The author is former head of Oculus at Meta, Hugo Barra
The full title, which of course wouldn't fit:
Vision Pro is an over-engineered “devkit” // Hardware bleeds genius & audacity but software story is disheartening // What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right // Why Meta could finally have its Android moment
Great article. It's so long, the four-part title is deserved and necessary to understand what's here.
I found this part somewhat funny or perhaps disingenuous:
> "I admit Vision Pro is the ultimate tech toy, but since I’m not an active developer I can’t justify the $4,049.78 price tag (512GB model + California sales tax) simply for keeping up with the VR market, so I returned my Vision Pro for a full refund inside the 14-day return window."
Mr Barra has held VP positions at companies like Google, Xiaomi and Meta since 2008. He's obviously a multimillionaire just from stock awards. Surely he can afford a $4k toy...
Being a multi millionaire isn’t really relevant here. If you’re not the type of person who spends $4k on a tech toy then you’ll have a hard time justifying it.
I think even at $100 the AVP is hard to justify for most people. It’s a solution in search of a problem (which I feel is generally the case for all VR tech).
Overall though I think the issue is common across consumer tech. The space is extremely saturated. People have so little time left it’s crazy. Devices monopolize people’s attention. I wonder if we’ll figure out a way to move past this, as a species, and get back to more meaningful interactions.
I need to call myself also 'rich' (because of values i hold but can't liquify and i earn enough that i could buy more expensive toys without thinking too much about it) but this doesn't mean my mindset changed.
I have to remind myself that i can afford certain things or i'm wasting too much thought about prices of products.
This probably shows a more realistic, less material and proper upbringing of Mr Barra than 'not being able to afford it'
Likewise. I could absolutely afford one, but I can't justify one.
I'm the same with a smartwatch. I'd like one, but if I got one it would need to be cellular so I can leave my phone at home most of the time. But I just can't justify the cost for the utility I would get.
In some way, this is probably one of the reasons I'm in the situation that I can buy these things, because of all the other things I have not bought in the past.
Just an FYI in regards to a smart watch; if you're in the US, check your health insurance. Some of them have an offer of "if you go to the gym N times, you can have an Apple Watch for free or at a discount".
It sort of makes sense; the calorie counting feature on my Garmin has actually been really helpful in me losing weight, and I think the insurance companies feel like nearly anything to help people lose weight is probably going to save them money in the long run.
I'm hardly "rich" but I do alright, but similarly there are plenty of toys that I certainly could "afford", but can't really justify.
For example, I would really like a real pinball machine, but a nice refurbished one or brand new one cost anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000. If I wanted, I could save up for a bit and buy one, but it's really hard for me to tell myself that $5,000 for a toy is "worth it", so I never have.
The most extravagant toy that I've purchased in the last few years with the MiSTer, and even that was a little hard to justify.
He's been heading up a small health-care startup since 2020. I'd be surprised if he was swimming in cash and liquidity (like he's used too). Companies can no longer write off R&D for the year that they've spent it. Countries like China have major R&D sectors because they allow softare development to be a tax write-off. The US killed this in 2022. Maybe he -- like many of us -- just can't justify spending money on luxury VR goggles given the circumstances.
I have found that many of the affluent engineers that I know exhibit this sort of... line of thinking. this how should I say, false frugality, that at the end of the day doesn't really move the needle much (since they're making 200-300+K TC minimum) but makes them feel good
people who will, instead of directly using their subsidized subsidized clipper card benefits, will load their clipper card with credit cards for the 2% cash back, and then manually submit an expense, creating an operational burden for their company finance team so that they personally can read the benefits of... $25 a year in cash back
people who will take UberPool/Lyft Line to save 4-5 dollars for their commute home at the expense of an extra 20/30 minutes instead of either a) just taking public transit or b) taking a regular uber
people who will buy take out containers and bring them to work to take company-provided catered food so that they can save $20 a day
people who will use credit cards to buy gift cards at grocery stores for 5% cash back (obviously if you buy a $1000 gift card for $50 cash back, that's great but you run the risk of either losing the card/and thus losing cash/losing the credit card purchase/price matching benefits/etc etc)
all in all I think regardless of income/net worth sometimes it's not about the money. they can afford it. but it just feels good to save a little bit of money relative to your net worth way more than the actual financial impact
Rich, literally headed Oculus at Meta, extremely relevant to his career and interests, spends many hours writing at least one article about the device. But no, can't justify the purchase. If this guy can't justify the purchase who can??
I balked at this too - more because the idea of returning something I bought that arrived in perfect condition, after I’ve given it a fair amount of use, just because I decide I don’t like it never occurs to me. It feels vaguely entitled and unethical. In my head, you can’t return things you’ve used!
In this situation I’d either keep it and use it infrequently (or maybe it’d grow on me), or perhaps sell it.
It’s a legitimate form of “try before you buy” for online purchases. Even when buying in-store where you can try it before purchase, the demo is rather limited in time and exploration freedom to really make an informed decision. Companies like Apple know that their lenient return policy is worth the extra purchases it generates.
I like my Oculus Rift. But the software is so bad. It is confusing, after a month not using it, I don't know where each setting is. Sometimes I misconfigure, and there is no easy way to reset it and move everything into view again. Hardware is fine for my needs (playing Alyx), but the software looks like somthing bought from seven sources and glued together.
Is there something inherently difficult or novel about VR operating software that would make it difficult to design or implement controls? I can understand tracking hands is difficult, but I mean the problems you have.
It seems crazy that after investing so much in the 'hard part', the VR hardware and software itself, they'd drop the ball on what seems mundane - basic design of UI controls.
No I don't think so. They just miss the Apple attitude of UI.
It's like the Windows setting system. I'm using Win11/WSL, and while it works, the Windows settings are a mixture of Win95/Aero/3rd Party Plugins (Nvidia)/Win11 and some things that just look like Win3.1.
Googling to change DNS settings:
Step 1: Open the Control Panel. ...
Step 2: Open Network and Sharing Center. ...
Step 3: Choose the connection. ...
Step 4: Change adapter settings. ...
Step 5: Choose Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) ...
Step 6: Click on Properties. ...
Have they finally unfucked the settings and brought them all into a consistent ui, or have they just moved that particular one to yet another new layer?
Yep. Microsoft has taken a lot of effort in the last two years to empty out Control Panel and get everything into Settings, along with unifying everything into the Win11 Fluent (or whatever it is called these days) style.
To be honest, in a lot of cases when you need “Advanced $ Settings” it still kicks you into the old Control Panel-style pop-up windows, but at least it’s almost all in one place now.
Let's not give them credit for having two subsystems called 'control panel' and 'settings'. That it happened even once is an embarassment, and I think they started that with Windows 8.
That is indeed when it is started, but that's the one and only time - it's just that this transition is still ongoing, after 11 years. By now everything that a casual user might need is in the "new" settings, and much of the advanced stuff is as well, but it's not complete.
It’s a new UI paradigm, not just a new UI toolkit or something like that. I think those are quite difficult, I can only think of like 4 in the computer space: text & terminals, windows mouse and keyboard, menu driven (consoles & cable boxes), and smartphone.
We don’t come up with totally new ways to interact with our computers often. And Facebook has never stood out for their UI brilliance.
It's gone through so much reshuffling and clearly been kicked around internally between managers/PMs.
The earlier versions were much easier to use and the later ones can become quite a nightmare to setup navigating the oculus/meta/facebook account silliness then ultimately it all feels a lot jankier than very early versions of the software both in Rift and Quest respectively.
Think if Zuck believes in this going forwards it would be wise to focus on removing some of this platform bureaucracy friction, took me 15-20 minutes to get my Quest up and running and logged in after not using it for 18 months.
Yeah it's wildly, embarrassingly bad - to such a point it feels like Zuck must not be using it. Maybe most of his attention is on the AI stuff and the Ray Bans?
There's a ton of half-baked old ideas in the UI, it's extremely confusing. Even basic stuff like trying to add my dad as a friend is super hard to do.
Literally every person I've helped set it up has also had to do a full manual restore (holding down hardware buttons to reset from a boot menu) because they app fails to connect during initial setup or there's some bug with adding payment.
Someone really needs to go into that team and rip lots of stuff out.
Their touch controllers and basic UI navigation are good though.
Attaching a computer-tethered VR display should be as much of a non-event as plugging in a monitor. The Rift’s software experience is so unnecessarily sad.
Did Mark Zuckerberg ever actually use it? I felt like it got shitty after John Carmack left FB. I don't think he was direct in the UI side much (more like increasing framerate in software updates) but I got the sense that as VR CTO or whatever he was able to say "Hey — what, come on, fuck that shit get rid of it" but now there is nobody to do that job.
Incomplete, with a poor launch app ecosystem, dependent on owning another of the company's devices to scan your head to get a rather variable quality of mask fit, and when that phone guesses wrong it costs the customer a further $300 for a second guess? As long as the fans keep paying, I suppose you're right.
you just described the first iPod, iPhone, and iPad. they were right about them. you could see where they would assume the magic would happen again just from hubris.
None of them cost even half as much as this thing. What's with the endless comparisons with previous Apple products that were completely different in a completely different market and competitive environment.
They are being compared because the criticisms are the same or very similar.
The iPhone was form over function, no keyboard, no apps, and too expensive. You can't even use a stylus with it! It doesn't do anything that my phone and ipod don't already do better.
The iPad was absolutely roasted for just being a giant expensive iPhone with a dumb name, it doesn't even have its own apps. It doesn't do anything that my iPhone can't already do.
The iMac was underpowered and overpriced, didn't even have a floppy drive, didn't have real connectors just something called USB that no one had ever heard of, it wasn't compatible with 99% of the software on the market. It doesn't do anything that my PC doesn't already do.
We see all these products as unmitigated hits now, but at the time they launched, it was still very much up for debate.
If you read the unwritten subtlety of the phrasing, you can see I'm not exactly comparing these devices. Instead, I'm providing an example of where the company's ego would allow them to think that whatever device they do release would eventually be a smash hit. I intentionally didn't list all of the ways these devices are not the same, as I assumed that the audience would be able to put 1+1 together. I guess I'm yet again reminded of why it is bad to assume
Also, as with the iPhone, etc., they appear to have solved the fundamental problems: in this case, screen quality, UI, and hopefully presence in the surrounding environment.
From here they hardware will get cheaper, the bugs can be worked out, and everything will become more refined.
It has many of the problems, but it also has crucial improvements (mostly nails the user interface, vastly better pass-through, massively better screens). Did you read the article or just immediately come here to drop comments?
The author is also delusional, having pushed Oculus before VR was ready for the masses. It wasn't then. It isn't now. The technology won't be good enough for a decade.
I don't think anyone is saying the AVP is a mass market product, and neither were the early Oculus products.
VR as a category is niche. Apple will expand the public consciousness of it, but at $3,500 AVP is also niche.
There's nothing wrong with that. If it takes a decade for the tech to be good enough so be it--I'll be glad people were innovating and experimenting in the interim to get it right, and that the folks willing to sign up as beta testers helped push progress forward.
People get mad about this stuff--you don't have to buy it! I still haven't and probably won't until it feels more ready.
The Commodore 64 (or, staying on-brand, the Apple II) wasn't ready for the masses. Still if we hadn't had that, the computers that followed would have been worse due to not benefiting from lessons learned, built up user affinity etc.
And being there it was hella interesting to see it develop. Most tech isn't born right for the masses. And without the pioneers it likely won't get there.
No matter how much I contemplate about it, there was still no “killer” app that affords me to buy a VR set. I’ve tried them, it’s nice. But it really has no place in my life. And how could this change? Even with better displays etc. the whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems irreconcilable.
I'm in the same boat. I have no desire for these. If anything, I'm trying to reduce my screen time and increase my access and accessibility to the real world. This feels like the exact opposite.
The killer app for VR is the novelty of putting it on for the first 15 minutes / first 2 hours (depending on if you suffer from motion sickness or not) imho.
Thiking about it we would have VR predecessors in shape of screens attached to our forehead if this way of using technology was useful. We don't have that though so VR has nothing to replace.
PS: I bought a VR headset to check my bias and I don't use it because it's just uncomfortable to wear.
i felt this way too. i did buy the AVP because of the 14 day return policy. i ended up using it four hours a day, which is all of my non meeting work time.
It doesn’t matter. A perfect form factor like a contact lens or sunglasses would have the same issue. It’d psychologically be like walking around with a phone strapped to your eyeballs. Having screens be localized in physical space is a FEATURE.
I own 2 VR headsets, primarily for gaming. I've had a lot of fun with stuff like Beat Saber or Superhot VR, and Half Life Alyx is an incredible experience that could only exit with VR.
Despite that, VR is pretty much just a cool toy. Yes there are cool and interesting experiences in VR, but there are also a lot of limitations, not all of which are technological. I think VR will stay around for a while, but I don't see it moving past the "cool toy" stage anytime soon.
The fact that superhot is mentioned so little here tells me what i should think of the opinions of these posters. Q3 + superhot is an amazing experience. It’s fun for social game nights and also decent exercise.
AVPro is the best thing to happen to Q3 because the Q3 is ready for prime time at a price point people want and, despite metas reputation, with an open enough platform to support general computing. If you aren’t a gamer or aren’t consuming 3d content, yeah VR isn’t for you. But otherwise, yeah it’s a pretty cool experience for the price.
I'm going to relate in a different way / non VR user way:
Once in a while I want to get into VR, but understanding all the options and etc makes my head spin and I quit on it, go back to other hobbies. Much of the discussion online, news stories (with any detail) and etc is all very "already knows the VR lay of the land / knee deep in it". It makes it difficult to understand / get the lay of the land. I'm almost burnt out just thinking about looking into it again.
Now if Apple provided a more affordable route in in the future, I know my consistent user experence with Apple would make that choice potentially a lot easier.
I'm open to the idea of VR gaming but the industry just can't seem to break out of the chicken-and-egg problem of hardly any content being made, because hardly anyone has the hardware, because there's hardly any content. Even with Meta and Sony throwing money around for exclusives their libraries are barren, and PC VR is even worse since Valve isn't interested in subsidising game development beyond their one big first party title. It's been this way for years with little change and it stands to get even worse when Meta finally gets tired of losing billions of dollars each year to keep Reality Labs afloat.
Apples current approach to VR doesn't seem like it's going to help the gaming situation much either, since they opted to rely entirely on hand tracking which is much less accurate and capable than the standard-ish controllers used on every other VR platform. Releasing a game on Apple Vision opens up more potential buyers, but comes at the cost of having to accommodate a very limited lowest common denominator input method.
Same. Every time I try a VR headset (starting from the Oculus Rift dev kit back in the day with that rollercoaster and other demos) I am blown away by the experience, but then I take it off and never think about it again. VR/AR simply isn't something that is missing from my life, and a decade+ later the software still hasn't made the case for itself.
I think it’s partly generational. We don’t see as much value because traditional computers are familiar and get the job done for us
But younger people won’t have the same attachment. Young people already use mobile phones for things we would never do outside of a desktop. There is no question that the range of experiences you can have in AR/VR.
I found the killer app for me with AVP: working. I have my screens in front of me while I'm in front a roller-standing desk with really nice passthrough being able to see my garden outside. Everything looks crisp and the music quality is excellent
Software eng. It's been amazing to have my terminal, IDE , github in Safari on one side, apple music in the back, news tickers above the screen, and being able to resize, bring them anywhere with me
I'm not a gamer, but I found shooter games in VR to be extremely cool for procrastination. I can play Contractors for hours.
Last winter I had limited opportunities to excercise, so I tried FitXR and it turned out to be insanely engaging. Reality can't give that level of engagement and multisensory feedback. I did boxing and HIIT daily, and while I don't like to sweat like crazy in my living room, that was extremely positive experience that helped me get through the winter.
This is a bit of how I feel about Beat Saber modded with community maps.
It’s engaging and challenging in a way little else I can do at home is, and it’s pretty good for getting some movement and cardio in to boot. The days I play it’s almost always for an hour and if it weren’t for physical exhaustion I could go longer (once when live-streaming my play to and audio chatting with a family member, I played for closer to two hours straight thanks to having something to distract me from my tiredness).
Shooters are less energy demanding though. Even a bit disappointingly so. I even used to put gym hand weights so my muscles get more work to do while playing (also helps with stabilizing the gun, as I don't have gunstock).
For someone who lives in a very small apartment, my WFH setup takes an annoyingly large part of my living space. If I can build a comfortable work environment in VR/AR, I can get rid of my work desk entirely and keep a strong separation between work and my personal life (take headset off and put it + keyboard + mouse away in the closet => done with work). I get to even take it with me so I could work at any desk (in a hotel room, at my parents', etc.)
Even now, I'd love a solution to easily put up and teardown a monitor on my dinner table so I can get rid of my desk.
Yeah, the last thing I want is the scurge of Apple, Meta, or any other big tech parasite directly on my face.
They are soulless, passionless, sterile companies with only the goal of market dominance and investor growth. VR is never going to flourish here though I'm sure that won't stop the iSheep lapping it up and buying what marketing tells them to, like the Apple watch.
Racing sims are the killer app, because depth perception really helps with sense of speed, and tight corners on a monitor are often outside the field of view and you can't just turn your head to look at them.
Even then, it's not something I can do indefinitely. I've played GT7 on a friend's PSVR2, and sometimes elevation changes in particular tend to mess up the brain for a moment. It's somewhat disconcerting. Also, as someone who wears glasses, there's just no way to make the headset fit entirely correctly, and it tends to slip over time and the view becomes blurry.
Outside of that... control schemes are the major issue for me. You can't just blindly walk around in your room without falling over things, so movement is highly unnatural in VR unless you're in a cockpit. And the various attempts at making the player manipulate something with those hand controllers are just embarrassingly bad. I think this is one of the reason why so many VR games feel like toys you play with once before discarding them as a failed experiment.
The only other killer app are pinball simulations. It's surprising how much depth perception can make it so much clearer what the ball is doing, and the downsides of VR don't matter because you're stationary and only need two buttons.
I like racing sims, so I was interested in VR in the early days, but after experiencing it, I decided for now that I just don't want the associated hassle.
No offense, but I think you either don’t understand how niche racing sims are or don’t understand that “killer app” is meant to convey an app which justifies the existence of the device for a broad segment of the market.
And, if anything, Half Life Alyx remains the killer _gaming_ app (and it probably isn’t either if I’m being honest).
While Alyx is definitely up there in the best VR gaming has to offer, the real killer app has clearly been Beatsaber (hitting both the "gaming" and "workout" use cases). Some quick googling suggests that half of all Quest users have bought a copy, which is insane.
Mind that the two racing games I've tried were Redout and Trackmania Turbo, which have some more extreme movements like loops and high speeds, but being sitting in a VR headset and not feeling the accelerations that match your movement is just a recipe for motion sickness even if you don't normally feel motion sick. Add in the shitty FoV in all current VR headsets and I think we are a far way from that being a killer app.
For me the only apps that kept any of my interest are rhythm games like Beat Saber or Pistol Whip.
> the whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems irreconcilable.
to me, this is the entire point of VR. you want to virtually see something other than what your eyes can see in reality. a situation where you want to be fully immersed into this other space. i totally buy into that.
the confusion of use to me is the AR aspect of it. that's where the limitations take center stage. the limited FOV can't be ignored in AR. my brain buys into the suspension of disbelief for VR, but for AR my brain knows it's my real world, just limited.
In terms of straight VR I'm completely with you. As someone who doesn't game they hold no attraction.
The disconnection is also my big issue with VR.
However, as an AR platform, whether it's pass-through or some future passive system, I can see a time when I might get one. I can imagine a significantly better version of the VisionPro that replaces my laptop as my "big" computing device.
I think the form factor is the feature. In the same way that my tablet doesn't do anything my laptop can't do, but it's form factor makes it useable in different scenarios. I know people who exclusively use iPad Pros as their all-purpose "big" computing device, never touching a laptop.
Before it becomes widespread I can see it being adopted in specialist situations, many of the same things that the Microsoft AR hardware was never good enough for. Hololens was amazing to experience, but no where near amazing enough to actually be that useful. Passthrough AR like the VisionPro might actually manage it.
I don't think it will become something everyone has, but it will fill a slot in the mix of technology for some people, along with smart-watches, phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Each appeals to different people.
Now, whether the technology ever quite gets there is the big question for me. I think a lot has to improve in the hardware if they can ever make it something I would want to use on a daily basis.
I think the killer app will be online meetings. Online socializing really.
I work fully remote and Zoom/Meet works fine for meetings. But I kinda dread things like team happy hour and find you have to keep them structured like a meeting to work with group video calls.
Visuals aren't even the key factor here. It's audio. I find the obstacle to casual socializing is not being able to directionally focus audio so overlapping conversations are possible.
> whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems irreconcilable.
FWIW Apple's fundamental concept is to address that very problem - to not disconnect your eyes from your surroundings; they work very hard so that you can see your surroundings and that others can see your eyes, and so that their apps tend into integrate your surroundings.
(The article talks about it, and the author thinks they are shortchanging VR.)
> Can anybody relate?
The way I personally relate is the old, seemingly fundamental human instinct I have that shows up especially when new tech is incompatible with my existing life. It forces change if I adopt it, which I don't appreciate, and worse I might be compelled to change if it becomes a normal part of life - if it's necessary competitively or to sufficiently fit into society (e.g., smartphones).
So it's the old story: First I laugh at it (we seem past that for VR); second I say it conflicts with the orthodoxy (my established life, in this case); and third, someday, I'll say I knew it all along. :)
I'm kinda in the second stage, and maybe you are too? As a technologist - that is, as someone whose job is to evaluate and adapt new technologies - I can't afford to indulge that 3-step cycle or I will be giving people advice based on those instincts (1. 'that's ridiculous/vaporware/useless, don't worry about it', 2. 'it's not compatible/applicable for your business', 3. 'it's what everyone is doing!') and fail to be ahead of the curve. Plus, those instincts limit me as a person. So I've needed to learn to recognize that cycle and not act on it, but to evaluate new tech on its own merits.
That turns out to be hard even after lots of practice - it's hard to ignore all the instinct and the constant signals from everyone else, and think for yourself. We're social animals. So it's hard to imagine the killer, high value apps until they are out there, until everyone else signals their value. But some that stand out as possibilities to me:
- AR: Data and metadata on things in the world around me. It seems especially good for work with physical objects: Showing me their specs, diagrams of how they should look, alternate perspectives. Imagine working on your car with AR.
- 3-D VR work rooms: A room with all of your electronic documents, videos, applications, etc. for a project. Also you can have virtual objects - the live control panel from the router, copies of the physical object you are designing, etc. The room can be as large as you want. It seems especially great for teams, where people can bring in documents and objects to share and work on together with everyone else. This seems so much better than current collaboration.
- Presence at things like sporting events: Seats right on the sideline or even views from the field itself: Watch Messi's dribbling and goal form the goalie's perspective. Watch the pitch from the batter's perspective (or the referee's, for those controversial calls). Also for theater, etc.
- 3-D, immersive films and games, of course. Art seems to have great potential, but will need some time to develop, as artists learn the nuances of the medium (and as only games get funding).
I believe he nailed it with the live sports argument.if Apple can get that going people will buy it for that alone.
I have personally wanted VR for flight sims. It is jarring to have a screen full of instruments or looking out the window, but difficult to do both without a crazy physical setup that I do not want in my office. VR solves this by simply moving your head, the same as pilots do in real life.
Live sports is potentially huge. I am sure companies like Second Spectrum are thinking about how to use their player tracking tech plus traditional video coverage to provide a real time PoV shot from anywhere on the court/field.
I made a pointless cube with a square in VRML a long time ago and VR is ultimately going to be the biggest tech disappointment of my life.
The killer app is what I have when I get lucid inside a dream. To only cover vision is missing so much. I can remember being in a war in a plane and getting shot down in a dream. The decent felt unbelievable. That is the killer app for me. That had nothing to do with vision.
I'm not really disputing your broader point, but this:
> Porn is what got VHS to succeed over Beta.
Is just not true. For one, porn absolutely existed on Beta. But more broadly, by the time the content available on each format mattered, VHS had already won the format war.
That's because both Beta and VHS were primarily developed and marketed as a way to record TV to watch later. Tapes were way too expensive to make selling pre-recorded tapes viable when both systems launched. Pre-recorded tapes eventually did become popular, especially in the rental market. But that only happened well after VHS clearly won the format war, mostly due to VHS's longer recording time.
I found a single VR porn website that worked with the AVP. It was super finicky (around 30 seconds to load a page and actually get it playing, involving 6 button presses). Also was a paid website.
It's not that immersive because you either get a video that you can't interact with where you get to play the part of dead fish wearing a camera rig, or it's absolutely insanely bad 3D models that will only ever get deeper into the uncanny valley. The videos are also terrible quality because making VR porn is expensive, and if you prefer somewhat amateur content, you are completely out of luck, because couples moonlighting porn aren't buying those camera rigs.
I have shown VR porn to many people. They go "woah". I tell them they can have a similar experience literally on their phone with a normal $30 phone holder "headset", none of them buy the headset. None of them even try it ever again.
Very very few whales are optimizing their porn experience. The vast majority of human beings simply scroll through pornhub for 12 minutes and watch half of two videos and then continue their lives.
"Immersiveness" is not a strict benefit for everything.
I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot on. It's also a beta product in many way.
Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product, they have made no attempt to make it even remotely affordable to most people. But they also know that every aspect of the hardware will improve over the next decade, and as it does they will have ironed out many of the problems with how we use AR/VR and will be ready for it, based on the real life experiences of actual owners, rather than years of in-house testing.
The screen will get bigger (I hear FoV is pretty poor at the moment), the CPU/power/thermal performance will improve, battery density goes up, cameras and sensors get better and cheaper and many parts will get smaller/lighter. And in that time they will learn by doing, making it better/cheaper/lighter and working on the software and interaction model.
Hopefully at the same time it will really spur on the rest of the industry and we will see more competition and experimentation.
I can't see myself buying something like this for the next 10 years at least. But something like the VPro that is better, smaller and lighter and doesn't cost the earth could be quite tempting for late adopters like me.
There's nothing that says that a pair of glasses can't have panels on the sides and top to provide full coverage [0]. The main obstacle is miniaturizing the necessary compute and display technology.
My main concern with the vision pro is that all use cases I know of (other than gaming) work better with some sort of pass through HUD display like the HoloLens.
They spent a ton of company resources, weight and power making the wrong form factor emulate the right form factor, and are shipping with zero killer apps.
You can’t even let your friends play with it without getting it re-fit to their head at the Apple Store, which basically kills social/word of mouth marketing. It certainly isn’t a fashion item / status symbol to be seen in public like all their other stuff.
