it could be another 170 years before VR is a success.
Stereoscopy isn't VR. It isn't even required to use it, put a person with one eye in a VR headset and they'll be able to use it's fundamental feature set just fine. It's the positional tracking that allows for perspective correct representations of anything desired that's the point. This has a lot of practical use beyond making things pop out for effect.
I agree that stereoscopy isn't the only thing going on. But are you saying there are VR headsets that don't have stereoscopic 3D, and that I should therefore change my analysis?
I don't think spatial experiences are particularly new.
Quake was the first game I recall playing that was intensely spatial. So much so that after a couple of hours playing I had trouble readjusting to meatspace; the positional part of my brain was still carrying enough of the virtual world that i was easily disoriented. The same thing happened to me with Minecraft. Years later, I still have vivid spatial recall of some of the bases and mines I built.
You could certainly argue that VR controllers are an exciting step forward in spatial interaction. But things like the Wii and the Switch's (less capable) motion control mean they're only a step forward, not a leap. And that also makes clear that motion control and VR are separable concepts. I look forward to seeing the fancier controllers migrate to other platforms to see how that goes.
So I think what makes facehugger VR unique is stereoscopy. And stereoscopic 3D is a thing with a long history of faddish excitement followed by a total crash. You could argue that's not relevant here, but an awful lot of VR advocates make their cases in terms of 3D.
Obligatory pedantry: True Names was a novella, not a full novel. And the better for it.
Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment.
More seriously: I was really excited by True Names when it was published (and a bunch of us at MIT talked about it a lot) but by the time Snow Crash came out it seemed pretty obvious that real world metaphors weren't really desirable in virtual environments. Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies.
BTW you're 100% right about gaming being the killer app. Once people are used to that perhaps they'll want to do other things. But without a reason to develop the right metaphors, affordances, and experiences, there's "no there there".
>Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment.
Sorry, Gumby, it's the Play-Doh press for you.
I feel you. RE is probably going to end up being wrong about a lot of things, too; in particular, Vinge even kind of hinted at how the lack of haptics would cause the "mirror world" and virtual object schemas to break down, at least as far as immersion and utility go. Ultimately, I don't think we get to the world he described without the tech that was just nascent within it. That's analogous to the inapplicability of real-world translation metaphors to the pop-into-existence data stream that is the web, as you said. I realized this the moment that I reached out to touch the 3D model of a character I'd created and nothing was there.
Gaming short-circuits perception and gives leeway in a lot of ways that are conducive to a haptic-less experience, though. Good movement and animation can make up for a lack of embodiment that would kill a more serious experience (Second Life as a virtual office or retail branch...), and while animation is much less reliable of a tool for VR, I'm sure that other affordances can be found if devs are allowed to just... play around with it (pun intended).
The presentation kind of disappointed me because I didn't see an understanding of the situation that they face.
> Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies.
What's funny is that I think (having not experienced it) that I would like to basically set various files and applications around a virtual space, because I'm eternally frustrated with all window managers and other 2d application management tools. I just don't want to wander through someone else's "carefully curated" hall of t-shirt JPEGs.
People seriously underestimate the potential entertainment or even utility of being able to take your digital photo collection and, just, spread them all around your floor or walls or whatever. Grab them, stack them, group them with natural gestures. After that, the next time you open a PC-based photo manager, you will feel trapped, poking around a bucket full of files with a stick.
- Focus is on entertainment, remote work, collaboration, and utility, but their partnership with Unity might mean that gaming is part of the long-term strategy. Gaming is a top use case for VR with Meta devices, so Apple is focusing on AR use cases first.
- Disney is aligned on Apple's AR vision with Disney, Marvel Studios, ESPN 3D content, and more available on launch. This will make more entertainment companies jump into AR/VR!
- Can create a digital persona ("avatar") and make a virtual version of you with face tracking. Interesting move that can affect companies focusing on avatar creation.
- No physical controller - you can use your eyes, hands, and voice. Really interesting approach, and leaves room for haptic companies to shine.
- Comes with an M2 chip and a new R1 chip. Not sure how the R1 (or M2+R1) compares to the leading XR chip, Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2.
- Spatial photos and videos are supported and can be created with the device. Can be competitive with Leia's Lume Pad 2.
- Your Mac screen expands automatically to the VisionPro, which can be competition for companies building "AR laptops" or remote collaboration apps.
- Price is $3499, definitely a "Pro" price, which probably means that a "non-Pro" version is in the works.
- visionOS is Apple's OS for spatial computing. Interesting move that can affect companies building an OS for XR.
- "Spatial Computing" is the notable messaging (vs. "Metaverse").
> - Price is $3499, definitely a "Pro" price, which probably means that a "non-Pro" version is in the works.
I would perhaps argue the opposite here. They list it on the official page as "starting" at $3499 which gives me the indication that there will be other, higher tiered models to choose from on release.
I'm usually a fan of shiny new things, but this might be the first time I'll make an intentional effort to not buy something. I expect it's going to be fantastic, and using it for my development workstation would be amazing. However, I feel like this will be a net negative for humankind.
My kids will plead with me to get them one, and it will be easy to say no because it's so expensive. But with each successive generation it will get better and cheaper until I can no longer use cost as an excuse. My kids will explain to me that they have no way to interact with their friends because they all use it. I'm already dreading it.
> However, I feel like this will be a net negative for humankind.
The sinking feeling hit me too.
I'm well aware of how my usage of computers and technology, despite how well they've served me professionally, have absolutely caused me to be a more isolated human being. Spending times on online forums were fun... but frankly, I shouldn't've been hanging out there, and instead been developing my social skills with my peers.
But now having conversations with others while my AI eyes signal to them that I am totally listening?
Sitting in an empty room watching a TV? Or worse, sitting in a room with someone else, both of us strapped up with a headset to watch something, which we have to sync through the internet.
I mean, one of the demos was a parent sitting with one of these things strapped to their face so they could record a 3D Video of their kids. Instead of, you know, being with their kids.
VR/AR was already here, but now Apple have made it real. Not looking forward to this.
It's funny, I've noticed that this seems to be a common sentiment among the HN crowd. Maybe spending so much time with tech has made us more aware of its downsides.
I agree, the tech is amazing but it’s definitely not something I want to see becoming the norm :(.
In 10-15 years it’s going to get so advanced it will all be integrated into a pair of glasses. Then into a pair of contact lenses. Neuralink will probably try to leapfrog and have AR/VR surgically implanted.
The one thing I really want and like VR for is Thrill of the Fight boxing simulator. VR games in general are really fun.
> However, I feel like this will be a net negative for humankind.
I'm hoping things like this are just humanity's awkward first steps at augmenting our anatomy with tech. And after decades (or centuries) of withering our bodies (and often minds) with these myopic goggles, mobile internet terminals, and isolating earplugs, we'll make the jump to retinal HUDs, language skill implantation, and whatever else. The only thing I'm sure of is that we won't be the same species anymore.
Name with "Pro" in it already, might suggest lower-tier versions coming in some future?
Device looks promising, and I wonder if they plan to allow 2 devices to show the same content simultaneously to say watch 3D movies with someone else in the same room.
Some say $3499 is a high price, but being able to carry huge design studio with you is heck of a value to me.
I get the impression this model is intended to introduce the product line to the market and give developers something to build on while Apple fine-tunes the hardware. The thing is way overpriced for the average consumer but the tech inside it is wild. I expect we'll see more consumer-friendly models in 2024-2025.
I think this is long game material. And we won’t see a “consumer” version for at least two more years. Maybe Christmas 2025, but I feel like that’s super optimistic.
I remember when the iPhone came out, and one kid in my high school got one cause his dad was a wealthy businessman. Everyone thought it was super cool but it was definitely not consumer-friendly at the time (No app store, default stocks app, expensive and carrier-locked)
I think this headset has potential, but we're definitely not there with the first generation.
I've never spent even $1500 on a single tech product before, let alone $3500. They might as well have made it $9999. Its pricing puts it in the business buyer / wealthy Apple enthusiast league with Mac Pro, not consumer hardware. This is not priced for the market of middle class consumers worried about a recession.
The Quest 3 is $499. This headset looks GREAT but is it really 7X greater than the Quest 3?
Tech is so cheap now. When the Macintosh II came out in 1987 [1]:
> When introduced, a basic system with monitor and 20 MB hard drive cost US$5,498 (equivalent to $14,160 in 2022). With a 13-inch color monitor and 8-bit display card the price was around US$7,145 (equivalent to $18,400 in 2022).
Even the Commodore 64 was expensive [2]:
> Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595 (equivalent to $1,800 in 2022).
If the experience is worth it and there's no cheaper competitor, people have the money for these things.
And honestly, as a big user of the Quest 2 -- the Quest 3 isn't anywhere close to the same ballpark as this. Apple Vision Pro looks absolutely more than 7x better, the only question is whether it's worth it for you.
Absolutely. I’d rather have companies making these type of high quality products even if I can’t afford them to not having products like this in the market at all.
I'm totally getting a quest for fitness. This thing doesn't look like it is designed for fitness at all, although I might get one in the future if (a) I have disposable income for it and (b) the experiences are compelling? $3500 isn't that much these days (unfortunately).
Just because there's tech in something doesn't make them a tech product. Your microwave oven probably has tech built in, doesn't make it a 'not appliance.'
This will sell like hot cakes for flight sim consumers, if they could somehow show a virtual cockpit. It will be gone in seconds, flight simmers will pay more than that. I consider myself a starter and I already spent 2k+ just on flight sim hardware.
23M pixels across the field of vision of two eyes doesn't meet the requirements of a design studio. A retina display is minimum 60 pixels per degree. This will be around 30.
23 million pixels is 6kx4k (or maybe a slightly different aspect ratio, but whatever). That would be a 100 degree horizontal field of view at 60 pixels per degree. That would be a fairly narrow fov, but not unusually so for an HMD. I suspect they'd go for a much wider field though.
Agreed - we don't know what the actual PPD will be, but it will surely fall short of 60 given that the VR display covers more of your field of view than a 4K monitor in front of you.
That said, it'll still be higher than the current VR headsets and I expect many people will find it sufficient for their work.
Regardless of the future of the device, it’s been a long way for Apple to get here. ARKit was released in 2017 and is on version 6 by now, so far mostly for gimmicks. The same is true for the lidar sensor on every iPhone and iPad Pros: consumers have been bearing cost of R&D and establishing the supply chain for years. Also don’t forget binaural spatial audio: though quite cool on its own in the AirPods, it is clear that AR/VR is the application it shines. Finally, Apple Silicon’s absolute performance and performance per watt gives them an definite edge over competitors.
Although not needing handheld controllers is quite an Apple move, I am personally disappointed that the UX is not more spatial, but rather floating traditional 2D interfaces. As users of the first gen bear more of the initial manufacturing and R&D cost, let’s hope Apple can further iterate on the ideas, and also reduce costs for a proper consumer-range model.
All new paradigms heavily crib from the original while finding their place. I fully expect this will fall away within 5 years if there’s a healthy adoption.
I own a Varjo Aero. A comparably priced PC VR headset (after including graphic cards costs) that runs only under windows. I bought this setup for productivity – not gaming.
I want to give a quick reaction to apple vision pro from that perspective.
On the Aero, under windows I quickly came to learn that while the screens were clear and legible… The primary drawback was lack of software. Specifically there was no true 3d window manager.
I couldn’t arrange 10 different programs spatially around me, like some cliché virtual hacker’s den. I couldn’t layout a pillar of source code that expanded hundereds of pages above and below my current focus…
I was locked into looking at my 2d windows desktop, projected onto a plane, in a 3d virtual space. I wasn’t in 3d at all. I was still trapped in 2d.
---
The window manager in apple vision is already far better than that!
So, here’s my prediction.
Just like when microsoft sat out the race to mobile (iphone v. android), they are decidedly on the sidelines here too. VR productivity seems to be almost exclusively apple’s for the taking. (yes, I’m aware that FB has some offerings in this space, but no way in hell do they get telemetry on my literal eyeballs).
Just as products like the ipad haven’t exactly challenged microsoft windows, they have diminished it’s roll in people’s lives, apple vision seems to be a product with that kind of potential.
–
Last but not least, in the old days, I owned an ipad pro, which I supposedly bought for productivity. It had some weird limitation where I couldn’t run apps side by side in the way that I wanted. Eventually I gave the ipad away. Sooo… this time around apple doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt. I’ll pretty much have to demo one and personally confirm my top use cases before I’d consider buying.
What's so weird is that Microsoft had the Hololens years ago. It had a similar price, hand-based interaction, entirely self-contained, etc. I used one once, and it was astonishing. A totally magical AR experience
Of course the FOV was narrow and the resolution was probably too small for virtual monitors, and I don't know what the battery life was like. But this was so long ago, and then they just... stopped. I can't remember the last time Microsoft announced anything in mixed-reality. Maybe that Minecraft demo?
A good 20 years ago there was a bit of software called SphereXP that arranged windows in a 3D sphere around you, I really liked it and I’m glad the tech is coming back!
I with you, productivity is what I really want to use this for. Did you ever find any other VR tools that could do what you're describing? Because that's pretty much exactly what I'm hoping for too.
I found things, yes. But they weren’t a fit for me.
Things I found:
### SimulaVR [1]
A linux native VR headset with an entire open ecosystem of software. On the plus side: they actually have an open source VR native window manager!!! Cons include: The hardware hasn’t shipped yet. The hardware is already multiple generations behind. (11th gen intel NUC). For productivity – I think video pass-through is essential. Which both this and the Aero lack. Tragically, the software stack for developed by Simula is not compatible with the Aero. Because the Simula Window Manager is linux native, and the Aero is Windows Native… (damn, I bought the wrong hardware.)
### Immersed [2]
This is a software solution that basically lets you remote into a desktop running an appropriate server to sling pixels at your VR headset. It’s heavily oriented towards FB headsets. The Aero isn’t supported. So I’ve never tried it. Also, it’s required that you are serving up actual screen pixels… so If you want to run headless there are wierd display port dongle hacks…
### UltraTerm / CyberGem
There is a developer that has a terminal running in the unreal game engine. In this case you can essentially design a level that is your workspace… It feels weird to even be talking about this, but if you just want linux terminals in VR… this can get you there in a very unique way. I have to say there’s a part of me that’s super into the idea of designing a virtual scene with embedded computing.
### The state of play, as I understand it
In general, you can take it for granted that you can serve up your actual desktop to whatever PC VR solution you get your hands on. Which may be enough for you. But for me, no way! To repeat myself, For VR to be compelling for productivity, I want to be able to arrange my actual application windows in 3d space.
Even the Apple Vision seems to have this “2d desktop” limitation (If you are looking very, very closely). Your desktop share from your macbook seems to be limited to just a 2d desktop. So it appears as if to use the 3d window manager you have to be running Vision native apps only.
I hope I’m wrong on this, but if Ipad is any indication, Vision will never get the heavy hitters. X Code, Visual studio…. Etc.
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I have been so used to commodity PC hardware for so long, that when I impulse bought VR hardware during the pandemic, I assumed the software would be there to support it. But as far as I can tell, it’s largely not.
> For productivity – I think video pass-through is essential. Which both this and the Aero lack.
Video pass-through is shown in their WM demo, so IDK what you mean.
> Tragically, the software stack for developed by Simula is not compatible with the Aero. Because the Simula Window Manager is linux native, and the Aero is Windows Native… (damn, I bought the wrong hardware.)
The WM is linux-native, but any x86 OS should be installable on the onboard computer. Also, it's supposed to have the option to be used without the onboard computer, using an external computer with SteamVR or OpenXR, both of which seem to support Windows. (Alas, Windows doesn't expose any API for WM development, AFAIK).
>> Tragically, the software stack for developed by Simula is not compatible with the Aero. Because the Simula Window Manager is linux native, and the Aero is Windows Native… (damn, I bought the wrong hardware.)
> The WM is linux-native, but any x86 OS [...]
Oh. On re-reading, I see you meant you wanted to use the Simula software on the Aero HMD... I got that backwards.
Okay, You're right about video pass through. SimulaVR does have that.
but... I've found two places (both embedded within video) that still references 11th gen intel, and zero places that reference a 12th gen upgrade. If there is somewhere I can could confirm 12th gen, that's fantastic.
If apple really believed this were a revolutionary product they would have done the entire keynote with every presenter wearing and using the device. The fact they didn't is a major tell...
This thing has sunk cost fallacy written all over it and I'll be shocked if it even makes it to a version 2 of the device. They likely had so much time and talent engaged in the creation of it over the last few years that they feared it would be more of a demoralizing and attrition inducing event to kill it before launch vs. quietly abandon it afterwards.
I'm just starring slackjawed at their press photos of people using it and thinking if that's the absolute best they can make this thing look it is completely DOA with normal people. Nevermind all the usability issues that are sure to exist with strapping goggles to your face and head for hours at a time.
It's kinda different. Google is a company that is famous to launch new products just to see if they stick and then kill them quickly if they don't. Apple is a company that is famous to launch new products only when they know they can sustain them for years and integrate them fully in their own ecosystem.
Google didn't kill things just for fun and definitely NOT to see if it sticks or not.
People had real issues with glasses. People were even attacked because others didn't like the idea of being potentially filmed. It was a proper flop and no google didn't do that to see if they stick.
The same with the nexus loudspeaker: it was too expensive at that time, the feedback was bad.
>If apple really believed this were a revolutionary product they would have done the entire keynote with every presenter wearing and using the device.
To what purpose? At best, we'd all get to see how the virtual eyes thing worked, and that's about it. You wouldn't see them do any interactions with it, even if they were replacing their teleprompters it would all be automated scrolling. So what would be the purpose of putting it on the presenter's faces?
They're on that stage to sell us the vision of AR improving all of our lives. If they can't even be f'ed to do it in front of the most captive and interested audience for the device... it is a major tell and the device is doomed.
Think about it, if even the presenters on stage have no use for it or don't want to be seen using it then why would you?
But how does them using it while presenting help sell it to me? What use case are they demonstrating by doing so that is more compelling in that case? I don't expect them to have airpods in their ears when announcing the next airpod (or even the first). I don't expect presenters to be sitting in a car when they announce a new model. If Nike introduces new running shoes, I don't expect to see the presenters in those shoes on stage at a business convention. When telling me about a new food, I don't expect the presenters to be stuffing their faces all presentation long. Likewise it would be distracting as hell for presenters to be working out while announcing a new fitness routine or machine.
So again, what is the expected value you think there would be in the presenter wearing the device that wasn't provided otherwise in the rest of the presentation?
No I mean every apple leader on stage would have been wearing this device as they presented their part of the program (even parts unrelated to the headset).
This is not the reason people will or will not buy this. Contrary to it, they’d be called idiots for wearing it for nothing, as they are the ones seeing it inside
It seems to me that Apple is going for a very different direction than Meta, I see a lot of comments online by people that don't seem to understand this or perhaps didn't see Apple's presentation, they were very clear and careful about how they presented it.
Even when showing gaming, it wasn't VR games, it was a screen in AR playing a traditional game.
It seems to me this is also in the name and the branding, it was heavily rumoured that it would be named Reality Pro, but naming it Vision Pro seems to set what they are aiming for more clearly or at least how they are marketing it, it's about vision and essentially a replacement for screens, not a metaverse or virtual reality.
Exactly this. Even a 4090 can struggle with the next highest resolution display headset out there. This apple headset has like four times the pixel density or something? What GPU will be able to run this that isn't in some big PC tower on your floor?
yes, it's a very interesting reset on the marketing for AR/VR. Quite interested to see how it plays out - it looks very boring to VR enthusiasts (really, you're making a big deal that I can look at a photo?!), but Apple is so good at this - they may very well be laser focused on what they really know will sell.
IMO what makes Apple different and more likely to succeed than Meta is that they are pursuing more concrete scenarios like viewing content in a more immersive environment or spinning up a large viewing surface where you may have none .
Meta's problem is this focus around social interactions which just isn't taking hold apart from a niche audience of enthusiasts. Having tried the Quest Pro, if Meta pursued the remote office collaboration scenario more vigorously which is really quite promising and multiple desktop monitor replacement they would do a lot better
The obvious drawback with the Apple device is price and it's going to have challenges with traction. The enterprise would be a good place to start but that doesn't seem to be Apple's forte
The Oculus has had virtual video exactly like what was shown for a long time. Showing a VR video is not new or unique.
The innovation that apple has brought is from their holistic OS and UX design. If meta has a problem, it's that they focused heavily on full immersive experiences and let the concept of multitasking languish.
I don't personality think they focused too heavily on social at all... But I do think they failed to imagine (or at least position) their system as a proper personal computing platform.
I have a hard time imagining either company creating a good ecosystem here.
There will be some stunning experiences on both, absolutely (Disney/Marvel has entered the chat) but they'll be narrow niches. Neither company WI be anywhere near creating a more platform where experiences across systems work well.
Or maybe possibly one can. Apple only added widgets a couple years ago, & they're doing a great job across their platforms with widget like things (stacks on watch). The new iOS always-on Standby mode is starting to really leverage this, in a way Google is nowhere near doing (widgets on Android are so often ill maintained afterthoughts).
Metaverse requires a couple interesting features. Prepackaged monoliths just won't cut it, aren't dynamic enough. The space has to be a host not just to users but to a sea of mini experiences, sharing the space together, that users can seamlessly move across & interwork. Neither company has the genetics here to actually tackle these computing challenges: both are authoritarian in nature & unlikely to plant the right seeds for success.
Yeah, I haven't bought/used any AR/VR devices before, but I'm excited about a device that will offer seamless interaction with the rest of my Apple devices.
> pursuing more concrete scenarios like viewing content in a more immersive environment
100%. I'm not into playing video games or watching TV, so their focus on real world things really appealed to me.
This was maybe my biggest complaint about the Quest 2. I would get a text message or notification on my phone. I could feel it vibrate in my pocket or on my wrist, but I couldn't actually see it unless I took the headset off.
On the other hand, Meta are very very good at acquiring key companies for their ambitions. My Quest 2 is a Beat Saber machine and everything else that comes with it is icing on the cake.
I think you are absolutely right. The Vision Pro presentation was the first time that I could consider watching a movie or sports in VR. Making that screen really big but also embedding you into an environment focused on the show was great to see. Dimming the room or giving it a Star Wars theme is very nice.
It shows that they really considered what you can do with the device more than all the others.
Calling it now, the failure of this Apple product is going to be a big turning point for the company. Apple is supposed to be the company that sets trends, but instead they're following Meta down a path that has now shown to be a dead end, and no amount of aesthetics or marketing can prevent it.
It’s possible, but I see a use case for this as a replacement monitor for my Mac, plus a lot more. If this were $2k I’d get one immediately, assuming an in-store demo is not disappointing.
I have never had any interest in Meta products (partly because of their affiliation with FB).
People wear things on their face 16 hours a day because they provide value. A portable substitute for a monitor that also supports arbitrary multitasking and immersion is (potentially) valuable.
This. I'm imagining having my triple 27-inch 4K displays on the go with my MacBook while also being compact and fit into my computer bag.
$3500 for that? I'm game. I paid more than that for my home desk and just the ability of having a massive display at my disposal on the go makes that price tag look no brainer.
On the other hand , others shove their fingers into their eyes chasing around a loose contact behind their eyeball because the prospect of glasses is in their mind even worse of an experience.
I'm not 100% confident that I could wear these all day, but I wear my Airpods Pro all day long and they're heavy. I can wear my ski googles most of the day. Building a VR headset that can be worn for a few hours straight and are all-day comfortable seems possible.
Good point. I am wondering if they can make the environment immersive enough that you don't notice the weight as much. Sort of like how roller skates are heavy and cumbersome when you're walking around outside the rink, but when you're on the rink you don't notice that because they enable you to move so easily. And yes, I realize how badly I'm dating myself with this analogy.
Feels like you're just rewriting history. Apple product launches have had way more excitement in the past. A clip of Steve Balmer saying people won't buy iPhones isn't evidence of an overall sentiment.
100% agreed. This is going to be the point in history that people will remember when Apple went too far and how it destroyed the company...or destroyed the Apple as we know it today.
I've understood every single Apple product so far (with some small exceptions) but this is just DOA. People are used to thinking that Apple doesn't go into a product space unless they can really nail it in terms of implementation and pricing.
There is no excuse for 3499. This product is dead. If they can't manufacture it any cheaper they should have never done it.
It may or may not be a dud but I’ve no idea how even a resounding failure could ‘destroy’ a company as profitable and with as successful a product as the iPhone.
What makes you think they can’t manufacture it cheaper?
I see this price as a way of earning a healthy profit off early adopters and allowing them time to get third party apps developed before they announce a Vision (non pro) for $1000-2000 that flys off the shelves
The focal distance won't be an inch away of course. Every headset I've seen specs for puts the focal distance at 20ft. For normal human eyes, 20ft is optical infinity, so there's no difference optically between looking into a headset and looking at the horizon.
Funny, the moment they showed the vision health feature, I immediately thought they'd come back to that later to tell us that computing using a headset is in fact better for the eyes (because of the lenses that shift the focal distance).
As a glasses wearer I was wondering how this works. They mentioned extra lenses that I would have to install into the device. But why isn't it possible to do this all in software?
It takes optical phased array(we’re not there yet at all)) or light-field display(not there in computational power yet) to do this in software. Some googles has diopter correction/focus adjustment dials, but it’s not common for some reason, which I can only make assumptions, perhaps to do with motion sickness.
Did they say anything about myopia from holding screens close? I thought they specifically said the feature was encouraging spending more time outside. I believe the current theory for increased myopia is from not getting enough sunlight into your eyes as a child. Nothing to do with focusing close.
> Additionally, increasing the distance the device is viewed from can help children lower their risk of myopia and gives adult users the opportunity to reduce digital eyestrain. Screen Distance in Screen Time uses the TrueDepth camera to encourage users to move their device farther away after holding it closer than 12 inches from their face for an extended period of time.
Directly after mentioning the sunlight monitoring/monitoring outside time feature they announced a feature that utilizes the Face ID cameras to warn you if you are holding a screen too close to your face.
It’s not theory. Every VR headset produced, since the 90’s, and every microscope, shortly after their invention, has had optics that make viewing comfortable, by having a distant focal distance, for the eyes to settle on. This is, quite literally, Physics 101 material!
I'm not going to make predictions that I'll later regret, but I have the following concerns:
Comfort: This needs to sit on your face for 8 hours or more. Unlike with the Quest Pro, your face always touches the shield. If you wear AirPods Max with this, the majority of your head is covered, sweating and unable to breathe. Apple supposedly paid lots of attention to making the material breathable, but their rubber products also deteriorate notoriously fast, so we'll have to wait and see.
Resolution: The displays have an impressive resolution, but I'm not sure it will be enough. So far, none of the VR headsets I've tried have come even close to matching the resolution that I would want for coding and desk work. But image quality at the same resolution can vary heavily based on the lens quality and the headset, so we'll have to wait and see.
Input: I hated Hand Tracking on the HoloLenses and disliked it on the Quest. The pinching gesture becomes uncomfortable really quickly, as it requires more and more monotonous movement than tapping a key or clicking a mouse. However, they seem to heavily involve eye-tracking as an input method, which none of the other headsets have tried, so we'll have to wait and see.
Price: Well, I have a year to justify this in my head.
I was just pointing out the fact that they said "This needs to sit on your face for 8 hours or more." when it is limited by the fact that it will only be available for the 2 first hours.
DOA at the announced price of $3499. I don't think even the Reality Distortion Field can overcome the intrinsic problems with VR/AR, namely that most people simply do not want to deal with the hassle of strapping something to their face or clearing a sufficiently large area for room-scale experiences.
You don't really need to clear an area for this because you'll be using passthrough 99% of the time and won't hit stuff. You'll be able to run around a cluttered room, pick up things, interact with people, type on keyboards, etc. without taking the headset off!
The optics will make or break this, but I came in extremely skeptical, but it's clear they've put a lot of thought into the possibilities landscape, the interaction modes, and the human aspects of it. It looks a whole lot more interesting than I was expecting - it's the best shot I've seen at AR so far. It's also clearly the "First" in the line - similar to the first iPhone and iPad, it's expensive and a bit unwieldy, but you can start to see the potential.
Not an iPhone user but I have yet to see a panoramic camera app that gets anything remotely high red for output. The panoramic mode felt cool, but I can't imagine they actually have the data there to make it look good. (Short of copious AI up scaling, which is a pretty new capability.)
I think one telling section of the presentation is the very speedy run-through of a few 3rd party apps for this platform. They all looked crappy, quick and superficial pseudo-3D versions of existing 2D apps. Which is a problem on all VR platforms: to deliver a truly engaging and convincing experience is extraordinarily hard and expensive.
Even Disney couldn't deliver (yet). They showed a lot of imaginary scenarios that are not implemented and concluded with: Disney+ will be available. Which is just a 2D streaming app like any app.
I'm not all negative. I think movie watching in this incredibly immersive way might be stunning. That would be a type of baseline "killer app" to fall back on. Assuming it works well, without it being tiring. There's the prospect of gaming, which is interesting as you pretty much use this device stationary.
Those two solo experiences hold promise if the tech is as good as is suggested.
I'm not sold on the productivity scenarios, because they aren't really re-imagined. If your work consists of zoom calls, messages and email, projecting those into the air doesn't really do much and slightly unsharp Excel still sucks.
There's the usual amusement of hypothetical scenarios that only happen in Apple's imagination where everybody is balls deep into every iOS device, is permanently connected and instantly available on a whim. You decide to "relive" memories by projecting photos on your TV (most people never do or just watch it on their phone) and then spontaneously drag in grandma to have a shared live experience.
That's not real world. Grandma is taking a nap, has none of these devices and wants you to come by and visit instead of fooling around with your toys.
Which is the point I'll end with. I'm very much technically impressed and will readily admit that from a philosophical angle, I hope it will fail. I genuinely believe that technology that isolates you even further and gives you even less reason to interact with actual reality is the last thing we need in an already touchless society where mental health problems are skyrocketing.
I do not want a world where dad has ski goggles to record the kids, the kids looking back at a digital version of his eyes. Dad should stop recording at all and just bloody engage.
I will happily go on the record as saying that this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone, perhaps even more so.
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EDIT: To clarify this statement...
- For personal/entertainment use it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema.
- For business use, the days of multiple displays and screen management seem set to be a relic of the past. I look forward to coding in an IDE which isn't constrained to a physical device sat on my desk, or replying to emails "on the beach" versus under fluorescent lighting. My work environment will soon become consistent, without relying on the realities of my real-world physical environment. Think about people working from home with little-to-no desk space: this solves that problem.
- In response to the obvious criticisms (high price, battery life, form factor, weird eyeball thing)... this is Gen 1. Look how quickly the iPhone and Apple Watch evolved between generations 1 to 3, and look how the price changed as production capabilities and economies of scale evolved.
- Personally, I've been using Apple devices for 20 years. This is the first novel Apple device I've felt genuinely excited about since first joining the ecosystem. Will I use it for everything? No. Will the first version be perfect? No. Does it offer a whole new paradigm to any one of the physical devices I already own...? Yes! If Apple's reputation for growth and improvement in other product categories historically is anything to go by, I look forward to seeing how ubiquitous this becomes in 5 or 10 years from now.
> For personal/entertainment use it completely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema.
You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing. Also, a TV can be watched by multiple people, and a home cinema will obviously deliver better sound.
> For business use, the days of multiple displays and screen management seem set to be a relic of the past. I look forward to coding in an IDE which isn't constrained to a physical device sat on my desk, or replying to emails "on the beach" versus under fluorescent lighting.
The IDE is an interesting perspective I too as a developer am thinking about. But there's a reason you can be as productive in 2023 as in 1983 using emacs or vim. Because it's insanely hard to replace the simplicity of text buffers and a keyboard.
> In response to the obvious criticisms (high price, battery life, form factor)... this is Gen 1. Look how quickly the iPhone and Apple Watch evolved between generations 1 to 3, and look how the price changed as production capabilities and economies of scale evolved.
Smart watches have been anything but a groundbreaking technological revolution.
> Also, a TV can be watched by multiple people, and a home cinema will obviously deliver better sound.
I was extremely surprised that shared reality was completely absent from the presentation. Apparently the sensors on these devices don't enable creating a coordinate system that multiple devices can collaborate on/in. You can't look at the same objects in space together.
This is hard stuff, but I'm stunned they're shipping it before solving that problem.
You’d think it would because of that but you’d also think if it was supported they’d mention it, if only to provide defense against the “only for friendless nerds that live alone” criticism, albeit at an absurd price point.
Got your point. I only saw it from a very limited technical understanding of how ARKit works and how shared experiences can be achieved on a framework level.
Not explicitly mentioning shared experiences other than video calls at all could also indicate this is not the way it should be framed (by focusing on the collaborative aspects that exist "today").
The price sure point prevents me and my family members from casually trying this experience.
I was merely suggesting that the technology for shared experiences already exists in the form of shared anchors.
You could be right wrt "if they didn’t mention it explicitly it's not part of their (currently) intended experience", but it might as well be due to "spatial computing" being sth that primarily will be shaped by their adopters along the way, which is something different than a corporation plotting the experience up front (as might be the case with metaverse?).
We're really missing the point here. Yes, that device can't do better. You can't do that with your friends together. But there's some similar in America right now. You can just jump in and in 2 or 4 minutes, and that kind of experience. Why to bother this kind of thing, this new tech? Doing things together is good, I think that's the main selling point of these devices.
> I'm stunned they're shipping it before solving that problem
Are you really? Outside of everybody sitting on the couch watching a movie together, which will be an extremely marginal use case for this thing anyway—are you seriously going to buy all of (spouse, kids, friends) their own $3500 headset?—shared-reality seems very niche for consumer applications, which are clearly what they're targeting.
I think without shared reality in place, the public verdict on this device will be that it's a loneliness enabler, or has you wear your loneliness on your face. Or rather, on a screen strapped to your face. It's going to be undesirable, the most damning quality of any consumer item. Nobody will envy their peers for having one.
People say this about smartphones, too, and yet adoption is practically universal. If the product is worth using, people will use it, and the social friction will fade. The reason products like Google Glass never moved beyond pariah status is that they weren't really worth using, so they were only ever used by "tech bros" who were already cultural pariahs, and who in so using outed themselves as such.
Besides which, nobody is looking into my home and calling my various screens "loneliness enablers". Not that I would give a shit if they were, though I might invest in some blinds or drapes.
> The glasses are extreme expensive and they are not replacing anything.
Well, they're essentially pitched as a replacement for laptops, tablets, and for some users TVs too. No product category goes from zero to full adoption in a day (look how long it took for laptops!) but saying this headset isn't pitched as a computer replacement is flat out wrong.
> Someone with an ipad still needs the glasses and the other way around.
Why? You're losing the drawing tablet functionality, which I assume most iPad owners don't use, and what else?
> I'm saying the "Apple goggles" can so easily fall victim this perception because those qualities are so front-and-center with it.
And I'm saying nobody will ultimately give a crap if the tech works as well as Apple wants it to. Our social spaces have been utterly transformed by screens and networked technology in the last few decades, and while there is always some pushback, progress marches on for better or worse.
Especially with as much emphasis they put on SharePlay in the iPhone presentation. Quite a neat feature. For the few households that will splurge $14,000 for a family of 4 to watch movies together once a month, I'd hope it would have this feature!
It's not the sensors. Meta headsets can do this with much worse sensors by using shared anchors, which as someone else mentioned is already a feature in ARKit. Why they didn't mention this or integrate it into the OS I don't know.
> ... Also, a TV can be watched by multiple people ...
I will point to this article: "Why Americans are lonelier and its effects on our health" [1] that claims that "some surveys reveal that around 60 percent of people in the U.S. right now report feeling lonely on a pretty regular basis. And that's pretty devastating from a public health perspective".
I don't know the real number but it connect with the market potential. Also, Apple is really great on hitting the mark. Playing with words, I don't think Mark is as good as Apple.
But isn't this VR/AR kit going to contribute even more to the loneliness - contribute and feed itself on the trend?
Despite positive upbeat music it was kind of sad to watch people alone in their sparsely furnished environments without personal touch, viewing favorite pictures on helmet instead of printed on the wall, father with the face hidden behind this helmet during kid birthday party, etc
Probably yes, we were talking about the success of the product not the society. That is another topic where we can also include mobile phones, streaming services, etc.
> a home cinema will obviously deliver better sound.
Will it, though? Of course you could build a home theater with better sound, but I'd bet that the spatial audio built into AirPods delivers better sound that most peoples' home theater setups (which is generally just a TV with built in sound or a mediocre soundbar).
I don’t think we are at a point in human technology where any noise-cancelling headphones sound better than cheap wired counterparts… they feel amazing by rather deceptive engineering, but it only lasts until you go back to standard non-cancelling speakers.
Except those people who have "mediocre soundbars" can't afford buying a $3.5K VR headset. And those who have a spare budget of $3.5K to enhance their TV watching experience will invest the money on a better TV and a surround speaker setup.
I want an IMAX viewing experience with booming surround effects and I only have time to watch when the kids are all in bed. Compared with a house large enough to have a dedicated sound-proof theatre room, $3500 doesn’t sound too expensive.
Also not everyone lives in a house, I’m sure Manhattan condo owners can afford the price of the theatre gear, but cannot afford the space required for them to be used optimally. Wealthy people don’t all live in mansions.
> Except those people who have "mediocre soundbars" can't afford buying a $3.5K VR headset.
There are many many people for whom money is not the limiting factor. It's because they don't have the space, the technical wherewithal to set it up, the motivation to make it happen, or some combination of all three.
I think you might be over-extrapolating your own POV. I have a mediocre soundbar and can afford the Vision Pro. I'm not likely to upgrade my soundbar anytime soon (I don't really care), but I'm very likely to buy a Vision Pro.
can't imagine people will only be buying it for movie watching.
Like I said, "you could build a home theater with better sound." But most people haven't and won't. It requires time, technical expertise, and a lot of space. And with that you only get a home theater. And you can't travel with it (I love the idea of using one on a plane).
But I'm sympathetic to the social-watching issue. I don't love the idea of watching movies in a headset while my wife sits next to me on the sofa doing something else (or even watching the same movie on a screen). But I also don't love the idea of buying two. (And that's without even thinking about larger families.)
