As someone with already terrible eyesight from intense gaming, having a screen even closer to my eyes doesn’t sound like something I’d be interested in. Just doesn’t sound healthy at all.
There are lenses. Your eyes don't have to accommodate to a couple ft in front of you in VR, unlike with a screen. Instead they can focus on infinity or a very long distance, so it's actually wayyyyy better for myopia.
I'm interested in seeing how it works with glasses.
I know there's supposed to be some kind of custom magnetic Zeiss lenses you can pop in, but I don't fully understand how they're supposed to work — do they replace your glasses, or are they to adapt your glasses vision to an AR space.
There were a few tidbits in the iOS and watchOS portions of the recent keynote focusing on vision issues, so it's nice to see Apple taking it seriously. But I don't understand the solution.
Yes, they replace them because not only would your glasses not fit, they'd also mess up the field-of-view or the perspective according to what I've read (forgot the link). So you need custom lenses.
The optics used in AR/VR headsets typically make your eyes focus as if they were looking at a point anywhere between several feet in front of you and infinity, so it shouldn't advance myopia. Hard to say about the light emitted though.
I believe most damage is done in your prepubescent years. Using this or phones really should be limited until your eyes finishing changing and then you're gucci. I recall that Singapore went from 17% myopia to around 80% in almost a generation due to the lack of changes in distances that your eyes see in your younger years.
I think this article hits on the main point that I think has been missed by the early criticism I've read (and it's totally possible I've missed a lot of useful writing on it) - this device isn't supposed to compete with the Quest or any other current VR platform: it's supposed to be the starting point/MVP of competing with your laptop. Looking at in the frame of a gaming device, or the 'metaverse' is missing the point.
And, as the article notes, I think it is an early-adopter device that isn't worth the price tag, and probably doesn't deliver on even 1/10 of what it needs to for mass adoption - but I don't think that Apple intended it to.
No? HoloLens is an enterprise product barely advertised for public use. It’s not a new form of UX for general computing, it’s a niche.
The hardware for ambient light AR also sucks, it’s why HoloLens, magic leap and such are not compelling. It’ll be a while before that’s a viable option (and why Apple is committed to pass through currently).
The iPad was also supposed to compete with your laptop, and it has partly succeeded, though nowhere near as much as the most hopeful fans were expecting.
The VisionPro is a far less comfortable, far less portable, more power-hungry version of an iPad, with a few gimmicky 2.5D/3D stuff built in, for $3500. Is it really going to take anyone away from a laptop? Perhaps, but not that many people.
I personally think it'll come a lot closer to replacing my laptop than my iPad did. I used my iPad on a daily basis in college for taking notes and doing homework but largely haven't touched it in the few years since.
My work setup is basically just ssh + VSCode Remote + browser (on multiple screens) so it could easily be ported over to Vision Pro in a way that the iPad with its single screen couldn't support.
Yeah the price point is their way of explicitly saying that this is not a finished consumer product. The next few years will be key, as third-party developers build stuff and Apple evolves the OS and hardware.
They could pivot into gaming, that's not a bad bet, especially if they manage to shove an M5 Max or whatever into the headset eventually.
Apple’s game porting toolkit is there because they realize that the primary use of this is gaming. But they have hardly any games yet.
The current “executive toy” vision is, I believe, just a stop-gap measure until they get the hardware cheaper and games ported.
I don’t believe anyone wants to work in 2D with a thing strapped to their face for hours on end. Sure you get a bigger screen but it’s also super uncomfortable, especially this metal and glass conception. It’s only worth it if you are doing something in 3D, like playing a game.
... or the "Pro" label is a hint that this is not an MVP (for the masses). Perhaps over-engineered to the point that they expect early adopter feedback will provide guidance on what can be axed.
I have the same feeling. The features they packed into there is like if they had every engineer working on it write something down on a paper note and throw it into a hat and then build everything that was suggested into a single device.
There is probably quite a bit of room to cut out things, first and foremost the EyeSight ( even though it's cool ) to get to a more reasonable product.
Externalising the battery to bring the weight down is to some degree a solution to a problem Apple created by insisting on building the headset out of "premium" metal and glass. They haven't said exactly how heavy it is, but those who got to try it noted that it's pretty heavy even with the battery separated, like the AirPods Max are noticeably heavier than plastic headphones.
I don't believe there's an internal buffer battery either (IIRC it was mentioned on the ATP podcast, who were told by an Apple rep) so you can't hotswap the external pack, as the article suggests you could, without completely rebooting the headset.
Would people really accept a $3500 plastic headset though? It seems unlikely. As much as the Vision Pro is being lampooned now, it'd be even more intense if it didn't look and feel like a $3500 product.
I fully expect the more pared-down cheaper mainstream consumer versions to be plastic though, much like the cheaper AirPods.
I think they mentioned that the battery can be charged by usb-c, so you could potentially attach a power bank or to the wall to extend the battery life, also I hope that Apple allows 3rd party batteries so you could buy one with more capacity (but knowing Apple they might add some extra chips inside the battery render that harder).
I don't think Apple's just doing this for the premium feel of it. Plastic gives you much shittier visual quality than glass (definitely not enough for reading text for hours). Metal is a better heat conductor, lets you have quieter fans. The front display for EyeSight adds weight, and so do the more advanced inside displays, etc.
By all means use glass for the lenses and metal for the heatsinks, but building the entire thing out of metal is harder to justify IMO. I doubt they're heatsinking directly into the case, that would have the effect of making the unit uncomforable to handle after it's been used heavily, and it wouldn't sink that much heat compared to forced air through a proper copper heatsink anyway. Passive heatsinks need a lot of surface area to do much of anything, and the outer shell exposed to the air doesn't have any channels cut into it to add surface area.
The front glass is more scratch resistant than plastic but in exchange it's going to be instantly obliterated if you drop it the wrong way, so pick your poison.
