Wow, imagine if Apple starts integrating their stores with their products into connected life experiences. The stores become showcases for personalized experiences for life, work, and play. Companies are already integrating Watch and VisionPro with biofeedback. Might be something consumers need to deeply experience to believe, from the spatial desktop to music, games, and movies, desk to couch to bed.
Ah yes, the joys of traveling through high crime mall areas to arrive at a crowded Apple Store. At least one has a permanent police presence at the door.
Imagine walking into an Apple Store and seeing as new customers are getting fitted and exploring these experiences on 100” OLEDs. Converting the masses requires displaying entirely new experiences, from work to play.
1000%. I’ve worked for almost 15 years in empathic computing, what we have now for screen time is already deeply dystopian. So the question remains how next generation computing experiences can make our connected lives better. Because connectivity isnt going away, and maybe if we’re strapping it to our face we’ll be much more conscious of the times we choose not to.
You understand that this is miserable and dystopian, right? As humans we shouldn't be leading that kind of "integrated", "personalized" life. We already have too much of that going on with YouTube and Facebook.
Better context switching from work to meditation to entertainment then sleep. Anything health serious in that direction with biomarkers would be far better than what we have now for screen time.
I can understand this being a differentiator to other AR/VR products, but that is not exactly what the comment I replied to said, they said the “killer app” was the ability to buy it at an Apple Store. Short of a few folks with too much extra cash and curiosity, just being able to try it before you buy isn’t what I would refer to as a killer app. The “killer app” is what gets the main market populace to the store to even consider it.
I’m squarely in the target market for the Meta Quest, but the fact I have no way of trying one before I buy, even just for a few minutes, is my main blocker for getting one.
This is particularly important for a) new product categories where customers aren’t yet sure they want/need it, b) products that “fit”, or don’t, and c) expensive entertainment products. These headsets are all three, so it’s really important.
That's typical for most products like that but it doesn't solve the problem. The issue is only partly "will I like it" or "will it fit me", for which a free return policy can help (but not fully solve), but a lot of the issue is "why would I want this". If you walk past one in a shop and can give it a go you're much more likely to overcome that than spending £300 on one and having to go through the return process.
Aside, I hear a lot more about free returns from people in the US. In the UK they are seemingly near-universal, but there is significantly less willingness to return outside of specific categories such as clothing. I have a little experience working in a retailer (as a software engineer), and US return rates were far higher than UK/EU return rates, and this was apparently considered typical.
I think the friction can come across to some customers as good service, and help launch a category.
The Apple Watch was initially sold at fitting appointments in store, and I think that was important in establishing it as a normal thing to wear and even a fashionable thing to wear in some cases, and helped cement the product in the mainstream.
Tailored suits is another case where there’s a premium price, premium service, but a lot of friction. It’s not always bad.
They’re also probably supply constrained enough that the friction doesn’t matter for the first version or two.
Apple absolutely needed to normalise the idea that a £300 black puck was Luxury Fashion. See what happened to Google Glass for when a company fails to make a wearable product fashionable, and we've been wearing expensive glasses for hundreds of years. Watch nerds still shun it today, although Apple has managed to break through as much as they needed to make it a success.
They absolutely did. Smartwatches were mostly seen as tacky before the Apple Watch. That’s part of why they chose a different form factor and partnered with luxury brands for bracelet. For Apple to make wearing them seems normal was not a given at all.
The Moto 360 was out before the Apple watch. I know that for a fact because I got one on the release date. They were pretty hard to find when they came out.
Apple was late to the game with smartwatches and didn't do a single thing to convince people to wear them.
And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.
I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
> And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.
Source please! That's not how I remember the release, I recall it was very well recieved and sold out everywhere with the battery life being the biggest complaint.
> I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else. Your opinion is not the general consensus or a source for anything so find a reliable 3rd party to back you up that isn't a random blogpost by Joe nobody.
> I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same world than some of the commenters here.
Here is The Verge review of the Moto360: [https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review]. A few selected quotes by me: “It’s designed to prove that smartwatches don’t have to be ugly.”, “It’s not a gadget, it’s a watch”, “At 11.5mm, it’s a little thick”, “ Everything before it was a screen on your wrist”. And that’s the Verge being incredibly nice with the 360. Truth is it was very much still seen as a tacky piece of technology bolted to your wrist.
It took me two minutes to find by the way because this kind of reviews were literally everywhere in the years leading to the release of the Apple Watch.
> you think Apple invented wearing watches as a fashion statement with their release of the Apple watch in 2015.
No, I said that Apple successfuly turned smartwatches from something seen as gadget into something seen as a proper acceptable watch, which they most definitely did as I have proved to you with my previous message (which you are conveniently ignoring by the way).
The watch industry is very fashion conscious. Swatch Group managed to turn mechanical watches - a clearly inferior product which not only can't keep time properly but has to be serviced every couple of years - into something of seen as timeless and the embodiment of success so clearly Apple was walking a well paved road.
Before the Apple Watch, no mainstream celebrities were photographed wearing smart watches. After the Apple Watch, celebrities are regularly photographed wearing just one type of smart watch – the Apple Watch.
Whether you like it or not, for most people, celebrity culture drives luxury culture, and even in the top end markets it's still a leading indicator even if it's not driving it.
I'm open to hearing constructive arguments against this, but it seems very clear to me.
some people wear them, most of them clueless I-wear-it-too crowd. I see a lot of people around me / commuting wearing Garmin watches (ie fenix 7 pro), now that's a conversation starter.
The big win I think will be the App Store rather than just the Apple Store. the App Store will provide reducing the need to take the headset off to use general apps.
When you use an oculus, if you need to do something like reply to a text, check an email or reply to someone on social media, you have to take off your headset or kill your current task and switch to virtual desktop.
Having all your iOS apps on it, and being able to multitask means people won’t be taking off their headset as often and they’ll not have to consider dedicated VR time.
The first thing Apple says about battery life is "all day while plugged in". The device is intended to be used as long as desired while plugged in, just like a laptop.
This has been mostly missed by reviewers and pundits. They’ve presented a primarily sitting/static experience; the battery is for when you need to walk around between sedentary moments. In that context 2 hrs is going to be (mostly) plenty
> The big win I think will be the App Store rather than just the Apple Store
It won't be using the app store, though. It's using a brand-new store, built from scratch. No iOS apps will be there unless the authors rewrite them to be compatible with visionOS.
The reasons I would not like to have one of these devices ;
* Apple's closed moat
* App store lock-in
* 'DLC' model whereby not a single thing you do on this $3,500 device will be free - and no matter what app you choose, Apple takes 30% of whatever revenue stream that app wants...
* The piss-poor apple fix-service market, and their shitty designs of the iphone which break so fn easily that VCs (YC+) have had to invest in cottage industry of phone repairs
I've had iphones since the first day of launch... and while I prefer them over android, I still hate ios ecosystem.
The infra-mechanics of it are awesome, but compared to the smarmy and condescending greedy Apple, i still hate ios.
While I sympathize with feeling disappointed in having to pay for apps for use with such an expensive headset, I believe that its price would have severely restricted the number of free apps available for it in the first place. Developers are going to want to recuperate their investment, and that'd remain true even if it were possible to install whatever one pleased on it.
It's technically possible to develop on the simulator alone, but given that the simulator is confined to a 2D window on a computer screen I can't imagine that apps developed in this manner would be able to stand up to competition developed without such limitations.
Yeah, I understand both sides of the Coin. I appreciate your response, and it deepens my concern is that there will be an entirely new DLC-ish content model whereby you have one price for an ios app - and then a different price for the "Apple Headset AR *EXPERIENCE*" version of all the apps - and certain features will be lock-outs to non AR-paying-premium customers...
Its just FN financially-dystopian
---
@scarface_74 ;
"*May you please ELI5 expand on your comment - as I am OOTL and would like to understand what you mean, precisely. (because I want to learn, kthxbai)*"
Surprisingly the GP didn't include price of the device as a reason, but the 30% Apple cut/likely uplift in price that developers need to charge to recuperate development costs - which are far more significant than developer hardware costs.
A non-Apple device without the moat would be better. GP also didn't ask for free apps.
> The reasons I would not like to have one of these devices ;
I'm sure there are a number of people here who will agree with you.
On the other hand, the fact that Apple now has a $3 trillion-with-a-"t" market cap indicates that most people do not care about any of these issues. Not in the slightest.
Having replied to a text, checked my emails and responded to people on HN all from my first-gen Oculus Quest, I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. Do you not find a web browser sufficient for those tasks? Is there something inherent to the Quest ecosystem that should be stopping me here?
1. Many people prefer apps over browser experiences.
2. Many commonly used apps don’t have a browser experiences with equivalent features. Take Instagram for example.
3. With the Quest , you can’t really multitask, except for the Quest Pro.
The Quest 1-3 are equivalent to game consoles in many ways. I can use a web browser on my PS4. It doesn’t mean it’s a full productivity system with multitasking.
There used to be a Microsoft store in the big mall near me. It turned into a babysitting service for parents who dropped their kids off to play with the Xbox.
I don’t think people who pack Apple stores are target audience. From my experience they’re either not a target audience (older, non tech savvy) or lack funds (teenagers).
Can we please get rid of the stereotype that older people aren't "tech savvy"?
Older people today have been using computers since they were in their teens or twenties. Conversely, I know a 20-something woman who can't understand why her iMessages quit working when she switched to an Android phone, despite explaining it to her multiple times.
I always hated that stereotype too. Those older people were the ones to design our current processors, operating systems, and the internet and web itself. The people who sent man to the moon would be nearing 80-100 years old already.
There's a non-trivial portion of population that is familiar with the concept of having products fit to them personally: made-to-order uniforms, glasses, other sorts of assistive products.
I find it surprising that this is less common than it was in the past, and that people are more willing to put up with something that’s a subpar fit for them. One tech example that would benefit from custom fit are in-ear headphones. It would make sure that product is a perfect fit for every customer every time, rather than roughly every single customer having to put up with a suboptimal fit and poor comfort.
Fitting and customizing things takes time and is expensive. That fully explains the trend. Before industrialized mass production, making an item by hand and to fit someone's specific needs was only slightly more effort than to make some "average" fit item.
An Apple enthusiast not willing to go to the Apple Store? When I went to NYC, the Apple Store there was like nerd Mecca with people taking pictures in front of it.
Why xR enthusiasts don't? Though population is smaller, I suspect that they want to buy it more than average Apple enthusiasts (for %). They may already imagined use cases. They know that equip HMD is okay. xR sometimes needs enough big room but Apple enthusiasts haven't prepared for it.
you underestimate apple enthusiasts. they may not have already prepared, but the device isn’t already out.
besides, not all apple enthusiasts are wealthy. some will prepare last minute, by selling furniture to make space and help fund the headset. it doesn’t matter if that sounds silly, if it happens.
this is why apple goes slow. bring the ecosystem enthusiast to the object by attempting to integrate the object into the ecosystem first. start with the most eager, guide them in, let them deal with the growing pains, convert enough to full believers in the new object.
public-ish beta with an exclusive-ish signup fee.
apple isn’t merely training enthusiasts in how to use a headset. they are training fans that sell product. enthusiasts talk. easiest way into the ecosystem is with a guide, and even better if that’s a friend or loved one not getting paid to do so.
the least important part about this product is the product. it’s expanding the ecosystem into new territory. show apple enthusiasts that perhaps they want to be xr enthusiasts.
Most people live in urban areas though. Nova Scotia has only a million inhabitants and half of them live in Halifax where I assume the Apple Store is. If something needs fitting and prescription lenses it seems reasonable that a physical location needs to be visited and this is the kind of trade off one makes when moving to a rural area. I'd bet that this will still be convenient for the vast majority of the population.
That one store in Nova Scotia is pretty much the Atlantic Canada store being the closest for most people in Newfoundland, PEI and a huge chunk of New Brunswick (on the Western side the Québec City store is closer maybe, still hours away). There's plenty of non-rural areas there without an Apple Store.
There is still 4 U.S states that lack an Apple store entirely. It's not like Wal-mart or even Best Buy.
I believe that your memory is not as perfect as you believe.
> Beginning at 3:01 a.m. ET today, customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting.
> While Apple is directing people to the website to schedule a 15-minute fitting experience, they'll also accommodate walk-ins if time permits. Customers can also play with an Apple Watch display unit that lets them demo the interface. However they won't be able to try one on without meeting with an Apple employee.
> What It's Like to Get an Apple Watch Fitting Appointment on the 1st Day
ABC News tech editor Alyssa Newcomb gets in-store appointment.
Allow me to repeat myself: I had the original Apple Watch on pre-order from the online store and did not need to visit a physical location for fitting first.
I am not misremembering. I even still have the order invoice and delivery notification from the courier in my email archive.
See operative "or" in the quoted "customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting".
I believe that your memory is not as perfect as you believe.
> Beginning at 3:01 a.m. ET today, customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting.
> While Apple is directing people to the website to schedule a 15-minute fitting experience, they'll also accommodate walk-ins if time permits. Customers can also play with an Apple Watch display unit that lets them demo the interface. However they won't be able to try one on without meeting with an Apple employee.
> What It's Like to Get an Apple Watch Fitting Appointment on the 1st Day
ABC News tech editor Alyssa Newcomb gets in-store appointment.
Do you share your iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, AirPods or Apple Watch with friends and family? It’s touted as a work machine first and foremost right? Do you share your work laptop with others? Apple exec logic I’m sure.
I get what you’re saying and it’s hard to describe (and never really does it justice) the experience of this technology. It’s something you have to experience yourself to understand.
It shouldn’t have to be explained that dedicated video game hardware and personal mobile computers have very different use cases and sharing cultures around them.
Do you share the use of your tv with friends and family?
Regardless of Apple's marketing, for the vast majority of people this will be a media consumption device first and a media creation device second, just like the iPad. And you absolutely share your media consumption devices (television, game consoles, iPads) with your family/housemates.
I share my PlayStation and AppleTV with friends and family. And, yeah, my kid regularly uses my iPad and family members definitely use one another’s phones on occasion. Also the Vision Pro is expensive enough that not every family member will get one — if there’s one in the house it sure would be cool if everyone could use it.
It sure sounds like anyone in a household can use it but if anyone has a different eyeglass corrective lens prescription (very likely unless everyone still has 20/20 vision) from the primary user it’s a very substandard experience.
Apple already does laser engraving for products bought in the online store. For the price point of this thing, they can probably move engraving into the retail stores (not long ago, I bought a laser engraver for my hobby 3D printer for a few hundred bucks -- they're not expensive, certainly not by Apple Store standards).
As for getting lost, Apple already has their AirTag technology. While I don't know if that's already in these lenses, it doesn't seem like it'd be difficult to add.
