I bought the Apple Vision Pro and even though the tech is amazing I returned it(twitter.com)
twitter.com
I bought the Apple Vision Pro and even though the tech is amazing I returned it
https://twitter.com/neilpatel/status/1754327092538577220
107 comments
watching a movie in VR networked
with other people is something i did 3 years ago with the valve index, and yes it was immersive and enjoyable. This isnt unique to apple vision, we should all realize that.
Realize that AND acknowledge that it's been three years, and the tech has failed to take off, especially the way phones have. This could still be a V1 iPod or V1 iPhone thing, but between these initial responses, the history of the market and (the biggest) a missing Steve Jobs to do his Steve Jobs thing on it, I'm just not buying it. Cook is his own brand of genius, but they haven't disrupted much since Jobs passed on.
searches say over 20 million meta quests 1-3 sold and tech reporting already claims quest "has gone mainstream" back in 2021, so i dont think your point holds up. What has apple done that meta has not here?
My view is Meta has done far more for adoption than a product released 2 days ago and sure AVP honeymoon phase is exciting, especially so for those who've never tried VR before.
https://www.techradar.com/news/oculus-quest-2-sales-figures-...
https://www.techradar.com/news/oculus-quest-2-sales-figures-...
There are 6 million monthly users for Quest after a decade of releases. If Apple does 10X that in their first decade of AVP, highly unlikely, this will still be a huge failure of a platform with fewer than half of MacOS' users.
This tech cannot evolve to something mainstreamable and was best left in the lab. This is Apple shipping a slightly improved DynaTAK when people need at least a StarTAK and people would actually like an iPhone 1. Jobs would never have released this. He's have done what he did with phones, waited until the tech was good enough that regular people could at least imagine a few versions improving it enough to love. AVP is two or three decades away from that.
This tech cannot evolve to something mainstreamable and was best left in the lab. This is Apple shipping a slightly improved DynaTAK when people need at least a StarTAK and people would actually like an iPhone 1. Jobs would never have released this. He's have done what he did with phones, waited until the tech was good enough that regular people could at least imagine a few versions improving it enough to love. AVP is two or three decades away from that.
i agree. what is starTAK and dynaTAK? my searches arent revealing anything
I think the parent just used a 'k' instead of a 'c':
DynaTak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC StarTak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC
DynaTak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_DynaTAC StarTak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_StarTAC
The movie experience is available on MUCH cheaper headsets though. Sure, it's cool...but what feature really makes it worth so much aside from it having been made by Apple?
A movie experience is available not the same movie experience.
No cheaper headset has these movies available in 4K HDR 3D with optional HFR. That has simply not existed for the home market till now.
No cheaper headset has the same native streaming apps capable of delivering 4k streams.
No cheaper headset has the color accuracy and resolution.
You might as well make the same argument about someone upgrading from a 720p TV to a 4k one.
Remember, implementation is often more important than just a feature on paper. The iPhone killed off cheaper devices that did everything it did because it did the core things better. The same goes for the iPod and the iPad.
Anyone who compares features without an eye for implementation is missing the forest for the trees.
No cheaper headset has these movies available in 4K HDR 3D with optional HFR. That has simply not existed for the home market till now.
No cheaper headset has the same native streaming apps capable of delivering 4k streams.
No cheaper headset has the color accuracy and resolution.
You might as well make the same argument about someone upgrading from a 720p TV to a 4k one.
Remember, implementation is often more important than just a feature on paper. The iPhone killed off cheaper devices that did everything it did because it did the core things better. The same goes for the iPod and the iPad.
Anyone who compares features without an eye for implementation is missing the forest for the trees.
You can watch 4K streams on a Oculus Quest with Bigscreen. They will also do 3D movies and Bigscreen rents them.
HDR is missing and the resolution and color accuracy is lower but you can buy 6 Meta Quest 3s for the price. I don't think Apple has ever shipped a product with a bigger price discrepancy to it's competitors than AVP. It's not moderately more expensive and better but massively more expensive.
HDR is missing and the resolution and color accuracy is lower but you can buy 6 Meta Quest 3s for the price. I don't think Apple has ever shipped a product with a bigger price discrepancy to it's competitors than AVP. It's not moderately more expensive and better but massively more expensive.
You’re skipping the majority of my points.
Yes you can technically do each of those things in isolation , but you literally have no way to access these mainstream movies as 4K 3D before the Vision Pro, because they were not available. You could choose one or the other, not both.
and it does not matter if I can buy 7 meta quest 3s for the price. All 7 would not be able to do the things the Vision Pro enables.
Maybe it doesn’t make financial sense to you, I don’t really care, because that is subjective. But let’s not be deceitful by trying to disregard the delta in quality as meaningless either.
Yes you can technically do each of those things in isolation , but you literally have no way to access these mainstream movies as 4K 3D before the Vision Pro, because they were not available. You could choose one or the other, not both.
and it does not matter if I can buy 7 meta quest 3s for the price. All 7 would not be able to do the things the Vision Pro enables.
Maybe it doesn’t make financial sense to you, I don’t really care, because that is subjective. But let’s not be deceitful by trying to disregard the delta in quality as meaningless either.
Is the bitrate of the 4K 3D streams better than what's offered on the commercially available 3D Blu-rays? I've made 3D Blu-ray rips and watched them on the Quest 2 and they look pretty good. There's no technical reason a Quest device couldn't do 4K 3D movies, Disney and others just don't seem to bother for whatever reason.
The commercial blu-rays max out at 1080p so a bitrate comparison isn’t meaningful as the delta in resolution is too high.
And again, I will refer back to my point: Implementation matters more than just technical ability. Stop doing paper comparisons to soothe an ego.
The fact that these companies have their services on Vision Pro and nothing else is a result of implementation
It really doesn’t matter if the Quest can do something by jumping through hoops. Yeah you can rip your blu-rays, and then load them on, futz with compression etc. meanwhile a Vision Pro user can click one app and have it right there without any effort.
And again, I will refer back to my point: Implementation matters more than just technical ability. Stop doing paper comparisons to soothe an ego.