There almost certainly is an internal battery. I've seen the figure of 45 minutes battery life (without the puck) repeated in various places. Moreoever, they use a magsafe like pull-detach mechanism which will likely be knocked off fairly easily. There's very little chance Apple would ship a device that crashes if the power cable is jiggled.
Who knows whether it will be successful, but (as the article says) Apple have created the first commercially-available device that has all the necessary components for an immersive VR/AR/XR experience.
If this range of devices doesn’t do it for VR/AR (once the price comes down), nothing will.
Maybe we just don't have the required tech to give these a non-goofy form factor yet. I owned Google Glass and I didn't love being made into a spectacle, and that was more low profile than these things.
I think some people do like that type of attention, but whether or not it reaches a critical mass where it doesn't make you stick out is what I'm waiting for.
One aspect of the Vision Pro that I think is perhaps not talked about enough (and isn't mentioned in the linked blog post) is the sheer number of apps this thing will be running from day one, and how little it takes to have a first-class visionOS app.
iPad apps will run unmodified as basically virtual floating iPads which is nice, but not anything too special. What's much more interesting is that existing iPadOS apps can be transformed into first-class visionOS apps by just checking the "visionOS" checkbox in Xcode, which gets the app the full 2.5D treatment with all of the various controls taking on the expected visionOS appearance and behavior.
This means that the Vision Pro is probably going to have by far the best selection of day-1 apps that any AR/MR headset has ever had. Most of these apps won't be anything revolutionary of course since they're adapted versions of existing apps, but it makes the platform much more practically usable.
One of the clear goals of the product is to serve as an alternative to monitors. In that sense, any productivity tool (like the newly launched Final Cut Pro and Logic Studio for iPad) would immediately be extremely useful in visionOS, even if it’s not fully spatially aware.
It may not be the flagship spatial computing experience, but that doesn’t mean it should be thrown out as a “cheap trick” either. It likely is the more common experience for day to day interaction with the device, which is Apple’s goal.
MacBooks with Apple Silicon processors can run a shitton of iPad apps natively. App developers can choose not to have their apps listed in the store if they want, but many do.
Or you can just… plug an iPad into a monitor with USB-C.
To be entirely fair to the other commenter, they want it the other way around (iPad on a monitor not iPad as a monitor) which is why I didn’t include Continuity.
AFAIK it’s only Mac->iPad. If you’re running an app that also exists on your Mac (or equivalent like a browser) then you’d be able to take over the context on your Mac but it isn’t technically “[throwing] iPad Apps up on any monitor”.
They’re most definitely on an anti-Apple/Vision Pro crusade given their replies, but they asked for a specific thing and I gave them the exact thing they asked for.
The original comment specifically denied what you’re claiming was said:
> basically virtual floating iPads which is nice, but not anything too special
Instead, it was saying that being able to interact with those apps in a spatial way will be valuable:
> What's much more interesting is that existing iPadOS apps can… [get] the full 2.5D treatment with all of the various controls taking on the expected visionOS appearance and behavior
> Hear yourself man, you’re saying be able to look at iPad apps on a big monitor is the killer app for Apple Vision Pro.
That’s not what the person said, but also it might actually be the “killer app” for the vision pro.
Having a large, high-fidelity monitor anywhere you go would be extremely useful. Maybe useful enough to get people to keep coming back to the Vision Pro after the novelty wears off.
A big monitor everywhere you go isn’t a solution to any real problem. It comes from the same line of thinking that describes work as people sitting at a computer typing for 8 hours straight. It’s just not realistic.
Multi monitor setups are overrated anyway. I work entirely off a laptop screen and only a portion of that screen is where my focus is most of the time. Having multiple monitors at my desk is mostly for decoration and looking like you’re a big deal. Switching a virtual desktop isn’t hard.
Some creative types could legitimately use multiple monitors to lay out a lot of content, but I also don’t think those creatives will necessarily prefer an Apple Vision Pro over their existing tools, unless they’re doing something truly spatial like sculpting out a life size car or something. But that’s definitely not the norm. Most people are just going to browse web sites and stare at spreadsheets.
> Multi monitor setups are overrated anyway. I work entirely off a laptop screen and only a portion of that screen is where my focus is most of the time. Having multiple monitors at my desk is mostly for decoration and looking like you’re a big deal.
I staunchly disagree with this. I work from home and as such have no reason to optimize my desk for showing off or acting like a big shot, and find that having at least one extra monitor is a huge productivity boost because for most tasks, it practically eliminates the need to juggle applications or windows — everything that's relevant for the task at hand can remain visible the whole time without a cramped tiled windows setup. Virtual desktops are great but to me, work best in concert for switching tasks rather than being used as a tool to corral windows on a single screen.
When I need to work away from my desk, it's somewhat frustrating even with a 16" laptop.
> A big monitor everywhere you go isn’t a solution to any real problem.
I get that you don't care about having a big monitor, but it shouldn't be surprising that other people want big monitors. Personally, I hate working on my laptop screen, if I can use the Apple Vision Pro as a remote monitor while traveling, that's certainly worth some amount of money to me.
> This is mostly a cheap trick to inflate vanity metrics.
No, it's a way to mitigate the "chicken and egg" problem for the platform. Having existing apps to make the device immediately useful is important, even if they're not all exploiting the capabilities of the platform immediately.
I’ve been at this a long time and it actually isn’t. It keeps many developers from starting from scratch to take full advantage of the hardware, then disappoints the user
without disagreeing with your statement "Only spatial computing apps matter", there are two other considerations:
Nobody knew what the point of a microcomputer was back in the Apple II days (at the time I thought it was crazy that anyone would buy a computer rather than design and build their own). The best anyone could imagine with was keeping recipes and playing games. Yet the killer app was Visicalc, with analysts and accountants buying their own (expensive!) apple IIs and visicalc and getting around MIS (what's called IT these days).
The second consideration is "onramp". Clicking a button and being able to experiment with an app you've already written yourself is way better than being given sample code. Likewise the crufty skeuomorphic cues (from the desktop metaphor of PARC and then the Mac to the "leather" of the ios notepad and shiny "wheels" of its date picker) are important onramps that get people using something so that they can develop the correct metaphors. It wasn't Apple who came up with "pull to refresh", it was the developers (Brichter's app Tweetie, then quickly adopted by others).