I think home theater will be a big part of the appeal, but it won't succeed if replacing a home theater is the only thing it does well.
There's also a physical limit on bass sound from small head speakers. Much of bass sound is felt in the chest as much as in the ear, and the little speakers on the device are limited there. iPods are the same of course, and they do okay with sound, but we accept a lot of limitations on portable devices.
Note that 65" is very different from 100" and most people's movie experience at home is far too small relative to the directors' intents.
The Sonos w/ sub + rear surrounds and an 85" OLED TV with these latencies will put you in the price point of this thing.
If you're apart, both people would need a room, TV, and Sonos system to share the experience. So each has that "need one per person" problem depending whether colocated or not.
I'm more excited to use this for games and VRChat. My Valve Index needs my whole gaming desktop to power it which is actually pretty much the price of an Apple Vision Pro.
Home cinema implies (to me anyway) a true surround setup and not some crappy soundbar.
You can’t replicate true surround sound with stereo headphones. You can with binaural audio but that requires specialized recordings. I’m sure spatial audio sounds cool but it’s not true surround sound.
And then there’s the problem of low frequencies. You can’t beat a subwoofer.
The average American or British living room with even a cheap surround system is going to run rings around anything in-ear or on-ear.
There's many reasons that people warn newbies not to mix or master on cans and to use speakers.
For people who care about going beyond stereo, budget is going to be a much larger problem for most folks than space or technical knowhow. And anybody who cares about going beyond stereo probably cares about quality.
> You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing.
Hey - the world's biggest computer company just went up on stage along with the director of the world's biggest entertainment conglomerate and made that 'bold assumption'. They're probably pretty careful about these sorts of things.
It takes very little for Bob Iger to say he will make Disney+ available on the Vision Pro. It takes very little to deliver a streaming platform to a new device in general, but even less for one that uses the same frameworks as one of your primary existing devices. Most of what they showed was just showing you Disney+ content on a floating screen. I highly doubt they have invested that much into any sort of experience that is only possible on the Vision Pro (hence limiting anything that came close to that as a generic vaporware "What if?" trailer at the end).
With respect to the CEO of that company, I mean, sure. But you kind of take that as a given. It's not like he's only been right, and certainly his leadership so far has been business oriented, vs. "wave of the future" oriented. A good example is how the AirPods ended up being an arguably bigger success than the Watch (and how that hasn't really been fully capitalized on). The good news is that the world's biggest company is precisely the kind of place that can afford to iterate on something like this in the public. So if the theory is that the "dream" of AR is only possible by getting stuff out there to iterate on, then they certainly now have a good shot.
Hey, that’s a great point. Mine was more along the lines that they probably did not go up there on mere assumptions about what users might want. They’re not kids, they’re professionals on the tail-end and apex point of their career. Probably had an army of people do the homework to make sure that they don’t end up looking like complete fools a few years down the line.
Hasn’t there also been some executive overlap on the board level of these companies for a long time?
I was just watching a Steve Jobs keynote from 1998 the other day. And you can see exactly the same strategies implemented there, only with profit margins at <$100m and an inverse David-Goliath relationships with delegates from industry partners.
There are MANY examples of The Walt Disney Company making poor decisions. The most recent one would have to be the "Star Wars Hotel" that cost $1,200/night PER PERSON. In what world can enough Americans afford to fill up a hotel every night at that price? They did what all companies do- they got greedy. Now they have a $300M write-off as they tear it down.
DIS stock is taking a dump right now because Disney+, it turns out, isn't the savior we all thought it was (and were led to believe it was) during the pandemic when the Parks division wasn't bringing in the cash. ESPN is dead weight. They have more debt than ever thanks to the pandemic.
I did not say they’re making the right decision. I merely pointed out that the parent comment poked at this being a bold assumption.
They might be wrong, they might be making a bad play. But they’ve also probably devoted a reasonable amount of resources at finding answers to questions like whether people will want to use these or not. So, they probably didn’t make “bold assumptions”.
It's a question of semantics I suppose. So to me, it was a bold assumption on Disney's part to assume, regardless of what the data/research/surveys told them, that A) there were enough people on the planet who would travel to Orlando, FL to stay at this Star Wars-themed resort for over $1000/person/night, and B) there were enough people on the planet who would travel to Orlando, FL again and again to stay at this Star Wars-themed resort for over $1000/person/night.
It would have surprised me if such people would be interested enough in the hotel to not stay at it in the first few months of its opening, but hold off until some time thereafter, and so in that respect, Disney seems to have recognized that once that initial high demand drops off, it's GG. Demand wouldn't magically (ha) go from ~50% occupancy to ~90-100% with no change to the hotel or the pricing (e.g. any factor external to the resort itself).
>Apple has produced plenty of devices that didn't pan out.
Have they? They've launched particular versions of existing products that didn't sell too well, but have they ever launched a device which was was fundamentally new and didn't eventually sell a ton of units?
To be fair, that might as well be ancient history. I imagine more than 99% of Apple’s value comes from post-iPod activity, and I can’t think of anything post–OS X that failed, let alone post iPod.
I don’t get this HomePod hate. I have the big (old gen) and small one, and they rock.
We’re in allocated housing at the moment for my fiancées work and they have a shitty tv. I wouldn’t be able to hear the thing if it wasn’t playing through my HomePod. And that’s before the benefits of it as a speaker
Pure anecdata of course and I'm far from the average person, but I personally do not like to wear headphones if I can avoid it. (And yes, I have good headphones.) I can't even imagine having a screen strapped to my face.
I can imagine having a screen strapped to my face. I can't imagine a killer app that makes it worth the trouble & cost. I was hoping apple could help me out with my limited imagination, but they're pushing Apple Vision for watching movies, surfing the internet and facetime, so not really.
> You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing.
Raises hand. I'm in for that. I'm a VR fan but my soapbox has always been that AR is the true future.
> Also, a TV can be watched by multiple people, and a home cinema will obviously deliver better sound.
In the same way that when the iPhone came out there were individual devices that could do each feature better than the iPhone could, yes :)
If you look at video consumption, "individual" devices (phones, tablets, laptops) make up about 50% of viewing time. TV the rest. I don't think the multiple people angle is going to kill this considering how much content is consumed individually already.
A home cinema also has to be researched, purchased separately, takes up space, etc. Any pair of $200 Bose headphones sounds better than the old iPhone ear pods...and yet...
> it's insanely hard to replace the simplicity of text buffers and a keyboard.
We're talking about replacing monitors, not text buffers or keyboards!
> it's insanely hard to replace the simplicity of text buffers and a keyboard
Totally agree. I just want to use this to replace my big bulky monitor that I can't take with me wherever I go and that makes my small place look a little more junky.
> You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing.
Well Apple showed someone using the headset while lying down in bed. I’d say that Apple is making a bold statement about the comfort of their product. We’ll need to wait for hands on reviews to determine if it indeed is as comfortable as Apple implies it is.
> Well Apple showed someone using the headset while lying down in bed.
The box of Wheaties showed someone shooting the winning buzzer beating home run touch down in double overtime to win the world series of superbowl cups. Somehow I doubt that, due to the bowl of Wheaties I had for breakfast, my afternoon will look much like that.
> You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing.
I've seen people pass out in VRChat with their headsets on. Some people on VRC are on there for 12+ hours a day. It's a fascinating sub culture I was totally shocked to learn about. People drink and do drugs while listening to music at a virtual rave. Multiple rooms full every Friday, Saturday 80-120 people in the room hanging out. I found myself up till 6 am lost in the music.
I used to do exactly that when the pandemic started, but like, is that enough for a $3k headset? I paid $2k for my setup but I was already heavily committed to various simulation game genres.
120 people is not enough for an entire headset division, and since the main reason most people don't like doing that is that they don't really enjoy having the headset on, I don't know what apple can do to change that.
By Gen3 in 5 years, people will begin to buy these like iPhones and then multiple people will be able to watch via SharePlay.
3D images are probably coming to iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 so the posts about "who's gonna wear this to take pictures" are already moot.
This is a developer/enthusiast focused niche release providing perfect beta testing grounds while technology will shrink this device to a smaller and more practical form factor.
In 3-4 years, the current Vision Pro will be the standard Apple Vision product with a smaller form factor while a new Pro product will have more advanced features and lose its external battery.
I also think that Apple Vision will be successful but Gen1 is not where its at for the vast majority of users.
Using a tiny battery pack. I'm assuming (hoping) that you'll be able to use something bigger that provides USB-C power and get a correspondingly longer life.
good catch about needing 4 of them for a family... will they implement multiuser in vision OS or you will have to buy one for each member as you are supposed to do with the ipads?
I have to wonder about a device that won't allow you to watch a 2-hour movie without running out of battery and having to plug it in. I guess Oppenheimer is a no-go.
Give it a decade, and the demand for immersive escapism will be greater than ever, if anyone can afford it, as western civilization continues its decline/collapse.
> Smart watches have been anything but a groundbreaking technological revolution.
I think Apple has made a tactical error here. The days of the shrinking iPhone are long gone, but not forgotten. It was the iPhone 3G that was a turning point for people who hadn't bought an iPhone yet. It was smaller with better battery life.
If the Apple Watch 3 had followed a similar pattern, they would have had to skip adding the next additional sensor to the device, but I think in the long term that would have just delayed us one design cycle but still given us a thinner and lighter watch, which we would have needed for a deeper impact.
Apple needs to do 3 things for the Vision Pro to be successful.
1. Convince enough people to buy one via halo use cases
2. Leverage or buy developer adoption
3. Create a decent enough developer experience to produce high quality apps
On 2 & 3, Apple has a proven track record, or at least amassing enough market share to force developers to ignore deficiencies in 3.
Which means 1 is going to be make-or-break.
The Apple Watch is a great analogy here, because it was evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
It did not let you do anything you couldn't before. It did let you do it better.
Consequently, this won't be (and doesn't need to be) an iPhone level smash success. It just needs to be volume and financially self-sufficient enough to get them to iteration N+X.
Because iteration N+X is "We shrink the iPhone down to a minimally-screened compute/network node, and the Vision SE becomes everyone's must-have companion, and then Apple owns a better-than-iPhone platform."
I think Apple made the right move in trumpeting its non-work use cases, because Apple has let macOS atrophy for enterprise use. And priced-for-work is a trap market they don't need to pursue (see: Microsoft).
But I don't know if most people want a better consumptive device $3500-badly... time, will tell.
Regarding #2 and #3, Apple has been working on this for years. ARKit for instance, is hugely gimmicky if not silly on iPhones, and LIDAR on the same had incredibly limited real world utility for that device. Yet for years they've been deploying millions of equipped devices, building it out, expanding the SDKs, doing developer outreach, and so on. They've even built shared AR spaces when the viewport is just a phone, again despite it being pretty goofy and of limited value.
They've been building towards this for years.
I suspect for most apps supporting the Vision Pro will be supporting variable resolutions (for resizable windows) and clicking a checkbox on the targets.
Surely $3500 and "Pro" in the product name implies they think it'll mostly be used for work? I didn't quite understand why they branded it that way given the heavy consumer focus in the demos. It implies that they intended for it to be a consumer device for a long time and got cold feet at the end when they realized they couldn't reduce the price.
For me it could go either way. I am willing to put up with wearing a headset if it unlocks some new use cases. But we really need to know the specs. I haven't seen anyone mention a field of view, refresh rate, pixel per degree, etc. And even with these specs I would need to actually try it to get a holistic feel for the product and its software.
> Because it's insanely hard to replace the simplicity of text buffers and a keyboard.
And why would you think this would seek to replace that, rather than complementing it? Fill up your entire vision with forty text buffers. Use a keyboard on a twelve-inch-deep shelf on one side of your bedroom with no monitor taking up space behind it.
I used to think Apple TV was unimpressive. I had an Android TV which turned to shit after like 3 years. Apple TV though? Runs like a dream, still gets updates, has nice integrations with my iPhone. It's one of the best "plug and play" Apple devices there is. It "just works".
I went from finding it unimpressive to it being my first recommendation for anyone getting a TV. Screw regular smart TV software, just get the TV with the best panel and use Apple TV. So long as the TV doesn't break, you won't need to upgrade for a long long time.
Have you tried Chromecast 4k, though? I’ve bought one, as my LG TV’s webOS became so sluggish that it became pretty much unusable.
I have an Apple TV 4k in the living room and it’s great, but I find myself drawn to the Chromecast experience way more. Apple TV is more refined, but Chromecast’s remote is far better than ATV’s (1st gen, at least) and Google’s voice assistant is obviously far smarter (especially if you’re multilingual).
My family is all-Google so we have 5 Google TV devices. We're not dissatisfied enough to get rid of them, but it's pretty shocking to me how poorly it integrates with other Google services. I just keep finding ways in which it's clear that Google TV was developed in a silo relative to other Google services. Plus, Google's "Family Link" parental controls are so poorly designed it makes me wonder if anyone at Google actually has kids.
Granted, I am not an Apple user at all, so it's possible there would be similar frustrations on that side, but anecdotally I hear that Apple is way better about these sorts of things.
The original Apple TV remote was awful. It was the achilles heel of the product. The newer silver Apple TV remote with the round click/touch surface is what it should have been; it's worth trying if that's your primary pain point.
Are you talking about Google TV? I haven't used that one, but I've used Chromecast 4k and was not impressed. It doesn't have a remote - or really a TV UI at all - which was my biggest gripe.
We have a two month old high-end Sony TV with Google TV and a second gen 4k Apple TV. They are not really comparable. The Apple TV is super smooth and has great apps. The Google TV, in comparison, is clunky, the apps are meh, and you have to wait ages for major OS updates (while investing TVs, I looked at historical OS updates). Heck even a new TV is on a two year old OS with months old security updates.
But the Apple TV really shines with the integration in the Apple ecosystem. AirPlay, SharePlay, AirPods, HomePod, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, etc. the integration is fantastic.
That's still a bad comparison. You should be comparing a comparably priced stand alone device to the AppleTV. The built-in OS is never as good as decent stand alone devices even on $3000 TVs.
I have a 2019 Shield Pro (so 4 years old) and the 2023 AppleTV 4k. I've had issues with both. My AppleTV definitely does not just work. Apps crash all the time and occasionally requires a restart. I have different issues on the Shield which also occasionally requires restart
Apple TV is inexpensive and you hide it close to the TV. This one costs more than $3000 and you have to wear it on your face all the time. Masks work well only when we're alone or if everybody is wearing one. If not, they use to cancel the wearer from social interactions.
And most importantly, they're not selling you with tracking or ads. You bought a thing, you get a thing. No BS. besides that, the apps all work and have fewer bugs, unlike everything else I've used like it.
It's sort of evolved to the "What's that Chromecast thing again?" for me. (Which I thought was super-underrated.) And I guess I could maybe upgrade my big TV which would be an absolute hassle and is perfectly good for my purposes--and might not even be better at this point. Not a frequently in my hand thing but for ~$100 and really nice, perfectly good.
Apple TV is easily my favourite Apple product. Of all the Apple products it's the one that works flawlessly and gets out of my way. I could give up my Mac and switch to Windows before I would switch to an Apple TV competitor.
> Of all the Apple products it's the one that works flawlessly and gets out of my way.
You probably didn't experience the Atmos bug. For about a year, Atmos audio on the last Apple TV model would just drop out randomly every couple of minutes for like 10 seconds. In some cases it would make a big noise sound blasting through your speakers. They finally solved it in the last big TvOS version but it was painful to experience.
For streaming of Netflix, Disney, etc it's a great device but for Plex it sucks that it doesn't have HDMI audio passthrough.
There was an issue where you couldn't accept accept an updated iCloud TOS without an iPhone. You could dismiss the prompt but it would keep nagging you whenever you turned the device on. I think it's fixed now.
In general, using the Apple TV I get the impression that Apple PMs are probably deep in the Apple bubble and the idea that someone might not have an iPhone is inconceivable to them.
Can you use Netflix, Hulu, etc with it through Android? Or are you stuck with that wimpy remote that looks like a 1st gen ipod shuffle? If that's true, I'll admit you can use it, but that is a painful, dated experience. "click left, click up, click up, click left"
You should try the remote, it’s blazingly fast and makes any other TV feel like junk. You just swipe no clicking needed. If you need to type there’s voice to text built in to the remote to either say or spell what you want.
Yes you can use all of those with the included remote which is easy to use and quite responsive. And all of them (minus Netflix) surface the shows you're watching up to "watch now" so you don't have to dig into any of them to continue watch your shows. I'm not aware of any use of an iphone which makes using the Apple TV easier.
You are high as a kite. AppleTV is one of the greatest things in my househould. The UI is world's beyond whatever ad-filled garbage "smartOS" my TV uses.
I wouldn't really make a statement like the above, and I can't say I necessarily agree with it... that being said, other folks on this thread are kinda missing the point OP made: it's not that Apple TV isn't good. It's that it isn't, and never really was, revolutionary.
It's an arguably best-in-class app-based TV watching experience. But its market share is pretty small years after launch, it hasn't caused much change/adaptation in the market as a whole as a result of existing, and it's not really at the center of any kind of cultural conversation.
I am really curious to learn more details about Vision Pro (like... how much does it weigh?), and would be even more curious to learn about the market fit research Apple must have done to believe there's a place for this device, especially at this price point. The biggest omission for me was the placement of the headset as device on which to view movies, and see pictures of your kids, while at the same time completely sidestepping the question of how you'd do that together with your family, which is how these activities are typically performed in a household with children.
I'm one of the weird people who tried out the Google Glass. It was finnicky, 0 actual interaction with the modern world, lasted a good 45 minutes, melted your face, and had terrible audio.
But the thing is, if you could peak THROUGH the shortcomings, it was abundantly clear how an eyesight driven, glass form factor is the destination for computing. Smartphones were even less advanced at the time, but even then, we I tried for a few weeks making more extensive use of it, I would catch many glimpses of how "neat" this technology would be... even doing simple things like effortlessly capturing a picture on the spot, or videoconferencing with my gf (now wife!) showing her stuff in the grocery store and asking her what to get.
The AR capabilities, mixed with the essentially VR potential for movies/games, will totally be a thing and it'll totally live on our face as glasses. There can be details as to when exactly, price points ,etc., but the ubiquity of this sort of computing device will eclipse the iPhone when it comes time, and until then, slowly but surely change the nature of "working on a screen."
Yes, Google Glass was fun, and geeky, but was SO bad.
This seems to be an actual well thought out product. The resolution is a lot higher than the meta quest 3, and delays will be super small.
They're marketing this for productivity, which for me is the main selling point for VR at this point. I want a more spatial desktop, and I want multiple screens on the go.
What's different about it compared to Occulus or Samsung Gear or any other existing attempts at this?
Virtual movie theaters and virtual monitors haven't really been compelling use cases for putting an ugly sweat box on your face so far. What about slapping an Apple logo on it and pricing it even further out of reach changes that in your mind?
My take would be that it would be Apples track record of making software work well with the hardware, more seamlessly than either Samsung or Meta.
Just look at the virtual avatar they demoed compared with Meta’s. Apple went with a more professional looking avatar instead of a cartoony one.
Another app that was shown was a Birds Eye view of a basketball game. I’d love to be able to watch a sporting event live from that perspective (if I could stomach the entry fee for the experience).
I was on the fence about this product, thinking that there wouldn’t be many good use cases, but their presentation gave some activities that I’d want to try on the hardware. Whereas Meta’s presentation didn’t show anything I was interested in.
Apple is giving developers 6+ months to make even more interesting apps. I think there’s a good chance that this could be a successful product. But I should hold my judgement until I’ve seen the caveats of this device (ie comfort, battery life, display quality, etc). I’m sure we’ll see more in-depth looks in the coming months. We can judge it more fairly when these reviews come out.
I missed that it was part of the Disney presentation. In that case it may be just vaporware. Truthfully it would require a lot of infrastructure at the arena/stadium before it could even be realized. I’m not sure the sports team owners would be willing to pay for this expenditure without knowing the potential revenue it could generate. It’d also cannibalise some ticket sales, so it’s not necessarily a profitable move for pro sports.
> Is there anything specific to the Vision Pro in that feature? Couldn’t they just offer that as something that you could choose to watch on TV?
A TV wouldn’t be apt at creating a 3D-ish AR viewing experience. It also doesn’t have the controls to navigate such a scene easily. What I’m looking for is like a holographic 3D display of the game on my table top.
When you watch live TV, you watch what one person decides you should be watching.
With eye and head tracking in the headset, you can watch what you want to watch during live events and eventually in interactive motion pictures/motion environments.
This is already a reality with esports and yet most people prefer to watch someone else drive the camera. Someone who is really good at doing that and who can "predict the future" to never miss a key moment (aka, the broadcast is on a slight delay).
I don't see any reason live sports would be different here, do you? It'd be cool but it hardly seems "revolutionary", more like something you do once or twice for the novelty before going back to just not doing that.
I have an Oculus2 and a PSVR2, and the Apple headset seems like an entirely different thing. It's meant to replace your mac computer and your tv.
Yes with the headsets I have, you can surf the web and technically try to write code, but it's not a good experience. And those displays basically still suck. You can see the pixels, and the lenses create weird effects. If Apple has solved this, and the presence of the screen and lenses is just "forgotten", it's going to be a huge step forward. It'll be a device to actually be productive on, let alone watch movies and play games, IMO.
IMHO this really is what's gonna make or break this product. Will the screens have good enough fidelity and not strain my eyes in such a way that I will want to wear the headset for my entire work day.
People always drag out this line but how much time in VR do you actually have?
I have hundreds of hours in VR, doing fiddly simulator things, and it's not an enjoyable experience, but rather something you put up with to get to experience something you wouldn't otherwise get to experience, like flying a real as it gets plane.
A couple really nice monitors are $500. A laptop with a really nice built in screen is $2000, even if you want the apple logo on it.
Having infinite floating windows in VR is actually pretty useless. Either they are all tiny and unreadable because you need INSANE resolution to get 1080p quality at normal viewing distance, or you have one giant screen pressed against your face and your eyes find that very uncomfortable. VR is tiring on your eyes, worse than looking at a screen all day.
I wish rich kids would stop trying to attain a minority report style dream of computation and focus on making actual, usable, good UIs that are enjoyable, easy, and productive to work with. This is none of those.
>Having infinite floating windows in VR is actually pretty useless. Either they are all tiny and unreadable because you need INSANE resolution to get 1080p quality at normal viewing distance, or you have one giant screen pressed against your face and your eyes find that very uncomfortable. VR is tiring on your eyes, worse than looking at a screen all day.
Apple seem to think they have solved these issues. We'll see.
- the fact that this looks far more AR focused than the VR focused stuff I've currently seen;
- the public's perception of the Apple brand and its build quality (questionable if real, but an undeniable public perception nonetheless) could get around the "ugly sweat box" vibe you've described;
- the willingness for app-makers to build for the ecosystem;
- the 4k and (apparent) visual quality;
...could make this successful, or at least iPad-like in terms of dominating a market.
Hard to know for sure though until we get some actual reviews and footage of people wearing it.
People are going to reply to you and say "what made the iPod different from the Nomad"... inarguably the iPod was hugely successful where the Nomad wasn't.
I don't think it's a great comparison. The MP3 players in the pre-iPod era were all made by tiny players no-one had heard of. The Oculus in particular has absolutely massive backing and still hasn't amounted to a lot.
I suspect the differentiator will be software, not hardware. In particular the willingness of third parties to create software. Apple has a good record there at least.
Oculus is accessible by targeting itself as a fun gadget. You buy it to play immersive games when you're at home alone, bored. It's also affordable and that is extremely important. You won't feel nearly as bad dropping a wad of cash on this if it turns out to be a dud.
Apple's product, on the other hand, is extremely wonky. Who is this thing actually for? Based on the demos, it just looks like a second screen for my phone. It's also outrageously expensive. So Apple is asking me to seriously buy into the ecosystem and have confidence that this will be an important device in my collection.
I don't know, to me this isn't like any previous Apple take on a well defined market. In fact, this is Apple's take on a very undefined market with an unknown trajectory. It kind of feels more like when Apple went off the beaten path and added a touch bar to the MacBook Pro. It was an interesting idea and a lot of very long man hours went into making it work, but at what cost? In the end, it turns out, people just wanted simple tactile keys.
>Apple's product, on the other hand, is extremely wonky. Who is this thing actually for? Based on the demos, it just looks like a second screen for my phone. It's also outrageously expensive. So Apple is asking me to seriously buy into the ecosystem and have confidence that this will be an important device in my collection.
that's actually the playbook for new product launches for Apple. That was the same issue with Apple watch - they had no idea who it was for when they launched the first generation. It was just a watch with a screen that told time and gave you notifications. Then, they realized people loved using it for tracking health, and each generation they keep coming up with more and more ways to use it as an all-around health tracker. Now, Apple watch is as ubiquitous on people's wrists as iPhones are in people's hands
How so? The Watch was launched as a FitBit killer at the 1.0 keynote. There was a small segment from Jony Ives touting a ridiculously priced gold variant which was a complete mis-read of the market. I could see how Apple was nervous that their core audience was fashion conscious and smart watches were the ___domain of the biggest nerds out there.
However, point still stands, they knew they wanted an iPod shuffle with health and personal safety device at launch. They even went all out with a Nike partnership to help promote it.
At the time early media players were relevant, and to the community they were relevant (people very into music tech), Sony was known as "that company that installs rootkits on your computer if you buy their CD"
Sony was known as one of the big several well respected Japanese electronics manufacturers. The Sony Walkman was huge as a cassette and then CD player.
IIRC Sony were an absolute mess at the time. Didn't want to cannibalise their Minidisc sales, had weird DRM... even in the geeky crowds I ran in (where Nomads definitely were seen) Sony MP3 players were a rarity.
It didn’t flop. It just didn’t sell as much as later versions. Apple made the market for its own product. It’s like saying the Apple II flopped because it sold way less than the current Macintoshes. Of course it did: the market was way smaller.
The sweat box is actively cooled this time. I'm concerned about the price as well though, even if it is fantastic beyond all expectations of what was presented that's a really hard price for most to justify for the feature set shown. Showing things like true and proper Disney+ integration day 1 gives hope for big name support vs just special one off demos for headsets of the past though. At the same time, they are going to need a lot more properly integrated apps for it to reach success status.
No controllers, no waving your arms about. Eye tracking and hand gestures for navigation. Screen on the front that shows your face to make it feel less isolating. I don't know that it'll be a success but it's a lot more than just putting an Apple logo on it.
> ... bring the powerful capabilities of their Mac into Vision Pro wirelessly, creating an enormous, private, and portable 4K display with incredibly crisp text.
If this "incredibly crisp text" is true, then I want it. Nobody has done this yet.
With a resolution of slightly over 4k resolution per eye for the entire view, on top of lenses and warping when rendering it into the space, I just can't see how this is actually possible. It may be better than many previous solutions but they were all so far off in text clarity that's not saying much. Of course, they could just set the zoom way up on Safari/the UI and say "look, it's so clear!" and be technically correct.
Not that weird of a spot. That's what it costs for the most premium experience they can launch with. They'd rather it be good than something everyone buys on day one. They can get costs down in future models as they scale and progress pushes down some of the costs. As iPhones become even more performant in the future they can also eventually offer a version that offloads more compute to that and bring costs down even more. Their goal is to show this is a new type of product that works at the level people expect for a completely new Apple product. They can probably afford to wait for a much lower priced mass consumer product.
It's also the "entry point" price for a HoloLens (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens/buy). Businesses will spend that on an AR/VR device that adds value to their use-cases. It seems pretty clear this is not intended for "mass market consumer adoption" at this point in time.
What compelling use cases did the average consumer see for carrying around a computer in their pocket before Apple released the iPhone? There were a bunch of devices on the market all kinda doing what iPhone did, but Apple made it make sense for the average consumer.
The difference is the AR, which will eventually make it wearable in everyday life. When setting the perimeter, the Oculus already shows the surrounding using it's integrated cameras. This will be the future. I don't think the first version of Apple's AR mask will be a huge success, because it still looks too dorky. But in a few years you will see many people wearing sunglasses that double as phone screens all the time.
> The difference is the AR, which will eventually make it wearable in everyday life
In Apple's 10 minute video about this device the "AR" part came up exactly twice:
1) When the lady was interrupted by a friend to talk about sushi or something. This is literally Occulus' passthrough mode. It was a temporary "see around me" mode switch in practical usage.
2) The dad filming his kids. This was just depressing.
All the other examples had the room around them, so the "AR" part, as a glorifed skybox. The person was isolated & alone.
Like maybe Apple will figure out something that Microsoft's Hololens didn't. That's certainly possible. But they also didn't showcase any such examples, either.
Ok, I had the impression that those things are translucent, because the eyes were visible. I did not fully watch it, but I just found out that Apple is using a lentricular and OLED screen on the outside to display a 3D image of your face to make it look like the mask is transparent. This is some dystopian stuff.
I don’t think the dorky mask look will change any time soon. There’s just too much electronics to fit into the system for it to shrink down to a pair of regular glasses.
When the Apple Watch was introduced, I thought that the form factor would change after a few years. It’s almost been ten years and it doesn’t seem like Apple will be making any big form factor changes to the product.
Apple will just have to make it fashionable to wear dorky scuba masks everywhere. Maybe the price tag will be sufficient…
You may be right. Remember when they used someone with extra large hands for presenting the first iPhone in order to make it look small? Now you can get the iPhone 14 is large and very large. We may get used to this if the product is sufficiently useful.
I mean, nice ski goggles don't look uncool on the mountain, I don't see how it's impossible for people to get used to Vision goggles on people's faces.
Context is important. Ski googles look OK because they make functional sense, because everyone needs some kind of eye protection while skiing. You'd look ridiculous wearing them anywhere but at a ski resort.
It's an open question whether these will fit into their intended social contexts, whether that's the office, home, or public. If anywhere, I'd guess they wouldn't look weird in an office or on a single person at home (since there is nobody to look at them), but not in public or in a family setting.
> What about slapping an Apple logo on it and pricing it even further out of reach changes that in your mind?
Probably the fact that Apple has an excellent track record of entering nascent consumer electronics markets late (e.g. iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch) at high price points, nailing the execution, and eventually dominating said markets with arguably superior products.
It's the same story again and again. If you've already decided Apple is charging $3000 for "slapping an Apple logo on it" and nothing else, you may as well have been one of the people back in ~2001 who swore up and down that the iPod was just an overpriced late entry in a market full of mature, attractive offerings like the Archos Jukebox line. In retrospect, to be clear, you would have looked quite silly.
I'm not saying this thing is absolutely going to be a success, but the problem with previous attempts at virtual displays has been that the execution is always shit, and Apple's greatest strength is nailing the execution. I don't think betting against them here is a good bet.
Thr fact that the battery is separate should be a huge improvement for comfort because one of the biggest problems with most existing devices is their weight. Another thing to check is how much heat the device transfers to the user. Or in general the comfort. Also the fact that you can easily see you surroundings should help.
Most VR so far has been designed to isolate you from your surrounding environment, and is the opposite. Also the ability to use it without controllers makes the whole thing feel less intrusive/burdensome to use.
Gaming could be much be better on a VR/AR device, and a reason to put on a "ugly sweat box" initially. Apple did not go deep into that, only a brief segment about the Unity collab. Maybe gaming is not their forte right now.
Apple Vision v3 will not be a sweat box. And even right now, Occulus interface has to evolve to match this. Controller has to be optional. It has to be AR.
I've said this before, but Apple's attention to detail might finally bridge the uncanny valley to actually good AR. I can elaborate a bit more when I get on my computer.
And I will go on record saying this is nice and all, but fundamentally just some incremental progress. Absolutely not an iPhone moment.
The idea of having a fully immersive 3D environment around you is cool, but I haven’t had any VR experience that didn’t turn out to be eventually a headache let alone actually productive. Even with gaming I can only name a few titles that actually benefit, but for the ones that do the effect is quite something, I’ll admit that.
The idea of hybrid AR/VR - adjusted by a dial (crown) - is very clever. As is a high-resolution display.
But the form factor is a problem.
If it had all of the capabilities announced but combined with the Google Glass form factor of ultra thin & light - then it would be a device more revolutionary than the iPhone.
But the form factor makes it much more niche.
And the tech just doesn't exist in the year 2023 to make a device with that sweet-spot combination of high capability and tiny form factor.
(My two cents, which I am hoping ages better than the infamous HN Dropbox comment.)
But I (perhaps naïvely) think this is being approached from the wrong direction.
To me, if Apple had launched a new highly limited device but with the Google Glass form factor - then I could see the path to incrementally improve (keep the form factor, and add features over time as hardware progresses).
It's much harder for me to see the opposite - of starting out with the clunky form factor, even if it is 100x more capable.
EDIT: Or I may be thinking from the wrong direction. I could see this device as overtaking existing VR devices like the Rift by far.
It depends on whether "success" here is defined as surpassing the previous best-selling VR headset (very plausible), or as matching the iPhone (much less plausible).
You do recall that when the iPhone came out we already had Blackberry, HTC, Windows Mobile, Nokia already making smart phones with touch screens and apps right?
Sure the experience was terrible, but that's the same play here. Apple generally takes a technology space which is a little early and poorly done by others, and ships a great experience across hardware, software, and ecosystem to capture a market.
The elephant in the room is that by the time Apple came out with iPhone, everyone else had a mobile phone because there are clear benefits of ownining a mobile phone. Those phones as you say were not great, and iPhone was absolutely revolutionary in that case so we agree here.
But pretty much nobody has a VR headset right now (or at least IRL people that I know), so not sure if a normal person will see a benefit of owning this kind of device.
It's a jump from what we've seen in the consumer space. It isn't priced like other consumer VR hardware though, it's 4-8x the price; much closer to enterprise pricing. If you include the wider space with things like the Varjo XR3 (which released 2 years ago at only 2x the price) then it looks a lot less impressive of a jump. Plus there's things like the Bigscreen Beyond which actually manage a slim form factor. Really the only thing Apple has a chance to differentiate on is software, and they've got a lot of catching up to do there.
But they do have a huge head start in apps, movies, tv, games, sports rights compared to the makers of any other device. They are well positioned or make this work by integrating tightly to their own eco-system
2D content in 3D is a gimmick; it's nice to have, but it's not going to sell consoles. And even beyond that it's not a "head start"; almost all of that content is already available on other platforms, even other VR platforms. Just owning the content doesn't get Apple much if anything here.
>apps, games
...I don't know how you can possibly spin it as them having a head start here. Meta has a multi-year lead on them, and PC is even further, in games. Apps will need a lot of work as well - just throwing a 2D app in 3D space doesn't provide a compelling use case. You may as well just use a tablet.
Despite spending a lot of time pushing for AR apps on iPhone, Apple is still way behind on the VR/AR race. They need to get developers working on novel applications that utilize the full possibilities of a headset like this, and they need it yesterday if they don't want Meta to own the space.
Which brings us to the real reason that they released this $3.5k device: it's not actually for consumers, it's ultimately just a fancy, overly-polished dev kit.
Sorry, what I meant was, they have the whole App Store, plus the games in the App Store, plus Apple Arcade etc. These things are packed with games and apps that people care about and use every day.
Those are a few reasons that people will find this device compelling.
Absolutely none of which are a compelling reason to pick the $3.5k headset over an iPad or laptop for a fifth the price (or hell, a tenth the price used). Like I said, 2D content just floating in a 3D space is more of a gimmick than a real selling point.
Also, keep in mind, Meta's headsets have full access to all of Windows' apps and games through link or Virtual Desktop, which absolutely dwarfs Apple's lineup.
That's definitely a big concern about the physical pen. If it's too heavy or if it's too hot, it will overperform or perform some CPU intense work. Also the fitting using your eye with such a close contact with the digital device is another issue.
The Apple device is an "AR" device, it still projects artificle video to your eyes rather than letting you see the real world.
I haven't seen anything the apple device does better than the hololens 2, other than the field of view, which is only possible because they are mock AR, not real AR
> I will happily go on the record as saying that this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone, perhaps even more so.
It seems to have the potential. The UX seems incredible. Little details like using eyes as a pointer make it for a far better experience (no, moving your head to point is not the same). Looking at your Macbook to pull apps from it is the sort of thing that can make it intuitive for the average user. A proper review of what this could do would take an article.
I think the main things we need to know are:
* What sort of apps can we use? Is this IOS-like, or can I run XCode on it? Having to own the headset plus a macbook is not going to make or break it, but it changes the value of the device at its current price point.
* Can we comfortably use it for 8+ hours a day?
* Is text really crisp enough for productivity usage?
I don't think this version is quite there yet, but give it a few iterations and we may be able to ditch physical monitors altogether. I've been waiting for that for a while.
At $3499 it's quite a gamble. At $999 it would have been a no-brainer, as that's the price of a phone. It does have way too much hardware for a lower price point, so it's understandable. But the more devices that exist, the greater the network effects.
Sadly no. I've used AR glasses that have double the pixels per degree than the Quest Pro (done by using a smaller FOV). It looks like 1080p on maybe a 32" desktop monitor. You can read but it's not a fun experience. Apple's version will depend on what FOV they use, but it's going to look pixelated regardless. There's a reason they didn't use their Retina branding.
4K is roughly 8 million pixels. I wonder if they’re including the front display in their pixel count. Or there actually is significantly better than 4K per eye happening here.
At any rate, it’s a lot of pixels. Not sure what GP is complaining about.
GP here. It's 12M because the displays are square, not 16:9, so there are more vertical pixels. This will look better than most existing headsets, but it's not enough to match flat displays. You can't think about it in terms of traditional monitors- this is 4k over your entire field of vision, which translates to monitor-sized objects at maybe 720p. That's why all the virtual screens in their demo are so big; they're very low density.
Remember the age of 768p laptops? It'll look like that.
I get what you're saying in a mathematical sort of way, but I think the point you might be missing is that "monitor sized object" isn't a relevant concept for this device. You're saying that I can't think about this in terms of regular monitors, but I think you're doing precisely that.
"monitor sized object" exists as a thing because we live in a reality where desks limit the size of the things we can reasonably use for work. But here, your desk is virtual now. There is "space" for a bigger screen. You're saying they compensated by making the virtual screen larger--my thought here is "so what"?
Text legibility / crispness will be important. I'm one of those guys who buys the 5K displays, so I agree it matters. But Apple made a point of calling out clean text rendering, and none of the previews have complained so far. But obviously no one in those early previews has spent 8 hours in an IDE, so we'll see.