Even if they’re magnetic and easy to swap, it sounds a LOT clunkier than just handing someone an iPad. People are going to lose the lenses all over the place.
Heck, my dad loses his phone multiple times a week, necessitating a quick phone call to track it down. Are the lenses going to include built-in AirTags so people can locate them?
I don’t have a proposal. I’m skeptical of the entire market for this product. I’m taking a wait-and-see approach and I’m looking forward to reading one-year followups from early adopters.
Heck, I’m even skeptical of the iPad. I own one and I use it so seldomly that I have to charge the thing up from 0 every time I use it. But I recognize that a lot of people love them as consumption devices and a few as creation tools for some niche purposes, such as digital painting.
I suck at optics, and optics is a hard topic, so I say it will full humility: I’m always surprised that headset manufacturer can’t correct for most of these vision issues in software.
I think you'd need to be able to control the direction of each photon coming out of the screen, so that it landed in the intended place on the retina after going through the misshapen cornea/lens. That's basically what a corrective lens does. Doing it dynamically for each thing we call a pixel indeed sounds like science fiction.
you could do it with lasers, using lasers to draw directly on the retina. I don't think there would be any way to do this with a pixelarray type screen.. maybe if you could map each pixel to a point on your retina and then modify the rendering .. maybe. the concept reminds me of a generative art piece that Kyle McDonald built: https://www.fastcompany.com/90167836/disco-meets-computer-vi...
Essentially pile up a bunch of mirrorballs. Point projectors at it. Then map where each pixel from each projector ends up on the walls/ceiling/floors.
I think it is just a weird coincidence, but in this thread price and share-ability seem to be negatively correlated.
Consoles, AppleTV, and iPads are at the lower end of the price range here, right? (Well, you can get an expensive iPad of course).
Laptop are expensive but personal, phones… definitely personal, tend to be a little more expensive maybe?
I dunno, it isn’t a straight line correlation but I don’t think the fact that the Vision Pro is expensive tells us much.
In have a Rift CV1, I enjoyed showing it off to people and got some party-game type things (Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes is great for showing the device off). But I don’t use it much solo, and I’ve shown it off to all my friends already, so I don’t use it much. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, but it hasn’t integrated into my daily life.
If I were Apple—word of mouth is good, but I’d hope the Vision Pro becomes something that sort of gets embedded in people’s lives to the point where they don’t care to show it off (either because it becomes personal like a laptop, or because it becomes boring like a monitor).
Your comment is greyed out as if it was downvoted a bit, which seems quite bizarre to me.
I think we’re pretty clearly talking about a small number of contrary data points, here? I’m not trying to prove a general trend at least, just point out that we should at least double check the assumption that expensive implies shared.
If someone is really invested in that idea I’d love to see an argument for it, rather than silent downvotes.
I know plenty of middle class parents who bought their teenagers an old beater because they didn’t want them driving the car they needed to get to work or their expensive car.
Wrecking your first car is almost a teenage rite of package.
Again we are talking about people who are willing to spend $3500 on a headset. Not exactly the demographic of people who are “sharing a family car” and that don’t statistically have separate cars for the parents and don’t either buy their kids a car or subsidize them in some way to help them buy their own.
I know I never let either one of my sons drive my car alone and I bought myself a new car and handed my older one down to my older son and bought my younger son a car before he had a license.
Eh, you have a point. I am not exactly keen on sharing my Valve Index with people because hygiene is important to me. My wife can use it if she wants to.
However, we're talking about a 3500 US dollar (without tax) device and a novelty. Of course people are going to share it if they can.
Ipads are regularly shared in families and vision pro is more expensive than a top range tv which is shared in households. It's a hard sell if if can't be adapted to be used by multiple family members at its price point.
It’s pretty reasonable to share iPads and Macs between people, especially people who can’t afford individual devices for everyone separately. If I bought a VR headset for $3500 anyone being able to use it would be extremely useful
They do sell more expensive iPads. Not exactly unreasonable to want to share a $1000+ nice iPad Pro among a few people rather than buy multiple bottom tier devices.
Yes, it’s indeed very common to share iPad with kids and to have a laptop shared amongst family members. That’s why users exist and were such a hugely requested features of iPadOS (something Apple actually took ages to acknowledge because well, Apple).
Apple doesn't want to share even for iPad, as they don't implement multi user feature (except educational usage). I expect that it's same for Vision Pro, and it seems to natural for me. (I argue iPad should support multi user or guest)
You can. The Vision Pro supports a primary user that retains settings/user account/AppleID and a secondary user with gets a “guest” account that resets.
Based on how these work on many existing VR headsets including Quest 2, these are just insets that you can just take out. Probably held magnetically as well.
As described during the keynote, they’re magnetically held in place. You would need one set per user.
As someone that wears glasses with VR, it’s awful. The light gasket presses against them, gets tangled. The band presses against them. I can see why they didn’t bother making it an option, since I often put my headset away because of the discomfort. This is why the quest pro has optional light blockers, and why I never use mine. Leaving enough room for comfortably wearing glasses would make things huge.
> Plus even in the U.S Apple Store's aren't that common
There are 270+ Apple stores in the US, I don't have the figures to hand but an overwhelming percentage of the country's actual population live within an hour of an Apple store. They are common, frankly.
I'm not defending the decision to require a store visit here, but lets not paint a picture of Apple store availability that doesn't exist. The number of people with disposable income in the US to purchase a 3500 dollar headset and actually want to buy one who aren't living under an hour from an Apple store is likely a very small list.
Yeah or in my case the apple store becomes a part of a trip, there's not one near my home but there is one near the beach house I rented this year, so when I wanted a better fitting waterproof watch band I just baked a trip to that store into my trip itinerary.
If I were in the target market for the vision pro I would totally schedule an appointment and drive a couple of hours to get a curated experience and feel confident I'd come home with the right combination of lenses and everything.
And there are plenty of people (including my 80 year old parents) who drive 3 hours from their small town in South Georgia to the nearest bigger city to buy products that they want to be able to see instead of our used online.
In my dads case, music gear
I even know people who would drive from the even smaller places than where my parents live who would drive to my home town to go the mall, movies and Olive Garden.
Even if they came to my house to fit me with it I wouldn't buy it. What problem is it solving for someone other than Apple? We've been seeing this AR pipe-dream for 10+ years and it hasn't caught on. Not because the technology was bad, but because people just don't want it.
What Apple is missing here is that people wanted the iPhone (a phone with an iPod built in) for years before it was even officially announced as under development. It succeeded because the market invented it, not because Apple are geniuses who showed us we needed it.
People want it, but not in this form factor. Like I've been saying regarding Oculus' products for years: VR/AR isn't a bad idea, but nobody wants to strap a set of heavy, sweaty ski goggles to their face for eight hours a day. Just because the newest models are lighter/more comfortable than the old models doesn't mean they're anywhere near acceptable. I'll be passing on these until they're the size and weight of ordinary glasses.
I have been saying it for years, but it remains true of Oculus' modern products, and it remains true of the VP. In ten years it may be different, but today is not ten years from now.
I'll go much further than that: nobody wants to wear ANY pair of glasses.
Some people do because the benefit is literally regaining one of your senses, but even if AR / VR glasses one day become like normal glasses, it will be a niche product.
Nobody's wearing glasses just to get notifications and gimmicks like this. Ever.
The only moment where AR / VR can maybe become mainstream is when we can send signal straight to the brain to generate images (disregarding that there's no way people will be ok with other people controlling their brain).
I (and very many others) very much like wearing our vision-aid glasses, thanks.
There is also an entire industry of eyewear crafted and worn just to look cool (sunglasses have not primarily been a protective aid in a very long time, they're fashion accessories now).
Of course all that's orthogonal to AR/VR, but the idea that "nobody wants to wear glasses" is a bit laughable.
Can you expand on this comment? What have you seen in the AR market that leads you to believe the comment you are responding to is not accurate?
From many observers, we have seen many AR/VR devices fail over the years. Some spectacularly (like Snap Spectacles), and some seem to be just throwing money into a furnace (like Oculus, which hasn't failed, but even with millions of devices sold doesn't seem to be reaching product market fit for anything outside of niche gaming and fitness).
Yes, the Vision Pro is a different device, but there are orthogonal attempts at this kind of screen sharing experience which also have very niche markets, like Sightful's Spacetop laptop.
I get that the Vision Pro has some product differentiation, such as the App Store, the developer ecosystem (debatable at this point compared to other AR products), and so on - but what exactly are you seeing the market today that will drive this demand for Vision Pro? Where is the evidence that customers want this technology?
Objectively, I think it's reasonable to say the technology was bad compared to what is/will be available in the next 12 months. There are actual material technology breakthroughs that really do fundamentally alter the equation (primarily: micro-OLED displays, significantly faster mobile processors and distortion-free pancake optics).
The original phrasing is ambiguous as to whether its acknowledging the tech was bad or not. But it doesn't seem reasonable to conclude that people don't want something until they can experience an implementation of it that isn't "bad".
Snap spectacles weren't AR really. They were just a camera strapped to your glasses. Hololens or magic leap are sort of comparable to the Vision Pro, but they were much worse. The spacetop sounds kind of low quality based on the verge review.
It's an emerging product category. I think the workmachine use case is compelling and I can imagine myself using something like it. The price is steep for a personal device, but I suspect that will be fixed in one or two iterations.
HN users are generally pretty good at predicting the exact opposite of the future. Every obviously good product like Dropbox is claimed to be useless while every obviously crap product like Mastodon or the Librem phone is hyped up as the future.
I may be an old man, but what I want is the opposite of immersive technology. Put a computer on my face? Are you kidding? The one in my pocket already feels increasingly parasitic.
What is this freeing though for a lot of people? Maybe if you’re single and live in a tiny apartment then you wouldn’t have to dedicate a wall to a tv but then again you could already be watching on a tablet/laptop. As a married person with 2 children this would solve nothing. We still need tv to watch, play PlayStation etc as a family and as my wife and I wfh we are still required to use our work issued Windows PCs.
Nah, you're not an old man or anything like that. This is just the mainstream present technological scepticism. At some point marvelous technology became so ubiquitous we became blasé about it.
Cynicism, pessimism, and affected jadedness have always been the way people have attempted to sound cool. Nothing new about that part.
Ultimately, the question is whether your path brings you joy.
I think they are building all this on the hope that they can convince tech addicted kids to strap this stupid ass thing on for many hours per day. I think “on the person” computing devices are reaching their “peak tobacco” moment. Every day more and more people realize how bad it is for your mental and physical health and decide to unplug more and more.
AR feels like 3D TV. Mfgs want it badly so they have a 'next big thing' to sell. Otherwise they risk having their premium product line turn into a boring commodity.
I'm more excited for something like Humane's laser projection system or a less-intrusive, deep-learning driven assistant which uses voice and tactile feedback.
No, objectively the technology and hardware especially are bad. It’s an immature market and the high barriers to entry hinder the progress needed for the market to mature.
It won’t get better without big drives in adoption, adoption won’t happen without big improvements to.. everything. Catch 22
> Not because the technology was bad, but because people just don't want it.
Have you ever used an AR/VR headset for something you generally enjoy (a game, a movie, Google Maps, whatever)?
I ask because my own experience (and the consensus of my network and the critics I read) is that devices like Oculus and the Vive Pro are extraordinarily compelling but overall held back by immature technology. Base stations. Wires. Visible pixels. Low quality video pass through. Stupid controllers you have to hold in your hands.
People see the potential and flashes of what might be, but it's impossible to get beyond the awful user experience.
> What Apple is missing here is that people wanted the iPhone (a phone with an iPod built in) for years before it was even officially announced as under development.
Two thoughts on this:
1) It seems to undermine your point that iPhone launched in 2007 and yet through 2011 failed to come close to outselling iPod in terms of units.
2) The device you are describing -- "a phone with an iPod built in", before the iPhone -- actually did exist. The Motorola ROKR E1, or the "iTunes Phone": it was unveiled in 2005 on stage by Steve Jobs. Motorola did the phone stuff, and Apple did the iPod bit.
It was a dismal failure and was discontinued after roughly a year on the market.
> It succeeded because the market invented it, not because Apple are geniuses who showed us we needed it.
What do you mean by "invented"? Because literally two years before the iPhone launched, the market "invented" a phone with a built-in iPod, manufactured by the leading cell phone manufacturer of the day, in collaboration with Apple, and it failed miserably. Did the market invent that phone?
It's fair to say that Apple is not the first entrant to most market it contributes to, and it's fair to say that they are rarely the progenitors of the technologies their devices rely upon.
What Apple is very good at is deeply understanding when new technologies can be combined or honed to bring them over a threshold of resonance with consumers which drives widespread adoption. It is not enough to simply say "ship a phone with a touch screen' --- folks were doing that for years before iPhone launched. Instead it's about understanding the interplay of latency, brightness, PPI, plural point awareness, manufacturing yields, component costs, and making tradeoffs which pursue a vision which people buy into.
That's why when you said "a phone with an iPod built in" you could have been referring to both iPhone _and_ the ROKR, but the two devices could not be more different: ROKR had a fiddly microSD card for storage. Crummy slow processor and user interface. Stupid tiny keyboard for typing on. WAP internet. Wired transfer speeds slower than high speed USB. Slow java apps. A low resolution TFT LCD display. Only 11 megabytes of onboard memory.
"Gurman says Apple will ensure that the Vision Pro fits the wearer and also outfit the device with prescription lens inserts if needed"
I wear prescription glasses and have gone from single vision to progressive lenses that are stupid expensive. Worse, my prescription changes every visit to the optometrist. How sensitive is the headset's performance to my prescription, how expensive would replacement lenses be, and how difficult would they be to change out? Could I do this myself by ordering updated lenses based on my prescription or would I have to take the headset in?
LASIK can't be considered until your prescription stabilizes for at least a year or two, so that isn't helpful to someone whose prescription is constantly changing.
> your vision will eventually settle when you hit late 30’s
Eyesight doesn't settle, it continues to deteriorate with age. Lasik also deteriorates with time, normally becoming noticeable about ten years after the surgery. Lasik providers offer "touch ups" as you get older in order to ameliorate this.
> Eyesight doesn't settle, it continues to deteriorate with age
Apparently a common pattern, at least for myopia, is for that to stop progressing in the late 30s, but then focussing response to get worse (why people end up needing reading glasses in their 50s-ish.)
Certainly that's what I've experienced, and what before I did I was told to expect.
>your vision will eventually settle when you hit late 30’s
This statement reminds me of the surgeon who did my PRK few months ago. He mentioned preferring not doing procedure on candidates who are at least in their mid-20's. I think the person you're replying to probably meant specifically myopia whereas you're referring to presbyopia?