So while you're right in the long game, I think your dismissal is premature.
Gaming is at best an onramp or else the product is a failure. Apple's watch revenue alone exceeds the console manufacturers' revenue and last year was almost as large as the revenue of consoles and console games.
When I say onramp: Visicalc made the Apple II but I do think gaming got it into the home.
I always say Apple is the best embedded software company in the world and people look at me like I'm insane. They deeply care about software and it shows (even if sometimes we don't agree with their vision). Companies tend to get too hung up on hardware and end up forgetting the software, in my opinion.
Do systems on a chip count as embedded? I don't mean the vision pro, I mean their hardware architecture in general. I did some embedded work at university and it was a lot of fun, but SOCs for macbooks seem like such a different thing than little PICs that I never considered them the same thing. Actually curious
You can run android apps on the quest and I'm not sure people care that much.
People sound like they are over-rating how good interacting with 2d apps with goggles can be. It is "really neat", a really wow experience the first few times but it quickly gets old and things like "scratching your nose" or "drinking coffee" become far more valuable features than anything the goggles can provide.
I think we are in for a frustrating few years where the faithful go absolutely bananas over this because of the Apple brand until people quietly admit that they don't actually like having their peripheral vision filled with fake scenary or app windows or whatever. It's much nicer to see your real cat snoozing on your desk instead.
> You can run android apps on the quest and I'm not sure people care that much.
Yes, but these apps aren't native to the interaction patterns of AR/VR. They're adapted touch apps, which makes them as awkward as touch apps adapted to a desktop OS are.
Native visionOS apps have full affordances for eye and hand-based navigation and should be a good deal more pleasant to use in AR than emulated touch apps will be.
Interaction has not been the sticking point for me (keyboard aside), it's the lack of a "why".
I quite enjoyed browsing the web in various VR headsets, it's a fun novelty experience, but it's not sticky as a tool because it's not adding anything to the experience yet adds the irritation of goggles.
Dead on. Vision will attract a bunch of apple die hards that haven’t spent a few years with the quest already and realized why vr still has huge issues road does not fox at all.
1. The ease of use of installing Android apps. This is the constant flaw of all the “well XYZ also does this” arguments from tech folks that ignore the flow of the process
That’s not exactly something most people will be doing
2. As the person you’re replying to said, the iPad app can adopt visionOS features within the same codebase. The android apps cannot, because there’s no progressive API.
1. That would be relevant if talking about mass adoption but for the enthusiast market, when people want something e.g. custom songs in beat sabre or to play quake, we are delighted to use Sidequest. I'd happily sideload any app that I could experience some value in using with a headset but it's only things like Google Earth that make sense to me. As far as I can tell, for something like a spreadsheet, learning a new keyboard shortcut is more world changing than what a headset can offer.
2. I just don't rate them. The magic of 3d headsets that differentiates them from 2D for me has been "presence". To stand in front of a massive temple in Skyrim or something and feel like you are there, it's special and can't be replicated in 2D to the same extent. As soon as you get into a focussed state e.g. a game loop churning out iron daggers to level a skill, presence doesn't matter. Your area of attention is quite small and having a headset on is just a pain in ass. 2d apps are in the latter category for me.
My basic rule of thumb is that if you don't already render the content in 3d on a 2d screen, "spatial" doesn't have much to offer besides gimmickery.
The annoyances of sideloading combined with the Quest 2's middling SoC (which can make it drop frames or chug in some cases) were enough for me to not even bother. I mostly use my Quest 2 as a dumb headset cabled to my tower with PC link and play the Windows/Steam version of Beat Saber, which is way more mod friendly and never stutters.
Don’t both your points boil down to: “for my use cases, I don’t care” but then you’re applying them to the general use case that the OP is talking about.
You’re also oddly fixated on games, which is clearly not what the product is focused on delivering.
That’s just incongruent and reductive to the argument at hand.
But to your last point, that’s exactly what the progressive APIs let you do. You can integrate 3D elements on top of your windowed iPad. You’re thinking in “either 3D or 2D”, whereas this is allowing developers to progressively adopt the entire gamut within the singular app which can target iOS and visionOS.
Well, the reason I bought a number of headsets was for developing productivity applications. I just found that it was a bit of a deadend and that the only meaningful value was in existing 3d experiences (games, modelling, visualisation). I couldn't find the value in spatialising 2d productivity experiences. Hence the heuristic, if there was any value, we would already be wasd-ing our way around a 3d view in our 2d tools. There have always been a stream of 3d experiments like debuggers or knowledgement management tools but they just don't offer value compared to 2d text-oriented experiences.
Some of the talk about Spatial, feels like a pendullum swing back to Hacker's "Gibson" or Jurrasic Park's "Unix, I know this" 3d interfaces that were assumptions of what would be useful in 3D, and we have made real versions of these, but they just suck. Classic case of imagination / reality mismatch that often comes with tech.
> allowing developers to progressively adopt the entire gamut
I still want to be able to tell a coworker to "go past the routers, turn to the left and go past views until you get to models; the one you're looking for will be the one on top of the pile on the right".
It would be "wow" for sure, but also - spatial memory is one of the easiest to hijack and repurpose for something useful. Of course, being able to visualize the codebase like this would require a Smalltalk-level system (I'm seeing a chance here for Smalltalk & Moose/Roassal/Mondrian/GToolkit/etc.).
The problem: once you get to that model, you need to read it. And until now reading lots of text in VR wasn't the best experience, not without things costing $10k+. So, the idea is shelved and waits for a good opportunity in the future... Maybe.
The nice thing about ipads and iphones is that you just pick it up and use it. You might not even do so consciously. You're not really playing Candy Crush. You're idling.
You have to say "Ok I'm going to play Candy Crush now" and get your headset, put it on, and then do that, with largely your full attention unable to multitask because it's big.