The fact that these companies have their services on Vision Pro and nothing else is a result of implementation
It really doesn’t matter if the Quest can do something by jumping through hoops. Yeah you can rip your blu-rays, and then load them on, futz with compression etc. meanwhile a Vision Pro user can click one app and have it right there without any effort.
It's really not. A low bitrate but high resolution can look like shit in many scenes.
And there's really nothing stopping Disney or whomever from bringing 4K 3D movies to Quest. Many of the porn companies have 8K 180 degree 3D streams compatible with Quest already. It's nothing unique to the AVP.
And there's really nothing stopping Disney or whomever from bringing 4K 3D movies to Quest. Many of the porn companies have 8K 180 degree 3D streams compatible with Quest already. It's nothing unique to the AVP.
I guess all I can say is enjoy your Quest 3 without being insecure about a competitor since you have no interest in actually even reading the points I write.
The picture quality is absolutely amazing. Between the Quest 2 and the Vision pro, the difference is similar to SD to HD tv (480p to 1080p). It's a huge leap forward, and for spatial videos, it's an entirely different feeling.
Is it, though? On the AVP it looks better than an actual theater and almost as good as a $5k 80+ inch OLED TV at home. The fidelity is incredible and well beyond anything I’ve seen before from a VR headset.
I got mine on launch day. I didn’t read the emails from Apple about the prescription lenses coming separately by mail. That caused me to miss them when they were delivered in the morning. I started with temporary (disposable) contacts that weren’t quite the right script (freebies from the optometrist who updated my prescription).
I was disappointed. It wasnt the marvel of eye tracking I’d hoped it would be. But as soon as I got the lenses in later that day, everything was much nicer. Eye tracking, image quality, all of it. I like it more each day.
I’ve been on the home-theater projector train for over a decade. I have a 4K projector and this blows it out of the water. My extra BT kbds both failed to turn on, so I haven’t used it for work, yet. But I’m eager. My first game with is projects a skate park and you control a guy on a board. It’s decent, but looks cool. The speakers are unreasonably good for their size.
It’s a solid device. I just hope Apple doesn’t mismanage it like they have the iPad.
I was disappointed. It wasnt the marvel of eye tracking I’d hoped it would be. But as soon as I got the lenses in later that day, everything was much nicer. Eye tracking, image quality, all of it. I like it more each day.
I’ve been on the home-theater projector train for over a decade. I have a 4K projector and this blows it out of the water. My extra BT kbds both failed to turn on, so I haven’t used it for work, yet. But I’m eager. My first game with is projects a skate park and you control a guy on a board. It’s decent, but looks cool. The speakers are unreasonably good for their size.
It’s a solid device. I just hope Apple doesn’t mismanage it like they have the iPad.
I think:
"I get headaches from using it, and there isn't enough reason to be in VR" is probably the same reason oculus didn't really penetrate the Apple/tech/trendies.
The target the author sets for them trying it again is basically meta's roadmap.
the _hilarious_ thing is that meta cannot coherently deliver/demostrate baby steps to those targets, or explain through the medium of snootynosed PR/marketing hyperbole the potential of the oculus platform.
Put it this way, the reason the iPhone succeeded is because a lot of people gave apple the benefit of the doubt. It had two things: music and well engineered smooth scrolling. _Everything_ else was sub par. No 3g, terrible batterylife, no GPS, no apps, no sideloading and no flash. Fucking slow proc (but the interface was always given priority.)
If VR is going to succeed with apple, it will be because people gave them the benefit of the doubt for v1/v2. Most of the reviews are a lot of "It will be" "when x is delivered" and "when x makes content in y". Meta doesn't have that good will to draw on, they have to deliver first time They can't because the head of VR/AR is someone who ships features not releases coherent products.
You know the best fucking part? the quest pro could have been a 95% AVP. If they managed to ship the depth sensor, then passthrough would have worked. If they had planned their shell properly, not wasted many many people-years fucking porting react to VR, then they might have had time to design a coherent UX.
But thats the problem with most competitors, they shitout features, rather than release coherent experiences.
Apple: I want a VR headset that anyone can use, requires no hand controllers, and doesn't block out the world
Meta: Lets ship eyetracking and hand based controllers, but only release 4 pages of documentation on all of it. something something metaverse, something something playing poker in a room together.
"I get headaches from using it, and there isn't enough reason to be in VR" is probably the same reason oculus didn't really penetrate the Apple/tech/trendies.
The target the author sets for them trying it again is basically meta's roadmap.
the _hilarious_ thing is that meta cannot coherently deliver/demostrate baby steps to those targets, or explain through the medium of snootynosed PR/marketing hyperbole the potential of the oculus platform.
Put it this way, the reason the iPhone succeeded is because a lot of people gave apple the benefit of the doubt. It had two things: music and well engineered smooth scrolling. _Everything_ else was sub par. No 3g, terrible batterylife, no GPS, no apps, no sideloading and no flash. Fucking slow proc (but the interface was always given priority.)
If VR is going to succeed with apple, it will be because people gave them the benefit of the doubt for v1/v2. Most of the reviews are a lot of "It will be" "when x is delivered" and "when x makes content in y". Meta doesn't have that good will to draw on, they have to deliver first time They can't because the head of VR/AR is someone who ships features not releases coherent products.
You know the best fucking part? the quest pro could have been a 95% AVP. If they managed to ship the depth sensor, then passthrough would have worked. If they had planned their shell properly, not wasted many many people-years fucking porting react to VR, then they might have had time to design a coherent UX.
But thats the problem with most competitors, they shitout features, rather than release coherent experiences.
Apple: I want a VR headset that anyone can use, requires no hand controllers, and doesn't block out the world
Meta: Lets ship eyetracking and hand based controllers, but only release 4 pages of documentation on all of it. something something metaverse, something something playing poker in a room together.
> the reason the iPhone succeeded is because a lot of people gave apple the benefit of the doubt
No. Maybe you're too young to remember, but the iPhone was a revelation at the time. It was clear that everything that had come before was obsolete. Seems to be hip to trash it now based on the original specs (2G! No camera! No copy and paste!) but the alternative at that time was either a landline or a plasticky junk phone with awful software (or a BlackBerry, which could sure message a whole lot but that was about it).