Fully agree that more would be better, and would increase the usability of smaller, more fine elements. But this might be enough resolution to pull off the concept in a perfectly usable way.
The accessibility of this product is going to be transformative in industry. There have been similar AR headsets for woking in some industrial sectors, but this makes it possible for all companies to develop apps specific to their work place. Every factory, every distribution centre, every construction site, every industrial site, every hospital, can have this integrated to guide their workforce in complex tasks.
Imagine this for surgeries, or complex construction tasks, even just finding items in a warehouse.
This is going to be massive in the workspace, thats where I think people probably underestimate it.
We may all end up with one of these - or the none "pro" version - at home, just as we have iPads laying around. But many of us are going to end ups waring these for many hours a day during work.
Taking of a headset when we go home will end up being a joy.
>This is going to be massive in the workspace, thats where I think people probably underestimate it.
I don't think companies are going to spring this much for a headset and laptop until there's very obvious benefits, but maybe I've just been short-changed with shitty equipment my whole career.
Companies trying to get people to go back to the office, then ordering them VR headsets will be the height of tech irony.
Speaking as a total non-expert here: assuming workspaces _look_ good, I think this will entirely depend on software. What will it be like to use this with a keyboard? Will the OS be as siloed as iOS?
This morning, my mac wouldn't boot. I tried to write on my iPad instead. It was a nightmare: too cumbersome to move between apps, Zotero nearly unworkable, hard to navigate different file versions. If the OS works more like iOS than macOS, I can't imagine it being as useful as computers save for very specific applications.
For me 100% of the excitement is about the bajillion business ideas I've had hoping that VR would become more popular, when it just simply didn't get there.
Tons of minimally invasive procedures are performed through the Davinci surgical robot where the surgeon is literally hunched over with his head buried ina computer screen. As long as there is some medical benefit, I don’t see this sort of technology interaction as being something new.
What about $3500 says "accessibility" to you? You're just re-vomiting out all of the same promises VR companies have been making for the past half decade. No company is going to spend $3500 on a tool that easily breaks for low stakes jobs and is untested/unreliable for high stakes jobs.
I work in construction. $3500 is a paltry, pocket change amount of money compared to project budgets.
Standard single-building commercial / institutional new builds can be tens of millions to low hundred million, "big" projects are often north of a quarter billion dollars, and well over a billion is not unusual for so-called "mega projects". Risk (from defects / mistakes) is often roughly proportional to budget. The placement of seemingly minor and easy to miss elements at the initial critical stages of a concrete pour in a high rise, for example, is pretty high stakes with rework costing hundreds of thousands to potentially millions. We have processes for mitigating that of course, but none that approach it in such a direct and observable way as AR, and none are incompatible with being done alongside AR. Paying $3500 + software for something that helps mitigate that risk in a totally new and complementary way is very very interesting to many companies.
edit: To be clear, I'm not convinced that this particular device is revolutionary compared to those that already exist, which have their own challenges. I'm just objecting to the idea that there isn't a market for it at that price even WITH challenges.
I think it's a good risk, and the kind of risk Apple is well-positioned (as a combined owner of hardware, software, and third-party software ecosystem) to take.
Major we'll-see risk factors I identify:
1) $3,500 is expensive, any way you slice it. That makes it price-competitive with a workstation.
2) The stand-up-and-work environment they demo'd doesn't work for a lot of people. But if you sit down, you lose a lot of the benefit of that panoramic space.
3) Their gesture interface has to be rock-solid (meaning no false negatives but also no false positives) for it to be part of a daily work environment.
4) We've been experimenting with headsets for long enough to know that for the average user, the amount of time you can comfortably use one is lower than the amount of time seated at a mouse-keyboard-monitor UI.
5) The battery life is 2 hours, which is like nothing. You can use it plugged in, but then you're plugged in (meaning not only that you're tethered to somewhere, but that you've got the constant pressure of the tether disrupting your head motions, which adds up over time in irritation).
All of that having been said, if anyone has a prayer of overcoming these obstacles it's Apple. They've got the software / hardware / UI / UX integration in-house to take a solid run at the challenge.
I completely agree with your point about risk. When we're talking about risk, the opposite of risk is a great benefit, just like a starship. Captain Kirk said great risk we have, the more potential gain we probably gain. Stand-up work environment is also huge for me. I don't like sitting all the time in front of a desk. But I'm not sure if I sit down, all the benefits gonna last. Maybe it's just a choice. Maybe I can sit down doing some different kind of things. Or maybe I can lay on my bed, just do something else. The gesture interface has to be rock solid. I agree. Especially you're already doing something more fine-tune level things.For example, you want to manipulate a 3D object, but I think we can, or the engineering can finally overcome those difficulties by using those optical algorithms to track, to kind of think about a new way to interact with computer. Actually, if you think about the way we communicate with computer, all we're talking about is the keyboard, but does the keyboard is the only solution to all the problem we have? I don't think that is the only problem. The battery lapsed two hours, I'm not sure what exactly they mean. If it's just two hours, maybe it's a replaceable charge or something like that, maybe we can bring a bigger external battery. I'm not sure, but if it's just only working for two hours, that's going to be some potential issues here.
IMHO the biggest risk factor is that without a mass market version (running iPhone apps in a window doesn't count) the developers won't reach the critical mass you need to support a novel piece of hardware like this. $3500 is a shit ton to spend on a toy that lets you have a virtual Mickey Mouse standing next to a screen playing a Disney movie.
If nobody is buying the product then developers have no incentive to buy one either. The only software for it will be demos from Apple and extremely expensive bespoke professional applications for businesses, and that market is far too small for Apple to ever recoup their R&D costs, much less ongoing expenses.
The only way I see this working is if Apple themselves invent a killer application for the headset. Even then its going to struggle to find buyers at that price point. It doesn't matter how cool your hardware is if nobody can afford it. It's hard to see how they would even cut down the existing hardware to make a version for real people.
Strongly disagree that this will be as revolutionary as the iphone. The iphone, and smart phones as a platform were revolutionary largely because of how portable they are.
This is much more comparable to a laptop than a phone, and it doesn't introduce new communications technology like the iphone did with there now being near universal real time access to people's cameras and gps ___location.
This feels like what the apple watch was to the iphone but instead to the MacBook pro.
Unfortunately, I strongly disagree with this comment as well. It is because how portable this device is, you have to think about the... Imagine you have an infinite amount of screen just in your pocket. What you say causes what you do, and that's a huge thing.
Except even regular sunglasses are often inconvenient to carry around. So this will never get in your pocket.
The rear revolution will be when the info goes directly to our brain, bypassing the eyes. VR headsets looks to me like half assed interim "what if" devices.
Good point. Remember, they demonstrate that they put these devices as a module, so I'm not sure it is possible to make it a portable device. You can easily get rid of part of the panel part and put it into a very small bag, and the rest of things can just like a rope, something similar to those things, you can easily fold them into small spaces. I'm actually thinking the same thing as you. The real revolution is going to be directly connecting our brains, so we don't bother using our eyes to kind of sensor our physical world, that's kind of like the matrix. I'm not sure that's going to be in the near future or in the life we have, but I'm really looking forward to that kind of scenario.
The running time of the CD-ROM was designed to play Beethoven's 9th symphony in its entirety. You would have thought Apple would plan the battery life to allow you to watch all of Avengers: Endgame, or maybe Oppenheimer, without pausing to swap the battery.
If you look at the historical ratio of income to the price of computers we're literally orders of magnitude wealthier. You can't just pick one data point and blast off.
You're ignoring interest rates which allow the overall price to go up while keeping the monthly payment the same and the fact that houses have gotten a lot bigger over the decades [0].
True, but the price will come down. The early MacBook Air's were also super-expensive, rich-early-adopter-only pricing, and now they're the mainstream product.
This sounds like a take from somebody who doesn't realise that's already there in headsets like the Quest that this presumably won't match in numbers.
What is brilliant here, are the specs giving some serious boost to the use cases already established by Meta/Oculus, NReal etc and services like Immersed, BigScreen etc.
But please, less of that breathless "Apple have invented this new thing" tone, it's annoying when they haven't.
Either do some basic research first, or if you have, then at least frame what you reckon is revolutionary in terms of the existing market.
I am sure from the specs, if not the price, that this is going to kick up some dust, but its not obviously inventing anything that isn't there already.
Not only they don't realize it already exists, they don't realize how bad it is.
There's never enough resolution (even with 8K headsets), eye strain from trying to focus on virtual objects is real, and camera passthrough always look fake (and may even cause mild nausea). Not to mention that most folks don't really train their neck muscles to support significant extra weight on their heads on front-back axis (we typically tilt our heads much less than lean forward or backward, so headphones are not comparable).
I don't believe Apple have made some giant leap and included an autorefractor in there and made external cameras moveable and able to match you pupillary distance (and convergence!), then added some fancy magnetostrictive micro-mirror system to dynamically boost resolution at the areas you're focusing at. Not in this form factor, and if they would somehow magically make it they'd be boasting about it non-stop.
If they showcase it in Apple Stores I would definitely take a peek, and I would like to be wrong - but I'm pretty sure it's a pricey gimmick that won't be anywhere comfortable for any prolonged use.
...that fits in your bag. This is huge for folks like me that want to travel without lugging around a large display. If the visual integrity is there, it's gonna be worth it for me.
Yeah, the resolution will make it or break it for me. I tried working in a valve index using Simula and couldn't really get into it. Despite technically having much more screen space and screens, it felt like I was much more constrained.
Si senior. Same experience with quest 2. It has to be perfectly executed. In the Apple demo the guy was hitting virtual keyboard? If vr misses two keys, I am done with it and back to gaming only.
I'm interested to know what sort of resolution you'd get looking at a "screen". You get over 4k per eye, but that means 4k-ish for your field of vision.
exactly I don't know how many like 4k monitor is just sat in front of you and that physical device is only I don't know smaller than a 10 inch iPad so that's it's incredible
No clue, but I'd assume this is like any other pro Apple device that will have a bluetooth or some external device SDK and 3rd parties will make controllers for games.
6dof tracked controllers usually need to be tightly integrated with the headset.
Even if they are self tracking (like the Quest Pro controllers and therefore expensive) there's still a bunch of things that need to work smoothly together.
It's not just like making a Bluetooth gamepad.
And one thing we know about expensive, optional peripherals is that lack of developer support is usually it's death knell
Quest-style controllers are something that Apple would have to faciliate. They are tracked using a combination of motion sensors (high resolution but prone to drift) and detection by the headsets cameras (low resolution but doesn't drift) and the Vision Pros raw camera data is only visible to the operating system.
You can connect a traditional controller of course, they showed it working with a Playstation controller in one of the clips, but that's mainly useful for playing traditional flat-screen games on a virtual big screen and not so much for games which actually explore the possibilities of VR and AR.
well apple could use vr + ar to enhance your experience, provided that your partner agrees to that, and that could potentially be a winner's recipe. But you know what's the limitation? You won't see p*rn on apple store, or vision os whatever it will be called.
maintain.... competition will catch up and/or will do it better for a lower cost. It took years for other companies to get close to iphone performance. But now Apple is entering an established market already where fb is throwing big bucks.
Maintain a relative compute power advantage yeah. Maintain doesn't imply the device will be static. I also don't expect Apple to sit at this $3500 base price for long. Honestly a little surprised they launched with it at all but makes sense if they want it to be completely stealth, they need the apps out there so it got apps for consumers to use when they get the cheaper consumer/non-Pro version out.
Also a lot of FBs efforts seemed to be around their whole Metaverse play which is a step beyond just making a good VR/MR headset. The Quest headset seems to be doing pretty well if not the explosive world eating unicorn that companies are always reaching for.
I spent a ton of money configuring my home office. Many displays, giant motorized desk, articulating arms, cable management, etc. Easily over $3500, and I still don't feel like it's ergonomically great. It certainly can't be brought anywhere. It occupies a whole room.
Now I am thinking I might not need that bulky stuff at all, and if I don't need the displays and big desk then maybe I don't need the office. If I don't need the home office then maybe I should be shopping a home that's around 75-100k cheaper with one less room.
I've often wanted to work outside from my deck but then I don't have my screen real estate and I get tons of glare. This could solve that.
We've long complained about the degradation of the in-office experience. These days it's all open-floor plans with a fixed monitor set and no privacy. If I could put these on and have a huge display with a beach in the background, I wouldn't as much mind sitting 2 feet away from coworkers.
The benefits of something like this on flights and in airports seems obvious. Its not really weird, considering savvy travelers swaddle themselves in AirPods Max and bizarre neck-sling-pillow apparatuses already.
I have an NReal Air. It offers similar capabilities to everything you mentioned (though much worse resolution).
If I have the preference, I still choose a screen. Screens are easy, screens a casual, screens exist in the real world. I can share them, I can walk away from them, I can position them where _they will never, ever move_. Screens have (and will always have) higher resolution. Screens don't require me to mess with some cord and pull a headset off to find my snack or walk to the bathroom.
I prefer my Nreals in two situations:
* When I'm traveling/on-the-go and want more screen real estate.
* When my wife is using the main TV and I don't feel like hauling the Playstation downstairs.
Sounds like the Vision Pro addresses your main issues - it's fully wireless, albeit with the somewhat ridiculous cord hanging off and battery pack in your pocket. And you can walk around your house with (presumably) near perfect pass through view of the real world. And then the resolution - I think you could be wrong about that. It's surprisingly hard to compare, but the Vision Pro is going to get you pretty close to high enough resolution that it doesn't matter any more.
It's interesting though you seem to view the fact that it's close to impossible to move your monitors as a plus - that part sounds very weird to me.
The cable is really about how it runs down your shoulder/back. It gets caught on stuff and pinched between your body and seat, pulling it off. This is a problem even when using magnetic usb cables or Nreal with a usb-c based phone.
Taking it off is still necessary for anything outside of a trivial task. It's really scary to think about dropping a $3.5k device in the toilet/sink or having it fall off your head.
> It's interesting though you seem to view the fact that it's close to impossible to move your monitors as a plus - that part sounds very weird to me.
In the video, all of the virtual monitors are "perfectly" aligned with the user and the surrounding environment. It looks beautiful, but presents some challenges that I hope Apple has installed.
For example, if you use this at a desk, how do you ensure that the screens anchor directly in front of you every time you use it? Are the just slightly off? Do they read the room and reset when they recognize it? Do you need to "recenter" every time you use the device?
How do you put a TV in the perfect place in your room?
> how do you ensure that the screens anchor directly in front of you every time you use it?
That might link to why they made the otherwise slightly weird way you activate it - by looking at your laptop screen. So it knows exactly where your laptop is, and can position the screens perfectly relative to that.
I found it odd because partly the whole point is that it liberates you from being anchored but perhaps this is part of the reason they did it that way?
The thing that amazed me the most with the presentation was that they never showed typing on a virtual keyboard. It seems like you need an actual physical keyboard to do any typing.
The keyboard was famously considered a make it or break it feature internally at Apple when developing the original iPhone. It is very telling that they haven’t managed to solve this basic HCI problem for the Vision. Steve Jobs would never have released this. I’m sad to say it, but this is not a “Pro” device. It’s a Prototype device.
Apple Vision Prototype
(And I’m sorry, but the eyes are creepy —- uncanny valley)
The dual-touchpad style VR keyboard like the original Vive has is probably the only usable virtual keyboard. Everything else is one by one, find and peck typing.
If you want to experience it, get a steam controller or a steam deck and use the trackpads on that keyboard. You get used to it very fast and you can get really usable typing speed.
It won't work for programming though because anything that needs more niche than basic punctuation would require chording or multiple inputs, which sucks.
Is this the new reverse-Dropbox reverse-iPhone HN groupthink meta? The question is, will we link back to this in 10 years as a gotcha as AR/VR is still 10 years away from mainstream then?
This is not what got Apple to where it was. It was recognizing what we wanted to do to go further, individually and together, and amplified that with technology.
This literally amplifies your ass to the couch. I'm shocked. Stunned. And sad.
> This literally amplifies your ass to the couch. I'm shocked. Stunned. And sad.
Were you “shocked/stunned/sad” about Apple TV? A product which physically relies on your ass being sat on the couch?
Think a little bigger here! This goes well beyond entertainment value. Imagine the general business uses in industry, manufacturing, medicine, conferencing, telecommunications, let alone any form of interpersonal interaction over long distances…
These are all things we take for granted with FaceTime, Google, GPT… All these are new but ubiquitous technologies, which allow us to enhance our human abilities and connect with each other in new and novel ways.
You and I both know the TV was not Apple's 'One more thing...' to such a cringy degree.
Preface: I've been in the VR/AR space a long time. I started a company with a friend around the launch of DK1 - we wanted to sell VR Computer Boxes. We had so many dumb but beautifully naive ideas.
I will only offer high level themes (although incomplete) that should hopefully explain why I take such issue with this release:
We already have the best vision system on the planet, 'our eyes'.
Spatial Computing in humans is not vision and audio alone - proprioception underlies all.
What you cover with a headset, you cannot faithfully recreate with cameras and software.
Use the brilliant chipset advantage to bring super 'low cost' computing embodiments to every corner of life - then integrate with devs
Ambient Computing is the next iteration of 'mac at the center of your digital life'
AirTags, Beacons, and AppClips don't get the corporate strategic attention they deserve
Apple Watch should be 'the wand' for life out in the real world, with AppClips, Beacons and such
I was wondering what was dragging HN down :-). That said, if it translates signs in the "real world" on the fly to your native language, that would be win for business users. The "infinite screen/screens" thing has always show promise but has always been hard to execute against. The lack of them pushing any kind of gaming experience[1] was a bit telling for me. I'm guessing they haven't fixed the vomit problem. Still think it would be awkward to be in the same physical space with people who have visors and people who don't.
[1] To be fair I didn't see the keynote, just followed the website sales pitch.
Having multiple private large-scale screens anywhere, even on the train or plane, is huge. Many VR headsets tried delivering that, but so far the resolution just wasn't there. The article is a bit light on actual details, but at least the price point gives an indication that Apple might make it possible.
> - In response to the obvious criticisms (high price, battery life, form factor, weird eyeball thing)... this is Gen 1. Look how quickly the iPhone and Apple Watch evolved between generations 1 to 3, and look how the price changed as production capabilities and economies of scale evolved.
The original iPhone released for $599, which is ~$876 2023 dollars based on CPI. So, while most of your bullet points about iPhone improving is true, the iPhone is the wrong thing to point to for economies of scale making Apple products cheaper over time.
Agreed, I think this is going to be big, but it does very much have the feel of a first apple product. Especially wearing it to record 3d videos, I am sure now that there will be a 3d camera on the next iPhone pro.
I'm willing to take the opposite "bet", and say that I think this will receive very little traction.
The single reason being that it's uncomfortable to use. That's it. It's an "Emperor's New Clothes" type saying: It doesn't matter how impressive the capabilities are, if it's uncomfortable, people will, after the initial allure fades, just not use it.
IMO The only viable future for VR/AR is when the form factor will come down to normal looking/weighting glasses that I might look around for while having them on.
I will happily go on record to say that you're critically wrong and that the only reason this will ever have any usage is the Apple Reality Distortion Field.
I speak having used most available VR devices available these past few years, and currently owning a Valve Index:
Watching movies: wearing something over your eyes and on your head like that for so long _fucking sucks_. It's heavy/hot enough when you're doing something that takes your attention. Watching a movie is fun for the first time, then you realize that being able to walk around, look at other things etc is infinitely better. Not to mention the fact that if you ever want to watch with someone else, well they better have 3.5k available. that makes it a non starter for literally anyone hoping to, you know, have people over.
- For work: it fucking sucks. You know what's worse than having two screens taking up your entire sight? Having to physically turn your head to see more screens. It is physically sickening to have your entire attention taken up like that.
- Form factor: my dude the last thing I want in public is to look like I'm wearing swimming goggles. Also, two hours is absolutely pathetic.
- Price: the first iPhone cost $600. The cheapest new iPhone 14 is $1000, the most expensive is like 2000. It got worse, not better.
It's going to be a fun, overpriced toy and it'll be just like every VR device people currently own: hanging on your wall and used once every two weeks, at best.
I agree. This was more amazing than I had expected upfront. I can envision myself using this for developing code as well, but I think I will have a hard time convincing my boss…
> For personal/entertainment use it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema.
TV viewing is often a social experience: friends gathering in front of a TV to watch a sporting event (say, a World Cup soccer match, or your favorite team's football game, or an NBA finals game). This takes away that aspect. I'm not sure if this is a change we really need.
Sure but "for personal use" kinda excludes "social experience" here.
> it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema
In my previous flat, living along, a big TV just didn't fit anywhere. A sound system would also have annoyed the neighbours. Something like this would have been perfect for getting that 4K HDR viewing experience.
I will go on record as saying this will be one of the biggest flops in Apple's modern hardware history.
They've shown no innovative scenarios that Hololens / Quest / Google Glass (and similar devices) hasn't shown before. Those things flopped because they didn't have the scenarios and nothing changed now.
For me, the big difference is apps. I have a Quest and there's not much usable stuff for it. I can see a lot of those ipad/iphone/mac apps as useful on an AR device.
Quality also matters. I don't really like looking through the Quest for very long. Fresnel lenses and meh screen combined with a terrible processor means the visual experience isn't very good. I'd bet a lot that their custom lenses and screens combined with a decent SoC offer a HUGE jump in visual fidelity.
So.. Fun fact, Osterhaut group(ODG) has something just like this and it was working as Apple demos showed and it was out 7 years ago. I tried it on and for me it was the biggest game changer I felt since the 2007 iphone. Microsoft bought the patents from odg and the company ran out of money trying its own strategy. Sad story for them but I hope apple really does this right as it will be an absolute game changer.
We've had all these things since the very first VR headsets. I remember sitting in a movie theatre setting trying to play a 1080P movie and it looking like a potato.
Forgetting the AR/VR debate for a minute, the thing holding these back from wide adoption has been resolution and comfort. I have yet to use an XR device where I can simply play a video without it being jarringly blurry and pixelated. I've yet to use an XR device that isn't a chore to wear and sweaty (although I do trust Apple to address this one).
Let's see. The proof will be in the pudding when I try one of these in an Apple store next year.
> I will happily go on the record as saying that this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone, perhaps even more so.
> Look how quickly the iPhone and Apple Watch evolved between generations 1 to 3
I would not compare the iPhone to the Apple Watch. They were on completely different orders of magnitude of evolution.
I could see the Apple Vision Pro being half as popular as the Apple Watch (primarily due to the price tag) and I think there's a good chance it finds its market, but I think comparing it to the iPhone is way off base.
Not this version probably, just like the first version of the iPhone wasn't stellar. But as a new product line, this is the first VR/AR device I've seen that demonstrates a vision for the future that might work. For a one-day ubiquitous product, $3k is the entry level price. None of the existing devices support this vision - they are just VR hardware. Their lower price doesn't matter because that's not what's going to go mainstream.
Only if it‘s comfortable to wear and not sickening. It must be a huge improvement over current devices like PS VR2, which I can physically not tolerate for long.
> For personal/entertainment use it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema.
It remains to be seen if the experience is better than a large OLED TV.
In terms of sound I seriously doubt it. Maybe if it had large planar drivers but I doubt you can use large headphones with it. If it's meant to be used with crappy Airpods the sound is going to be nowhere comparable to a home theater.
How can you say that before trying? Have you ever tried VR? You can see the pixels, it's not at all immersive. I find it hard to believe that Apple have somehow invented revolutionary display technology before Meta/Oculus who have had about decade to do R&D. Not to mention that "inside-out" tracking is nowhere as good as shown as show at the WWDC keynote.
Small, comfortable smart glasses enabling Hololens 2 like UX, I agree.
Bulky, expensive passthrough? No, there are better, cheaper, more open options than this on the market. If it was going to change things, we'd be seeing people using this capability already.
The main hold up here is technology advancement, not quite where it needs to be yet, but the field is showing the progress needed to reach it.
Loved it. It’s exactly how I imagined it. People didn’t have high expectations because they thought this was going to be a gaming device. I posted quite a few comments in the past months telling people vr glasses like this had so much potential for broader applications. I’m glad Apple is making this a reality. It’s going to be a wild success.
Do you think people will enjoy living with a headset strapped to their face? The shots of that dad playing with his daughters while wearing the device seemed like a stretch that I'm surprised Apple took. This is the company that takes its "Human Interface Guidelines" seriously.
Like 1984, Black Mirror isn't a dystopia because of technology, but because it's in England. If you leave I expect everything's fine. Also solves being converted into Cybermen for the 100th time.
This is the funniest comment I've ever read on HN. After 3 months I've spent in London a year ago, I can never understand while people online hate England so much.
Ah! So the solution to that problem is to have a mask strapped to your face with 2 hour battery life. Makes sense. Yeah that sounds better than my iPhone that fits in my pocket and lasts all day. I can deal with the occasional fumble to find the record button.
Yeah from what I can tell and being a solitary person if I had 3.5k I'd be all over this. And I am a die-hard Linux guy though I have an iPhone and an Apple Watch. Very cool stuff, albeit, if it lives up to the hype in the presentation. Very cool stuff.
For people who are loners, live alone and don't share anything with others. I guess if you enjoy sitting on your couch watching TV all by yourself all day this is it, yes.
Well it s good, this is how you make something that turns us to cyborgs.
A bit pricey to become a household items (because a family needs 4 of them) but this is probably where things are heading to
There is so much engineering going on here that maybe ... it's simpler to start considering retina implants or just brain implants.
This was more like a work of art than a consumer device. I wonder if Oculus can steal some ideas ... Like, these device are not for gaming but general productivity. Ditch the 2 oculus controllers, put the battery in the 1 controller and wire it to the head. I m not convinced if eye tracking is worth it. oculus' controls are precise enough and in any case it's better to hold something instead of pointing and pinching the air, it makes the device more physical. dont know what is needed for the ability to render a full field of view but would be interesting to know what is the level of nausea this causes when movement is involved. I guess Apple purposely chose to eliminate all optic flow movement - all the apps appear to be stationary.
Their cost comparison to a 4k tv, surround sound, high end laptop, etc does seem reasonable for a single person, but it does indeed break down for a family. Everyone sitting on the couch watching a movie, but you with your goggles getting a completely different experience.
Notably there doesn't seem to be any tech present to share virtual spaces at all. All these smiling people staring at their virtual screens couldnt even share their experiences if they wanted to & everyone else had a Vision Pro too. These are personal, pocket spaces.
There was notably no effort to do a MagicLeap either, of playing with existing space. Meta for example shows people enjoying a crazy dungeon crawler board game atop their real table; very primitive but something physically integrated. I didn't see a single example of Apple integrating with space, only taking it over.
It is a great input, but more importantly: drastically lowers the required computation with foviated rendering, i.e. rendering hires where you look, not everywhere.
Unless you’re doing at least once over 100Hz refresh rates, human eyeballs are too fast for foveated rendering. Motion to photon latency for this thing is 12ms from the presentation, which is 83Hz(so it’s 85Hz), and that’s probably for post-processing 2D warping and not 3D scene shading/rendering where foveated rendering must take place so no way that works.
Also the 12ms mentioned, wasn't that from camera to screen (so the latency of both the camera sensor added to the latency of the screen) or did i misunderstand?
Now that i think about it, the eye tracking is also a camera. Hmm.
I’m convinced it’s not possible to build a decent headset without eye tracking. Low latency, high refresh rates, massive resolutions,
in a tiny footprint just isn’t possible with our current generation of chips. Eye tracking lets you put your compute cycles where they’re needed, and not waste time rendering to useless pixels.
is it really low latency considering that it needs 2 cameras and a bunch of leds? Also, saccades are not very precise and are relatively small movement so i m nor
sure how precise and detailed the pointer is in these.
The said during the event that they have a custom chip to do the signal processing for the cameras and sensors. I fully believe they’ve solved the camera latency issue.
I've always thought the killer feature to get people to start using AR/VR wasn't games or social experiences, but just a bigger screen for web browsing, Excel, dashboards and a bunch of other boring software.
Honestly, I'm not sure how Vision Pro product stacks up to what Apple says, but the marketing shows that Apple has clearly figured it out.
> I was initially a skeptic of widespread adoption of VR. I'm not sure that it's going to be the next smartphone. However, if it gets more comfortable and the price point goes down, I could see it being a replacement for traditional desktop monitors. Instead of paying $1k for a 27-inch display you get as many large screens as you want. That seems probable to me.
>
> I know that sounds awfully boring and mundane, but that probably comes way before other applications. After all the original iPhone was just an iPod you could make calls with.
Just commenting to leave my footprint for when people look back on the discussion a few years from now.
The high price seems like it'll be a barrier to adoption, which will limit the amount of developers willing to invest time in developing for a closed platform.
It'll probably take off in the furry / kink scene. The real killer app will have something to do with sex or porn, and Apple will try to kill it off or refuse to acknowledge it.
On release day some couple will record a first-person POV sex video and upload it to a major porn site. If the spatial video recording experience is really good it might take off in the porn space.
Leaving a ten year time capsule comment to reference a currently fifteen year old movie which repeats an evergreen point about the two things that drive technological adoption and innovation:
Furries have a lot of money and are often technologically proficient. It probably won't take long after release before it's possible to transpose an avatar or fursona over someone, a mix of VR Chat and IRL.
Actually, this makes sense. Existing VR porn is not well produced. The resolution is far from sufficient, and the scaling is downright bizarre. If Apple can solve these issues using their '3D camera' and provide the audience with a unified standard, then it is likely that we will see high-quality homemade VR porn being posted on platforms like OnlyFans and Pornhub.
> Apple showed off 180-degree 3D videos with spatial audio in something called the Apple Immersive Video Format, which the company apparently shot with proprietary cameras it may or may not release. (They looked like the 3D videos we’ve been seeing in VR demos forever.) https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23750003/apple-vision-pro-...
Gonna leave my footprint on this one too. Here’s my take since my favorite app on my Meta Quest 2 is actually Immersed (for virtual desktop / multi monitor setups): I’m less interested in either Apple or Meta here because I think Apples Vision Pro ideas just reinforce what we’re being told repeatedly: the industry wants to move away from screens, and the future is not screens. We have two big things on the near horizon now: AR/VR and AI. The industry as a whole will push these technologies until they are the norm. Smartphones, PCs, tablets and laptops (maybe even TVs?) will become legacy technology, but they will of course live on in emulated forms (a “window”). Conversational and ubiquitous computing will be the future, like it or not.
The hardware is no doubt impressive, as expected, but I just can't see myself in any of the situations they keep showing in VR/AR demos.
Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos? Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends? Would I want to be in a group call with generated avatars of people rather than their actual faces? If the kids are having a fun moment would I want to run inside, grab my headset, strap it on and record a video, or just go join them? Would I rather work on this all day instead of a laptop?
And the one thing I could maybe see this being useful for – gaming – was barely even mentioned in their keynote.
If I'm dropping $3,500 and cutting myself off from the outside world (and no, that weird eye display thing doesn't count), a half-assed substitute for consuming the same content as I would on any other screen isn't going to cut it. Show me the actual future, in terms of software/content/communication/immersiveness, then we'll talk.
> kids [...] grab my headset, strap it on [...] or just go join them?
> cutting myself off from the outside world
> half-assed substitute for consuming the same content
> Show me the actual future
It seems like you're trying very hard to convince yourself this will be a bad product that is unpleasant to use and carries unavoidable antisocial externalities. It could very well be all of that and more, but I don't really understand why you would bother with this level of self-assured negativity before there are even any unbiased hands-on impressions out there. Apple is historically very good at execution.
> Would I rather work on this all day instead of a laptop?
I don't think all those points seem like "trying very hard", they totally seem to me like the base case, and it's up to the product to rise to the occasion and show how this is all wrong.
Their points aren't really even about the product at all. They start off with (paraphrased) "I can't imagine using this myself" and then launch into a hilariously negative caricature of a hypothetical experience using it. It's heavy on the negatively-associated words and light on actual critical analysis beyond the hype. Like, of course you can't imagine using it! You seem to be really really really convinced it sucks hard. Who would imagine themselves voluntarily having an experience like that?
I mean, it doesn't matter. The product will come out either way and I have no stake in it. But this is the internet and we post things.
If you have spent much time with other VR headsets you can absolutely imagine yourself using this, and while this version is excessively negative, I came to essentially the same conclusion. There is a big hole where the experience should be.
It’s like they tried to be the next Nike and build a better sneaker except no one actually has a need for face-shoes to begin with.
MP3 players were bad, but everyone listened to music. Smartphones were a convergence that everyone was working on and wanted, and everyone needed a phone, but the experience was lacking. The dominant cool-kid response was not “why?” but “finally” when the iPod and then iPhone dropped.
They still have a year — perhaps there is more coming — but this does not have the feel of “finally” for VR/AR that still seems possible, and no one needs VR, yet.
The original iPod didn't officially run on PCs, at the time easily the dominant platform and only became fully compatible with the third generation model. iPhone didn't ship with an app store and while it nailed a bunch of UI paradigms, it was limited compared to much of the competition for the first year or so.
I think it'll take longer than that for Vision to bake, it seems rough, it's just that the idea that Apple products are released fully formed has never been particularly true.
Fair points — I guess my main point is at their core they served known, simple functions and people knew what they did. There had been music players and phones in mainstream use for decades.
The correlate here I suppose is “watching things” or “using computers” but the function together with the price point so far feels to me more like PARC than Apple.
Sure, "don't knock it till you try it". But that just makes more sense for an entirely new product category. But this isn't a new product category. We all know the many drawbacks of these headsets. So, from the marketing materials released for this new entrant in that category, does it look like it has overcome all those issues? It doesn't, to me.
We have data: all the marketing materials they released are data. It is perfectly reasonable to look at what they have put out as "these are the use cases we're explicitly highlighting" and find them wanting. Especially because it's not a new class of product. Many of the people bringing criticisms have used past products in this space, and these are their criticisms of those products. This is not some hypothetical thing, VR headsets already exist. This looks like a very solid, probably class leading, iteration on the product, but it's still just an iteration.
I don't think so? It's just reasonable to say "this doesn't look like it solves any of the already known issues with other products in this space". And I think it's weird to respond to that with "you have no idea until you use it!". We do have an idea, because this is not a new thing.
Our experience is completely different then I guess?
Size changes but sweaty? Yes, you can even grab scuba glasses and humidity and heat will build up normally even if you stand in a living room. Strapped? Obviously. Makes you absent from the place you are at? AR can fix that I hope, but the feeling of being "somewhere else" is absolutely, completely there. A person can't just interact with you while you are using VR, you are in a different space in terms of interaction.
I've used VR dozens of times and all of these look like completely legitimate concerns.
Modulo the whole isolation paranoia thing, sure. I preordered an original Vive way back in 2016 or whatever so I think it's fair to say I know how hot, sweaty, and unpleasant some VR headsets can get.
However (again, modulo the isolation paranoia thing which I think is just completely silly) I am not a person who thinks it's impossible to make a VR/AR headset that doesn't suck to use. What can Apple do for several times the price of any extant consumer headset? I'm interested to find out!
It may be paranoia, but it matches my experience with the PS5 vr. Amazing experience and I love playing it. You have absolutely no connection to folks in the room with you.
I'm talking about this sudden insistence that using screens by yourself, possibly in private, implies that you're some kind of antisocial shut-in.
In fact: I can spend 8 hours playing Elite in VR one day, go out with my friends the next, binge-watch LOTR with my wife the day after that, and then spend a day cranking out a 3000 word manuscript in total distraction-free isolation. These things can all exist in one person, and already do!
I think I agree. That you can use it for social isolation from those in the room with you is fine, in itself. But this is akin to promoting headphones because they increase your social/situational awareness. Which is laughably false.
Such that the complaint here isn't the "by yourself, possibly in private" implications. It is the "in your home, surrounded by family" implication. You may be surrounded by them, but you are definitely isolated from them.
I do think (to whatever extent Apple is pushing it) the marketing angle that this headset will enhance in-person social interactions is pretty silly. But I also see it as inevitable PR fluff and distinct from the real compelling use cases this headset could offer.
I think in some reactions, there's an element of "I can't justify this cost, so I want to convince myself I don't want it." I can't justify this early version, but at $1k I'd be quite happy to strap on the headset and cut myself off from the outside world in the evenings, or for some of my work.
I can absolutely see a future where many adults spend idle evenings with a headset instead of a TV or iPad.
Getting a bit triggered by all this "lonely adult" type language, some of us (maybe more than a few) are alone for "reasons", we might even have more cash because of that. There is no stigma/shame attached to living alone, at least I didn't really think there was. To catch this attitude, on hackernews of all places, is a bit inelegant imho.
I will grant you the cognitive dissonance though of Apple of all companies making the ultimate bachelor toy.
Do you really need to hug your kids or throw things at the dog whilst in the middle of a code flow or devops nightmare (or whatever focused work is your poison) ? Until some chick turns up and suddenly falls in love with me, maybe I can use that cash on this thing lol.
This does seem to be targeted at people being remote/isolated/alone; they probably could have saved some time and not bothered with those eyes and the virtual avatar stuff.
I'm married with a kid on the way and have a pretty good social life, seeing friends and family multiple times a week. When we aren't out, my wife and I regularly watch TV and movies together.
Based on the above, do you think I ever use screens by myself? As a programmer and a writer, would you claim that I have no use for a quiet, private workspace without distractions?
(It's crazy how many people are coming out of the woodwork to insist on this false dichotomy between being socially well-adjusted and having a use for a screen that can't be shared.)
This, and we can say the same of the current present where, we, people behaves like zombies watching our own mobile phones without looking at the faces around. Not saying that this is a good future but the technology is sound and Apple execution excels and is well integrated within their ecosystem.
> Would I rather work on this all day instead of a laptop?
That really is the $3,500 question. Can I see myself preferring to work streaming my Mac's screen to a Vision Pro for my IDE, having and things like Slack and e-mail off to the side running on the headset? I don't know, but if I can, this seems worth it to me.
All day is the key component. Most VR headsets recommend taking breaks every half hour, which isn't just a "cover your ass" warning. I know I can't use my personal headset for much longer without feeling woozy after I take it off.