I doubt people will want to use any of these apps beyond the gimmick novelty.
My first thought when seeing this was "neat," but my second still eats away at me: what about the tactile experience?
If you can fill your physical space with floating virtual iPads, what will it be like to touch and manipulate them? You don't get to actually press against a screen when you press or scroll. If you wanted to "hold" a screen while manipulating it with the other screen, what will that be like?
I'm just speculating. I find touch and weight etc to be important, personally.
I'm also concerned about the weight of the headset, again, because I find touch and weight to be important.
And about how it works for people with glasses who can't wear contact lenses (perhaps you could have prescription lenses built into the headsets one day?)
There's a big difference between apps that "work on" a platform and apps that are "built for" a platform.
Consider Android tablets, folding phones, or basically any Android device with a large format display. Basically all modern Android apps work on those devices, with practically no effort required of the devs. But most Android apps were built exclusively for smartphones, with small vertical displays. Only apps which have been developed to account for large displays actually provide a good user experience on those devices. Sure, there's still value in having a big library of apps that technically work on the new platform. But if the AVP experience for an app is worse than the platform it was built for, most people will probably try it out and quickly switch back to the platform they used before.
The AVP really needs a killer app to convince people to invest in it. If it can capture that investment, there will be an incentive for devs to start building their apps for it and it can grow from there. I'm concerned that I haven't seen anything that looks like a "killer app" for the AVP yet.
>. But most Android apps were built exclusively for smartphones, with small vertical displays. Only apps which have been developed to account for large displays actually provide a good user experience on those devices.
While there are apps that do this on IOS (Snapchat , Instagram) I believe the introduction of Stage Manager on iPad has prepared IOS app makers for dynamic windowing better than Android Tablets and folding phones have.
I fully understand that maybe I lack the vision Apple has, but if I had to call it this is going to be a total flop. There's no vision here, it's just iPad glasses. They did not embrace spatial computing at all or build a new experience around it from the ground up.
> The big Apple hits have been the perfected version of products that already had massive markets
Uh...
Did you own the first iPhone? It had no apps and no horizontal typing. It didn't even have 3g. Few if any mobile sites. Small screen. Bad battery life.
Did you own the first iPod? 5gb. Firewire connection (which were hard to come by). The scroll wheel was an ACTUAL wheel. You needed a mac to use. Again, bad battery life.
I won't even go into the early mac desktops and laptops.
Those were MVP's on the market. Where we are now with those products didn't dictate where were were then. The did the bare minimum to be considered products.
The cell phone market at the time did not fit the iPhone. There was no attempt at internet connectivity. The biggest seller at the time was the razor, a flip phone. Not comparable. There was the palm pilot, but the market was minuscule compare to the iPhone market today
There is an argument to be made for iPhone vs. media players. The Irivers and the like were comparable functionally. The iPhone just had a killer app… the iTunes Store.
> The iPhone was a success because it was a status symbol
> And having the latest one still is
You may be forgetting just how dismal the phone market was when the iPhone was released. As basic as it was, the first iPhone was astronomically better than any other phone on the market.
In the last 15 years, the rest of the market has mostly caught up, but the iPhone is still one of the best phones you can get and the best phone you can buy that runs iOS, if that's your preference.
Or look at the Apple Watch which dominates wearables and sells more than all mechanical watches combined. Series 0 was terrible hardware wise, and their premium marketing strategy was a flop.
Sounds like there might be some ambiguity around "minimum". These products were quite a bit "extra" in the cohorts of devices they were competing against.
They were arguably minimal for what Apple intended to do. They obviously wanted to carve out new categories and create products that would not be fungible with the competition in the minds of consumers, which from their perspective would raise the bar on what the minimum is.
But, in terms of the market, the iPod was not a minimum viable music player, and the iPhone was not a minimum viable phone.
Notes on iPod, 5GB was a very large capacity at the time, and the iPod was smaller than competitors with similar capacity. The wheel was very extra as a concept, however implemented. It had 10 hours of playtime on a single charge. It was built well from steel and polycarbonate. This was a premium product.
Uh, dude, the first iPod was amazing. Lots of storage and firewire made transfers ridiculously fast, but yeah the target market was probably people who already had a modern Mac.
Also the physical wheel was amazingly good UX, and very responsive.
It kinda makes sense. Nobody else is doing AR/VR in a terribly interesting way. The Quest is cool, but pretty lame for anything except playing rhythm games, PSVR is more of the same but hella expensive.
I think all the other players WANT VR to take off, but haven't yet made a truly compelling offering that attracts anything but nerds. Apple has been forced to step in early to encourage the market to develop. Just like the others this first version will be early adopters, nerds and developers only but Apple will make it MORE compelling (unlike Meta who made their "pro" model less compelling) for the mass markets with future iterations because that is just what Apple does.
Seems clear to me that's not a minimum requirement for viability. The ease of integrating the device into the situations where is might be useful is certainly important, but there's a sliding scale. I'm not sure where it becomes viable, but I don't think it's all the way at the end of the scale.
Actually, I think this entire analysis is backwards. The question isn't how far from perfect the Vision Pro, or any other VR/AR/MR device is, but whether it does enough things well enough to be worth the trouble.
(For me, it looks like the VP does not, mainly due to the price tag. That's even assuming some new major drawbacks that become apparent once it's released.)
when was the last time Apple released a product that didn't have a proven market? iPod, iPhone, iPad, watch, etc. were all basically superior versions of products that already had proven consumer demand and Apple just made a way better version of existing products.
Apple going into VR seems like the first time they've taken an actual risk in a long time. I'll buy it day 1 if it allows me to create a solid virtual workspace with multiple monitors synced to my laptop.
But for consumer market they are going to have to find a way to drop the price over time and get people over the negative image of wearing goggles on your head
and there's the simple fact that you won't be able to wear these publicly in most major cities without getting robbed, which limits their use
At the time mp3 players were a niche with crappy hardware and low capacity. The iPod was a lot more expensive and a lot better - it caused general adoption.