No. Maybe you're too young to remember, but the iPhone was a revelation at the time. It was clear that everything that had come before was obsolete. Seems to be hip to trash it now based on the original specs (2G! No camera! No copy and paste!) but the alternative at that time was either a landline or a plasticky junk phone with awful software (or a BlackBerry, which could sure message a whole lot but that was about it).
<<Aslan do not speak to me of this magic, I was there meme>>
The revelation was that you could talk on your ipod, and that ipod had a really really slick interface. It was running at 60hz, vs the ~20hz of the rivals. The rest, was all marketing fluff. Apart from the itunes store, the only other thing that the iPhone had was google maps, buttery buttery smooth maps.
This is kinda what I'm hinting at before. Nokia had this great roadmap to basically deliver what essentially was the ipad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet) However they fucked up the software, had internal teams at war, a conflicted road map, and a chronic inability to deliver. Meta, if they had different leadership could actually make a better, cheaper AVP. probably even with content, as there are so many streaming services out there trying to get a USP.
They won't, because meta can't execute. At best meta is going to be the cheapy android of VR, at worst nokia.
The revelation was that you could talk on your ipod, and that ipod had a really really slick interface. It was running at 60hz, vs the ~20hz of the rivals. The rest, was all marketing fluff. Apart from the itunes store, the only other thing that the iPhone had was google maps, buttery buttery smooth maps.
This is kinda what I'm hinting at before. Nokia had this great roadmap to basically deliver what essentially was the ipad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet) However they fucked up the software, had internal teams at war, a conflicted road map, and a chronic inability to deliver. Meta, if they had different leadership could actually make a better, cheaper AVP. probably even with content, as there are so many streaming services out there trying to get a USP.
They won't, because meta can't execute. At best meta is going to be the cheapy android of VR, at worst nokia.
> Apart from the itunes store, the only other thing that the iPhone had was google maps, buttery buttery smooth maps.
And a _usable browser_, don't forget. No other smartphone at the time had a browser that you could use for more than a few minutes without getting a powerful urge to throw the thing out the window.
And a _usable browser_, don't forget. No other smartphone at the time had a browser that you could use for more than a few minutes without getting a powerful urge to throw the thing out the window.
Opera has been usable on mobile since forever (and I am not talking about Mini).
Mobile Safari and multitouch were both revelations and revolutionary.
If you were there, surely you remember WAP?
If you were there, surely you remember WAP?
I do! but WAP was pretty much dead by 2007. It was ok on black and white feature phones, but smart phones had actual browsers. A lot of them shit.
Safari's interface was great. Safari was and still is, a bit shit. If you remember, a lot of sites were using flash, and safari couldn't run it (because the iphone didn't have enough ram/cpu spare)
The iPhone accelerated the "booo flash is shit, lets use javascript" trend significantly. But that was because the iphone was weak, not because it was strong. More over, it had a critical mass of people that were both webdevs, and target market.
In the same way that AVP can't operate on trains/cars that move too much (IMU is used to speed up SLAM) I'm sure there will be a lot of "oh don't use AVP as a passenger, its bad for your health" when its just that the hardware cant do it, without an external IMU reference.
Safari's interface was great. Safari was and still is, a bit shit. If you remember, a lot of sites were using flash, and safari couldn't run it (because the iphone didn't have enough ram/cpu spare)
The iPhone accelerated the "booo flash is shit, lets use javascript" trend significantly. But that was because the iphone was weak, not because it was strong. More over, it had a critical mass of people that were both webdevs, and target market.
In the same way that AVP can't operate on trains/cars that move too much (IMU is used to speed up SLAM) I'm sure there will be a lot of "oh don't use AVP as a passenger, its bad for your health" when its just that the hardware cant do it, without an external IMU reference.
Yeah, this completely piss me off nowadays, the current crop of Apple cultist has insane history revisionism built-in to fit their narrative on how Apple will prevail in the end, because history says so (yet in the recent past history has proved Apple is lost in the woods...).
But yes the original iPhone was way beyond anything on the market, no matter how much money you wanted to spend and it's shortcoming where very easy "fixes" that anyone could see coming rather shortly.
The reason iPhone succeeded was because it was a much better product than anything else in its category and anyone who used it for a few minutes could see that right away, the only objection was the price...
In contrast, for the AVP even tech enthusiasts will object to the price before even trying and after they will object to many things because it's not that useful and it's not even that good, at any price...
But yes the original iPhone was way beyond anything on the market, no matter how much money you wanted to spend and it's shortcoming where very easy "fixes" that anyone could see coming rather shortly.
The reason iPhone succeeded was because it was a much better product than anything else in its category and anyone who used it for a few minutes could see that right away, the only objection was the price...
In contrast, for the AVP even tech enthusiasts will object to the price before even trying and after they will object to many things because it's not that useful and it's not even that good, at any price...
Yeah I had a smartphone before the iPhone (HTC Wizard) and it was clear it had gone from geeky toy to mainstream tool.
"Meta doesn't have that good will to draw on" this is literally what drove my purchase. I just don't trust FB to respect me as a human, let alone as a paying customer. I think, "Yeah, Apple is over-priced. But, I'm paying to be a customer and not a product"
Of course, I'm not confident that is actually true. At all.
Of course, I'm not confident that is actually true. At all.
that's the power of great marketing!
Something else that’s hurting Meta is how compared to Apple, it doesn’t have as robust of a platform (SDK, UI paradigms, etc). Quests run plain old Android in 3D with some AR bits bolted on, which is fine for games but not as compelling for other types of apps.
Devs could probably look past that if apps developed for the Quest had a possibility of running on competing headsets, with Meta offering to license their flavor of Android to other manufacturers and establishing Quest OS the “Windows” of AR/VR. They’re not doing that though, they’re instead going for a more Apple-like strategy, but without the platform chops to back it up.