By comparison, I'm at my laptop for 7+ hours just for work. I would need to see compelling evidence that the Vision Pro is safe and comfortable to use for that long before I'd even consider replacing my laptop. And if it can't replace the computers or displays I use, then it's just a $3,500 gimmick.
To be fair you are supposed to get up, walk around, and refocus your eyes on something far away every 20 mins or so no matter what computer you are using.
But that isn't fair, since we know a vast majority of all-day computer users don't do this. The impact that a screen inches from your eyeballs has on you physically is simply higher, although both carry costs.
I work sitting in a chair, looking at a screen. If I were to work using one of these, I would just plug it in like my computer and screen currently are. Though it would be nice to go outside and work in my hammock, on a gigantic floating screen!
I have a lap desk with a BT keyboard and trackpad. I assume I'd want to bring the keyboard to my imaginary hammock desk. The trackpad (and lap desk) might not be necessary, assuming that pointer manipulation can be done via gestures.
I agree that dictation would not be enough for most people. I don't code, but writing emails is not a fun experience with Apple's current speech-to-text offerings.
That may help, but it won't fix the fact that there's not an easy syntax for editing words/phrases as you go, or at least not as efficiently as you can edit on a computer. They do offer some ways to do this if you use certain accessibility features, but without those turned on it is very difficult (if not impossible) to edit text with your voice. Perhaps they will open this up a bit for the new OS, since many people will use it sans keyboard.
I was disappointed to see that the battery cord, with the magnetic headset-side connector, seemed hardwired at the battery end. Though this is very in character for Apple. You can bet that each "battery with proprietary cord tail" will be at least $199. Look what they charge for an iPhone "battery pack" -- a $2 ring of magnets, a $5 battery, and a bit of plastic = $99.
Given the initial cost is so high, it's both frustrating that they will continue to nickel and dime you, and at the same time unlikely that someone dropping that kind of money will even blink at buying an accessory which actually is less than the sales tax on the device itself.
Who cares how much the Apple battery pack costs? Does literally anybody buy Apple's own MagSafe accessories instead of getting cheap third-party ones?
I feel like this is similar to the Mac Pro coaster wheels: a case of consumers getting upset about something that was never meant to be sold "ala carte" to individuals in the first place; but rather only exists to be purchased in bulk on the Apple Business Store by institutional buyers who wants every component to be under warranty and able to be returned for depreciation, and who don't even look at the cost breakdown before clicking "Buy."
> Who cares how much the Apple battery pack costs?
Since I wrote this, I have seen a screenshot that implies that a USB-C dongle might exist (in box? Who knows), which would allow plugging in normal batteries with a normal cable, but I can explain good reasons to get upset about this kind of thing:
When they use a proprietary connector on the top end and hardwire it to the battery on the other end, that creates a ton of problems:
1. Fraying cable? Chuck the good Li-ion battery in the trash and buy a new $200 one! Apple loves the Earth so much :)
2. The proprietary connectors are probably patent-encumbered, meaning the only ones available third-party are either overpriced because they're paying a steep MFi royalty, or they're made by fly-by-night Chinese companies with no quality control. This is the entire history of the Lightning (and Dock) connectors. With those, they added on DRM chips IN the cables too. That useless increased complexity makes the 3rd-party alternatives worse and unreliable because they have to reverse-engineer the standard. Everybody who has ever bought a 3rd-party Lightning cable has experienced this failure mode. So, many consumers absolutely do pay $20 a pop for Apple-branded cables, or they (absurdly, in my opinion) carry around the single, delicate Apple cable from their device box from place to place until it fails, and then buy another one.
Another perfect example of this is the Watch. Apple chose to make that a closed proprietary standard instead of using USB or publishing specs. They offer a couple models of crappy first-party chargers, one of which costs a fortune. I bought third-party Watch + phone combo chargers years ago. When Apple switched to USB-C Watch chargers, the watches in that generation and after will only charge incredibly slowly over the course of about 8 hours using any USB-A Apple charger, or any third-party charger -- chargers which worked quickly on the old watches. It's impossible to tell now which third-party Watch charger sold today might use the "newer" standard, or even really to know what changed! The only solution is to re-buy a bunch of first-party obnoxious pucks-with-a-cable-hardwired for $25 a piece.
The problem is not the cost, it's the experience. You _could_ be carrying multiple laptop batteries with you also. It would make the laptop itself lighter and thinner, but it would be a larger hassle overall.
They did mention that their dual chip pipeline/low latency reduces the "woozy" effects (because it lines up better with what your brain is expecting I guess). It will be interesting to see
These days I've moved over to pomodoro technique to be able to get any work done in the face of WFH distractions and general indifference to my work.
So strapping on immersive goggles for 30m-1h chunks and taking lots of breaks actually fits my current work model perfectly and might improve my productivity.
I think that price tag is not for end consumers, but early adopters/builders. There is going to be a gold rush of "maybe I can make that flashlight app that makes me a millionaire".
I wonder if you could make a literal flashlight/headlamp, either by using the front-facing display as a light, or just leveraging the infrared/lidar sensor to make night-vision goggles
A bigger question is – does it support mouse input? Because none of their demos showed it, and without it the headset is basically dead on arrival for any real work.
> You’re able to place multiple apps in the real world space and can type with either voice or a virtual keyboard, but you can also use Bluetooth keyboards and trackpads, and with a glance at your Mac, you can use it on a large virtual display.
My bigger worry is how I would type, if that's at all possible. My assumption, like the sibling comment notes, is that eye tracking would replace mouse input.
And I'm not yet typing code by talking to a computer. Maybe AI will work for 'typing' by talking and using copilot or some similar tech, but I've yet to try that and am not that confident that software has caught up to allow me to navigate folders and files within a codebase, edit the code, restart any servers if that's necessary, test (run tests, or visit a page, or send a curl request), post a pull request, etc. All of the disjoint steps I need to do to work, which change depending on the task, would need to work confidently in a system like this for me to switch over. And if speech is the way forward, I think my wife is going to be pretty upset with me since I WFH.
The beautiful part is that the headset makes any desk (at my apartment, when visiting parents, in the office, etc.) my desk, which is exactly the same every time no matter where I am. Without bajillion cables and with instantaneous setup time. And would allow me to not worry about the physical constraints of the surface and take up no actual physical space on the desk.
I sit on a reclining desk chair, about 4 feet back from a 46" TV. I have a lap desk with a bluetooth keyboard and trackpad. Love it! I'm interested in trying this out, to be able to have a bigger screen, and to be able to take it anywhere.
That sounds fun. I do that from time to time, but it gets fumbly for me. You must have a better chair (or keyboard) if it's working for you. Also.. my TV isn't nearly 4k (or even 2k)
I did pick up a nice chair when some nearby offices were being vacated a couple years ago. I have used a decade-old Apple BT keyboard and trackpad. They're great (though the batteries have to be changed every month or so). My TV is 1080p, and I wish it were a bit higher resolution, for sure.
I have desks at home, work, at parents' house, etc. So i have a physical desk in all places to place a keyboard on.
The issue is that all those desks are different, and I am not carrying the same setup everywhere. I am not going to bring my monitors and cables and the rest on a flight to visit parents. Or if I am working from a hotel. And I am not carrying my entire setup every time i switch between working in the office or at home.
But just a headset + kbm? No problem, especially since consistency of the setup being the same is guaranteed, and the setup time is zero.
You can use a Bluetooth keyboard pretty much anywhere you can sit with it on your lap or a table in front of you. One might legitimately worry about looking like a huge dork in public, but for a lot of people I imagine there is a lot of appeal to a device that can throw up a virtual array of multiple monitors anywhere they want to sit down and get some work done.
Well, you do you, but if I were using a headset like this as a laptop replacement I would put it and the keyboard in a backpack. You know, just like how I carry my laptop around today.
Or on my lap, for that matter, but it can't throw up a virtual array of huge monitors. Even the biggest laptops feel cramped next to my desk setup at home.
Your "array of huge monitors" is, I assume, not in any reasonable sense as portable as a laptop or a headset and BT keyboard. You're talking in circles.
That's fair. My monitor is a constrained space. If this headset is light and comfortable and can give me unlimited real estate without compromising on text clarity and resolution, I'd happily wear it all day at my desk.
They're positioning this as a productivity product. You'll probably be able to just use a keyboard. Get ready to learn to type without looking at the keys I guess, but I think most people already can with only a few issues.
Imo most useful case for this is watching youtube in bed, I'd just keep a bluetooth keyboard/mouse on my nightstand.
"Get ready to learn to type without looking at the keys I guess"
Why wouldn't you be able to look at the keys? This is AR, you can see everything around you still, including a physical keyboard right in front of you.
I'd guess if they owned the ecosystem (headset and keyboard) they could make for very accurate "pass through" showing the keyboard isolated over the background (arbitrarily change the desk surface, or have a floating keyboard, etc).
Remove your hands from the keyboard for a bit and have it set to disappear.
You could do this with Immersed on a Quest 2 but you’re right the ecosystem is what will make or break that option.
Personally I hope there is no keyboard at all. Seems with depth cameras mapping your hands, eye tracking, perfect speech-to-text, and some user training you could do some cool stuff.
Even further, there are two downward facing cameras. I bet they restrict these (for privacy), but I wouldn't be surprised if they come out with something to help you see your keyboard via those cameras
The demo I saw showed a guy at a standing desk, using a Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad. I remember I grimaced thinking what his shoulders must feel like typing with his hands so close together on that tiny, shitty little keyboard. It made me think of little T-Rex arms.
The keys on the magic keyboard (and therefore hand positions) are no closer together than on other keyboards. It just doesn't have the numeric keypad part.
If you want an ergonomic keyboard with a gap in the middle, any bluetooth keyboard will work with a Mac, iPhone or iPad, so I imagine it would with this too.
Seems like they mentioned t-rex arms which are characteristic of non-ergo keyboards, all of which are generally terrible. I really wish Apple would just make a better version of the Sculpt now that MS is out of that game.
For me the question rather is: is being able to work from the sofa a couple of hours a day without having to stare at a small screen worth $3.5k? Certainly.
you should at least take a brake where you use your legs every hour or more often because if not it will noticeable increase the chance of blot clots in your veins and in turn stuff like heart attacks (long term wrong behavior leading to increased risk over the long term, no relevant per-case risk)
similar you should change the focus distance of you eyes often enough as it does reduce eye strain (similar light conditioning in your room) and the easiest way to do it is to look not at your screen e.g. when standing up and moving around (and if well done maybe the glasses from Apple can simulated depth in a way which does lead to changes in eye focus)
Having a walking band below your desk and looking around your room outside of the window or similar will also fix this issues quite efficiently, at the cost of being less lazy (and issues for people with certain kind of back issues).
And for me spending more than 2 hours per day with laptop on the sofa is a recipe for neck pain and migraines. The angle is just not right.
If the headset is more ergonomic for this situation, it will find its target audience for sure. The battery is designed for 2 hours sessions, but the device can run indefinitely while on charger
Yeah I’m approaching 40, and if I spend more than 30 minutes or so with a laptop on the couch I get crippling shoulder pain at night while I’m in bed. So this sounds like a lovely way to avoid that problem but - even with a headset strapped to your face, what do you think you’ll be using as input devices? I’ll still want a trackpad and keyboard in my hands. (Waving your arms around all day isn’t fun). And if I have to balance a keyboard on my lap anyway, aside from a bigger virtual screen, what’s the point?
I'm not a native English speaker so I thought I missed a comma somewhere. But rereading my previous comment I'm rather certain I mean the small screen to be the one of the laptop. Even the 16" model gives only so much space to work with.
I mean, depending on the work using it as a thin client would make the most sense imo, compiling still takes a toll on the battery life even with m2 magic
It really depends on how the fake screens actually look in use. You need a decent multiple of the number of pixels in the screen you want to emulate on your AR glasses to be able to pull it off well and so far we haven't really gotten it. I do not see myself getting these till they're a third or less the price either unless they're issued to me for work for some reason.
Because if well done I get my reasonable high multi monitor like setup everywhere I want, no matter weather I'm sitting or lying or on the train or at home.
Fun thing is if you just skim the article it looks as if they copied https://simulavr.com/ :=) (They didn't this was developed independent of each other and Apple put some tweaks in it which they claim no one else did and gave it a new name and claim they are the first, like always.)
I'm in the camp that sees the whole thing as a novelty. I didn't see any use cases that made me go "Ooh, I need this in my life." I already have multiple screens around me. If I'm watching TV and want to look something up, I can open up my laptop or look at my phone.
The nice thing about those are I can physically close the laptop or turn off the phone. With a virtual screen, I have to use some UI to do it. I know it doesn't seem like much of a difference, but to me, there's enough lag and lack of real feel of control that I'd prefer a real object than a virtual one.
Interacting with app windows in 3D space also doesn't feel any faster than just using a flat window on a flat screen. I'm already super productive using keyboard + mouse and a flat display, so I don't see how using my voice and turning my head to look at things in a virtual space is any better.
I see a bunch of use-cases I might like, but they all have a big asterisk of "how well does it actually work".
And it would have to be pretty damn spectacular for me to drop ~AUD$5200 on it in a "I will be using this all the time, pro-actively sense". Which maybe it is!
But this press-release spends a lot of time talking around the hard numbers - i.e. 23 million pixels is a lot of things but its not a resolution. Nor is their any mention of the FOV angle (this data is obviously out there, but avoiding mentioning it in your own marketing copy means you know it's not what you want people up front comparing).
Same boat. $5k is massive. I'm considering buying a new ~$2k screen that would then be bound to either home or office, so there's budget to solve the visual side of work and be portable, but I wouldn't bet it on this before a lot of hands-on reviews.
And the reviews would have to be outrageous for me to not wait for a future, cheaper version.
One thing I don't like is the idea of being bound to their idea of what a spatial interface is. I use three screens and like more density, so my current situation is more useful than their demo. Give me that and good control over the environmental backdrop, and I'd start to be convinced. I like my work, but if I could do it while feeling like I'm in the desert permanently at golden hour, that'd be an upgrade.
Giving the total number of pixels is actually more honest, compared to competitors who claim that 2Kx2K*2 is a 4K headset
23 million is comfortably more than 4K resolution per eye, putting this at one of if not the highest resolution of any headset. It seems like they are telling the whole truth when they say you can view a 4K virtual screen on this - there is enough resolution headroom
That said, the lack of FOV is suspicious. Between that, the lack of proper VR game demos and the focus on virtual monitors, I get the feeling this headset will have poor FOV traded for sharpness across the whole image and reduced nausea
> 23 million is comfortably more than 4K resolution per eye, putting this at one of if not the highest resolution of any headset
But still at a density (pixels/degree) lower than my $70 4K display at normal viewing distance.
VR companies are always so damn excited about their innovations that allow a headset to display text at a fraction of the fidelity of a display that costs almost two orders of magnitude less.
I get that the innovation is mostly in the rest of the headset, but companies really need to stop skimping on the display resolution.
> I get the feeling this headset will have [...] sharpness across the whole image
I mean it's not skimping, it's right at the limits of our technological capability. VR is weird in that once you cross a certain pixel density, no further improvements will matter because the eye won't be able to resolve the image better. But until you get there, it's much more limited.
The cross-over point AFAIK is about a 16K screen resolution (per eye) - i.e. at that point a screen in a VR helmet is "retina" and you won't see pixels no matter what.
It's just that's an enormous number of pixels, in a tiny surface area, and a colossal amount of data to move.
> VR is weird in that once you cross a certain pixel density, no further improvements will matter because the eye won't be able to resolve the image better.
Can people stop saying this? I can clearly see every individual pixel of my 4K display. This headset is not even close to the limit of visual resolution. It doesn't matter if 16k is the limit of the retina if the headset is only 4k per eye anyway, that's almost 2 orders of magnitude. Much like the difference in price between this headset and a much sharper 4K display.
I get that it's technologically impressive compared to nothing, and I get that the main selling point is motion, not resolution. But until I can comfortably read text on a simulated 4K display, it won't be impressive to me.
They said 'anywhere you look, so I'm guessing the FOV is nearly all the way around to your peripheral vision. If not, the first review to say 'pay $3500 to experience glaucoma' will torpedo the product entirely.
> To be fair when the iPhone 1 came out nobody really said they need it in their lives vs a Nokia or BB
That's not how I remember it, that original keynote was magical. The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear, the only damper being high price together with tying it to an AT&T contract.
While impressive technologically, this on the other hand gives rather creepy vibes - the whole presentation looks like a Black Mirror episode.
Agreed, I think they may struggle to overcome the whole “Black Mirror” effect. Feedback from my brother and parents (veritable Apple-philes) this morning amounted to “sounds kinda cool but I’d probably think someone was a grade-A weirdo if I showed up at home and saw they had a AR/VR headset / I’d take that $3500 and go on a nice weekend trip, play some golf, have a nice dinner, etc.”
While HN may be more “the target market”, I’m still fairly certain we’re a vanishingly small contingent of consumers, and apparently we’re not even completely onboard with AR/VR ourselves.
>The benefits of the iPhone over current devices (both phones and MP3 players) were crystal-clear,
I don't remember that at all. Windows phones could do essentially everything the first iPhone could do, and in 3G. What they couldn't do was do it seamlessly and quickly like an iPhone and that made all the difference.
If I remember correctly, weren't most of the original Windows Mobile devices similar to PDAs in that they required a stylus to use them? I joined Microsoft around that time before the iPhone, working in the codec team, so we had several test devices. I just remember how clunky they felt to use. Kind of laggy and the UI was a bit ugly. Windows Phone came out to try to fix that and we got the whole Metro UI thing.
Even as a college student, watching them use that capacitive touch screen vs the clunky resistive screens was magical. I'd owned an iPod for a couple of years and had already seen the smoothness of the clicky wheel thing. Every single person I knew was looking forward to this phone
I asked people that are close to my age at the time about this headset and the reaction is pretty visceral. May be my crowd is more "tech focused" but strapping a headset just elicits a completely negative reaction, especially with those creepy eyes. "Black Mirror" and "RPO" were frequent references, explicitly as negatives
What benefits exactly? Touch screens were not well regarded pre-iPhone, I remember a lot of people not wanting to ditch their keypads. And there was no app store at first so it was just a phone with music which many could already do.
My reaction to the original iPhone was, “that’s it. That is every phone from here on out.” The UX was so clearly years ahead of every other phone UX and it combined the wildly popular iPod with a phone. If nothing else it took two products that a lot of people carried with them and made it one and did that well.
While the vision pro is impressive it doesn’t make my pockets or luggage lighter. And there isn’t a thing I am not buying because I am buying this.
The original iPhone was also 599, much cheaper than the laptop it was "replacing". The Vision Pro is priced so high it's not in the same category of luxury items.
I distinctly remember getting the first iPhone and, having come from some random Nokia, just staring at the vibrant iPhone screen. It seemed impossible. Similar reaction with the first iPads as well.
I'd been using a Windows CE device up till then, so the iPhone didn't really look revolutionary to me - the big deal was that the capacitive touchscreen made the interactivity model possible. You can't build the iPhone UI without that touchscreen - driving it with a stylus and a resistive touchscreen just wouldn't work.
Which is why I do get a little annoyed about the "Steve Jobs visionary" claims surrounding it - the market was circling the "single slate" concept for a good long while, the big innovation was finding a price-point and a way to manufacture the iPhone with that touchscreen technology and get it into consumers hands (and being willing to gamble on it).
Actually, I had a Dell handheld (Axim?) but never really found a use for it. I think it was the contrast and reactiveness of the iPhone that stunned me.
I don’t remember it that way at all. The screen resolution. Touchscreen keyboard. Pinch and zoom, safari web browsing etc was all so much better than Nokia and BB offerings and many people immediately wanted the first iPhone. The earliest adopters would be hounded to show off their phone to family and friends.
For me, it's hard to make direct comparisons with the world of then. Today, everybody has so many devices and are so used to tech all around them every waking moment. An AR headset doesn't feel like a huge leap in additional day-to-day functionality compared with what a smartphone gave us at the time.
As this comparison says[1], people got from Wright Brothers to 747 in a very short time and thought we'd be space travellers soon after that, but hey, a 747 was good enough.
The success of this really depends on the developers’ and consumers’ patience, and since that will fade quickly, probably also depends on the amount of dough Apple is willing to sink into it until the tech allows for more practical non-intrusive products.
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
Flights. This might become a must-have for the jet-setting class. That not only makes Apples first-year numbers, it fertilizes the market for developers.
Every time I fly First, the best part of it is that the attendants are non-intrusive. If I were to go and convert that into an interrupt-driven experience I think it would be a massive downgrade.
"Yes, I'd like to be woken for meals alone, please". Lie down, effectively teleport a few thousand miles away, wake up to eat, teleport the rest of the way. One time, I was so tired I just went to sleep in London and woke up in San Francisco. Captain Kirk had nothing on me. The plane was a teleportation chamber.
Now I'm sure the thing that many people like is talking to flight attendants, but personally when people wait on me I prefer it completely in the background with a minimum of questions and interruptions.
> actually pleasant to interact with the flight attendants. They have nice things to share, like snacks, drinks, and food
I'm generally a book and chat flier. But most people aren't. And I'm not all the time. My limited rebuttal is to the claim that for some reason front cabin passengers won't want an escape.
Hell, I could see e.g. Delta having a VR stream that makes it look like you're super-manning when laying flat.
I bet they absolutely will. If I could afford business/first, I'd absolutely buy something like this just to be able to watch content or work on a bigger screen and without the constant interruptions you get on in-flight entertainment.
Then in economy, not having to cram a laptop where it can get crushed by the seat in front, or craning your neck, etc - that'd be fantastic.
The Quest Go came out in 2018 (first "real" VR headset for this kind of thing) and I've never ever seen someone use one in flight. Not once in four+ years. I average about one flight a month.
The Quest headsets seem pitched for fitness-type games as much as anything else, whereas this pushes the higher resolution for workspace and content consumption.
But it fertilizes the market for what kind of developers? Currently I see no real convincing reason why this should be substantially different than existing headsets except for a better operating system experience.
I can see this being an exceptional gaming device if the screen specs are anything to go by. But any game that would justify spending the substantial premium for that device would likely need an extra PC with really beefy specs, bumping the price up even higher, further limiting the target audience.
I've read other peoples thoughts about 3D modelling usecases. For most CAD related use-cases this thing is almost definitely overspeced considering the shitty textures most CAD prototypes utilize. Maybe it would be cool for architecture studios, but thats also a fairly limited audience.
I'm sure developers will come up with very creative use-cases for that device, but I cant imagine most of them being as impactful in the average persons everyday life as the introduction of the iPhone was. What I'm very certain is that this device is launching at a bad time economically. 3.5k is a significant expense, even for people with higher incomes. In a time where disposable incomes shrink and uncertainty is continuing to stress many employees, I don't think as many people would be willing to drop the 3.5k on that device as maybe 3 years ago.
But hey, maybe this comment will age as poorly as the famous dropbox one.
Completely agree with your points here. I personally see nearly zero times when I would use this given what I've seen so far. I imagined consuming content with the cheap Oculus Go would be cool, but mine has been gathering dust for years.
This Apple device seems like a moonshot. I am actually really glad for them to use some of their $100B+ of cash to take a shot at this product rather than other things that might be more sure-fire profit makers. I think if there is a killer app for AR/VR, we haven't seen it yet, and also, it'll be mind-blowing. But I think the chance of that happening anytime in the next 5 years is minimal. It's a low probability of something really awesome, so I'm rooting for it even though Apple is overall not my favorite company.
This is the first true mixed reality headset as it allows you to gradually transition between VR to AR. That's going to make the headset a lot more usable outside or in collaborative environments.
Maybe it would be cool for architecture studios, but thats also a fairly limited audience.
A guy I know does VR high quality architectural renderings of apartments etc that are sold off plan. So the potential buyer can actually go through their apartment before it’s even built. That doesn’t seem like a small use case.
Aside from the in-seat power, I think another likely solution will be third parties like Belkin making a less "apple-esque" but longer lasting battery that's compatible with the magnetic connector. The OEM solution looks quite small as is. [1]
Interesting, it doesn't show a way to charge that brick. I assumed it would have USB-C for charging, though perhaps MagSafe makes more sense given the propensity of the user to stand up and start walking without realizing he's plugged into the wall!
I also wonder if it will use the other type of MagSafe (like on the iPhone) charging. I could see the argument for convenience, but presumably this would be significantly slower charging than over USB-C.
I typically fly one airline so it could just be their planes, but I don't remember the last plane I was on that didn't have outlets[1]. And certainly the folks that can drop $3,500 on this are more likely to either be in business class or flying "nicer" airlines, so plug access feels like a non-issue to me.
[1] That being said, the number of times a plug has been able to support a charging brick directly is...miniscule. They're usually so worn out that they can't support the weight, so I have to carry the extension just for that reason.
This is not true. Most seats have a 120/240v receptacle that can keep laptops charged while in use.
You’re forgetting this thing uses a mostly passive M2 chip. Not to mention I’m sure they designed it so it could be powered from the USB c ports on their laptops. The headset won’t use anywhere near the amount of power you seem to be implying.
That's voltage, not amperage. Just because it's a 120V receptacle doesn't mean you can draw large current. My laptop charger gets booted off the grid pretty frequently on a full plane.
Two extra batteries will likely be trivial cost in the context of a $3500 device, not sure why this isn't clear to everyone critiquing the battery life?
I'm assuming 3rd parties (like Anker, Belkin, etc) will be producing batteries for this not long after it's launched that will run much larger. If we assume the Apple battery for 2 hours is something like 40Wh, a 100Wh battery (the TSA max I believe) will give you 5 hours (enough for approximately 2-3 movies), which seems like plenty.
i can certainly see the appeal of a VR headset on flights, but if that's all i'm buying it for why would i go for a $3500 apple device instead of a $299 headset from meta?
can i even use noise-cancelling headphones with the reality pro, or is it locked to the built-in spacial audio headest? because i'd rather block out the noise than the peripheral vision on a plane.
> a) Meta Quest is heavier, bulkier with significantly poorer quality displays
It's also made by Facebook. We tend to underestimate the power of brands in tech. There are few places I've seen as loud of a status-signaling system than commercial aviation.
I kept picturing someone, having turned the "immersiveness" crown to the max and put on noise-cancellation, sitting in a window seat, smiling and calmly watching Ted Lasso all the way down while everyone around them braces for impact and grabs their life preservers!
Doubt. It might provide an (expensive) escape from the misery that is economy class, but if you are travel in first class or on private jets then you're already living in a very pleasant version of the world.
That’s my take as well. You can stretch out, watch a movie on a flat screen TV, sleep, stand up and walk around, have food and drink with a sturdy table, or curl up with a book or otherwise. I recently did international first class for the first time and wasn’t particularly dying to escape the hellishness of it all.
All the most enjoyable stuff I've done in VR has involved, at a minimum, lots of arm movement, and typically also leg movement as well. Think Beat Saber, or Half-Life: Alyx. I don't really see this working in a seated plane environment.
I don't know if watching movies is a great use case for VR though? Unless it's gonna be a fully immersive 3D experience, I'd rather just watch it on a normal screen and give my eyes and head a rest.
For productivity, the M2 MBA is great. But for movie-watching, this is no comparison. I'm not a member of "the jet-setting class", but I completely agree that this is going to be de rigueur for those folks. I wouldn't be surprised if first class cabins came with free rentals in the near future.
They need a better story for the lenses for that to become a reality. Anyone who needs corrective lenses will need to bring their own and my guess is they are going to cost around $500. I’ll eat my shoe if they are less than half of that cost.
Flights is one of the most compelling use cases for me personally. I’m tall and would love this. I also could use my ergonomic keyboard while looking up and ahead.
so you're going to be a tangle of wires that cant see the person in the seat next to you with these on on the plane. your ergo keyboard to the headset through a usbc adaptor with a mouse and the battery pack all on a tiny seat tray while you can't really see the keyboard or the mouse. got it.
I've done full passthrough, and the digital overlays over the keyboard suck when they come close to lining up correctly.
Done virtual desktop on the plane as well. if they're using kalman filters at all to correct for camera placement they freak out whne the plane moves at all. which it does, it's a plane. and let me tell you slow drift is how you toss your cookies.
I get how much people want them to be right. I do to. same as how cloud gaming just isn't quite there.
They've said there's a "crown" (like on their watches) on the headset you can turn to adjust seeing your surroundings or not. And there's a video demonstrating that on the page this thread links to. So no, you're not stuck seeing your surroundings if you don't want to see them.
I have Sony over ears and airpods pro and I never wear airpods on flights. Far too uncomfortable for long ones and noise cancelling is far better on over ears, by design. Of course airpods are more versatile if that's what you after tho.
I have both the Sony over the ear noise canceling headphones and AirPods Pro.
I haven’t brought the Sonys on a flight since I got the AirPods. The Sonys do a marginally better job, but they take up so much more space in your carryon that the small advantage isn’t worth it.
Comfort is more subjective. Over the ear headphones start to hurt my head after a couple hours. Earbuds don’t bother me much in comparison.
It’s something that gives me pause about these VR headsets for longer durations. If I don’t even like wearing the relatively light over the ear Sonys, hard for to imagine myself being all that comfortable wearing a whole screen on my face.
I have both and prefer the AirPods Pro. The Bose noise cancelling always felt a bit unnatural; there was a pressure difference that would make me feel slightly dizzy. For me, the AirPods Pro do not cause the same dizzyness issue and have comparable noise cancelling. Even if they had noticeably worse noise cancelling the charging and pairing experience are so much better than what Bose can achieve that I'd probably still use the AirPods.
Two years ago they were better than the best in-ear noise cancelling earphones Bose had. I've not kept up to date or tried Bose since then so maybe they've got even better (they weren't bad, just not as good as Airpods Pro, IMO).
This sounds absolutely awful and everyone on the flight will think you're a massive tool. It also costs $3500, people that can afford that just for flights are flying business or first class anyhow. I also don't know how much hand room you need to navigate the thing and personally don't like the idea that the person next to me on a flight could be watching porn, flights are already kinda gross.
Who cares what anyone else on a flight thinks of them?
My goal on a flight is to spend as little time as possible interacting with anyone else, and then trying to purge the experience from my mind minutes after landing.
A headset that makes it all disappear sounds like a godsend.
You may not care, but social pressure is effects -most- people. If you think you look like a moron to everyone around you, you're much less likely to take part in something. If a "headset that makes it all disappear" is a Godsend...why haven't you already bought the various headsets currently available that could already do that and worn it on a flight? I imagine there are two reasons, it looks silly and because it has no brand value associated with it (like Apple), it looks -really- silly.
The Quest 2 which cost $400 or so has a high-quality screen. I don't know the last time you've put on a headset, but the screens aren't the problem anymore. The problem are the other various fundamental flaws with the concept. In terms of having one in public, I have yet to see one, even this new Apple one, that doesn't look completely absurd. Tim Cook didn't even take a picture with the product on, because it looks ridiculous and is memeable. That is incredibly important, like it or not.
I have used a quest 2. It was… fine. It’s pretty charitable of you to say those screens aren’t a problem anymore, though. Still had screen door. Still made me feel a little unwell. Did it even do pass through? I seem to remember some awful grainy video feed.
We all have different standards though. Some people are already saying the Apple Vision screen isn’t high enough resolution either. Granted, none of them have gone hands on so I’m not sure what they’re basing that on.
Business class from Seattle to Tokyo is only $6k these days. That is compared to $1500 in economy though. Even if I could afford this new VR system, I still couldn’t afford international business class.
I know HN is generally people that make decent money in tech, but $3500 for most people is a lot of money, especially for a first-generation unproven product. You are much more likely to find a person in business class that is buying this than a person in coach. That's just a fact. Meanwhile, there is no reason to wear the headset in first or business class because you aren't trying to escape the grim realities of the airplane.
Phones, Tablets and smart watches existed and had big market penetration before those products were introduced. The same is true of earbuds, wireless and otherwise. This is a space with incredibly low penetration, it will be much harder to get traction.
Fair comparison, I felt the same about the AirPods. What these three devices have in common? They are not pro devices and their physicality is portable and easily accessible. Is the same true for the Vision Pro? I am purposefully excluding price.
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them
I just want to say, absolutely. Except it's not sweaty.
You're not going to do it in a social situation -- it's not replacing a movie the family watches together -- but in your bedroom or home alone absolutely. Just recline on your bed/couch and watch an IMAX-sized screen in the sky above you. Surround sound in your AirPods.
I already do it with my Quest 2 and it's glorious. It's hard to imagine how good the experience is until you've tried it.
And I'm convinced that within a few years, it's going to become the main way of watching movies together with friends/family/lovers when you're geographically apart -- whether 2,000 miles or 2 miles.
I must be old-fashioned or even anti-social, but what exactly is the point of watching a movie together remotely? Does it become some kind of group debate that constantly interrupts the movie?
With comedies you're laughing together and it's awesome. I did that constantly during COVID with friends. Especially great for reality TV shows, you can pause and make jokes about what's going on.
It's really fun to pause and chat about what's happening and then resume. Yes it's constantly interrupting the movie but that's the whole point. But because you pause you're not missing dialog or anything.
I mean, do you not see a difference in watching something on a couch with friends vs. watching the same thing by yourself?
During Covid & lockdowns, loads of people watched movies together. It's not much different from watching a movie with a friend at your own place. VR gives the activity sense of presence which is hard to describe, but basically it's even more of a social experience.
> It's not much different from watching a movie with a friend at your own place
not to sound rude, but that's a bit of a stretch.
It is much different.
Maybe not better overall for some people, but very much different it is.
> VR gives the activity sense of presence which is hard to describe
Not really hard, it's similar to proprioception
Difference is proprioception enables you to feel limbs that are actually there, which is not as good as tricking your brain to feel something that it's not there.
>not to sound rude, but that's a bit of a stretch.
Not to me. I've spent several thousand hours in VR. When it comes to watching a video with someone else online, the most immersive way is in VR. Things like the now defunct Rabb.it or Watch Together are for many technical reasons better (no screen door, don't need any bulky headset). But it doesn't feel like being there with your friend.
>Difference is proprioception enables you to feel limbs that are actually there, which is not as good as tricking your brain to feel something that it's not there.
I've witnessed dozens of people who can "feel" a virtual touch from another avatar on their avatar. VR tech from 5 years ago was good enough to already elicit such reactions. The determinant seems to me to be time spent in a sufficiently immersive virtual world. And we've had those for many years already.
When I'm away on a remote site for a week or two, it is nice to be able to watch a movie with my wife after a shift. There's something nice about the feeling of being connected even though I'm 2000kms away from her.
I don't have a Quest 2 myself, but my nephew has one and even wearing it for 15 minutes has the padding full of sweat any time I've messed with it. I can't even imagine wearing it for 2+ hours.
If you use an app like SkyBox you can make sure the screen is outputting full 1080p detail by adjusting the size and rendering quality of the virtual screen. Nothing is blurry or messy at all -- I've actually compared against stills from the same video on my laptop. Each eye is 1920 pixels wide but it's effectively a bit wider since you have two eyes without total overlap between the two images, so it matches up for 1080p pretty perfectly. (And you can watch 4K content but you're only going to get effective 1080p resolution.)
I'm happy you have a 65" 4K TV but not everyone does, and the vast majority of content out there is only 1080p as well. And my AirPods Pro, with noise cancelling, together with the Quest's own spatial audio, absolutely destroy any regular speakers I've ever owned. And everything can be as loud as I want without disturbing anyone's sleep or study.
> It DOES get sweaty, hot, and it leaves pressure marks on your face.
I guess we have different experiences, but it sounds to me like your strap is possibly much too tight. None of those things happen to me. But I'm also using it in a room-temperature environment -- I'm sure it would get sweaty and hot if it were 90°F indoors or something.
This is like five times worse than my desktop display, which fills around a third of my visual field with a 4K desktop. It sounds absolutely miserable (and is, based on my experience with an HP Reverb G2, which is 2160x2160 per eye).
> If you use an app like SkyBox you make sure the screen is outputting full 1080p detail. Nothing is blurry or messy at all. You can do the math if you don't believe me.
1080p detail? Are you aware this detail is spread all over your field of vision? ~18 pixels per degree is laughable quality. And let's not talk about the Screen Door Effect!
> The vast majority of content out there is only 1080p
What???
> And my AirPods Pro, with noise cancelling, together with the Quest's own spatial audio, absolutely destroy any regular speakers I've ever owned.
You probably haven't owned many speakers, then.
> I guess we have different experiences, but it sounds to me like your strap is possibly much too tight.
If you don't wear it tight, it's easy for it to move slightly and you lose the sweet spot of the lenses, which is very narrow, increasing blurriness even further.
I don't wear my glasses tightly, and they still leave a mark on my nose.
> 1080p detail? Are you aware this detail is spread all over your field of vision?
I'm aware that the field of view on the Quest 2 is fairly narrow, so expanding the virtual screen to close to the full width of the field of view winds up to actual 1080p yes. And it's a great comfortable size for a virtual screen. You're free to confirm the math yourself, but you're not losing detail.
>> The vast majority of content out there is only 1080p
> What???
That's factual. Even most new TV shows aren't in 4K yet, nor is most of the movie catalog. Fortunately it's slowly growing.
> You probably haven't owned many speakers, then.
Right, I've dropped a few hundred on speakers. I'm much happier dropping a couple hundred on AirPods than many thousands on a set of surround-sound speakers to get comparable quality... that I can't even use at the same volume because it would bother people.
As a data point, the time I bought a 10" subwoofer for use in my home theatre was when my thoughts on headphone use changed.
Prior to that I'd used some decent (but not "fantastic" headphones).
Nothing compares to the whole-body experience of watching a movie with good bass speaker setup. Large bass speakers literally vibrate your whole body rather than just your head.
> I'm aware that the field of view on the Quest 2 is fairly narrow, so expanding the virtual screen to close to the full width of the field of view winds up to actual 1080p yes. And it's a great comfortable size for a virtual screen. You're free to confirm the math yourself, but you're not losing detail.
Resolution and detail are not the same thing. We need to talk about Pixels Per Degree here. A 65" 1080p TV at reasonable viewing distance (3m) has ~70 PPD. The Quest 2 can barely do 20 PPD!
I can personally count the pixels of the Quest 2 (and the space between them!). I have to get extremely close to my 4k TV in order to be able to see the pixels.
> That's factual. Even most new TV shows aren't in 4K yet, nor is most of the movie catalog. Fortunately it's slowly growing.