Maybe the “real” product is sitting in the wings and will be ready to ship in a few years, but the current form factor seems like a non-starter to me.
But their work on the software side transfers seamlessly to a pass through device later. It still serves its purpose as a beta (beta meaning data collection and improvement process, not its modern “we just don’t support this” definition.
"Pro" is a misnomer here, though. "Pro" normally means "with extra features for professionals", where here it means "it's more of a dev kit than it is an actual product".
My opinion, and its very naive because I've only really tried the Vision Pro for this type of content, but immersive video is the current killer app for the Vision Pro. Sitting in the studio with Alicia Keys warming up for her tour was almost equal parts uncomfortable and amazing.
The main use case Apple presented, productivity, works much better with an opaque screen, not pass-through. There's a reason we don't make transparent screens, nor transparent windows on our screens: text and images are much easier to read if they are opaque.
There were lots of rumors that Apple was working on both AR glasses and VR goggles, but had to focus on the latter because the tech just isn't there to do glasses right.
First Oculus headset versus Quest 3 right now? Quest 3 wins. There's progress. Perhaps not as fast as we'd want. There is progress though. I suspect that progress will continue.
Ten years ago was pre oculus rift. We weren't saying anything about VR headsets.
Five years ago was pre valve index. We didn't have CPUs in a headset. Nor a battery. Cameras were only used for tracking. The things we were saying would improve is "screen door effect" and "tracking", both of which have.
The optical pathway is pretty much locked in. LEEP was invented in the 80s, and that's still the optical system used today. Compare the size to NASA's VR system from the early 90s. https://images.nasa.gov/details/ARC-1992-AC89-0437-6
It's been 30 years of massive improvements to all of the rest of computers, and VR has only shrunk a couple inches. There's not much else we can do to make it smaller.
There’s an insane amount of tech in the Vision Pro. Eyesight probably occupies a big chunk. Then there are more sensors than they need. Also the CPU and 100% processing is happening literally strapped to your face.
This is like having two 5k displays powered by a mobile device*.
* 2 x 5k = 28 million pixels, compared to Vision Pro’s 23 million pixels.
Didn't Microsoft's hololens first launch around 10 years ago? It was AR rather than VR, but it was absolutely pitched as an early product meant for very specific use cases to act as a proof of concept before consumer versions.
I personally used a HoloLens for a few minutes and it had severe problems with field of view and brightness of the display. AR works for enterprise or the military to train people or present information at least the US military for the HoloLens [1]. Google finally axed the Glass Enterprise project in 2023 which was much longer than the original version.
Google Glass was pretty slick honestly, ahead of its time.
I had a friend that worked on the team for a couple years when it first started. The use case of a headsup display for directions while driving was a great experience.
I had a friend get Google Glass. I tried in on for a few minutes and was pretty disappointed. It was a tiny Android window stuck in the upper right of my FOV. Looking at the hardware, I guess it makes sense, but it’s not what the marketing seemed to be selling, and I expected a more custom UI that would get out of the way, rather than what looked like a tiny phone screen.
It wasn’t mine, so maybe there was more to it that I didn’t get from my brief interaction, but it didn’t leave me wanting more.
Yeah the UX definitely wasn't immersive. I liked the idea of a heads up display and have never really wanted a full display experience, Glass would have fit really well for me.
These days I don't even want that, but that's almost certainly of a combination of getting older and over reacting to how pervasive tech and displays have become.
The list on wikipedia [1] doesn't include it, I guess because it was a "development kit", and I just naively assumed the "Oculus Rift" was the DK1 not the CV1.
> Ten years ago was pre oculus rift. We weren't saying anything about VR headsets.
Rift DK1 was released in ~2013, and lots of gamers bought it throughout 2014. We got the first "consumer release" for the original Rift in 2016. I think its more than fair to say 10 years - we were absolutely talking a lot about Rift DK1 in 2014.
> Five years ago was pre valve index
Valve's first consumer VR headset was the HTC vive, released in 2016:
"The first-generation Vive was announced in 2015, as part of a collaboration with video game studio and distributor Valve Corporation, and implementing its VR software and hardware platform SteamVR; the first-generation consumer model was released in April 2016."
It demonstrates Valve have been at this longer than the ~5 years of the Index, and closer to a decade again (the point OP disputes and uses Index as evidence of).
not OP but it does seem like you're nitpicking details instead of engaging with what seems to be the intent of the response: AR/VR has come an incredible distance since DK1, the last 10 years have seen it go from a barely-discussed completely unavailable/fringe dev-kit-only technology to being an clearly viable spectrum of mass-market products.
edited: grammar. still feel like I've failed to produce readable english, but I'm giving up
The AVP is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were collectively technically back then
But I don’t see us appreciably closer to the goal of ubiquitous persistent headworn see through visual computing
It’s a social expectations and data problem it’s not a “technical” problem
It’s probably gonna be decades before we see any regularized mainstream adoption, because the form factor is such a different thing that we’re not even close to make it a simple transition for the least savvy consumer
There's been talk about VR and some kind of headset since the late 90s, even if it was cardboard, or some computer science professor wearing large goggles and backpack around campus. Google Glass came out in 2013.
There were a lot of tablets before the iPad but it wasn’t until the iPad that tablets really took off as a serious market segment. Ditto with AirPods and Bluetooth earbuds.
In the past, once Apple started pouring R&D money into a specific product type, the entire industry around it tends to advance very quickly. I’m optimistic about the Vision Pro, and I actually think the n+2 Meta release will be much better off for it.
My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do this, over and over? Why are they the only ones who seem to be able to knock a product category out of the park and legitimize it? Is it just the vast amount of money? Are they the only ones who can create products? Is everyone else that bad? Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the whole industry scrambles. Why does this keep happening?
They seem prepared to go in at higher price points.
Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of getting as many features on the side of the box and then compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing.
I often maintain that so much technology is 80% of the way to being amazing, but is stymied by commercial concerns that cause companies to cut corners and cheap out, or they hobble their own product to create barriers to interoperability.
While Apple still have to strike the right balance between between features and cost, and also like to make their own walled gardens, they are able to go for the higher price points, and also integrate really well between a wide swathe of products. They are prepared to let specific products be less competative in general (e.g Homepod), because they know that they integrate well into their overall ecosystem.
Yes, "stymied by commercial concerns" is a great way to put it. I get the feeling that many companies/managers don't have enough courage to make a different set of tradeoffs.
A lot of the replies are pretty vague, like they’re just “good at product” or they just “understand this or that” as if it’s some kind of mysticism. But why, and how? What is the formula? I think this reply chain starts to get at why.
I’m imagining a typical business school 2-axis chart where one axis is “willingness to take and commit to risks vs unwillingness/noncommittal” and the other axis is “acts independently vs. reacts to commercial/competitive pressures”. I guess what I want to understand is why is Apple kind of all alone on that plot, where the rest of the industry are clustered together far away from them? What are the business processes that lead to their position? Can a company follow a playbook and change their culture and have similar results? Are there other examples?
A lot of our industry are so extremely risk averse, have tunnel vision trying to copy each others’ feature checkboxes, rush things to market to try to make money before they are fully baked, and then give up when they aren’t instant successes. Everyone seems to follow this playbook.
As someone who is deep inside the Apple ecosystem after making enough to afford the devices, it’s because they make it pleasant to use. Before my first MBP, I had a Dell Inspiron which has good specs, but it was heavy, the plastic was flimsy and the screen was not good. The trackpad was abysimal. In my last work position, I got a Dell XPS and it was the same, so in the span of 8 years, nothing changes to show that they care for me as a user.
Most people don’t want to think about how to do something or care about optimizing it when they can get it done and not think further about it. But companies seems to want to put a lot of barriers into what I want to get done, like popups, complicated screens, ugly interfaces. For the majority of user workflows, Apple offers a simple, unobstrusive way to do them. Starlink routers are almost the same in that regard (the mobile app could use some work, and perhaps add a desktop interface)
My advice (as a user) is for to simplify the usual workflow to the point you only ask the few (0,1-3) indispensable questions, and then get out of the way. Further options can be buried inside Preferences and Settings. And then you perfect the apperance, ease of use, and general enjoyment of using the application/device.
Being pleasant to use also requires some courage to remove features, make compromises and spend extra time on the right things, rather than box-ticking.
In the end you need courage both to make it pleasant to use and to give it a big price.
Apple makes devices for the users. Dell makes them to sell as part of a service contract to a company. Microsoft makes an OS to sell to enterprises to provide a heavily managed experience for their employees so they can maximize productivity and profit. Apple makes an OS for people to use. (and get a 30% cut on almost every purchase the users make with it lol)
My personal machine is an M1 Air, and have to use PCs for work. The time it takes the PCs to wake from sleep until I can do actual work is a constant annoyance. The MacBook Air wakes just as quickly as an iPhone.
The MacBook team had this whole presentation planned for him, a usual dog and pony show about better specs and batteries and whatnot. Instead he just put an iPhone and a MacBook on the table, “woke” them both up, and said “why can’t this (the MacBook) do that (the iPhone)?” End of meeting.
Apple has in house expertise for everything from designing their own processors, writing their own OS and applications, world class designers, manufacturing at scale, and sourcing parts and negotiating favorable pricing.
No other company has all these competencies at the same level.
I think they view design, especially of new products, as an intensely iterative process to identify and solve every problem they can find. And let that process lead them to a new very cohesive product definition.
That takes a very wide set of skills, to follow the series of discovered problems to be solved wherever they lead.
Other companies look at what parts are available, define a product from that, design have different teams build the different parts, each maximizing specs and reducing cost.
For the vast majority of already well defined products, the second path is the right one.
So that path is very familiar to every level of management at every corporation, and doing something completely different from the ground up isn’t easy or natural in that context.
For Apple, the other holistic discovery path is their mission.
Even “big” differences like being super vertical are a second level strategy for Apple, in service of being able to more easily follow problems to product definitions.
But even for Apple, that path is very risky. They have had a few half baked lemons in products that didn’t get as much discovery and attention as they needed.
You're getting close. Over the past 30-40 years, American corporations have focused more and more and more on profitability, and "making the numbers go up." They have sacrificed employee retention in order to pay executives eye-watering packages to focus on eliminating literally everything that doesn't contribute to that goal. They gutted all the R&D they can, years ago. Apple seems to be almost alone in retaining enough business acumen to think further out than the next quarter. It's not magic. They're just continuing to do what places like IBM and HP were famous for, decades ago. It's like the quip in Days of Thunder (and I have no idea why it sticks with me): "I'm not going faster. Everybody else is going slower." Wall Street has killed the future of America, and slowed human progress around the globe, in order to buy a bunch of already-filthy-rich people even more stuff.
Not that I'm bitter and jaded, as an engineer, or anything.
Apple can afford to build to standards, It is not like everyone else is dumb , they simply cannot pull it off the brand strength Apple has is without peer in the market.
If another brand launched first at same price points they simply will not get the traction Apple does.
Even with $3,500 price Apple likely needs sales hundreds of thousands of units to break even , no other manufacturers cannot pull it off
I think there are a lot of smaller companies that can build to standards, and then they either exceed their original vision or things explode to the point where they feel they need to move faster.
I love my Apple Watch (on my second one now) and I didn't like wearing watches. Except the Pebble that I bought (I think that I got the first generation Pebble colour, but it's been a while). After that product, things went sideways for Pebble for a lot of reasons. But the initial products were great and the build quality was good (not great, but good). The same applies to the first few generations of the Palm Pilot (and to a lesser degree, the Treo), although I think that the best PalmOS device built was the Clié NX70.
With respect to Apple's break even…I suspect that the research they did is going to produce benefits across all of Apple's product lines for the better part of the next decade (part of it already has, with the Apple Watch Double Tap hand gesture, although that is movement detection not camera-based).
> to the point where they feel they need to move faster
They feel the need because unlike Apple others cannot wait years to release a product or upgrade to a successful one and still sell enough. Everyone else have limited brand recall, if they don't move fast a competitor will and they loose relevance.
The point is nobody else can sustainably build to standards the way Apple can, because Apple can take its time enter a industry late and still win big.
Ya know the funny thing about Pebble, looking back as someone who is on his 3rd apple watch: At the time, I honestly thought Pebble was doing it the right way! And in hindsight, I still think that at launch, they had the perfect idea - for that point in time. Their initial success even matches that.
When the tech advanced, and use cases evolved, and users had become accustomed to the limitations of the apple watch style of smartwatch - which regarding battery life STILL HOLD TRUE... once all that was the case, Pebble had to deal with the "and now what?" and they couldn't.
> Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of getting as many features on the side of the box and then compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing.
This is a good summary of Windows Mixed Reality headsets, or Kinect
The price thing isn't just about competition. Meta and oculus before it has a stated goal to bring it to the masses. That's not going to work at a $3500 price point.
You need to get Devs interested too and that won't work if only the top 1% of the western world can afford it.
Steve Jobs is on record that Apple doesn’t care about being first (to market). They care about being the best.
This is why secrecy is a huge part of their culture: it allows them to spend years doing R&D work on multiple prototypes until they land on something they think is better than what is already out there.
If they can’t make it work due to the laws of physics (e.g. Apple AirPower) or indecision (e.g. Apple Car), they can shut it down without much fanfare and move on to the next secret R&D project.
No, it is the vast amount of risk they are willing to take. Microsoft/alphabet have vast amounts of money too, but no appetite for risk.
Apple is willing to dump tens of billions and years into R&D for physical products, fail, and then try again. Microsoft half asses it, and then pulls back instead of plowing through (see them shutting down Microsoft retail stores and windows phone). But they have that Excel and Windows B2B gravy train they can ride for the foreseeable future.
I have no interest in convincing anyone else, maybe they are only risky according to me.
But I do know they seem to result in net incomes that others would seemingly find envious, and yet the others are not able to replicate, so the empirical evidence doesn’t make it seem so easy.
AirPods/pro/max? They've taken major presence a space owned by Sony, Samsung and Bose.
Apple Watch Ultra?
Though it's thin and flat, The iPhone X was a huge leap in specs, contrary to the entire market analyst sentiment that people wanted cheaper phones. Apple made a big bet that people would want the opposite: more expensive phones, and they were right.
M series of chips is an arm processor, licensed by ARM and fabricated by TSMC.
On top of that it is a processor. Did apple R&D invent the processor? No, they licensed an existing design, tweaked it, and paid a factory to make it for them.
Airpods are just bluetooth headphones. Did Apple R&D invent bluetooth, or even bluetooth headphones?
Apple watch was not even the first smart watch to market. They did not invent the watch, and they did not invent the smart watch.
You must be pretty blinkard to think that Apple invented all these things instead of licensing existing patents and repackaging them, which is what they do best.
Who is talking about patents? I was talking about business risk. Since when does invention ever imply economic gain? It's business 101, invention rarely leads to business payoffs unless there is innovation in the market, i.e. it is manufactured, packaged, sold, distributed to the demands of the day. Who invented the PC? Kenbak corp & John Blankenbaker, arguably - they didn't last. Motorola invented the mobile phone. Invention is important but is no indication of long term business success.
On the M series of chips, "Tweaked it" is a heavy lift. You are vastly underplaying the amount of Apple's design work that went into the M series of chips. It's led to massive performance gains against the competition.
Airpods are "just" bluetooth headphones, but happen to be the ones that have the most market share by far. It's about design and quality.
The Apple Watch also is the most widely adopted smart watch, by far. Because of how it was designed and manufactured.
The facts are that Apple has taken major risks repeatedly with their design and product decisions, and reaps the rewards with higher margins and market share than the competition. This isn't blinkard, this is just reality.
Microsoft is actually doing great right now, but the thing they're doing great at is Azure and cloud services like 365, plus some very lucky AI investments.
Shutting down their bad products was a good move, even if they should've made good products in the first place.
Because they have spent decades building a brand which most people see as premium and desirable. Doesnt matter what the product is now, if it has an apple logo on it the majority of people will want one.
Other companies trying to compete with Apple in any space will automatically have this disadvantage that they are seen as the inferior choice because Apple have repeatedly positioned themselves as the most premium player in the market, and so thats just what people expect now.
OS: Windows is a add-riddled and always ignoring your preferences and getting in the way of your work.
Tablet: Android tablet are slow (or soon to be) and not much applications designed for them
Laptop: Windows and never a good mix of great components, perfomance, and weight.
Phone: Only a few do not add uninstallable junk, and these days, they all try to copy the iPhone which is not something I want is I’m trying to move away from the iPhone.
Speaker System: If I want a homepod alternative, I will not be looking to get inside another closed ecosystem. And I’d want lifetime support (airplay has been reversed-engineered). The last time I used Sonos, it wanted me to use its music player or something.
Apple aggressively focus on low-volume high-margin opportunities, have been doing so for some decades, and have a giant war chest to make bets with. In many ways, they work like the very very large version of a successfully bootstrapped business.
Most of their peers pursue maximum volume in an attempt to dominate a market and drown all competition, inebitably at much lower margins. It's the continuation of the VC launch-or-bust rocketship model most of them were born from.
The difference then means that Apple can try making something really unique and compelling and call it a profitable success based on much much smaller sales volume. And if it does happen to launch like a rocketship (as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad each did) all the better.
But their peers set a much higher mark for sales volume when thinking about what's a success or failure. If a product is only lightly taken up, even if nominally profitable at their margins, it's more like a distraction or clue rather than a success in itself. So they scavenge the project and move on to an alternative market or a parallel product idea.
This all sets Apple up to make slow, well-considered bets on quality and design coherency instead of strictly trying to race to market and outmaneuver everyone for volume.
Apple have only had 1 successful product, and thats a flat device with a screen for media consumption.
iPod, iPhone, and iPad are just different sizes of this device.
The only thing Apple have done which elevated themselves above their peers is have marketing which positioned them higher in the market.
Remember those Black and White ads of Steve Jobs next to Ghandi, Malcolm X, and Charlie Chaplin?
They are paying off now in spades.
That interpretation seems pretty out of sync with their financial history across divisions, their operating margin across divisions, their customer loyalty across divisions, and pretty much everyone's experience of the world, but maybe you're right.
You may not like their products, and you may think their customers are idiots hypnotized by villianous marketers or something, but that's kind of the point of it all: by targetting high margins and precisely volume instead of low margins and maximum volume, they really don't need to care what you think. And that lets them approach products differently.
>You may not like their products, and you may think their customers are idiots hypnotized by villianous marketers or something.
Thats quite a stretch to assume that opinion from my comment?
I actually love Macbook Pros. IMO they are the best Laptop ever built. However in the global market of laptops they are not patrticularly successful. The entiety of the MacOS ecosystem (of which Macbook Pros are a small percentage) barely breaks 20% of the market share.
Are their products more reliable, more fully featured, and objectivley better than their competitiors? No they are not. The reason they are regarded as a more premium option in the market is not because they make less product with more profit margin, its because they have had an incredibly clever marketing department for the last 20 years meticulously curating their brand presence and public perception into being the most premium tech company which produces the best products.
That's the difference in strategy. Apple only cares about profits not about market share. Market share only matters when margins are low and you need volume to bring revenue numbers up. When your margins are high, you can have a much smaller market share but also use that to create a more opinionated brand image and drive brand loyalty.
Thats fine until your revenue growth stagnates. Its then that your shareholders come knocking demanding growth, at which point market share becomes incredibly important. When that happens, opinionated brand image needs to become much more generic brand image to start attracting more of the market.
This is what happened with Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, and it will happen to Apple too.
Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft were unable to stay innovative. All three brands had huge missteps entering emerging market categories. Xerox stumbled during the PC transition, IBM with commodity servers, and Microsoft with mobile. The risk of building a brand is building an inflexible brand that doesn't have the agility to change.
It's true that trying to enter every market and own a huge market share in it can lead to lower risk of having to stay ahead of every innovation (as we can see with Google and its inability to productize AI properly) but since Apple's turnaround its execution has been top notch, and that was 20 years ago. With products like the Vision Pro Apple is explicitly trying to avoid losing the innovation race that Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft did.
Do you even realize that Apple owns most of the above-1000$ laptop market and makes something like 40% of all computer profits because it sells so few computers at such a high price?
I'd love to be not successful making a luxury product that sells at commodity volume.
> Are their products more reliable, more fully featured, and objectivley better than their competitiors? No they are not.
This is your personal opinion. My personal opinion, is very much the opposite.
> The reason they are regarded as a more premium option in the market is not because they make less product with more profit margin, its because they have had an incredibly clever marketing department for the last 20 years meticulously curating their brand presence and public perception into being the most premium tech company which produces the best products.
I've heard this same boring claim now for about 20 years. It was wrong as a broad statement twenty years ago, and such a statement I would hazard is still wrong now.
I've had a twenty year career in IT. Starting with PC repair and working for a PC OEM, however the vast majority of my career has been spent in fields involving Linux. (Linux Administrator/Systems Engineering/DevOPS through to executive leadership). I know how computers work, I know how the hardware works, I know the relative value of parts that go into things, yes I can, always have, and still will build machines including using on a regular basis all major operating systems in place today and despite all of this, I still remain an Apple customer and its not because im some dumbo non technical individual tricked by apples fancy marketing voodoo.
It's because for those twenty years Apple has consistently conducted themselves in a way with me personally that for the vast majority of cases, has served me best as a user and as their customer. As opposed to some third party who is paying them to exploit me through their operating system or some mass of adware shipped with their operating system, not just this years profit margins, not just for as long as im in the store and to which afterwards im left alone once ive paid them with a "fuck you, got mine."
Just a few of the events of the past twenty years that have kept me as an apple customer:
* 2006ish era macbook. HDD dies at random just outside of warranty. No local apple stores at the time. Local authorised repairer spends two weeks dicking me around on a fix, nothing. I push it to Apple who was not even local at the time. A week later I have a BRAND NEW macbook, not just a drive, outside of warranty, complete with brand new warranty, an additional year tacked on top and an apology for the service I had received. (We now have apple stores so this would not occur again I imagine.)
* 2014ish iPhone. Much like the macbook I start having issues outside of warranty, it is unable to be debugged in store. Dude wanders away, comes back. "Have you got a backup?", "Yes?", "We'll just give you a refurb, newer model, with warranty, are you happy with that?" "lol, yes I am."
* 2012 15" MacBook pro retina battery replacement - Battery dies outside of warranty in around 2017 and im informed no stock currently exists in the country, and that i'll be waiting months if I wanted a replacement. I am immediately informed that if I do not want to wait, I can instead have a significantly more powerful, and higher specced refurb model, complete with brand new warranty in place of waiting the month for a replacement. I took the replacement. Again, this machine was OUTSIDE of the warranty window. That one retina MBP purchase due to this replacement saw my laptop needs covered for a decade.
This is only touching on a tiny amount of the circumstances that have led to me remaining to continue investigating the purchase of products from Apple. Not everyone will have had these interactions, or come away from Apple positively, and perhaps one day, I also will not and my opinions will change. But at this point, from the day I became a customer through now, I have received a better long term support experience as a customer from Apple, then I have from any other organisation on the planet.
They didn't need those numbers for the iPhone to be worth their original R&D effort, but winning those numbers is even more advantageous for them because of their core philosophy around volume and margins.
Meanwhile, Microsoft/Google/etc are playing a whole different game. When they succeed, they also saturate a market, but that's the only time they call it a success and so they approach the whole product design process differently.
Because Apple is great at product. They have product built into their DNA. Specs and technology are only there to deliver a product experience. Few companies in the technology space think this way.
Other companies are also really bad at product. Google can't convey a coherent product strategy to save their lives. Great at technology (and building chat apps lol), terrible at product.
First, we cannot ignore Apple Fanboys (and I am not using that in a negative sense). They have a large base of users who will jump at nearly anything they put out.
However they also have a track record of doing things, both big and small, and pushing the industry to go a certain way. Dropping CD drives is a great example of this, this was an inevitability with more and more distribution through the internet. This would be a risk for a manufacture to try with a random computer because consumers may just ignore it. Apple has the power to say, well you want a Mac? here are your couple options and we are doing this anyways.
Sometimes this fails, see all USB-C Laptops.
But I think it also often comes from thinking about the entire experience. Take them removing the head phone jack (the debate on whether or not they actually needed to do that aside), at the same time we got the AirPods.
Or the iPhone wasn't just simply, without a physical keyboard. It emphasized the advantages of this throughout the entire OS.
But regardless of all the above, I think the simple fact that they just happen to generally sell a lot of devices. Enough that it can normalize a decision for consumers and then other manufactures can follow without risk.
Because they're able to understand what is actually valuable to their customers, and they'll go the extra mile to make sure that what matters is done properly.
It's comparable to why 'Google Video Search' lost out to youtube way back in the day. The google engineer nerds couldn't understand why no one liked their product: it had all these options for uploading video with the best quality and all these formats, while youtube had worse quality and few options. They missed the point and didn't understand the users, and were caught up in the tech rather than what was actually valuable to the users (basically: dead simple to 'just upload a video' - quality doesn't matter as much as that).
Kinda like how Mark Z. has been talking about how the Oculus has similar resolution. It's not the tech specs that make the product - those are necessary but not sufficient. If the product is supposed to be AR: then it needs to actually be AR. And that means. e.g., that details like virtual shadows on real surfaces MUST be included, and must actually work properly. If it's not, then it's only kinda-AR. That's the kind of long tail that Apple understands, and other companies don't. The tech must fit the users, and the experience must be complete.
This. I consider myself a VR/AR enthusiast and I've had many VR headsets since the DK1, included Hololens 2 (and now Vision Pro). The day I started using Hololens 2 I just though "Wow, I could wear this for hours and even do real work on this if the displays and performance were a bit better". The product was simply amazing but it had a few issues (mainly performance) that it limited the device to very specific use cases.
Microsoft decided to mostly abandon the project, move/fire most of the team and give up rather than keep spending resources on a product that had an incredible potential... What would happen if Microsoft released a headset like Hololens 2 capable of running Windows apps for consumers at a similar price to AVP? They have Windows Mixed Reality, an almost infinite software catalogue, and the capabilities to do it... buy they simply don't (think about the Surface).
my generalized thoughts (and there are exceptions so don’t bother replying with “what about XYZ” because its a generalization):
1. Apple focus on customer story for every product. They may get it wrong sometimes but every product is sold with “this is how it will impact your life for the better”.
2. Apple understand brand and fashion. Unlike other companies, they don’t typically rush out the gate with a million variants to try and capture every part of the market. They don’t let it cheapen their brand and they avoid brand fatigue.
3. They stick with things for longer . Other companies tend to throw products at the wall early and hope they stick. Apple comes in later and then doesn’t relent for a long time compared to competitors.
4. They try and not focus on just specs. Other brands focus on features, and do a really bad job at telling you why you need it.