Eventually, there will be a company that builds a “Windows” of AR that they license out and becomes dominant, but I wouldn’t bet on it being Meta. Maybe it’ll instead be Valve, given their recent work on SteamOS.
Devs could probably look past that if apps developed for the Quest had a possibility of running on competing headsets, with Meta offering to license their flavor of Android to other manufacturers and establishing Quest OS the “Windows” of AR/VR. They’re not doing that though, they’re instead going for a more Apple-like strategy, but without the platform chops to back it up.
Eventually, there will be a company that builds a “Windows” of AR that they license out and becomes dominant, but I wouldn’t bet on it being Meta. Maybe it’ll instead be Valve, given their recent work on SteamOS.
Meta also suffers from their views on privacy. I refuse to buy a meta quest and risk letting them monetize my whole life.
Same. I’m not buying the Vision Pro because that’s a crazy price. But I wouldn’t even use a free Oculus because I do NOT trust Meta at all.
Meta being involved is a complete dealbreaker for me, no matter what it is.
Is Vision Pro SDK better than Android SDK? What about UI paradigms?
> Put it this way, the reason the iPhone succeeded is because a lot of people gave apple the benefit of the doubt.
It had a clearly superior capacitive screen with glass when competitors were still doing shitty resistive screens with plastic... or worse small screens and buttons.
It looked great and worked ok.
The rest could be ignored due to that.
It wasn't benefit of the doubt, it was a clearly superior product that competitors took years to catch up to some extent.
It had a clearly superior capacitive screen with glass when competitors were still doing shitty resistive screens with plastic... or worse small screens and buttons.
It looked great and worked ok.
The rest could be ignored due to that.
It wasn't benefit of the doubt, it was a clearly superior product that competitors took years to catch up to some extent.
I would encourage my fellow oldsters (you know who you are!) to strongly consider trying out the AVP. After several days of use, I'll be keeping mine. A few rambling thoughts.
First, and foremost, I like the feeling of mental tiredness after using it for an hour or so, reminding me of how fatigued I felt years ago, living in a remote Peace Corps location and wrestling daily with a difficult new language. One can almost feel new mental connections being forged as utterly new visages appear floating in space and novel configurations of information present themselves. And, as a consequence, one can sense dreaded dementia receding a decade or so into the murky future.
Second, the meditation app is truly awesome, and allows a length of quiet sitting I've never before been able to attain, and lower blood pressure.
Third, the near-term prospect of virtual attendance at performing arts and sports events around the planet, without needing to leave home, is enticing.
Fourth, in the mid-future, tele-medicine will surely take account of the possibilities of AVP, tied likely to various monitors the Apple watch will have, opening new vistas of quality care at a distance.
And fifth, and best of all, the sheer pleasure of personal spatial videos is not to be denied. It was delightful to hear my own spouse gasp in amazement to see herself in 3D twirling gracefully during a recent outing.
All in all, a winner for nearly every senior.
First, and foremost, I like the feeling of mental tiredness after using it for an hour or so, reminding me of how fatigued I felt years ago, living in a remote Peace Corps location and wrestling daily with a difficult new language. One can almost feel new mental connections being forged as utterly new visages appear floating in space and novel configurations of information present themselves. And, as a consequence, one can sense dreaded dementia receding a decade or so into the murky future.
Second, the meditation app is truly awesome, and allows a length of quiet sitting I've never before been able to attain, and lower blood pressure.
Third, the near-term prospect of virtual attendance at performing arts and sports events around the planet, without needing to leave home, is enticing.
Fourth, in the mid-future, tele-medicine will surely take account of the possibilities of AVP, tied likely to various monitors the Apple watch will have, opening new vistas of quality care at a distance.
And fifth, and best of all, the sheer pleasure of personal spatial videos is not to be denied. It was delightful to hear my own spouse gasp in amazement to see herself in 3D twirling gracefully during a recent outing.
All in all, a winner for nearly every senior.
Why did contacts vs custom lenses matter?
I suspect you posted this on the wrong thread.
Didn't realize it doesn't have chrome - bit of a deal killer right there for work purposes.
Also, the inability to have more than one mac desktop is very strange.
And the weird limitation on not having audio from your mac go through the headphones.
I'm waiting to see if Immersed Visor [1] ever becomes real and lives up to the marketing.
[1] https://www.visor.com/
Also, the inability to have more than one mac desktop is very strange.
And the weird limitation on not having audio from your mac go through the headphones.
I'm waiting to see if Immersed Visor [1] ever becomes real and lives up to the marketing.
[1] https://www.visor.com/
> Also, the inability to have more than one mac desktop is very strange.
is it. sounds like typical apple to me.
is it. sounds like typical apple to me.
You can separately pair headphones to the Mac. Not ideal but works fine so far.
The pros and cons of the early adopter.
Factors like weight and comfort often arise. Perhaps a future strategy in this space will be to minimise the headset componentry by shifting as much as possible externally, similar to how Apple has approached the battery issue with the Vision Pro.
(imagination running with that idea : future iphones and Macs will be the processing units for more-compact future Vision Pros)
Factors like weight and comfort often arise. Perhaps a future strategy in this space will be to minimise the headset componentry by shifting as much as possible externally, similar to how Apple has approached the battery issue with the Vision Pro.
(imagination running with that idea : future iphones and Macs will be the processing units for more-compact future Vision Pros)
Like, it's super weird to have an external battery but not the rest of the non-visual hardware, right?
Maybe AVP aspirationally (once in sunglass form factor) seeks to replace iPad, then Mac, then iPhone?
Modular Google Glass essentially? That could be pretty cool, and make the headset lighter too.
There's no fixing the fact that people think highly of their faces (especially those who spend time on hair and makeup) are not going to put a big dorkbox on their faces.
This whole approach is an evolutionary dead end. If users have to strap anything to press against their faces all around their eyes, forehead and cheeks, adoption's going to be limited to a small group of male gamers, think 10 million MAU in 5-10 years ("Quest" got 6M in 10 years) not 100 million and certainly not a billion. This product is a flop that should have stayed in R&D for 10 to 20 more years until the tech was ready to build something that didn't make your face look silly.