Most of the new TV shows I watch come in 4K 10bit HDR with Dolby Vision. It's rare when one doesn't have the option.
No, resolution and detail are the same thing in this case. Either you can clearly make out details or you can't.
Pixels per degree are irrelevant for regular 2D entertainment content when you can vary the virtual screen size. Obviously your 4K TV which occupies a very small slice of your vision has more PPD. And obviously a virtual screen which is more like IMAX-sized has less PPD. But it doesn't matter at all once you're already seeing every pixel of your content. Because if you're already seeing every pixel of the source material, an increase in PPD achieves literally nothing except for a sharper user interface (not content).
> Most of the new TV shows I watch
And different people watch different content. I'm happy for you that yours are mostly 4K. But even prestige shows like White Lotus and Succession are still only 1080p.
> Because if you're already seeing every pixel of the source material, an increase in PPD achieves literally nothing except for a sharper user interface (not content).
Pixel size matters, you are not supposed to be able to clearly discern every pixel of the content you are consuming.
> Pixel size matters, you are not supposed to be able to clearly discern every pixel of the content you are consuming.
If that's really important to you (why?) then you can adjust your position in the virtual world until the viewing angle is the same as your TV or whatever the ideal size is.
You know as a parent (feels weird to write that) this highlights an entirely weird product oversight for me: is anyone doing shareable low-latency wireless headphones? Because in terms of putting things on your head, that's exactly what me and my wife need - a way to watch things at night without constantly riding the volume control, with shared audio (and microphone pick ups or something so we can talk to each other).
You're totally in luck if you're in the Apple ecosystem. With AirPods, you can do that easily from iOS or on your Apple TV. It's zero-latency in the sense that it automatically delays the video to match the Bluetooth latency, so the image always syncs with sound:
All of this is true, but my biggest complaint is the only really good use case other than games for this sort of tech is immersing yourself in a bunch of terminals in VR, and they even botched that what with it not being a real OS that can run traditional dev environments and only allowing you to embed one mac screen in the whole thing. Like who wants to sit around in a glorified iOS all day and essentially screen cast your one mac screen into there? I should be able to have my vscode window to my left, browser to my right, more terminals to the side and above, etc..
This is going to very quickly become the product that allows CEOs and other megalomaniacs to sit on the couch for three hours watching photo albums of their accomplishments or whatever it is they alluded to. I can see why they went for the $3500 price tag, this is basically an admission that there isn't mass-market appeal for non-gaming VR stuff at the moment, so might as well get $$$ and make it a status symbol for the C suite. The problem is all the people within apple who sanity test this idea, are also those types..
This is not the category disruption they made this out to be.
I would actually say that games are NOT a good use case for VR. Some simulation games (mainly racing and flying) are fine for VR, but if you are really into those genres you probably already have better equipment to actually simulate cockpit equipment or at very least wheel and pedals.
All other games in VR suck ass. Either they are just 3d movies with some small interactive pits in them or they are tech demos which are stretched to couple hours and called a game or they are just "jump scare the game".
My main problem is the movement. Unless you dedicate entire room(s) to VR you have to use D-pad/stick to move - which for me defeats the whole purpose of VR - or you have to use the stupid teleportation which either breaks your game by completely trivializing it or makes movement extremely frustrating.
I think we have pretty definitely already showed that gaming isn't the killer VR app. We have had affordable VR headsets on the market for years, but the industry hasn't shifted (because VR is at best a mildly amusing gimmick). We need one of those infinite mats where you can walk and run to become actually usable and drop in price low enough that headset + the mat are together affordable.
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
Some of us don't have local friends we want to sit down and watch a movie with; and some of us don't have local friends at all.
I know people who already watch whole movies, etc, in VRChat. This usecase already exists.
We have multiple TVs in our house. After the kids are asleep, my wife will watch her preferred shows on an iPad in bed (or second screen while working) despite there being a TV in the room. I can see people using the headset like this.
Even when the kids are awake, if granted screentime, more often than not they split off and watch/play completely different things. They'll usually only watch the same thing on the same screen if we insist, usually watching a documentary or telling them to watch the same movie together. Otherwise, their different tastes prevail.
> I know people who already watch whole movies, etc, in VRChat. This usecase already exists.
mmmmm
this line of reasoning is a bit worrying to me.
I'll use an hyperbole here, apologizes in advance, it's not specifically a counter argument, just a thought, but to me it's like saying "some people are alone, don't have friends, so they use heroin, I can totally see a usecase for manufacturing heroin"
Maybe we should try to fix the underlying problem, before trying to exploit it?
I totally agree with everything you've written, but I'd just put forth that I think what Apple did with Apple Watch could be instructive here.
Apple Watch was basically originally marketed as a high-end app/notification device (remember the original 10k gold Apple Watch?) Over time they realized the real target market and use case was as a fitness/health tracker, and they doubled down on features and design for that.
With these AR/VR headsets, I agree that gaming is the one use case I've actually seen these headsets be great at, but all these companies keep trying to extend it to our daily lives that nobody seems to really want. But I could believe Apple would eventually come around to seeing one or two really good target markets (gaming and watching movies maybe?) and then just really hone in on that. Folks say games will be a tough sell because Apple isn't really known as a gaming platform, but I don't think this is really true if you take iOS games into account. I can easily see game developers wanting to build for this given the hardware capabilities.
No one is going to buy a $3500 headset for their puzzle and idle games, so Apple's existing games market is not going to help them sell this device.
For Apple to break into the VR games space they'll have to woo both serious gamers and large game studios, both of which seem extremely unlikely given the huge cultural disconnect.
Good point imo. In the Serious Gamer contingent, you’re perceived as being basically wheelchair-bound if you try to play any major title PC game on a Mac, regardless of its basic capability of running said game.
It’s similar to how many coders will scoff at someone running Windows, pointing out Mac’s higher quality ergonomics, nix OS, and overall friendliness to common dev tools. In recent years the gulf has closed a lot with Microsoft making solid gestures toward dev-ex, but the perception remains.
That said, Apple’s resistance to reaching out into the Serious Gamer market has always confused me, but as a Not Serious Gamer it’s very likely that I don’t really understand the engineering difficulties that they’d face in making those inroads (other than the fact that Mac products are seemingly modification-immune, and the Serious Gamer contingent avoids that mindset like cholera).
I saw that but it doesn't help change my mind. A lot of fun PC games are made with Unity, but not the kind that really benefit from the immersion of VR [0]. Meanwhile, at the end of last year they merged with ironSource—a mobile ad platform—which suggests Unity continues to see their future as being focused on mobile and F2P.
It's possible that Apple will once again define the market, but choosing Unity is not good evidence they've correctly identified the VR games market that's already there.
I’m less concerned with the “VR Games as a market segment” and more concerned with the “all video games will eventually, essentially be AR/VR” concept.
Like you I’m less than convinced that Apple knows what they’re talking about/doing with Unity, but time will tell.
> For Apple to break into the VR games space they'll have to woo both serious gamers and large game studios, both of which seem extremely unlikely given the huge cultural disconnect.
I have no idea if Vision Pro will ultimately be successful, but I'd easily bet that game developers would be willing to come on board. Is there anyone that really disagrees that this is the most impressive piece of consumer VR tech to be released so far? Wouldn't game devs be chomping at the bit to put that technological power to use?
The current generation of VR has been around for a decade now and the large studios have been very anemic towards it so far.
And with Apple, that difficulty is compounded. The company’s greatest success with games has been the casual mobile market, mostly with indie devs and indie studios. Apple and AAA don’t really gel.
I worked at a games company that only made casual games and we had individual users who spent more that $3500 per month, admittedly not many, but more than one.
I'm not saying that casual gamers don't have the cash, I'm saying that casual games almost by definition won't benefit from an immersive experience. People aren't going to go out and spend $3500 to play Candy Crush in the air. Well, not enough to make this device take off.
But an Apple Watch is still a watch. Even though though first watch kind of sucked it still did what every other watch did and 90 percent of the time you just wore it and ignored it.
You can’t ignore this thing. If it isn’t offering utility 100 percent of the time you are using it you are going to take it off and set it aside.
> You can’t ignore this thing. If it isn’t offering utility 100 percent of the time you are using it you are going to take it off and set it aside.
Isn't one of its new innovative features the ability to turn the display transparent so you can still interact with the real world without having to take the whole thing off?
I can only imagine a sci-fi scene where regular people go to the supermarket with this strapped to their heads.
Plus no matter how good its response time is, I’m sure it is not completely seamless compared to your eyes — noise cancellation alone can make you lose contact with quite a big part of reality, let alone a whole filtered view. Even in the video it was mostly used stationarily.
Nobody really likes wearing ski goggles, especially for many hours. I can't begin to imagine how annoying it will be to wear something heavier. Hope it has some type of ventilation system!
Perhaps a HN opthamologist can chime in - what are the long term effects on vision likely to be from wearing/using a device like this for extended periods of time every day?
I've spent the last 35 odd years of my working life peering at screens, from teensy phosphor numbers to decent wide screens. I've had issues with OOS but never with my eyes.
I have never heeded any of the warnings about taking a break, refocusing every 20 minutes etc. My eyes are just fine, well as good as most other people my age.
My pick is there will be some recommendations with this, but they'll be hand wavey and you won't know if ignoring them will fry your eyes or have no effect whatsoever.
> Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos? Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
This was exactly my biggest question. In what situation do you sit and watch family photos of a vacation with your kids alone on your couch? In almost all cases, you're doing that with your family, or showing them to someone else. And if you've got a family (as many people in the ads did!) you're also watching movies together with them most of the time. Apple completely sidestepped talking about how other people might be able to share your experience. Even if this is amazing for actual work, and you're working in a physical office (as the guy in the ad did! as Apple requires all employees do a few days a week!), how will you show your coworker what you're working on? They also conspicuously focused on manufacturing, presentations, and conferencing as their office use cases, and not coding, despite repeatedly stating that small text looks very clear.
As for the "running inside and grabbing a headset" aspect, it felt like they were implying that people will wear this everywhere they go (which they similarly imply won't feel weird exactly due to the weird eye display thing), so you'll already be wearing the headset. But that feels like a very, very ambitious goal, that right now seems ridiculously unlikely/niche.
I mean, I have looked at old pictures of a vacation, but it's usually a pretty idle thing, often in response to some notification from Google photos or a facebook memory or something like that, it's definitely not something where I'm going to dedicate time to it or pull out a separate device.
As someone who lives alone in a tiny apartment I have watched a movie on my Quest 2, quite a few. It's better than watching a movie on my PC monitor that pulls double duty as a TV. Would I pay $3500 for that though? Absolutely not.
I'm curious how well gaming will work too. They didn't show off any sort of VR controller a la Quest or PS VR2.
I think they purposefully avoided showing a VR controller because they're making the claim that you don't need one at all for the use cases they were showing.
I think they're claiming that their hand and eye tracking are good enough that you don't need to be waving your arms around to navigate menus.
They did show people using a Playstation controller to play games so I assume there will eventually at least be a third party VR controller.
Yeah I get not showing it off for watching a movie or whatever if the hand/eye tracking work well but for VR gaming it's worrying. VR controllers need some sort of tracking and I'm unsure a 3rd party solution will be as seamless or well supported.
Because their gaming market would be tiny. Gaming on Mac is completely dead, and mobile gaming will take at least a lot of time to adapt to the hardware.
"Dead" is an unnecessary exaggeration. I'm a Mac gamer and my Steam library has more Mac games in it than I can possibly play all the way through. No Man's Sky was just released for Mac, and I'm looking forward to playing that too. I just played through Subnautica at the same time as my friend who was playing it on his Switch and he was blown away at how much better and smoother it was on my M1 MacBook. Also Parallels and Crossover open up the ability to play a lot of Windows games on a Mac. I'm still impressed with just how well that works for some games. I'm not a bleeding-edge everything-in-my-life-is-about-gaming gamer, sure, but I still think I'm a gamer. Yes, compared to the Windows gaming market, the Mac gaming market is small, but it's not dead.
Paid emulation, but not as slick of Steam's Proton (which one could get for no extra cost). Linux currently has better gaming support than Mac.
Gaming on Mac is not "completely dead", but it's basically getting leftovers. That's ok for many people, but it will negatively affect the fortunes of "Vision Pro".
No, but imagine getting DOOM in 1999 instead of 1993.
As I was saying, Mac gaming is basically leftovers. Which isn't terrible, but means the Vision Pro probably isn't very good for games (raw performance is fine, but devs won't build for it).
Some other things mentioned at WWDC besides Vision Pro: The new macOS is getting a "game mode" for better performance during gaming (even though it's already pretty good!) and they're making porting to mac easier too. Oh, and Hideo Kojima was one of the presenters and talked about bringing his stuff to mac. Apple is clearly starting to court gamedevs and gamers, and I'd be willing to bet that what we've seen so far is just a start. Apple doesn't usually half-ass things.
But it's not a mac and gaming is the current biggest application for VR. Apple could have gone on a spending spree and built up a family of games if they were interested.
I agree that it's undoubtedly a very impressive device.
I think the next generation of computing devices is going to be centered around the device understanding the environment around you, what you are looking at and doing. E.g. you are shopping, cooking, fixing something at home, running, playing basketball and the device understands what you are doing and gives you info and help about the activity. Democratizing access to a personal universal coaching for everyone, like the Internet did with access to information.
This device is kind of like a mac on your head, I think it doesn't differentiate itself enough from what is currently available. That's with the exception for entertainment: gaming and movies where I expect it will provide a much more immersive experience to what you can have at home with a traditional setup, like the other similar device do.
I do like the eye display on the front, I think Apple is making a correct bet that these devices can't cut you off from the outside world. In the long run they will be small enough not to cover the face at all.
I think it's probably another 5-10 years before the next big thing, but with the Apple silicon advancements and few year of lessons from this device Apple is the best position to dominate that space then.
In the video they show luxurious, spacious interiors. To my mind, the virtual space makes much more sense when your pysical space is cramped (plane, train, car, cubicle) but you need a large display, preferably in 3D.
3D footage and movies, which can be relatively easily downcast to 2D for flat screen consumption, may be another hit. Especially the footage you shoot yourself, pretty exclusive and likely more future-proof. Imagine an upcoming iPhone with a stereo camera (in landscape mode).
Also there are obvious traditional applications of AR / VR that become more useful with a retina-class display, such as medical, mechanical / repairs work, and, of course, military. I suspect the medical market can be pretty large, because serious medicine, like heart surgery, won't be strained by the price.
I think in practice AR is the bigger use, e.g. the Louvre lets you rent one of these (or maybe you've bought one and the Louvre gives you an app for it) and it shows you where to walk to go see the painting of the guy made of vegetables or whatever. Like an audio tour but visual and interactive.
I imagine one museum actually making it quality, while the rest would just straight up suck. Suckiness in AR/VR I imagine is way worse than a bad UI on your phone.
The mask is not transparent. It shows the real world around through cameras. It can as well show none of it, or imitate a hole in it that leads into an endless perspective.
I have not developed a VR/AR game, but I imagine there are several chicken-egg problems making this possible killer app hard to achieve. One is that VR/AR adoption (and usage) is not enough to justify large studios spending huge sums of money developing games that make extensive use of Vr/ar features, at best they’ll take a regular game and port it to VR. Another is that there aren’t very many workers who are experienced at developing VR/AR applications yet, and that the tooling isn’t mature enough (or standardized enough) for this to be easy. But without killer apps there won’t be enough VR/AR users to begin with.
Also the hardware is rapidly developing and creating super flashy applications requires high-specced SKUs that are only supported by a small number of devices in the wild.
Porting 2D desktop applications with a couple VR/AR gimmicks to VR is something that is well scoped and comparatively easy, it also is mostly re-usable because any “render a 2D UI in 3d” tech is going to work in most or all applications. So in terms of getting features and applications to encourage adoption, it has very high ROI.
Also, people probably aren’t just going to strap on a VR headset to look at vacation photos or YouTube videos if the only thing it offers is a super wide field of view and immersive audio. But they will for… other kinds of photos and videos that Apple can’t demo on stage
I got very similar thoughts... I think the most promising future of this tech are simulations of all kinds: let's virtually open a human body and study it, let's disassemble an engine to see how each part works, let's project how a city should be wise-designed to avoid transport issues, etc.
Even most of these things can be also appreciated using regular tech. Why should Apple succeed when most of other companies have not succeeded (Occulus, Hololens, HTC Vive)? Putting aside not so stunning technology, people actually didn't get engaged with the tech so much.
I had the opportunity to use a version of the Occulus some years ago and found them pretty impressive, but even though at the time I saw it like a cool gadget only to be enjoyed for a very limited amount of time.
> Why should Apple succeed when most of other companies have not succeeded (Occulus, Hololens, HTC Vive)?
Because it is Apple and has shown success (excellent execution) where others don't? How can Apple make chips that astonish incumbents such as Intel without having their own fab? How can they run a real OS in iPhone 1 where Linux existed for long?
Surely Apple can fail as other companies do but I they can estimate a market potential with real data.
> Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos? Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
Not saying that I like it, but a very large swath of people mindlessly scroll instagram for hours a day, or watch movies on their laptop.
Regarding the photo library, I can speak for my wife. We have a kindergartener and one of my wife's favorite activities is to watch pictures / videos of our kid in bed. She can do this for hours on end to entertain herself.
She also likes to watch movies on an iphone instead of a big screen cause she can use it while performing other tasks (cooking, cleaning etc). She has always said no to a larger form factor like a iPad but I think this might be a good use case for her.
My wife also watches content on phone and iPad. Usually in a room with a TV in it. Doubt she's intentionally watched something on a TV screen for weeks. I mostly watch on a second or third screen while working.
Our TVs are used by the kids, and even then they will happily take an iPad instead.
I’m continually amazed by how many people translate “this product in its current form isn’t for me” into “this product shouldn’t exist, even as a gen 1”
That's not how I read OP at all. Everything they said is in the first person. It's very clear that they're saying they see no purpose for themselves, and people are upvoting because they also see no purpose for themselves.
If Apple finds a market, more power to them, but HN commenters was never going to be that market.
To be honest, I was looking to hate on this, but they sold it much better than the others...
I can see value in it where before it was a gimmick.
And come to think of it, isn't this where Apple does best? Taking the components of an idea that others have failed with, and using them to create a new market category.
That thing will have to be as light as a feather though...
What weirded me out most though, was the feeling that all the presenters had run their demonstrations through chatGPT "in the style of Steve Jobs". Maybe the SMT have rebooted Jobs via an LLM!
What value do you see here that others haven't already tried selling? I haven't watch the keynote yet, but the landing page looks like all the same concepts Meta's been trying and failing to get people excited about for years now.
Possibly it's the confidence that there is "something" behind it. I. E. Apple software...
To get all nostalgic again... "And one more thing... the iPhone runs OSX * rapturous applause *". It's that same kind of thing.
When I think of Meta, I think Facebook and it's absolutely over. I see Zuck avatar, I see cringe. Same with other manufacturers. Not many have the depth to deliver short and long term. Especially if dropping serious money on it.
You have to hand it to Apple, the presentation is cliché, but they know how to sell.
I won't be getting one, but I can imagine these selling decently. Not iPhone scale, obviously, but enough to cement the market
I feel this is an overly negative take on what they shipped. It's a platform. The platform seems to solve a lot of the problems of AR/VR (feeling of isolation, control of leaking outside world, better integration with your digital life, truly enhanced media - media that's more mainstream).
For those of us who have no use/space for a TV in their home, this is a SMASHING replacement. Imagine if you watch TV nightly but do so alone, this could bring a whole new meaning to "watch parties".
For those who don't have a desk and want to be able to stand and work on a kitchen bar, this is a great substitute for an office. I would love to have an office but some times you just can't. The idea that I could use my mac side by side with iOS features that matter to me is huge. I'm slightly disappointed that it's limited to one display, but still pretty nice.
I feel like the argument here is the same as the iPhone when it came out - it replaces a lot of low cost items with not 100% coverage but enough to be a compelling buy such that you can rid yourself of those other things.
If they make one that can stream 2 screens from my laptop and can be a standalone device for certain useful situations, it's a good buy for me.
Ultimately you have to try it to buy it because unlike an iPad, it sits on your face.
Maybe they are showing off this because they want to make a difference.
If you show someone playing Beat Saber, you are inviting comparison to $500 headsets. And chances are, the $500 headset plays Beat Saber just as well, maybe even better. Apple doesn't want that, so they are going into a different direction.
I don't know how it will turn out, but Apple is usually pretty good at marketing, so I think they know what they are doing.
I see myself using it for virtual screens as a work environment. But with real keyboard and mouse. And not for this price. I'll wait. Also for first experiences about comfort, reliability, practicality.
I despise desks and chairs with screens, that's why using laptop with internal screen only most of the time - which is not ideal, not at all -, relocating based on my needs and mood. But could use lot more screen space.
The watching movie and have a chat with a helmet on while moving around in the hotel room scenarios are just .... well, sorry, couldn't find kinder word for it, just stupid. I feel the sweat of the marketing folks through, trying to find a usecase they feel is pompus enough, worthy for fanfares. It is repelling. Especially for 3500, they are out of their minds! : ) It is in the way, physically and seriously in the way for movies and chat.
I am hopeful for the virtual monitor scenario, where the comfort is less demanding than on leasure (even an incentive for taking a break). Of course its exact level is to be discovered, I mean relative the two, office use needs adequate level of comfort too.
> Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos?
There was a time that people said the same thing about digital photos -- people swore nothing would ever replace physical photo albums, and thought the idea of having to look at a screen to view your vacation photos was insane.
Now just imagine a few generations from now when Apple Vision is the size of a pair of regular eye glasses.
When do you believe that time was? Because that's not how I remember it.
I borrowed an Apple QuickTake from friends in the mid '90s, and bought an Olympus 1-megapixel camera not too long after. People definitely complained about the low quality. And some said they didn't want to have to go to a desktop computer to view their photos, which was very plausible given the size and slowness of desktop computers of the time.
And they turned out to be basically correct. Digital photography became wildly more popular with the rise of the smartphone and the tablet. Basically computers had to get much more human-friendly, fitting into the existing human world, so that you could use photos as you would with an album, handing them around, pointing at them, etc.
Which is part of what makes me skeptical about facehugger VR. Instead of putting technology in their living rooms, it requires people to cut themselves off from their surroundings and pretend to be somewhere else. It's the exact opposite of what made digital photography work for the masses.
Digital photography had already won by the time the iPad came out 13 years ago, the DSLR and Point and Shoots were everywhere, and Kodak was on the brink of bankruptcy. Smartphones as awesome cameras didn't really take off until 2010-2011 with the iPhone 4/4s, where it was competing with point and shoots.
Facehugger AR is potentially great for bringing remote people into your living room. AppleTV is getting FaceTime, (and Zoom/webex), SharePlay already exists to sync media across remote participants, etc.
Also 3d moment captures / replays could be a killer app.
Depends on how you look at it. Rummaging for stats, it looks like analog photos peaked at around 80 billion photos per year. Digital cameras were rapidly replacing that and increasing the number of photos taken somewhat. But current estimates are in the neighbor hood of 2 trillion photos per year. Digital photography won over film early in the smartphone era, but that was still just the beginning.
For sure, I get the point that photo taking exploded after 2011 or so. Just saying that growth in new product categories is non-linear, and often builds on the prior modest successes.
The VR headset business has been beset by boom/bust behavior (boom in 2016, led with the PSVR ; boom in 2020 led by the Meta Quest 2). It's seen as disappointing that it hasn't reached a sustainable mass market stable growth rate. But what's not broadly recognized is that it is still showing strong growth, just lumpy and subject to over inflated expectations. The Meta Quest 2 has sold 20 million units total, that's about half of the Sony PS5 and MORE than Microsoft sold of Xbox Series S|X consoles so far. it's also 400% higher than what we saw from the PSVR 's lifetime sales. now, global console (including VR) sales collapsed in late 2022 and layoffs followed, but... they're beating the Xbox, which is notable. Sony has now shipped the PSVR2 into a terrible market for game consoles and even they expect 1.5 million units to ship this year.
It's nothing compared to the iPhone, but nearly all products in history are nothing compared to the iPhone.
I would bet Apple can only make a small number of Vision Pros in 2024 (1-2 million?), and the price is more about the production limitations of this next generation of screen than the actual cost of goods. This stuff takes time. I would expect 2026 is when the mass market version is widely available.
It might take time. But we can't assume that. Like 3D movies or 3D TV, it might get pushed for a while on a wave of investor and corporate money before it goes back to being irrelevant. Sometimes a modest success is the harbinger of great success. Sometimes, as with the CueCat, it's the absolute peak.
The conversation doesn't have to be limited to only whether this device is perfect today, I'm not sure why you object to people discussing the concept and its future potential also.
I guess the question is whether this the Newton or the iPad. It might take another 5-10 years before actual uses cases get figured out and at that point it might be very different from what Apple is offering now or are envisioning for the next couple of generations.
I wasn't around when the Newton happened so I'm curious - do you know if there were people at the time (outside Apple) believing it would be the next big thing?
As a general late adopter, I see the thing similarly. Flashy tech, no doubt, and I'm sure it would entertain me a bit, especially as I tend to be asocial.
However, it seems like a thing that wants a part of the user's life for itself, rather than adding to the life of the user. For this reason, I'm not enthusiastic for it at all.
I share some of your skepticism, but I do indeed watch movies in my VR headset (while running on my elliptical trainer).
I use the Meta Quest Pro right now, so it's not plugged into anything, but I would not be averse to plugging it into some phone-sized battery unit in my pocket or clipped to my belt or something.
And I definitely, desperately, do also want to do my software engineering job in VR (with many large displays or floating windows) and not my laptop. But the question is, will those of us who see this future coming and are waiting impatiently for it want to do it with this headset?
The Meta Quest Pro is pretty amazing in its own right (and pretty expensive, although not Apple expensive) but it nevertheless just isn't there yet.
It reminds me of using Linux for desktop computing in 1999. You can see it will be great one day, but it's definitely not great yet.
I feel like Apple could maybe build that if they wanted to... but do they?
Imagine a world where visual, immersive tech is the default.
Look around your home. Realize how much money you have spent on cosmetics. Pictures, photographs, throw pillows, plants, paint, lighting, etc.
What if all of that could be replaced at the snap of a command? What if you could hang Christmas lights virtually in less than 10 seconds? What if a poor family who could not afford Christmas lights and decorations could now snap them into place in a second, for free?
Sure these goggles are not that mainstream yet. The battery life is too short. They are bulky and sweaty. But the tech will improve. What if wearing immersive goggles was no more difficult than wearing glasses? It might take a few decades but the tech will get there.
Sure but.. there’s just the fundamental “not real” element of digital “stuff”. It goes away when the $3500 headset comes off. And I’m not even a pure luddite about this shit, I enjoy getting a new sword in Diablo IV, but the notion that the average guy will buy VR Christmas deco for their AR home (which they don’t own) is hilarious/deluded in a special way
> What if a poor family who could not afford Christmas lights and decorations could now snap them into place in a second, for free?
Sure that would be neat, but wouldn't it be even more neat if "poor family who could not afford Christmas lights and decorations" didn't have to exist?
It's not like that's how it _has_ to be. It just _will_ be like that if we just continue building this deranged tech-dystopia where we sell the problem as the "solution" to itself.
Almost all the furniture in my house we got for free—and it's not bad furniture, either! We just benefit from people who spend enough on regularly replacing their furniture that a $3500 device looks like an improvement.
As for Christmas lights, they run $10/25ft. The cost on these goggles would have to come down a lot for a family that can't afford lights to be able to afford a pair of these for every family member (because you can't have the 4yo excluded from the Christmas lights).
> Realize how much money you have spent on cosmetics. Pictures, photographs, throw pillows, plants, paint, lighting, etc
Like a $100 bucks at most? That poor family will surely buy every member a used car’s worth of device. And no, I don’t see it a reality neither in 3-4 generations — it is fundamentally more expensive to produce than a TV/laptop/phone so if its price lowers, so does the rest.
It is not a must like a phone is, so why would they not buy a really good TV instead for a tiny fraction of the money?
What makes a phone a must? Why can’t a pair of AR goggles (eventually) replace a phone? What if iPhones go the way of laptops and stop selling as much because people prefer an all in one device on their face?
That’s the sell here. You no longer need a laptop and tv and phone and touchscreen in your car. All that can be replaced with this one device.
Except that you don’t have nearly as good an input method for it than a smartphone is. Also, can you honestly imagine people walking around with something like this on their head?
I have type 1 narcolepsy and the prospect of being able to work laying horizontal in bed while my muscles are 90% shut off from a sleep attack is worth at least $3k.
>Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch
I have never watched movies in VR, but in my previous smaller apartment I did watch quite a lot of Youtube with Quest2. I didn't have room for larger solution, phone is way too small and pad is hard to position. With VR headset you could lie in a coffin and still have huge screen.
I am also pretty sure I spent longer than 2 hour sessions in VR and sweat wasn't an issue, but I live in Fennoscandia, so I won't just sweat while sitting still.
>with their family/friends?
It has been a hot minute since I have actually watched a movie with anyone else
I don't think this is for 'us' yet - which is why its labelled Pro.
I think this is definitely going to be like the Watch - they can see the segment could do with a high quality platform, but they don't know what the killer app will be.
This is about getting it into the hands of the developers and people with strong ideas on how it can be used.
Also, Apple is rumoured to have been spending lots of energy and money on relationships with high quality game developers lately. I think this shows how seriously they are taking gaming, and area they are really not done well at.
Hopefully, they can make this an Apple Watch hardware-wise, and Apple TV content-wise.
I excited to see what the clever 3rd parties come up with!
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
Let's be real, most media content is being consumed on phones these days. In those cases? Yes, a headset is basically just a smartphone for your face.
But I agree about the demos in general focusing on stuff you can do already just fine in 2D. There was very little that looked like a useful application of a HUD. No 3D modeling work, no superimposing digital info over relevant real-world objects... just normal computer and smartphone tasks, but wearing a big sweaty heavy expensive face-screen.
Can it be straining the eyes, head, ears, and jaws?
Also, what are the negative mental effects of being lost in that world for 2+ hours? Staring at my phone, I still know what's beside me.. I can fall asleep with stuff still playing on my phone... but I can't imagine what sort of an experience it is to fall asleep with the headset still wrapped around your skull...lol
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
My mom does this because she's legally blind and the best assistive devices she can use for movies are AR goggles that do magnification/zoom. It's the only way she can make out a human face in a film.
I've worn them for parts of movies as well just to try them and it's really not so bad. The calculus here will obviously be different for people with normal vision, but I figured this experience with a similar use case was worth noting.
AR is so, so, so difficult and so much more than just good resolution. If they are trying to do passthrough camera then the framerate has to be super high while also delivering all that 4k video. The problems with opacity and occlusion of real and superimposed objects is almost impossible to make it truly immersive. I think their trick is likely going to be in the software and in the interaction modes. You can't strap this to your head and ride a bike with heads up display, this will be a seated experience with a controlled environment. And it may do that one job very, very well.
Meaning it's an indication that Apple are interested in games and that more partners will come. This is not the last game-oriented move; anyone with any sense in the market is currently staying up late to think how to leverage this. The people who buy this are the customers you want.
> Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos?
I would, yes.
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
Yes, absolutely. We have a very small 2 bed, 1 bath place and only 1 TV that's in the central area. If I want to watch a movie while my wife is involved in her studies or work, I'm limited to my iPad or my iPhone.
With this, I can lay there and chill.
We have no kids, and we don't have friends over for movies.
I'm also very susceptible to outside distractions. This would allow me to focus a whole lot more.
> And the one thing I could maybe see this being useful for – gaming – was barely even mentioned in their keynote.
Perhaps Apple doesn't want it to be brushed off already as another Oculus or gaming toy?
> a half-assed substitute for consuming the same content
I don't think this is a half assed substitute at all. There's literally nothing else like this.
> Show me the actual future, in terms of software/content/communication/immersiveness, then we'll talk.
They just showed you. You weren't listening. You focused on gaming. Again, that's probably why they didn't.
The anatomy app demo alone would be reason enough for me to buy one. I am frequently in medical related classes and often refer to my anatomy guides on my iPad.
I always wanted something like this. I lived in small apartments where I cannot have large screens. I always thought having a good VR / AR headset will unlock a huge screen which I don't have access to otherwise.
Of course, it's anyone's speculation and numbers will give us answers in future.
I see very similar parallel to headphones imo - why would anyone wear a device instead of listening to amazing speakers. I feel the same for vision.
>but I just can't see myself in any of the situations they keep showing in VR/AR demos.
We said the same thing about fingering our way through endless content on a handheld slab of glass we now call smartphones. Innovation doesn't happen without some thinking outside of the box; most of them will be flops, but you'll never succeed if you never even try.
>Would I want to be in a group call with generated avatars of people rather than their actual faces?
Speaking as a gamer who reminisces the good old days of MMORPGs, I don't care for peoples' mugs. Speaking as a Japanese, the insistence on seeing peoples' mugs everywhere seems distinctly like a western thing that I can't really relate to. Besides, I see them all the time in person (or the rare video call) anyway.
>Would I rather work on this all day instead of a laptop?
If it turns out the work flows better there, you'll probably say yes. Won't know until we try, though.
>And the one thing I could maybe see this being useful for – gaming – was barely even mentioned in their keynote.
Apple has given negatives damns to games since time immemorial. iOS being a great mobile gaming platform is an outlier, not the norm.
Oculus already lets you watch Netflix and stuff, visually it’s a pretty decent experience, but like … 42” TVs are $300 or something. you’re not gonna fall asleep on the couch with your headset on, or at least you certainly don’t want to.
I think it’s a beautiful and fascinating piece of tech, I doubt I’ll be an early purchaser, but I’d sure like one. It does feel like they are grasping at straws for mainstream use cases.
I wonder what you'd have to say when someone built the first laptop? It's large, slow, sluggish and not powerful enough as my desktop PC?
The device is an engineering marvel and this is the first time that an AR device that's bringing mass appeal. The demo with Disney looked sick, watching the replay of a sporting event in that table top 3-d view would be awesome!
the 3D camera should be a separate device. Don't need a head mounted monster for it.
I am actually surprised that with prevalance of all the big powerful smartphones with cameras being a flagship feature, we haven't seen 3D cameras (two 2D cameras separated by the inter ocular distance, mounted on the back of a phone) become common yet.
I think if the hardware is good and even more importantly developer tools are easy to use and better than competition this could be successful. It doesn't really matter what Apple shows in their demo what the use cases are. Does anyone share heart-beats on Apple watch? No. Yet, Apple Watch is a best selling product.
> Would I rather work on this all day instead of a laptop?
Generally right there with you, but this is the one that I think ... maybe? I don't see laptops as an unbeatable experience, and I see work as probably the only thing in my life that might benefit from an "infinite digital canvas".
At least one use case I could think of is work on the go. I work from home but I can work from anywhere in my country. But I really do not like working on a small laptop screen, and wish my two 27” displays were with me. If this thing provides at least reasonable substitute- I am game.
This is good for gamers actually not for the obvious one (hand tracking ) but actually the ability to immediately change the isolation. The biggest problem I have with doing stuff in VR is that I multitask in certain games and if you make it so I can switch to something else momentarily then that’s a big win. I agree with you though that why they haven’t been much more aggressive with gaming at wwdc unless at launch or nearer they wanted to announce then but that would be ridiculous since gamers preorder everything and announcing a game would push more gamers to that.
The "I'm dropping at $3,500" should take into consideration that Hololens 2 has a higher price tag [1] but nobody talks about their product, and price ;-) Microsoft seems invisible where Apple doesn't. I also assume with high estimation confidence that Apple has a deep market knowledge to launch this product.
I thought the hardware was a bit underwhelming considering Apple has an ultra-powerful chip that no one else has with amazing battery life...and they can only squeeze in 2 hours and there is a big cable running down/side of the headset. Maybe it's nicer in person. More impressive to me would be a really well-done pair of actual glasses that are "smart glasses" like the ThinkReality. This to me just doesn't solve any of the major problems with VR/AR (this is not really AR.)
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
I actually tried watching a downloaded Netflix movie on my quest while on a cross country flight once and it was surprisingly not terrible.
Also I managed to get away with not ending up on some viral twitter post despite probably looking ridiculous.
That said if it wasn’t so bulky I’d probably bring it on more flights but it’s such a pain to lug around I haven’t really done it since.
> Same as running inside to grab the camcorder, no?
I agree with this, plenty of us are old enough to remember our parents lugging a huge video camera around at family events. If the videos are compellingly better, this is a use case.
I watch tv shows often and movies occasionally on my Quest 2. Often the TV shows aren't in 4K anyway so I'm not losing any resolution. The main reason I do it is the perfect darkness you get with the headset on. Shows like Silo are too dark to watch during the day in my southern california apartment. I know I could get blackout curtains or whatever but the Quest is actually cheaper and easier.
I definitely watched Netflix on the Oculus go which was a crappy screen and a overheating headset, and yet it was amazing. The only thing that prevented me from finishing was the battery. I also joined a cinema experience and there were other people sitting next to me in the room. Man you really have to try it to understand how dope it is
> Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos?
If your photos are:
1. 3D movies
2. viewed in a collaborative setting instead of trying to show your stupid phone to everyone at the table, one at a time
> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged into a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends?
I can see myself getting two of these when they’re less expensive and never going to a movie theater again.
Agreed. VR/AR headsets are amazing for gaming, and I imagine could be pretty useful for 3d modelling type applications too. But after the novelty wore off for me I couldn't imagine using it over just a regular screen for basically anything else.
> (and no, that weird eye display thing doesn't count)
That weird eye display thing is the only novel thing here, as far as I can tell? I actually thought that was pretty neat. (Not 3.5k suddenly-I'm-interested-in-VR neat, but still.)
We’re still really early in the AR/VR space. Hardware is bulky and expensive but that’ll change over time. Eventually we’ll have lightweight, high-fidelity, reasonably-priced hardware and AR/VR usage will be common
Historically, I think it dates back to Jobs not liking them, Apple doesn't really care about games. It begrudgingly accepts them on the platform as second rate citizens since there's a lot of money involved.