It's not the money. They did it with the iMac when they were headed for the ground, and with the iPod when they were in a better position but still without infinite funding. Reality is actually quite simple: they spot technology advances, and integrate them into a neat, well-designed package that people actually want to buy.
The first iPod was a fancy shell around an IBM 1.8'' hard drive. There were MP3 players before but they were very bulky, or could store only a handful of files. They saw the hard drive coming, did the math, and went all in.
Same thing with the iPhone: there were smart phones before, but they spotted the capacitive digitizer that was orders of magnitude more accurate than the competition, and boom, multitouch.
Same thing with the AirPods: the killer feature being their fancy Bluetooth chip, which made the experience much better than the competition that was established for a decade at that point.
It is quite interesting that they do it over and over, going as far as saying what they do in interviews, and some people really don't see it for what it is.
> Are they the only ones who can create products?
They are not. They just have a vision of what they want to do, and once they start they put the effort needed (sometimes killing advanced designs before release). Then, they iterate relentlessly generation after generation. They play the long game, and often introduce their first generations at higher price points and keep improving and driving their price points down even if it is not an initial resounding success. Any company can do it, if they take design seriously and optimise for long term strategic goals rather than short-term economics.
> Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the whole industry scrambles.
If you look closely, when Apple comes in, it's because they have found a differentiating factor that they think will make the difference. They always have a compelling message about why you should choose their product above the competition. And it's never "same product, but cheaper".
Agree. And in a world where most technical people assume differentiation means better specs, Apple repeatedly prioritizes better UX: easier and/or more fun to use.
Agreed. I wasn’t trying to say Apple gets every bit of UX perfect (or even acceptable) in all products.
But they do have a history of disrupting markets by leveraging superior UX. Mainstreaming the GUI, the click wheel, the all-glass multitouch phone, etc, etc.
Apple is AFAICT the only company in the world (outside of ultra-luxury brands) that actually cares about user experience enough to spend however much it takes to make it good.
Consider Google. A couple years ago, a reporter documented the nearly (iirc) 20 attempts Google has made at a messenger. Meanwhile, Apple made one and ground away at it until it became great.
Google is a company that -- and this is true -- dropped trou and put apps on my phone called "Google Meet" and "Google Meet (Original)." And don't forget Duo. See also having "Google Pay" and "Google Wallet."
With a side of Android is kinda meh and look at pics of various Google execs at industry events. There's a solid chance there's an iphone in their hands.
Are you aware that Google Pay and Google Wallet are completely different products, and that Apple has exactly the same counterparts even named the same?
Apple does have similar level of branding confusion elsewhere. Look at Apple Music vs iTunes Store. How many people understand the difference between the two subscriptions?
Anyone who has been around longer than a minute in the ecosystem. The iTunes Store isn't a subscription service, it's an a la carte store. Done!
More importantly: it's not confusing because no one really cares or needs to care. New folks use the Apple Music subscription, old folks that know the difference use either.
There is, in fact, an iTunes subscription called iTunes Match. That's the one that lets you upload your own tracks to the cloud, scans them to match against the catalog, and then gives you DRM-free high quality downloads of it.
On the other hand, with Apple Music, there's a different subscription that also lets you upload your music to the cloud and scans them for matches, but what you get back out of it is DRMed downloads. Which don't work outside of the Apple ecosystem, and stop working even on it if you cancel your Apple Music subscription.
On top of that, the way matching works is different for the two services. iTunes Match actually analyzes the raw data of the track to do the exact match, while Apple Music seems to prefer metadata. Which means that, with the latter, you'll often get a different variant of the song, in cases where multiple versions exist.
I'm aware of iTunes Match vs Apple Music Sync Library. Incorporating legacy services into new ones is always a product management tap dance of tradeoffs.
My point is that bring your own library of pre-ripped music into a subscription service for syncing is rare these days unless you're over a certain age or are an audiophile (at which point there are better alternatives like Roon). If you're going to do rare things, then there will always be nuances to understanding the tradeoffs Apple took to support you.
It's not rare for anyone who already has a collection of music, e.g. because they are coming from a different service. It doesn't have to be ripped - it may well have been purchased via numerous existing services that sell downloadable files, from Amazon to Apple itself.
Apple is and always has been a product company. They invent technology to serve the product, and they don't particularly talk up the specifics of the technology, preferring to talk about what it enables. For example, the numerous interaction features introduced by the iPhone, such as swiping, pinching, and tapping. And the high resolution display they demanded for their Vision Pro.
It’s because the majority of tech firms with sufficient capital are not willing to invest in the development of a full product, nor frankly, do they have the leadership to do so. I also believe they don’t have the smarts to capitalise on disruption, so they’d much rather maintain the status quo by swatting competitors.
However the c-levels at those companies are happy to chase $$$, and will closely copy whichever hardware and software is deemed the best in the market at the time. Some also do this because they see the product as a threat to their core business.
There will also be various cheerleaders who exalt that apple’s ideas are trivially obvious and were always the pre-destined pathway for the category. Seemingly ignoring the long floundering that occurred before Apple’s entry.
One of the reasons for this is that Apple is a design-centric company. They really prioritize aesthetic and functional design, and they have a customer base that will allow them to flex these muscles in building luxury lifestyle products. Consumers respond to that. Products like that tend to have a segment-defining quality.
>My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do this, over and over?
Because they don't just treat things as hardware, but as a complete ecosystem. Sure, they price things at a point where they can afford to make a quality product, but it's more than that... There are times when things aren't perfect, but overall everything works together and is very high quality. When I've tried in the past to buy non-Apple gear, things tend to be clunky, incomplete, and put a high burden on me as a user, even in cases where the specs might be better than Apple gear.
Before Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the entire industry had decided separate software and hardware companies were the superior business model. With Intel processors, Microsoft software, and a huge number of PC compatible manufacturers.
Jobs doubled down on the combination of hardware and software designed and implemented under one roof. That bet paid off past anyone’s expectations.
So Apple now is far ahead of everyone else, when it comes to creating products deeply integrating hardware and software and design.
Apple has invested in developing the full stack for their products. Not only do they have the full stack of components for the products but the entire toolchain to develop those products. This gives them a very strong foundation for pretty much any product they want to pursue.
The AppleTV and HomePod both use older A-series SoCs and run iOS with a custom shell on top. They get all of the iOS media and peripheral handling capability "for free". Both projects can focus on TV or speaker features since the base OS is largely a solved problem for them. If they need some special consideration from somewhere in SWE they just file a Radar. They don't just get binary blob dumps of firmware from outside vendors and have to beg for bug fixes and hope their contract is big enough to get some consideration.
The Vision Pro leverages their ARM SoCs, base OS, and all the motion coprocessors that have been in their phones and watches for a decade. Novel improvements from the Vision Pro's development will just feed back to those components and make it into the next phone, watch, or whatever.
Most other companies don't actually own their whole product stack. Even Microsoft is at the mercy of their suppliers with the Surface line. They get what Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD have to offer. Smartphone manufacturers are grabbing Qualcomm and Samsung SoCs which are collections of Cortex cores then slap Android on top hoping that Google's latest version is better than the previous version.
It's hard to really make leapfrog products when you're shipping the same shit as your competitors and trying to compete on price.
Apple tends to jump on the bandwagon late but then turns thing mainstream. That worked well for ultrabooks (e.g. sony vaio, then MacBook air, nowadays every laptop) or earbuds.
The AR/VR or visionsomething^TM case is a bit different in that apple actually has to implement a new market. Thus far they don't seem to be trying that hard.
They don't really have to implement the market themselves - they just have to create the marketting buzz. Then they'll happily let Meta build the volume market where the profit margins suck (much as Android did for the iPhone business)
Apple has a history to sticking with things like this. Watch and HomePod were both seen as over-priced and sold poorly the first iterations. Apple leadership had the confidence to see through those initial versions. This was part of the internal culture during my time at Apple.
> This was part of the internal culture during my time at Apple.
From a management perspective, how do they handle the people side of that - keeping good people on the team and keeping them motivated to do something extraordinary?
People don't like spending time on unsuccessful projects and don't want their names associated with them, and don't want to work extra hard on something that won't come to fruition.
Maybe Apple management has enough internal reputation that employees are willing to take that risk (but even Apple management has flops - the car seeming to be a recent example). But that doesn't feel like a sufficient explanation to me.
So basically they have the patience, the cash stockpile, and the management culture to support large multi-year product field testing with non-employees.
You don't know if Apple sees them as failures. We weren't building to v1. We were building a long lived product. We knew that. We understood our vision and that it might take years to see that through. I don't think anyone would be ashamed to have Apple Watch or HomePod on their resume.
Clearly you are right and they were right, but that's hindsight.
Getting people to see that in forseight when they aren't seeing results, they won't for years, and it's all uncertain that it all won't be a waste of time, and it's frustrating and they have other, more certain offers - that's difficult leadership and management, and I wonder how Apple does it.
But we were getting the results we expected, just not what articles and blog posts expected. I learned very quickly that most things I read regarding projects I had knowledge of were wildly inaccurate.
I know this is anecdotal but my brother uses the Vison Pro daily ever since we have had it. He got a Oculus DK1 and a Oculus Quest 2 (I bought the Quest 2 off from him) and if he wasn't wearing it so much I have worn it and the best experience from it is media consumption. Its really a iPad with a ridiculous screen.
Given my age, I would say the same applies to all headsets I have seen since 1994, when I saw someone using one to play Doom at the Lisbon computer fair.
The problem with every headset over the last ten years was that they just didn’t have the technical commitment to really overcome the major problems. Making good VR is a VERY tech heavy endeavor. Apple has shown that they can make hardware which really begins to solve those issues (good resolution and quality pass through being one, having a nice OS being another). The AVP is truly starting to make a difference in what is possible with VR. It’s not just more optimism.
It could play out like the iPhone where it costs N times more than the competition, but lasts 2N times longer, and has better resale value. (For iPhone, N is ~1.5)
I’m having a hard time imagining that level of planned obsolescence for VR displays though. If anything, I’d expect the quest 4 (or 5, or whatever generation matches Apple specs) to last longer.
Of course, it’s a moot point for me and the large percentage of the population that will never strap Facebook-controlled eye trackers to their head.
iPhones on average don't last 3 times as much ib people's hands as Android phones that cost 66% as much. Better resale value is fair, but I am contesting that 2N figure strongly.
I regularly replace my screen 1-2 times between iPhone upgrades, and have never kept one until end of security update support. I've never managed to replace an android screen, and have only replaced one android phone that still had security update support (I've only bought flagship androids.)
The accelerometer on my X finally started failing, making it impossible to hang up voice calls. It wouldn't turn the screen back on after I took the phone away from my face :-D
Looking at the number of articles which compare m3 macbooks against "intel" but mean "the intel macbook from years ago", I totally expect to read lots of articles which pretend non-apple devices don't exist.
I hate windows as much as the herd, but OS choice isn't always as clean as "better or worse".
I need to run Windows in some form for various industry specific needs that a VM or emulation simply cannot meet at the moment. I don't like it, but that isn't going to change the state of things.
It's a delight to be able to choose what and where you work with, but it's not the reality a lot of us have to deal with.
In some ways that’s understandable and can be very helpful. Because if you’re a Mac person looking to buy a new Mac then that may be what you have. Newer Intel Macs don’t exist.
If you’re a PC user looking to switch to Mac, or you’re looking for a machine and don’t care about which operating system it has, then it’s less useful.
So what? the iPhones have 4x the price of mid-tier Android phones the whole time.
The point is, for now the AVP is the only iPhone-tier (Pro Ultra Whatever) VR headset. Meta's crap (I have all of them) is analogous to the mid tier budget phones, in this metaphor. (Even the fantastically expensive Quest Pro is just like... an insult, even though it does have eye tracking which is now absolute minimum table stakes (and Quest 3 doesn't have it))
The current price it too high to go mainstream, yes, for sure. But let's see the next. AVP 3Gs could fuckin' destabilize the fuck out of this whole nascent ecosystem.
Until now, VR headsets were used almost exclusively for gaming, even if they were capable of other things.
The AVP was made to be a general use device in a way that other headsets just aren’t.
This is like iPhone vs. flip phones in 2006 as far as I can tell.
Yes, your flip phone can play music, take pictures, use the internet, etc. just like an iPhone. But, you would be a fool think the devices are in the same league. Apple just sort of defined a genre of product that didn't exist.
It’s the first one. Apple packed a ridiculous amount of ultra powerful stuff in it. As the article says they may find out that they don’t need some of that stuff. Also we know that everything gets cheaper overtime.
And Apple put an absolute ridiculous amount of money into designing and building that thing and they’re trying to recoup some of that. But by version two or three a lot more of it will have already been recouped and it won’t be as necessary to keep the prices high.
The first color televisions, cell phones, refrigerators, computers, and microwave ovens were not exactly cheap either.
In the same way that a MacBook is 4x the price of an Xbox.
As far as the market is concerned: the Quest is a gaming platform that can do computer stuff if needed. The AVP is a computer that can do gaming stuff.
There are many headsets much more expensive than that. They aren't as mainstream but for the hobbyist who is willing to pay more for better, they are definitely out there.
Personally I'm betting it's not even a dev kit for future VR devices, though we will almost definitely get an iteration or two of them before we get to what I think is their true goal, AR glasses. There's so much unnecessary stuff here if the goal isn't that, mainly the ridiculous outward facing eye screen, that makes sense if it's just to simulate as close as possible using AR glasses.
> Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product.
I really feel like too many people are ignoring this. If anyone understands how to play the long game with a new product it is Apple. I mean the Apple TV was a "Hobby" for many years.
Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before the "normal" version?
I think it also helps the clear sharing of technology between this and other products. From using the M2 tech, to iOS and (I assume) built with much of the AR tech they have been showing off for the last several years on iPhone.
I honestly kinda wonder how much of ARKit was directly made from work on the Vision Pro?
This version of Vision Pro was never going to be a massive product, I expect they knew they would get returns (and they hoped to mitigate that with the in store demos but that only does so much). But it is setting the ground work for a long term investment.
> I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot on.
A devkit prepared for lock down. It's the old formula: let devs make the platform great, then pull a Sherlock or increase the platform fees. Count me out.
Aren't they already charging the 30% app store tax for the privilege of running software on the device you bought? I doubt that fees going to go up from there.
iOS non-game apps aren't exactly innovative. It's Gmail. It's YouTube. It's social media photo and video scrolls. It's been more than a decade, and the most innovative thing I can find on top downloads and top grossing, Duolingo, is also kind of a game, like if you remove the game part of it it's kind of not much, is it? All the innovations in Google Maps are kind of tied up in backend technologies that aren't specific to the phone at all, indeed predated it.
Once they figured out touchscreen keyboard and accelerated web browsing sort of everything else fell into place. Then the retina display was introduced, and software improved the camera. I don't know what roles 3rd party devs played in all of this, but those list of innovations happened years ago.
They don't Sherlock games.
Even then, is Apple going to approve a game with guns on the AVP? Time will tell. Beatsaber is an innovative game but it leaned on the basic premise of people doing something illegal, uploading non licensed maps and tracks.
Hacker News commenters don't know much about making games - even when they work for huge game studios! - and they don't know much about VR - even when they work at companies making VR headsets!
Hugo must certainly be aware of the Varjo XR3, which is actually the most comparable device to the AVP and even more expensive, but there were developers at Apple on the AVP team who never heard of it, and many more Oculus developers.
At the end of the day this is a love letter to halo product positioning coupled with relentless vendor lock-in applied to helpless consumers. I agree with you that the locked down nature of the product makes it as DoA for developers as the Apple Watch was. People forget that the first apps for iPhones were delivered via jailbreaks made by hackers, who had unlimited access, and that plus Steam ultimately teed up what limited things you can do in iOS apps today, not brilliant strategy.
Agree there is less worry about Apple Sherlocking games. But you are looking at existing apps, not considering Apple is sending emails to devs like me saying “please invent new greenfield use cases for this!” But this time some devs realize Apple will copy the first app that gets popular with AVP users.
For a recent example, during the pandemic mental health journaling apps became popular, and now Apple has their own that has 10x the capability by sticking fingers in all your sensitive location, photo, health data that those 3rd party apps could never dream of.
I think of the Vision Pro as the 1984 Mac of VR/AR. The original Mac was next to useless and, adjusted for inflation, cost twice what the Vision Pro does. But it changed the world.
(Yes, it was near useless. The original Mac had 128k of RAM, which allowed for only the smallest of applications. It wasn't until the Mac 512k came out that people could do real work on these machines.)
The next rev of Vision products from Apple, or maybe the rev after that, will just be leaps and bounds beyond what anyone else is doing in the space. No new paradigm of computing truly begins until Apple starts it.
Also, much like the Apple Watch, they took their best guess at what it’s good for but don’t really know yet. So they’ve kind of tried to prepare for everything.
It’s going to be interesting to see what it really shines at as more developers make different kinds of apps.
My problem with the vision pro is that it doesn’t do enough new, the iPhone and the MacBook Air let you use a computer in an area where you previously couldn’t and made it accessible to normal people. The vision pro isn’t that much better in terms of bringing the technology in a user friendly package to the masses than the quest.
A good measure of an Apple product is if you can pitch a version of it to your grandma or dad who can’t open PDF file. If something only appeals to tech enthusiasts it is not a good Apple product (except the professional line products intended to be used for serious work by professionals which the vision pro isn’t)
A good measure for an Apple product was for me always: it makes tech disappear. That was always the differentiator, I feel: it doesn’t feel like tech and it doesn’t look like it.
iPhone 1 was limited but extremely useful at launch. People like me that bought on day 1 couldn’t get enough of it. Had an amazing unparalleled Web browser experience and email, an iPod replacement and Google Maps / Youtube in your pocket felt magical. Also got a Vision Pro on day one and used it just a handful of times. Use cases and value prop of AVP nebulous. Smartphones were a popular product category when iPhone launched in a way VR / AR headsets aren’t today.
I don't think VR is all that different from smartphones at the time of the iPhone launch. The Quest has sold over 20 million units. And at the time of the iPhone launch, a lot of people still had "camera phones" and "feature phones". Business users (like me) has Blackberry / Treo / or a few Windows devices. There were weird texting phones for teens that had keyboards, etc. But most people did not have a smartphone.
You are saying that sales, usage, range of use cases and types of audiences of VR headsets today is comparable to Smartphones (Blackberry Palm), Cell phones and personal music players in 2007? Those are the devices that iPhone improved upon and replaced. Most VR headsets stopped being used shortly after purchase and only a few games sub genres have signs of product-market fit
the first iPhone (2007) cost $499 and the second iPhone, iPhone 3g (2008), cost $199. while the 3g support and App Store helped, I think the much lower price led to volume increase from 1.39M to 11.63M YoY.
They actually cost the same the behind the scenes the difference was the subsidy was available by the time the 3G came out when it wasn’t available at lunch.
One of the things I remember about it was someone, maybe Jeff Atwood, spent a fortune on a maxed out model with an SSD.
Even though the SSD was much tinier than the hard drive and the processor in the machine was slow and under clocked to be able to manage heat, in combination with the SSD it was fast compiling code and ran smoother than a normal MacBook Pro.
The flipside is I think the hard drive was a 4200 RPM model and performed absolutely abysmally.
But if you didn’t need much computing power, say you’re a writer, it was extremely small and lightweight and easy to carry. It’s not surprising it changed the industry.
I thought it was pretty good - but nowhere near ideal of course.
But discovered I could dispense with both of Apple's "Light Seal Cushions" and simply line the light seal with some 1/8 adhesive foam. It took a little experimenting to avoid hard pressure points, and then make it comfortable.
It is now very comfortable with the following benefits:
1. The field of view is noticeably wider. Yay! The immersion improvement feels cognitively significant.
2. I realized that greater peripheral vision downward is more important than upward. Being more aware of down makes us feel safer and is also where are our hands and keyboards live.
So I arranged the padding to wear the head set slightly lower, allocating all the increased vertical FOV downward.
3. The combination of being 1/4 inch or so closer to the face, and firmer padding, reduced the feeling of weight on the front of my head.
Warning - literally. I get an occasional popup warning that my eyes are too close to the lenses. The danger being if I were to fall I could potentially hit my eyes. I stay seated most the time, but occasionally walk through rooms, so it is worth being careful.
I use my Vision Pro for 10 hours a day on many days, comfortably. I had to switch to the two-strap support to do this. But I have ordered an adapter that allows the original behind the heat cushion strap to be used with a second cushion strap over the head. I anticipate that working even better, given how much surface area weight will be distributed across. (Also turning a knob is easier for adjustments than messing with velcro.)
Also, got some thicker (in width) lighter foam, to add some more light seal around the edges.
This feels like a real upgrade, a year or so before Apple will release a bump.
In the recent update it now lets you mouse off your Mac and onto vision apps just like iPad hands over. It made me switch my desk setup to have the desk attached to my chair so I can have 360 range of screens. The resolution is stupidly high.
I’ve attempted a coding workflow in all of the quests and it just wasn’t possible. It’s awesome in vision
Unrelated-but-related -- your username is fantastically appropriate for this discussion. I'm imagining a website with the same name, filled with images of people whose headsets have permanently melted onto their faces, like a Dali painting :D
No. Works in the dark. The vision has IR lights on it.
No the personas aren’t right. They just creep people out. They need more work, or some basic editablity. It generally nails your eyes perfectly at the expense of everything else.
For me it is not a novelty, it has completely stuck.
Yes, on comfort for 10 hours. I have even worked 12 hours, then watched a long 3D movie (Blade Runner 2049, Dune I, etc.) without hesitation.
I cannot imagine going back to only physical screens. I have a 98" monitor with two 55" monitors in portrait angled towards me on either side (heights all match), all wall mounted. Truly wonderful! But this has replaced that for me.
I have even considered beheading a MacBook Pro.
I love the following:
• Never needing to put on or take off reading glasses to see far, or within inches.
• I can have my main Mac "screen" whatever size I want, typically large. Also that I can lean into it when focusing on a patch of code, and it always looks perfect.
• Having multiple Vision safari screens, or utilities, surrounding me. With the look and pinch interface being very nice for navigating.
• Being able to tune out 180 degrees of my space with a natural scene so I am completely undistracted. Wish I could go 360 degrees, and still leave keyboard visible. (Either by having an unobstructed low circle, or having the keyboard "punch through" like hands do.
• Flexible screen position lets me sit with great posture all the time. I tend to pull right up to my desk, push my keyboard far out and lean forward on my elbows a bit. Have the screen large but close enough that I can lean in to focus on something.
• Two environments in one! I will put project organization and context notes on huge screens behind me on a wall. Personal mission control. In thoughtful moments I get out of my chair, walk around the room and see the large screens from anywhere, walk right up to it, make small edits with pinch and zoom.
• The incredible ergonomics of being able to code comfortably in bed, on a couch, recliner, etc. with good ergonomics, due to the screens being flexibly placed. Being able to code in many places keeps my brain fresh.
• I use a holster for the battery. Geeky, but after dropping it as I walked away from my desk 100 times I realized I need that. That elminated inhibitions about moving, and feelings of being chained down.
• I haven't been in flow so consistently for so many hours for a long time. For me the Mac interface expansion/isolation chamber IS what Vision is for.
Issues:
• As noted, wish the keyboard and my drinks would "punch through" 360 degree scenes, or there was an optional lower circle of punch rough.
• Keyboard and trackpad pointer are fussy when switching between Mac and Vision screens.
• Wish I could have more Mac screens, and drag Mac windows out to their own screens. Also pull in iPad and iPhone screens. And push windows/app-states back out to those machines too. Or two other people's devices.
• Wish the Mac screen operated with look and pinch. I do this a few times every day when in flow.
• Wish I could disconnect/reconnect my MacBook Pro screen. The headless MacBook Pro for Vision would be absolutely great. But having the option to use it as a laptop too would be great. Maybe remove my MacBook screen, but set it up so I can clip my iPad Pro to it too?
• Need a Vision Spaces interface for setting up work then moving to a different context, but being able to come back to those screens. Being able to set up a space that is location sensitive, so always available in that room, seat, whatever.
>• Never needing to put on or take off reading glasses to see far, or within inches.
Can you expand on this? Does it basically have built in vision correction? This actually sounds like a 'killer' feature if you don't need to mess with glasses.
It has optics to correct for vision problems yeah, you give Apple your prescription when buying the Vision Pro.
But more importantly, your eyes are always focusing at a consistent 1ish meter in front of you. That's why you don't have to switch vision correction ever when using the Vision Pro (or any VR display).
just for your information. there is only little knowledge about the influence of vr glasses on the vision. there have been reports of developers that worked in vr for a long time that had issues with theyr sight afterwards.
problems can come from increased heat within the vr device, but also because every lighty our eye receives comes in at the same angle, and thus the eye never needs to adjust to different distances, as it would have to do in a real environment. while it appears / looks the same as in reality it really isnt. thats also the reason you only need one correction.
> • Being able to tune out 180 degrees of my space with a natural scene so I am completely undistracted. Wish I could go 360 degrees, and still leave keyboard visible. (Either by having an unobstructed low circle, or having the keyboard "punch through" like hands do.
Oculus quests have had this feature for a while now so I guess it'll come to AVP too. It only supports a handful of models but that's no big deal for Apple users as they mostly will use Apple keyboards anyway.
Let me put it this way, then: having used a Vision Pro for two weeks (I bought one and returned it) I would gladly take a greater field of view in exchange for a slightly lower pixel density, and it would be a very easy decision.
I had some major issues with the Vision Pro, but pixel density was not one of them.
When I did the AVP demo I was impressed by how quickly my eyes would relax and drift away slightly from looking at something after initially focusing on it. It took some conscious effort at first to maintain steady eye focus on an object whilst actuating it with a gesture.
This is, coincidentally, one of my biggest issues with the Vision Pro. I never got used to it. I'd very frequently want to select one thing while also moving my eyes around to look at other things.
• The pinching focus remains on the control you just looked at for a fraction of a second as your eyes zoom off it.
That would be killer.
In retrospect, it would have been vintage Apple to have realized this was an important detail and resolved it already.
Also widely spreading fingers within a moment of looking at a control could act as "hovering" with a mouse pointer. Add some kind of glow to the control as an intuitive indicator that it is staying in pinch focus. So you can lock in, still look around, and pinch if you decide to - or just relax the hand to abort.
This ability to lock on last gaze, and pinch/abort, would dramatically free the eyes to continue roaming naturally.
> • The pinching focus remains on the control you just looked at for a fraction of a second as your eyes zoom off it.
I'm not convinced this would solve it. What if I really do want to select a different button quickly? Certainly, when I use traditional computers I hate mouse latency. You could add additional pinch controls like you said, but I think it would all continue to be finicky.
I think the problem is that eye tracking is bad, at least as a primary input mechanism.