Similar for the iPhone - smartphones were a business niche and had crappy hardware, the first iPhone was triple the price and expanded smartphones to everyone on earth.
HoloLens, magic leap are niche products (the latter also being crappy hardware), meta’s hardware is better but still mediocre and constrained by their lack of computing platform. Apple’s hardware is a lot more expensive and if successful will expand the market to everyone in a few hardware revisions.
> the negative image of wearing goggles on your head
This isn't about image, it's about the discomfort of wearing heavy goggles pressed against your face. Doing that for anything more than an hour or so is horrible, and it's pretty bad even after ten minutes.
People dislike wearing glasses if they can afford to, I don't believe you'll ever get them to wear these heavy goggles for anything except some deeply immersive gaming experiences.
personally i think both meta and apple will see success with their ar/vr solutions, it will take years for the ergonomics to be acceptable but they are laying the groundwork for the content and software now
The mass market appeal of this thing is, primarily, a portable setup with 2 4k screens and top-notch eye-tracking. The latter is very important, and I think will be a usability boon for literally every computer user, whatever they use it for, perhaps beyond what we expect.
I can imagine going to the coffee shop to work on some code, and instead of using a laptop, whip this thing out, while sitting on a comfy couch sipping a latte... And if I want to play an immersive game for a bit, I can do that too.
I have a different perception; Apple Vision Pro is not the MVP for AR but just the next iteration of these devices.
The original MVP for AR was Microsofts HoloLens and especially HoloLens 2. The later one has many of the AVP features already in place (hand and eye tracking, spatial awareness etc.) and has proven on a professional level to be a useful tool.
Who else has used a vr headset for programming? That may be my biggest use case for this. Currently I need to deal with low fidelity headsets connected to my MacBook and it's hard to read code that I'm writing with the quest.
I really hope this will be my solution, a true VR computer like the Simula One (which I feel like this is competing against).
I have used the Quest Pro. I'm the ideal user, writing code on my MacBook most of the day from multiple locations, but the resolution is just too low to be comfortable for long periods. It is perfectly legible, just not sharp enough at comfortable sizes so I gave up on it. Really hoping Vision Pro fits the bill.
The Google Glass mention brings back memories of that launch. The tech circles were abuzz with how revolutionary that device was going to be. It would change productivity and humanity forever!
Some people really did wear them everywhere. It was weird. And quickly stigmatized as I recall.
I don't think this is a necessary condition for AR. Just take the computer off and put it down. Or better, don't wear it to begin with.
From what I remember, most of the stigma was always having a camera pointed directly at the person you were talking to at all times. That was just needlessly "socially aggressive" on Google's part.
The tech was definitely a cool proof-of-concept and the route I wish VR/AR would have taken. AR has so many more impactful use cases - think a navigation HUD or hands-free control of music while driving/biking or doing other things with your hands.
Of note, ARKit is about 6 years old now. The Vision Pro may be an MVP for _immersive_ AR, but handheld AR has been viable for many years. Pokemon Go is also nearly 6 years old. WordLens debuted maybe 10 years ago. No one has really come up with anything more useful than those to date.
Totally immersive is VR. For mobility, nothing beats a phone. This is threading a needle of immersive and mobile and I'm not sure what the value prop for that could possibly be.
On one hand, if anyone is going to crack it, it's going to be Apple. They seem to have made the best possible "giant uncomfortable helmet strapped to your face".
On the other, I have no interest in VR/AR until it hits a "better Google glass" level. Something that looks and feels like a normal pair of glasses, but has things like AR navigation, text message popups, or hands-free ability to change music by "looking" at a button. Unfortunately that tech seems to be ~10+ years out.
AR vs VR, spatial vs social, etc are just marketing gimmicks. Both Meta and Apple are putting out the same basic products, but they are available at different price points and different levels of quality. Why are they the same? It's a screen mounted inside a goggle that you put in front of your eyes. It shows you 3D things, they have cameras that allow you view a video stream from the outside and overlay things on top of that. Extra screen? More precise eye tracking? Higher res? Way better on Apple's headset, but also way more expensive what else would you expect?
Over time Apple will put out cheaper less featureful products, and Meta will make their hand and eye tracking better etc. Meta will include better integration with Windows/Mac for work, Apple will get beat saber, etc. In the very early days of iOS v Android, the two OSs were very distinct and choosing one or the other was a significant choice. By about version 5, the OSs were at feature parity, all phone makers had different phones at different price points, etc. The excitement was gone and we had mature capable phones all around. The VR headsets will play out the same way.
I really want head mounted displays to get good. I’ve have an irrational burning desire to build a wearable computing rig since I read Snowcrash in college.
There is no upper bound on how stupid I am willing to look to achieve this goal.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadI know there's supposed to be some kind of custom magnetic Zeiss lenses you can pop in, but I don't fully understand how they're supposed to work — do they replace your glasses, or are they to adapt your glasses vision to an AR space.
There were a few tidbits in the iOS and watchOS portions of the recent keynote focusing on vision issues, so it's nice to see Apple taking it seriously. But I don't understand the solution.
And, as the article notes, I think it is an early-adopter device that isn't worth the price tag, and probably doesn't deliver on even 1/10 of what it needs to for mass adoption - but I don't think that Apple intended it to.
The hardware for ambient light AR also sucks, it’s why HoloLens, magic leap and such are not compelling. It’ll be a while before that’s a viable option (and why Apple is committed to pass through currently).
The VisionPro is a far less comfortable, far less portable, more power-hungry version of an iPad, with a few gimmicky 2.5D/3D stuff built in, for $3500. Is it really going to take anyone away from a laptop? Perhaps, but not that many people.
My work setup is basically just ssh + VSCode Remote + browser (on multiple screens) so it could easily be ported over to Vision Pro in a way that the iPad with its single screen couldn't support.
They could pivot into gaming, that's not a bad bet, especially if they manage to shove an M5 Max or whatever into the headset eventually.
The current “executive toy” vision is, I believe, just a stop-gap measure until they get the hardware cheaper and games ported.