I always assumed I'd get LASIK if my vision started to degrade. Then I learned that apparently LASIK can't treat age-related farsightedness: fixing your close vision will mess up your far vision. The only option AFAIU is to treat one eye only, so you have one eye for close vision and one eye for far. That doesn't sound very enticing to me.
Yep. I have had myopia since my teens and by the time I decided to consider LASIK at 40 my optician told me it wasn't worth it because my vision will start to adjust toward far sightedness within 10 years.
Fantastic advice! A few years later my prescription started to drop and I wear glasses less and less.
If I had LASIK I'd be looking at glasses or more LASIK already.
I do have low prescription inserts for VR because one eye is slightly weaker and I found that more noticeable than IRL.
> Worse, my prescription changes every visit to the optometrist.
FYI, unless your vision is quite bad, this is likely to bilk you and/or your insurance for money. I have slight-to-moderately bad eyesight and had optometrists trying to change my prescription every year as well, to no noticeable effect. I started getting my eyes checked only every few years and then taking away my prescription without purchasing glasses immediately. You can generally gauge how honest your optometrist is by how indignant this makes them.
But the screen is always 2” away. As you look from things that are drawn as if they are near or far is kind of irrelevant, isn’t it? Your focus depth won’t change because your actual focus depth never changes.
Human vision cannot focus on an object less than 9” away without fatigue. VR headsets put lenses between your eyes and the screen to give up to several feet of effective focal distance.
For some, it might be easier and cheaper to get an Apple Vision Pro-specific prescription and contact lenses than to update the lenses in the device, assuming you're ok with contacts.
It’s a shame that the eye trackers are not suitable to understand the shape of the eye, so the image could be adapted for it.
I feel you on this topic. I wear glasses. Wearing a really old pair from 20 years back is painful, but I can slip comfortably into a prescription from 6 years ago, I don’t know what your experience is with that, though.
I wish there were more information about this. Should I get an updated Rx and put in a pre-order for lenses? Who knows!?! I’m astigmatic, near sighted I guess, but a close up VR lens doesn’t change focal length at all, so lenses are a must for me.
They need to go back and read the Newton’s postmortem. With every new detail about this devices release - it’s becoming clearer and clearer this device just is not ready.
I was excited iPad apps could be directly ported over to VisionPro - but now after hacking with it in XCode - it’s evident this device and its APIs have no idea that customer intent drives context.
This lack of customer awareness is so interesting because all the designers in WWDC videos outline context with great labor. They forget a space is only part of an intent, and an intent is not a click or scroll. Intents demand a certain context, not the other way around - they’re scratching at old scars of starting with technology first then working to some customer experience.
Everyone pulls up the SJ D3 interview to say VisionPro is what Steve would want - but just like everything he says, if you only quickly listen you miss the full history and intent -
he says something along the lines of “headphones are just as good as amazing audio systems, displays on your face need to get better before we can recreate the plasma tv experience” - only after a lot of reflection did I come to understand this means audio passive consumption and display passive consumption. The customer intent for a display on face context is to recreate watching a plasma tv - following this intent means you end up with something completely different than what is happening now (I think SOL has nailed this, but perhaps focused too niche on the use case). Only later do you pull forward interactivity - as in the delay between headphones and Siri, which is still lagging.
> This lack of customer awareness is so interesting because all the designers in WWDC videos outline context with great labor. They forget a space is only part of an intent, and an intent is not a click or scroll. Intents demand a certain context, not the other way around - they’re scratching at old scars of starting with technology first then working to some customer experience.
Could you elaborate on that? I'd like to better understand
Every time I try to type something in response it comes out overly verbose -
Basically think of what you want to achieve, it’s the intent. Then think what happens if it happened automatically, that’s the ideal context (why pills for losing weight is so enticing). Then actually try to solve the problem in tech in the best way, and then you’ll see that the intent drives what tech context is truly great - as in you’ll end up creating dedicated hardware and software; what’s happened is that this platform has become good enough for many use cases and everyone is looking for the next best “good enough” when this current generation of tech platforms was built for a specific intent very different from what’s next
Tell me if this is what you're saying: It'd be better if they picked a use case, e.g. consuming movies/TV shows, and designed a device around that specific goal, rather than focusing on broader capabilities. Is that kinda what you're saying?
Yes, the best portable media player begot the best mobile phone. The best mobile phone begot the best general computing device - the general compute structure is emergent not core.
Think AirFryers and Convection Ovens - focused, small package, easy to use, etc vs…
> They need to go back and read the Newton’s postmortem. With every new detail about this devices release - it’s becoming clearer and clearer this device just is not ready.
In fact their actions suggest they already know this. It feels like Apple felt obliged to show .. something, anything .. after so many years of work (7 years? Just a guess).
I think this limited appointment-only release is part of a cautious wait-and-see approach.
> They need to go back and read the Newton’s postmortem. With every new detail about this devices release - it’s becoming clearer and clearer this device just is not ready.
Neither was the Mac that sold abysmally for years and Apple was propped up by the Apple // series
And neither was the iPod. They sold less than 1 million in the first two years.
Or the Apple iPhone that barely captured 1% market share tte first year (Jobs stated goal)
Or the Apple Watch which was slow, with bad battery life and a horrible SDK. It took years for Apple to have a coherent focus.
Number of unit sales isn’t the measure of success for a new paradigm. Everyone knows this. The quality of ideas and the affordances to achieve human aims is what makes a success.
The development process from what I read is not great for Apple Watches. But at first, you couldn’t even create real apps just projections from the phone.
Thankfully the dev process has improved to ~5seconds to hit a breakpoint on a real watch - which is the only way to work with live HealthKit/HKWorkout data.
Apple masters the art of creating artificial product shortages for marketing purposes. They deny it, they say it's some manufacturing issue, but usually it's just marketing.
Remember when there were export requlations for the Playstation 3 because the chips were so powerful that North Korea could use them for missile guiding systems? I always thought that was excellent marketing.
That's not my opinion. That's what Apple Analysts say is happening and they even predicted it. They observe the supply chain very closely and get information from the floor level. Apple does it it again and again in a way that is not realistic and analysts point it out.
When Apple seems to face less demand than expected they have 'problems'.
Sony has real screw ups it hurts the company because demand is off the roof.
(Apple has the best supply chain management in the world)
The Bigscreen beyond requires a face scan and generates a custom interface to fit each persons face perfectly. Everything I've read indicates that this actually improves fit and comfort. It helps that the bigscreen beyond is incredibly light and small, but the face scan doesn't seem to be a gimmick.
The Vision Pro might end up a complete failure, but requiring an appointment and a face scan is not a sign for this.
Meta has neither of those things and still managed to sell 15-20 million Quest units. If Apple is projecting less than a million units sold this year, they're going to have a hard time catching up to Meta's install-base, let alone their MAU count.
RIM and Palm sold 15-20 million units this year. If Apple is only projecting selling a million iPhones they're going to have a hard time catching up to Palm and RIM's install base.
Yep. You left out the part where Palm ate Apple's lunch for 15 years, to the point that Apple was forced to abandon the Newton platform in order to compete. Spot-on recounting otherwise though.
>Apple was forced to abandon the Newton platform in order to compete.
They cancelled Newton in order to compete? I don't understand the assertion.
Newton was cancelled by Jobs in 1997 for a number of reasons, but mainly because Apple had lost focus and was running out of money. Jobs cleaned house and only kept the products that could bring in larger profits more quickly.
Palm pilots were sold as complementary products to Macs or PCs and synced well with either one. I don't understand how that is eating Apple's lunch for 15 years since Apple was not shipping a competing product. Does Boeing eat Apple's lunch since Apple doesn't sell any airplanes?
Apple released iPod in 2001, again, not a competitor to Palm but it did provide a means for Apple to learn how to build handheld devices in very high volumes. Ignoring the Motorola ROKR, when Apple finally entered the smartphone market in 2007, Palm began to wither away.
You've always got the weirdest anti-Apple position. Palm ate Apple's lunch? Palm spent ten years trying to overextend their platform, selling themselves to anyone that gave them the time of day, and going out of business. By 2007 Palm was a brand name on an out of date platform. The Pre was a few good ideas on a bad foundation and underpowered hardware.
The Newton platform was never competitive. The only group that forced the Newton to shut down was Apple. Then Apple didn't compete at all in the PDA space. Palm had a better PDA than Apple and Ford in 2000, because neither company competed in that space.
Meanwhile the iPhone sells more units in a year than Palm sold units in its lifetime.
Meta's unit sales are not an unassailable moat just like Palm's unit sales weren't a moat. Apple setting low initial projections is also not necessarily indicative of them not taking the market seriously or not having faith in the product.
Hopefully Meta learned the lessons of Palm, RIM, and the other smartphone also-rans and focuses on making their platform better. Apple's not unstoppable. There's also likely plenty of market for VR/AR at all price points. There's certainly room for that market to grow if the offerings are compelling.
That's not what I was saying. Palm and RIM assumed their unit sales were an unassailable moat. Both almost completely ignored the consumer phone market then dominated by feature phones. Apple didn't jump after raw market share but an underserved market.
I'm not saying the Vision Pro will follow the same path as the iPhone. Past sales of the competition shouldn't be used as a signal of how good compelling of a product it will be. Meta's sales reflect the demand of a product from Meta. Apple has a lot more experience and success at building a platform for third parties. Meta can improve the Oculus platform but it's an open question whether they will.
And Apple has single digit market share in computer sells and barely double digit in phone sales.
Are those two categories also failures for Apple?
And saying that Meta can sell more worse devices than Apple that are cheaper and losing Meta money is like saying that Android manufactures can sell more $50 unsubsidized phones than Apple.
People who are buying a $60 unsubsidized phone are not going to all the sudden be able to afford a $400+ iPhone. Apple has never in 40+ years catered toward the low end.
People who are priced out of an iPhone Pro are not going to take out a loan to pay for a headset they'll use like a game console. If they're not replacing their iPhone with it, there's no point in buying it. It's a product that inherently relies on an ecosystem (albeit a strong one) to survive. Much like the iPad and the Apple Watch, if the iPhone and it's app ecosystem didn't exist it would be DOA.
So... assuming you're right, who is this headset for? People inside the ecosystem, who want to spend more money on Apple products but don't need it for anything particularly useful? I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
> People who are priced out of an iPhone Pro are not going to take out a loan to pay for a headset they'll use like a game console
Yet people take out 0% interest loans from Apple to buy $3000* laptops?
Besides, in most countries, people tend to pay cash for phones and carriers don’t offer payment plans.
> with it, there's no point in buying it. It's a product that inherently relies on an ecosystem (albeit a strong one) to survive
You mean like you can’t use an Apple Watch at all without an iPhone paired to it initially - not even the cellular Apple Watch and I doubt very many people are buying AirPods that don’t own Apple devices. The main value add over other BT headsets is the tight integration.
> Much like the iPad and the Apple Watch, if the iPhone and its app ecosystem didn't exist it would be DOA.
But the iPhone does exist and Apple’s services revenue from selling to existing users is larger than its revenue from the Mac and iPad revenue combined.
To a first approximation, no one buys Apple Watches for its third party app ecosystem. Most use it for notifications from the phone, for workouts using first party apps and for times when they don’t want to have their phones on them like running or other exercise
> I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
And more iPod users and iPhone users own Windows PCs.
But with the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch, they also had an army of enthusiastic users who would show off these portable devices to all their friends and acquaintances. An ad hoc product demo given by someone you know is often worth more than thousands of dollars in traditional marketing.
With the Vision Pro, it’s not obvious that users can give demos so easily. There’s custom face fit, prescription lenses, and hygiene questions.
Their previous hit devices were famously “one size fits all” — the billionaire’s iPhone is the same as everyone else’s. The Watch has a bit of customization, but the Vision Pro takes it beyond fashion into a necessity.
When Apple introduced the iPhone, they had lines of people waiting to buy one without ever trying it. The same was true with the iPad.
Apple sold 10 million iPhones in the first year. But 10 million was such a small number, that the chance of you seeing one in the wild wasn’t that common.
Apple is already seeding journalist with demos and it’s getting enough buzz from people in YouTube who were invited to use one and people like John Gruber and Marco Arment that if even a small percentage of their listeners/readers try it not to mention natural foot traffic in popular Apple Stores that demand will outpace supply.
This also means the device will be suboptimal for anyone other than the primary wearer.
While the personalized parts can probably be bought for a whole household and swapped by the user, when including lens correction for instance it's just not practical and it becomes a single owner device.
1. How much room in the headset is there for glasses? I can wear glasses relatively comfortably in existing gaming headsets like the Vive, Index, and Quest.
2. What are the stats on likelihood of requiring corrective lenses across a group of people, and what subset of those exclusively wear glasses?
If I had a friend with one of these and they didn't accommodate glasses on the wearer, I'd just wear contacts to do a demo. If I were spending $3500 on a setup at home, I probably wouldn't scoff at an accessory cost alongside it to get lenses for a family member.
On 1., leaving space for glasses limits the FOV so I'd assume Apple is not leaving that gap (which would also justify the production of prescription lenses from the start, for a product that isn't even shipping yet)
> The distributions with significant changes included males that were significantly more myopic and astigmatic, while females were more hyperopic across the age groups. Furthermore, myopia decreased, while hyperopia, astigmatism and anisometropia increased with increasing age.
So,
- parents and children have a high probability of having a different correction
- A man/woman couple has a high probability of having a different correction
> Everything I've read indicates that this actually improves fit and comfort.
Everything we have read at this point comes directly from Apple
or from “reviewers” invited by Apple which is the same as coming from Apple considering Apple blacklists reviewers who don’t play ball from futur events.
At that point, we as consumers have absolutely zero meaningful and trustworthy information about the product and that will most likely be so until it is out.
> Maybe Apple doesn't actually want to sell a lot of a first generation product they know will quickly evolve?
It's an impressive tech demo pushed out early to support the stock price, claim trademarks, gauge interest, and allow developers to begin building the ecosystem. Apple isn't going to go in with both feet on a product with dubious market potential.
This product has opened my eyes to "AR" glasses in general, but I think its way overkill for what I want to do.. My use case is being able to code with a giant screen anywhere (plane, hotel room, etc). I just want a few giant editor windows and terminals open. I don't care about gaming, AR gimmicks, etc.
From what I understand, there are a number of sub $500 options. (xreal air, rokud air, TCL NXTWEAR, etc). However they all get very mixed reviews. I wish there was a retailer that had demo units, as this is something I'd very much like to try before I buy.
I have the xreal airs. I’m very happy with them as an “on-the go” screen or “I don’t have my desk”, but I certainly prefer my desk setup (triple monitor).