I wonder if they think you either have to be the top dog (PC? PS5?) or you're better off getting the casual gamers (iOS) and not distracting the core business? It's a massive, successful company. I don't think they begrudgingly accept it, or extrapolate from the personal preference of a past boss. The past boss taught them that style and status sells and they've continued with that because it's successful, not just because it was his thing.
I would totally rather work on this all day instead of being hunched over a laptop. The freedom of posture, and the expansiveness of the desktop real estate blow laptop productivity out of the water in my opinion.
I wouldn't mind having a huge monitor that I can use anywhere, set up just how I like it. Other than that, you are spot on. Also the camera presents a privacy issue. It has to be always on I suppose.
They're just advertising the tech and the platform. Probably so people could come up with some real use cases and apps for it... otherwise what's the point of introducing it a year earlier.
I totally want to get this thing! This is awesome! Ha ha ha! :) I don't know if I'd like it, but I certainly want to try it. Looks fucking great! Ha ha ha :)
Sure, the announcement is full of cliches and more than a little cringeworthy. But I'm not aware of any device that provides this level of quality and immersion for things like 2D and 3D movies, games, or simply the amount of screen real estate for anything 2D people already use. The genius move with this strategy is that it is mostly about leveling up 2D and existing content and software. With some sprinkling of 3D content.
And probably this device is not fast enough for full immersive 3D gaming to begin with. You'd need that new Mac Studio in a backpack mounted on your back with probably a few kilos of battery dangling behind it and some cooling for you and all that hardware. Not going to happen. Some light gaming is probably fine. But it would be a mistake to aim this at gamers.
If this works as advertised, this could basically replace most of my devices. Why have a laptop when I can just project whatever in my field of view, grab a wireless keyboard and go to work. Not that different from what magic leap promised to deliver years ago. Only issue with that is of course that they never really delivered that. Apple seems a bit further with their R&D.
Probably the first generation will have some significant limitations and a certain level of being just a bit uncomfortable. That head band doesn't look fun without AC, for example. And of course motion sickness might be a thing. Not to mention headaches and other potential side-effects of prolonged exposure to this. And probably showing up in public with this is not a great idea in terms of getting robbed, beaten up, etc. Also, the whole interacting with family is seriously cringe-worthy to look at. This looks to me like a solo experience that has not much capability for sharing it with others.
On the other hand, I think they just presented a big money making machine with an amazing walled garden that is pretty much guaranteed to bring countless users if if gets even close to delivering what is on display here.
I think 3.5K$ is pretty OK as a price point. I don't have that kind of disposable income necessarily. But lots of people undeniably do. And this does have a certain level of wow that unlocks that kind of budget for those with this kind of money. I bet lots of people are itching to throw money at this thing on the off chance it is much than half as good as this announcement suggests.
I'm just hoping that this kicks the competition into gear. This looks like it is a lot nicer to have than some of the other stuff out there. The flip side is of course that it's all locked behind the towering walls of Apple's walled garden. This just screams for a more open answer. Meta looks like it just got its lunch eaten pretty thoroughly. Mark Zuckerberg going on about having meetings in VR just isn't quite going to be good enough. I'd love to see what MS comes up with. They've been working on holo lens for years and been holding off on putting it in the hands of consumers. This might prompt them to kick a few things into gear. A pro-sumer focused version of that maybe with some XBox and Steam action on the side could tempt a few people.
And of course all of this stuff is going to be cat nip for the adult entertainment industry. Forget games. I don't think I need to spell that out for this audience. I'm curious to see how Apple is going to contain that.
> Meta looks like it just got its lunch eaten pretty thoroughly
I don't see how you can come to that conclusion. Meta's offerings looks far better in my view. Unless, I'm missing something here, Meta's Quest Pro appears to provide basically 95% of the experience for $2,500 less, while providing great controllers for gaming. All in a form factor which IMO is better (no wired hip battery).
You're seriously overestimating the experience of the Quest Pro. Have a read of Nilay Patel's experience with the Vision Pro: it doesn't even come close.
the wired hip battery is far better than the weight of the headset on your neck.
On the contrary, they might expand Meta's market by giving "legitimacy" to AR/VR headsets. Not everyone will want to buy a $3500 Apple headset, but might try out a cheaper Meta Quest.
While everyone might benefit from it, as many have from tablets or smart watches, the Meta play to be the first of owning groundbreaking hardware has failed.
Meta has consistently tried to drive the price of their headsets down compared to the competition. They weren't looking to build the expensive high end groundbreaking hardware, they are looking to make cheap ubiquitous AR/VR so that people can access the "metaverse" which is the real platform and product that meta wants to control.
So no, meta's play was never "groundbreaking hardware", it was making the hardware better while keeping the price accessible to normal people. Apple hasn't even entered the competition there.
Probably. But I don’t think many were expecting Meta to dominate this space because it was always obvious that they don’t have a multi-device ecosystem like Apple does.
Or it could be the public really isn't interested in VR/AR.
I get we're no longer allowed to be critical of the tech now that Apple has directly entered the market, but some tech never takes off despite repeated attempts and I'm convinced this is one such situation.
Doesn't seem that way to me. I'm generally not opposed to jumping on the latest and greatest toy from Cupertino the second it comes out. And I'm a big fan of VR: I own two headsets now, but I was waiting for this announcement before deciding whether or not to buy a Quest 3.
I've decided to buy a Quest 3.
I could elaborate on why, but to each their own. I just don't see this thing fitting any use case for me. I know people who like to watch videos in VR. I hate it. I'm aware that accessing your computer screen through "virtual desktops" is a moderately popular application. Can't stand it. I have never used FaceTime, and certainly wouldn't have anybody with another one of these to call.
We live in a world where forum comments have to be either "this is stupid and anyone who likes it is stupid" or "this is the greatest thing ever and anyone who doesn't like it is stupid". I'm not saying either of those things. I'm saying this is not for me, and furthermore, now that I know that, it has unlocked the purchase of a competing product.
I'm sure there are people who do see their use cases in this product, and also can afford it or its non-pro successor. But my take on it is that the real market will continue to be in games, not putting on a helmet so you can virtually type on a computer.
I don't think Meta is worried with the price tag of Vision Pro. Meta will be happy to be the Android of AR/VR. The Quest 3 will probably out sell this by over 10x.
Seems outlandish ... a $3500 product can't obsolete a $299 one. It doesn't look like Apple has any intention of attacking the low end here.
I'd almost say that Apple is doing Meta a favour because they are doing a much better job at making the case for devices like the Quest Pro and Quest 3 than Meta seems to be able to do. A lot of people will turn to these when they find they want in on the hype but they can't afford the Apple version.
I see it more as tackling the core product they're trying to deliver. Meta is trying to deliver "Virtual Reality." Apple is delivering "Augmented Reality." Meta will be able to pivot quite well, but Apple's execution here has disrupted 10 years of vision and development furthered towards creating a virtual reality rather than augmenting it
meta has consistently been releasing affordable products only. They've been on a mission to drive the price of VR down to widen potential audience, because for them the VR metaworld is the actual platform they want to own and sell.
Apple showed a headset that does what most headsets do, but better, with a lot of nonsense features ("it shows your eyes!") and a stable of mobile ios apps for launch, at a price thats unreachable to most buyers.
People buy quests for their kids, they aren't going to be doing that with apple vision anytime soon.
So its actually not that apple disrupted 10 years of vision at all. Apple's vision is totally different from metas, and meta continues. You have an imaginary view of what meta is trying to accomplish because meta isn't interested in $3500 unicorn headsets.
If meta could figure out $100 headsets that gave a decent experience theyd be doing that. This apple vision isn't related to meta's vision at all, and hasn't disrupted it. Meta wants to run the metaworld to control what you see. If they could get there without VR headsets they'd do that first.
I guess they had to call it a "spatial computer" in an attempt to overcome the shock that they want $3,500 for a VR headset when the competition is selling their newest generation for $500.
I guess they had to call it a "spatial computer" in an
attempt to overcome the shock that they want $3,500 for
a VR headset
With "computer" I think they're trying to emphasize the fact that it's standalone, not an add-on?
That may seem silly, but I have not paid much attention to VR/AR and I had assumed that headsets like the Meta Quest 2 were tethered to some other device. A quick search before this post showed me that is not the case, but I was actually ignorant about that fact. So apparently there are dopes like me who need to be told that these flagship headsets are standalone computing devices.
Honestly, it really doesn't seem different at all.
AR is also where other notable headset makers are betting, Quest has had hand controls for quite a while (which made the "clunky controllers" dig fall flat).
It definitely seems more refined, but then again, it's over 2x the cost of the competition, so that would have to be taken as read.
There is really no comparison between the Apple device and what Meta announced, the devices are quite different.
Even when Apple showed games, it was less full AR games or like VR experiences in AR, it was about putting a screen up and playing a standard game like this.
The Apple experience is full VR and using every space as a screen to access the things you already do. Meta is insisting on building the 'metaverse' it's a completely different concept that people making this argument seem to have completely missed.
And I say that as someone that uses a Q1 everyday for Fitness and will be purchasing a Q3, you saw Apple announce nothing like this, also I think the name is a give away 'vision pro' it's about visuals and virtual screens, not about creating another reality, which is likely why they moved away from the reality pro name that was rumoured.
It was all 2.5D apps and watching movies - this is the exact stuff that has already been tried. It's a really polished presentation of it with the shadow casting and stuff, but is that really the missing piece? Seems unlikely.
Fully 3D apps and content are definitely supported, just not emphasized a ton in the keynote. I expect third party devs to create tons of cool stuff for it beyond the basic 2D iPad apps!
What are they doing that can't be done with other VR headsets? Virtual desktop has been a thing for years, and VR pass-through and "pointing interfaces" are possible with the Meta Quest. While these features may be better on Apple's headset, they certainly aren't new.
I'm sorry, but have you tried the Quest Pro's pass-through?
I have, and it was an awful experience. They had color pass through but faked it and it felt like a grayscale video that someone shoddily tried to paint over it. There was significant warping and text (like a poster on my friend's wall) was barely readable.
It "exists", but was completely useless in terms of usability. If Apple can get pass-through to actually work well, I would call that "new" in the sense that it's a feature that's usable.
The cheapest android sells for $50, vs iPhone that starts at $900, yet it takes weeks to get an iPhone on launch. What's the point here.
The thing has its own more than capable chip, knowing Apple has seamless integrations and will absolutely start a new trend. Can't wait for Google's and Samsung's substandard implementation soon, like what they did with the watch.
It should have DisplayPort out so you can use it as a computer too. (There's probably some garbage patent already for using a VR computer as a computer, mercy patents are just such trash.)
Long ago in the Avatar (2009) movie there was a scene when a guy was walking with a tablet-like device displaying some info, then grabbed that info with some kind of hand gesture and threw that info on a wall-mounted screen.
This AR demo was the first thing I ever saw that did something comparable by taking the app off mac and opening it in VR. Now, I don't really want an AR glasses, but I absolutely want to grab things from my smartphone and display it on any nearby screen, and not in (clunky) Chromecast / Airplay way, but seamlessly.
Up until to the point they announced the price, apple was doing nice on the street but seems like $3,499 for a brand new platform is a bit too much risk than market was anticipating. Almost 60 billion $s went from the market cap (maybe not much for a giant in Apple's scale but still interesting).
Honestly I think they’ll sell a ton to businesses and wealthy people looking to get into the new tech. The high price should raise the stock value if anything.
Apple could announce a cure for cancer for which they are the only owners of the patent and for which every world health organization has committed to 40 years of purchases and their stock price would still go down. The best time to buy Apple stock is almost always right after a product announcement.
Meta has a social network, but they don't really have an electronic ecosystem connecting them. Mac has a social network (anyone with an iPhone arguable) and an operating system. This might give them the edge needed in integration to do well.
Additionally, apple fan boys will pay a few grand for a high end device. So the whole "glasshole" issue from Google will be less of a thing. It's easier to see where they are coming from here is what I'm saying.
I think the nay sayers sure have reasonable nays to say, but I can see how it'll be popular to Apple's core "creative pro with pro level pocket change." Growing beyond that is definitely anyones guess and needs a "VisionLite"
The Mac private social networking was on mad display this WWDC.
IMessaging has really upped the game on what a group chat is, mainly via emoji creation tools that will really add personality & flavor & build repetoir over time; touching stuff to me. Other nice to haves like builtin ___location reporting in the chat & ability to drop emojis positionally on posted graphics are also very good social capabilities.
The communication technologies on display at WWDC impressed me a lot a lot a lot. There's a huge list of ways people will have markedly better everyday experiences, with each other & solo.
Even though it's made well, it's annoying that Apple is investing for their own communication platform. It's completely useless for communicating non-Apple device user. Platform closed communication tool is nonsense IMO.
Augmented reality is a much harder problem than virtual reality.
Have they defeated cybersickness?
Possibly, in part due to only 12ms latency from outside camera to display. The neurological visual latency is about 100ms, but there are many drivers to cybersickness[1].
fovea-centric resolution: improve not the whole screen, but the area seen by the retina's fovea, which has much higher resolution (and attention). I can see how the R2 processor schedule could prioritize what you're actually looking at relative to the rest of the UI.
Is it weird? The device projects the eyes and face out to others, so they can "interact" with you. It's telling that the ad places the user not in a business context, but making toast for kids, and interacting with a surprise soccer ball.
Notwithstanding the "everyday" appeal of 3D games for play and minority-report displays for work, there are many, many specialty applications where this could be huge and $3,500 would be nothing.
I wonder what their manufacturing runway is. It could take time to start selling millions of these units, but small lots can be really, really hard to justify.
12ms puts it at about 90hz latency. I play games on a 144hz screen, and I can tell the difference between 90 and 144 hz, and that's on a bad screen at an arms length from my face that's definitely not trying to convince me I'm looking at reality.
It'll probably be in the same ballpark as a good transparency mode on headphones -- close to indistinguishable in small bursts, but long term causes alienation/lack of presence.
This really blows whatever it was that Zuck and Meta were doing out of the water and into outer space! This is light-years more game-changing than the metaverse and old VR. Only drawback is the price, but I'm sure a non-pro will be released at a cheaper price point.
I was thinking the same thing. I know the price points are way different between what Apple's putting forward and what Meta was shipping, but Apple's vision and tech here blows Meta's out of the water. Meta seemed to be approaching the problem with an iterative approach, where the payoff in vision was down the road, and wanted consumers to share the journey to get there - whereas Apple jumped all the way to the end.
No tech specs available on https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/ and no release date "early next year". Both are unusual for apple. I wonder why they didn't hold off to announce it when actually ready.
What do you mean "no tech specs" are "unusual for apple"? That's like their ethos. It has an M2, 2x "over 4k" display panels, and 2 hour battery life. Has Apple ever announced the amount of RAM in an iPhone?
> I wonder why they didn't hold off to announce it when actually ready.
Apple has always pre-announced new product categories. No worries about Osborne-ing their own sales, time for developers to build before launch day, etc.
Oculus sold a lot of users but most of them were used 0 or 1 times.
This product will need to be actually useful to take off, the early adopters need to rave about it to their friends. Presumably that's why Apple is targeting such a high price point at first, I'm sure they could remove half the cameras and use a worse CPU and end up with a device that sort of works, but first impressions matter.
This has iPhone 1 feel. Killer hardware, killer idea, giant price tag, and no killer app. They were really stretching with the heart and the skyview app.
Eventually they'll get the killer app and it'll take off.
just a point on my comment yesterday on Metas trailer[0]. I wrote:
> I think [Meta] missed the mark with that trailer.
They promote it like it’s a skateboard: cool tricks, fast paced, hip and happy. I don’t think that’s why you want a VR headset at all, it’s actually the opposite: immersion, sinking into a another world, it’s concious dreaming. The D&D pitch could be perfect. I’d love to play a VR/AR d&d game. But in the video, the first thing he does is take off the headset and smile? It makes no sense. He should be totally enraptured, not happy to take it off.
Compare this to Apples trailer. The guy sits down, with the headset on and a bowl of popcorn, enlarges the screen, ready to delve in. Sitting in an airplane, but just have it all meld away. A guy playing ball with his kid, while wearing the headset.
I can't afford it at all but Apple made me want the product just for a bit.
Your comment about the Meta commercial is exactly what I was thinking after watching it yesterday. The last shot is the guy taking the headset off and smiling. And the first thing I thought was: "Is he happy to be getting it off his head? Because it looks like he's fucking relieved it's over."
I love the idea of VR but the fast paced, cool games world is NOT for me. I dislike most modern 3d gaming in general. I'm much more interested in either passive viewing experiences, desktop computing augmentation, and creative applications. TiltBrush is still the most amazing thing I think I've come across in VR. TiltBrush in an AR envrionment, surrounded by multiple displays of other conent, work apps, dragging and dropping my 3D work into 2D powerpoint, etc...
There is so much more potential than the hyperactive-chic-gaming metaverse world that the Quest and Meta is pushing.
I'm really surprised that Apple chose to work on this. Think about the track record of companies of similar products (in no particular order):
- Google Glass -- tried and failed
- Facebook's 'meta' -- slashed development
- Metas space glasses -- now defunct, idk if they even even shipped
- Magic leap -- did they end up shipping?
- Microsoft surface -- looks like it was rolled out to 'enterprise' but does anyone actually use it?
- Numerous headsets on the market causing nausea, eye strain, head aches, and social ridicule (lmao)
Many big companies tried to do this but didn't really get past the gimmick stage. So yeah, it seems like a massive risk that Apple took or is taking to do this. Hopefully they've done enough to push the concept past these usability hurdles. I mean: as a tech guy this would be awesome if it delivers.
Shadows help ground images (e.g. characters in games seem to float without contact shadows). Seems simple, but requires a 3D model of the room to work properly. LiDAR
Lag between reality and virtual would be noticable side-by-side, no matter how much the "R1" chip reduces lag (12ms)... Ah! they might do the Guitar Hero trick, and delay the reality feed by the same amount, so they are exactly syncronized... see-through AR (like google glasses) can't delay reality.
The outward display of reverse faux-transparency is a nice touch, displaying a fuzzy image of the wearer's eye on the front. (Though not sure what to make of the back-side of the displayed image - could a user ever see it?)
I think this is the first major Apple developmemt without Jobs' involvement?
I think a big limitation with VR headsets in general, is that if you have a morning facial routine (moisturiser, sunscreen etc.), it smears all of the headset. In fact, it's probably the primary reason why I stopped using my Quest 2.
It's like, I used to use it religiously, and then the moment I started a facial routine I stopped using it immediately.
From someone who ignored the iphone because I didn't think it was going to be a big deal and hopefully learned a lesson.
OTOH, 12 milliseconds in the AR mode doesn't sound fast to me. I'm not in this space as other than a past oculus owner, but that is 8 frames of latency at 60hz. I thought that the best devices were much less these days.
I have been trying a lot of these helmets/glasses for work the past years. I didn't expect Apple to go for something that still needs so much work, but more is more. The Quest 2 is my favourite for meetings, some gaming, movie watching etc, but for work, I just use the nreal air. It really did become the replacement for my laptop the past 6 months. There isn't a lot of software for it, but I don't take my laptop anymore for coding. I do see when these things all fall in place, monitors, tvs etc could just fall away. Phones seems not very real now, but it depends on how fast the developments go.
I had expected Apple to wait 5 or so years more with this until it's a market they can really take on; currently this is quite bold imho.
But it's good; huge corps going in means hopefully someone will solve the battery usage of these things; even in this presentation, there was a battery connected. That's why I like the nreal; for all it's faults (mostly; just open source the thing so people can dig in!), it is very light and has the battery life of my phone, which is 15 hours. So I can wear it all days, there is no irritation or fatigue, and when I take it off, it has a lot of time left.
It takes a lot of time for people to warm up to a new device type. Probably makes sense to get a premium version out to make people yearn for it and build an ecosystem, and then create a more palatable version for mainstream use.
Yeah, 3,500$ for a device that offers ... what killer app exactly? That I can see floating screens? That I can use a bluetooth keyboard while working on those screens?
Newsflash: I am looking at screens right now. I am using a keyboard right now. And I can do that for much longer than 2 hours, and don't have to wear a ski mask to do so. And my coworkers can see my eyes. And I can sip coffee and eat my breakfast easily. And the entire setup I am using for this, plus the luxurious chair I am sitting on, plus the aforementioned coffee and breakfast, cost less than that. Actually, I'm pretty sure the desk would still fit into the budget.
- 3d camera built-in to the device is huge, photo and video got so big online because smartphones meant we all had cameras on us and they made sharing those media easier, we may finally see stereo photo and video content go beyond adult content if consumers can record stereo video with this device they already have and upload to YouTube, Tiktok, etc
- Microgestures as input like two finger pinch and flicking up the hand are really wise. Gorilla arms syndrome sucks and means most people prefer to sit there and play Call of Duty rather than jump around and play Beat Saber or Wii Bowling.
- FOV seems to be full field of view, unlike Hololens and Magic Leap
”No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.” - Slashdot's famous 2001 dismissal of ipod.
Apple has a history of high prices, and a history of making it work by pioneering forms and user interface paradigms . The desktop GUI everyone now knows as "computers." Laptops. Click wheel ipods, and their multi-device paradigm. All-screen smartphones.
There's no guarantee of success, but VR is exactly the kind of problem where Apple has a legacy of releasing breakthrough products.
Going with apple's history... and 2000 skeptical comments... it all comes down to content. I'm also skeptical about using a heads up display for 2D stuff... like watching regular movies or using a virtual, 2D monitor. That said who knows.
There are things that I would like to see. VR films could be amazing. Design software could be amazing. Simulators.
Regardless of what content, all content faces user base issues. Can't make a $100m Star Wars film for a <1m person audience.
The $3500 price tag might restrict the number of users, and make profitable content difficult. OTOH, pushing for the best device possible might make new kinds of content work.
Maybe. But the iPod was also not 10x the price of the Nomad. The iPod also had essentially the same feature set. Here the Vision Pro is undoubtedly better in ways like the screen but also seems to be lacking support for VR controllers. Right now VR gaming is pretty much the main reason VR exists. Perhaps Apple will change that but something like Beat Saber is a pretty great demo for VR. And without VR controllers more complicated titles like RE8 VR are not going to offer the same experience as other platforms like PS VR2.
Maybe Apple’s strategy relies on EU’s sideloading law… to make porn both persona non-grata and available in VR. They can deny it’s here, and blame it all on EU, and let parents decide whether they give the “PUK” code to their teenager, and that’s a winning trio.
It's hard not to be impressed by it. From a design standpoint, it feels magnitudes more human and thoughtful than everything else. It will help open the world of "spatial computing" to the everyday consumer (who has the money), not restricting it to the VR people who have already grown used to the limitations of current headsets and may not see how cool this handset-free, see-through-ish device is. The fact that existing apps already work on it is amazing, and who knows what new apps this will inspire. I'm excited.
The biggest downside is that it looks like you can only use a single display from your Mac. If I could run 3+ screens from my mac, this would become a no-brainer.
I am expecting a lot of apps to be able to cast a window directly to visionOS devices by the time this thing actually launches or possibly a way to split out spaces into their own screens by the time this launches.
The Simula One (https://simulavr.com) has been targeting similar productivity use cases for a while. I've been following it from a distance; I have to wear reading glasses for computer work now, and I would love to be able to focus on a virtual screen 2 meters or so away for coding etc. Whether I could stand wearing the headset all day is another question.
The Simula folks think that there's a lower limit of about 30 pixels per degree for something to be useful as a low-eye-fatigue virtual desktop. Their device meets that threshold but really nothing else currently on the market does. I haven't seen PPD info for the Apple device yet but I am interested to see where it falls.
The Simula is at a pretty similar price point ($2700 for the preorder, but it's not shipping yet and has a way to go before it's a reality).
The price is even higher than people expected at $3.5k! The passthrough of the wearers eyes with a front facing display is pretty interesting, especially with the 3D lenticular display giving every viewer the correct perspective.
I hadn't seen that in the rumors leading up to the launch, its good to see apple still can keep some secrets.
For the FaceTime calling to make sense, you have to be the only one actually using this product. If everyone in the call is wearing this, you're basically talking with avatars..
I'm cautiously optimistic here. I have a very specific idea that the Vision Pro might make real. There's a great urban park nearby and I so want to just...walk while I work. Not on a treadmill and not 'to get away from my work'. Just: walk on a safe road / trail and do my computer work at the same time.
I've been exploring the consumer AR space --- I have a Viture One and have been eyeing the Xreal Air, but neither seems to solve the problem of "keep the virtual screen stable while I walk through real space".
If the Vision Pro can do that for several hours at a time, my interest in getting one will skyrocket.
(The whole 'how do you type while walking' issue is a separate problem, but one I feel is far more solvable than the virtual screen stability issue).
Very good point - I guess they are trying to redefine the terminology in this category and create unique marketing keywords. I suspect that is too late, VR Goggles just seems to ingrained but perhaps I'm wrong.
IMO what makes Apple different and more likely to succeed than Meta is that they are pursuing more concrete scenarios like viewing content in a more immersive environment or spinning up a large viewing surface where you may have none .
Meta's problem is this focus around social interactions which just isn't taking hold apart from a niche audience of enthusiasts. Having tried the Quest Pro, if Meta pursued the remote office collaboration scenario more vigorously which is really quite promising and multiple desktop monitor replacement they would do a lot better
The obvious drawback with the Apple device is price and it's going to have challenges with traction. The enterprise would be a good place to start but that doesn't seem to be Apple's forte
Exactly ! The social stuff requires a network effect... hilarious that the makers of Facebook bet their chips on the same bet as their existing products. Apple knows it doesn't need groups of people to use this together, just enough early adopters to help pay for (and more importantly help guide) the user research and material advancement.
1. The avatar and face scanning for video chat
2. Screen quality, pixels shouldn’t be viewable.
Meta could copy both with time but the 2nd just requires more expensive hardware. I never liked the meta avatars and it looks like the apple ones could work with any chat app?
It's a much better version of the Oculus Quest, basically. The reason why AirPods took off is because they were immediately, 100% useful in your day to day life. The same with Apple Watch (notifications, fitness). What is the day 1, must have use for this?
I really wonder how much that "creepy eyes" tech adds to the cost. It would be great if they had a model without that, because for my use case its completely unnecessary and probably adds ~$500 to the price tag, plus additional weight and battery usage.
This made me think that they may have put everything into v1 so they can really learn what is necessary for a successful experience – ie v2 may come with a cheaper version without the external display because they discover that the display isn't necessary for the experiences that prove most successful on the platform.
Related: In the full video demo they showed use of the external 3d camera - What appears to be a dad interacting with his kids while wearing the headset and capturing a moment using the 3D camera. Later he watches the 3D video he captured, reliving that moment.
They could just call this feature the "Noncustodial Parent" feature, because absolutely no one is going to wear Apple Ski Goggles TM while interacting with their children, unless they are extremely desperate to draw out a few special moments into a year's worth of memories.
Not a single AR functionality was demoed; all that was shown was a 2D overlay on top of real-world view. No 3D computer vision segmenting objects on the screen, no placing 3D objects on real objects etc. It felt less capable than Hololens a few years back.
Extra stunning because iOS already has some quite fine AR capabilities. This was such a freakish ommission.
At my most charitable, maybe they didn't want to take the risk. They don't know what they would do with those capabilities. AR isn't their thing, as a platform provider. They need developers to go build stuff. By not showing anything, they emphasize what they control, and they show only things they have power over.
In short, the omission keeps the narrative from getting out ahead of the horse.
Yes. The other standout was no shared space AR. Meta is big into this with shared anchors.
They specifically spell out how they don't want it to be isolating, but every shot of someone using it to do things like watch movies or sports they are entirely by themselves in the experience. It feels like something went seriously wrong with some piece of this and they yanked a large segment of the AR stuff out. I don't believe they didn't try. I wonder what the story is.
I could see this being revolutionary for in-computer music production, because currently that space is heavily modal and arcane to use with a mouse and tons of deeply buried UIs.
Imagine organizing digital instruments spatially in your office and composing music with a spatial feel similar to using a hardware setup. Then you can flip between various setups. For example you might bring up the mixing environment when you're ready to mix, which fills your office with a mixing board, amps, compressors and whatnot instead of synths and drum machines.
Could make digital modular synthesis a lot of fun, too, as you could move digital wires around in physical space.
Seems obvious there will eventually be a Vision Air that cuts some of the premium fit & finish and drops the price. They wouldn't have launched it with the "Pro" moniker unless they were planning to drop it later.
It'll be very interesting what they'll cut though, I have a feeling that any future version will be very similar. There's not much they can cut without making it feel cheep and comparable to a cheeper meta product
Quest pro: 1800 x 1920 pixels per eye, so ~3.5Mpx per eye
Vision pro: "The custom micro‑OLED display system features 23 million pixels"
So 11.5Mpix per eye, assuming similar aspect ratio (1:1) resolution ~3400x3400
Probably there is more then resolution to this, but still, seems impressive
I use Meta Quest 2 on an average around an hour a day - workouts, Netflix, Youtube etc. I am really excited but Vision Pro, but $3500 is a bit too high for me.
I am now eagerly waiting for what Meta Quest 3 has in store for us. I'll just upgrade to that for now and will wait for Vision Pro cost to come down.
This device will revolutionize movie making. Given that this is cheaper than most 3D rigs used today, 3D movies just became way easier to make. With the ability to record 3D videos and then play them back, you can expect a whole new breed of consumer made 3D videos to hit the market.
Also, no one else is saying it, but this will revolutionize the pornography industry, for all the reasons above. It'll be super easy for OF creators to make custom 3D videos for big bucks for example.
Is anyone able to watch Apple marketing without cringing or feeling uncomfortable? Part of it is the actors' exaggerated enthusiasm and practising what they've learnt at some bullshit, TED-style, influential speaking bootcamp. But it also makes me feel defensive. Like when a religious nutjob or cult leader tries to tell me the "good news" or something. I get the very same feeling as I have done on the few occasions I've attended church.
Well said, I’m not convinced I’m going to get value out of it, but I can totally see real use cases here. Better than “you’re going to socialize” from meta.
My two warm takes, as a non-gamer and “never VR” guy who wears glasses and is old enough that I need new prescriptions every year and I don’t see trying to keep up with yet more annual prescription lens purchases:
In 5+ years will it be glasses and we can dump the iPhone? That'd be good (I realize it’ll surely take longer). I might pay $2K for that but I like taking my glasses off and sitting in front of my big 4K TV without anything on my face. So take that use case away unless I’m on a plane.
Mark Zuckerberg must realize how unserious his efforts have been. He probably can't ever do anything this ambitious, coordinated, and platform integration dependent. Even with his Brewsters Billions.
It’s about as refined and impressive and futuristic as I could’ve expected a v1 product to be, but while I enjoy gawking at it I don’t really want to take one home.
No one’s going to say, “Where’d you leave the vision pro’s?” It’ll be goggles or mask or something else. Not well named. Except they won’t be shareable (with lenses in), because they’ll be too personal, like a hat.
I maxed out the new Mac Pro on the Apple Store site and it came to $10K even. With full memory. That’s really blowing my mind.
> No one’s going to say, “Where’d you leave the vision pro’s?” It’ll be goggles or mask or something else. Not well named. Except they won’t be shareable (with lenses in), because they’ll be too personal, like a hat.
I could see Vision sticking as a name in colloquial use. Vision Pro is a signal there is room for a lower price headset in the future. No one ever called their iPad an "iPad Pro" in colloquial use. This name is least as good as Quest.
Fair. Probably. We’ll grow into it. Vision feels slightly too generic and off product. Kinda like how they spell it “Apple silicon” and not “Apple Silicon”.
This really is technology wrapped up in an experience that feels magical. I'm decently familiar with the state of the HMD industry and I reckon they're a solid 5 to 7 years ahead of Meta in terms of processing power and display tech, not to mention all the ancillary details you have to get right to deliver a convincing AR experience like lens adjustment (they demonstrated a crazy 2D motor controlled carriage for centering the screens, no doubt automatically driven by the eye tracker without user intervention)
I guess the only real bummer is the high price -- all those optical components can't be cheap at this scale -- and the short battery life which really can't be solved without either a serious breakthrough in power efficiency (which apple is on the frontier of), battery density (likely same) or sacrificing visual fidelity (not in Apple's ethos). I don't mind the external battery pack, actually; hopefully it results in a well balanced headset.
I wonder if they're going to do in-person demos at the Apple store. I might have to go check it out.
I worked at Apple during most of the golden Steve Jobs era. Back in the day, Apple was a fraction of its size, but Apple almost singlehandedly set the agenda for the computer industry. It's fascinating and sad to see Apple now chasing after industry trends, and at the same time being too big and heavy to pivot after the AR/VR/XR winds changed.
I can believe Apple Vision Pro will actually sell due to the novelty factor, and then Apple will get quiet about it. It'll take a few years it to find a niche, just like what happened with Apple Watch. shrug
With iPod and iPhone, Steve clearly loved music and hated the MP3 players and feature phones of the day. With Apple Watch, Jony was into luxury watches and fashion, and Tim is a fitness buff. Does anyone at Apple actually love VR goggles? Why the hell are they doing this, besides flexing their "only Apple can" muscles and, more probably, because the bean counters running Apple predict it will be a $B market?
As a friend put it: Apple has become a parody of itself.
1977 Apple ][ Introductory price US$1,298 (equivalent to $6,270 in 2022)
I think folks are missing the point that this is the first Pro version. Likely targeted at developers and early adopters. I’m sure there will be an Air/Lite/etc version that cost reduces overtime.
It’s effectively a nonstarter. $3499 USD prices this way beyond the grasp of everyone but a small minority of enthusiasts and professionals.
And considering Apple isn’t really known for dropping product prices as the years go by, all this really does is tell us that the tech just isn’t ready for mass production yet.
I’m considering this, like Google Glass, to be a neat proof-of-concept.
Compared to what you are (potentially) getting for the price it's not that high - especially when viewed as a work tool or business expense. You can easily pay more for tech it could replace, like monitors, headphones, speakers, lower-end laptops and desktops even.
The only drawback I can see is the 2h battery and potential fatigue from wearing something on your head, near the eyes for longer periods of time. Maybe that'll be a non-issue? Will have to wait and see.
Presumably, they would go the SE route where the Pro model retains highest performance and price while the SE model inherits the tech from past generations.
$3499 USD prices this way beyond the grasp of everyone but a small minority of enthusiasts and professionals.
In a world of $1000 cellphones, $2000 computers and $40k cars, I wouldn't be so sure. I suspect if the prices do stay this high, it'll get priced on a monthly like how many people pay for their phones or cars.
I’ll go out on a limb and say it will be far more popular than people think. I’m ready to preorder one (although perhaps I fall into the enthusiast & early adopter category).
This can’t be compared to other headsets out there, and is rather in an entirely different product category.
I will probably wait for version 2 in about 2 years, but I am fairly certain I will buy one.
I get a huge amount of value from my Quest 2, so spending money on a new toy is not unreasonable.
I worked in the field of VR about 25 years ago (SAIC, Angel Studios, Disney project). VR and AR as consumer tech will eventually be AWESOME, but I am not holding my breath - it will be a long wait.
It’s highly custom, and clearly engineered not to compromise on the vision they have for it.
Early adopters will foot the bill for the R&D required to create the non-“Pro” version of this, hence the price. But there’s always going to be a Pro version of this, that pushes what “no compromise” looks like, as there is for the rest of their products.
Two hours of battery life is a joke. They did not mention FoV, which seems to be the biggest limitation on other headsets.
The technology looks nice: foveated rendering, eye tracking controls and geature recognition. The image quality could be amazing and the battery life is still bad enough that it will be v2 or v3 before it is worth looking at.
The battery has to be comfortable wear, so I'm hoping it's closer to 40Wh/10Ah than the airline maximum 100Wh/27Ah bricks the laptop class is used to.
Two hours seems fine to me, if the battery is indeed reasonable size. Knowing Apple though they're going to spit in the EU face & require Apple MFi Usb-c certified batteries or some shit, cause that's the shitty shit Apple does.
I hope this actually turns out to be a win. The idea, in my mind, being that comfort is a priority & swapping batteries should be low effort.
I didn't see real info on the battery (no surprise), but I'm hoping it's like a 40Wh/10Ah pocketable little thing that isnt very noticeable.
It'll be interesting to see how the fate of the IBattery goes. Will it charge fast? I hope so. Will it be easy to pocket? Will price be reasonable enough for people to pack a few? Hope so.
Apple didn't talk about it but they shipped a presumably usb-c battery this WWDC. That's interesting for sure.
Ooof, the price point on this is killer ($3500). Will need to have some major differentiating features to justify that pricing compared to a Quest 3.
I know they are fundamentally different (Quest having roots in VR but also enabling passthrough AR and Vision Pro focusing on AR ala Microsoft HoloLens) but hard to chew on that price!
another product to add to the apple walled garden, you will have to go through the vision store for everything, and they will capture their share from all the transactions happening inside it. It's incredible how apple can be so innovative and nobody can fight such prevalence. Will be a handset with the same features, but that you can connect to an open operating system someday? i would like to think that it will happen someday.
I feel this is the point where they have to heavily rely on the developers and possibly give out devices to developers to experiment like they did with the Apple TV.
It’s a huge risk for an indie dev to buy and bet on, it will be really interesting to see how they approach this.
IMO what makes Apple different and more likely to succeed than Meta is that they are pursuing more concrete scenarios like viewing content in a more immersive environment or spinning up a large viewing surface where you may have none .
Meta's problem is this focus around social interactions which just isn't taking hold apart from a niche audience of enthusiasts. Having tried the Quest Pro, if Meta pursued the remote office collaboration scenario more vigorously which is really quite promising and multiple desktop monitor replacement they would do a lot better
The obvious drawback with the Apple device is price and it's going to have challenges with traction. The enterprise would be a good place to start but that doesn't seem to be Apple's forte
No matter what they try, Meta can't really implement a vision of an enterprise collaboration OS because they don't make a widely adopted desktop OS.
More generally, the whole "productivity computer" market will also have to convince thrifty companies that they should spend thousands of dollars per employee on a headset for remote work when they already spent thousands per employee on a laptop that has a webcam.
Nobody's going to be able to demonstrate ROI on these devices for making employees more productive. Buying your employees two or three $150 monitors has the same effect.
This is why Apple's strategy of marketing directly to the consumer can work. It forced companies to support the iPhone on corporate networks, because everyone wanted an iPhone. It didn't matter that all these companies were Microsoft shops with Blackberry phones.