Jobs would never have released this. This is the DynaTAK, not even the StarTAK, and certainly not the iPhone 1. Apple didn't rush to build a mobile phone in the late '90s when the StarTAK was showing that cell phones could fit in your shirt pocket and work pretty well. They waited another decade until they could build something truly good, not just good enough like the StarTAK. But Tim Cook shipped this DynaTAK+ headset that dorks your face.
That's just the kind of good solid work a fashion tech brand like Apple needs /s
This whole approach is an evolutionary dead end. If users have to strap anything to press against their faces all around their eyes, forehead and cheeks, adoption's going to be limited to a small group of male gamers, think 10 million MAU in 5-10 years ("Quest" got 6M in 10 years) not 100 million and certainly not a billion. This product is a flop that should have stayed in R&D for 10 to 20 more years until the tech was ready to build something that didn't make your face look silly.
Jobs would never have released this. This is the DynaTAK, not even the StarTAK, and certainly not the iPhone 1. Apple didn't rush to build a mobile phone in the late '90s when the StarTAK was showing that cell phones could fit in your shirt pocket and work pretty well. They waited another decade until they could build something truly good, not just good enough like the StarTAK. But Tim Cook shipped this DynaTAK+ headset that dorks your face.
That's just the kind of good solid work a fashion tech brand like Apple needs /s
I get the sarcasm and I wish Apple would stop their luxury fashion brand run and go back to interesting affordable universal tech...
I’m still experimenting but thus far I’ve found it to be nice for lounging usage (couch, bed, etc) because it lets me keep my head up and eyes focused several feet away instead of down and a few inches away.
It does need more apps but those are coming along at a decent pace, and if necessary I can write what I need.
It does need more apps but those are coming along at a decent pace, and if necessary I can write what I need.
> if necessary I can write what I need.
I understand that this is probably an off-the-cuff comment (and no judgement for it), but it got me curious:
What sort of apps do you think you might need (or want) for this, and how much work do you think it would be to write them?
Like, I can see myself putting together a CLI or a web app to help organize and collate my work (and I have) but I don't see myself creating a word processor.
I'm curious to hear what you (and anyone else) would see as a useful app for this device :)
I understand that this is probably an off-the-cuff comment (and no judgement for it), but it got me curious:
What sort of apps do you think you might need (or want) for this, and how much work do you think it would be to write them?
Like, I can see myself putting together a CLI or a web app to help organize and collate my work (and I have) but I don't see myself creating a word processor.
I'm curious to hear what you (and anyone else) would see as a useful app for this device :)
> I'm curious to hear what you (and anyone else) would see as a useful app for this device :)
Still figuring this out, but most things that are useful as phone or tablet apps for one since you don’t want to switch to other devices if you don’t have to when you’re using it. Some sites would be better as apps too, because similar to how the web was clunky on early iPhones it’s also kind of clunky on the Vision Pro due to there not really being web affordances for AR/VR environments (aside from the immersive stuff typical of WebXR).
Integrations with Xcode and Android Studio on my Mac, allowing simulators and connected devices to appear as floating panes in visionOS might be cool.
Still figuring this out, but most things that are useful as phone or tablet apps for one since you don’t want to switch to other devices if you don’t have to when you’re using it. Some sites would be better as apps too, because similar to how the web was clunky on early iPhones it’s also kind of clunky on the Vision Pro due to there not really being web affordances for AR/VR environments (aside from the immersive stuff typical of WebXR).
Integrations with Xcode and Android Studio on my Mac, allowing simulators and connected devices to appear as floating panes in visionOS might be cool.
Yea, one of my favorite things has actually been the ability to lay back on the sofa looking at the ceiling watching a movie on a massive screen.
But is it $3500 nice?
I mean, there was a picture of a pair of guys wearing them out in public, eating food or something.
And, you know, that's almost $8000 (with tax) of equipment there in that cafe stuck on those heads.
Make no mistake, its not a criticism at all, I hope you enjoy your purchase.
Maybe those guys eating were watching Iron Man or something.
I mean, there was a picture of a pair of guys wearing them out in public, eating food or something.
And, you know, that's almost $8000 (with tax) of equipment there in that cafe stuck on those heads.
Make no mistake, its not a criticism at all, I hope you enjoy your purchase.
Maybe those guys eating were watching Iron Man or something.
> But is it $3500 nice?
That's going to be entirely subjective and widely dependent on the wallet and finances of whomever you ask, and how badly they been wanting a VR/AR computer thingy.
That's going to be entirely subjective and widely dependent on the wallet and finances of whomever you ask, and how badly they been wanting a VR/AR computer thingy.
The cost is more or less the standard price of admission for early adopter stuff. Not worth it for everybody clearly, but worth considering for those who like riding the wave as a platform matures from the start.
I don’t think I’d take it out in public, except maybe on a plane or in an airport lounge.
I don’t think I’d take it out in public, except maybe on a plane or in an airport lounge.
Not really. Quest is early adopter stuff and it's $300-500, about a tenth of the price. Steamdeck, Raspberry Pi, these are early adopter hardware and they're all sub-$500. I've been buying enthusiast hardware since the '80s and, no, $3500 is not the price of admission. I can't think of a single piece of enthusiast gear I've ever run across in computers or electronic music, that was that expensive unless it was a collectors item, one of a kind, or some other factor which absolutely does not apply to the Vision Pro which Apple markets as having mainstream appeal (see the commercials if you want to know how Apple is positioning this thing, and it's without a doubt not enthusiast or early adopters.) Are you sucking up to Apple here because you like Apple or because you like VR, or is there some other reason?
You’re conflating enthusiast with early adopter.
The Quest is not early adopter, it is several generations in, and is the culmination of multiple product lines. The original Rift or the Vive were early adopter for this generation of VR headsets, excluding multiple previous attempts at the market. Factoring in the attached PC needed to drive the experience, they were expensive.
The raspberry pi was not an early adopter system. It was a consumer friendly evolution of many SBCs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer?wprov=sf...).
Lots of music equipment is very expensive. People pay thousands for synths and thousands for musical instruments.