If I were Apple, I would focus more on hand gestures. The Vision Pro lets you move application windows around with your hands (although you need to initially select them with your eyes), and this always felt much more natural to me than. I can imagine a system where you use your hands to manipulate a cursor in space, possibly even a 3D cursor.
I think if you pinch within fraction of a second after a minimum time previous gaze, and before another minimum time next gaze, it would work really well.
These minimum gaze times could be quite small. When we move our eyes, they move fast. I am guessing in the order of 10-30 ms. Just under our perception of what we are actually doing.
I find myself deciding and starting to pinch, but moving my eyes away at the same time. That is a small window where carry-over gaze would reliably do-what-I-mean without undercutting a follow up gaze and pinch
The original Apple Lisa, which cost $9,995 in 1983, would cost approximately $27,905 in today's dollars, adjusting for inflation over the period up to 2023.
I am happy and avid user of Meta's recent Ray Ban Smart Glasses as Im a sunglass wearer (think a huge part of the population are too) and use my phone to take pics a lot. Now do that reliably through Meta's glasses and Zuckerberg just showed the latest Meta glass beta which you can ask "what mountain am i looking at," at it audibly tells you.
Im betting Apple will release similar smart glasses like Meta's in the next year or two.
I can't remember if it was here or somewhere else I saw the point made that the current Vision Pro is the worst one Apple will ever make. All future Vision* products will likely be technically improved from the current model. So if the Vision Pro is good right now it really can only be refined and get better.
Interesting article. Does the average person distrust meta as much as I do? I wouldn’t consider anything made by meta in my house - I imagine this is a common position it’s a shame it didn’t get a mention.
After obsessing on thinness and weight for a decade on the iPhone and MacBook, Apple
inexplicably did the opposite and missed the opportunity to focus on the major painpoint or VR : every headset hurts after 30 minutes. The Vision Pro is heavier than most flagship headsets.
I have 1000 hours on SteamVR, but coming back is a chore. And my face is red after every session.
I remember being sooooo tempted to buy a devkit just so I could play about, see if I can get it to work with my own 3D games. Would it be a pointless exercise? Yes. However, would I learn from it as a programmer? Yes.
To this very day, I still dont have a VR headset. I am actually a tad behind with the latest ones, if I am honest about it.
There is a VR place in our City which I take my children to (and myself) for some fun for an hour. I do enjoy it. We play together on those Zombie or Archery games.
One of the main reasons I am tempted to get VR is to got the extra mile for some games or.. more specifically.. simulations.
I want to give my kids a slight head start to things like driving. With a decent simulator, steering wheel and VR, will be educational for them. I would need to build (or perhaps just buy) a new PC.
Is all this worth it for a driving simulator experience?
Interesting to see the future of VR and AR. I think these techs will merge in one way or another, ending up being small like a pair of glasses. I do think this tech as it evolves will eventually replace monitors. Things like this will be replaced, like giant mainframes are nothing compared to modern phones.
I find it weird that people who are clearly interested will vacillate on buying a headset these days. Quest 3 is mind bogglingly cheap for what it is. It's selling in the millions and the Quest platform already has tens of millions of users.
If you are from a developed country with decent wages and think of yourself as a tech enthusiast you should just go buy it as a professional investment to learn about the tech. Even if you don't want the gaming it is easily good enough to give you insight into the the broader tech (working in VR, social experiences, etc) and it's a pretty good standalone WebXR viewer which very easy to pick up.
(I have the same logic that anybody who buys a Vision Pro for development is insane not to also pick up a Quest at 1/7th the price so that they can at least have a full perspective on where VR is at)
It is not just the price of the VR headset. Quest 3 is £400+. I need a good PC for the headshet as well. This is likely £700+ (likely closer to £1000+)
Yes, without sounding like a big shot, can affort to splash this type of money. However, just because I can does not mean I should. I have a family and spending money needs discussion with the Mrs (as she does to me)
Also, it is finding a place to put it in the home especially with a toddler.
I have to prioritise, as there are other things in tech to be enthusiastic about. There are atleast 4 other things as well as wanting to dive into VR. Thing is, the other things I have access now.
> Watching movies in Vision Pro is great at first but most people will stop doing it after the initial novelty excitement wears off
Watching TV/movies in virtual reality seemed like such an incredibly compelling idea that we (the Oculus team at Meta/Facebook) built an entire product around that idea — Oculus Go. Launched in 2018, Oculus Go was the biggest product failure I’ve ever been associated with for the simple reason that it had extremely low retention despite strong partnerships with Netflix and YouTube. Most users who bought Oculus Go completely abandoned the headset after a few weeks.
You can't possibly extrapolate the movie watching retention rate from Oculus Go to Apple Vision Pro. That's like saying most people won't use ipod based on the data we collected from our walkman.
Agreed, I've had my Vision Pro for a month, and I still use it to watch shows/movies and as my portable external display. It has its daily and weekly use cases
I loved movie watching with my AVP but I agree it's too uncomfortable, even lying in bed and having less weight on my cheek bones. I watched two hours of Guards of the Galaxy 3 and got tired of wearing it and finished the last hour on my 13" laptop screen
The dual loop makes a world of difference to me. Interestingly, lying in bed makes it more uncomfortable, not less, since more of the weight is on the face.
I wear it about 30 min at a time, 2 min breaks in between, 2-3 hours total daily.
Daily use case: portable Macbook monitor
weekly use case: watching shows or a movie. I have to pause due to dry eyes, not due to the heaviness. After the first 2 days of using it, it's not actually that heavy afterward, but it is noticeable if you pay attention.
Why not? The device has a very similar form factor and the use case is the same, except they’re missing the partnerships with Netflix and YouTube. The Walkman was also an incredibly popular device for years. Not to undersell the iPod, either, but I think the innovation was as much in the distribution channel (iTunes) as the product design.
People keep vastly overestimating the amount of content that is consumed in group settings.
I watch a show / movie with my girlfriend a couple times a week. A nice TV is still better for that obviously.
But I watch stuff on my own every single day. Personal media consumption for me is probably 8x my group-based consumption. I would wager most people these days have similar habits.
I do think my situation fits current society more though. Families under one roof consuming media only through the shared TV is less and less how the (at least Western) world operates.
I don't know. I have roughly 0 interest in watching movies with a VR headset. And I have a VR headset, such that I have tried it a bit.
You are also kind of... ignoring the fact that the walkman was very successful. Ridiculously so, in fact. Such that, people did predict ipod like things would be a success because of it. There was a whole line of successful portable music devices leading up to the ipod.
I thought this was one of the most interesting insights because there is a lot of discussion around why Meta isn't / hasn't gone after media viewing as a primary use case. Understanding now that they really tried and it failed hard at Oculus previously adds a lot of insight to that.
I do have to say, for me it does add up to one huge missing element for Vision Pro: why Apple didn't ship some kind of co-presence features on day 1 is totally baffling to me. I think it likely stems from the fact they clearly missed their mark with Personas and presumably they didn't want to then introduce cartoon style avatars like Meta did. They've decided to die on the hill of realistic avatars and they are actually dying there. It means people hate Personas, they don't have co-presence which is damaging the media viewing and preventing a lot of the AR and professional use cases from developing where co-presence is also a must, sometimes the primary feature.
It's fascinating to me because Apple pitched so hard at their headset not being socially isolating, but they ultimately created the most socially isolating headset of all.
His point on the significant motion-blur / image quality issues that exists with pass-through is my biggest complaint with the device hardware-wise.
I got the prescription lens inserts that Apple had suggested, and when I first put on the device I thought that either my eye doctor had gotten my prescription wrong, or something was defective with my device.
The blur is distracting -- and looking further away makes it more obvious, as the objects in the background move around a lot more when turning your head vs items really close to your eyes.
He also says you can read your screens through passthrough, but I've found that not really to be the case, at least for devices like the iPhone or Apple watch.
I've had to take my Vision Pro off many times not only to read a phone notification, but also for anything that requires Face-ID (which doesn't work well when the Vision Pro is covering your face, which feels like an Apple ecosystem fail).
I'm still enjoying it, and I bought it knowing it was a V1 product, but it also shows how far have to go, even with a ton of engineering put into a product.
This actually helps me a little bit. I've also seen people say they can read screens, and that's not my experience. I also have the lens inserts, and I suspect that part of the problem is how they implement the prescription. I'm not knowledgeable enough about lenses to say this with confidence (please correct me!), but I wonder if this is because Apple prioritizes a farther away focal point for the inserts, so you literally can't focus on anything close up.
I've noticed that I can almost read things if I hold my phone a little farther away, but I wouldn't call it usable by any stretch. I've considered getting contacts for the first time just to test all of this, but I'm extremely turned off by the upkeep of them (to say nothing of the idea of touching my eyeball to put them in).
> I wonder if this is because Apple prioritizes a farther away focal point for the inserts, so you literally can't focus on anything close up
VR is interesting all because all manufactures (that I know of) have a fixed focal distance for the screens. This is why you need inserts in the first place, even though the lenses are right in front of your eyes. For example, on the valve index this is set to ~6ft, so if you can see up to 6ft perfectly, you do not need inserts.
Moving your phone around doesn't change this number, its a relationship between the lenses and the screens
Counter anecdote: I didn't find the blur distracting at all, and was able to read my iphone 13 mini perfectly fine. I beleive your experience of course, though.
Stupid question: Are you wearing it in an environment with good lighting? Passthrough camera performance suffers a lot in low light, and the blur increases with the longer exposure.
I can read screens "fine" while wearing it (fine as in, I can read them, I wouldn't want to do it for an extended amount of time).
> but also for anything that requires Face-ID (which doesn't work well when the Vision Pro is covering your face, which feels like an Apple ecosystem fail).
At some point don't we need to accept the laws of physics and biology? That is, The VisionPro covers a significant part of your face, much more than a pair of glasses. Face-ID already has the challenge of needing to recognize you in tons of different conditions (lighting, pale/tan skin color, wildly different hairstyles, facial hair, etc.), while for security reasons nearly never letting someone else impersonate you. Is it really possible to get that level of forgiveness with accuracy if Face-ID only gets to consider the bottom half of your face?
I think the complaint is that the vision pro can’t authenticate the wearer to the iphone. Just like using your apple watch to unlock a mac, the vision pro will probably eventually be able to set up a trusted relationship between the user and their phone, and fix this issue. That’s what I understood from “ecosystem fail”
"Apple intentionally calibrated the Vision Pro display slightly out of focus to make pixels a bit blurry and hide the screen door effect “in plain sight”
Makes me think of the blurring effect of phosphors on a CRT.
This is shocking to read. I tried the in store demo and my main take away was that the display wasn’t as crisp or sharp as I expected for a $4k device.
That would be the case blurring or no blurring. Apple managed to cram 4K displays per eye there, which is very impressive when you compare it against Quest etc - but that's 4K shoved right against your eyeballs. That is, it is the rough equivalent of sitting so close next to a 4K TV that it covers your entire field of vision. If you've ever tried that, you know that it's not exactly retina, and you can still very much see the pixels.
But even that is a massive technological achievement when you look at raw numbers in the article - those 4K displays in Vision Pro are already 3386 PPI.
I'm well aware, and that doesn't change anything. What Apple gave us in Vision Pro is what you get for the price tag given modern technology. High-res VR is insanely expensive for good reasons, both the extreme DPI required, and the powerful hardware needed to drive it all at speeds fast enough to avoid motion sickness.
How difficult would it be to build an app where your friends could join remotely, watch the same movie, and appear right next to you? With good enough latency you could talk to each other like you were sitting right next to each other?
I do think these kinds of "virtual presence" apps are possible and exciting - and also I think there are huge new challenges that come with the Vision Pro's better spatial computing. If you are in a video game (like fortnight) you easily forgive a lot of jank - your brain isn't expecting it. On the flip side, people will not like someone jumping around "in space" right next to them. Same goes for reproducing movements in avatars.
You can always choose a lower fidelity co-presence, but again if you are doing that why are you wearing the heavy goggles? Just get a discord server and watch on there. I think there are very real technical challenges to combining all of the important aspects, but it is also the category of experience I am most excited by.
Those have existed pretty much since the start of VR multiplayer games. VR chat has them, RecRoom has them I think, there are dedicated apps for this, and many "screen mirroring" apps also have multi-user and presence.
They aren't used that much because it's a silly gimmick and nothing more. People don't roleplay nearly as much in actual VR experiences. Real life isn't Ready Player One, and real people may say they want this, but then they try it and never do it again.
It was neat to socialize with strangers in VR during covid lockdowns. It was instantly less neat when I could socialize with my real friends again. I don't have any friends from that period, and I was hanging out with VR strangers for tens of hours a weekend. There's just too many real, physical drawbacks to doing anything in VR that means unless you specifically crave the experience that ONLY VR can provide, like a driving simulator game, you don't really do it.
I've gone clubbing in VR. It's just not that special.
All the talk about AVP is full of people who seem to have zero understanding of what has existed for almost a decade in the VR space, don't seem very familiar with VR, and haven't tried to get friends and family to try VR. They all think Ready Player One, or The Matrix is right around the corner. Reality isn't magic.
For reference, VR is literally a game changer for Sim Racing, and even there most people don't care about it. Even then, it's only brought out occasionally, or for specific reasons. Headsets just suck, blocking your eyes with some form of screen will always suck for a social species like humans.
It's so easy there are probably a dozen apps that do it on Quest and other platforms. I sat in a theatre with 15 other people the other day and watched Jurassic Park in 3D the other day on my Quest 3. It was cool.
So why isn't it happening with Vision Pro? Because Apple hasn't shipped proper co-presence features. Vision Pro lacks a proper Avatar system like every other platform has, so they can't have apps like this, ergo they are left entirely with trying to convince people that solo experiences are a valid value proposition, all the while attempting to sell their headset as non-isolating.
There's an immersive viewing setting on the Vision Pro called Cinema that's very close. It puts you inside a theater-like room without seats and gives you a pretty convincing feeling of looking at a movie screen — way better than any of the stupid immersive viewing rooms in Disney Plus or whatever.
Also, there's an IMAX app that actually simulates being in an IMAX theater. It's silly, but having the seats and railing and being able to look to the side and see the dim IMAX sign glowing on the wall goes a very, very long way. But for now there's not much you can do inside of it. I really,
The only thing that's really missing is the sound. The built-in speakers sound fantastic, but lack that low-end, guttural rumble that you can only get in a theater or with a very fancy home theater setup (which I don't have because I have a family, with a partner who's very noise-sensitive, and a house that's just not big enough to watch movies in without waking up my kid — I'd just never get to use it).
I haven't actually tried watching it hooked up to my homepods, which I'd guess would help. But yeah, the visual experience is remarkable. They can get there if they keep putting effort into it.
Eh not really. What IMAX does with the sound matters too. You can't replicate that with Airpods. Also you do not feel like a weight is pushing into your face. That is a big part of an enjoyable experience.
Gotta have the kid kicking your seat from behind, and the dude a few rows up who's on his phone the whole time too. Just can't replicate that with AVP.
> If the Vision Pro can soon replicate that experience they will print (even more) money and could lock the big film studios down forever pretty much.
Visually? It looks far better than an IMAX screen. It's an order of magnitude better compared to watching 3D movies in a movie theater with '3d glasses'.
All it is missing is sound. It's no slouch, but you don't have a subwoofer :)
I think it's natural. With the end of the Free Money Era, every New Shiny Thing in your life is going to require a subscription, permission to harvest data on everything about you that can be measured, as many advertisements as users will tolerate, and gambling-tier microtransactions. It's tiring, demoralizing, and stupid. Walking away is liberating.
If people wanted to wear a phone screen taped over their eyes out in public, the technical limitations wouldn't barely make a dent in that desire. But the vast majority of people want to have real in-person human interactions when they're out in the world. That's what the makers of these devices fail to see. But they can't see that because they're self-described VR enthusiasts. If they talk to non VR enthusiasts (which is everyone else), they'll see that the limiting factor isn't the hardware.
Think of it this way. Most people think it's rude to talk to each other indoors with sunglasses on. That's the slimmest form factor you're going to get, and it still steps on the toes of human connection.
I think the key to your last bit is "indoors." People don't consider it rude when talking to each other outdoors because it's mutually understood that wearing the device is beneficial.
All it takes is to get to that point with AR. So it's more a critique of the state of AR's present usefulness rather than an innate, immovable reflection on society.
I agree it is unfortunate that you can't tell where someone's eyes are at when talking with sunglasses on and I also agree that it detracts from the socialization experience.
I do not feel that this loss makes it rude to have an outside conversation wearing sunglasses in a sunny environment.
So, I still think that AR will find its way in. I'm not saying it won't reduce the socialization experience further. It'll just be perceived as semi-necessary, understandable, and life will move on.
The main difference is that there might be any number of equally-or-more-valid reasons to have AR/MR glasses on than "it's too bright".
Like, "I'm on call for blahblah" or "I'm watching the baby monitor" or... whatever, a million possibilities.
So yes, AR glasses detract, but no, it's not different.
Also, lots of wearers consider that social interaction complexifier a feature, not a bug. Which is why you see a lot of cops wear sunglasses all the time, even with no sun. For a deep, heart-to-heart conversation with somebody important? Sure, take them off. For anything else...
Your arguments are from the PoV of the wearer. Sure, as a wearer, you know that you are paying attention to whoever you are talking to, but as someone on the other side, I don't know that.
That's not a problem with sunglasses because it's inherently impossible for you to be doing something else.
The issue that people have with AR glasses (and to some extent, people wearing sunglasses unnecessarily) is that AR glass wearers are thinking more about themselves than the perspective of other person. And then to defend AR glasses saying "I could be doing something important but actually I'm paying attention" is like doubling down on that lack of awareness.
I'm not opposed to AR glassses. I'm just explaining why they are a bit of a faux pas and the people who think they are OK are also the reason why they are not OK.
Except what is the benefit that it’s providing, that people asked to have solved?
I feel like if you went up to someone and asked “how can we improve this social interaction?” Literally nobody would suggest strapping a screen to your face anywhere in the list of improvements.
Here’s some other technology improvements:
What would make your TV experience better?
* make it bigger
* allow it to use the internet to watch infinite shows
* make it cheaper
* make the colors brighter
What would make your analog home-phone experience better?
* make it portable
* make it smaller
* allow me to save contacts within it
* allow me to take other notes
* now that I have this little thing in my pocket anyways, make it do more stuff
Then when we think of the problems that lead to AR being the solution, it’s almost entirely related to business problems. Surgery, manufacturing, carpentry, construction… all would benefit from a HUD that tells you what to put where. Those are real benefits.
But anything that people would do in a social situation? Almost never will the answer to a human interaction problem to be “attach a screen to your face”. In that scenario, all of the solutions are really in search of a problem.
I think a convincing example is to show a heads-up display of what two people last talked about as to enrich the conversation.
I already do this but more manually. For example, I don't try to remember everyone's birthday. Instead, I put their birthday's in my calendar, get a notification when it's close, and use this information to enrich our relationship.
It seems reasonable to believe this could be extended much further if the barrier to recording and recalling the information was reduced.
> I think a convincing example is to show a heads-up display of what two people last talked about as to enrich the conversation.
Perhaps. It might be a generation or two before the "that's ... creepy" vibes fade. Reminds me a bit of that scene in minority report after the eye swap and the protagonist passes by a billboard and the avatar asks him about how the pants he purchased worked out.
I do something similar to the calendar thing too. I reach out a few days ahead of time so it doesn't seem like I'm just doing it reflexively like an unfeeling robot because facebook prompted me to do so day of.
> Then when we think of the problems that lead to AR being the solution, it’s almost entirely related to business problems. Surgery, manufacturing, carpentry, construction… all would benefit from a HUD that tells you what to put where. Those are real benefits.
I think you're on to something. Glass was an expensive flop from the word "go" but the second generation did live on in these specialized sectors.
I suspect that - at least for this decade - AR is still going to be the specialized/industry tech and that VR is going to be the consumer oriented tech.
The problem isn't the form factor, it's the purpose. Wearing sunglasses is beneficial because it protects my eyes and makes it easier to look at you when you're talking to me.
Wearing an AR device is like telling you something more important than our conversation might come up and I need to be able to quickly shift my focus from you to it.
Maybe it's my age (early 40s) but it's common for our friend/family group to shame each other (in a half-kidding-half-not way) when somebody gets into their phone too much during a social event. "If you're going to be here, be here" is a mantra we tease each other with. We hold each other accountable enough to where when my elementary-age son picks out a movie for us to watch, if one of the adults in the room starts scrolling on their phone he'll pause the movie and ask them if they're going to pay attention or not.
My assumption is that this expectation will shift as time passes.
I can see a future where people use AR, there's a setting that indicates "full focus" vs "distracted", and people will ask others to stay in "full focus" mode when talking. This would minimize the number of notifications the user receives in an effort to lend focus to the conversation.
It'll be the same general expectation as what you're describing, but with a step towards concession and acceptance of the tech.
There will also probably be an in-between period where people who remain glued to their phone try to take the morale high ground against those who are using AR goggles by saying they're giving more focus to the conversation :)
Full focus mode would have to be passthrough with no notifications or external information. I feel like anything less would just be the current phone status quo.
I dunno. Some people have trouble reading emotions from other people's facial expressions. A heads-up display that conveys this sort of information in real-time could help improve the conversation. Or pulling up highlights from the last time a conversation occurred so you can more easily pick up where you left off.
Of course, some people will feel like these changes reduce the humanity of the interaction because you're letting the device do too much of the work and others will disagree and say that the tech is just helping automate and improve a task they were already performing. Both camps will have fair points.
These sorts of behaviors which augment the conversation seem distinct from concepts like "be shown new text messages while mid-conversation" which I do think should be able to be silenced and conveyed as being silenced.
I agree that a CRM mode would indeed be very valuable, but I'm skeptical of such a feature shipping given that a similar thing could be surfaced on the phone but I've never even heard of people using it.
I agree it would be breaking some new grounds. The only things that I can think of right now are tech like Babel Fish earbuds, which strive to translate conversations in real-time, and Google Lens for real-time visual translations.
I did make good use of Google Lens when traveling to France last year. I found myself engaging with the world by looking through my phone's camera frequently as it made understanding restaurant menus much easier.
I guess I don't use this feature when having a conversation with another person because it would require me to get out my phone and change modes when the conversation begins. That's too much of a barrier. In some settings, though, like when going to watch a movie in public, there's a dedicated window where people are expected to shift their phones to a socially acceptable mode. I do respond accordingly in those situations.
With AR, it would seem this process could be automated through facial recognition / voice detection. If there was a setting that said, "Don't notify me of text messages when the system detects I am conversing with another person. Do this automatically" then it seems quite practical to have that enabled. It also seems reasonable that it would be implemented because the concept of "disable notifications temporarily" already exists on phones.
This is the trap of when a company needs a user to buy a product more than the user needs the product.
This was something jobs was adept at navigating around along with Jonny Ive.
Tim Cook is a product idiot. Or maybe more to the point he is adept at making factories and has run out of products for them to manufacture. So what’s more important to him his giving the factory more to do vs designing the right product.
> But the vast majority of people want to have real in-person human interactions when they're out in the world.
I think this statement is too strong. I see too many people every day in elevators, in lines, all sorts of different places that are on their phone and specifically avoiding eye contact with other human beings. That suggests that the term “vast majority” is probably too strong.
Right? Eyes down at their phone, Air Pods in, it's not easy to get their attention even if you need to. They're essentially already connected to a VR headset, just a poor version of one.
Seconded. One glance around coffee shops, buses, or the like is enough to show that screens dominate “out in the world” too. And looking at the trend lines for the past decade, it seems set to continue.
I don’t buy this. So many people walking around absolutely glued to their smartphones. Neck crooked down, ignoring the world, even inside businesses, social situations, at home, at work, and the taboo is very quickly softening! I often notice couples sitting in a restaurant, basically ignoring each other in favor of their phones for an entire meal. No human connection going on here!
People want human connections less and less, especially with strangers, service providers, “NPCs” as some would lovingly call them. I think good AR will accelerate this, not fail due to a shrinking taboo.
IMO people on their smartphones are generally experiencing 10-100x the human connections that people without their smartphones are experiencing. That's exactly why they're so addictive. Smart phones let people push themselves right to the very edge of Dunbar's limit for social connectivity, which is why it can get stressful and exhausting, and is probably damaging when done in extended periods.
Putting your phone down for a few hours to stare at the trees, or the water, or the clouds passing by, and maybe chatting up a couple nearby people doing the same, that is now the epitome of disconnected blissful ignorance.
> > But the vast majority of people want to have real in-person human interactions when they're out in the world.
> I don’t buy this. So many people walking around absolutely glued to their smartphones.
I think it is right-ish, and just needs refinement:
Where people have to have human interactions when they're out in the world, the vast majority of them want them to be real in-person.
If I choose to interact with someone, or accept their attempt at interaction, I don't want a device between me and them. I often don't choose that, but this doesn't minimise my preference for non-tech-filtered integration if interaction does happen.
If I'm out on a trail run or trek I'm perfectly happy to exchange pleasantries with others out and about, I'm quite happy to give directions or similar assistance to a tourist while meandering locally (if asked politely, otherwise you will get sent well out of your way), but far less so if they are not looking me in the face.¹
> especially with strangers, service providers, “NPCs”, …
…, bloody survey people, charity muggers, those who think that because they believe [deity] loves me I'm somehow beholden to care, local press outside the station when I get off a train delayed by a significant incident, …
--
[1] caveat: I'm away that some people are very uncomfortable with direct eye contact, that is quite different from not entirely paying attention because of a bit of tech.
I've always found examples like "couples sitting in a restaurant, ignoring each other in favor of their phones" as kind of hilariously judgemental. Almost in the same way that ignorant extroverts view introverts.
If they're a couple, why would they feel the need to always talk? You don't need to always be talking to enjoy just doing your own thing in each other's presence. Even prior to the proliferation of smartphones this was pretty normal in my experience, you spend most of your time having the ability to talk to the people you like, at some point you run out of things to say and are comfortable enough with each other to just do your own thing while in each other's company. It says nothing about their connection with each other.
shrug I don't spend my entire life in company. Reading a book is hardly a group event....
Also, when shared experience hits the next version (or the one after that, or..) and I can watch Liverpool beat Man Utd with my brother on a different continent (with whatever lag being compensated for) I'll get more of a shared experience than I could have today.
This is a version-1 product. It's only going to get better - I have one of the original iPhones, and compared to the '15 Pro I have now, it's pitiful. Apple are generally a long-term game company, and they're not going to let this just drop.
So sure, in company down at the pub, I won't be wearing goggles like this. Funnily enough I don't think that's the target market, making your argument a bit of a strawman one. Apple (I expect) will focus is attention on where it can make a difference. And (again, I expect) it will.