Apple's still not going to get far with this thing until they can bring the price down to three digits.
Because of the "Pro" branding, I'm really interested in how soon we can expect a baseline non-pro Apple Vision. Determining what specs/features they're going to cut will be interesting.
Also, with the release of visionOS, Apple is now maintaining a pretty hefty load of systems: macOS, iPadOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and now visionOS. I have no doubt that beneath the UX they share a LOT of common building blocks, however I wonder if Apple will try to consolidate one or more of those platforms. E.g. macOS and iPadOS could be merged into a hybrid, watchOS is basically turning into iOS on a small screen, and visionOS may have some very interesting common ground with macOS -- possibly a continuity-screen style interop in the future.
Why weren't the CEO and the presenters were wearing it, if its so easy and natural to switch between immersive and real world?
I am not impressed so far. Yeah you have better display, but its not something a trend setter AR/VR headset would have looked like.
Yeah, with them touting watching movies and only having "up to 2 hours" of battery, that's going to severely limit the movies you can watch. "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once", which they showed someone watching, is 2.2hrs.
One use case I'm psyched about for this - shared virtual whiteboarding for remote workers. No traditional apps have been able to reproduce the feeling of being in the room with a small group, collaborating on a shared whiteboard, feels like a huge opportunity!
I feel collaboration is the 'killer app' for this tech - though it won't achieve that.
Now, how big is that market?? I don't think it's all that big. yet.
Generative AI is making an impact on that world too - perhaps there will be a change in generative AI's presence in creation / media creation, which will require AR / VR.
I think THIS product will be sold as a PC / Monitor replacement, and in 5 years the collaboration killer app will be the "novel" usage.
Agreed. Huge opportunity. Computing always has been about information spaces, and making those implicit informatics explicit & visible is highly interesting.
Apple notably didn't show a single collaborative capability, to my eye, the entire time. Everyone was inside their own pocket space. They went extra far to let people videoconferencing as normal while wearing it, preserving the current norms for shared connectivity.
They'd have to do a lot better than anything I've experienced. There are loads of these whiteboarding apps, including a first party one from Meta and they all suck when you try it.
If you carefully look though you'll see they don't demo shared anything. No people playing games together, watching movies together, literally anything. There's something missing here in the story, I don't know why they would have left that out. I wonder if you really can't do it.
$3500 is perceived as expensive, but a MacBook Pro can easily exceed that.
Both have an M2, and while a MacBook has a display, more RAM, larger SSD, ... it's still a bunch of standard-ish components, while Vision Pro has a ton of really innovative never-seen-before hardware.
Apple presentations have kind of started to give me the creeps. They're speaking is so soothing and the production so polished, it's just kind of off-putting, like an AI generated video telling you "everything's gonna be alright."
I'm not exactly sure what the "aha moment" is for this compared to the iPhone launch. Don't get me wrong, it looks incredibly exciting and I love new shiny tech but the demo videos felt incredibly lonely and I can't really picture myself using this on a daily basis for hours. I have a Quest 2 that gets used once, perhaps twice a month for VR Chat or to entertain family/friends with Beatsaber. Once you played enough VR, you kind of get over it.
It's like the iPad for me. When I want to get serious work done, I use a MacBook. For quick stuff, the iPhone is sufficient. The iPad then ends up being an entertainment device.
The iPhone's "aha" seemed to come from making existing workflows so much easier with touch gestures (e.g. scrolling through texts and contacts). It addressed and improved upon a pain point that we all knew from using cellphones.
> Once you played enough VR, you kind of get over it.
This, very much. It's one thing to invent in a new device category, it's another to turn it into a habit. The iPhone targeted existing habits, such as checking emails and watching videos, that made it very sticky. I'm not sure if Apple Vision has a sticky application, especially with the obstacle of (1) wearing a headset (2) plugging the battery chord (3) enduring the weight.
The demonstrated software doesn't look too compelling (mostly floating 2D app windows), but I could see this becoming the ultimate learning/training tool. Interactive, step-by-step guides/instruction on how to do literally anything would be incredibly useful (play an instrument, vehicle maintenance, cooking, etc.)
If the hardware is sufficiently good, eventually the software will come, which is probably why this initially targeting the pro market. I'm skeptical the current frameworks make it easy enough to build quality AR apps, but hopefully the difficulty will go down eventually (maybe with the help of AI).
This headset is without a doubt an order of magnitude above things like the Meta Quest Pro, but even with that increase in power, UI, hardware, etc - I'm not sure they have really figured out the "why" for it quite yet.
The biggest tell is the fact that the battery pack is going to give you only two hours of use. Part of the appeal of a headset being AR instead of VR is that I can use it while out and about to add context and value to what I am seeing. The battery is a major limitation that will keep its use squarely at home or in the office, where it essentially is just another monitor (or set of monitors).
Perhaps, but my sense is you can hot swap the battery while using the device, instantly getting back to 100% charge. Inelegant, but solves the battery problem.
There’s a lot of impressive technology in the device but I’m not convinced that it’s going to be as popular as the iPhone. Even the Watch has a smaller market than the iPhone—I think this one is even smaller than the Watch.
Perhaps if they made a lighter version that people could take outdoors and quickly take photos/videos with for sharing in social media (i.e. something to compete with Snap’s Spectacles), then it’d be easier to see more popular adoption. They wouldn’t really be innovating, though, and I’m not even excited by the idea of being surrounded by people who wear such glasses whenever I am outdoors.
Even once this is released, it's going to take a while for the OS and applications to find their groove. So rich people will essentially be paying to beta test this.
Probably going to be unequivocally awesome 3 years from now though.
Can anyone help to orient in the current VR/AR/XR programming landscape in a light of this announcement?
My goal is just to learn programming in VR/AR for myself. Assuming this is gonna be a leading XR platform in the coming years, does it make sense to focus exclusively on learning ARKit/RealityKit? Or there are some "true cross-platform XR" stacks are being actively developed?
I vaguely remember some initiatives from Kronos group, but have no idea how this landscape currently looks like. Would really appreciate some elif5 brief into current state of XR programming.
No controllers mean that people will get bored of this very quick. It's already tiring using a headset even if you can just let your arms flop. Also very out of date strap design that has the device resting on your face instead of using a builders hat type of harness system. Massively disappointing
I used up all of my interest in VR with the Oculus Quest. It's cool for a month to watch Netflix on your ceiling on a giant screen, until you get tired of the poor quality video. The same goes with having 5 monitors surrounding you. This is stuff we were all doing pre-covid. So the ideas aren't really new.
The real deciding factor is implementation. Oculus / Meta Quest remains on the cusp of "having potential, but not being there yet" for the past X years. What will this actually be like when you try it yourself? That's to be determined.
They shouldn't have revealed the price today, it would have afforded them more time to build hype around features and in-person demos (and to give themselves a chance to reduce the price before release).
The high price tag is interesting from a strategy perspective. It feels like they wanted to start super high to really test the market and give themselves an out if it doesn't succeed for a long time.
Each year that they keep the price high, it can be used as an excuse for the lack of uptake, should it not succeed. If they ever exit the space, they can always announce that it was too difficult to make it work at lower price points, instead of "people just weren't interested in an AR headset".
> It feels like they wanted to start super high to really test the market
Reminds me of how Steve Jobs announced a price reduction by $200 in two months after the release of the first iPhone. Apple can likewise reduce the price of Apple Vision, but save face this time by releasing a non-Pro version.
> If they ever exit the space
I'm not sure if Apple would exit the space that easily. While markets for auxiliary products like homepods were easier to exit, Apple announced Apple Vision announced with too much fanfare to exit quickly.
Apple will probably commit to Apple Vision for a while, just like the Apple Watch. While the first Apple Watch did not take off massively, Apple persisted by pivoting it from a luxury item to a more practical device for fitness and Apple Pay.
I always figured Apple would target Glass before going into full AR. I mean, the "smartwatch for your face" accessory for your phone seems more up their alley, something lightweight and fashionable that just sends you notifications and turn-by-turn directions and stuff like that.
Going instead for this huge bulky thing is really surprising, since it's so far outside their normal wheelhouse. It seems like the real things it would bring to the table would be gaming and 3D viewing/modeling applications, which were barely considered in the demo.
Is this the first really big thing to come out under Tim Cook? I guess the homepod and apple watch also came out under him? Still those feel like relatively minor things that were never going to revolutionize the world. The way they're trying to sell this they really think it will. There's no avoiding the Jobs comparisons.
My guess is this is just too expensive for people to actually use in any large numbers, but maybe there will be cheaper versions down the line.
I'm skeptical. But if I put my inner skeptic in the corner, what I'm most excited about is how it will affect ergonomics.
Most input happens in a (typically horizontal) plane, but the human body is better modeled in polar coordinates. It's called "tech neck" because we've attached a screen to the input plane and then end up hunching while we look at it. Decoupling the two, if we can pull it off, will help a lot of people.
That's going to depend pretty heavily on what you're doing with that computer on your face.
Ergo problems typically come up when you're assuming the same posture for long periods. If there are no other constraints to lock you in (e.g. desk and monitor), then I expect there will be much more moving around (perhaps even explicitly encouraged by the OS).
Whether this offsets the weight-on-head thing... time will tell. Whatever the problems will be, they'll be different problems.
Awesome trailer, but the Meta Quest 3 can do the same things, with somewhat worse hardware but that's acceptable considering its 7x cheaper.
The biggest improvements over it are the higher resolution, the spatial audio and using a PS5/xbox controller to play regular apple arcade games. They are heavily leaning into the "use it as a large monitor aspect" which is something Meta Quest sucks at because of poor resolution.
I am curious about the recording functionality of this product.
This tech demo from a few years ago [1](https://store.steampowered.com/app/771310/Welcome_to_Light_F...) and a more recent one[2] were one of the most jaw-dropping experience I had in VR. It's basically VR photo and VR video; you can actually move you head as if you were here.
If they can manage to compute similar light field with their camera and depth sensor (and perhaps a sprinkle of NeRF ? [3]) within a reasonable time, they could have an effortless killer app.
visionOS UI unsurprisingly still feels very tethered to a stationary AR model (i.e. mostly on couch / at table use cases). Of course hard to tell without trying it, but even if this had full day battery and wasn't a glowing please rob me sign, wearing this while navigating some outdoor spatial environment with the current OS seems like a great way to break an ankle. Maybe they have some gesture or accelerometer-based trigger to do the equivalent of Mission Control's "desktop" to minimize everything except for the camera pass-through so a person can safely walk around their house.
Seems like if it is eventually going to become outdoor-friendly OS, it would need to minimally be multi-mode for stationary vs. moving user, where when moving there's more minimal overlay (maybe like Anon [1] hopefully minus the dystopian hellscape).
3D camera + spatial audio is probably most interesting near term thing for me in this version, will be interesting to see how people use that to record and share immersive experiences.
I think wearing such a massive thing on your head is a dead end. It may become a niche product for professionals (as the price and "Pro" in the name suggest), but it's not practical for everyday casual use.
Is it still out of the reach from the current state of art in technology for a thin client, not much heaver than sunglasses - just the visual component and some simple circuit to receive the signal from an iPhone?
Regardless of how well this product does, the presentation and vision from Apple was phenomenal. It was like watching a cinematic AAA movie, so exciting and inspiring. There has been no other company that has been able to present AR and VR in such a way that is so exciting.
The augmented reality shifting to virtual with the dial is so genius. I feel like a kid, and that's rare to feel these days. Love it, dream on Apple!
Vision Pro implies a non-pro version could be possible. Cheaper and less funcionality. Either way its an interesting new product and knowing apple they wont ditch it after a couple of years. At this price its just going to be the pro users and richer people that buy it, but hopefully its going to spawn competitors from Samsung and the Chinese companies, at a much lower price but with less functionality.
Apple is incredible at a lot of things and no doubt this is impressive. Apple's entire lineup is the best version of things people already have and use. A computer, a laptop, a screen, a phone, a watch, headphones, speakers. The tablet was new but made sense as a replacement for books/newspaper/laptop.
I have been in the vr space since the dk1 and used a bunch of headsets in both consumer and professional settings. It is magical if not a bit gimmicky...in short bursts. It can do wondrous things like give you a sense of scale or transport you to another environment.
But it's not an extension for or replacement of the real world.
The use case is gaming, media consumption on mass transit, and niche professional use cases (eg how to do heart surgery, or fix an engine, or ___location scout a movie) where 3d visualization adds meaningful context to the process.
It's not billions of people. Or rather if it is, then we are all plugged into ready player one and I think that would be a sad outcome for our species.
Maybe we are already headed that way with the amount of screen time everyone is putting in these days. Time to log off and go for a run.
"Reliving the memories closest to your heart -- that you apparently recorded with this thing over your face."
Seriously though: if this takes off I can see specially designed video capture devices/cameras for recording events like weddings (and other significant life events) meant for consumption on an Apple Vision Pro (and captured in higher quality than the cameras and lenses in the Apple Vision Pro).
There is not one mention in the Apple Press Release of any of the terms associated with the product's market:
virtual
augmented
reality
Etc
It's a Spatial Computer don't you know.
Very arrogant but clever marketing I guess.
Anyway, as somebody who would normally by default scoff at the Apple tax, I'm pleased to see them taking the tech seriously, it definitely needs to advance to fulfill the non-gaming promise pointed to by Meta/Oculus.
Perhaps the huge price is justified by the significant specs here.
Why should Apple use existing technology words to describe their new product? They are trying to create a “new” product category and come up with their own vernacular for this segment.
I can just see the patent trolls salivating over this new opportunity. At least now Apple can use each of these lawsuits to promote their product with their own terminology (ads via news articles, Apple Marketing 101).
They are trying to create a “new” product category
But they haven't. Its a VR/AR headset; just relatively powerful and expensive; absolutely no need for the new terminology technologically; its pure marketing.
For all the tech inside a device you can wear on your head it is quite impressive even for the $3499 price tag.
I will hold off judgement until I can actually use one. While it certainly has some goofiness and kinda dystopian vibes in some of the demos shown it also has some very interesting use cases that could be something almost everyone uses day to day like the TV or computer.
Well they showed it being used as a display with macOS but I don't know if you can isolate an individual macOS app window and use it as such within the Vision Pro interface.
New hardware advancements often prompt us to anticipate corresponding strides in accessibility research.
> Navigate visionOS simply by looking at apps, buttons, and text fields. App icons and buttons subtly come to life when you look at them.
I will defer to experts for a more in-depth discussion on accessibility, but this feature does raise a concern for me.
I have a condition that causes my eyes to rapidly move back and forth. My visual processing compensates. I see like normal, but my eyes do not stay still for long even when looking in one spot.
Initially, I assumed that this condition would prove problematic for VR use, but I've found that I can see quite clearly inside current VR headsets, although I've never tried anything that has eye-tracking. The prism component of my prescription does reduce the area of optimal focus. In addition, certain degenerative and congenital conditions cause individuals to rely very heavily on peripheral vision if central vision is impaired.
If visionOS can tailor its visuals to the user's specific visual abilities, it could provide a profoundly useful tool for these users.
Apple seems to have a good track record for considering this kind of stuff. On the "Learn more about visionOS" section of the site they state this:
> Like every Apple product, Vision Pro was designed with accessibility in mind. The flexible input system lets you use your eyes, hands, and voice individually or in any combination with features like Dwell, Voice, and Pointer Control.
Neat. I won't buy one any time soon, but it looks cool and knowing Apple, they will iterate like hell on this platform over the years and hopefully the price will eventually come down to a more reasonable point like $2k-2.5k.
In 3-5 years down the line, though, this will really start to take off. The Vision Pro 2 or Vision Pro 3 will be a game changer.
This seems like incredible hardware from apple, but I'm really hoping for root access to be more prevalent in the mixed-reality space. I really don't want to see another ios and android walled garden with so much creative potential on these devices, especially considering Meta seems to be taking the android position in the space.
3500? Holly Applemolly. That is expensive as shit considering the VR is not new tech. Ofc, someone is going to smash at me with "well this is Apple ok." Cool story. Looks like a fun little gadget but is way too pricey for the consumer line. Unless ofc, they will have a beat down version without the "pro" features.
This seems very promising by being based on already existing experiences (support for iPhone and iPad Apps). Considering all the other features the price of 3499$ doesn't seem to crazy, especially because it can replace all of your monitors, TV and more while also enabling entirely new experiences for basically the same price.
This is the "pro" verison, maybe eventually Apple will sell less powerful non-pro version that can connect with the pro one, but at a much lower price, then you can create experience for the whole familiar, if the set of 4 can cost <$6000, then it will be the same as a 8K tv + sound bar + a couple of work monitors.
Other companies have been developing VR along with gamers and whatnot for a long while now, especially with the explosion that Vive/VRChat enabled, etc.
As per usual Apple hops on the bandwagon late, doesn't contribute much to any new tech/software developments, creates a locked down platform with a stupid special name "spatial" "retina" etc.
The VR desktop already exists. There's an entire ecosystem already, and like other ecosystems certain things don't exist or aren't used at the moment because there's no good reason to, or they lack finesse. People don't use virtual desktops because it's annoying to wear a VR headset and interaction with virtual objects isn't as fine-tuned.
We're not waiting for Apple for this, we're waiting for an extremely lightweight, comfortable pair of glasses for VR and some gloves or other interaction device that makes it natural and easy and then we'll see the virtual desktop come to light.
Apple has solved none of these problems. But omg it has an Apple logo on it.
"a revolutionary spatial computer" absolute BS, nothing revolutionary about it.
"“Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing." BS, VR/AR has been around for a long time now, with many offerings that Apple's doesn't really differ from.
Tbh I give up. Their entire press release if full of the regular Apple crap "innovative" "most advanced" "best materials" bla bla bla, I can't believe people eat this stuff up. I'm not even working in the VR/AR space & it irks me, can't imagine how people who've been hard at work progressing a tech only to have charlatan Apple step in must feel.
And omg, their demo is a "gallery app"...and for their AR/VR showcase, with their "spatial computing" "visionOS" their galley example is a FLAT, 2D APP!
No virtual object photo album, no virtual folder/box of photos that you can reach into. No holding a virtual polaroid "in your hand" as you move it back and forth to look at it and then place it on a surface where it stays and is remember that it's there for your next session.
No being able to decorate your virtual/AR space by placing an art frame up onto the wall and having it stay there.
No demo of 3d (multiple angles reconstruct 3d scene)/360* footage being played "around" the viewer.
No demo of any proper virtual objects at all, hell nothing in 3d or anything with any real depth beyond 2d planes in the whole thing.
This product feels like Tim Cook trying to a will a product into market to leave a lasting impact and legacy. My gut reaction is it will have the opposite effect. I have a lot of respect for Tim Cook for being the CEO after Steve and keeping the company moving forward and operating smoothly. This feels like hubris.
This is the "pro" verison, maybe eventually Apple will sell non-pro version that can connect with the pro one, but at a much lower price, then you can create experience for the whole familiar, if the set of 4 can cost <$6000, then it will be the same as a 8K tv + sound bar + a couple of work monitors.
Why is it called Vision Pro instead of just Vision? I predict they will release a lower end version for average consumers so that it can couple with it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_skimming
Who else noticed that none of the presenters were actually wearing the device they were unveiling?
Best case scenario is they didn’t want to monkey around awkwardly with fit and adjustment. But even in that case, wasn’t the whole thing pre-recorded anyways?
My hunch (combined with the 2024 release date) is that this thing isn’t fully baked yet.
Incredibly impressive technology with a price that is simply unreachable to almost everyone.
Maybe if Apple can bring the price down in a few years we'll see widespread adoption, but until then I don't see how this is anything but a toy for the wealthy. Maybe it will have some commercial/industry adoption.
While I don't think this has yet shown 'the killer app' that will make everybody want VR; I do think that this has a killer feature that will revolutionize the segment.
Facial expression matching on your avatar.
The ability to make an avatar of yourself is kinda cool, but match the eye-tracking and other internal cameras you now have a way to have your avatar facial expression match your real-life expression. And THAT is what flattens the uncanny valley.
Regardless of a 2D 'Teams/Zoom' meeting or a special 3D Facetime, you will (A) always be looking directly at the camera, and (B) your facial expressions will convey all the hidden subtext that missing in communication done via voice-only.
This is a WIN over having a webcam pointed at your (messy) room too.
I am not an Apple fan. I do hope that this can inspire the spark that gives us the VR killer app.
FWIW, the Quest Pro can do both eye and face tracking on avatars right now, although whatever app you're using needs to support it and it's not yet photorealistic. (Meta's been working on photorealistic avatars but my understanding is they're currently too computationally expensive)
It looks as though it can replace a laptop. Unlike the iPad, assuming the display really delivers on text fidelity, it may be a more comfortable working environment than the old paradigm.
If that’s the case, the effective cost falls considerably because you don’t need the laptop anymore. And get rid of the iPad too.
/s, work is not supposed to involve too much hand manipulations, you are suppose to create and add value through fabrication and theft by showing happy faces in as many boy’s club meetings as possible
However, unlike a Macbook, you could own a few external batteries and swap between them. You'll probably also see aftermarket batteries for this pretty quickly with even more power.
I'm wondering if they're including a small battery on the headset for ~5mins of juice, just enough to swap batteries or from external power to AC power. It would be frustrating to have to shut down completely every 1.5 hours to recharge or swap packs.
Yeah, they probably won't be cheap. I wonder if swapping the battery would require turning the device off. Maybe they've put in a small internal battery to facilitate a swap.
This is version 1.0. I imagine down the road there will be larger batteries and greater power efficiency. But for desk workers using AR goggles for “laptop work,” you’re usually near a power outlet anyway.
As a developer I sure would like to make product for people who spend that much, much like I did in early days of iPhone. Crazy expensive for regular consumers sure, but very attractive for conspicuous consumers and developers who want to laser target only conspicuous consumers. Exciting stuff
My biggest concern with this is how easy it would be to steal. If I'm sitting in a train, someone could just yank it off my head and run away. That's $3,500 bucks down the drain. When using a phone for example, I don't really have to worry about it as long as I'm careful. I wear a shirt long enough to cover my pockets making it hard for a thief to lift up the shirt without me noticing and grab the phone in my pocket. When I use the phone, I keep it close to my body. If I were using the Vision Pro, I'd have a giant screen in front of my face. I wouldn't even see the thief coming. Maybe they could make a strap that you attach around your chin like a helmet and charge $1,000 bucks for it. Or perhaps screws to drill it into your skull.
Facetime: "Users wearing Vision Pro during a FaceTime call are reflected as a Persona — a digital representation of themselves created using Apple’s most advanced machine learning techniques — which reflects face and hand movements in real time. "
It's hard to be excited about a device that will supposedly be released early next year yet had no live demos. How do we know that anything they announced will work as expected?
I recall that with the original iPhone and Apple Watch, they even had live demos 6+ months ahead of their release.
For someone who hasn't really tried this kind of thing (VR goggles...), what's it like after thirty minutes? Two hours?
I feel reluctant because it's a huge thing wrapped around my head, isn't that something a twelve year old likes but not a 32 year old?
Personally, I can’t imagine using VR/AR headsets for development because of eventual eye strain and the sweatiness factor. But I’m willing to entertain that there are specific dev activities that could benefit from the enhanced immersion. Maybe a debugger that’s built from the ground up to support gestures and provide all of my breakpoints, watchpoints, stack frames, variables, etc in a visually intuitive AR display. That could be amazing, even a killer app, but would be ridiculously difficult I think to get right. How cool would it be to single step through a function with a snap of the fingers, wave downward to jump to the return, and then jump over to an adjacent thread with a glance to the left?
I really hate the overall form factor of these things. The future is more and more powerful devices in smaller and smaller tech. Sleek and subtle, not clunky and ostentatious. I can't believe this is the same society that 10 years ago saw the google glass as a conceptual failure. At most with the google glass you looked a bit like a dork, but with the vision pros you look like a gormless twat.
Wearing a VR headset in public is like wearing a big kick me sign telling to the world "I am suggestible and easy to part with my money, please mug me". A VR headset in private is useless because I already have a desktop at home that can o what it does 10x better (and doesn't cost $3500).
As a child I used to read books with just one eye open. This device will be revolutionary for me, but not because of the immersion.
My excitement is tied to the two high resolution displays, entirely independent for each eye. I asked Brendan Iribe about this for Oculus back in Fall of 2014 and he told me they were two generations away.
As a programmer, I'm staring at a screen all day long, and the effect has not been great. Having both eyes focused 1-2 ft in front of me has caused strain on my eyes, headaches, and seemingly permanent loss of far-sighted vision (my prescription gets worse every year).
It's not proven yet, but hopefully the estimated 20ft focal length can help alleviate my eyes for my day-to-day work!
All the other people that are attending the facetime call should also be using the glasses and why not an apple headphone. That way instead of talking to my brother I could talk to a Daft Punk member.
This is probably going to be even less successful than the Apple watch in terms of adoption. $3.5k for a personal device -- perhaps it will capture a niche. Genre defining like the iPod or iPhone, this isn't going to be.
Since we are leaving comments for the future, let me leave my prediction.
In a couple of years, a new version will come out, with no screen on front, maybe just called Apple Vision, with no M2 on it, just the spatial chip, and no screen on the front. It will need to be tethered to your M2 Mac or iPad, but with no processor and no screen it will cost much less, it will look like a bargain ($999 or $1500) and it will be a huge success.
This way, the version with the eyes will differentiate Pro users from normal users, and in time it will be seen around less and less: by that time, people will be used to wearing a ski mask in public.
This product will fail among Apple's traditional customer segment of high-income Westerners.
High-income Westerners do not like to engage in activities that make them appear like mindless consumer zombies.
In Denmark the highest income households have small cheap TVs they can hide away while low income households have big 4K TVs as the main attraction in their living room. The reason is that the former don't want to appear like passive mindless consumer zombies who watch TV.
It is a very superficial opinion but wearing a VR/AR headset is literally the most 1984 consumer zombie thing you could possibly do.
Need to imagine more in terms of the possibilities before dismissing it.
Were all of the promises of mobile fully realized? No, but about 60% were (uber, increased mobility, notifications, shopping, news, mail, 80% of use cases previously handled by desktop only, etc.).
Consider the use cases of full 3d immersion at crisp, high resolution (not seen until now). If 60% of them are realized we won't want to go back to 2d. These use cases could include: smart-home monitoring but in a doll-house-sized model of your actual house. Infrastructure (AWS/Azure/GCP) monitoring but in a 3d-architecture diagram that you can inspect at a high level. Imagine how much more infrastructure you can manage (similar to Star-Wars-esque zooming in and out of planets). If even 60% of that is realized 2d will never feel the same. And we will evolve use 3d for any type of semi-complex user interface with the need to abstract and still dive deep into data.
The display gives instantly 2-3x horizontal v. vertical resolution. That's insane. But also it gives let's say 2-3x depth resolution. Obviously you can't see more things if you have windows in front of you stacked (the depth pixels aren't as valuable as the x and y plane). But they're still quite valuable and allow for much better management of what's in front of you. And much better modeling of real-world objects; they're a much richer model of the world -- and all software is a model of the world in some ways.
They "re-charge" the 2-3x horizontal and vertical resolution and in total give something like a 5x resolution. That approaching an order of magnitude more resolution. If anything is limited by not being able to see enough on the screen, you now have approaching an order of magnitude more space. That has the power to revolutionize what we can manage and manipulate in terms of analyzing and building things. If you had a monitor/new paradigm that's 5x resolution that you can actually fully use, could you do parts of your job 2x more quickly? Could do you 3x more work in some areas? Can you build unimaginable things that previously with less bandwidth couldn't really be mustered up (e.g., imagine the first extremely small resolution Macintosh SE). That's the potential power.
The goggle form is at the crux of everyone's criticisms and uncertainties. Its actual features and value propositions are, for the most part, welcomed.
If this product were instead in the form of contact lenses, I'm confident that this would be viewed much more favorably. The psychological friction of appearing disconnected from the world would suddenly dissipate. Capturing a video of your child blowing out the candles on their birthday cake would seem much less dystopian.
Given Apple's ecosystem, influence, and vast wealth, I would be surprised if their venture into this ___domain ended in failure.
There’s no question this will be a game changer. Applications will be absolutely endless. Can you imagine putting this on and having guides on fixing homes or cars? I didn’t know it was going to be completely untethered. That you can walk around with this thing freely.
By the 3rd gen and cheaper price, Apple will be selling a lot of these devices. As software ecosystem emerge to create this entirely new experience, I cannot wait to see what people develop to use this device.
I don’t necessarily think this first gen will sell well but it will make people start thinking of all the possibilities. I am excited.
The current price of this first-gen product will make it a niche, early-adopter kind of thing — just like the original iPhone — but the Vision Pro is going to absolutely slay over the next five years. Which isn't to say that this won't sell out.
It's going to get a lot smaller, lighter, more comfortable, and more capable (with better battery life) and be years ahead of the next best competitor.
They're also setting this up as the "Pro" version, which means a lower-priced model is already planned, maybe in two years.
In ten years, these'll be regular ole glasses, maybe even a contact lens.
You make it sound like this is the new steam engine, but is it really that historical of a product? Nothing here strikes me as an entirely novel idea, in fact it just seems like an iteration on an already pretty well developed concept
It’s everything that’s best from the VR world put in one package by Apple. The only downside to this device for VR might be if it isn’t supported by SteamVR or OpenXR. If this is a walled garden, it will be more of a niche product for professionals. If you can plug this into any PC to do VR, it’s actually quite awesome as a headset, but pretty expensive due to all the extra chips.
I will admit I was curious. I am not an Apple fanboy; quite the opposite. But if it will jailbroken the same way phones were, there is a potential there. Naturally, I would assume developers will be able do whatever they want anyway.
This is the first device from Apple that.. I might consider buying if it looks like something I could use. And that is despite the crazy price.
I think as a VR headset alone it's worth $1.5k due to the features it has (4k+ OLED per eye, inside-out tracking, hand tracking, etc.), so I guess the other $2k is half due to this thing being a whole iPhone on your face (basically) and then some "Apple Product Premium" for the other half, since Apple makes nice products that work well for the most part. I see it as expensive, but well worth it, assuming you could use this with regular PCVR titles, like having SteamVR or OpenXR support. If it doesn't have support for PCVR, then it's a tough sell for me, personally.
I'm just snowcloning "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame" since the comment I'm replying to seems like an unintentional snowclone of exactly what GP comment was talking about.
It's not like past always predicts the future. Apple has a lot of stinkers too, just not recently. Apple TV (the HW device) is not all that successful either.
On the other hand, this is rather hype-free (no metaverse!!!!! no AI!) and has actual usecases presented. Also I thought Apple Watches were stupid, but now almost everyone has one. So, who knows.
I mean its pretty clear how this stuff goes by now.
1. Tech already exists. Not really widely adopted since its super niche.
2. Apple comes along, takes existing tech, makes it sleek, gives it modern processing power, integrates it into the apple ecosystem, puts everything behind a paywall
3. Because Apple is cool and has brand recognition, people adopt the tech and start using it.
4. Non Apple cheaper alternatives eventually pop up.
Rinse and repeat. Happened with iPod, iPhone, iWatch, e.t.c
Personally, face emulation isn't there yet for video calls and face pass through is a bit odd giving off a dead eyes stare look. Their focus on a portable interface, but stationary and passive spatial entertainment experiences is the right call for where we are with battery capability and weight. It is also what can be generally 'useful' to the broad market class Apple likes to target.
Hopefully, the field of view experience is really as good as it appears. I think they nailed the execution here and definitively defined the vision of these devices going forward.
I think this is very point on. This is not the sweet spot on the supply demand curve that maximizes the units sold * price per unit. But at this point in time, that's not actually what Apple would want/need with this new "innovation". They need a limited set of people who are zealous enough to jump in at that price, and help refine the product. Apple gets feedback and a publicity that will be biased positively. "Let's drop 3500+ and then pan this thing" will not fit the majority of reviewers. But "I spent discretionary money that you didn't/don't have and I want you to know it, and I'm certainly going to paint it as a wise first mover type experience" is more likely. People who pay more for seats at a game, always make a bigger deal about how awesome the game was.
A Valve Index will run you $1000, for less resolution and no onboard computing. Lenovo has $1700 AR glasses. Both of these seem like much better comparison points than a budget product like the Oculus Quest.
The only question I have is: can I use this as a SteamVR headset? If not, then Apple will only sell this generation to Apple consumers who can afford this sort of thing. If so, I'll buy one tomorrow, because an OLED ~5k-per-eye VR headset made by Apple would be worth that price, because I know it would work and be supported for a while. Oh, and I just noticed they seem to also support some sort of hand tracking, so knowing Apple that feature alone will be pretty revolutionary, maybe you won't even need controllers to play VR games anymore?
After watching MKBHD talking about how amazing the eye tracking is, my first thought is:
When will apple start selling ads? They can use the eye tracking as feedback to advertisers, allowing apple to ask more money than non-eye tracked ads because they can prove you actually watched the ad.
Next you can track what people are looking at in netflix shows and adjust the shows to make them even more algorithmicly optimized (I dont even want to go there).
Interesting tech, but I think apple has something in mind we'll only realise a few years down the road (like how the app store turned out).
In the keynote, they went out of their way to say that they won't give this data to websites, only click data.
This, of course, is different. To the extent they can prevent it, they will. But I'm not sure what data app developers NEED to receive for this to work, and certainly any of that info could get passed to a developer.
Anyway, Apple has an interest in locking that down as much as possible and expressed a desire to do so. We'll see what happens.
It looks like the most compelling differentiator is the AR and pass-through experience. I wouldn't say it's a game changer for VR, but it does sweeten the deal.
But if there is ever a perfect AR experience for desk work, if it does seriously allow me to have only a keyboard and a mouse on my work desk, without compromising my productivity like using a single screen laptop does, it could save me some real estate cost in the long run that would be well worth the price - I'd be able to work better in a smaller room or at the dining table.
Expensive but with such an immersive experience can right off the bat replace a television and surround sound system. But potentially offers a lot more than this.
Not bad for a 1st generation product.
My (and I suspect many others') main use case for a TV+surround sound system is social consumption of media. A TV I can't watch with my partner is useless, a speaker I can't use to keep a party going is useless. To me the relevant comparison here is a PC, and by that measure this is a very expensive PC with an improved screen experience. Whether that screen improvement is worth the $1K-1.5K more than a Macbook will depend on how thoroughly they've actually delivered on the AR experience.
meta is fine, for now. Apple's $3500 headset isn't something most parents are going to buy their kids, while I know a bunch of people who have bought quest 2s for their kids because they're cheap af.
If apple can lower the price to something reasonable or even twice the quest's price, maybe they can threaten them.
I’m due for a new mac, going to wait it out and give this VR thing a proper try. Remember those first cell phones.. we’ve just past the “dude why would you carry a brick in your pocket” situation.
If anyone can pull this off it’s Tim Cook: make no mistake, you could live a thousand years and never see a nuts and bolts logistics and go-to-market maestro like him.
With that said, as others have commented, the iPhone and iPad and maybe the watch are just the form factors that make sense. Science fiction from Star Trek to the Expanse has…iPads.
I appreciate that the investment community has been waiting for a new iPhone like the USSR was waiting for a second front, but when Carmack says the batteries don’t work for the graphics?
Apple just started the AR/VR era, thank you very much. Every other company will use this as the new benchmark for VR/AR, every other device feels like prototypes compared to this.
I like that Apple are being so ambitious. They are literally the ONLY company that could possibly make this work as they make and control the stack from top to bottom.
That said, it's still a very tough sell. I don't think having a physical conversation with someone wearing this thing will ever really catch on, it's still taboo to this day to be looking at your phone when someone is talking to you after all.
But if the price comes down I can see this being very successful with the ever growing population of loners out there.
You cannot deny that this is an immense technical feat.
I think the real draw comes, of course, from the integration with their own eco-system. I imagine 3d videos shot on the iPhone being played back, Ironman like interfaces that can integrate with your physical Apple devices, etc.
I have no doubt that it will eventually become smaller and lighter and there will be a tipping point for price and size where this makes complete sense instead of an iPhone or Mac. And if anyone is in it for the long game, I do believe it's Apple.
Can we tell if it will be possible to develop with anything other than Swift?
For reference, Apple says that it will have "familiar tools and frameworks like Xcode, SwiftUI, RealityKit, and ARKit, as well as support for Unity and the new 3D-content preparation app Reality Composer Pro"
My guess is that since we can use other frameworks like react native on iOS that you could eventually do things with something like Python or JS, but someone will need to create some frameworks to interface with their APIs. Any thoughts?
If I want to try developing an app for this, should I just wait for the thing to be generally available and try to buy one? Would Apple ever offer some kind of developer preview device?
I think they will probably offer some kind of developer program? Developers apply for early access to a device.
I wonder if it will also be possible to preview Vision apps on Xcode via the simulator... Very interested to see how much access they give to the hardware and sensors via APIs.
Looks like an awesome device, but with that price I don't think it's aimed at consumers. Also, would the Pro moniker imply a non-Pro version at a lower price in the future?
I've been thinking about this for 12 hours. This product is going to change everything (sales going to skyrocket). The only problem I see if how Apple projected it in the entire demo.
They are projecting this to be like a mobile phone which will always be the part of day-to-day activity, but in reality this is not.
This is a single person device which will be only used when no one is around and mostly for work. Nothing else. You can't expect someone to have this on his head all the time for all the thing.
> A unique dual‑chip design enables the spatial experiences on Vision Pro... The powerful M2 chip simultaneously runs visionOS... the brand-new R1 chip is specifically dedicated to process input from the cameras...
Any information on the new "R1" chip?
Signal processing sounds like FPGA territory, would be interesting to know what is unique for giving this chip new branding, versioning, and calling it out... versus just saying "the headset processes input from the cameras..."
I think that signal processing is really only 'FPGA territory' because most people who need to do custom signal processing don't also have access to large scale chip design and fabrication capacity. For Apple, it could just be a matter of "we built a custom chip because that's kind of what we do now - might as well tell people about it". I agree that I'd definitely love to hear more, though!
Is anyone else terrified that this is the beginning of the end of "outside"?