The Yamaha GX1/707 was 60k at launch. The macintosh was over 7k in today’s money. The first HD TVs for consumers started in the 7k range.
I’m not sure how you’re defining “early adopter” but nothing you listed is early adopter. All your examples are quite late in the respective areas, when they were getting targeted for mass consumer adoption.
The Quest is not early adopter, it is several generations in, and is the culmination of multiple product lines. The original Rift or the Vive were early adopter for this generation of VR headsets, excluding multiple previous attempts at the market. Factoring in the attached PC needed to drive the experience, they were expensive.
The raspberry pi was not an early adopter system. It was a consumer friendly evolution of many SBCs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer?wprov=sf...).
Lots of music equipment is very expensive. People pay thousands for synths and thousands for musical instruments.
The Yamaha GX1/707 was 60k at launch. The macintosh was over 7k in today’s money. The first HD TVs for consumers started in the 7k range.
I’m not sure how you’re defining “early adopter” but nothing you listed is early adopter. All your examples are quite late in the respective areas, when they were getting targeted for mass consumer adoption.
As an owner and frequent user of a Quest 2 (and a original Rift) I don’t really seem them as being in the same category as the AVP. They’re obviously related, but have significantly different trajectories, and I think visionOS in particular fares a much better chance of working well across a variety of form factors than anything Meta has.
Yeah. I genuinely considered buying one, playing with it for a few days, and then returning it. I can't imagine actually using it on a regular basis and even if it were useful it wouldn't be three times as useful as the $1200 macbook I already have.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. If it had a Thunderbolt out, or HDMI or something, that it could sit on a desk and double as a Mac Mini, for example, I think it'd be more 'keepable'.
Most of my friends work in the tech space, and a lot of them have at least one VR headset, most of which have been sitting in 'the drawer of stuff I'll come back to at some point' or have been given or lent to friends/family.
Most of my friends work in the tech space, and a lot of them have at least one VR headset, most of which have been sitting in 'the drawer of stuff I'll come back to at some point' or have been given or lent to friends/family.
> I genuinely considered buying one, playing with it for a few days, and then returning it.
Just make sure you write a twitter thread (or social network of your choice) to maximize those engagement dollars. Standing bravely against the tide is a good look (when the tide is low), or maybe try a different angle.
Just make sure you write a twitter thread (or social network of your choice) to maximize those engagement dollars. Standing bravely against the tide is a good look (when the tide is low), or maybe try a different angle.
Why is the title changed from "though" to "when," changing the meaning?
[edit to add] Also, a comma was added, so this resulted in a net loss of one character while also changing the meaning.
[edit to add] Also, a comma was added, so this resulted in a net loss of one character while also changing the meaning.
It’s interesting that the author does still think it’s the future despite returning it for a bunch of dealbreaking flaws that have no chance of being addressed. I don’t recall a lot of people out there with a similar sentiment when they bought their first generation iPhones and Apple Watches.
They saw a future that was imminent, a future that their current device could actually possibly be a part of, at least partially. Their original iPhone eventually got things like an App Store and Microsoft Exchange support, becoming a very useful device. The vision was essentially executed on the first try, and the only things that needed to be improved were very incremental details like network speed, screen size/quality, battery life, processor power. Despite that, the device was the right size, shape, and general combination of functionality.
Sure, those first generation devices stopped being updated fairly quickly, but at the end of the day they hit their stride within a couple years of updates, many through software.
I think it’s “the future” only if the tech can move a lot faster than it has thus far. It is a major problem that after so many years of active development with industry giants sinking billions into VR/AR, this space still doesn’t seem anywhere close to the sort of cyberpunk-esque human computer that is the eventual vision of AR, the only way it will gain mass adoption.
Not only did Apple not deliver an AR headset (it’s a VR headset with video passthrough that you can’t wear without messing up your hair), even if they delivered AR glasses or whatever…that is still arguably not a good enough experience. Wearing glasses isn’t great when you don’t normally wear them. That’s much more of a commitment than putting a phone on your pocket or a watch on your wrist. Step one is convincing you to do that.
But that isn’t even really the issue here because not only did Apple not deliver something like a pair of glasses, what they delivered is so far away from that where the very idea of a Vision Pro shrinking down into a pair of Ray Bans seems physically impossible. Apple gave us one of the heaviest headsets out there despite having an external battery to keep the weight down.
When the iPhone came out you could see the device becoming extremely powerful and performant within 5 years. That path was obvious. If you look at an iPhone 5, that is a phone that really isn’t that far off from modern, mature products. It had LTE, and there isn’t really a technical reason why you couldn’t use it just like any other modern phone besides the lack of updates. The product category essentially achieved its ultimate vision within a short period of time.
But when you look at the AR market, all the major VR/AR products were coming out around 5 years ago (or longer) and we’ve barely got a better experience. The difference between the Quest 3 and the original Quest (2019) is basically just some pass through cameras and a speed bump. Incremental changes like we got with the iPhone. We’re still just playing beat saber and superhot.
The Valve Index is a similar age and still represents one of the better HMDs that you can buy. Apple’s device has worse FOV even though it’s $3500 and 5 years newer.
There is not going to be this cool AR future because the products are already in their final form. They are screens attached to your head. That’s all they’ll ever be. We have seen this because they’ve only made incremental changes in their first 5 years like an iPhone or Apple Watch, no fundamental form factor changes. The Vision Pro 5 is going to be the same device as the original, without the external battery, and with a better display. It’s going to still mess up your hair and make you wear dumb looking shit on your head.
Even the educational and enterprise features that the author imagines, while cool, don’t seem to be going anywhere. Microsoft gave up on those despite having very capable first-mover technology and a web page full of enterprise client success stories. I personally guess that it’s just very hard to make useful AR experiences. They’re difficult to develop compared to making a web page, a CRUD app, training video, etc. Hell, they might not even be as cost effective as hands-on apprentice-style training. Between buying the hardware and developing a fully immersive 3D app…the applications for that level of effort are limited, IMO.