I don’t believe anyone wants to work in 2D with a thing strapped to their face for hours on end. Sure you get a bigger screen but it’s also super uncomfortable, especially this metal and glass conception. It’s only worth it if you are doing something in 3D, like playing a game.
Macbook Pro vs. Macbook kind of thing.
There is probably quite a bit of room to cut out things, first and foremost the EyeSight ( even though it's cool ) to get to a more reasonable product.
I don't believe there's an internal buffer battery either (IIRC it was mentioned on the ATP podcast, who were told by an Apple rep) so you can't hotswap the external pack, as the article suggests you could, without completely rebooting the headset.
I fully expect the more pared-down cheaper mainstream consumer versions to be plastic though, much like the cheaper AirPods.
I think they mentioned that the battery can be charged by usb-c, so you could potentially attach a power bank or to the wall to extend the battery life, also I hope that Apple allows 3rd party batteries so you could buy one with more capacity (but knowing Apple they might add some extra chips inside the battery render that harder).
The front glass is more scratch resistant than plastic but in exchange it's going to be instantly obliterated if you drop it the wrong way, so pick your poison.
https://atp.fm/538 at 3 hours 16 minutes
I haven't been able to find a first-hand source stating otherwise.
If this range of devices doesn’t do it for VR/AR (once the price comes down), nothing will.
I think some people do like that type of attention, but whether or not it reaches a critical mass where it doesn't make you stick out is what I'm waiting for.
iPad apps will run unmodified as basically virtual floating iPads which is nice, but not anything too special. What's much more interesting is that existing iPadOS apps can be transformed into first-class visionOS apps by just checking the "visionOS" checkbox in Xcode, which gets the app the full 2.5D treatment with all of the various controls taking on the expected visionOS appearance and behavior.
This means that the Vision Pro is probably going to have by far the best selection of day-1 apps that any AR/MR headset has ever had. Most of these apps won't be anything revolutionary of course since they're adapted versions of existing apps, but it makes the platform much more practically usable.
Only spatial computing apps matter.
Don't get me wrong, it's cool and I'm intrigued, but 2.5D controls are about as groundbreaking as skeuomorphism.
One of the clear goals of the product is to serve as an alternative to monitors. In that sense, any productivity tool (like the newly launched Final Cut Pro and Logic Studio for iPad) would immediately be extremely useful in visionOS, even if it’s not fully spatially aware.
It may not be the flagship spatial computing experience, but that doesn’t mean it should be thrown out as a “cheap trick” either. It likely is the more common experience for day to day interaction with the device, which is Apple’s goal.
Hear yourself man, you’re saying be able to look at iPad apps on a big monitor is the killer app for Apple Vision Pro.
MacBooks with Apple Silicon processors can run a shitton of iPad apps natively. App developers can choose not to have their apps listed in the store if they want, but many do.
Or you can just… plug an iPad into a monitor with USB-C.
The goalposts you set yourself are on the other side of the field. Stick to them.
When the Apple ecosystem works, it's extremely powerful.
AFAIK it’s only Mac->iPad. If you’re running an app that also exists on your Mac (or equivalent like a browser) then you’d be able to take over the context on your Mac but it isn’t technically “[throwing] iPad Apps up on any monitor”.
They’re most definitely on an anti-Apple/Vision Pro crusade given their replies, but they asked for a specific thing and I gave them the exact thing they asked for.
> basically virtual floating iPads which is nice, but not anything too special
Instead, it was saying that being able to interact with those apps in a spatial way will be valuable:
> What's much more interesting is that existing iPadOS apps can… [get] the full 2.5D treatment with all of the various controls taking on the expected visionOS appearance and behavior
That’s not what the person said, but also it might actually be the “killer app” for the vision pro.
Having a large, high-fidelity monitor anywhere you go would be extremely useful. Maybe useful enough to get people to keep coming back to the Vision Pro after the novelty wears off.
Multi monitor setups are overrated anyway. I work entirely off a laptop screen and only a portion of that screen is where my focus is most of the time. Having multiple monitors at my desk is mostly for decoration and looking like you’re a big deal. Switching a virtual desktop isn’t hard.
Some creative types could legitimately use multiple monitors to lay out a lot of content, but I also don’t think those creatives will necessarily prefer an Apple Vision Pro over their existing tools, unless they’re doing something truly spatial like sculpting out a life size car or something. But that’s definitely not the norm. Most people are just going to browse web sites and stare at spreadsheets.
I staunchly disagree with this. I work from home and as such have no reason to optimize my desk for showing off or acting like a big shot, and find that having at least one extra monitor is a huge productivity boost because for most tasks, it practically eliminates the need to juggle applications or windows — everything that's relevant for the task at hand can remain visible the whole time without a cramped tiled windows setup. Virtual desktops are great but to me, work best in concert for switching tasks rather than being used as a tool to corral windows on a single screen.
When I need to work away from my desk, it's somewhat frustrating even with a 16" laptop.
I get that you don't care about having a big monitor, but it shouldn't be surprising that other people want big monitors. Personally, I hate working on my laptop screen, if I can use the Apple Vision Pro as a remote monitor while traveling, that's certainly worth some amount of money to me.
No, it's a way to mitigate the "chicken and egg" problem for the platform. Having existing apps to make the device immediately useful is important, even if they're not all exploiting the capabilities of the platform immediately.
Nobody knew what the point of a microcomputer was back in the Apple II days (at the time I thought it was crazy that anyone would buy a computer rather than design and build their own). The best anyone could imagine with was keeping recipes and playing games. Yet the killer app was Visicalc, with analysts and accountants buying their own (expensive!) apple IIs and visicalc and getting around MIS (what's called IT these days).
The second consideration is "onramp". Clicking a button and being able to experiment with an app you've already written yourself is way better than being given sample code. Likewise the crufty skeuomorphic cues (from the desktop metaphor of PARC and then the Mac to the "leather" of the ios notepad and shiny "wheels" of its date picker) are important onramps that get people using something so that they can develop the correct metaphors. It wasn't Apple who came up with "pull to refresh", it was the developers (Brichter's app Tweetie, then quickly adopted by others).