The second paragraph seems silly. Nobody thinks its rude to talk with normal glasses on, and that's the same form factor. Meta's AR glasses are already available as both sunglasses and normal glasses (though obviously lacking in actual AR).
> But the vast majority of people want to have real in-person human interactions when they're out in the world.
Is this true? Most of the time when I'm out and about I'm going from point a to point b and I'm not really interested in talking to anyone I dont already know. If I'm already at a specific place to do a specific thing... I'm not going to have a vr headset on and I'm not really interested in interacting with people I dont already know.
these things change quiet quickly.
Ask any zoomers (which i might add arent young anymore either, the first ones'll start turning 30 next year!) if its rude to glance at the phone mid conversation.
Gen Y/X generally considered that extremely rude, while gen Z started to see it as completely normal.
> Most people think it's rude to talk to each other indoors with sunglasses on.
Nobody finds it rude to talk to each other with actual glasses on. If AR had similar utility and minimal impact on seeing each others eyes, then the same would be true. Sunglasses prevent people from tracking where people are looking which is why they come off as rude.
> That's the slimmest form factor you're going to get, and it still steps on the toes of human connection.
The minimalist form factor for AR is contact lenses not glasses. Several companies are working on them though it's a long way from a consumer product.
You may not have realized it, but the glasses on tip of nose thing where people lean forward to look at you is because reading glasses make things blurry at conversation distance. Basically this: https://levinsoneyeclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/shu...
However, sometimes people don't bother and they really can't see you very clearly. But, you can still track the body language from where they eyes are looking so it's fine, that's the difference clear lenses make.
> The minimalist form factor for AR is contact lenses not glasses.
That is extremely unlikely to ever be possible. A chip that size that did both high-bandwidth radio AND wireless charging (since you're not gonna have wires dangling from your eyes) AND high refresh rate display would fundamentally have to get extremely hot, with anything resembling current electronics.
You'd have to invent an entirely different transistor to do something like this.
You don't need a high bandwidth connection for AR. Vector graphics + text dramatically reduces the bandwidth requirements.
That's not immersive 3D, but the useful bit of AR would be things like putting peoples names above them at a party as if you where in an MMO. Countdown timers over cooking pots, a map or just an arrow when walking somewhere etc.
People used to think it's rude to stare at a phone screen too, but here we are.
I'm not saying VR will become as normalised as smartphones, mind you, just that it's a possible outcome. That said, VR / AR as we know it now has been a thing for a while now and it hasn't taken off as much.
It used to be extremely rude to not take off headphones when people talk to you. Nowadays it is quite accepted for earbuds and "transparency mode" is even a selling point.
My guess would be that once AR allows easy sharing, e.g. showing others a funny AR cat video, it will quickly become socially accepted to wear frequently.
Hard disagree. Except for brief interactions like ordering a coffee, I don’t think it is at all socially common for people to keep headphones on when they talk with others. Maybe it varies by culture, or social circle.
It varies. I’m totally fine with it if it’s clear the person can hear and interact with me, and the people I interact with a lot do it to varying degrees, and no one’s offended.
There's an important difference: the subtle face mimicry is extremely important for sub-conscious (and conscious) communication. Having headphones on is rude because it indicates that the other person is not interested in hearing what you have to say. The problem with having an opaque visor covering your face is not that it's rude, it's that you completely lose the non-verbal part of communication. This is why email and phone communication can be so easy to misunderstand. Without seeing the face and body languages of the other person, your mind will have a tendency to overlay biases and prejudices on what is being communicated. A simple "sure, whatever" can be interpreted as obnoxiously dismissive, as a surrender, or friendly banter. If you can see the body language of the other person, the intent is usually clear. If you can't, it isn't.
It used to be rude because people understood it to signal that.
With younger people earbuds seem more like a fashion statement (you also don't take off ear rings to talk to people) and the noise cancelling/transparency will actually do the opposite: filter out background noise so that you can be heard more clearly.
Similarly taking out a Nokia used to signal that you will not be paying attention for a while. Nowadays it might instead be you taking a nice photo, showing off something to others etc.
VR headsets are definitely not at this point yet, but I am not so sure they never will be.
My point is that with the current VR implementation the problem is not about rudeness, but fundamentally hampering personal communication.
If I go and meet with someone in person, I generally do it because I want to see them up close, face to face. If we are both wearing VR headsets that hide our faces, the whole premise goes out the window.
Eventually, VR headsets might overcome this problem by accurately portraying the other person's face in some way, but we are nowhere there yet.
I find that it is sadly getting socially acceptable to be worse than that: to talk straight out loud with someone over the phone over the airbuds while around other people, even making eye contact with other people.
When someone makes eye contact with you and speak, you can no longer expect that they intend to speak with you.
The people with the worst behaviour are pushing the norm.
What's wrong with AR glasses in a form factor akin to actual prescription glasses? It seems from my perspective a cool way to augment our perception about the world, not to diminish it.
I disagree, there is a difference between desire and practicality.
For example, I would love and could easily justify the 12.9 inch iPad but the logistics of traveling with it make no sense for me.
I could justify the benefits of traveling everywhere with my high powered gaming pc but logistically it makes no sense.
These devices are still largely impractical for long term use, and particularly outside use. They won't be until the hardware catches up with what we are working on with the software and it is an almost invisible technology except for a mostly standard looking pair of glasses.
People already walk around with their phone almost attached to their face, it isn't hard to imagine wanting an AR headset.
> Most people think it’s rude to talk to each other indoors with sunglasses on
…really? I have prescription glasses/sunglasses and I often don’t bother switching them during a quick excursion- such as daycare pickup/drop off. It’s never crossed my mind that I could be perceived as rude. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that anyone with such opinions do not have the level prescription that are required for driving and just general consent use. And for anyone thinking transition lenses would be the solution- those do not work in vehicles with UV blocking windows.
How many people have you seen wearing sunglasses inside an office, or talking at home?
If you're having a quick interaction like popping in and out of a building to pick up / drop off someone or something, sure. But otherwise, it's quite universally rude.
I'm confused by comments like this one. Apple very specifically designed Vision Pro to address this problem, going to great lengths to make the outside world visible to the user and the user's eyes visible to others, and marketing that they don't want to create isolation. It is also described in the article (where the author thinks they went too far).
What do you think of how the Vision Pro addresses this problem?
The "user's eyes visible to others" part has been widely panned, even by the most enthusiastic reviews. There are two major problems with it.
One, it's not the actual user's eyes, it's just a bad rendition of some eyes - without any of the extremely subtle facial expressions that happen with the skin around the eyes, and without any amount of certainty from the other that they are correctly reflecting exactly what you're looking at. We are extremely good at noticing exactly which direction another human is looking in, and when theire gaze shifts, so even minor inaccuracies or lag are jarring.
Much worse, the screen they used is so bad that the eyes are barely visible in almost any amount of lighting.
Either way, even if this "solution" actually worked, the visor still covers far too much of the face to be able to get a normal expression.
This is why linux perpetually has <5% adoption. It's made and maintained by linux enthusiasts who are incapable of understanding how the average person wants to use a computer.
But, how the average person wants to use a computer is extremely, irreconcilably different from how the 5% (or 2% probably but whatever, doesn't matter) want to use their computers.
So... sniffsniff what's that smell? The market working is it then?
Both Vitamix blenders and recumbent bicycles have less market share than desktop Linux. Is that because recumbent bike makers just really have no idea how people want to ride bicycles, or...
> This is why linux perpetually has <5% adoption. It's made and maintained by linux enthusiasts who are incapable of understanding how the average person wants to use a computer.
No. That's a gross generalization. You have all sorts of people using Linux, including leading UX experts.
What you don't have is a single governing body pulling everyone in the same direction, so efforts get diluted(even when prioritized).
I wouldn’t mind wearing glasses outdoors as long as the environment could provide me with useful information. From a nearby shop that has discounts, to real time traffic updates. What AR was supposed to deliver but never really materialized.
Why do you think VR makers think people are going to wear the thing all the time? Not being appropriate to use everywhere doesn’t hurt computer monitors, or game consoles, or cars, etc. It’s not going to replace phones, but that isn’t what it needs to do to succeed as a product.
I would encourage you to try out both the Quest 3 and the Apple Vision Pro for an extended period of time. If you had asked people during the advent of the television, they would have expressed the same opinion about people wanting social connection instead of sitting in front of a box.
No they clearly wouldn't be right. Even if we accept as fact the idea that both
those things have had negative effects on society and on us, quite clearly huge numbers of people DO want TVs and smartphones, even if those things aren't leading to better, happier lives.
I'm not sure how we could possibly quantify and compare better, happier lives before and after TVs or smartphones, but it would be impossible to narrow down the metrics to peg the change over such a long period of time on just those technologies. The scale is just too big and the timeline to long to possibly know why happiness may have increased, if it did at all.
> quite clearly huge numbers of people DO want TVs and smartphones
This really ventures into the space of addictive behaviors. Do meth addicts really want meth, or are they using for some other reason? Can we assume that they DO want the meth and that's the primary driver simply because they keep using it?
That's true. But as far as business and popularity go, TV and smartphones were a huge success. In the end what makes money will be sold without regard for social consequences.
I’m in my late 30’s, and I was a high school educator for about a decade. Teenagers have become quite comfortable holding an entire conversation while wearing earbuds. As an ancient and outdated old person, my initial gut reaction was that it was… a bit rude(?); however, these teenagers just internalized that audio pass-through was a thing, and wearing earbuds didn’t indicate a lack of attention to the conversant. My point being, we may not be comfortable having a conversation indoors with sunglasses on today - but that could change in a flash and only ‘old people’ would even notice.
Yeah, it could be a “bad thing”, but it won’t be a bad thing just because prior norms have been broken.
We’re already deep into the process of merging modern technology into every aspect of our lives, and in some cases it’s been bad. In some cases it’s been a necessary evolution to survive in a modern society. In some cases, it’s been good.
On the one hand, I worry that face helmets will further erode human connection, and people will live in a lower resolution reality than what is possible with direct human contact. On the other hand, the current reality is that more and more people are looking down into a slab of glass instead of up/out at the world around them.
It could be that the ultimate version of AVP (some kind of glasses that are barely more noticeable than AirPods) is what gets people to look up/out again.
The “bad thing” is arguably already here, and it’s just a question of whether future tech will make it worse, or do a better job of merging the real world with the digital world, enabling people to participate in both instead of disappearing into their pocket computer.
The AirPods are really the first mass-market augmented reality device. It's so well done that no one even thinks about them that way. That's how it'll need to be with visual augmentation, but there's no reason I've seen that we won't get there eventually. I'm bullish on Apple being the first major player here in part because they already are, by a huge, huge margin, the biggest player in augmented reality.
Apple is IMO the only company that seems capable of simultaneously tackling the form factor, outside-viewer perception factor (AirPods are fully socialized, as you mention), inside-viewer perception factor (AirPods on transparency really do feel 99.9% fully "transparent")
There is a major difference between earbuds and sunglasses. There is a lot of subconscious communication that goes on with facial gestures (including but not limited to eye gestures). This is where the sterotype of poker players wearing sunglasses comes from.
Would the new generation be get used to it? Probably. But that does not mean it is healthy. We have gotten used to a lot of things that are objectively bad for us.
I think you could make the exact same argument about almost any tech device, like the iPhone itself which is wildly popular along with the spinoffs.
Also VR isn’t what companies, Apple at least, care about. It’s a stepping stone to AR which is why the AVP does a “fake AR” of sorts as its primary mode of operation. You have to walk before you run which is also why Apple pushed VR/ARKit so hard even before they had a device to really take full advantage of it (as in a device that’s not just holding an iPad up and pointing it at table, all of 5 people care about that).
The Overton window will shift if people get true utility out of VR/AR in the same way it’s shifted on everything else. Right now there just isn’t anything compelling enough to force that shift but I think it will happen quickly when there is.
And before “I find X compelling”, ok, that’s great for you, for the vast majority of people the tech and/or use-cases are not there yet.
> Also VR isn’t what companies, Apple at least, care about. It’s a stepping stone to AR
I couldn't care less about AR. I want VR and only VR.
I don't want digital overlays of the world around me at all. That's completely useless and will be filled with ads and noise. I want to live and breathe in imaginative fantasy worlds and escape the real world completely.
I want to be a character in interactive movies. Have realistic D&D sessions with friends where the real world disappears completely. To create entire planets and universes and populate them with stories and adventures.
I don't want labels on cooking ingredients, advertisements for Taco Bell while I walk around, or email notifications popping up during conversations. AR might have industrial use cases, but the real world implications are annoying.
> you could make the exact same argument about almost any tech device, like the iPhone itself
I don't think this is true. There was a massive appetite for the iPhone for decades leading up to its release, and there was no question that mobile was going to have a giant role in the future of computing. If you look back, most nay-sayers didn't doubt the value or utility of pocket-computers, but rather just that Apple specifically would be out-competed by established vendors.
What we consider acceptable changes all the time. A lot of people have conversations with earbuds in. And in the 90s it would have been inconceivable to go out for dinner and have half of the people hacking away on their phones.
Maybe I'm old fashioned but one of the biggest barriers for me adopting VR/AR is there isn't a socially acceptable way to "duck out" of a VR experience you're just not into. I've been given a couple of demos of headsets by friends and more often than not by the end I feel trapped -- you're strapped into a thing that fully occupies your visual field, yet it's obvious and socially awkward when you take it off.
And your eyes are both covered so there isn't a good way to non-verbally communicate waning interest levels...I suppose a solution is to simply care less if I hurt my friend's feelings but I'd also like a way to spend time with friends without feeling trapped.
At least in an f2f or video call meeting that I'm bored of, I can zone out or look at my phone or tap on my laptop, or do anything but stare at the slides. With eye tracking, the headset knows (and presumably everyone else could know as well) when you're tuned out.
The eye tracking thing also kind of weirds me out from a privacy standpoint. It's already bad enough that web pages track how long you engage with different portions of content. Now they know what parts of images I stare at, and can algorithmically feed me content based solely on my gaze alone. Does that prospect not weird anyone else out? Or are most normal users like "plug me into AR TikTok, but with gaze mechanics now!"
> And your eyes are both covered so there isn't a good way to non-verbally communicate waning interest levels...I suppose a solution is to simply care less if I hurt my friend's feelings but I'd also like a way to spend time with friends without feeling trapped.
I hadn’t considered those antisocial patterns that the technology is foisting on users, but I suppose one can also juts directly communicate verbally. Could work in low context cultures but not so well in high context cultures.
> The eye tracking thing also kind of weirds me out from a privacy standpoint.
Indeed. While I am less worried about Apple “going after me in a direct targeted nefarious way”, I don’t appreciate more levers for technology to disintermediate my manipulate my behavior, emotions, or interactions.
> What do you do if someone hands you a controller for a tv game equivalent?
I'm not the GP, but as they said you have all your other body language for communication. In VR-world, you have your eye direction and hands - not even your full eyes, with all the muscles around them that may communicate more than anything else on your body. I suppose you could flip them off. :)
It's an interesting point about how VR avatars, for all their 'presence', are very limited. VR video chat seems much better.
If someone is showing you a tv show it seems extremely rude to me to not look at the show as a way of passively showing disinterest vs just saying it’s not for you; no?
> If someone is showing you a tv show it seems extremely rude to me to not look at the show as a way of passively showing disinterest vs just saying it’s not for you; no?
Those aren't your only two options. There are almost infinite ways to communicate.
I don't understand your question. That's how people express emotion, mostly. I'll trust you are not being argumentative:
Facial expression - eyes (the muscles around them), mouth (smile, blank, frown, etc) - posture, legs, arms, etc etc etc. You can look disinterested, you can look like it's the best thing ever, or any other human emotion.
That's a very interesting comment, because I've definitely felt that just playing a game on console (portable or plugged to a TV) or on PC. Sometimes games get so intense that I can't stop it and I have to force myself to get out of the world. I remember getting a massive headache playing Elden Ring and forcing myself to just stop the game.
Also, I've played Catan in VR and felt like I couldn't leave "like that". I had to finish the game and shake hands with the strangers I played with before leaving the game, it just felt like I was really there and it would have been rude to leave the game like that.
I did freak out the first time I joined a cinema room (can't remember the name of the game) as when I looked on my left side I saw people staring at me in the cinema room (which made me yell and it made everyone laugh, indicating to me that even my mic was on!)
IMHO Meta's #1 mistake with VR thus far has been presentation. No good press has ever come with screenshots of silly cartoon avatars (with or without legs). The focus on games highlighted its lack of utility. AVP only highlighted utility, which draws instant connection to our daily lives.
Just speaking for myself here, but owning a Quest I don't entirely agree. The utility of it is kinda crazy - I can browse the web and OpenXR apps from my browser, or tether myself to my PC with the push of a button. Wanna sideload streaming apps and watch movies over SFTP from your homeserver? There are no guardrails in place to stop you.
If I try to imagine myself living the same workflow on Apple Vision Pro, I get hung up on the cost. $3,500 is a big ask for a VR iPad with a lot of the same pitfalls as the tablet.
Meta severely underplays those capabilities. I've always known they're "there", but it's not their preferred presentation of the device. It also takes a bit of "power user" to be comfortable doing much of what you're describing.
I'm not even sure if AVP can side load apps or watch movies over SFTP, but I don't think it matters at this point: the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now, and personally I don't think it's the hardware driving the difference. Strangely, I think it came down to "look n feel" for a lot of it.
They definitely underplay it - Meta is big on services, selling people a quest for sideloading or Blu-Ray streaming probably threatens their bottom line. Hard to blame them when the hardware costs the same as a Switch though. At the price Apple is asking (and the hardware margins they enjoy), I'd expect more capabilities than just spatialized iOS. I'm not sure the Apple customers in my life would buy a Vision Pro even if it was the same price as an iPhone.
> the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now
Besides Casey Neistat and Mark Gurman, I'm really not hearing much from the "global mindshare" anymore. The Quest didn't really get any fanfare either, but it did move units and get market penetration from the start. Apple is on a slow roll right now, and until they get Half Life: Alyx or MSFS2020-tier system sellers, I'm not sure the in-group will even consider them on-par with PCVR. Given Apple's audience, I half expect their biggest VR competitor to be Sony's PSVR2.
It's possible Apple isn't truly interested in typical VR/AR gameplay, or at least the way we (and Meta) have been thinking about it. The high price (as of now) and focus on utility leads me to think their long term game here is as a complement to macbooks, and AVP is a Display replacement, rather than a standalone unit. I can see them pushing this on Enterprise customers a lot.
Time will tell. I worked at a startup that bought Apple Silicon build servers day-and-date with announcement (despite our stack not building on ARM). There is certainly a demand for anything with the "made in Cupertino" label.
Like so much else with VR, it's a real challenge of perception. Because nearly everyone who actually tries it finds that those cartoon avatars are actually surprisingly good in giving you a real sense of co-presence with someone else. Especially when linked with good eye and face tracking. You really quickly just forget it's not the real person you are with. But I totally agree, every time you see a screen shot or even video of it, it just looks totally silly.
> Launch high-definition room scanning and unlock teleportation using technology that has existed within Oculus Research for several years now; it is time for Meta to make this future a reality where people can be remote but feel truly present by visiting each other’s home, office or favorite place.
This teleportation/telepresence is the thing that struck me the most. I'd love to pop into a friend's living room for a beer without worrying about them living in another country.
Yeah, that sort of works, but I think there's something meaningful to be gained by bringing the embodied experience into it, even if it's just simulated.
On a related note, we're probably also less than a decade away from telepresence via a humanoid robot at an affordable price.
It’s not the same. Seeing your friend or family member trapped in a small box is very different from having out with a low fidelity version of them playing mini golf or ping pong. Immersion and presence are things that you won’t understand if you refuse to try VR for longer than 5 minutes.
The current model is not going to work, but it is a large leap to the ideal state of the future world to come. Probably we will adjust but it will be an odd world to adjust to when we have this thing over our face all day
I'm going to die on the hill that gaze sucks. I really hate focus follows gaze and not having a workable keyboard or buttons makes it hard to actually use this for productivity. It's fine for an alt mode type thing but as the main form of input I kind of hate it.
That said, forcing your hands to be full of controllers also sucks but at least you can play a game. I don't have a solution but it needs to get solved for these things to be seamless enough to wear and useful enough to want to.
imo for AR purposes the gaze is a huge improvement than just pinching (a-la HoloLens). I agree though that for productivity, a more tactile device is needed. In practice I end up connecting my keyboard via Bluetooth, or just end up mirroring my MacBook, when I need to do real work
For work purposes, the privacy factor is a huge benefit -- nobody in the room can peek at your "screen"
^ agree with this take. If you're slow with tech, then this is amazing! And I think Apple has been great at making interfaces that are natural to use and easy to get into if you're not tech-savy. But for someone who's used to multi-task, or perform operations without looking at what I'm actually operating on, it sucks. I tried using keynote to create diagrams in Vision pro and the experience was so infuriating, I had to painfully look at everything and keep my focus on them while I also tried to repeatedly snap my fingers as the Vision Pro failed to detect it half of the times. I just want controllers.
Can’t you just use a mouse and keyboard as controllers? It’s hard to imagine any hardware peripheral that would improve on them for making a keynote or we’d already be using it on our desktops.
This was just one example, but yeah if the answer is always “just use a mouse and keyboard” then the experiences are going to be quite limited. I guess I’m used to the high interactivity of experiences on the Quest and the Vision Pro is just a glorified screen to me.
I liked the thumb gesture idea they presented in Peripheral. Enough movement to be discernible by a camera, but really only requires a small amount of energy and dexterity.
Though ideally we probably want some sort of “force gloves” that allow us to feel the weight of and manipulate objects in a virtual world using. We need way higher resolution on inputs than we have today, though, which currently amounts to an x/y/z and some button presses.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 382 ms ] threadThe full title, which of course wouldn't fit:
Vision Pro is an over-engineered “devkit” // Hardware bleeds genius & audacity but software story is disheartening // What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right // Why Meta could finally have its Android moment
I think my edit is the best summary.
I found this part somewhat funny or perhaps disingenuous:
> "I admit Vision Pro is the ultimate tech toy, but since I’m not an active developer I can’t justify the $4,049.78 price tag (512GB model + California sales tax) simply for keeping up with the VR market, so I returned my Vision Pro for a full refund inside the 14-day return window."
Mr Barra has held VP positions at companies like Google, Xiaomi and Meta since 2008. He's obviously a multimillionaire just from stock awards. Surely he can afford a $4k toy...
Overall though I think the issue is common across consumer tech. The space is extremely saturated. People have so little time left it’s crazy. Devices monopolize people’s attention. I wonder if we’ll figure out a way to move past this, as a species, and get back to more meaningful interactions.
The point being that he’s applying a bunch higher bar than someone with his interests and net worth would otherwise apply.
I need to call myself also 'rich' (because of values i hold but can't liquify and i earn enough that i could buy more expensive toys without thinking too much about it) but this doesn't mean my mindset changed.
I have to remind myself that i can afford certain things or i'm wasting too much thought about prices of products.
This probably shows a more realistic, less material and proper upbringing of Mr Barra than 'not being able to afford it'
I'm the same with a smartwatch. I'd like one, but if I got one it would need to be cellular so I can leave my phone at home most of the time. But I just can't justify the cost for the utility I would get.
In some way, this is probably one of the reasons I'm in the situation that I can buy these things, because of all the other things I have not bought in the past.
It sort of makes sense; the calorie counting feature on my Garmin has actually been really helpful in me losing weight, and I think the insurance companies feel like nearly anything to help people lose weight is probably going to save them money in the long run.
For example, I would really like a real pinball machine, but a nice refurbished one or brand new one cost anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000. If I wanted, I could save up for a bit and buy one, but it's really hard for me to tell myself that $5,000 for a toy is "worth it", so I never have.
The most extravagant toy that I've purchased in the last few years with the MiSTer, and even that was a little hard to justify.
people who will, instead of directly using their subsidized subsidized clipper card benefits, will load their clipper card with credit cards for the 2% cash back, and then manually submit an expense, creating an operational burden for their company finance team so that they personally can read the benefits of... $25 a year in cash back
people who will take UberPool/Lyft Line to save 4-5 dollars for their commute home at the expense of an extra 20/30 minutes instead of either a) just taking public transit or b) taking a regular uber
people who will buy take out containers and bring them to work to take company-provided catered food so that they can save $20 a day
people who will use credit cards to buy gift cards at grocery stores for 5% cash back (obviously if you buy a $1000 gift card for $50 cash back, that's great but you run the risk of either losing the card/and thus losing cash/losing the credit card purchase/price matching benefits/etc etc)
all in all I think regardless of income/net worth sometimes it's not about the money. they can afford it. but it just feels good to save a little bit of money relative to your net worth way more than the actual financial impact
In this situation I’d either keep it and use it infrequently (or maybe it’d grow on me), or perhaps sell it.
It seems crazy that after investing so much in the 'hard part', the VR hardware and software itself, they'd drop the ball on what seems mundane - basic design of UI controls.
It's like the Windows setting system. I'm using Win11/WSL, and while it works, the Windows settings are a mixture of Win95/Aero/3rd Party Plugins (Nvidia)/Win11 and some things that just look like Win3.1.
Googling to change DNS settings:
So I don't think it has anything to do with VRSettings
Network and Internet
Choose either your wifi or Ethernet
Click Edit next to DNS Server Assignment
To be honest, in a lot of cases when you need “Advanced $ Settings” it still kicks you into the old Control Panel-style pop-up windows, but at least it’s almost all in one place now.
We don’t come up with totally new ways to interact with our computers often. And Facebook has never stood out for their UI brilliance.
The earlier versions were much easier to use and the later ones can become quite a nightmare to setup navigating the oculus/meta/facebook account silliness then ultimately it all feels a lot jankier than very early versions of the software both in Rift and Quest respectively.
Think if Zuck believes in this going forwards it would be wise to focus on removing some of this platform bureaucracy friction, took me 15-20 minutes to get my Quest up and running and logged in after not using it for 18 months.
There's a ton of half-baked old ideas in the UI, it's extremely confusing. Even basic stuff like trying to add my dad as a friend is super hard to do.
Literally every person I've helped set it up has also had to do a full manual restore (holding down hardware buttons to reset from a boot menu) because they app fails to connect during initial setup or there's some bug with adding payment.
Someone really needs to go into that team and rip lots of stuff out.
Their touch controllers and basic UI navigation are good though.
I think that sums it up pretty well. More companies should launch products like that!
The iPhone was form over function, no keyboard, no apps, and too expensive. You can't even use a stylus with it! It doesn't do anything that my phone and ipod don't already do better.
The iPad was absolutely roasted for just being a giant expensive iPhone with a dumb name, it doesn't even have its own apps. It doesn't do anything that my iPhone can't already do.