Yep, on occasion. They work just like a normal monitor. I've had code/terminals/etc open while watching Netflix on a side monitor.
When Nebula is open, they simulate 3 individual monitors. Nebula is simply responsible for positioning the screens in space and keeping them where you want.
So what about this product opened your eyes that the previous 15 years of VR/AR did not? Just Apple's marketing power? Or is there something specific about this device that made it click for you?
I had always looked at things like Oculus as a "gaming" accessory. And I demoed Google Glass about 10 years ago, and it didn't present a virtual screen.
When seeing the Apple goggles, it clicked for me that this was basically a mac environment, and I started thinking how amazing it would be to run terminals in it, then I started googling for any options that were available now..
Crazy. That's the power of marketing eh. Almost as soon as the DK1 was available, people were running desktop envs inside VR. 3D modelling, CAD, multiple floating desktops, watching movies videos in 3D or big fake theaters, panoramic photos... Google even had a 3D paintbrush program demo on their cardboard product half a decade or more ago. This is stuff all been explored before.
They tried it, but did they keep doing it? i.e. did it work in practice, for real-world work-flows? Was the ROI there, so allocating budget was a no-brainer? I think, if it did, it would have taken over by now.
To me, the question is whether Apple has actually made this work.
It didn’t work because the pixels per degree isn’t enough, even with the Quest Pro, to show clear text. I still use it for coding, but it’s very far from ideal.
Apple claim text is crisp with VP. They also claim the resolution is similar to retina - but their stated pixel count and my guesstimates of usage distance suggest it's about half (in each dimension, so a quarter for area).
If they've got it crisp, how big a deal do feel that would be? For yourself, and for others who've been interested?
I've showed several "professional computer users", who sit behind nice monitors all day, my Quest Pro virtual screen setup. They've all said it's too blurry/font is too large/not enough screen space (which are all the same, from lack of PPD).
So, the Quest Pro is unusable to them, due to PPD. If the Vision Pro is actually retina, then that's good, but I don't think that's the only reason they wouldn't want to use it. I think comfort/bulk is a huge concern, especially since it appears to use the flesh of your face to support the weight, rather than a top strap. My Quest Pro is unusable without a top strop, for more than 30 minutes. With, I can easily do 6 hours. But still, the bulk makes me hesitantly put it on, sometimes.
For what it's worth I think of lot of guesstimates of PPD are likely a bit low. You can play games with lenses to increase it near the centre of the display where it actually matters (because your eyes don't travel that far away from straight forwards, so you can have much lower resolution in your peripheral FOV).
SimulaVR, a competitor with roughly half the number of pixels (2x2448x2448 = 11,985,408 vs 23 million), claims to go from 24.48 PPD naively calculated to 35.5 PPD near the centre of the display using this.
Not really, it’s the power of solid product development. I don’t want to fuck around with setting up a desktop env inside VR. I’m 100% confident I’ll be able to walk into an Apple Store, buy a Vision Pro, go home, put it on, and get to work.
I have a Valve Index, I've tried it, the resolution is simply not good enough for it to be comfortable as a screen replacement. It (and all VR headsets before it) were simply not reaching the minimum viable product level of hardware for this use case.
And, until the resolution was good enough, your eyes were closed? You literally could not imagine what was possible until an incremental upgrade in optics occurred?
The Vision Pro estimates I've seen are between 33 and 40 PPD (while 20/20 vision is 60 to 70 PPD at the centre of the field of vision). So this could be quite sharp, particularly if you have the text somewhat larger (on the huge virtual monitors) than you'd normally have it.
1. Eye tracking for interaction vs hand tracking. If the UX works out, the amount of precision that can be reached is just far higher with less effort - just seems to be an easier technical problem.
2. Resolution and lensing. Most VR headsets have fairly low quality fresnel lenses which cause distortion near the edges (basically - if you want to see something in good detail, you have to tilt your whole head to look at it), and in general the resolution is not good enough to see things that are 'far away' (those who play games like DCS have to use the 'binoculars' feature with headsets to accurately see targets). With a device like an HP Reverb, the resolution is probably close to good enough, the lensing is not - the Meta Quest Pro has a good enough lens, but not resolution. I'd expect the lensing on the Apple device to be top of market, and we know the resolution is ~2.5x more dense than the Meta Quest Pro - which should be closer to going from SD to HD TV rather than HD to 4k. Essentially, if you try to code on a Meta Quest Pro, the text looks a bit blurry. With the Vision Pro, it won't.
3. Custom face cushion + prescription lenses. Comfort is everything with these devices and nothing is worse than a headset putting pressure in the wrong places. It'll cost much more, but be totally worth it.
4. People claim common nausea when using VR. I've felt it too, but only on certain headsets. My money is other companies know what causes folks to feel bad, but have had to make technical tradeoffs which mean that nausea remains a problem. I'd put money on Apple having done serious research into 'what causes nausea when using headsets' which causes this to minimised on their headsets.
5. Software stack and usability. VR stacks are typically fairly clunky, usually Android derived, usually behaving a bit like a dodgy phone. iOS/MacOS are usually not most feature-ful, but a core usually works very very well. Will likely push bar a lot higher, change the shape of industry (e.g. samsungs are so good because of the iPhone competition).
Basically, having used some of these devices - the complaints I have with these right now, are the same things that Apple has real, technical solutions for. And the price isn't even _that_ high compared to other players in the market. Pimax Crystal is $1600 for what right now is a fairly buggy user experience. Their vapourware Pimax 12k is listed as starting at $2400 for the most basic model, though it's been in that state for well over a year.
(1) The HoloLens used eye tracking. It was tough to get used to but it was interesting. I didn't feel that I ever got to the point where it was more precise than moving my hand to a 3d point in space.
(4) I doubt it's the headset. It's almost certainly the application the headset is running.
Yeah, Automobilista 2 or Flight Simulator 2020 are a joy on Reverb G2. Though I must say I was surprised how tiny Monaco felt which is probably a question of FOV.
4. Nausea is apparently caused by latency between head movements and updates of the visual field, which they've kept very low on the Vision Pro by means of that R1 chip.
While true... That doesn't mean it will actually be any good at what it's trying to do. VR/AR is truly at the edge of our current technological abilities - Apple can have done everything to the best standard possible and still not be good enough here.
Nor is their a guarantee that its even a viable market at scale.
Apple is too big to serve niches (see how they let some product lines wilt like Mac Pro, Apple TV hardware) and needs to sell 10s of millions of units in the near term.
> My use case is being able to code with a giant screen anywhere
I've tried this on other platforms. The device gets heavy and your eyes get hot and sweaty, and dealing with an extension cord running from your head to a battery pack just adds insult to the inconvenience. It's not fun and it was not a major boost to productivity.
Plus.. for $3,500 I can just buy quite a few nice monitors.
It’s clever but I’ve never felt a burning need for more than a laptop screen while traveling and don’t even try to work on planes unless it’s just reading.
At least for me this solves nothing. If I don't want to hunch over a laptop keyboard & screen for ergonomic reasons, I'm certainly not going to add more laptop-sized screens.
For hotel rooms, an HDMI adapter can usually get you hooked up to the TV. It's usually better for movies than work, though, and sometimes the TVs are so locked down you can't get it to read the HDMI in.
Text editing is actually a harder problem than gaming. For gaming you can very well do with relatively low resolution and big bright objects to shoot at. But displaying clear text requires way higher resolution.
I tried Pico 4 headset, and gaming-wise it is fine, you almost forget you are not in your room anymore, but run a browser, and eyes start bleeding out from horrible font rendering. It is somewhat better on Quest 2, but still too bad.
It's true that the text isn't great out of the box on the current batch of 1080p versions. Personally, I just stick the zoom level to 110% / 120% and then find it fine to use though.
I also tried replacing my monitors with a Quest 2. While the idea of not needing space for monitors and have your setup anywhere with you is cool, the resolution just wasn't there yet.
Yeah, this is where the Vision Pro has most of my interest and excitement. The reported[0][1] 3400PPI resolution on the thing is going to be next-level. My main use-case for it will be as a productivity device, and everything else will be a bonus.
What matters for direct comparison with physical monitors is the PPI of the virtual "monitors", not of the tiny screens in the headset.
If you have roughly 4K per eye in the headset that renders everything you see, then you can't expect the virtual equivalent of a 4K monitor that only takes up a part of your vision.
Lower PPI virtual screens should be usable, but the text may still look bad on those when you can't do things like subpixel antialiasing (macOS on 27" 1440p also suffers from this). Especially if you need to render small text at an angle. If you only work with fairly large text or with pictures/video, that would probably be fine.
Yeah I think it's something people don't consider about resolution. I want to upgrade to a newer e-ink Kindle for CJK characters. On the opposite end, the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch have a 7" screen is only 720p and it's fine for gaming.
The alternatives have the whole unit in the headset in the front, which makes it very warm, sweaty and heavy for the neck - they're also nowhere near the required resolution for comfortably reading text in AR/VR, something that Apple seems to have solved.
Try a few first, not everyone's eyes can manage long exposure to have a screen strapped to it. Kids under 11 are generally not allowed to use it for that reason
It's also worth noting that this is dependent on model. E.g. I can handle an HP Reverb G2 indefinitely, but a Meta Quest Pro for only about 30 minutes before I feel ill.
I think the factor you're missing is that even the Vision Pro is still only about hitting the bare minimum to be able to comfortably do what you're looking for in terms of specs (and maybe not even then in terms of weight). It's 'overkill' in terms of pricing, but only because we're still years if not decades away from the tech advances needed for true standalone AR glasses.
Though most “real” computers were quite expensive by todays standards at the time. The editor in chief of PC Magazine coined Machrones Law—the computer you want always costs $5000 dollars and that I held pretty well for a long time.
There's clearly a lot more variety in sports though. It's probably hard to have a big entry-level outlay for running or even racquet sports though for the latter you'll often benefit from lessons and there can easily be ongoing costs for club memberships and the like. Whereas SCUBA, mountain biking, golf will be significant and we won't even talk about horseback riding, yachting, etc.
yes exactly - so many options with so many games and apps and social media related experiences and all I (and im sure many others) want is a solution to “how can i travel or be in a hotel and open vi/emacs/terminal and code as comfortably as with a huge monitor(s) home setup that’s impractical to haul around”. Even hauling around 16” laptops with a solid keyboard is a pain and can’t compete with a huge monitor(s) at home setup
Apple’s thesis seems to be that it is not overkill — that, in fact, every other option is significantly underkill, and that’s why you don’t use them despite knowing they exist.
Do we have any indication whether it’s going to be responsive and fast enough for AR in sports?
Maybe it’s a solution looking for a problem, but the best use of AR has always seemed to be for activities that require full attention. Flying a plane, driving a car, riding a bike, etc.
Closest thing I can think of would be Big Screen Beyond, which I believe will support 3DOF mode without trackers at some point (you should confirm this), and according to YouTuber “Sadly It’s Bradley” is decent for productivity work.
But actually resolution is extremely important for that kind of work and only the highest resolution headsets available today can actually work well for that.
At least it'll be at all (most?) of their US stores. I drove halfway across the country to NYC to get Google Glass. At least me and a couple friends turned it into a fun vacation.
Maybe this is cynical, but my marketing class taught us to look at everything Apple does under the view of the best marketers in the world.
The marketers told them to go for the 'exclusive club' vibe by doing in-store appointments.
Wonder if there is some messaging by the Apple leader at the appointment that explains how this is cool, exclusive, luxury. Reinforcing the purchase decision.
Need to make the barrier to entry extra high too, so when people laugh at it in public, they are fully committed to defend it. Who knows maybe they will go full abercrombie and make sure people who are older than 40 get it slightly later than 20 year old females. Eventually it gets normalized and people use it.
I suspect that they don't expect high volumes so rather than giving the impression that the launch is a failure they turn it into an exclusive club product.
Supply chain scuttlebutt is that the display technology is so constrained[^1] that Apple expects to only _manufacture_ 400,000 headsets next year.
It's possible that this product will flop, but I can't see it being anything other than sold out everywhere for most of 2024. Heck, you can make a reasonable case for there only being 10k-30k SKUs in channel inventory at launch, and Apple has 275 retail locations which require multiple demo units in addition to launch stock.
It'll be by appointment so they can control the tap, say it is sold out, say there is a waiting list. Create a buzz.
Cynically, a case in point is the display: it is so new and advanced that they have problems ramping production!
Whether issues are real or not, I am sure that Apple's marketing team knows how to spin everything. They are famous for that and indeed one of the best.
> It'll be by appointment so they can control the tap, say it is sold out, say there is a waiting list. Create a buzz.
For near enough the last decade, all iPhone launches have been appointment only in-store, and Apple Watch was appointment only in-store for the first 4 months of its life.
> Cynically, a case in point is the display: it is so new and advanced that they have problems ramping production!
Imagine that at the end of next year, Apple has sold 400,000 devices, and tells us that only supply constraints are preventing them from selling many more. Which is the more plausible explanation:
1. As with nearly all novel/complex technologies when manufactured at large scale, the combined costs of tooling, the complexity and uncertainty of new manufacturing techniques, and the low yields which inevitably follow, have created a supply constraint for Vision Pro.
2. In the face of weak demand for Vision Pro, Apple and its partners choose to collude in a lie to customers and shareholders alike, claiming that Vision Pro is supply constrained when really nobody wants to buy it, thus… achieving… erm… uh… something?
I think this is true. I'm sure there are practical reasons for a slow rollout, but this kind of exclusive rollout to flagship US stores will lead to a lot of coverage of people lining up get the device. It will generate worldwide demand for a product that many probably don't even know what they will do with it.
Very reminiscent of the rollout of Facebook which had an exclusive, Ivy league only presence, that eventually expanded out to everyone and their grandparents.
Another thing I just noticed in this release is how the device looks like ski goggles; an item already associated with 'coolness' and extreme sports but also wealth and exclusivity.
> my marketing class taught us to look at everything Apple does under the view of the best marketers in the world.
I think there's a risk that your marketing class is being taught by folks who have a limited grasp of how trivial the discipline of marketing can be when a company's products -- in Apple's case: iPhone, MacBooks Pro & Air, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch -- rank among the leading products in their categories by nearly any measure, from consumer satisfaction to performance benchmarks.
> The marketers told them to go for the 'exclusive club' vibe by doing in-store appointments.
"The marketers" told them the same thing for the Apple Watch launch in 2015, and each iPhone launch since 2014 (?). The article suggests that the in-store requirement for Vision Pro stems from the need for multiple components of the device to be tailored to the purchaser's head/face/vision.
> Who knows maybe they will go full abercrombie and make sure people who are older than 40 get it slightly later than 20 year old females.