So while you're right in the long game, I think your dismissal is premature.
That’s the question: what is the killer app for VR? Seems like it could be gaming but I didn’t see a lot of gaming examples during the keynote.
When I say onramp: Visicalc made the Apple II but I do think gaming got it into the home.
People sound like they are over-rating how good interacting with 2d apps with goggles can be. It is "really neat", a really wow experience the first few times but it quickly gets old and things like "scratching your nose" or "drinking coffee" become far more valuable features than anything the goggles can provide.
I think we are in for a frustrating few years where the faithful go absolutely bananas over this because of the Apple brand until people quietly admit that they don't actually like having their peripheral vision filled with fake scenary or app windows or whatever. It's much nicer to see your real cat snoozing on your desk instead.
Yes, but these apps aren't native to the interaction patterns of AR/VR. They're adapted touch apps, which makes them as awkward as touch apps adapted to a desktop OS are.
Native visionOS apps have full affordances for eye and hand-based navigation and should be a good deal more pleasant to use in AR than emulated touch apps will be.
I quite enjoyed browsing the web in various VR headsets, it's a fun novelty experience, but it's not sticky as a tool because it's not adding anything to the experience yet adds the irritation of goggles.
Namely it’s not AR…
1. The ease of use of installing Android apps. This is the constant flaw of all the “well XYZ also does this” arguments from tech folks that ignore the flow of the process
https://www.androidcentral.com/how-sideload-apps-oculus-ques...
That’s not exactly something most people will be doing
2. As the person you’re replying to said, the iPad app can adopt visionOS features within the same codebase. The android apps cannot, because there’s no progressive API.
2. I just don't rate them. The magic of 3d headsets that differentiates them from 2D for me has been "presence". To stand in front of a massive temple in Skyrim or something and feel like you are there, it's special and can't be replicated in 2D to the same extent. As soon as you get into a focussed state e.g. a game loop churning out iron daggers to level a skill, presence doesn't matter. Your area of attention is quite small and having a headset on is just a pain in ass. 2d apps are in the latter category for me.
My basic rule of thumb is that if you don't already render the content in 3d on a 2d screen, "spatial" doesn't have much to offer besides gimmickery.
You’re also oddly fixated on games, which is clearly not what the product is focused on delivering.
That’s just incongruent and reductive to the argument at hand.
But to your last point, that’s exactly what the progressive APIs let you do. You can integrate 3D elements on top of your windowed iPad. You’re thinking in “either 3D or 2D”, whereas this is allowing developers to progressively adopt the entire gamut within the singular app which can target iOS and visionOS.
The quest just can’t do that.
Well, the reason I bought a number of headsets was for developing productivity applications. I just found that it was a bit of a deadend and that the only meaningful value was in existing 3d experiences (games, modelling, visualisation). I couldn't find the value in spatialising 2d productivity experiences. Hence the heuristic, if there was any value, we would already be wasd-ing our way around a 3d view in our 2d tools. There have always been a stream of 3d experiments like debuggers or knowledgement management tools but they just don't offer value compared to 2d text-oriented experiences.
Some of the talk about Spatial, feels like a pendullum swing back to Hacker's "Gibson" or Jurrasic Park's "Unix, I know this" 3d interfaces that were assumptions of what would be useful in 3D, and we have made real versions of these, but they just suck. Classic case of imagination / reality mismatch that often comes with tech.
> allowing developers to progressively adopt the entire gamut
That is just the "how", not the "why".
It would be "wow" for sure, but also - spatial memory is one of the easiest to hijack and repurpose for something useful. Of course, being able to visualize the codebase like this would require a Smalltalk-level system (I'm seeing a chance here for Smalltalk & Moose/Roassal/Mondrian/GToolkit/etc.).
The problem: once you get to that model, you need to read it. And until now reading lots of text in VR wasn't the best experience, not without things costing $10k+. So, the idea is shelved and waits for a good opportunity in the future... Maybe.
I'm still not sure if it's enough to be successful, but if an AR/VR device is to finally take off, an iteration of the VP is probably it.
You really believe that an app made for touch on a fixed 2D screen will miraculously be pleasant to use in VR/AR just by checking a box?
You have to say "Ok I'm going to play Candy Crush now" and get your headset, put it on, and then do that, with largely your full attention unable to multitask because it's big.
I doubt people will want to use any of these apps beyond the gimmick novelty.
If you can fill your physical space with floating virtual iPads, what will it be like to touch and manipulate them? You don't get to actually press against a screen when you press or scroll. If you wanted to "hold" a screen while manipulating it with the other screen, what will that be like?
I'm just speculating. I find touch and weight etc to be important, personally.
I'm also concerned about the weight of the headset, again, because I find touch and weight to be important.
And about how it works for people with glasses who can't wear contact lenses (perhaps you could have prescription lenses built into the headsets one day?)
Consider Android tablets, folding phones, or basically any Android device with a large format display. Basically all modern Android apps work on those devices, with practically no effort required of the devs. But most Android apps were built exclusively for smartphones, with small vertical displays. Only apps which have been developed to account for large displays actually provide a good user experience on those devices. Sure, there's still value in having a big library of apps that technically work on the new platform. But if the AVP experience for an app is worse than the platform it was built for, most people will probably try it out and quickly switch back to the platform they used before.
The AVP really needs a killer app to convince people to invest in it. If it can capture that investment, there will be an incentive for devs to start building their apps for it and it can grow from there. I'm concerned that I haven't seen anything that looks like a "killer app" for the AVP yet.
While there are apps that do this on IOS (Snapchat , Instagram) I believe the introduction of Stage Manager on iPad has prepared IOS app makers for dynamic windowing better than Android Tablets and folding phones have.