They saw a future that was imminent, a future that their current device could actually possibly be a part of, at least partially. Their original iPhone eventually got things like an App Store and Microsoft Exchange support, becoming a very useful device. The vision was essentially executed on the first try, and the only things that needed to be improved were very incremental details like network speed, screen size/quality, battery life, processor power. Despite that, the device was the right size, shape, and general combination of functionality.
Sure, those first generation devices stopped being updated fairly quickly, but at the end of the day they hit their stride within a couple years of updates, many through software.
I think it’s “the future” only if the tech can move a lot faster than it has thus far. It is a major problem that after so many years of active development with industry giants sinking billions into VR/AR, this space still doesn’t seem anywhere close to the sort of cyberpunk-esque human computer that is the eventual vision of AR, the only way it will gain mass adoption.
Not only did Apple not deliver an AR headset (it’s a VR headset with video passthrough that you can’t wear without messing up your hair), even if they delivered AR glasses or whatever…that is still arguably not a good enough experience. Wearing glasses isn’t great when you don’t normally wear them. That’s much more of a commitment than putting a phone on your pocket or a watch on your wrist. Step one is convincing you to do that.
But that isn’t even really the issue here because not only did Apple not deliver something like a pair of glasses, what they delivered is so far away from that where the very idea of a Vision Pro shrinking down into a pair of Ray Bans seems physically impossible. Apple gave us one of the heaviest headsets out there despite having an external battery to keep the weight down.
When the iPhone came out you could see the device becoming extremely powerful and performant within 5 years. That path was obvious. If you look at an iPhone 5, that is a phone that really isn’t that far off from modern, mature products. It had LTE, and there isn’t really a technical reason why you couldn’t use it just like any other modern phone besides the lack of updates. The product category essentially achieved its ultimate vision within a short period of time.
But when you look at the AR market, all the major VR/AR products were coming out around 5 years ago (or longer) and we’ve barely got a better experience. The difference between the Quest 3 and the original Quest (2019) is basically just some pass through cameras and a speed bump. Incremental changes like we got with the iPhone. We’re still just playing beat saber and superhot.
The Valve Index is a similar age and still represents one of the better HMDs that you can buy. Apple’s device has worse FOV even though it’s $3500 and 5 years newer.
There is not going to be this cool AR future because the products are already in their final form. They are screens attached to your head. That’s all they’ll ever be. We have seen this because they’ve only made incremental changes in their first 5 years like an iPhone or Apple Watch, no fundamental form factor changes. The Vision Pro 5 is going to be the same device as the original, without the external battery, and with a better display. It’s going to still mess up your hair and make you wear dumb looking shit on your head.
Even the educational and enterprise features that the author imagines, while cool, don’t seem to be going anywhere. Microsoft gave up on those despite having very capable first-mover technology and a web page full of enterprise client success stories. I personally guess that it’s just very hard to make useful AR experiences. They’re difficult to develop compared to making a web page, a CRUD app, training video, etc. Hell, they might not even be as cost effective as hands-on apprentice-style training. Between buying the hardware and developing a fully immersive 3D app…the applications for that level of effort are limited, IMO.
Strapping something that needs to press against your face is a nonstarter for anyone that cares about hair and makeup. This will never iterate into something mainstream. I said it up page, but this is the DynaTAK(+), not even the StarTAK, and a DynaTAK+ cannot go mainstream or evolve into something mainstream. We require new technologies to take these HMDs from DynaTAK to StarTAK and that's when I expect people will start to care but it won't be until the tech lets us go from DynaTAK to StarTAK to (original) iPhone. Then it will be minimally sufficient to show people the possible future and then adoption will get out of the single digit millions into the double digit millions and have a path to hundreds of millions or billions. But that day is not this day.
I completely agree and all that seems obvious if you think about it for more than 30 seconds.
Apple or not the whole product category has a hard limit governed by physics that won't get "solved" anytime soon and it's pretty clear that what can be done with that tech won't change, probably forever...
That considered we are back to the usual niche applications of VR and then the price is just not even close to reasonable, no matter how cutting edge the actual hardware is (only the displays are really worth mentioning in the end, and the reason others don't use them is because they are too expensive to justify).
At 500 bucks, it was already a hard sale, but at least it can be a gift for nerds or something that won't get used very frequently but is ok to splurge on for entertainment; what Apple has made is fashion for fanboys...
All that is before talking about the fact that with today's knowledge none of this will ever be truly mobile. The external battery pack is already a bit of a travesty but even more when you consider that they put the compute (that is already limited) inside the damn thing, even though for serious applications, it would need much more. However, considering how bad the GPU story on Apple Silicon is, it is clear that Apple doesn't even envision proper games on this thing even though it is one major application!
For this price they had to provide a MUCH better computer, not just the compute capabilities of a diminished iPad (because a good amount has to be used for the spatial features). Since efficiency gains are vanishingly small it should have been clear that the compute requirement would only go up and then putting it all inside the thing isn't a viable strategy.
It should have been either an affordable headset that would connect to Mac or iPad or a complete standalone compute platform where instead of connecting to just a battery, it would connect to full computing box (upgradable/swappable at least).
Then again, under Cook's leadership we got the 2013 Mac Pro and saying it was shortsighted is an understatement. It's basically the same thing, but even worse, because at least a Mac Pro has a clearly defined use case for its price, even though it might have long term shortcomings as a platform...
That considered we are back to the usual niche applications of VR and then the price is just not even close to reasonable, no matter how cutting edge the actual hardware is (only the displays are really worth mentioning in the end, and the reason others don't use them is because they are too expensive to justify).
At 500 bucks, it was already a hard sale, but at least it can be a gift for nerds or something that won't get used very frequently but is ok to splurge on for entertainment; what Apple has made is fashion for fanboys...
All that is before talking about the fact that with today's knowledge none of this will ever be truly mobile. The external battery pack is already a bit of a travesty but even more when you consider that they put the compute (that is already limited) inside the damn thing, even though for serious applications, it would need much more. However, considering how bad the GPU story on Apple Silicon is, it is clear that Apple doesn't even envision proper games on this thing even though it is one major application!