It's almost impossible for me to imagine that someone with sufficient interest in marketing to intentionally study it in a class could entertain this idea, even as a joke. It betrays a near total misconception of the discipline of marketing, and Apple's relationship to it.
This is some blatant rhetoric. I cannot help but to call this out when I see it.
> rank among the leading products in their categories by nearly any measure, from consumer satisfaction to performance benchmarks.
When you say it generically like this, it has no meaning. Among? Top 50%
You could say this about any company. Its marketing jargon from the best in the world at marketing.
This is no different than when they plaster 'Security' and 'Privacy' in their ads, yet have worse security than Android(if we use pegasus and zerodium for security) and have been known to hand over data(PRISM, data in Russian and chinese data centers).
It has little to no meaning, but it sounds really positive when you say words like 'rank among' and 'nearly any measure'
Let me pull up single and multithreaded bench marks. "Oh not that measure". "Well it was among, top 36.6 percentile".
> When you say it generically like this, it has no meaning. Among? Top 50%
Here are two measures for you: 1) look at the last ten years of Consumer Reports smartphone rankings. How often is the latest iPhone ranked in the top 3? 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
> You could say this about any company. Its marketing jargon from the best in the world at marketing.
The urge to suggest that you seek a refund of the tuition fees for your marketing class is tempered only by a growing feeling that it might have been an elective at high school?
> This is no different than when they plaster 'Security' and 'Privacy' in their ads, yet have worse security than Android(if we use pegasus and zerodium for security)
Trusted Reviews:[^1] "iPhones are more secure by default. Disk encryption is enabled by default, apps from the App Store go through a stricter vetting process, and Apple doesn’t gather users’ personal details for advertising purposes"
Norton:[^2] "There’s no doubt Android is a bit more of a Wild West than iOS, but, with the right precautions, it can still be a safe platform."
InfoSecurityBuzz:[^3] "Android had 547 vulnerabilities in the year 2021, compared to 357 for iOS. While both Android and iOS have vulnerabilities […] Android has more overall vulnerabilities [and] a higher proportion of Android vulnerabilities are considered to have a low attack complexity, which means that they are easier to exploit."
The claim that Android is more secure than iOS seems like pure fantasy. Can you substantiate it?
> and have been known to hand over data(PRISM, data in Russian and chinese data centers).
Any foreign company operating a data center in China is required to contract with a domestic partner for legal ownership of the data within the facility and physical security of the location. In this regard, as with PRISM, Apple is no different to Amazon, Microsoft, et al.
The only data stored in Apple's Chinese data center is that of its Chinese customers, and I do not believe Apple markets its products as "privacy"-focused in China, where there is almost literally no concept of privacy.
Apple has in fact publicly resisted repeated attempts from state and federal authorities to have it insert backdoors into iOS, and launched an amicus legal claim with Meta against the NSO group.
But anyway, let's pretend for a second that I grant you all of these fantastical and unsubstantiated claims about iPhone privacy and security, I have some direct questions for you!
1. Can you explain to me why "the marketers" are adopting the same strategy for Vision Pro's launch as they have for every other flagship Apple launch in the last decade?
2. Can you explain why a company with an estimated NPS in range(+65,+80) even _needs_ the best marketers in the world?
3. Can you explain why you seem to believe that it is the job of Apple's marketing team to "normalise" something ex post facto? Isn't it a well understood axiom of Apple's philosophy that until the technology is mature (in this case: thin / light) enough to create a resonant user experience, they will not enter a market?
4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
5. Can you see a trend looking back at the top 3 smartphones in Consumer Reports' surveys over the last decade?
Clearly bad faith and incivility, calling a MBA marketing class high school level just because it doesn't fit your world view.
You share links to random websites that fit your narrative. Its dangerous to listen to your opinion, you might get mureded like jamal khashoggi with a pegasus hack. Or maybe it will be mere nudes like Jeff Bezos. Has anyone gotten hacked with Pegasus on Android? I couldn't find any examples.
Your identity is wrapped up in Apple products, its scary what they can do to a human brain.
Isn't it funny that in your previous reply, you suggested that if you offered a rebuttal of my point around performance, I would try to move the goalposts:
> Let me pull up single and multithreaded bench marks. "Oh not that measure". "Well it was among, top 36.6 percentile".
And now you say:
> You share links to random websites that fit your narrative. Its dangerous to listen to your opinion,
If you can reject the mass of empirical data supporting the view that MacBook Air M1 offers unparalleled processor performance and battery life in its class and form factor, then I'm not really sure what to say. Good luck with the MBA which educated you sufficiently to suggest that Apple's marketing team might profile customers in retail stores based on age and gender.
> Your identity is wrapped up in Apple products, its scary what they can do to a human brain.
I'd say my identity is more wrapped up in helping the world to avoid making facile and conspiratorial statements about marketing strategies so hopelessly out of touch with reality that they can make someone apparently educated to a postgraduate level appear roughly as superficially informed as a high school student.
Don’t bother trying to convince people who think Apple’s product success is some marketing ploy that no one else has figured out how to replicate. Their worldview is the products are a priori inferior, so some magical reason must explain their success beyond the theory that people (repeatedly) buy products they like.
Blackberries and palm pilots were ready to take over the world in 2007, when Apple swooped in and hypnotized people to think a full screen, no-stylus touchscreen was a better design!
> Apple has in fact publicly resisted repeated attempts from state and federal authorities to have it insert backdoors into iOS
They have also in fact been part of NSA surveillance programs for over a decade. It's nice that Android gets out ahead of these things by offering pure Open Source images.
1. Can you explain to me why "the marketers" are adopting the same strategy for Vision Pro's launch as they have for every other flagship Apple launch in the last decade?
Because lying works!
2. Can you explain why a company with an estimated NPS in range(+65,+80) even _needs_ the best marketers in the world?
Why wouldn't they? They're the largest company in the world, forced to compete in one of the most competitive advertising markets in the world. Publishing things that keeps those customers happy takes work, and Apple clearly does lots of "work" in that sense.
3. Can you explain why you seem to believe that it is the job of Apple's marketing team to "normalise" something ex post facto? Isn't it a well understood axiom of Apple's philosophy that until the technology is mature (in this case: thin / light) enough to create a resonant user experience, they will not enter a market?
Well, that's kinda what they did with the iPhone and the Apple Watch and even the iPad: https://youtu.be/3S5BLs51yDQ
I don't know what their end-goal is, but they seem to be perfectly aware that Apple products are not 'the norm' in many places.
4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
See above. There are hundreds but anything with a Ryzen 5 or 7 from 2019-onward should smoke the M1, if only for lacking a big.LITTLE core architecture. Beating the M1 in CPU or GPU performance is... not difficult. Beating it's idle draw will be what people struggle with.
5. Can you see a trend looking back at the top 3 smartphones in Consumer Reports' surveys over the last decade?
I'm happy to get into the subjective stuff you've outlined, although you're not OP, but before I do, can I just make sure you're clear on what I'm asking for on the laptop thing?
I said:
> look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
1. Single core performance
It looks like the M1 which shipped in the 13" MacBook Air massively outperforms the AMD Ryzen 5 3500U[^1] on Geekbench 5 single core: 1710 vs. 707.
Am I missing something?
2. Battery life
Here's a comparison[^2] of the M1 MacBook Air with the laptop you referred to from the same publication. The M1 MacBook Air scored >29hrs on the battery rundown test: "It ran for 29 hours and 1 minute on our battery rundown test, producing one of the longest results we’ve ever recorded." The Ideapad was about 1/3rd of that at 8hrs: "Eight and a half hours away from a wall outlet isn't bad…"
Am I missing something?
3. Screen quality
The same reviews refer to the Ideapad having a "mediocre" screen. It's 1920x1080, but the resolution is only 142ppi. The M1 MacBook Air is higher resolution and higher PPI (227) and 13" not 15". The disparity in quality between them almost couldn't be starker.
Am I missing something?
Happy to talk to someone who can at least try to offer substantiation for their perspectives, but it feels like we're missing each other on this.
> It looks like the M1 which shipped in the 13" MacBook Air massively outperforms the AMD Ryzen 5 3500U[^1] on Geekbench 5 single core: 1710 vs. 707.
> Am I missing something?
Yes, a fair fight. Pick a laptop with the same core count as M1 and preferably another 5nm laptop chip for a truly "fair" comparison. Like the 5800u, if you fancy. Or ignore that and continue to insist faster and cheaper laptops don't exist.
> The M1 MacBook Air scored >29hrs on the battery rundown test
> Am I missing something?
Presumably the part in any of my previous comment where I mentioned battery life.
> The same reviews refer to the Ideapad having a "mediocre" screen.
> Am I missing something?
It's a $400 laptop and your only critera was that it had to be faster and cheaper. If you actually wanted to talk about displays then yes, your original comment was missing some key details. I wouldn't be surprised if your next reach was to claim MacOS is an "infinite value add" and end our comparison on that basis alone.
> 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
My point is not that there are NO faster or cheaper laptops than MacBook Air, but that at this price point, it's very difficult (impossible?) to find comparable processor performance, battery life, and screen quality.
You offered a laptop which doesn't seem to be commensurate on any of those aspects. I think it's possibly because you didn't read the full comment?
> Or ignore that and continue to insist faster and cheaper laptops don't exist.
Hopefully the above clears up what I'm driving at. Faster laptops definitely exist. Cheaper laptops definitely exist.
> It's a $400 laptop and your only critera was that it had to be faster and cheaper.
No, that is not what I said. I referred to the MacBook Air "test" twice:
> > 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
This might be unclear to you. I am saying: look at [processor performance, battery performance, screen performance] of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance [to those aspects][ at the same price point.
I went on to refer back to this later on:
> 4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
I did not set the condition that it be cheaper. I did not constrain performance to JUST the processor speed.
> If you actually wanted to talk about displays then yes, your original comment was missing some key details.
Is there something beyond me specifically referring to the "screen quality" that would have been helpful to your understanding?
> I wouldn't be surprised if your next reach was to claim MacOS is an "infinite value add" and end our comparison on that basis alone.
You're engaging in a lot of quite pointed speculation about my integrity in this discussion. Did you read what I said to OP? If so, can you help everyone understand why you think I don't care about the list of parameters I enumerated and am somehow moving the goalposts by assessing your example by the criteria I feel like I originally expressed?
I'm not surprised, given the overwhelming focus so far that they've had on minimizing the bad parts of VR (motion sickness in particular). Since they're not going to have real mass-market production numbers anyway, they've gone all in on making the experience as positive as possible for those limited number of people who get their hands on one, even if that means burning a bunch of retail employee time on fitting and adjustments.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 361 ms ] threadaccess to a virtual apple store with no crowding, no wait, and no pilgrimage required. payment charged to apple card using an eyeball scan.
hey, siri, let’s go to the mall.
The best use of VR Apple can come up with is going to a store?
It takes a lot to be outdone by the Metaverse, but trust Apple to accomplish it.
I was in San Francisco last year and walk from the financial district to the pier and I wasn’t nervous at all.
My wife and I “nomad” across the US to major cities across the US half the year. I’m comfortable walking around most places during the day.
- Game play that changes with your heart rate
- Switching easily from work mode to a meditation
- Getting ready for bed by watching a VR sunset
Imagine walking into an Apple Store and seeing as new customers are getting fitted and exploring these experiences on 100” OLEDs. Converting the masses requires displaying entirely new experiences, from work to play.
The manual learning process of ordering special fit lenses, adjusting the headsets, etc would be a great fit with Apple’s store model.
Maybe I misunderstood, but if not count me skeptical.
This is particularly important for a) new product categories where customers aren’t yet sure they want/need it, b) products that “fit”, or don’t, and c) expensive entertainment products. These headsets are all three, so it’s really important.
Apple’s retail presence could solve this.
Aside, I hear a lot more about free returns from people in the US. In the UK they are seemingly near-universal, but there is significantly less willingness to return outside of specific categories such as clothing. I have a little experience working in a retailer (as a software engineer), and US return rates were far higher than UK/EU return rates, and this was apparently considered typical.
It has been one of Apple’s competitive advantages since 2001.
How many people are going to spend $3500 on a device that by definition you have to try on in person to see if you want it?
they’re front-loading friction in an effort to minimize it.
The Apple Watch was initially sold at fitting appointments in store, and I think that was important in establishing it as a normal thing to wear and even a fashionable thing to wear in some cases, and helped cement the product in the mainstream.
Tailored suits is another case where there’s a premium price, premium service, but a lot of friction. It’s not always bad.
They’re also probably supply constrained enough that the friction doesn’t matter for the first version or two.
Apple did not need to normalize the wearing of watches. Watches have been luxury fashion items for hundreds of years.
Apple was late to the game with smartwatches and didn't do a single thing to convince people to wear them.
And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.
I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
Source please! That's not how I remember the release, I recall it was very well recieved and sold out everywhere with the battery life being the biggest complaint.
> I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else. Your opinion is not the general consensus or a source for anything so find a reliable 3rd party to back you up that isn't a random blogpost by Joe nobody.
https://www.cnet.com/reviews/motorola-moto-360-review/
https://www.alphr.com/motorola/32669/motorola-moto-360-revie...
Criticisms of how much the OS sucks
https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same world than some of the commenters here.
Here is The Verge review of the Moto360: [https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review]. A few selected quotes by me: “It’s designed to prove that smartwatches don’t have to be ugly.”, “It’s not a gadget, it’s a watch”, “At 11.5mm, it’s a little thick”, “ Everything before it was a screen on your wrist”. And that’s the Verge being incredibly nice with the 360. Truth is it was very much still seen as a tacky piece of technology bolted to your wrist.
It took me two minutes to find by the way because this kind of reviews were literally everywhere in the years leading to the release of the Apple Watch.
I'm wondering the same thing.
You are arguing with people because you think Apple invented wearing watches as a fashion statement with their release of the Apple watch in 2015.
No, I said that Apple successfuly turned smartwatches from something seen as gadget into something seen as a proper acceptable watch, which they most definitely did as I have proved to you with my previous message (which you are conveniently ignoring by the way).
The watch industry is very fashion conscious. Swatch Group managed to turn mechanical watches - a clearly inferior product which not only can't keep time properly but has to be serviced every couple of years - into something of seen as timeless and the embodiment of success so clearly Apple was walking a well paved road.
It doesn't prove anything at all and all my Apple friends were very interested in my watch when it came out.
Whether you like it or not, for most people, celebrity culture drives luxury culture, and even in the top end markets it's still a leading indicator even if it's not driving it.
I'm open to hearing constructive arguments against this, but it seems very clear to me.
This sort of exclusivity makes some people feel special. It's a viable tactic.