Like, I can see people wearing these full-time, everywhere, to "enhance" life at first with the ultimate goal of these _replacing_ life (i.e. why go outside, where you have to spend money and deal with people, when you can just wear these and be in a world that you control without leaving your couch?)
Or am I just becoming a curmudgeon? If I am, I didn't expect it to happen at 35!
I think MORE efficient indoor-tech, that allows you to get your stuff done MORE QUICKLY so you can go outside, is a goal we all should seek, as technologists.
Not forcing users outside in order to get their work done . . (not that is what you were saying).
If the price is a concern to you then this product isn't for you. Watch the video and look at the spaces the people were in. Every single one of them was in a high end space that has been maintained by maids (no clutter, sparkling clean) and professionally painted and styled and their spaces were large.
At least initially, this is for the high end market. For people that want an object others can't really obtain yet. For those that want to be the first.
I wouldn't read that deep into it, they used the same types of homes in the same announcement video for the Apple TV ($100) section. It just looks nicer to the marketing folks.
I for one am actually excited for this. (Price tag is admittedly still high.)
When I look at a piece of technology I want to know what problem is it solving. And for me it will solve the biggest one: I want to work on the couch while next to my partner. My current solution involves bringing an extra monitor down and putting it on the coffee table.
Beyond that, the massive increase in screen real estate will be great for working on highly visual projects like Final Cut or Ableton.
The Apple faithful are going to wake up tomorrow and realize THIS is what they used to make fun of Google and Microsoft for.
It's a pair of REALLY expensive snow goggles. Worse it's goggles with a tiny battery life, a bizarre generated face, it looks goofy and the first time that cable snags on anything...
Imagine Steve Jobs on stage and he says "One more thing..." and puts that on his face, That would NEVER happen.
This is cool in the same way the Newton was!
(edited for typo)
Dude, college lectures. Having a notepad running to take notes in, have the recording going, be able to look back at the recording and the notes. That would be sick.
It would be amazing if the downward-facing cameras could be used for 'typing' on a phantom keyboard. It would be weird to do so without tactile feedback, but it would make it possible to be productive anywhere, without having to bring a keyboard along. I'm sure that someone will come up with some sort of alternate text input method, given that Siri is not great at speech-to-text, and speaking out loud is terrible for privacy.
Locking the away the eye data is a big miss for me. With the hololens we were able to get interesting visual confirmation that what you were looking at was indeed focused prior to selecting objects using an air tap. This also limits enterprise use cases quite substantially. I hope in the future they move to a permission system where users can opt-in to their eye data (literally just the pointer ___location) being available for specific apps.
I think there is a possibility that this device actually looks the way it does in the promo.
Every VR device that's come to market so far show a promo that's completely disconnected from the actual experience. They show these crisp, high resolution images. But when you get the headset on you've got this really soft image, with damn near abysmal edge sharpness, and a display riddled with fun new unique artifacts like mura and screen door.
I'm truly wondering what M. Zuckerburg and the rest of the Quest team are thinking/saying/feeling seeing Apple entering this field with such an impressive device. Will they welcome such a player to give more credibility to the metaverse concept and the VR/AR headset market or they would panic because they may feel unable to compete, who knows?! But surely, the next months would interesting to sit and watch.
A missed pros for HMD is that it's very energy efficient. 85 inch TV is quite power hungry while Vision Pro might consume power similar to an iPad Pro.
My bet, or wishful thinking, is that lower-fi spatial augmented experiences can be more fun and engaging when "shared" with our senses. Maybe also cheaper :D
If the displays and sensors on the device are as good as they say they are, I'd buy it.
Watch a movie, play a game, workout, code, dance, be fully immersed. Like have multiple screens around my garage walls in 3D where I can walk up to them.
I tried NReal AR glasses, Roku, Quest, Holo lens. They didn't feel right.
If Apple vision pro could really take me to another world, be immersed for multiple hours, $4000 (including tax) is worth the experience.
This seems to be another iPhone moment, but I wonder what’s its killer feature? iPhone had the killer feature of phone calls, so everyone has a reason to buy one, I can’t come up with any for AR.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually incredibly excited about AR, I just can’t imagine how it becomes mainstream. It can of course be mainstream if it’s just like glasses and has all day battery, but it still seems pretty far away.
I have a sweet setup - huge screens, stand-up desk, mouse and keyboard at home.
But when I go on holiday / a long trip / a weekend away, I have to hunch over my laptop.
Now I can pack this thing and have 15 massive monitors. Heck, I can set up a little bridge-of-the-enterprise situation where I know where to turn my head to get the status of system x. This could really change how I work once it's all ironed out.
> Apple Vision Pro can transform any space into a personal movie theater with a screen that feels 100 feet wide ... Users can watch movies and TV shows
> Apple Vision Pro is designed to sustain high-performance workloads and is capable of running for two hours on a single charge.
So... you can watch a movie on a virtual 100 ft screen, but only when plugged in else you have to take a break to recharge it partway through
Was sort of expecting a demo of interacting with a real object in your field of vision. And... maybe 'interacting with' isn't the right phrase. But the idea of looking at a table and being able to call up info about the table, or a dog, or a couch, or mountain, or whatever... I suspect that may come later, but was a little surprised to not see it out of the gate.
Given the $3500 price tag + US only release, it looks like Apple also doesn't think that this product will strongly appeal to the market broader than enthusiasts. Perhaps the first version is more of an experimental product with no high expectations, so we probably need to see if it draws enough attentions from enthusiasts and generates a good level of tech hypes here.
This is a proof of concept. It's going to take many more years to get it into a practical form factor for widespread adoption. In the meantime, early adopters including developers will define it. It's basically the same as the Macintosh. That essentially failed to gain mainstream adoption for 15 years. People called it an expensive toy. Same same but different.
Very interesting and I can’t really blame them on the price point; this is basically the pinnacle of the in-house engineering they’ve been working at since they decided to spin out their own processors. I think it is so early on for these kinds of products that the true “market” isn’t known or formed yet, so nobody really knows if this thing is positioned well or not.
Also presumably the reason for making the first one a 'pro' version -- and beginning the presentation with a focus on work. Easier pitch that way, and once it can establish itself / there is an ecosystem, you can probably get more 'consumer' focussed versions with less compute power or that are plugin only etc
People don’t want to wear these it seems. Some do, some don’t, sort of like masks or regular glasses. Those that don’t will mock those who do.
This will never get widespread adoption but that’s fine. It’s a niche product for a relatively small market. Maybe they can get IT departments to purchase them for execs and certain workers, which would help explain the price tag.
Finally I got a clue to how the next Ted Lasso season is going to look like: He's going to coach remotely having everyone happily wearing a VP.
Joke aside: It's mind-boggling how Apple uses product placement to hammer pictures in our heads and get us to consider not looking like a jerk anymore when wearing AirPods just because some "icons" are wearing them.
It looks sweet. I want one, for sure. But I have to say, it's a little concerning that they haven't publicly stated the FOV. FOV is an absolutely CRUCIAL issue in modern XR, and I have a feeling if Apple had actually solved it, they would be bragging about it just like how they're bragging about "23 million pixels" or whatever.
I think this looks cool as hell. The only thing that obviously sucks about it is how big it is. Admittedly I didn't really jump on the VR/AR hype train years ago so I don't know what's possible today. This headset gives me some serious uncanny valley vibes and kinda freaks me out which no other product in this space has ever done.
I understand they have built a whole deal of spatial audio technology around it. But in a practical sense, I hope one could just plug in Airpods instead to go with the MR display. Under no circumstances, real world settings will match their design studio perfection. Too often stray sounds & ambient noise pollution could dilute that experience.
It's unfortunate that apparently Apple won't include any controllers for this. Just with imprecise gesture controls VR gaming is out of the question. Which is a bummer, as the headset itself appears to be amazing and massive step forward in the tech.
Instead they decided to use it for ... floating virtual screens. An iPhone & iPad replacement.
Sometimes new and soon to be very popular things have a seriously negative response here in HN initially.
Think of Snapchat. I'm sure everyone in tech would have said 'nah, there is no market for a messaging app where all messages disappear after 15 seconds'.
And yet only a year or so later it was sending more photos than any other platform.
That’s the usual refrain isn’t it? You can apply “remember how everyone said X wasn’t useful?” to almost anything.
Honestly I think this will be pretty middle of the road. Apple Watch started off with a general market, and pivoted to health/fitness.
I could totally see them readjusting as time goes on into whatever people start using it for. But it’ll be a niche. I think the “it’s for everyone” marketing from today is a way to gauge who really is their target market, not the market itself.
To be fair, it also gives vague hints on resolution with “more pixels than a 4K TV for each eye”, which is simultaneously more verbose and less informative than giving the actual resolution.
Yeah, "4K TV resolution" doesn't mean anything as that completely ignores viewing distance. Pixels Per Degree (PPD) is the core metric and it drives me bananas that marketing professionals continue to intentionally obfuscate basic facts about products for sale.
I assume they're just ashamed that after billions of dollars in product development, they were unable to obtain the requisite 35PPD necessary to emulate a very basic "virtual computer monitor" and display readible text - or get close to the 62PPD that actually represents the limits of human resolution and is the golden benchmark to shoot for.
Maybe they did achieve these goals, which would be impressive, but without using standardised meaningful metrics for HMD resolution you just can't tell.
Fair point! Anyone can do a quick math on the PPD with their announcement of "23 million pixel microOLED" with this calculator? https://qasimk.io/screen-ppd/
I trust they would have mentioned that if they had it. "4K TV resolution" is the best they could say, so in turn you can expect the minimum you could possibly squeeze out of that statement.
I mean, they said it's got 23 million pixel microOLED.
Dual 4K would be 16.5M pixels.
So it's comfortably 40% more than 4K per eye, so as long as say a virtual TV screen filled up most of your vision it should be at least close to 4K quality. Maybe a bit less in the end, but even somewhere between 1080p and 4K should look great.
Ever been to a movie theater using digital 2K projectors? Looks pretty good to me still.
You know why phones are so addictive and VR isn't? Phones make us feel like we have control over how and when we use them. We can just set them down.
With something you strap to your head that illusion of you controlling it goes away. We don't want to strap something to our head because it means admitting we want our life ruled by technology.
I liked your first drift but where I see the real hangups happening is with software control.
People put up with a lot of fussy uneven software they can't really tweak or adjust or make comfortable. Prescripted everything is endurable. But if we have to live inside the software, it seems like all the fixed feature way of doing not-so-soft not-so-personal computing today will be oppressive.
The metaverse idea is interesting most of all to me because it has to be a better computing space, for all kinds of experiences to be hosted & play together somewhat. Right now, it doesn't feel like there's many companies that have open possibility & rich multi-party ecosystems in their genes (especially after G+ turned Google's back on APIs and interoperability). Almost all the prevailing winds in software seem going the other direction, which leaves a lot of new ecosystem resistances for XR/spatial to grow well & flourish.
I don't see lots of AR/VR techs in the intro: there is no interaction with real world, there is no 3D object other than virtual screen and virtual controls. It seems to be just a traditional portable computer with bigger screens. I can see the potential of it. But at the current stage, it's hard to justify the price.
Honestly, I just want a headset that's so slimline I don't look like a weirdo on an airplane, and to achieve that all I want is for it to be able to play movies in the 3d cinema experience. Doesn't need to be optimized for games or interactivity. I get that I'm likely minority but my VR needs are very simple.
When the iPad came out I thought to myself "Who needs a big iPhone? also, god what a dumb name, 'iPad'. Apple really missed the mark on that one." Welp, I was wrong then. I don't personally see myself using this but that doesn't mean it is not going to be successful. I'll just wait and see.
This is the first time I have been excited about XR - it feels right. Seeing it makes me feel like how I saw technology as a kid, sort of like a magic parallel world.
I think a spatial UI will sit much better with people, our brain obviously evolved to manipulate stuff in 3-dimensions. It's very exciting to see where this will go.
VR screens eliminate the eyes' ability to focus naturally.
Unless this devices solves that problem, I find it hard to believe it will be comfortable to wear for many hours per day.
And if the device is not comfortable to wear for longer durations, then it doesn't make sense that it's priced as premium work equipment.
It's really awesome but I think what we really want eventually is to be able to project those displays into the space around is without having to wear any goggles. No doubt we'll get there eventually. Until then headsets can become smaller and lighter and also we may be able to get rid of the cables.
I wonder what the model that you actually want to buy will cost and what average sales price will be.
From the looks of it, I wouldn't be surprised if they sell a "pro" headband like Meta does for the Quest that has a battery pack that does better than the 2 hours of charge with the brick.
Again, for those complaining about price - the current (and far less capable) Microsoft HoloLens is also $3500. I've personally used and interacted with the HoloLens and was thoroughly impressed, however the leaps in optics & tracking Apple has pulled off make the Vision Pro quite compelling.
This is the display. Next they'll release a tiny, screenless computer that'll work with it (i think they have one already?). Then you'll be able to dump the heavy laptop for basically just a box that sits in your bag/a drawer and a virtual/small keyboard.
This is the first inverse of Apple. It's the first device that doesn't live with you on the journey... everything from "the throw it out the window macintosh," iPod, iPhone, Air, iPad... you name it, was about going with you where you went.
It's striking... This is a shift of epic proportions.
The accessible implications this could have for the blind could be profound. Persons with some usable vision could have data only projected in their usable field. Just as with prism glasses, the brain will eventually click and suddenly the partially sighted legally blind can see everything.
The one unintended effect is that the apps may charge extra for supporting this! For example, Disney+ or the NBA may charge extra $$ for supporting this device!
Also, everyone is assuming that it's powerful enough to run the development environment. We need to wait until Apple releases the specs.
"""“Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing. Built upon decades of Apple innovation, Vision Pro is years ahead and unlike anything created before"
The product looks really good. Hope someone also starts selling a "dumb" version (no cameras, sensors, speakers, external display, etc.) with the same quality internal display. It would be great to have a large high-quality display that can be used in a reclined position.
Can't read and argue with all 2300+ comments but I am pretty sure this is best we can get so far in the market and over the next 5 years - it will be improved significantly. Zuck can be the competitor in some way but Apple has this moat so it's very difficult to win.
Looking at the demo through the link, the next step here is to translate whatever the dog is thinking into natural language. Would much rather get enriched reality than a 3D theater for my 2D screens. I'm sure that's coming eventually, maybe through an app store.
First one of these things I’ve wanted. They’re honestly the only company that could pull this off. Meta has been doing some draft devices and Google will follow as hard as they can, but the UX, ecosystem integration and leverage with partners makes this a whole new animal.
Too late for anyone to actually see this, but am I the only one who is terribly amused that Apple's silicon lineup now consists of A-series, R-series, and M-series chips, with the R-series handling realtime workloads?
I feel like I've seen that naming convention somewhere before.
I could see myself enjoying this for work - insane screen real estate! And for catchijg up with family abroad IF we can see each other in 3D. How do you see each others face though? Can it reconstruct your face using AI or something (it already is looking at your eyes)
They shouldn't have revealed the price today, it would have afforded them more time to build hype around features and in-person demos (and to give themselves a chance to reduce the price before release).
Now it's going to kill interest in the device before it's even out.
I'm just looking forward to being able to work/focus without the people around me always disturbing me, not thinking I'm doing anything important.. I hope this outside eye thing can be tweaked so I can use them as an "availability marker"
They didn't invent computers, mobile phones, mp3 players or tablets.
Instead they tend to take products where the whole industry is essentially still in alpha, polish it to a mirror finish and then show the world how those products will make their personal lives better.
Computers don't just have to be for big companies running accounting software; they can unlock the creative potential of writers and artists.
Mobile phone aren't just for drug dealers and business executives; they let people share their lives with their friends.
There were a few misses too. The Magic Mouse looked sleek but was mostly annoying and didn't really do anything that other mice didn't already do better.
I'm afraid this headset falls in the same category. This seems to have marginal improvements over the HTC Vive I bought 6 years ago. The resolution is better, it looks lighter and less bulky. It also gives you pass through mode for an AR experience vs just a VR experience. It looks like a good headset.
That's just not enough. Not only does it fail to meet the high innovation standards that we've come to expect from Apple, it fails to meet the standards that we already expect from AR.
Unlike with all the previous hardware innovations, we already know what we want from AR. Everyone who has played modern video games is already used to various forms of HUDs and we've seen many iterations of what works well and what doesn't.
When I put on an AR headset I want all the things I've seen in video games. I want name indicators. I want automatic highlighting of relevant objects. I want to replace my map with floating directional indicators. I want to see my health stats floating off to the side. I want to be able to make all my friends wear silly hats. I want a virtual cat following me around.
Well, we have seen something like this failing about six years ago.
Let's see whether
- there is a new killer-use-case or
- technology has advanced enough to make it less cumbersome or
- Apple can generate enough hype around it to make it work on its own.
Already have an index, and SO has a Quest2, but I'm holding out for their rumored standalone, codename "Deckard".
I wish valve actually worked on the "Steam VR Home" environment again, because in 2023 their engine is ready and could be used to create something like ChatVR but on steroids.
I think one of the biggest risks is overselling the product, is creating expectations they can't live up to.
They probably could have gotten some AR iOS apps ported & being neat. But are those things people would really use day in day out? Do they set the right expectation, or are they wow & hype? Apple showed the intended mainline usecases: boring regular everyday stuff. Watching videos, browsing the web. And notably all experiences they & not app devs are in tight tight control over.
So, setting realistic expectations. And remaining in absolute control of the experience.
I still don't see myself wearing this thing more than a few minutes on my head. However I am open to where it moves in the future. The realistic (and convenient) way would be to get to simple glasses concept, however technology is behind so far
I found it a little funny that they had a doctor on explaining about their new feature to keep the screen farther from your face to reduce eye strain and myopia, then proceed to release a device where is the screen is right in front of your eyes.
this represent a persistent and common misunderstanding of how VR optics works. VR is good for your eyes because the focal point is actually quite far away. Hence why you still need corrective lenses to use it if you are short sighted. It's a lot better than staring at a close up screen.
What a lonely isolated future to look forward to. It feels like the scene in Minority Report where he is watching a video of his lost son alone. Wish technology had a way to connect us more to reality instead of further removing us from it.
This may be an age thing (it is probably an age thing), but the picture of a smiling woman with a VR headset on completely detached from reality looks dystopian as hell to me. And it is being advertised as something I would actually want.
I'm still curious, how they will enable developers to start developing for the device, before it gets released. A simulator will not be as effective as in the iPhone case.
Maybe by something like the M1 Mac mini developer kit, that you had to return.
Reminds me of a 3D TV - glasses did not work then - it will be a niche product.
Now if Neuralink actually figures out how things work and develop a inducer type of headband technology without requiring invasive surgery then it will be the killer product.
Don't underestimate Apples ability to make a successful product where many others have tried and failed before. This could be the spark that is needed to spur on AR/VR in a big way. At $3500 it's definitely out there.
The external facing screen conveying the user's eyes and a sense of what they are looking at is a simple but really great idea that makes this device feel much more faithful to the idea of augmented reality than any predecessor.
Feels like the marketing department at Apple has gone down hill: is "Apple Vision Pro" really the best name they could come up with? How about something like "iView" or "iWorld" or "iSight"?
Okay since you just stepped out of the time machine, I can get you up to speed. A global viral pandemic happened, America elected a Black president, and Taylor Swift replaced Britney Spears as the most popular female pop star. Also, Apple stopped putting "i" before every product name and that whole thing isn't cool anymore.
Apple seems to have been shifting from the i-prefix since Apple TV. The i-prefix trademark is very easy for competitors to mimic; there's no trademark protection.
"Apple X" scheme is better suited to capitalize on and enhance the Apple brand. No competitor can mimic that, as "Apple" name is a monopoly under trademark protection.
iSight was the name they used for their webcam a decade ago, and when was the last time they used the ‘iDevice’ naming convention? Seems they’ve been getting away from that for a long time.
AirPods Max synthetic fabric is not comfortable to touch face. Hope Vision Pro has more comfortable materials. Many big headphones have comfortable velour or leather ear pads. It's also better for the pads to be replaceable.
Does anyone track the apple criticism for the ipod, the iphone, the watch etc etc?
Apple takes some risks, not everyone is fan, it costs a lot, but they have the money to burn, I don't get why they aren't allowed to try this stuff out.
Apple is a full stack trillion-dollar company, they should be inventing many (1000+) multi-million-dollar full VR systems. Just that will make them the world's first quadrillion-dollar company, even if VR never takes off.
I hate that Apple has joined the vaporware trend. It started with the Mac Studio, which was announced before it could be purchased. Now we have another device announced… that will be available for purchase next year.
The facetime video shows the faces of the people she's online with, but they will not be able to see her face while she's wearing the "spacial computer", unless it generates a fake avatar for them.
I am most intrigued by the use of the 6x Sony IMX418 which seems to be brilliant for daisy-chaining cameras over MIPI lines in such a small package even if the sensor is older. Anyone else have experience with these?
I wonder if we will be able to connect this to a PC for use with steam VR. All of the best things in VR happen in the PC realm where you don't have to jump through hoops to get your experiments out to others.
Random thought: I'll be able to see what I look like in 3D... I'm both dreading it, and am also extremely curious. I'm guessing it will be hearing myself on tape. "I _look like that?" ...
Lot of potential.Beautifully designed. I can see it selling a million a year. Questioned that before but I can see enough demand for 1M units a year. Could be an iPad level business if they keep miniaturizing it.
The front screen is brilliant. If you commute by train it will be socially acceptable to wear the headset. Apart from frequent flyers, millions of people will by the headset for the illusion of private space.
I'm terribly sorry. Even the frickin' lightweight gadgets like Google Glass totally bombed a few years back. Like, why the heck did we have to learn the hard way? - RIP steve jobs. RIP Jony Ive.
Disney did a better job of demonstrating the Vision Pro's ability than apple. This is obviously going to be a hit, and by gen 3 - 4(with a ton a immersive apps) it might by trailing behind iPhone.
Looks amazing and wild full of possibilities but the price tag and perhaps the clunkiness of the device (size and external battery) indicates that the technology is not quite there for mass adoption.
Curious to hear anyone's experience playing non-VR-optimized games on a VR headset, as I have a lot of those types of games and am working on a WebRTC project that streams those types of games.
Assuming that test is crisp and usable, and it's more of a Mac than an iPad, this looks very promising. If pass through works well, I could see this replacing a laptop for a bunch of use cases.
This is an unpopular take among the HN crowd, but I haven't seen it posted yet so here it is: this product will either be a huge hit, or it will be a massive failure, or somewhere in between.
I am skeptical but applaud anyone trying to introduce a new computing form factor. All the use cases in the presentation seemed like they could be done already with a computer, and much better.
It seems like Apple knows this first generation hardware isn’t going to sell much but they’re going forward anyway. Should be interesting to see what the next couple generations looks like.
I really miss the authenticity of an Elon presentation. Some of the people in the Vision Pro presentation looked 3D rendered with the degree of post processing the video underwent.
No kidding. This honestly felt like something out of Hunger Games, with some obviously well-off, out-of-touch, work-from-home dweebs wearing this unit to show off their status to their Apple ecosystem social circle. And then we have Disney! With Marvel and Star Wars! So you can experience Adventure! Without leaving your home!
Yeesh, this says a lot about their target market.
Cool tech, though. Let's hope I'm not peer pressured into wearing one of these masks for my kid's goddamn birthday party.
What I can’t wait for is unbiased hands on reviews, hopefully from MKBHD or someone big enough they can just shell out the money for it and tell us how it actually is to operate.
I just can't imagine buying one of these for every person in my household so we can watch TV together or game together. My kids have friends over and they take turns playing on the switch. Even the kids who aren't playing get involved because they can see the screen and shout encouragement/advice/heckle.
Even if they come down in price by an order of magnitude, that's still too pricey to buy one for everyone in my house and an extra or two for a friend.
Totally see the value for certain specific business and industry uses though. My company has a product that help keep line and construction workers keep utility information up to date in real time by scanning poles, cabinets, transformers etc and identifying them along with positional information. This could be amazing for something like that and the price tag will just be a business expense.
I could be wrong but I just don’t see it. As a mantle piece and curiosity it’s interesting, but real world use cases are far and few between, especially at this pricing point.
Has anyone pitching these products actually worked with a computer all day? I can't imagine the state my eyes would be in after staring through this thing on a workday.
If there’s a company that can make the VR/AR headset thingy fly, that is Apple. I’m not sure it will fly (I’m skeptical) but I’m happy that we will finally find out.
I think what would be revolutionary if this this tool could be used for blind people or for people with little sight. It seems a tool for those that can't move.
In the announcement video they mentioned you'll be able to get prescription lens inserts via some partnership with a lens company. That said, even though they are physically very close, optically most VR headsets are somewhere around 6 feet focal distance, so if you don't need reading glasses for that it might not matter.
The marketing makes it sound like Apple invented all of this, but as usual they have actually just packaged it well. Very unfair to the entire industry that actually got the tech to where it is today. You know people will eat it up as well, and just like the iPhone people will tell us that Apple invented VR/AR all on their lonesome. The iPhone was a great leap though, this headset is not. It is not even current gen tech, the OS is going to be the novel part of it and I look forward to seeing the UX innovations they can pull off. Good product in general, just disingenuous marketing.
Why did they make the front out of glas?
This weigh a lot more than plastic (or aluminium if transparency is not needed), and is probably wuite expensive, too.
Imagine if you could plug this to your desktop dock and use it like a Mac Mini.
It would be the ultimate multimodal workstation, and justify its price easily.
I still wonder what the TAM for these kinds of headsets is, even if they are Apple quality. Nausea and dork factor might limit to a fairly small clientele.
Why would I spend $3500 on a device that seems to essentially have the same specs and abilities as the Quest 2 (with an unsightly battery pack to boot)
this thing is so feature complete the only thing left i was kind of hoping to see is innovative use of the apple watch as HID. For example using the taptic engine as feedback provider and the apple watch sensors for improved microgestures similar to what google Project Soli was researching. i am very sure this will come in a future version if this prevails.
With the per eye resolution for your entire field of view being only slightly more than the resolution of the MacBook's main screen, replacing 4 additional screens seems lofty. I mean yeah, there is plenty of visual space to place all of the screens... but that's a heck of a DPI downgrade before we even get to unused visual space, stretching/warp of placing flat-rendered screens in positions across a perspective render, and the optics. There is also the whole matter of streaming that much low-latency screen over Wi-Fi from the MacBook, which is why I think it's limited to 1x 4k screen right now (per the video).
Virtual screens is probably #1 on my VR/AR productivity list but, having tried so many prior solutions, I just couldn't believe them no matter how many times they repeated "crisp text" when talking about it. I'd love to see it and be so wrong... but the specs don't have me holding my breath. Maybe if it had double the resolution per eye it'd start to be something worth considering.
The presentation says that yes you can. Incidentally, you can also do this with the cheaper Quest Pro headset (or any headset in the Quest line, so $300-$1000 price range). There are a few options, [VRDesktop](https://www.vrdesktop.net/) being one.
It looks like yes, but only one display for now. One of the reasons I'll wait till version 2 or 3 – my primary use case would be to have unlimited virtual displays for working in macOS.
Right, that's exactly how I feel. I'd already have 3-4 Studio Displays if it weren't so costly. To be able to have unlimited virtual displays would be so great.
they will see an avatar of you with some kind of facial expression and eyetracking, but with a different name (not avatar) of course. But they wont see a videostream of you, what is kind of akward imho.
if the resolution per eye is 4k, that would mean that you need to scale the screen to the whole fov of the hmd and stop moving, because that might blur the content on the virtual screen. i think, apple has put a lot of effort to get around the bluriness but there wont be more pixel available than there are on the little screens. So, its probably a downgrade in resolution for you
They're offering magnetic clip-in prescription lenses to use with the headset. I assume the experience will be pretty good, though obviously it comes with an added price...
well it may actually be appealing for winter sports, snowboarders and skiers can appreciate it. but at this pricetag, maybe 5 years later. lets hope we would not have to project the snow bythen...
Callers without Vision Pro show up on calls like normal. Vision Pro wearers are portrayed by a 3D representation of them wihtout the headset on.
> This was one of the most difficult challenges we faced in building Apple Vision Pro. There's no video conferencing camera looking at you, and even if there were, you're wearing something over your eyes. Using our most advanced ML techniques, we created a novel solution.
> After a quick enrollment process using the front sensors on Vision Pro, the system uses an advanced encoder-decoder neural network, to create your digital Persona. This network was trained on a diverse group of thousands of individuals. It delivers a natural representation which dynamically mathces your facial and hand movement. With your Persona, you can communicate with your a billion FaceTime-capable devices. When viewed by someone in another Vision Pro, your Persona has volume and depth not possible in traditional video.
AR sized sunglasses is the next iPhone so much innovation to happen here.
Though as of now and until they shrink all the tech into regular sized glasses the majority will reject while the innovators will jump on this headset and start creating amazing things.
I fear they'll position it just like they have the ipad, primarily focused towards entertainment with a super locked down environment that's noticeably worse than a mac, if it ends up that way it'll be a deal breaker for me although we'll have to see, they did convince me to buy an ipad for nothing but procreate lol
None of them. The only games they mentioned are essentially iOS games in little floating windows.
Beat Saber is the only VR game most people know and Meta owns that so I think they're just ignoring games until some third party developer comes out with something that catches on. I don't think they expect anyone to pay $3,500 strictly for Apple Arcade.
I don‘t think there is even a need to translate/represent most of that (text/image/video) to 3d. VR was not invented for that purpose but rather to „present“ 3d media in 3d space. So the ultima ratio now is a device which is a basically a private monitor? While great for spacially confined waiting situations this falls short with the original dream.
Zuckerberg has the vision/drive to make VR headsets real with the Quest. Don't underestimate the underdog. Apple doesn't have anyone like that on their side.
Pure trash. Sorry for telling you. There are all sorts of jokes around it now. Nobody wanted to weark Google's glasses back then, won't do it now either.
It’s like people read about Vision Pro, ignore the demonstrations in the Keynote presentation, and then comment and criticize as if this was an Occulus. These comments are peak Hacker News. Practically “why would anyone ever want a touchscreen on a phone.” Or “where’s the stylus?” Or “You can make your own Dropbox in just a few hours.”
The intense criticism of a device nobody has even seen in person is astounding. Some guy that codes CRM software complaining that Apple isn’t innovative enough. Or some other person that makes one of hundreds of podcast apps is lamenting that nobody needs Vision Pro. And those from third world countries are whining about how expensive it is. And the Marxists are going on about rich CEOs. Vision Pro apparently has something for everyone to hate — which is why is clearly a world-changing product.
However very few are actually discussing the world changing possibility that Vision Pro is finally going to unlock. People laughed at the 3D birthday party demo.. but can you imagine having conversations with your grandparents and recording those like you are actually there? Or 3D immersive journalism that lets a single reporter take you into the battle, protest, or history making event? What about an app that can take you inside of 1942 Paris.. you walk along down the streets and see it as if you were in occupied France. Imagine the Pokémon-Go level of immersive real world gaming that is unlocked. Imagine the possibilities for rural and remote medical care delivery. VR required lots of specialized programming — Vision Pro can make everyone a creator. This isn’t the f’ing “Metaverse” — this is real life at a whole different level of possibility.
Many of you folks are talking about the boring, whining, pessimistic view of Vision Pro. Where is the optimism? The imagination? What innovation will this inspire? Possibilities are endless. The original TV cameras were huge and obtrusive, but TV changed the world. Now imagine what Vision Pro is going to do.
I miss the times when the tech world was about the (Peter Thiel definined) Definite Optimism. Now it’s as if we have this European-influenced malaise and everyone is indefinitely pessimistic about everything. Everyone is so cynical and lacking in imagination.
However, thanks HN, these comments are going to be legendary in 10 years.
There are circular magnetically attached lens inserts. Kind of hard to get started but looks like it could have really good optical performance, much more so than the glasses-capable devices we have today.
It will be very interesting to see how Apple Stores manage to demo these things. A case full of inserts?
The single most important and most revealing aspect of this announcement is Apple's framing of the promotional images showing the face display on the front of the headset.
I think the large R&D investments tech companies are making into VR/AR headsets are ultimately centered on the idea that years in the future, an affordable, comfortable, and socially acceptable headset for all-day wear in daily life could hypothetically replace smartphones, tablets, laptops, and screens.
If a future daily wear headset as a phone/computer replacement reached a critical mass of adoption, then control of the platform will provide the owner with a huge profit source in selling virtual goods that can be "worn" or "placed" in the real world and are seen equally by any other person wearing a headset. I won't speculate on exactly what would be popular, but it is conceivable that this could include things like: buying virtual wall posters of licensed characters, virtual landscaping objects placed outside a house, filters that virtually "repaint" the exterior or interior of a house, or personal adornments like virtual clothing or appearance modifiers. That is to say, a digital layer of adjustment on top of the real world where everyone wearing a headset is automatically shown the virtual objects or adjustments that anyone else has made (within the scope of the latter's own appearance and owned spaces - random members of the public could not place publicly visible digital objects in the middle of a NYC street). Note that this virtual economy is a profit motive for a company to build AR, but not the selling point for a headset adopter.
Apple is not trying to sell this headset to consumers for $3500. They're showing off future hardware that they believe represents the bare minimum for what average people might be willing to wear regularly, with the expectation that they will be able to produce essentially this same unit and sell it for perhaps a third of the current price in several years. The way it's presented is also an early form of reputation management for the product space trying to influence public perception of how someone wearing a headset is viewed by others around them.
Standard see-through AR headset designs face fundamental implementation limits with the display technology that generally result in accepting one of two unacceptable limitations: a display that projects an image over the real world but cannot render black or otherwise draw anything darker than the scene behind it, or a liquid crystal light modulator with a polarizer that permanently makes the glass tinted dark like sunglasses even indoors. Apple is instead making a VR headset that is completely enclosed, displaying the world through pass-through cameras and drawing the wearer's eyes on a front display for everyone else to see.
The front lenticular OLED shows how Apple is approaching the social aspect of trying to market the acceptability of wearing a headset in the company of other people. In the long term, establishing a virtual economy for digital world overlays is fundamentally dependent on the social acceptance of wearing an AR device regularly. This announcement seems to be trying to thread that needle in advance of when this technology could eventually be priced and sold as a consumer product. I.e. establish an image of an Apple headset positioned without the kind of negative associations Google Glass quickly garnered.
I have no idea whether AR will succeed in replacing smartphones years from now or fade into obscurity, but what I find interesting about this announcement is that it makes a timeline where AR does take off at least appear conceivable. They've only taken a first and early step into trying to make it happen, but they haven't made a fatal mistake yet.
Magic Leap[1] did it years ahead of them, and in my opinion better.
I mean - they're doing pass-through AR which is silly. There's all this work being done to emulate people and faces when they could just build lenses.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills watch everyone get so hyped over this, because there's literally better devices already out on the mark. This is effectively a $3500 Oculus device. Like what the heck? I know it's just because Apple made it, but still. This is pretty weird to watch the reaction.
It's not... what? It's not "Apple's first spatial computer"? Did Apple have one before this? Did you even read the title before you typed out your crybaby "less space than a nomad" post lol
This will only be targeted in US, no? I doubt it's GDPR compliant and won't probably buyers outside of US. If it's $3500, then in Europe, it will be around $5000.
What’s the issue with GDPR? If it is similar to other Apple products where data is collected / processed at the edge, then no more issues than anything else they do.
I don't think GDPR is a problem, but they might have to cut some features in some EU countries where facial recognition is illegal (if they use that, but they probably do).
Kind of like Google Photos which has facial recognition and tagging, except in the EU.
We're not 10+ years from traveling a foreign country, meeting people completely different from yourself, becoming enmeshed socialy in their lives, developing relationships with them (if only for a brief time), etc.
Give me a break.
What these will do is safe us from the dystopia we're creating outside our own doors, which isn't solving the problem, just ignoring it.
If the Apps are restricted in the samme manner other Appple devices
it will be a bit more difficult.
but this will create a whole new level of porn for the world.
Combined with the rather impressive advances made in teledildonics
one can get a lot closer to "being there".
Various mostly shitty "VR" enabled ways to watch porn have been
developed but have been disappointing in use.
This may kick off a whole new frenzy.
Some folks will make a lot of money.
Esp if they manage to combine it with the independent
"Content creators"
In fact, getting out early and opening in a studio making recordings
for people would be sustainable for a good while.
If you are in the right ___location.
The demo greatly exceeded my expectations. If the v1 actually works as well as their presentation, then this is going to fundamentally change personal computing. Sure, it's expensive, but that's because they are bringing to market something that is truly high tech.
In 5-10 years this will be mainstream if it's not too expensive. It's going to be interesting because we're going to repeat the cycle of a new competing platform coming up, like Android, and copying the UX. This time around though it seems that they patented it really hard, so it'll be interesting to see that fight go down.
Ultimately it's going to come down to if their products lives up to its claims, and if they'll be able to bring the costs down.
A high end VR/XR display like Varjo does feel like a new ux paradigm if the device has low latency and high resolution and good software. Given how long Apple has been at this I would bet they’ve come up with something that is of expected quality.
Some of the stuff on display felt gimmicky, but I would imagine as bare minimum there are lot of people who are happy to have a private huge 4k screen they can move anywhere.
It might be, but you still need the MacBook Pro if you want to use this as a Mac. So this is just the display, that can access some iPad apps.
Although I still think it's pretty awesome, need to give it a few years and see the price come down and a few versions later, this tech will be very interesting in the 5-10 year time space, what a crazy time that is going to be with AI and all this stuff.
Into an ecosystem where people buy a $1000 watch, $1000 phone, $200 earphones, and a $2000 computer.
There is absolutely a market for this, the demo experiences are extraordinary.
I have no idea what the Meta experience is like, but even in ignorance, it's not like what this thing is doing.
They were correct in saying this is something only Apple can do.
There are a lot of isolated technophiles with money to burn to put into something like this. The idea of lifting your mac into space with nothing but a keyboard and mouse in front of you alone is enough for many to pop for this. Talk about bringing your office into the local Starbucks, this moves it to the next level.
No. But it's an outrageous price for a redundant product that most people will not purchase. I don't see any meaningful market leverage for Apple here relative to Meta - if the selling point for this is "experiences, plus iPhone apps" then everyone with an iPhone will get a Quest or similar and save a few thousand bucks.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593&p=4
There are also a bunch of other threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
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