The iMac was underpowered and overpriced, didn't even have a floppy drive, didn't have real connectors just something called USB that no one had ever heard of, it wasn't compatible with 99% of the software on the market. It doesn't do anything that my PC doesn't already do.
We see all these products as unmitigated hits now, but at the time they launched, it was still very much up for debate.
From here they hardware will get cheaper, the bugs can be worked out, and everything will become more refined.
VR as a category is niche. Apple will expand the public consciousness of it, but at $3,500 AVP is also niche.
There's nothing wrong with that. If it takes a decade for the tech to be good enough so be it--I'll be glad people were innovating and experimenting in the interim to get it right, and that the folks willing to sign up as beta testers helped push progress forward.
People get mad about this stuff--you don't have to buy it! I still haven't and probably won't until it feels more ready.
And being there it was hella interesting to see it develop. Most tech isn't born right for the masses. And without the pioneers it likely won't get there.
Can anybody relate?
PS: I bought a VR headset to check my bias and I don't use it because it's just uncomfortable to wear.
The tech is interesting but I am still waiting for the software to show me something that doesn't feel like a gimmick.
As long as those apps come, it could be great
which headsets are you referring to? surely not the ones in the article since they have very good passthrough
Despite that, VR is pretty much just a cool toy. Yes there are cool and interesting experiences in VR, but there are also a lot of limitations, not all of which are technological. I think VR will stay around for a while, but I don't see it moving past the "cool toy" stage anytime soon.
AVPro is the best thing to happen to Q3 because the Q3 is ready for prime time at a price point people want and, despite metas reputation, with an open enough platform to support general computing. If you aren’t a gamer or aren’t consuming 3d content, yeah VR isn’t for you. But otherwise, yeah it’s a pretty cool experience for the price.
Once in a while I want to get into VR, but understanding all the options and etc makes my head spin and I quit on it, go back to other hobbies. Much of the discussion online, news stories (with any detail) and etc is all very "already knows the VR lay of the land / knee deep in it". It makes it difficult to understand / get the lay of the land. I'm almost burnt out just thinking about looking into it again.
Now if Apple provided a more affordable route in in the future, I know my consistent user experence with Apple would make that choice potentially a lot easier.
Apples current approach to VR doesn't seem like it's going to help the gaming situation much either, since they opted to rely entirely on hand tracking which is much less accurate and capable than the standard-ish controllers used on every other VR platform. Releasing a game on Apple Vision opens up more potential buyers, but comes at the cost of having to accommodate a very limited lowest common denominator input method.
But younger people won’t have the same attachment. Young people already use mobile phones for things we would never do outside of a desktop. There is no question that the range of experiences you can have in AR/VR.
Last winter I had limited opportunities to excercise, so I tried FitXR and it turned out to be insanely engaging. Reality can't give that level of engagement and multisensory feedback. I did boxing and HIIT daily, and while I don't like to sweat like crazy in my living room, that was extremely positive experience that helped me get through the winter.
It’s engaging and challenging in a way little else I can do at home is, and it’s pretty good for getting some movement and cardio in to boot. The days I play it’s almost always for an hour and if it weren’t for physical exhaustion I could go longer (once when live-streaming my play to and audio chatting with a family member, I played for closer to two hours straight thanks to having something to distract me from my tiredness).
Contractors demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gjRRoYwPTQ
Even now, I'd love a solution to easily put up and teardown a monitor on my dinner table so I can get rid of my desk.
They are soulless, passionless, sterile companies with only the goal of market dominance and investor growth. VR is never going to flourish here though I'm sure that won't stop the iSheep lapping it up and buying what marketing tells them to, like the Apple watch.
Even then, it's not something I can do indefinitely. I've played GT7 on a friend's PSVR2, and sometimes elevation changes in particular tend to mess up the brain for a moment. It's somewhat disconcerting. Also, as someone who wears glasses, there's just no way to make the headset fit entirely correctly, and it tends to slip over time and the view becomes blurry.
Outside of that... control schemes are the major issue for me. You can't just blindly walk around in your room without falling over things, so movement is highly unnatural in VR unless you're in a cockpit. And the various attempts at making the player manipulate something with those hand controllers are just embarrassingly bad. I think this is one of the reason why so many VR games feel like toys you play with once before discarding them as a failed experiment.
The only other killer app are pinball simulations. It's surprising how much depth perception can make it so much clearer what the ball is doing, and the downsides of VR don't matter because you're stationary and only need two buttons.
I like racing sims, so I was interested in VR in the early days, but after experiencing it, I decided for now that I just don't want the associated hassle.
And, if anything, Half Life Alyx remains the killer _gaming_ app (and it probably isn’t either if I’m being honest).
For me the only apps that kept any of my interest are rhythm games like Beat Saber or Pistol Whip.
to me, this is the entire point of VR. you want to virtually see something other than what your eyes can see in reality. a situation where you want to be fully immersed into this other space. i totally buy into that.
the confusion of use to me is the AR aspect of it. that's where the limitations take center stage. the limited FOV can't be ignored in AR. my brain buys into the suspension of disbelief for VR, but for AR my brain knows it's my real world, just limited.
The disconnection is also my big issue with VR.
However, as an AR platform, whether it's pass-through or some future passive system, I can see a time when I might get one. I can imagine a significantly better version of the VisionPro that replaces my laptop as my "big" computing device.
I think the form factor is the feature. In the same way that my tablet doesn't do anything my laptop can't do, but it's form factor makes it useable in different scenarios. I know people who exclusively use iPad Pros as their all-purpose "big" computing device, never touching a laptop.
Before it becomes widespread I can see it being adopted in specialist situations, many of the same things that the Microsoft AR hardware was never good enough for. Hololens was amazing to experience, but no where near amazing enough to actually be that useful. Passthrough AR like the VisionPro might actually manage it.
I don't think it will become something everyone has, but it will fill a slot in the mix of technology for some people, along with smart-watches, phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Each appeals to different people.
Now, whether the technology ever quite gets there is the big question for me. I think a lot has to improve in the hardware if they can ever make it something I would want to use on a daily basis.
I work fully remote and Zoom/Meet works fine for meetings. But I kinda dread things like team happy hour and find you have to keep them structured like a meeting to work with group video calls.
Visuals aren't even the key factor here. It's audio. I find the obstacle to casual socializing is not being able to directionally focus audio so overlapping conversations are possible.
FWIW Apple's fundamental concept is to address that very problem - to not disconnect your eyes from your surroundings; they work very hard so that you can see your surroundings and that others can see your eyes, and so that their apps tend into integrate your surroundings.
(The article talks about it, and the author thinks they are shortchanging VR.)
> Can anybody relate?
The way I personally relate is the old, seemingly fundamental human instinct I have that shows up especially when new tech is incompatible with my existing life. It forces change if I adopt it, which I don't appreciate, and worse I might be compelled to change if it becomes a normal part of life - if it's necessary competitively or to sufficiently fit into society (e.g., smartphones).
So it's the old story: First I laugh at it (we seem past that for VR); second I say it conflicts with the orthodoxy (my established life, in this case); and third, someday, I'll say I knew it all along. :)
I'm kinda in the second stage, and maybe you are too? As a technologist - that is, as someone whose job is to evaluate and adapt new technologies - I can't afford to indulge that 3-step cycle or I will be giving people advice based on those instincts (1. 'that's ridiculous/vaporware/useless, don't worry about it', 2. 'it's not compatible/applicable for your business', 3. 'it's what everyone is doing!') and fail to be ahead of the curve. Plus, those instincts limit me as a person. So I've needed to learn to recognize that cycle and not act on it, but to evaluate new tech on its own merits.
That turns out to be hard even after lots of practice - it's hard to ignore all the instinct and the constant signals from everyone else, and think for yourself. We're social animals. So it's hard to imagine the killer, high value apps until they are out there, until everyone else signals their value. But some that stand out as possibilities to me:
- AR: Data and metadata on things in the world around me. It seems especially good for work with physical objects: Showing me their specs, diagrams of how they should look, alternate perspectives. Imagine working on your car with AR.
- 3-D VR work rooms: A room with all of your electronic documents, videos, applications, etc. for a project. Also you can have virtual objects - the live control panel from the router, copies of the physical object you are designing, etc. The room can be as large as you want. It seems especially great for teams, where people can bring in documents and objects to share and work on together with everyone else. This seems so much better than current collaboration.
- Presence at things like sporting events: Seats right on the sideline or even views from the field itself: Watch Messi's dribbling and goal form the goalie's perspective. Watch the pitch from the batter's perspective (or the referee's, for those controversial calls). Also for theater, etc.
- 3-D, immersive films and games, of course. Art seems to have great potential, but will need some time to develop, as artists learn the nuances of the medium (and as only games get funding).
I have personally wanted VR for flight sims. It is jarring to have a screen full of instruments or looking out the window, but difficult to do both without a crazy physical setup that I do not want in my office. VR solves this by simply moving your head, the same as pilots do in real life.
The killer app is what I have when I get lucid inside a dream. To only cover vision is missing so much. I can remember being in a war in a plane and getting shot down in a dream. The decent felt unbelievable. That is the killer app for me. That had nothing to do with vision.
Porn is what got VHS to succeed over Beta. Porn is what got CC payments working online. Porn drives a lot of Twitch and other platforms.
Apple won't allow porn on its platform, but someone will.
> Porn is what got VHS to succeed over Beta.
Is just not true. For one, porn absolutely existed on Beta. But more broadly, by the time the content available on each format mattered, VHS had already won the format war.
That's because both Beta and VHS were primarily developed and marketed as a way to record TV to watch later. Tapes were way too expensive to make selling pre-recorded tapes viable when both systems launched. Pre-recorded tapes eventually did become popular, especially in the rental market. But that only happened well after VHS clearly won the format war, mostly due to VHS's longer recording time.
For more details, Technology Connections has a long rant about this misconception in this video: https://youtu.be/hGVVAQVdEOs?si=X-FYCRAzowXOdqBb&t=931
https://www.meta.com/experiences/1990852827683397/
It's not that immersive because you either get a video that you can't interact with where you get to play the part of dead fish wearing a camera rig, or it's absolutely insanely bad 3D models that will only ever get deeper into the uncanny valley. The videos are also terrible quality because making VR porn is expensive, and if you prefer somewhat amateur content, you are completely out of luck, because couples moonlighting porn aren't buying those camera rigs.
I have shown VR porn to many people. They go "woah". I tell them they can have a similar experience literally on their phone with a normal $30 phone holder "headset", none of them buy the headset. None of them even try it ever again.
Very very few whales are optimizing their porn experience. The vast majority of human beings simply scroll through pornhub for 12 minutes and watch half of two videos and then continue their lives.
"Immersiveness" is not a strict benefit for everything.
Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product, they have made no attempt to make it even remotely affordable to most people. But they also know that every aspect of the hardware will improve over the next decade, and as it does they will have ironed out many of the problems with how we use AR/VR and will be ready for it, based on the real life experiences of actual owners, rather than years of in-house testing.
The screen will get bigger (I hear FoV is pretty poor at the moment), the CPU/power/thermal performance will improve, battery density goes up, cameras and sensors get better and cheaper and many parts will get smaller/lighter. And in that time they will learn by doing, making it better/cheaper/lighter and working on the software and interaction model.
Hopefully at the same time it will really spur on the rest of the industry and we will see more competition and experimentation.
I can't see myself buying something like this for the next 10 years at least. But something like the VPro that is better, smaller and lighter and doesn't cost the earth could be quite tempting for late adopters like me.
[0] A random example: https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Driving-Around-Sunglasses-Pola...
They spent a ton of company resources, weight and power making the wrong form factor emulate the right form factor, and are shipping with zero killer apps.
You can’t even let your friends play with it without getting it re-fit to their head at the Apple Store, which basically kills social/word of mouth marketing. It certainly isn’t a fashion item / status symbol to be seen in public like all their other stuff.
Maybe the “real” product is sitting in the wings and will be ready to ship in a few years, but the current form factor seems like a non-starter to me.
That's ok. That's exactly why they released the 'pro' first.
Ten years ago was pre oculus rift. We weren't saying anything about VR headsets.
Five years ago was pre valve index. We didn't have CPUs in a headset. Nor a battery. Cameras were only used for tracking. The things we were saying would improve is "screen door effect" and "tracking", both of which have.
It's been 30 years of massive improvements to all of the rest of computers, and VR has only shrunk a couple inches. There's not much else we can do to make it smaller.
the photo of it sitting in a display case gives a decent sense of scale, I think.
http://briteliteimmersive.com/blog/remembering-nasas-view-vr
There’s an insane amount of tech in the Vision Pro. Eyesight probably occupies a big chunk. Then there are more sensors than they need. Also the CPU and 100% processing is happening literally strapped to your face.
This is like having two 5k displays powered by a mobile device*.
* 2 x 5k = 28 million pixels, compared to Vision Pro’s 23 million pixels.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/13/23871859/us-army-microsof... [2] https://support.google.com/glass-enterprise/customer/answer/...
I had a friend that worked on the team for a couple years when it first started. The use case of a headsup display for directions while driving was a great experience.
It wasn’t mine, so maybe there was more to it that I didn’t get from my brief interaction, but it didn’t leave me wanting more.
These days I don't even want that, but that's almost certainly of a combination of getting older and over reacting to how pervasive tech and displays have become.
See, for example:
https://youtu.be/gAkfPhlvSn8?si=fSObULo52MAvcBoR
The Rift DK1 is almost exactly 11 years old, released 3/29/13.
The list on wikipedia [1] doesn't include it, I guess because it was a "development kit", and I just naively assumed the "Oculus Rift" was the DK1 not the CV1.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_reality_headse...
Edit: Went ahead and edited the wikipedia page so the next person won't make the same mistake.
Rift DK1 was released in ~2013, and lots of gamers bought it throughout 2014. We got the first "consumer release" for the original Rift in 2016. I think its more than fair to say 10 years - we were absolutely talking a lot about Rift DK1 in 2014.
> Five years ago was pre valve index
Valve's first consumer VR headset was the HTC vive, released in 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Vive
"The first-generation Vive was announced in 2015, as part of a collaboration with video game studio and distributor Valve Corporation, and implementing its VR software and hardware platform SteamVR; the first-generation consumer model was released in April 2016."
edited: grammar. still feel like I've failed to produce readable english, but I'm giving up
I’ve been in AR since 2010
The AVP is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were collectively technically back then
But I don’t see us appreciably closer to the goal of ubiquitous persistent headworn see through visual computing
It’s a social expectations and data problem it’s not a “technical” problem
It’s probably gonna be decades before we see any regularized mainstream adoption, because the form factor is such a different thing that we’re not even close to make it a simple transition for the least savvy consumer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy
In the past, once Apple started pouring R&D money into a specific product type, the entire industry around it tends to advance very quickly. I’m optimistic about the Vision Pro, and I actually think the n+2 Meta release will be much better off for it.
Most other manufacturers seem to take the approach of getting as many features on the side of the box and then compete on price. They cost engineer the crap out of everything and it ends up being somewhat disappointing.
I often maintain that so much technology is 80% of the way to being amazing, but is stymied by commercial concerns that cause companies to cut corners and cheap out, or they hobble their own product to create barriers to interoperability.
While Apple still have to strike the right balance between between features and cost, and also like to make their own walled gardens, they are able to go for the higher price points, and also integrate really well between a wide swathe of products. They are prepared to let specific products be less competative in general (e.g Homepod), because they know that they integrate well into their overall ecosystem.
I’m imagining a typical business school 2-axis chart where one axis is “willingness to take and commit to risks vs unwillingness/noncommittal” and the other axis is “acts independently vs. reacts to commercial/competitive pressures”. I guess what I want to understand is why is Apple kind of all alone on that plot, where the rest of the industry are clustered together far away from them? What are the business processes that lead to their position? Can a company follow a playbook and change their culture and have similar results? Are there other examples?
A lot of our industry are so extremely risk averse, have tunnel vision trying to copy each others’ feature checkboxes, rush things to market to try to make money before they are fully baked, and then give up when they aren’t instant successes. Everyone seems to follow this playbook.
Most people don’t want to think about how to do something or care about optimizing it when they can get it done and not think further about it. But companies seems to want to put a lot of barriers into what I want to get done, like popups, complicated screens, ugly interfaces. For the majority of user workflows, Apple offers a simple, unobstrusive way to do them. Starlink routers are almost the same in that regard (the mobile app could use some work, and perhaps add a desktop interface)
My advice (as a user) is for to simplify the usual workflow to the point you only ask the few (0,1-3) indispensable questions, and then get out of the way. Further options can be buried inside Preferences and Settings. And then you perfect the apperance, ease of use, and general enjoyment of using the application/device.
In the end you need courage both to make it pleasant to use and to give it a big price.
It’s details like that, which set Apple apart.
The MacBook team had this whole presentation planned for him, a usual dog and pony show about better specs and batteries and whatnot. Instead he just put an iPhone and a MacBook on the table, “woke” them both up, and said “why can’t this (the MacBook) do that (the iPhone)?” End of meeting.
No other company has all these competencies at the same level.
That takes a very wide set of skills, to follow the series of discovered problems to be solved wherever they lead.
Other companies look at what parts are available, define a product from that, design have different teams build the different parts, each maximizing specs and reducing cost.
For the vast majority of already well defined products, the second path is the right one.
So that path is very familiar to every level of management at every corporation, and doing something completely different from the ground up isn’t easy or natural in that context.
For Apple, the other holistic discovery path is their mission.
Even “big” differences like being super vertical are a second level strategy for Apple, in service of being able to more easily follow problems to product definitions.
But even for Apple, that path is very risky. They have had a few half baked lemons in products that didn’t get as much discovery and attention as they needed.
Not that I'm bitter and jaded, as an engineer, or anything.
If another brand launched first at same price points they simply will not get the traction Apple does.
Even with $3,500 price Apple likely needs sales hundreds of thousands of units to break even , no other manufacturers cannot pull it off
I love my Apple Watch (on my second one now) and I didn't like wearing watches. Except the Pebble that I bought (I think that I got the first generation Pebble colour, but it's been a while). After that product, things went sideways for Pebble for a lot of reasons. But the initial products were great and the build quality was good (not great, but good). The same applies to the first few generations of the Palm Pilot (and to a lesser degree, the Treo), although I think that the best PalmOS device built was the Clié NX70.
With respect to Apple's break even…I suspect that the research they did is going to produce benefits across all of Apple's product lines for the better part of the next decade (part of it already has, with the Apple Watch Double Tap hand gesture, although that is movement detection not camera-based).
They feel the need because unlike Apple others cannot wait years to release a product or upgrade to a successful one and still sell enough. Everyone else have limited brand recall, if they don't move fast a competitor will and they loose relevance.
The point is nobody else can sustainably build to standards the way Apple can, because Apple can take its time enter a industry late and still win big.
When the tech advanced, and use cases evolved, and users had become accustomed to the limitations of the apple watch style of smartwatch - which regarding battery life STILL HOLD TRUE... once all that was the case, Pebble had to deal with the "and now what?" and they couldn't.
This is a good summary of Windows Mixed Reality headsets, or Kinect
You need to get Devs interested too and that won't work if only the top 1% of the western world can afford it.
This is why secrecy is a huge part of their culture: it allows them to spend years doing R&D work on multiple prototypes until they land on something they think is better than what is already out there.
If they can’t make it work due to the laws of physics (e.g. Apple AirPower) or indecision (e.g. Apple Car), they can shut it down without much fanfare and move on to the next secret R&D project.
No, it is the vast amount of risk they are willing to take. Microsoft/alphabet have vast amounts of money too, but no appetite for risk.
Apple is willing to dump tens of billions and years into R&D for physical products, fail, and then try again. Microsoft half asses it, and then pulls back instead of plowing through (see them shutting down Microsoft retail stores and windows phone). But they have that Excel and Windows B2B gravy train they can ride for the foreseeable future.
As far as I can see its all the same thin, flat device with a screen, just different sizes.
But I do know they seem to result in net incomes that others would seemingly find envious, and yet the others are not able to replicate, so the empirical evidence doesn’t make it seem so easy.
AirPods/pro/max? They've taken major presence a space owned by Sony, Samsung and Bose.
Apple Watch Ultra?
Though it's thin and flat, The iPhone X was a huge leap in specs, contrary to the entire market analyst sentiment that people wanted cheaper phones. Apple made a big bet that people would want the opposite: more expensive phones, and they were right.
Airpods are just bluetooth headphones. Did Apple R&D invent bluetooth, or even bluetooth headphones?
Apple watch was not even the first smart watch to market. They did not invent the watch, and they did not invent the smart watch.
You must be pretty blinkard to think that Apple invented all these things instead of licensing existing patents and repackaging them, which is what they do best.
On the M series of chips, "Tweaked it" is a heavy lift. You are vastly underplaying the amount of Apple's design work that went into the M series of chips. It's led to massive performance gains against the competition.
Airpods are "just" bluetooth headphones, but happen to be the ones that have the most market share by far. It's about design and quality.
The Apple Watch also is the most widely adopted smart watch, by far. Because of how it was designed and manufactured.
The facts are that Apple has taken major risks repeatedly with their design and product decisions, and reaps the rewards with higher margins and market share than the competition. This isn't blinkard, this is just reality.
Shutting down their bad products was a good move, even if they should've made good products in the first place.
Other companies trying to compete with Apple in any space will automatically have this disadvantage that they are seen as the inferior choice because Apple have repeatedly positioned themselves as the most premium player in the market, and so thats just what people expect now.
OS: Windows is a add-riddled and always ignoring your preferences and getting in the way of your work.
Tablet: Android tablet are slow (or soon to be) and not much applications designed for them
Laptop: Windows and never a good mix of great components, perfomance, and weight.
Phone: Only a few do not add uninstallable junk, and these days, they all try to copy the iPhone which is not something I want is I’m trying to move away from the iPhone.
Speaker System: If I want a homepod alternative, I will not be looking to get inside another closed ecosystem. And I’d want lifetime support (airplay has been reversed-engineered). The last time I used Sonos, it wanted me to use its music player or something.
Most of their peers pursue maximum volume in an attempt to dominate a market and drown all competition, inebitably at much lower margins. It's the continuation of the VC launch-or-bust rocketship model most of them were born from.
The difference then means that Apple can try making something really unique and compelling and call it a profitable success based on much much smaller sales volume. And if it does happen to launch like a rocketship (as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad each did) all the better.
But their peers set a much higher mark for sales volume when thinking about what's a success or failure. If a product is only lightly taken up, even if nominally profitable at their margins, it's more like a distraction or clue rather than a success in itself. So they scavenge the project and move on to an alternative market or a parallel product idea.
This all sets Apple up to make slow, well-considered bets on quality and design coherency instead of strictly trying to race to market and outmaneuver everyone for volume.
The only thing Apple have done which elevated themselves above their peers is have marketing which positioned them higher in the market.
Remember those Black and White ads of Steve Jobs next to Ghandi, Malcolm X, and Charlie Chaplin? They are paying off now in spades.
You may not like their products, and you may think their customers are idiots hypnotized by villianous marketers or something, but that's kind of the point of it all: by targetting high margins and precisely volume instead of low margins and maximum volume, they really don't need to care what you think. And that lets them approach products differently.
Thats quite a stretch to assume that opinion from my comment?
I actually love Macbook Pros. IMO they are the best Laptop ever built. However in the global market of laptops they are not patrticularly successful. The entiety of the MacOS ecosystem (of which Macbook Pros are a small percentage) barely breaks 20% of the market share.
Are their products more reliable, more fully featured, and objectivley better than their competitiors? No they are not. The reason they are regarded as a more premium option in the market is not because they make less product with more profit margin, its because they have had an incredibly clever marketing department for the last 20 years meticulously curating their brand presence and public perception into being the most premium tech company which produces the best products.
Market share is the goal, making money is the goal. Market share helps, but it isn't the same thing. MacBooks do pretty well.
This is what happened with Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, and it will happen to Apple too.
I think if they went back to that they’ve lost a serious bit of their DNA.
You mentioned Mac only having a 20% market share. Who has the bigger one?
It's true that trying to enter every market and own a huge market share in it can lead to lower risk of having to stay ahead of every innovation (as we can see with Google and its inability to productize AI properly) but since Apple's turnaround its execution has been top notch, and that was 20 years ago. With products like the Vision Pro Apple is explicitly trying to avoid losing the innovation race that Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft did.
I'd love to be not successful making a luxury product that sells at commodity volume.
This is your personal opinion. My personal opinion, is very much the opposite.
> The reason they are regarded as a more premium option in the market is not because they make less product with more profit margin, its because they have had an incredibly clever marketing department for the last 20 years meticulously curating their brand presence and public perception into being the most premium tech company which produces the best products.
I've heard this same boring claim now for about 20 years. It was wrong as a broad statement twenty years ago, and such a statement I would hazard is still wrong now.
I've had a twenty year career in IT. Starting with PC repair and working for a PC OEM, however the vast majority of my career has been spent in fields involving Linux. (Linux Administrator/Systems Engineering/DevOPS through to executive leadership). I know how computers work, I know how the hardware works, I know the relative value of parts that go into things, yes I can, always have, and still will build machines including using on a regular basis all major operating systems in place today and despite all of this, I still remain an Apple customer and its not because im some dumbo non technical individual tricked by apples fancy marketing voodoo.
It's because for those twenty years Apple has consistently conducted themselves in a way with me personally that for the vast majority of cases, has served me best as a user and as their customer. As opposed to some third party who is paying them to exploit me through their operating system or some mass of adware shipped with their operating system, not just this years profit margins, not just for as long as im in the store and to which afterwards im left alone once ive paid them with a "fuck you, got mine."
Just a few of the events of the past twenty years that have kept me as an apple customer:
* 2006ish era macbook. HDD dies at random just outside of warranty. No local apple stores at the time. Local authorised repairer spends two weeks dicking me around on a fix, nothing. I push it to Apple who was not even local at the time. A week later I have a BRAND NEW macbook, not just a drive, outside of warranty, complete with brand new warranty, an additional year tacked on top and an apology for the service I had received. (We now have apple stores so this would not occur again I imagine.)
* 2014ish iPhone. Much like the macbook I start having issues outside of warranty, it is unable to be debugged in store. Dude wanders away, comes back. "Have you got a backup?", "Yes?", "We'll just give you a refurb, newer model, with warranty, are you happy with that?" "lol, yes I am."
* 2012 15" MacBook pro retina battery replacement - Battery dies outside of warranty in around 2017 and im informed no stock currently exists in the country, and that i'll be waiting months if I wanted a replacement. I am immediately informed that if I do not want to wait, I can instead have a significantly more powerful, and higher specced refurb model, complete with brand new warranty in place of waiting the month for a replacement. I took the replacement. Again, this machine was OUTSIDE of the warranty window. That one retina MBP purchase due to this replacement saw my laptop needs covered for a decade.