When you use an oculus, if you need to do something like reply to a text, check an email or reply to someone on social media, you have to take off your headset or kill your current task and switch to virtual desktop.
Having all your iOS apps on it, and being able to multitask means people won’t be taking off their headset as often and they’ll not have to consider dedicated VR time.
To me, that’s the biggest software differentiator
The reported battery life on the Vision Pro is still going to require that you have dedicated "goggles on" time for the foreseeable future.
It won't be using the app store, though. It's using a brand-new store, built from scratch. No iOS apps will be there unless the authors rewrite them to be compatible with visionOS.
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/10090
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The reasons I would not like to have one of these devices ;
* Apple's closed moat
* App store lock-in
* 'DLC' model whereby not a single thing you do on this $3,500 device will be free - and no matter what app you choose, Apple takes 30% of whatever revenue stream that app wants...
* The piss-poor apple fix-service market, and their shitty designs of the iphone which break so fn easily that VCs (YC+) have had to invest in cottage industry of phone repairs
I've had iphones since the first day of launch... and while I prefer them over android, I still hate ios ecosystem.
The infra-mechanics of it are awesome, but compared to the smarmy and condescending greedy Apple, i still hate ios.
It's technically possible to develop on the simulator alone, but given that the simulator is confined to a 2D window on a computer screen I can't imagine that apps developed in this manner would be able to stand up to competition developed without such limitations.
Its just FN financially-dystopian
---
@scarface_74 ;
"*May you please ELI5 expand on your comment - as I am OOTL and would like to understand what you mean, precisely. (because I want to learn, kthxbai)*"
/as-i-am-posting-too-fast....
A non-Apple device without the moat would be better. GP also didn't ask for free apps.
Almost every non game app on the iPhone/iPad of note require a subscription and most outside of the App Store.
I'm sure there are a number of people here who will agree with you.
On the other hand, the fact that Apple now has a $3 trillion-with-a-"t" market cap indicates that most people do not care about any of these issues. Not in the slightest.
2. Many commonly used apps don’t have a browser experiences with equivalent features. Take Instagram for example.
3. With the Quest , you can’t really multitask, except for the Quest Pro.
The Quest 1-3 are equivalent to game consoles in many ways. I can use a web browser on my PS4. It doesn’t mean it’s a full productivity system with multitasking.
That being said, it’s not like children aren’t already in Apple stores and they don’t seem to be damaging a substantial amount of phones and whatnot.
There were a lot of videos in the 2000s of Wiimotes getting swung into TVs.
I cannot imagine people being excited that they need to go physical store and deal with a staff there to get their fancy new toy.
https://youtu.be/bWgd5crvB0U
Older people today have been using computers since they were in their teens or twenties. Conversely, I know a 20-something woman who can't understand why her iMessages quit working when she switched to an Android phone, despite explaining it to her multiple times.
As you note, they also have more money.
I find it surprising that this is less common than it was in the past, and that people are more willing to put up with something that’s a subpar fit for them. One tech example that would benefit from custom fit are in-ear headphones. It would make sure that product is a perfect fit for every customer every time, rather than roughly every single customer having to put up with a suboptimal fit and poor comfort.
for the enthusiastic, apple is going to make it as low-friction as possible.
this is a slow game.
> for the enthusiastic, apple is going to make it as low-friction as possible.
Going to a store is not low friction for an enthusiast. We've already established that the price tag shuts out all but the enthusiast.
Apple enthusiasts will do anything to buy Apple products.
besides, not all apple enthusiasts are wealthy. some will prepare last minute, by selling furniture to make space and help fund the headset. it doesn’t matter if that sounds silly, if it happens.
this is why apple goes slow. bring the ecosystem enthusiast to the object by attempting to integrate the object into the ecosystem first. start with the most eager, guide them in, let them deal with the growing pains, convert enough to full believers in the new object.
public-ish beta with an exclusive-ish signup fee.
apple isn’t merely training enthusiasts in how to use a headset. they are training fans that sell product. enthusiasts talk. easiest way into the ecosystem is with a guide, and even better if that’s a friend or loved one not getting paid to do so.
the least important part about this product is the product. it’s expanding the ecosystem into new territory. show apple enthusiasts that perhaps they want to be xr enthusiasts.
There is still 4 U.S states that lack an Apple store entirely. It's not like Wal-mart or even Best Buy.
I purchased my Apple Watch through one of these 'fitting' appointments.
> Beginning at 3:01 a.m. ET today, customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting.
> While Apple is directing people to the website to schedule a 15-minute fitting experience, they'll also accommodate walk-ins if time permits. Customers can also play with an Apple Watch display unit that lets them demo the interface. However they won't be able to try one on without meeting with an Apple employee.
> What It's Like to Get an Apple Watch Fitting Appointment on the 1st Day ABC News tech editor Alyssa Newcomb gets in-store appointment.
> ByALYSSA NEWCOMB > April 10, 2015, 2:42 PM
I am not misremembering. I even still have the order invoice and delivery notification from the courier in my email archive.
See operative "or" in the quoted "customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting".
> Beginning at 3:01 a.m. ET today, customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting.
> While Apple is directing people to the website to schedule a 15-minute fitting experience, they'll also accommodate walk-ins if time permits. Customers can also play with an Apple Watch display unit that lets them demo the interface. However they won't be able to try one on without meeting with an Apple employee.
> What It's Like to Get an Apple Watch Fitting Appointment on the 1st Day ABC News tech editor Alyssa Newcomb gets in-store appointment.
> ByALYSSA NEWCOMB > April 10, 2015, 2:42 PM
Sounds like a serious shortcoming if you can't share the device with friends and family.
I get what you’re saying and it’s hard to describe (and never really does it justice) the experience of this technology. It’s something you have to experience yourself to understand.
Do you share the use of your tv with friends and family?
But there will be enough people who will by the headset for them to sell all they can make in the first year.
Likely the upfront issues would be getting everyone their personalized lenses, but actually using seems like it would be easy.
As for getting lost, Apple already has their AirTag technology. While I don't know if that's already in these lenses, it doesn't seem like it'd be difficult to add.
Heck, my dad loses his phone multiple times a week, necessitating a quick phone call to track it down. Are the lenses going to include built-in AirTags so people can locate them?
Heck, I’m even skeptical of the iPad. I own one and I use it so seldomly that I have to charge the thing up from 0 every time I use it. But I recognize that a lot of people love them as consumption devices and a few as creation tools for some niche purposes, such as digital painting.
Essentially pile up a bunch of mirrorballs. Point projectors at it. Then map where each pixel from each projector ends up on the walls/ceiling/floors.
Consoles, AppleTV, and iPads are at the lower end of the price range here, right? (Well, you can get an expensive iPad of course).
Laptop are expensive but personal, phones… definitely personal, tend to be a little more expensive maybe?
I dunno, it isn’t a straight line correlation but I don’t think the fact that the Vision Pro is expensive tells us much.
In have a Rift CV1, I enjoyed showing it off to people and got some party-game type things (Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes is great for showing the device off). But I don’t use it much solo, and I’ve shown it off to all my friends already, so I don’t use it much. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, but it hasn’t integrated into my daily life.
If I were Apple—word of mouth is good, but I’d hope the Vision Pro becomes something that sort of gets embedded in people’s lives to the point where they don’t care to show it off (either because it becomes personal like a laptop, or because it becomes boring like a monitor).
I think we’re pretty clearly talking about a small number of contrary data points, here? I’m not trying to prove a general trend at least, just point out that we should at least double check the assumption that expensive implies shared.
If someone is really invested in that idea I’d love to see an argument for it, rather than silent downvotes.
Wrecking your first car is almost a teenage rite of package.
Again we are talking about people who are willing to spend $3500 on a headset. Not exactly the demographic of people who are “sharing a family car” and that don’t statistically have separate cars for the parents and don’t either buy their kids a car or subsidize them in some way to help them buy their own.
I know I never let either one of my sons drive my car alone and I bought myself a new car and handed my older one down to my older son and bought my younger son a car before he had a license.
However, we're talking about a 3500 US dollar (without tax) device and a novelty. Of course people are going to share it if they can.
As someone that wears glasses with VR, it’s awful. The light gasket presses against them, gets tangled. The band presses against them. I can see why they didn’t bother making it an option, since I often put my headset away because of the discomfort. This is why the quest pro has optional light blockers, and why I never use mine. Leaving enough room for comfortably wearing glasses would make things huge.
There are 270+ Apple stores in the US, I don't have the figures to hand but an overwhelming percentage of the country's actual population live within an hour of an Apple store. They are common, frankly.
I'm not defending the decision to require a store visit here, but lets not paint a picture of Apple store availability that doesn't exist. The number of people with disposable income in the US to purchase a 3500 dollar headset and actually want to buy one who aren't living under an hour from an Apple store is likely a very small list.
But I will to buy electronic gear or even to get my right AirPod replaced that I dropped in the water when I was on a boat in Cabos…
If I were in the target market for the vision pro I would totally schedule an appointment and drive a couple of hours to get a curated experience and feel confident I'd come home with the right combination of lenses and everything.
In my dads case, music gear
I even know people who would drive from the even smaller places than where my parents live who would drive to my home town to go the mall, movies and Olive Garden.
What Apple is missing here is that people wanted the iPhone (a phone with an iPod built in) for years before it was even officially announced as under development. It succeeded because the market invented it, not because Apple are geniuses who showed us we needed it.
It’s hard to see how anyone who has been following the technology could make this claim.
Some people do because the benefit is literally regaining one of your senses, but even if AR / VR glasses one day become like normal glasses, it will be a niche product.
Nobody's wearing glasses just to get notifications and gimmicks like this. Ever.
The only moment where AR / VR can maybe become mainstream is when we can send signal straight to the brain to generate images (disregarding that there's no way people will be ok with other people controlling their brain).
There is also an entire industry of eyewear crafted and worn just to look cool (sunglasses have not primarily been a protective aid in a very long time, they're fashion accessories now).
Of course all that's orthogonal to AR/VR, but the idea that "nobody wants to wear glasses" is a bit laughable.
What do you think advertising and news are?
From many observers, we have seen many AR/VR devices fail over the years. Some spectacularly (like Snap Spectacles), and some seem to be just throwing money into a furnace (like Oculus, which hasn't failed, but even with millions of devices sold doesn't seem to be reaching product market fit for anything outside of niche gaming and fitness).
Yes, the Vision Pro is a different device, but there are orthogonal attempts at this kind of screen sharing experience which also have very niche markets, like Sightful's Spacetop laptop.
I get that the Vision Pro has some product differentiation, such as the App Store, the developer ecosystem (debatable at this point compared to other AR products), and so on - but what exactly are you seeing the market today that will drive this demand for Vision Pro? Where is the evidence that customers want this technology?
The original phrasing is ambiguous as to whether its acknowledging the tech was bad or not. But it doesn't seem reasonable to conclude that people don't want something until they can experience an implementation of it that isn't "bad".
It's an emerging product category. I think the workmachine use case is compelling and I can imagine myself using something like it. The price is steep for a personal device, but I suspect that will be fixed in one or two iterations.
Go on...please tell me where the AR in William Gibson's 1984 novel ,Neuromancer, came from.
I may be an old man, but what I want is the opposite of immersive technology. Put a computer on my face? Are you kidding? The one in my pocket already feels increasingly parasitic.
Cynicism, pessimism, and affected jadedness have always been the way people have attempted to sound cool. Nothing new about that part.
Ultimately, the question is whether your path brings you joy.
I'm more excited for something like Humane's laser projection system or a less-intrusive, deep-learning driven assistant which uses voice and tactile feedback.
It won’t get better without big drives in adoption, adoption won’t happen without big improvements to.. everything. Catch 22
Have you ever used an AR/VR headset for something you generally enjoy (a game, a movie, Google Maps, whatever)?
I ask because my own experience (and the consensus of my network and the critics I read) is that devices like Oculus and the Vive Pro are extraordinarily compelling but overall held back by immature technology. Base stations. Wires. Visible pixels. Low quality video pass through. Stupid controllers you have to hold in your hands.
People see the potential and flashes of what might be, but it's impossible to get beyond the awful user experience.
> What Apple is missing here is that people wanted the iPhone (a phone with an iPod built in) for years before it was even officially announced as under development.
Two thoughts on this:
1) It seems to undermine your point that iPhone launched in 2007 and yet through 2011 failed to come close to outselling iPod in terms of units.
2) The device you are describing -- "a phone with an iPod built in", before the iPhone -- actually did exist. The Motorola ROKR E1, or the "iTunes Phone": it was unveiled in 2005 on stage by Steve Jobs. Motorola did the phone stuff, and Apple did the iPod bit.
It was a dismal failure and was discontinued after roughly a year on the market.
> It succeeded because the market invented it, not because Apple are geniuses who showed us we needed it.
What do you mean by "invented"? Because literally two years before the iPhone launched, the market "invented" a phone with a built-in iPod, manufactured by the leading cell phone manufacturer of the day, in collaboration with Apple, and it failed miserably. Did the market invent that phone?
It's fair to say that Apple is not the first entrant to most market it contributes to, and it's fair to say that they are rarely the progenitors of the technologies their devices rely upon.
What Apple is very good at is deeply understanding when new technologies can be combined or honed to bring them over a threshold of resonance with consumers which drives widespread adoption. It is not enough to simply say "ship a phone with a touch screen' --- folks were doing that for years before iPhone launched. Instead it's about understanding the interplay of latency, brightness, PPI, plural point awareness, manufacturing yields, component costs, and making tradeoffs which pursue a vision which people buy into.
That's why when you said "a phone with an iPod built in" you could have been referring to both iPhone _and_ the ROKR, but the two devices could not be more different: ROKR had a fiddly microSD card for storage. Crummy slow processor and user interface. Stupid tiny keyboard for typing on. WAP internet. Wired transfer speeds slower than high speed USB. Slow java apps. A low resolution TFT LCD display. Only 11 megabytes of onboard memory.
I wear prescription glasses and have gone from single vision to progressive lenses that are stupid expensive. Worse, my prescription changes every visit to the optometrist. How sensitive is the headset's performance to my prescription, how expensive would replacement lenses be, and how difficult would they be to change out? Could I do this myself by ordering updated lenses based on my prescription or would I have to take the headset in?
As you likely know your vision will eventually settle when you hit late 30’s.
Also I assume you have considered LASIK?
Eyesight doesn't settle, it continues to deteriorate with age. Lasik also deteriorates with time, normally becoming noticeable about ten years after the surgery. Lasik providers offer "touch ups" as you get older in order to ameliorate this.
Apparently a common pattern, at least for myopia, is for that to stop progressing in the late 30s, but then focussing response to get worse (why people end up needing reading glasses in their 50s-ish.)