It’s more like a fanboy article
The big Apple hits have been the perfected version of products that already had massive markets
Like the iPod launching into the music/mp3 player space or the iPhone into the phone/personal device space
The Vision seems to be going counter to this, launching one of the earlier products into a undeveloped market
> The big Apple hits have been the perfected version of products that already had massive markets
Uh...
Did you own the first iPhone? It had no apps and no horizontal typing. It didn't even have 3g. Few if any mobile sites. Small screen. Bad battery life.
Did you own the first iPod? 5gb. Firewire connection (which were hard to come by). The scroll wheel was an ACTUAL wheel. You needed a mac to use. Again, bad battery life.
I won't even go into the early mac desktops and laptops.
Those were MVP's on the market. Where we are now with those products didn't dictate where were were then. The did the bare minimum to be considered products.
Those might have been MVPs in terms of what Apple can do
But the markets were already there
Millions/billions of people who already owned a personal music player or a cellphone
Compare the size and maturity of those markets to the current VR/AR market
There is an argument to be made for iPhone vs. media players. The Irivers and the like were comparable functionally. The iPhone just had a killer app… the iTunes Store.
Apple’s success is about their appeal
The iPhone was not a success because of the iTunes Store
The iPhone was a success because it was a status symbol
And having the latest one still is
Having a Vision Pro is not
You may be forgetting just how dismal the phone market was when the iPhone was released. As basic as it was, the first iPhone was astronomically better than any other phone on the market.
In the last 15 years, the rest of the market has mostly caught up, but the iPhone is still one of the best phones you can get and the best phone you can buy that runs iOS, if that's your preference.
They were arguably minimal for what Apple intended to do. They obviously wanted to carve out new categories and create products that would not be fungible with the competition in the minds of consumers, which from their perspective would raise the bar on what the minimum is.
But, in terms of the market, the iPod was not a minimum viable music player, and the iPhone was not a minimum viable phone.
Notes on iPod, 5GB was a very large capacity at the time, and the iPod was smaller than competitors with similar capacity. The wheel was very extra as a concept, however implemented. It had 10 hours of playtime on a single charge. It was built well from steel and polycarbonate. This was a premium product.
Also the physical wheel was amazingly good UX, and very responsive.
I think all the other players WANT VR to take off, but haven't yet made a truly compelling offering that attracts anything but nerds. Apple has been forced to step in early to encourage the market to develop. Just like the others this first version will be early adopters, nerds and developers only but Apple will make it MORE compelling (unlike Meta who made their "pro" model less compelling) for the mass markets with future iterations because that is just what Apple does.
Seems clear to me that's not a minimum requirement for viability. The ease of integrating the device into the situations where is might be useful is certainly important, but there's a sliding scale. I'm not sure where it becomes viable, but I don't think it's all the way at the end of the scale.
Actually, I think this entire analysis is backwards. The question isn't how far from perfect the Vision Pro, or any other VR/AR/MR device is, but whether it does enough things well enough to be worth the trouble.
(For me, it looks like the VP does not, mainly due to the price tag. That's even assuming some new major drawbacks that become apparent once it's released.)
Apple going into VR seems like the first time they've taken an actual risk in a long time. I'll buy it day 1 if it allows me to create a solid virtual workspace with multiple monitors synced to my laptop.
But for consumer market they are going to have to find a way to drop the price over time and get people over the negative image of wearing goggles on your head
and there's the simple fact that you won't be able to wear these publicly in most major cities without getting robbed, which limits their use
At the time mp3 players were a niche with crappy hardware and low capacity. The iPod was a lot more expensive and a lot better - it caused general adoption.
Similar for the iPhone - smartphones were a business niche and had crappy hardware, the first iPhone was triple the price and expanded smartphones to everyone on earth.
HoloLens, magic leap are niche products (the latter also being crappy hardware), meta’s hardware is better but still mediocre and constrained by their lack of computing platform. Apple’s hardware is a lot more expensive and if successful will expand the market to everyone in a few hardware revisions.
This isn't about image, it's about the discomfort of wearing heavy goggles pressed against your face. Doing that for anything more than an hour or so is horrible, and it's pretty bad even after ten minutes.
People dislike wearing glasses if they can afford to, I don't believe you'll ever get them to wear these heavy goggles for anything except some deeply immersive gaming experiences.
I can imagine going to the coffee shop to work on some code, and instead of using a laptop, whip this thing out, while sitting on a comfy couch sipping a latte... And if I want to play an immersive game for a bit, I can do that too.
Also I can tell you haven’t used VR because eating while using it is nearly impossible.
The original MVP for AR was Microsofts HoloLens and especially HoloLens 2. The later one has many of the AVP features already in place (hand and eye tracking, spatial awareness etc.) and has proven on a professional level to be a useful tool.
I really hope this will be my solution, a true VR computer like the Simula One (which I feel like this is competing against).
Some people really did wear them everywhere. It was weird. And quickly stigmatized as I recall.
I don't think this is a necessary condition for AR. Just take the computer off and put it down. Or better, don't wear it to begin with.
The tech was definitely a cool proof-of-concept and the route I wish VR/AR would have taken. AR has so many more impactful use cases - think a navigation HUD or hands-free control of music while driving/biking or doing other things with your hands.
Totally immersive is VR. For mobility, nothing beats a phone. This is threading a needle of immersive and mobile and I'm not sure what the value prop for that could possibly be.
On the other, I have no interest in VR/AR until it hits a "better Google glass" level. Something that looks and feels like a normal pair of glasses, but has things like AR navigation, text message popups, or hands-free ability to change music by "looking" at a button. Unfortunately that tech seems to be ~10+ years out.
Over time Apple will put out cheaper less featureful products, and Meta will make their hand and eye tracking better etc. Meta will include better integration with Windows/Mac for work, Apple will get beat saber, etc. In the very early days of iOS v Android, the two OSs were very distinct and choosing one or the other was a significant choice. By about version 5, the OSs were at feature parity, all phone makers had different phones at different price points, etc. The excitement was gone and we had mature capable phones all around. The VR headsets will play out the same way.
Like we're trying to succeed at entering in The Matrix.