This is only touching on a tiny amount of the circumstances that have led to me remaining to continue investigating the purchase of products from Apple. Not everyone will have had these interactions, or come away from Apple positively, and perhaps one day, I also will not and my opinions will change. But at this point, from the day I became a customer through now, I have received a better long term support experience as a customer from Apple, then I have from any other organisation on the planet.
> This is your personal opinion. My personal opinion, is very much the opposite.
Yeah, the GP's personal opinion seems very much the opposite (like yours) as well. Quote:
"I actually love Macbook Pros. IMO they are the best Laptop ever built."
Not sure what caused the dissonance. Seems like trying to prove they're not an Apple fanboy or sth.
I also don't think most customers are old enough to remember those ads.
It's hard to call anything selling 200M+ units/year low volume.
They didn't need those numbers for the iPhone to be worth their original R&D effort, but winning those numbers is even more advantageous for them because of their core philosophy around volume and margins.
Meanwhile, Microsoft/Google/etc are playing a whole different game. When they succeed, they also saturate a market, but that's the only time they call it a success and so they approach the whole product design process differently.
Other companies are also really bad at product. Google can't convey a coherent product strategy to save their lives. Great at technology (and building chat apps lol), terrible at product.
First, we cannot ignore Apple Fanboys (and I am not using that in a negative sense). They have a large base of users who will jump at nearly anything they put out.
However they also have a track record of doing things, both big and small, and pushing the industry to go a certain way. Dropping CD drives is a great example of this, this was an inevitability with more and more distribution through the internet. This would be a risk for a manufacture to try with a random computer because consumers may just ignore it. Apple has the power to say, well you want a Mac? here are your couple options and we are doing this anyways.
Sometimes this fails, see all USB-C Laptops.
But I think it also often comes from thinking about the entire experience. Take them removing the head phone jack (the debate on whether or not they actually needed to do that aside), at the same time we got the AirPods.
Or the iPhone wasn't just simply, without a physical keyboard. It emphasized the advantages of this throughout the entire OS.
But regardless of all the above, I think the simple fact that they just happen to generally sell a lot of devices. Enough that it can normalize a decision for consumers and then other manufactures can follow without risk.
It's comparable to why 'Google Video Search' lost out to youtube way back in the day. The google engineer nerds couldn't understand why no one liked their product: it had all these options for uploading video with the best quality and all these formats, while youtube had worse quality and few options. They missed the point and didn't understand the users, and were caught up in the tech rather than what was actually valuable to the users (basically: dead simple to 'just upload a video' - quality doesn't matter as much as that).
Kinda like how Mark Z. has been talking about how the Oculus has similar resolution. It's not the tech specs that make the product - those are necessary but not sufficient. If the product is supposed to be AR: then it needs to actually be AR. And that means. e.g., that details like virtual shadows on real surfaces MUST be included, and must actually work properly. If it's not, then it's only kinda-AR. That's the kind of long tail that Apple understands, and other companies don't. The tech must fit the users, and the experience must be complete.
Microsoft decided to mostly abandon the project, move/fire most of the team and give up rather than keep spending resources on a product that had an incredible potential... What would happen if Microsoft released a headset like Hololens 2 capable of running Windows apps for consumers at a similar price to AVP? They have Windows Mixed Reality, an almost infinite software catalogue, and the capabilities to do it... buy they simply don't (think about the Surface).
1. Apple focus on customer story for every product. They may get it wrong sometimes but every product is sold with “this is how it will impact your life for the better”.
2. Apple understand brand and fashion. Unlike other companies, they don’t typically rush out the gate with a million variants to try and capture every part of the market. They don’t let it cheapen their brand and they avoid brand fatigue.
3. They stick with things for longer . Other companies tend to throw products at the wall early and hope they stick. Apple comes in later and then doesn’t relent for a long time compared to competitors.
4. They try and not focus on just specs. Other brands focus on features, and do a really bad job at telling you why you need it.
If I could focus on specs, I wouldn't need spectacles!
It's not the money. They did it with the iMac when they were headed for the ground, and with the iPod when they were in a better position but still without infinite funding. Reality is actually quite simple: they spot technology advances, and integrate them into a neat, well-designed package that people actually want to buy.
The first iPod was a fancy shell around an IBM 1.8'' hard drive. There were MP3 players before but they were very bulky, or could store only a handful of files. They saw the hard drive coming, did the math, and went all in.
Same thing with the iPhone: there were smart phones before, but they spotted the capacitive digitizer that was orders of magnitude more accurate than the competition, and boom, multitouch.
Same thing with the AirPods: the killer feature being their fancy Bluetooth chip, which made the experience much better than the competition that was established for a decade at that point.
It is quite interesting that they do it over and over, going as far as saying what they do in interviews, and some people really don't see it for what it is.
> Are they the only ones who can create products?
They are not. They just have a vision of what they want to do, and once they start they put the effort needed (sometimes killing advanced designs before release). Then, they iterate relentlessly generation after generation. They play the long game, and often introduce their first generations at higher price points and keep improving and driving their price points down even if it is not an initial resounding success. Any company can do it, if they take design seriously and optimise for long term strategic goals rather than short-term economics.
> Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes out with something v8-ish and the whole industry scrambles.
If you look closely, when Apple comes in, it's because they have found a differentiating factor that they think will make the difference. They always have a compelling message about why you should choose their product above the competition. And it's never "same product, but cheaper".
But they do have a history of disrupting markets by leveraging superior UX. Mainstreaming the GUI, the click wheel, the all-glass multitouch phone, etc, etc.
Consider Google. A couple years ago, a reporter documented the nearly (iirc) 20 attempts Google has made at a messenger. Meanwhile, Apple made one and ground away at it until it became great.
Google is a company that -- and this is true -- dropped trou and put apps on my phone called "Google Meet" and "Google Meet (Original)." And don't forget Duo. See also having "Google Pay" and "Google Wallet."
With a side of Android is kinda meh and look at pics of various Google execs at industry events. There's a solid chance there's an iphone in their hands.
https://www.apple.com/apple-pay
https://www.apple.com/wallet/
Apple does not have this level of product or branding confusion.
So you don't like Apple, fine. But using Google as a poster child of consistent product marketing is a fool's hill to die on.
With Google, it's endemic to their products.
More importantly: it's not confusing because no one really cares or needs to care. New folks use the Apple Music subscription, old folks that know the difference use either.
On the other hand, with Apple Music, there's a different subscription that also lets you upload your music to the cloud and scans them for matches, but what you get back out of it is DRMed downloads. Which don't work outside of the Apple ecosystem, and stop working even on it if you cancel your Apple Music subscription.
On top of that, the way matching works is different for the two services. iTunes Match actually analyzes the raw data of the track to do the exact match, while Apple Music seems to prefer metadata. Which means that, with the latter, you'll often get a different variant of the song, in cases where multiple versions exist.
My point is that bring your own library of pre-ripped music into a subscription service for syncing is rare these days unless you're over a certain age or are an audiophile (at which point there are better alternatives like Roon). If you're going to do rare things, then there will always be nuances to understanding the tradeoffs Apple took to support you.
However the c-levels at those companies are happy to chase $$$, and will closely copy whichever hardware and software is deemed the best in the market at the time. Some also do this because they see the product as a threat to their core business.
There will also be various cheerleaders who exalt that apple’s ideas are trivially obvious and were always the pre-destined pathway for the category. Seemingly ignoring the long floundering that occurred before Apple’s entry.
Because they don't just treat things as hardware, but as a complete ecosystem. Sure, they price things at a point where they can afford to make a quality product, but it's more than that... There are times when things aren't perfect, but overall everything works together and is very high quality. When I've tried in the past to buy non-Apple gear, things tend to be clunky, incomplete, and put a high burden on me as a user, even in cases where the specs might be better than Apple gear.
In my experience, at other companies, product development is run on a spreadsheet by MBA PMs. Apple doesn’t operate that way.
Jobs doubled down on the combination of hardware and software designed and implemented under one roof. That bet paid off past anyone’s expectations.
So Apple now is far ahead of everyone else, when it comes to creating products deeply integrating hardware and software and design.
Apple has invested in developing the full stack for their products. Not only do they have the full stack of components for the products but the entire toolchain to develop those products. This gives them a very strong foundation for pretty much any product they want to pursue.
The AppleTV and HomePod both use older A-series SoCs and run iOS with a custom shell on top. They get all of the iOS media and peripheral handling capability "for free". Both projects can focus on TV or speaker features since the base OS is largely a solved problem for them. If they need some special consideration from somewhere in SWE they just file a Radar. They don't just get binary blob dumps of firmware from outside vendors and have to beg for bug fixes and hope their contract is big enough to get some consideration.
The Vision Pro leverages their ARM SoCs, base OS, and all the motion coprocessors that have been in their phones and watches for a decade. Novel improvements from the Vision Pro's development will just feed back to those components and make it into the next phone, watch, or whatever.
Most other companies don't actually own their whole product stack. Even Microsoft is at the mercy of their suppliers with the Surface line. They get what Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD have to offer. Smartphone manufacturers are grabbing Qualcomm and Samsung SoCs which are collections of Cortex cores then slap Android on top hoping that Google's latest version is better than the previous version.
It's hard to really make leapfrog products when you're shipping the same shit as your competitors and trying to compete on price.
Apple tends to jump on the bandwagon late but then turns thing mainstream. That worked well for ultrabooks (e.g. sony vaio, then MacBook air, nowadays every laptop) or earbuds.
The AR/VR or visionsomething^TM case is a bit different in that apple actually has to implement a new market. Thus far they don't seem to be trying that hard.
Apple Vision Pro is a different beast because AR/VR don’t have product-market fit yet besides a few game genres that Apple doesn’t care about.
Apple is good at improving existing product categories less so at finding product-market fit that usually outsources to others.
From a management perspective, how do they handle the people side of that - keeping good people on the team and keeping them motivated to do something extraordinary?
People don't like spending time on unsuccessful projects and don't want their names associated with them, and don't want to work extra hard on something that won't come to fruition.
Maybe Apple management has enough internal reputation that employees are willing to take that risk (but even Apple management has flops - the car seeming to be a recent example). But that doesn't feel like a sufficient explanation to me.
Getting people to see that in forseight when they aren't seeing results, they won't for years, and it's all uncertain that it all won't be a waste of time, and it's frustrating and they have other, more certain offers - that's difficult leadership and management, and I wonder how Apple does it.
Having even a few people saying they are already doing that on the Vision Pro seems significant.
Now if apple puts out an Apple Vision SE or non-pro or whatever at $1,999 it will be seen as an absolute steal.
I’m having a hard time imagining that level of planned obsolescence for VR displays though. If anything, I’d expect the quest 4 (or 5, or whatever generation matches Apple specs) to last longer.
Of course, it’s a moot point for me and the large percentage of the population that will never strap Facebook-controlled eye trackers to their head.
I also have a Galaxy Edge from the same year as the iPhone X. The Samsung is completely unusable. Every tap takes seconds for anything to respond.
If you do a lot of gaming, for example, macOS is in many ways worse than Linux even.
I need to run Windows in some form for various industry specific needs that a VM or emulation simply cannot meet at the moment. I don't like it, but that isn't going to change the state of things.
It's a delight to be able to choose what and where you work with, but it's not the reality a lot of us have to deal with.
If you’re a PC user looking to switch to Mac, or you’re looking for a machine and don’t care about which operating system it has, then it’s less useful.
The point is, for now the AVP is the only iPhone-tier (Pro Ultra Whatever) VR headset. Meta's crap (I have all of them) is analogous to the mid tier budget phones, in this metaphor. (Even the fantastically expensive Quest Pro is just like... an insult, even though it does have eye tracking which is now absolute minimum table stakes (and Quest 3 doesn't have it))
The current price it too high to go mainstream, yes, for sure. But let's see the next. AVP 3Gs could fuckin' destabilize the fuck out of this whole nascent ecosystem.
Until now, VR headsets were used almost exclusively for gaming, even if they were capable of other things.
The AVP was made to be a general use device in a way that other headsets just aren’t.
This is like iPhone vs. flip phones in 2006 as far as I can tell.
Yes, your flip phone can play music, take pictures, use the internet, etc. just like an iPhone. But, you would be a fool think the devices are in the same league. Apple just sort of defined a genre of product that didn't exist.
And Apple put an absolute ridiculous amount of money into designing and building that thing and they’re trying to recoup some of that. But by version two or three a lot more of it will have already been recouped and it won’t be as necessary to keep the prices high.
The first color televisions, cell phones, refrigerators, computers, and microwave ovens were not exactly cheap either.
The price will come down.
As far as the market is concerned: the Quest is a gaming platform that can do computer stuff if needed. The AVP is a computer that can do gaming stuff.
I really feel like too many people are ignoring this. If anyone understands how to play the long game with a new product it is Apple. I mean the Apple TV was a "Hobby" for many years.
Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before the "normal" version?
I think it also helps the clear sharing of technology between this and other products. From using the M2 tech, to iOS and (I assume) built with much of the AR tech they have been showing off for the last several years on iPhone.
I honestly kinda wonder how much of ARKit was directly made from work on the Vision Pro?
This version of Vision Pro was never going to be a massive product, I expect they knew they would get returns (and they hoped to mitigate that with the in store demos but that only does so much). But it is setting the ground work for a long term investment.
Yes they introduced the MacBook Pro before the MacBook.
I do realize that the name change came with a switch from PowerPC to Intel.
The Mac (Pro) came before the iMac/Mini etc too
The pro moniker is just branding but they usually start with the pro line for more expensive hardware.
Even with the iPhone, the current pro line is a continuation of the main line iPhone that evolved via the X.
The Lisa before the (original) Mac
HomePod is another one.
A devkit prepared for lock down. It's the old formula: let devs make the platform great, then pull a Sherlock or increase the platform fees. Count me out.
iOS non-game apps aren't exactly innovative. It's Gmail. It's YouTube. It's social media photo and video scrolls. It's been more than a decade, and the most innovative thing I can find on top downloads and top grossing, Duolingo, is also kind of a game, like if you remove the game part of it it's kind of not much, is it? All the innovations in Google Maps are kind of tied up in backend technologies that aren't specific to the phone at all, indeed predated it.
Once they figured out touchscreen keyboard and accelerated web browsing sort of everything else fell into place. Then the retina display was introduced, and software improved the camera. I don't know what roles 3rd party devs played in all of this, but those list of innovations happened years ago.
They don't Sherlock games.
Even then, is Apple going to approve a game with guns on the AVP? Time will tell. Beatsaber is an innovative game but it leaned on the basic premise of people doing something illegal, uploading non licensed maps and tracks.
Hacker News commenters don't know much about making games - even when they work for huge game studios! - and they don't know much about VR - even when they work at companies making VR headsets!
Hugo must certainly be aware of the Varjo XR3, which is actually the most comparable device to the AVP and even more expensive, but there were developers at Apple on the AVP team who never heard of it, and many more Oculus developers.
At the end of the day this is a love letter to halo product positioning coupled with relentless vendor lock-in applied to helpless consumers. I agree with you that the locked down nature of the product makes it as DoA for developers as the Apple Watch was. People forget that the first apps for iPhones were delivered via jailbreaks made by hackers, who had unlimited access, and that plus Steam ultimately teed up what limited things you can do in iOS apps today, not brilliant strategy.
For a recent example, during the pandemic mental health journaling apps became popular, and now Apple has their own that has 10x the capability by sticking fingers in all your sensitive location, photo, health data that those 3rd party apps could never dream of.
(Yes, it was near useless. The original Mac had 128k of RAM, which allowed for only the smallest of applications. It wasn't until the Mac 512k came out that people could do real work on these machines.)
The next rev of Vision products from Apple, or maybe the rev after that, will just be leaps and bounds beyond what anyone else is doing in the space. No new paradigm of computing truly begins until Apple starts it.
It’s going to be interesting to see what it really shines at as more developers make different kinds of apps.
And yet -- as Steve demonstrated -- it fit in an envelope.
THIS is Apple launching a new product line (and trust me I'm not a fan boi).
And shortly after (2-3 years?) the MBAs were powerful cheap and barely powered up their fans.
Mind you the MBA was maybe Steve's last obsession. What is Tim's thinking these days?
Still it all seems very Apple like...
A good measure of an Apple product is if you can pitch a version of it to your grandma or dad who can’t open PDF file. If something only appeals to tech enthusiasts it is not a good Apple product (except the professional line products intended to be used for serious work by professionals which the vision pro isn’t)
Now, I guess, it makes reality disappear?
I have a Quest and have used other VR systems, the Vision Pro felt like a huge leap forward compared to those.
I walked away from the demo tempted. Not by what is available today, but by what I want to be available and what I want to create with it.
https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology--media-a...
Even though the SSD was much tinier than the hard drive and the processor in the machine was slow and under clocked to be able to manage heat, in combination with the SSD it was fast compiling code and ran smoother than a normal MacBook Pro.
The flipside is I think the hard drive was a 4200 RPM model and performed absolutely abysmally.
But if you didn’t need much computing power, say you’re a writer, it was extremely small and lightweight and easy to carry. It’s not surprising it changed the industry.
I thought it was pretty good - but nowhere near ideal of course.
But discovered I could dispense with both of Apple's "Light Seal Cushions" and simply line the light seal with some 1/8 adhesive foam. It took a little experimenting to avoid hard pressure points, and then make it comfortable.
It is now very comfortable with the following benefits:
1. The field of view is noticeably wider. Yay! The immersion improvement feels cognitively significant.
2. I realized that greater peripheral vision downward is more important than upward. Being more aware of down makes us feel safer and is also where are our hands and keyboards live.
So I arranged the padding to wear the head set slightly lower, allocating all the increased vertical FOV downward.
3. The combination of being 1/4 inch or so closer to the face, and firmer padding, reduced the feeling of weight on the front of my head.
Warning - literally. I get an occasional popup warning that my eyes are too close to the lenses. The danger being if I were to fall I could potentially hit my eyes. I stay seated most the time, but occasionally walk through rooms, so it is worth being careful.
I use my Vision Pro for 10 hours a day on many days, comfortably. I had to switch to the two-strap support to do this. But I have ordered an adapter that allows the original behind the heat cushion strap to be used with a second cushion strap over the head. I anticipate that working even better, given how much surface area weight will be distributed across. (Also turning a knob is easier for adjustments than messing with velcro.)
Also, got some thicker (in width) lighter foam, to add some more light seal around the edges.
This feels like a real upgrade, a year or so before Apple will release a bump.
Can you comfortable code all day in that? If you don't mind my asking, is it purely novelty or is it genuinely better than coding on a 5k monitor?
In the recent update it now lets you mouse off your Mac and onto vision apps just like iPad hands over. It made me switch my desk setup to have the desk attached to my chair so I can have 360 range of screens. The resolution is stupidly high.
I’ve attempted a coding workflow in all of the quests and it just wasn’t possible. It’s awesome in vision
Do those semi-realistic virtual avatars work for non-FaceTime apps like Zoom?
No the personas aren’t right. They just creep people out. They need more work, or some basic editablity. It generally nails your eyes perfectly at the expense of everything else.
It takes time to absorb all the possibilities
Yes, on comfort for 10 hours. I have even worked 12 hours, then watched a long 3D movie (Blade Runner 2049, Dune I, etc.) without hesitation.
I cannot imagine going back to only physical screens. I have a 98" monitor with two 55" monitors in portrait angled towards me on either side (heights all match), all wall mounted. Truly wonderful! But this has replaced that for me.
I have even considered beheading a MacBook Pro.
I love the following:
• Never needing to put on or take off reading glasses to see far, or within inches.
• I can have my main Mac "screen" whatever size I want, typically large. Also that I can lean into it when focusing on a patch of code, and it always looks perfect.
• Having multiple Vision safari screens, or utilities, surrounding me. With the look and pinch interface being very nice for navigating.
• Being able to tune out 180 degrees of my space with a natural scene so I am completely undistracted. Wish I could go 360 degrees, and still leave keyboard visible. (Either by having an unobstructed low circle, or having the keyboard "punch through" like hands do.
• Flexible screen position lets me sit with great posture all the time. I tend to pull right up to my desk, push my keyboard far out and lean forward on my elbows a bit. Have the screen large but close enough that I can lean in to focus on something.
• Two environments in one! I will put project organization and context notes on huge screens behind me on a wall. Personal mission control. In thoughtful moments I get out of my chair, walk around the room and see the large screens from anywhere, walk right up to it, make small edits with pinch and zoom.
• The incredible ergonomics of being able to code comfortably in bed, on a couch, recliner, etc. with good ergonomics, due to the screens being flexibly placed. Being able to code in many places keeps my brain fresh.
• I use a holster for the battery. Geeky, but after dropping it as I walked away from my desk 100 times I realized I need that. That elminated inhibitions about moving, and feelings of being chained down.
• I haven't been in flow so consistently for so many hours for a long time. For me the Mac interface expansion/isolation chamber IS what Vision is for.
Issues:
• As noted, wish the keyboard and my drinks would "punch through" 360 degree scenes, or there was an optional lower circle of punch rough.
• Keyboard and trackpad pointer are fussy when switching between Mac and Vision screens.
• Wish I could have more Mac screens, and drag Mac windows out to their own screens. Also pull in iPad and iPhone screens. And push windows/app-states back out to those machines too. Or two other people's devices.
• Wish the Mac screen operated with look and pinch. I do this a few times every day when in flow.
• Wish I could disconnect/reconnect my MacBook Pro screen. The headless MacBook Pro for Vision would be absolutely great. But having the option to use it as a laptop too would be great. Maybe remove my MacBook screen, but set it up so I can clip my iPad Pro to it too?
• Need a Vision Spaces interface for setting up work then moving to a different context, but being able to come back to those screens. Being able to set up a space that is location sensitive, so always available in that room, seat, whatever.
Can you expand on this? Does it basically have built in vision correction? This actually sounds like a 'killer' feature if you don't need to mess with glasses.
But more importantly, your eyes are always focusing at a consistent 1ish meter in front of you. That's why you don't have to switch vision correction ever when using the Vision Pro (or any VR display).
problems can come from increased heat within the vr device, but also because every lighty our eye receives comes in at the same angle, and thus the eye never needs to adjust to different distances, as it would have to do in a real environment. while it appears / looks the same as in reality it really isnt. thats also the reason you only need one correction.
What are these 98" monitors? Is this a TV or some kind of signage display? That truly is a huge setup.
SAMSUNG 98-Inch Class Neo QLED 4K QN90A
SAMSUNG 55-Inch Class Neo QLED 4K QN95B x 2
In my opinion, desk space taken up by displays is criminal!
Also like to get out of my chair, pace the room, still see my work on a big screen as I think about it. Move to think
And this setup encourages more collaboration
Even a 40 inch 4k TV on a wall works great with a desk spaced suitably
Oculus quests have had this feature for a while now so I guess it'll come to AVP too. It only supports a handful of models but that's no big deal for Apple users as they mostly will use Apple keyboards anyway.
Btw it’ll be a few years before they update the Vision Pro
The displays are really, really good.
It is obscured though by the softened out of focus presentation, maybe that blurring makes the difference unnoticeable.
I had some major issues with the Vision Pro, but pixel density was not one of them.
• The pinching focus remains on the control you just looked at for a fraction of a second as your eyes zoom off it.
That would be killer.
In retrospect, it would have been vintage Apple to have realized this was an important detail and resolved it already.
Also widely spreading fingers within a moment of looking at a control could act as "hovering" with a mouse pointer. Add some kind of glow to the control as an intuitive indicator that it is staying in pinch focus. So you can lock in, still look around, and pinch if you decide to - or just relax the hand to abort.
This ability to lock on last gaze, and pinch/abort, would dramatically free the eyes to continue roaming naturally.
I'm not convinced this would solve it. What if I really do want to select a different button quickly? Certainly, when I use traditional computers I hate mouse latency. You could add additional pinch controls like you said, but I think it would all continue to be finicky.
I think the problem is that eye tracking is bad, at least as a primary input mechanism.
If I were Apple, I would focus more on hand gestures. The Vision Pro lets you move application windows around with your hands (although you need to initially select them with your eyes), and this always felt much more natural to me than. I can imagine a system where you use your hands to manipulate a cursor in space, possibly even a 3D cursor.
These minimum gaze times could be quite small. When we move our eyes, they move fast. I am guessing in the order of 10-30 ms. Just under our perception of what we are actually doing.
I find myself deciding and starting to pinch, but moving my eyes away at the same time. That is a small window where carry-over gaze would reliably do-what-I-mean without undercutting a follow up gaze and pinch
The original Apple Lisa, which cost $9,995 in 1983, would cost approximately $27,905 in today's dollars, adjusting for inflation over the period up to 2023.
So the VisionPro seems downright cheap.
Im betting Apple will release similar smart glasses like Meta's in the next year or two.
I can't remember if it was here or somewhere else I saw the point made that the current Vision Pro is the worst one Apple will ever make. All future Vision* products will likely be technically improved from the current model. So if the Vision Pro is good right now it really can only be refined and get better.
I have 1000 hours on SteamVR, but coming back is a chore. And my face is red after every session.
To this very day, I still dont have a VR headset. I am actually a tad behind with the latest ones, if I am honest about it.
There is a VR place in our City which I take my children to (and myself) for some fun for an hour. I do enjoy it. We play together on those Zombie or Archery games.
One of the main reasons I am tempted to get VR is to got the extra mile for some games or.. more specifically.. simulations.
I want to give my kids a slight head start to things like driving. With a decent simulator, steering wheel and VR, will be educational for them. I would need to build (or perhaps just buy) a new PC.
Is all this worth it for a driving simulator experience?
Interesting to see the future of VR and AR. I think these techs will merge in one way or another, ending up being small like a pair of glasses. I do think this tech as it evolves will eventually replace monitors. Things like this will be replaced, like giant mainframes are nothing compared to modern phones.
If you are from a developed country with decent wages and think of yourself as a tech enthusiast you should just go buy it as a professional investment to learn about the tech. Even if you don't want the gaming it is easily good enough to give you insight into the the broader tech (working in VR, social experiences, etc) and it's a pretty good standalone WebXR viewer which very easy to pick up.
(I have the same logic that anybody who buys a Vision Pro for development is insane not to also pick up a Quest at 1/7th the price so that they can at least have a full perspective on where VR is at)
Yes, without sounding like a big shot, can affort to splash this type of money. However, just because I can does not mean I should. I have a family and spending money needs discussion with the Mrs (as she does to me)
Also, it is finding a place to put it in the home especially with a toddler.
I have to prioritise, as there are other things in tech to be enthusiastic about. There are atleast 4 other things as well as wanting to dive into VR. Thing is, the other things I have access now.