Certainly that's what I've experienced, and what before I did I was told to expect.
But from what I understand, you won’t have major changes in your prescription, such as what GP is dealing with.
This statement reminds me of the surgeon who did my PRK few months ago. He mentioned preferring not doing procedure on candidates who are at least in their mid-20's. I think the person you're replying to probably meant specifically myopia whereas you're referring to presbyopia?
You may be able to go for additional follow ups, but it’s case by case, as there is only so much cornea that can reshaped.
Fantastic advice! A few years later my prescription started to drop and I wear glasses less and less.
If I had LASIK I'd be looking at glasses or more LASIK already.
I do have low prescription inserts for VR because one eye is slightly weaker and I found that more noticeable than IRL.
It’s not nearly as bad as you might think and it only ever comes up during my annual eye exam.
FYI, unless your vision is quite bad, this is likely to bilk you and/or your insurance for money. I have slight-to-moderately bad eyesight and had optometrists trying to change my prescription every year as well, to no noticeable effect. I started getting my eyes checked only every few years and then taking away my prescription without purchasing glasses immediately. You can generally gauge how honest your optometrist is by how indignant this makes them.
Not really on-topic, but I've had very good luck with Zenni Optical.
I feel you on this topic. I wear glasses. Wearing a really old pair from 20 years back is painful, but I can slip comfortably into a prescription from 6 years ago, I don’t know what your experience is with that, though.
I wish there were more information about this. Should I get an updated Rx and put in a pre-order for lenses? Who knows!?! I’m astigmatic, near sighted I guess, but a close up VR lens doesn’t change focal length at all, so lenses are a must for me.
Waiting and “seeing” ;)
I was excited iPad apps could be directly ported over to VisionPro - but now after hacking with it in XCode - it’s evident this device and its APIs have no idea that customer intent drives context.
This lack of customer awareness is so interesting because all the designers in WWDC videos outline context with great labor. They forget a space is only part of an intent, and an intent is not a click or scroll. Intents demand a certain context, not the other way around - they’re scratching at old scars of starting with technology first then working to some customer experience.
Everyone pulls up the SJ D3 interview to say VisionPro is what Steve would want - but just like everything he says, if you only quickly listen you miss the full history and intent - he says something along the lines of “headphones are just as good as amazing audio systems, displays on your face need to get better before we can recreate the plasma tv experience” - only after a lot of reflection did I come to understand this means audio passive consumption and display passive consumption. The customer intent for a display on face context is to recreate watching a plasma tv - following this intent means you end up with something completely different than what is happening now (I think SOL has nailed this, but perhaps focused too niche on the use case). Only later do you pull forward interactivity - as in the delay between headphones and Siri, which is still lagging.
Could you elaborate on that? I'd like to better understand
Basically think of what you want to achieve, it’s the intent. Then think what happens if it happened automatically, that’s the ideal context (why pills for losing weight is so enticing). Then actually try to solve the problem in tech in the best way, and then you’ll see that the intent drives what tech context is truly great - as in you’ll end up creating dedicated hardware and software; what’s happened is that this platform has become good enough for many use cases and everyone is looking for the next best “good enough” when this current generation of tech platforms was built for a specific intent very different from what’s next
Think AirFryers and Convection Ovens - focused, small package, easy to use, etc vs…
In fact their actions suggest they already know this. It feels like Apple felt obliged to show .. something, anything .. after so many years of work (7 years? Just a guess).
I think this limited appointment-only release is part of a cautious wait-and-see approach.
Neither was the Mac that sold abysmally for years and Apple was propped up by the Apple // series
And neither was the iPod. They sold less than 1 million in the first two years.
Or the Apple iPhone that barely captured 1% market share tte first year (Jobs stated goal)
Or the Apple Watch which was slow, with bad battery life and a horrible SDK. It took years for Apple to have a coherent focus.
In Apple's defense, it is still two of those things. (No longer slow though!)
Here is news from 12 years ago where they deny iPhone 4 shortages are just marketing. https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/20/apple_denies_crea...
They’ve only sold 38 million in almost 3 years - the number of iPhones Apple sells in less than a quarter.
And you’re citing a denial as proof?
When Apple seems to face less demand than expected they have 'problems'. Sony has real screw ups it hurts the company because demand is off the roof.
(Apple has the best supply chain management in the world)
The Vision Pro might end up a complete failure, but requiring an appointment and a face scan is not a sign for this.
They cancelled Newton in order to compete? I don't understand the assertion.
Newton was cancelled by Jobs in 1997 for a number of reasons, but mainly because Apple had lost focus and was running out of money. Jobs cleaned house and only kept the products that could bring in larger profits more quickly.
Palm pilots were sold as complementary products to Macs or PCs and synced well with either one. I don't understand how that is eating Apple's lunch for 15 years since Apple was not shipping a competing product. Does Boeing eat Apple's lunch since Apple doesn't sell any airplanes?
Apple released iPod in 2001, again, not a competitor to Palm but it did provide a means for Apple to learn how to build handheld devices in very high volumes. Ignoring the Motorola ROKR, when Apple finally entered the smartphone market in 2007, Palm began to wither away.
The Newton platform was never competitive. The only group that forced the Newton to shut down was Apple. Then Apple didn't compete at all in the PDA space. Palm had a better PDA than Apple and Ford in 2000, because neither company competed in that space.
Meanwhile the iPhone sells more units in a year than Palm sold units in its lifetime.
Meta's unit sales are not an unassailable moat just like Palm's unit sales weren't a moat. Apple setting low initial projections is also not necessarily indicative of them not taking the market seriously or not having faith in the product.
Hopefully Meta learned the lessons of Palm, RIM, and the other smartphone also-rans and focuses on making their platform better. Apple's not unstoppable. There's also likely plenty of market for VR/AR at all price points. There's certainly room for that market to grow if the offerings are compelling.
I'm not saying the Vision Pro will follow the same path as the iPhone. Past sales of the competition shouldn't be used as a signal of how good compelling of a product it will be. Meta's sales reflect the demand of a product from Meta. Apple has a lot more experience and success at building a platform for third parties. Meta can improve the Oculus platform but it's an open question whether they will.
Are those two categories also failures for Apple?
And saying that Meta can sell more worse devices than Apple that are cheaper and losing Meta money is like saying that Android manufactures can sell more $50 unsubsidized phones than Apple.
Is that a wrong statement? Do they not effectively stop Apple from penetrating every non-US market in the world?
So... assuming you're right, who is this headset for? People inside the ecosystem, who want to spend more money on Apple products but don't need it for anything particularly useful? I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
Yet people take out 0% interest loans from Apple to buy $3000* laptops?
Besides, in most countries, people tend to pay cash for phones and carriers don’t offer payment plans.
> with it, there's no point in buying it. It's a product that inherently relies on an ecosystem (albeit a strong one) to survive
You mean like you can’t use an Apple Watch at all without an iPhone paired to it initially - not even the cellular Apple Watch and I doubt very many people are buying AirPods that don’t own Apple devices. The main value add over other BT headsets is the tight integration.
> Much like the iPad and the Apple Watch, if the iPhone and its app ecosystem didn't exist it would be DOA.
But the iPhone does exist and Apple’s services revenue from selling to existing users is larger than its revenue from the Mac and iPad revenue combined.
To a first approximation, no one buys Apple Watches for its third party app ecosystem. Most use it for notifications from the phone, for workouts using first party apps and for times when they don’t want to have their phones on them like running or other exercise
> I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
And more iPod users and iPhone users own Windows PCs.
But with the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch, they also had an army of enthusiastic users who would show off these portable devices to all their friends and acquaintances. An ad hoc product demo given by someone you know is often worth more than thousands of dollars in traditional marketing.
With the Vision Pro, it’s not obvious that users can give demos so easily. There’s custom face fit, prescription lenses, and hygiene questions.
Their previous hit devices were famously “one size fits all” — the billionaire’s iPhone is the same as everyone else’s. The Watch has a bit of customization, but the Vision Pro takes it beyond fashion into a necessity.
Apple sold 10 million iPhones in the first year. But 10 million was such a small number, that the chance of you seeing one in the wild wasn’t that common.
Apple is already seeding journalist with demos and it’s getting enough buzz from people in YouTube who were invited to use one and people like John Gruber and Marco Arment that if even a small percentage of their listeners/readers try it not to mention natural foot traffic in popular Apple Stores that demand will outpace supply.
While the personalized parts can probably be bought for a whole household and swapped by the user, when including lens correction for instance it's just not practical and it becomes a single owner device.
1. How much room in the headset is there for glasses? I can wear glasses relatively comfortably in existing gaming headsets like the Vive, Index, and Quest.
2. What are the stats on likelihood of requiring corrective lenses across a group of people, and what subset of those exclusively wear glasses?
If I had a friend with one of these and they didn't accommodate glasses on the wearer, I'd just wear contacts to do a demo. If I were spending $3500 on a setup at home, I probably wouldn't scoff at an accessory cost alongside it to get lenses for a family member.
On 1., leaving space for glasses limits the FOV so I'd assume Apple is not leaving that gap (which would also justify the production of prescription lenses from the start, for a product that isn't even shipping yet)
On 2. I don't have the stats, but this study was interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8569398/
> The distributions with significant changes included males that were significantly more myopic and astigmatic, while females were more hyperopic across the age groups. Furthermore, myopia decreased, while hyperopia, astigmatism and anisometropia increased with increasing age.
So,
- parents and children have a high probability of having a different correction
- A man/woman couple has a high probability of having a different correction
Everything we have read at this point comes directly from Apple or from “reviewers” invited by Apple which is the same as coming from Apple considering Apple blacklists reviewers who don’t play ball from futur events.
At that point, we as consumers have absolutely zero meaningful and trustworthy information about the product and that will most likely be so until it is out.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253348
> Maybe Apple doesn't actually want to sell a lot of a first generation product they know will quickly evolve?
It's an impressive tech demo pushed out early to support the stock price, claim trademarks, gauge interest, and allow developers to begin building the ecosystem. Apple isn't going to go in with both feet on a product with dubious market potential.
From what I understand, there are a number of sub $500 options. (xreal air, rokud air, TCL NXTWEAR, etc). However they all get very mixed reviews. I wish there was a retailer that had demo units, as this is something I'd very much like to try before I buy.
I think the price is right for what they do.
When Nebula is open, they simulate 3 individual monitors. Nebula is simply responsible for positioning the screens in space and keeping them where you want.
When seeing the Apple goggles, it clicked for me that this was basically a mac environment, and I started thinking how amazing it would be to run terminals in it, then I started googling for any options that were available now..
Because yes those features have been available on other devices but what's important and different is how those features have been implemented.
And those that have used other headsets and the Vision Pro all say that there is a jump in the quality of experience that hasn't existed before.
To me, the question is whether Apple has actually made this work.
If they've got it crisp, how big a deal do feel that would be? For yourself, and for others who've been interested?
So, the Quest Pro is unusable to them, due to PPD. If the Vision Pro is actually retina, then that's good, but I don't think that's the only reason they wouldn't want to use it. I think comfort/bulk is a huge concern, especially since it appears to use the flesh of your face to support the weight, rather than a top strap. My Quest Pro is unusable without a top strop, for more than 30 minutes. With, I can easily do 6 hours. But still, the bulk makes me hesitantly put it on, sometimes.
BTW I read somewhere they are adding a top strap.
SimulaVR, a competitor with roughly half the number of pixels (2x2448x2448 = 11,985,408 vs 23 million), claims to go from 24.48 PPD naively calculated to 35.5 PPD near the centre of the display using this.
https://simulavr.com/blog/ppd-optics/
The extremely low latency in rendering courtesy of the dedicated R1 chip is going to take some time for other companies to replicate.
As a reference, the standard resolution for web pages is 47 pixels per degree.
1 : https://xkcd.com/1053/
1. Eye tracking for interaction vs hand tracking. If the UX works out, the amount of precision that can be reached is just far higher with less effort - just seems to be an easier technical problem.
2. Resolution and lensing. Most VR headsets have fairly low quality fresnel lenses which cause distortion near the edges (basically - if you want to see something in good detail, you have to tilt your whole head to look at it), and in general the resolution is not good enough to see things that are 'far away' (those who play games like DCS have to use the 'binoculars' feature with headsets to accurately see targets). With a device like an HP Reverb, the resolution is probably close to good enough, the lensing is not - the Meta Quest Pro has a good enough lens, but not resolution. I'd expect the lensing on the Apple device to be top of market, and we know the resolution is ~2.5x more dense than the Meta Quest Pro - which should be closer to going from SD to HD TV rather than HD to 4k. Essentially, if you try to code on a Meta Quest Pro, the text looks a bit blurry. With the Vision Pro, it won't.
3. Custom face cushion + prescription lenses. Comfort is everything with these devices and nothing is worse than a headset putting pressure in the wrong places. It'll cost much more, but be totally worth it.
4. People claim common nausea when using VR. I've felt it too, but only on certain headsets. My money is other companies know what causes folks to feel bad, but have had to make technical tradeoffs which mean that nausea remains a problem. I'd put money on Apple having done serious research into 'what causes nausea when using headsets' which causes this to minimised on their headsets.
5. Software stack and usability. VR stacks are typically fairly clunky, usually Android derived, usually behaving a bit like a dodgy phone. iOS/MacOS are usually not most feature-ful, but a core usually works very very well. Will likely push bar a lot higher, change the shape of industry (e.g. samsungs are so good because of the iPhone competition).
Basically, having used some of these devices - the complaints I have with these right now, are the same things that Apple has real, technical solutions for. And the price isn't even _that_ high compared to other players in the market. Pimax Crystal is $1600 for what right now is a fairly buggy user experience. Their vapourware Pimax 12k is listed as starting at $2400 for the most basic model, though it's been in that state for well over a year.
(1) The HoloLens used eye tracking. It was tough to get used to but it was interesting. I didn't feel that I ever got to the point where it was more precise than moving my hand to a 3d point in space.
(4) I doubt it's the headset. It's almost certainly the application the headset is running.
Apple seems to have maxed out every possible spec and put a ton of research and software into making a great experience.
Probably will see it move down price points from here (it already has Pro in name so presumably that’s the top).
The parts will get cheaper over time as well which will help.
Nor is their a guarantee that its even a viable market at scale.
Apple is too big to serve niches (see how they let some product lines wilt like Mac Pro, Apple TV hardware) and needs to sell 10s of millions of units in the near term.
I've tried this on other platforms. The device gets heavy and your eyes get hot and sweaty, and dealing with an extension cord running from your head to a battery pack just adds insult to the inconvenience. It's not fun and it was not a major boost to productivity.
Plus.. for $3,500 I can just buy quite a few nice monitors.
But you're not taking those monitors anywhere.
https://sidetrak.com/products/swivel-pro-triple-13-3
I have seen a person take out a standard moniter, laptop stand, keyboard and mouse from their carry on and set it up on an airport table.
Why even bother with the laptop when you can bring a desktop and diesel generator.
Yeah, but you can't use them in planes or hotel rooms very easily.
I tried Pico 4 headset, and gaming-wise it is fine, you almost forget you are not in your room anymore, but run a browser, and eyes start bleeding out from horrible font rendering. It is somewhat better on Quest 2, but still too bad.
[0] https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-vision-pro-display-spec... [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/apple-vision-pro
If you have roughly 4K per eye in the headset that renders everything you see, then you can't expect the virtual equivalent of a 4K monitor that only takes up a part of your vision.
Lower PPI virtual screens should be usable, but the text may still look bad on those when you can't do things like subpixel antialiasing (macOS on 27" 1440p also suffers from this). Especially if you need to render small text at an angle. If you only work with fairly large text or with pictures/video, that would probably be fine.
And the enthusiast price is similar across very different sports.
I use a quest pro for this. It requires relatively large font.
If the rumors about the pixels per degree are true, I’ll have trouble keeping my wallet in my pocket.
Maybe it’s a solution looking for a problem, but the best use of AR has always seemed to be for activities that require full attention. Flying a plane, driving a car, riding a bike, etc.
There might be some point in the future at which the risk/benefit tradeoff lands in favorable territory, but I wouldn't bet on it being any time soon.
But actually resolution is extremely important for that kind of work and only the highest resolution headsets available today can actually work well for that.
The marketers told them to go for the 'exclusive club' vibe by doing in-store appointments.
Wonder if there is some messaging by the Apple leader at the appointment that explains how this is cool, exclusive, luxury. Reinforcing the purchase decision.
Need to make the barrier to entry extra high too, so when people laugh at it in public, they are fully committed to defend it. Who knows maybe they will go full abercrombie and make sure people who are older than 40 get it slightly later than 20 year old females. Eventually it gets normalized and people use it.
It's possible that this product will flop, but I can't see it being anything other than sold out everywhere for most of 2024. Heck, you can make a reasonable case for there only being 10k-30k SKUs in channel inventory at launch, and Apple has 275 retail locations which require multiple demo units in addition to launch stock.
[^1]: https://www.ft.com/content/b6f06bde-17b0-4886-b465-b561212c9..., https://www.ft.com/content/632b4ffa-3637-4972-a525-0ddbcd50b.... Tl;dr: each device needs 2 displays (so 800k displays leads to 400k headsets), the displays are new and complex (which is why they account for 50% of the manufacturing cost of the entire device) which means it's expensive to ramp up production lines for suppliers (who are unsure of demand) _and_ production yields are low.
Cynically, a case in point is the display: it is so new and advanced that they have problems ramping production!
Whether issues are real or not, I am sure that Apple's marketing team knows how to spin everything. They are famous for that and indeed one of the best.
For near enough the last decade, all iPhone launches have been appointment only in-store, and Apple Watch was appointment only in-store for the first 4 months of its life.
> Cynically, a case in point is the display: it is so new and advanced that they have problems ramping production!
Imagine that at the end of next year, Apple has sold 400,000 devices, and tells us that only supply constraints are preventing them from selling many more. Which is the more plausible explanation:
1. As with nearly all novel/complex technologies when manufactured at large scale, the combined costs of tooling, the complexity and uncertainty of new manufacturing techniques, and the low yields which inevitably follow, have created a supply constraint for Vision Pro.
2. In the face of weak demand for Vision Pro, Apple and its partners choose to collude in a lie to customers and shareholders alike, claiming that Vision Pro is supply constrained when really nobody wants to buy it, thus… achieving… erm… uh… something?
Very reminiscent of the rollout of Facebook which had an exclusive, Ivy league only presence, that eventually expanded out to everyone and their grandparents.
Another thing I just noticed in this release is how the device looks like ski goggles; an item already associated with 'coolness' and extreme sports but also wealth and exclusivity.
I think there's a risk that your marketing class is being taught by folks who have a limited grasp of how trivial the discipline of marketing can be when a company's products -- in Apple's case: iPhone, MacBooks Pro & Air, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch -- rank among the leading products in their categories by nearly any measure, from consumer satisfaction to performance benchmarks.
> The marketers told them to go for the 'exclusive club' vibe by doing in-store appointments.
"The marketers" told them the same thing for the Apple Watch launch in 2015, and each iPhone launch since 2014 (?). The article suggests that the in-store requirement for Vision Pro stems from the need for multiple components of the device to be tailored to the purchaser's head/face/vision.
> Who knows maybe they will go full abercrombie and make sure people who are older than 40 get it slightly later than 20 year old females.
It's almost impossible for me to imagine that someone with sufficient interest in marketing to intentionally study it in a class could entertain this idea, even as a joke. It betrays a near total misconception of the discipline of marketing, and Apple's relationship to it.
> rank among the leading products in their categories by nearly any measure, from consumer satisfaction to performance benchmarks.
When you say it generically like this, it has no meaning. Among? Top 50%
You could say this about any company. Its marketing jargon from the best in the world at marketing.
This is no different than when they plaster 'Security' and 'Privacy' in their ads, yet have worse security than Android(if we use pegasus and zerodium for security) and have been known to hand over data(PRISM, data in Russian and chinese data centers).
It has little to no meaning, but it sounds really positive when you say words like 'rank among' and 'nearly any measure'
Let me pull up single and multithreaded bench marks. "Oh not that measure". "Well it was among, top 36.6 percentile".
Here are two measures for you: 1) look at the last ten years of Consumer Reports smartphone rankings. How often is the latest iPhone ranked in the top 3? 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
> You could say this about any company. Its marketing jargon from the best in the world at marketing.
The urge to suggest that you seek a refund of the tuition fees for your marketing class is tempered only by a growing feeling that it might have been an elective at high school?
> This is no different than when they plaster 'Security' and 'Privacy' in their ads, yet have worse security than Android(if we use pegasus and zerodium for security)
Trusted Reviews:[^1] "iPhones are more secure by default. Disk encryption is enabled by default, apps from the App Store go through a stricter vetting process, and Apple doesn’t gather users’ personal details for advertising purposes"
Norton:[^2] "There’s no doubt Android is a bit more of a Wild West than iOS, but, with the right precautions, it can still be a safe platform."
InfoSecurityBuzz:[^3] "Android had 547 vulnerabilities in the year 2021, compared to 357 for iOS. While both Android and iOS have vulnerabilities […] Android has more overall vulnerabilities [and] a higher proportion of Android vulnerabilities are considered to have a low attack complexity, which means that they are easier to exploit."
The claim that Android is more secure than iOS seems like pure fantasy. Can you substantiate it?
> and have been known to hand over data(PRISM, data in Russian and chinese data centers).
Any foreign company operating a data center in China is required to contract with a domestic partner for legal ownership of the data within the facility and physical security of the location. In this regard, as with PRISM, Apple is no different to Amazon, Microsoft, et al.
The only data stored in Apple's Chinese data center is that of its Chinese customers, and I do not believe Apple markets its products as "privacy"-focused in China, where there is almost literally no concept of privacy.
Apple has in fact publicly resisted repeated attempts from state and federal authorities to have it insert backdoors into iOS, and launched an amicus legal claim with Meta against the NSO group.
But anyway, let's pretend for a second that I grant you all of these fantastical and unsubstantiated claims about iPhone privacy and security, I have some direct questions for you!
1. Can you explain to me why "the marketers" are adopting the same strategy for Vision Pro's launch as they have for every other flagship Apple launch in the last decade?
2. Can you explain why a company with an estimated NPS in range(+65,+80) even _needs_ the best marketers in the world?
3. Can you explain why you seem to believe that it is the job of Apple's marketing team to "normalise" something ex post facto? Isn't it a well understood axiom of Apple's philosophy that until the technology is mature (in this case: thin / light) enough to create a resonant user experience, they will not enter a market?
4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
5. Can you see a trend looking back at the top 3 smartphones in Consumer Reports' surveys over the last decade?
[^1]: https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/mobile-news/are-iphones-...
[^2]: https://uk.norton.com/blog/mobile/...
You share links to random websites that fit your narrative. Its dangerous to listen to your opinion, you might get mureded like jamal khashoggi with a pegasus hack. Or maybe it will be mere nudes like Jeff Bezos. Has anyone gotten hacked with Pegasus on Android? I couldn't find any examples.
Your identity is wrapped up in Apple products, its scary what they can do to a human brain.
> Let me pull up single and multithreaded bench marks. "Oh not that measure". "Well it was among, top 36.6 percentile".
And now you say:
> You share links to random websites that fit your narrative. Its dangerous to listen to your opinion,
If you can reject the mass of empirical data supporting the view that MacBook Air M1 offers unparalleled processor performance and battery life in its class and form factor, then I'm not really sure what to say. Good luck with the MBA which educated you sufficiently to suggest that Apple's marketing team might profile customers in retail stores based on age and gender.
> Your identity is wrapped up in Apple products, its scary what they can do to a human brain.
I'd say my identity is more wrapped up in helping the world to avoid making facile and conspiratorial statements about marketing strategies so hopelessly out of touch with reality that they can make someone apparently educated to a postgraduate level appear roughly as superficially informed as a high school student.
(Sent from my IBM Thinkpad.)
Not even marketing can stop you/your corp from buying the best product huh?
Anyway, check out some benchmark websites one day.
Blackberries and palm pilots were ready to take over the world in 2007, when Apple swooped in and hypnotized people to think a full screen, no-stylus touchscreen was a better design!
Sure: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-IdeaPad-Laptop-Memory-Windows/...
> Apple has in fact publicly resisted repeated attempts from state and federal authorities to have it insert backdoors into iOS
They have also in fact been part of NSA surveillance programs for over a decade. It's nice that Android gets out ahead of these things by offering pure Open Source images.
1. Can you explain to me why "the marketers" are adopting the same strategy for Vision Pro's launch as they have for every other flagship Apple launch in the last decade?
Because lying works!
2. Can you explain why a company with an estimated NPS in range(+65,+80) even _needs_ the best marketers in the world?
Why wouldn't they? They're the largest company in the world, forced to compete in one of the most competitive advertising markets in the world. Publishing things that keeps those customers happy takes work, and Apple clearly does lots of "work" in that sense.
3. Can you explain why you seem to believe that it is the job of Apple's marketing team to "normalise" something ex post facto? Isn't it a well understood axiom of Apple's philosophy that until the technology is mature (in this case: thin / light) enough to create a resonant user experience, they will not enter a market?
Well, that's kinda what they did with the iPhone and the Apple Watch and even the iPad: https://youtu.be/3S5BLs51yDQ
I don't know what their end-goal is, but they seem to be perfectly aware that Apple products are not 'the norm' in many places.
4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
See above. There are hundreds but anything with a Ryzen 5 or 7 from 2019-onward should smoke the M1, if only for lacking a big.LITTLE core architecture. Beating the M1 in CPU or GPU performance is... not difficult. Beating it's idle draw will be what people struggle with.
5. Can you see a trend looking back at the top 3 smartphones in Consumer Reports' surveys over the last decade?
Not when I look at the global chart, no.
I said:
> look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
1. Single core performance
It looks like the M1 which shipped in the 13" MacBook Air massively outperforms the AMD Ryzen 5 3500U[^1] on Geekbench 5 single core: 1710 vs. 707.
Am I missing something?
2. Battery life
Here's a comparison[^2] of the M1 MacBook Air with the laptop you referred to from the same publication. The M1 MacBook Air scored >29hrs on the battery rundown test: "It ran for 29 hours and 1 minute on our battery rundown test, producing one of the longest results we’ve ever recorded." The Ideapad was about 1/3rd of that at 8hrs: "Eight and a half hours away from a wall outlet isn't bad…"
Am I missing something?
3. Screen quality
The same reviews refer to the Ideapad having a "mediocre" screen. It's 1920x1080, but the resolution is only 142ppi. The M1 MacBook Air is higher resolution and higher PPI (227) and 13" not 15". The disparity in quality between them almost couldn't be starker.
Am I missing something?
Happy to talk to someone who can at least try to offer substantiation for their perspectives, but it feels like we're missing each other on this.
[^1]: https://versus.com/en/amd-ryzen-5-3500u-vs-apple-m1/geekbenc...
[^2]: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/lenovo-ideapad-3-15-2021, https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/apple-macbook-air-m1-late-2020
> Am I missing something?
Yes, a fair fight. Pick a laptop with the same core count as M1 and preferably another 5nm laptop chip for a truly "fair" comparison. Like the 5800u, if you fancy. Or ignore that and continue to insist faster and cheaper laptops don't exist.
> The M1 MacBook Air scored >29hrs on the battery rundown test
> Am I missing something?
Presumably the part in any of my previous comment where I mentioned battery life.
> The same reviews refer to the Ideapad having a "mediocre" screen.
> Am I missing something?
It's a $400 laptop and your only critera was that it had to be faster and cheaper. If you actually wanted to talk about displays then yes, your original comment was missing some key details. I wouldn't be surprised if your next reach was to claim MacOS is an "infinite value add" and end our comparison on that basis alone.
My original ask of OP was this:
> 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
My point is not that there are NO faster or cheaper laptops than MacBook Air, but that at this price point, it's very difficult (impossible?) to find comparable processor performance, battery life, and screen quality.
You offered a laptop which doesn't seem to be commensurate on any of those aspects. I think it's possibly because you didn't read the full comment?
> Or ignore that and continue to insist faster and cheaper laptops don't exist.
Hopefully the above clears up what I'm driving at. Faster laptops definitely exist. Cheaper laptops definitely exist.
> It's a $400 laptop and your only critera was that it had to be faster and cheaper.
No, that is not what I said. I referred to the MacBook Air "test" twice:
> > 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
This might be unclear to you. I am saying: look at [processor performance, battery performance, screen performance] of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance [to those aspects][ at the same price point.
I went on to refer back to this later on:
> 4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
I did not set the condition that it be cheaper. I did not constrain performance to JUST the processor speed.
> If you actually wanted to talk about displays then yes, your original comment was missing some key details.
Is there something beyond me specifically referring to the "screen quality" that would have been helpful to your understanding?
> I wouldn't be surprised if your next reach was to claim MacOS is an "infinite value add" and end our comparison on that basis alone.
You're engaging in a lot of quite pointed speculation about my integrity in this discussion. Did you read what I said to OP? If so, can you help everyone understand why you think I don't care about the list of parameters I enumerated and am somehow moving the goalposts by assessing your example by the criteria I feel like I originally expressed?