You can't possibly extrapolate the movie watching retention rate from Oculus Go to Apple Vision Pro. That's like saying most people won't use ipod based on the data we collected from our walkman.
> It has its daily and weekly use cases
What do you do with it?
Daily use case: portable Macbook monitor weekly use case: watching shows or a movie. I have to pause due to dry eyes, not due to the heaviness. After the first 2 days of using it, it's not actually that heavy afterward, but it is noticeable if you pay attention.
shareplay over facetime is wonderful. i have watched a few big movies with my buddies in this way
I watch a show / movie with my girlfriend a couple times a week. A nice TV is still better for that obviously.
But I watch stuff on my own every single day. Personal media consumption for me is probably 8x my group-based consumption. I would wager most people these days have similar habits.
I do think my situation fits current society more though. Families under one roof consuming media only through the shared TV is less and less how the (at least Western) world operates.
You are also kind of... ignoring the fact that the walkman was very successful. Ridiculously so, in fact. Such that, people did predict ipod like things would be a success because of it. There was a whole line of successful portable music devices leading up to the ipod.
I do have to say, for me it does add up to one huge missing element for Vision Pro: why Apple didn't ship some kind of co-presence features on day 1 is totally baffling to me. I think it likely stems from the fact they clearly missed their mark with Personas and presumably they didn't want to then introduce cartoon style avatars like Meta did. They've decided to die on the hill of realistic avatars and they are actually dying there. It means people hate Personas, they don't have co-presence which is damaging the media viewing and preventing a lot of the AR and professional use cases from developing where co-presence is also a must, sometimes the primary feature.
It's fascinating to me because Apple pitched so hard at their headset not being socially isolating, but they ultimately created the most socially isolating headset of all.
I got the prescription lens inserts that Apple had suggested, and when I first put on the device I thought that either my eye doctor had gotten my prescription wrong, or something was defective with my device.
The blur is distracting -- and looking further away makes it more obvious, as the objects in the background move around a lot more when turning your head vs items really close to your eyes.
He also says you can read your screens through passthrough, but I've found that not really to be the case, at least for devices like the iPhone or Apple watch. I've had to take my Vision Pro off many times not only to read a phone notification, but also for anything that requires Face-ID (which doesn't work well when the Vision Pro is covering your face, which feels like an Apple ecosystem fail).
I'm still enjoying it, and I bought it knowing it was a V1 product, but it also shows how far have to go, even with a ton of engineering put into a product.
I've noticed that I can almost read things if I hold my phone a little farther away, but I wouldn't call it usable by any stretch. I've considered getting contacts for the first time just to test all of this, but I'm extremely turned off by the upkeep of them (to say nothing of the idea of touching my eyeball to put them in).
VR is interesting all because all manufactures (that I know of) have a fixed focal distance for the screens. This is why you need inserts in the first place, even though the lenses are right in front of your eyes. For example, on the valve index this is set to ~6ft, so if you can see up to 6ft perfectly, you do not need inserts.
Moving your phone around doesn't change this number, its a relationship between the lenses and the screens
I can read screens "fine" while wearing it (fine as in, I can read them, I wouldn't want to do it for an extended amount of time).
At some point don't we need to accept the laws of physics and biology? That is, The VisionPro covers a significant part of your face, much more than a pair of glasses. Face-ID already has the challenge of needing to recognize you in tons of different conditions (lighting, pale/tan skin color, wildly different hairstyles, facial hair, etc.), while for security reasons nearly never letting someone else impersonate you. Is it really possible to get that level of forgiveness with accuracy if Face-ID only gets to consider the bottom half of your face?
Makes me think of the blurring effect of phosphors on a CRT.
But even that is a massive technological achievement when you look at raw numbers in the article - those 4K displays in Vision Pro are already 3386 PPI.
If the Vision Pro can soon replicate that experience they will print (even more) money and could lock the big film studios down forever pretty much.
That is the killer use case. Everything else seems like fluff.
You can always choose a lower fidelity co-presence, but again if you are doing that why are you wearing the heavy goggles? Just get a discord server and watch on there. I think there are very real technical challenges to combining all of the important aspects, but it is also the category of experience I am most excited by.
They aren't used that much because it's a silly gimmick and nothing more. People don't roleplay nearly as much in actual VR experiences. Real life isn't Ready Player One, and real people may say they want this, but then they try it and never do it again.
It was neat to socialize with strangers in VR during covid lockdowns. It was instantly less neat when I could socialize with my real friends again. I don't have any friends from that period, and I was hanging out with VR strangers for tens of hours a weekend. There's just too many real, physical drawbacks to doing anything in VR that means unless you specifically crave the experience that ONLY VR can provide, like a driving simulator game, you don't really do it.
I've gone clubbing in VR. It's just not that special.
All the talk about AVP is full of people who seem to have zero understanding of what has existed for almost a decade in the VR space, don't seem very familiar with VR, and haven't tried to get friends and family to try VR. They all think Ready Player One, or The Matrix is right around the corner. Reality isn't magic.
For reference, VR is literally a game changer for Sim Racing, and even there most people don't care about it. Even then, it's only brought out occasionally, or for specific reasons. Headsets just suck, blocking your eyes with some form of screen will always suck for a social species like humans.
So why isn't it happening with Vision Pro? Because Apple hasn't shipped proper co-presence features. Vision Pro lacks a proper Avatar system like every other platform has, so they can't have apps like this, ergo they are left entirely with trying to convince people that solo experiences are a valid value proposition, all the while attempting to sell their headset as non-isolating.
Also, there's an IMAX app that actually simulates being in an IMAX theater. It's silly, but having the seats and railing and being able to look to the side and see the dim IMAX sign glowing on the wall goes a very, very long way. But for now there's not much you can do inside of it. I really,
The only thing that's really missing is the sound. The built-in speakers sound fantastic, but lack that low-end, guttural rumble that you can only get in a theater or with a very fancy home theater setup (which I don't have because I have a family, with a partner who's very noise-sensitive, and a house that's just not big enough to watch movies in without waking up my kid — I'd just never get to use it).
I haven't actually tried watching it hooked up to my homepods, which I'd guess would help. But yeah, the visual experience is remarkable. They can get there if they keep putting effort into it.
Visually? It looks far better than an IMAX screen. It's an order of magnitude better compared to watching 3D movies in a movie theater with '3d glasses'.
All it is missing is sound. It's no slouch, but you don't have a subwoofer :)
Call me a Luddite, but I am increasingly disdainful of all the New Shiny stuff, and see society trending toward lower-tech, traditional pursuits.
Think of it this way. Most people think it's rude to talk to each other indoors with sunglasses on. That's the slimmest form factor you're going to get, and it still steps on the toes of human connection.
All it takes is to get to that point with AR. So it's more a critique of the state of AR's present usefulness rather than an innate, immovable reflection on society.
At least with google glass it was trivial to see where the eyes were pointed.
I do not feel that this loss makes it rude to have an outside conversation wearing sunglasses in a sunny environment.
So, I still think that AR will find its way in. I'm not saying it won't reduce the socialization experience further. It'll just be perceived as semi-necessary, understandable, and life will move on.
Having AR glasses on is totally different.
Children used to be told "don't sit so close to the TV" and now we're strapping monitors to our heads.
The main difference is that there might be any number of equally-or-more-valid reasons to have AR/MR glasses on than "it's too bright".
Like, "I'm on call for blahblah" or "I'm watching the baby monitor" or... whatever, a million possibilities.
So yes, AR glasses detract, but no, it's not different.
Also, lots of wearers consider that social interaction complexifier a feature, not a bug. Which is why you see a lot of cops wear sunglasses all the time, even with no sun. For a deep, heart-to-heart conversation with somebody important? Sure, take them off. For anything else...
That's not a problem with sunglasses because it's inherently impossible for you to be doing something else.
The issue that people have with AR glasses (and to some extent, people wearing sunglasses unnecessarily) is that AR glass wearers are thinking more about themselves than the perspective of other person. And then to defend AR glasses saying "I could be doing something important but actually I'm paying attention" is like doubling down on that lack of awareness.
I'm not opposed to AR glassses. I'm just explaining why they are a bit of a faux pas and the people who think they are OK are also the reason why they are not OK.
I feel like if you went up to someone and asked “how can we improve this social interaction?” Literally nobody would suggest strapping a screen to your face anywhere in the list of improvements.
Here’s some other technology improvements:
What would make your TV experience better?
* make it bigger * allow it to use the internet to watch infinite shows * make it cheaper * make the colors brighter
What would make your analog home-phone experience better? * make it portable * make it smaller * allow me to save contacts within it * allow me to take other notes * now that I have this little thing in my pocket anyways, make it do more stuff
Then when we think of the problems that lead to AR being the solution, it’s almost entirely related to business problems. Surgery, manufacturing, carpentry, construction… all would benefit from a HUD that tells you what to put where. Those are real benefits.
But anything that people would do in a social situation? Almost never will the answer to a human interaction problem to be “attach a screen to your face”. In that scenario, all of the solutions are really in search of a problem.
I already do this but more manually. For example, I don't try to remember everyone's birthday. Instead, I put their birthday's in my calendar, get a notification when it's close, and use this information to enrich our relationship.
It seems reasonable to believe this could be extended much further if the barrier to recording and recalling the information was reduced.
Perhaps. It might be a generation or two before the "that's ... creepy" vibes fade. Reminds me a bit of that scene in minority report after the eye swap and the protagonist passes by a billboard and the avatar asks him about how the pants he purchased worked out.
I do something similar to the calendar thing too. I reach out a few days ahead of time so it doesn't seem like I'm just doing it reflexively like an unfeeling robot because facebook prompted me to do so day of.
I think you're on to something. Glass was an expensive flop from the word "go" but the second generation did live on in these specialized sectors.
I suspect that - at least for this decade - AR is still going to be the specialized/industry tech and that VR is going to be the consumer oriented tech.
Wearing an AR device is like telling you something more important than our conversation might come up and I need to be able to quickly shift my focus from you to it.
Maybe it's my age (early 40s) but it's common for our friend/family group to shame each other (in a half-kidding-half-not way) when somebody gets into their phone too much during a social event. "If you're going to be here, be here" is a mantra we tease each other with. We hold each other accountable enough to where when my elementary-age son picks out a movie for us to watch, if one of the adults in the room starts scrolling on their phone he'll pause the movie and ask them if they're going to pay attention or not.
I can see a future where people use AR, there's a setting that indicates "full focus" vs "distracted", and people will ask others to stay in "full focus" mode when talking. This would minimize the number of notifications the user receives in an effort to lend focus to the conversation.
It'll be the same general expectation as what you're describing, but with a step towards concession and acceptance of the tech.
There will also probably be an in-between period where people who remain glued to their phone try to take the morale high ground against those who are using AR goggles by saying they're giving more focus to the conversation :)
Of course, some people will feel like these changes reduce the humanity of the interaction because you're letting the device do too much of the work and others will disagree and say that the tech is just helping automate and improve a task they were already performing. Both camps will have fair points.
These sorts of behaviors which augment the conversation seem distinct from concepts like "be shown new text messages while mid-conversation" which I do think should be able to be silenced and conveyed as being silenced.
I did make good use of Google Lens when traveling to France last year. I found myself engaging with the world by looking through my phone's camera frequently as it made understanding restaurant menus much easier.
iOS and Android both have Focus Mode:
https://blog.google/products/android/android-focus-mode/
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/set-up-a-focus-iphd62...
I guess I don't use this feature when having a conversation with another person because it would require me to get out my phone and change modes when the conversation begins. That's too much of a barrier. In some settings, though, like when going to watch a movie in public, there's a dedicated window where people are expected to shift their phones to a socially acceptable mode. I do respond accordingly in those situations.
With AR, it would seem this process could be automated through facial recognition / voice detection. If there was a setting that said, "Don't notify me of text messages when the system detects I am conversing with another person. Do this automatically" then it seems quite practical to have that enabled. It also seems reasonable that it would be implemented because the concept of "disable notifications temporarily" already exists on phones.
This was something jobs was adept at navigating around along with Jonny Ive.
Tim Cook is a product idiot. Or maybe more to the point he is adept at making factories and has run out of products for them to manufacture. So what’s more important to him his giving the factory more to do vs designing the right product.
I think this statement is too strong. I see too many people every day in elevators, in lines, all sorts of different places that are on their phone and specifically avoiding eye contact with other human beings. That suggests that the term “vast majority” is probably too strong.
People want human connections less and less, especially with strangers, service providers, “NPCs” as some would lovingly call them. I think good AR will accelerate this, not fail due to a shrinking taboo.
Putting your phone down for a few hours to stare at the trees, or the water, or the clouds passing by, and maybe chatting up a couple nearby people doing the same, that is now the epitome of disconnected blissful ignorance.
> I don’t buy this. So many people walking around absolutely glued to their smartphones.
I think it is right-ish, and just needs refinement:
Where people have to have human interactions when they're out in the world, the vast majority of them want them to be real in-person.
If I choose to interact with someone, or accept their attempt at interaction, I don't want a device between me and them. I often don't choose that, but this doesn't minimise my preference for non-tech-filtered integration if interaction does happen.
If I'm out on a trail run or trek I'm perfectly happy to exchange pleasantries with others out and about, I'm quite happy to give directions or similar assistance to a tourist while meandering locally (if asked politely, otherwise you will get sent well out of your way), but far less so if they are not looking me in the face.¹
> especially with strangers, service providers, “NPCs”, …
…, bloody survey people, charity muggers, those who think that because they believe [deity] loves me I'm somehow beholden to care, local press outside the station when I get off a train delayed by a significant incident, …
--
[1] caveat: I'm away that some people are very uncomfortable with direct eye contact, that is quite different from not entirely paying attention because of a bit of tech.
If they're a couple, why would they feel the need to always talk? You don't need to always be talking to enjoy just doing your own thing in each other's presence. Even prior to the proliferation of smartphones this was pretty normal in my experience, you spend most of your time having the ability to talk to the people you like, at some point you run out of things to say and are comfortable enough with each other to just do your own thing while in each other's company. It says nothing about their connection with each other.
Also, when shared experience hits the next version (or the one after that, or..) and I can watch Liverpool beat Man Utd with my brother on a different continent (with whatever lag being compensated for) I'll get more of a shared experience than I could have today.
This is a version-1 product. It's only going to get better - I have one of the original iPhones, and compared to the '15 Pro I have now, it's pitiful. Apple are generally a long-term game company, and they're not going to let this just drop.
So sure, in company down at the pub, I won't be wearing goggles like this. Funnily enough I don't think that's the target market, making your argument a bit of a strawman one. Apple (I expect) will focus is attention on where it can make a difference. And (again, I expect) it will.
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-launches-expanded...
https://www.meta.com/smart-glasses/early-access-program/
Is this true? Most of the time when I'm out and about I'm going from point a to point b and I'm not really interested in talking to anyone I dont already know. If I'm already at a specific place to do a specific thing... I'm not going to have a vr headset on and I'm not really interested in interacting with people I dont already know.
Nobody finds it rude to talk to each other with actual glasses on. If AR had similar utility and minimal impact on seeing each others eyes, then the same would be true. Sunglasses prevent people from tracking where people are looking which is why they come off as rude.
> That's the slimmest form factor you're going to get, and it still steps on the toes of human connection.
The minimalist form factor for AR is contact lenses not glasses. Several companies are working on them though it's a long way from a consumer product.
You may not have realized it, but the glasses on tip of nose thing where people lean forward to look at you is because reading glasses make things blurry at conversation distance. Basically this: https://levinsoneyeclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/shu...
However, sometimes people don't bother and they really can't see you very clearly. But, you can still track the body language from where they eyes are looking so it's fine, that's the difference clear lenses make.
That is extremely unlikely to ever be possible. A chip that size that did both high-bandwidth radio AND wireless charging (since you're not gonna have wires dangling from your eyes) AND high refresh rate display would fundamentally have to get extremely hot, with anything resembling current electronics.
You'd have to invent an entirely different transistor to do something like this.
That's not immersive 3D, but the useful bit of AR would be things like putting peoples names above them at a party as if you where in an MMO. Countdown timers over cooking pots, a map or just an arrow when walking somewhere etc.
I'm not saying VR will become as normalised as smartphones, mind you, just that it's a possible outcome. That said, VR / AR as we know it now has been a thing for a while now and it hasn't taken off as much.
My guess would be that once AR allows easy sharing, e.g. showing others a funny AR cat video, it will quickly become socially accepted to wear frequently.
Hard disagree. Except for brief interactions like ordering a coffee, I don’t think it is at all socially common for people to keep headphones on when they talk with others. Maybe it varies by culture, or social circle.
With younger people earbuds seem more like a fashion statement (you also don't take off ear rings to talk to people) and the noise cancelling/transparency will actually do the opposite: filter out background noise so that you can be heard more clearly.
Similarly taking out a Nokia used to signal that you will not be paying attention for a while. Nowadays it might instead be you taking a nice photo, showing off something to others etc.
VR headsets are definitely not at this point yet, but I am not so sure they never will be.
If I go and meet with someone in person, I generally do it because I want to see them up close, face to face. If we are both wearing VR headsets that hide our faces, the whole premise goes out the window.
Eventually, VR headsets might overcome this problem by accurately portraying the other person's face in some way, but we are nowhere there yet.
The people with the worst behaviour are pushing the norm.
For example, I would love and could easily justify the 12.9 inch iPad but the logistics of traveling with it make no sense for me.
I could justify the benefits of traveling everywhere with my high powered gaming pc but logistically it makes no sense.
These devices are still largely impractical for long term use, and particularly outside use. They won't be until the hardware catches up with what we are working on with the software and it is an almost invisible technology except for a mostly standard looking pair of glasses.
People already walk around with their phone almost attached to their face, it isn't hard to imagine wanting an AR headset.
…really? I have prescription glasses/sunglasses and I often don’t bother switching them during a quick excursion- such as daycare pickup/drop off. It’s never crossed my mind that I could be perceived as rude. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that anyone with such opinions do not have the level prescription that are required for driving and just general consent use. And for anyone thinking transition lenses would be the solution- those do not work in vehicles with UV blocking windows.
If you're having a quick interaction like popping in and out of a building to pick up / drop off someone or something, sure. But otherwise, it's quite universally rude.
Those were just viral memes of people using it like that for fun.
What do you think of how the Vision Pro addresses this problem?
Do you enjoy talking to a colleague while they still have their headphones on, even if you know they have this setting on?
One, it's not the actual user's eyes, it's just a bad rendition of some eyes - without any of the extremely subtle facial expressions that happen with the skin around the eyes, and without any amount of certainty from the other that they are correctly reflecting exactly what you're looking at. We are extremely good at noticing exactly which direction another human is looking in, and when theire gaze shifts, so even minor inaccuracies or lag are jarring.
Much worse, the screen they used is so bad that the eyes are barely visible in almost any amount of lighting.
Either way, even if this "solution" actually worked, the visor still covers far too much of the face to be able to get a normal expression.
So... sniff sniff what's that smell? The market working is it then?
Both Vitamix blenders and recumbent bicycles have less market share than desktop Linux. Is that because recumbent bike makers just really have no idea how people want to ride bicycles, or...
yeah
No. That's a gross generalization. You have all sorts of people using Linux, including leading UX experts.
What you don't have is a single governing body pulling everyone in the same direction, so efforts get diluted(even when prioritized).
They understand, but they don't care. The 5% want to have a system that is designed for themselves and not the other 95%.
> quite clearly huge numbers of people DO want TVs and smartphones
This really ventures into the space of addictive behaviors. Do meth addicts really want meth, or are they using for some other reason? Can we assume that they DO want the meth and that's the primary driver simply because they keep using it?
It identifies that rudeness comes from lack of attention and that communicating attention can change within a cultural context.
People living in the 1920’s would say we are all crackheads.
We’re already deep into the process of merging modern technology into every aspect of our lives, and in some cases it’s been bad. In some cases it’s been a necessary evolution to survive in a modern society. In some cases, it’s been good.
On the one hand, I worry that face helmets will further erode human connection, and people will live in a lower resolution reality than what is possible with direct human contact. On the other hand, the current reality is that more and more people are looking down into a slab of glass instead of up/out at the world around them.
It could be that the ultimate version of AVP (some kind of glasses that are barely more noticeable than AirPods) is what gets people to look up/out again.
The “bad thing” is arguably already here, and it’s just a question of whether future tech will make it worse, or do a better job of merging the real world with the digital world, enabling people to participate in both instead of disappearing into their pocket computer.
Apple is IMO the only company that seems capable of simultaneously tackling the form factor, outside-viewer perception factor (AirPods are fully socialized, as you mention), inside-viewer perception factor (AirPods on transparency really do feel 99.9% fully "transparent")
Would the new generation be get used to it? Probably. But that does not mean it is healthy. We have gotten used to a lot of things that are objectively bad for us.
Also VR isn’t what companies, Apple at least, care about. It’s a stepping stone to AR which is why the AVP does a “fake AR” of sorts as its primary mode of operation. You have to walk before you run which is also why Apple pushed VR/ARKit so hard even before they had a device to really take full advantage of it (as in a device that’s not just holding an iPad up and pointing it at table, all of 5 people care about that).
The Overton window will shift if people get true utility out of VR/AR in the same way it’s shifted on everything else. Right now there just isn’t anything compelling enough to force that shift but I think it will happen quickly when there is.
And before “I find X compelling”, ok, that’s great for you, for the vast majority of people the tech and/or use-cases are not there yet.
I couldn't care less about AR. I want VR and only VR.
I don't want digital overlays of the world around me at all. That's completely useless and will be filled with ads and noise. I want to live and breathe in imaginative fantasy worlds and escape the real world completely.
I want to be a character in interactive movies. Have realistic D&D sessions with friends where the real world disappears completely. To create entire planets and universes and populate them with stories and adventures.
I don't want labels on cooking ingredients, advertisements for Taco Bell while I walk around, or email notifications popping up during conversations. AR might have industrial use cases, but the real world implications are annoying.
But maybe there will be a few years of bliss, like the early internet. Or maybe that bliss has already happened.
I don't think this is true. There was a massive appetite for the iPhone for decades leading up to its release, and there was no question that mobile was going to have a giant role in the future of computing. If you look back, most nay-sayers didn't doubt the value or utility of pocket-computers, but rather just that Apple specifically would be out-competed by established vendors.
Whereas VR equivalent of a phone call with eye and face tracking and eventually full body tracking is much closer to an in-person interaction.
And your eyes are both covered so there isn't a good way to non-verbally communicate waning interest levels...I suppose a solution is to simply care less if I hurt my friend's feelings but I'd also like a way to spend time with friends without feeling trapped.
At least in an f2f or video call meeting that I'm bored of, I can zone out or look at my phone or tap on my laptop, or do anything but stare at the slides. With eye tracking, the headset knows (and presumably everyone else could know as well) when you're tuned out.
The eye tracking thing also kind of weirds me out from a privacy standpoint. It's already bad enough that web pages track how long you engage with different portions of content. Now they know what parts of images I stare at, and can algorithmically feed me content based solely on my gaze alone. Does that prospect not weird anyone else out? Or are most normal users like "plug me into AR TikTok, but with gaze mechanics now!"
I hadn’t considered those antisocial patterns that the technology is foisting on users, but I suppose one can also juts directly communicate verbally. Could work in low context cultures but not so well in high context cultures.
> The eye tracking thing also kind of weirds me out from a privacy standpoint.
Indeed. While I am less worried about Apple “going after me in a direct targeted nefarious way”, I don’t appreciate more levers for technology to disintermediate my manipulate my behavior, emotions, or interactions.
I vaguely remember there being some stuff from Apple about this when it launched - the apps don't have a lot of access to that raw tracking data
Had a quick google... the doc here has more details https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Apple_Vision_Pro_Privacy_...
I don’t get it. Why not just tell them? What do you do if someone hands you a controller for a tv game equivalent?
I'm not the GP, but as they said you have all your other body language for communication. In VR-world, you have your eye direction and hands - not even your full eyes, with all the muscles around them that may communicate more than anything else on your body. I suppose you could flip them off. :)
It's an interesting point about how VR avatars, for all their 'presence', are very limited. VR video chat seems much better.
Those aren't your only two options. There are almost infinite ways to communicate.
Facial expression - eyes (the muscles around them), mouth (smile, blank, frown, etc) - posture, legs, arms, etc etc etc. You can look disinterested, you can look like it's the best thing ever, or any other human emotion.
Also, I've played Catan in VR and felt like I couldn't leave "like that". I had to finish the game and shake hands with the strangers I played with before leaving the game, it just felt like I was really there and it would have been rude to leave the game like that.
I did freak out the first time I joined a cinema room (can't remember the name of the game) as when I looked on my left side I saw people staring at me in the cinema room (which made me yell and it made everyone laugh, indicating to me that even my mic was on!)
If I try to imagine myself living the same workflow on Apple Vision Pro, I get hung up on the cost. $3,500 is a big ask for a VR iPad with a lot of the same pitfalls as the tablet.
I'm not even sure if AVP can side load apps or watch movies over SFTP, but I don't think it matters at this point: the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now, and personally I don't think it's the hardware driving the difference. Strangely, I think it came down to "look n feel" for a lot of it.
> the global mindshare is sold on Apple being the leader now
Besides Casey Neistat and Mark Gurman, I'm really not hearing much from the "global mindshare" anymore. The Quest didn't really get any fanfare either, but it did move units and get market penetration from the start. Apple is on a slow roll right now, and until they get Half Life: Alyx or MSFS2020-tier system sellers, I'm not sure the in-group will even consider them on-par with PCVR. Given Apple's audience, I half expect their biggest VR competitor to be Sony's PSVR2.
it's nice for browsing the web, but you have to deal with ads inside their chromium fork.
for working with it as a monitor for work though. it's usable but the resolution is not there yet.
No way I'm going to buy a piece of equipment Zuck can brick at any minute...
Apple seems to have a bit better reputation in this regard, but I'm still not sure I'd risk getting a device...
This teleportation/telepresence is the thing that struck me the most. I'd love to pop into a friend's living room for a beer without worrying about them living in another country.
The way a large number of young people do this is just by seeing their friends in voice chat on discord and then joining on their phone.
On a related note, we're probably also less than a decade away from telepresence via a humanoid robot at an affordable price.
That said, forcing your hands to be full of controllers also sucks but at least you can play a game. I don't have a solution but it needs to get solved for these things to be seamless enough to wear and useful enough to want to.
And I would call myself an enthusiast.
For work purposes, the privacy factor is a huge benefit -- nobody in the room can peek at your "screen"
Though ideally we probably want some sort of “force gloves” that allow us to feel the weight of and manipulate objects in a virtual world using. We need way higher resolution on inputs than we have today, though, which currently amounts to an x/y/z and some button presses.