For this price they had to provide a MUCH better computer, not just the compute capabilities of a diminished iPad (because a good amount has to be used for the spatial features). Since efficiency gains are vanishingly small it should have been clear that the compute requirement would only go up and then putting it all inside the thing isn't a viable strategy.
It should have been either an affordable headset that would connect to Mac or iPad or a complete standalone compute platform where instead of connecting to just a battery, it would connect to full computing box (upgradable/swappable at least).
Then again, under Cook's leadership we got the 2013 Mac Pro and saying it was shortsighted is an understatement. It's basically the same thing, but even worse, because at least a Mac Pro has a clearly defined use case for its price, even though it might have long term shortcomings as a platform...
The thing I find weird is how many of these reviews and experiences are coming from people who (1) genuinely believe Apple has an innovative product and market positioning, yet (2) seem never once to have purchased or used an Oculus or Meta product in the same space.
I mean, so many people are like "OMG Amazing Apple Demo" (or "This is the future" in the linked tweet) not realizing that the Rift was doing the same thing a decade ago. Is the Vision Pro better? I guess it must be given the price. But realistic 3D headsets are a long-solved problem.
I mean, so many people are like "OMG Amazing Apple Demo" (or "This is the future" in the linked tweet) not realizing that the Rift was doing the same thing a decade ago. Is the Vision Pro better? I guess it must be given the price. But realistic 3D headsets are a long-solved problem.
I think of this as “what does the launch product look like compared to five years from now?”
The Quest (2019) compared to Quest 3 basically gives you speed bumps, a pass-through camera, but the overall experience of what you’re doing in there is very similar.
Valve didn’t even make a new headset because the experience is still good enough (and they probably don’t see much of a future in it, to be honest).
Microsoft gave up despite having one of the more viable commercial solutions.
This amazing AR experience that Apple is pretending to deliver is just an incremental improvement to VR. It compares well to going from the launch iPhone to the iPhone 5.
What this means is that the VR/AR product market is likely already close to its technological end point. This is as far as we can go: we can strap displays to our heads. We can pass through a camera feed. We can remove the external trackers (though not without introducing blind spots, which will never be a solved problem).
That’s about it. How do I know we are at the end already? Because look at the iPhone 10 compared to the 5, or look at the 15 compared to the 10. What is different about it? The screen is a little bigger? You can unlock it in a fancy way? It’s got a nicer camera and faster processor? It’s the same device that does all the same things. Every year the increments get smaller. VR has already gone through its fastest era of development. It all slows down from here.
It’s decent tech that can be fun or even productive but I just don’t think it’s for everyone, and for the people who it’s for it’s not really something you are going to want to use for 4+ hours a day like most smartphone and computer users. And we aren’t getting this tech in a pair of glasses or a projected hologram in front of our face or anything unobtrusive like that. It’s physically impossible within any foreseeable period of time.
The Quest (2019) compared to Quest 3 basically gives you speed bumps, a pass-through camera, but the overall experience of what you’re doing in there is very similar.
Valve didn’t even make a new headset because the experience is still good enough (and they probably don’t see much of a future in it, to be honest).
Microsoft gave up despite having one of the more viable commercial solutions.
This amazing AR experience that Apple is pretending to deliver is just an incremental improvement to VR. It compares well to going from the launch iPhone to the iPhone 5.
What this means is that the VR/AR product market is likely already close to its technological end point. This is as far as we can go: we can strap displays to our heads. We can pass through a camera feed. We can remove the external trackers (though not without introducing blind spots, which will never be a solved problem).
That’s about it. How do I know we are at the end already? Because look at the iPhone 10 compared to the 5, or look at the 15 compared to the 10. What is different about it? The screen is a little bigger? You can unlock it in a fancy way? It’s got a nicer camera and faster processor? It’s the same device that does all the same things. Every year the increments get smaller. VR has already gone through its fastest era of development. It all slows down from here.
It’s decent tech that can be fun or even productive but I just don’t think it’s for everyone, and for the people who it’s for it’s not really something you are going to want to use for 4+ hours a day like most smartphone and computer users. And we aren’t getting this tech in a pair of glasses or a projected hologram in front of our face or anything unobtrusive like that. It’s physically impossible within any foreseeable period of time.
I've had a HTC Vive, Quest 2, and the Valve Index. It's much higher fidelity than any of them by a very large margin.
The virtual desktop feature is pretty similar experiences.
The hand tracking controls are classic apple (it just works). The eye tracking can use some more work.
I do feel that this could be the future. It's a huge step forward in certain areas, and I think the rest will be fixed. In a generation or two, this is going to be really compelling. I never felt that way about any of the other headsets I own.
The virtual desktop feature is pretty similar experiences.
The hand tracking controls are classic apple (it just works). The eye tracking can use some more work.
I do feel that this could be the future. It's a huge step forward in certain areas, and I think the rest will be fixed. In a generation or two, this is going to be really compelling. I never felt that way about any of the other headsets I own.
Slightly better resolution but a narrower FOV and worse reflections is not going to turn any HMD from a single digit millions user device into a hundreds of millions of users device. This entire approach is, I think, an evolutionary dead end. People who care about their faces and hair aren't going to strap a 1.5 lb dorkbox to their faces. And no, making it a 1 lb or even an 0.5 lb dorkbox isn't going to fix things if you still have to mash it to your face. People like their faces and won't agree to have their faces look silly for little appreciable gain over a phone and/or laptop.
Will mirror this as someone who uses a Quest 2 somewhere around 10-12 hours per week. In terms of hardware the Vision Pro is much better, which already shows and will only become more evident as intense apps make obvious the difference in CPU+GPU horsepower between the two headsets.
Right, but this gets to the flip side of my argument: what you're saying is that it will do what the Quest does better, at a higher price point.
But... no one is buying Quests. I mean, my kids have one and claim to love it. I had a ton of fun with Google Earth on a Rift S a few years back. But the market is a tiny niche thing.
How does selling a premium version of a niche product make money? I just don't see it. And what I find striking is the number of "Apple People" out there who haven't bothered to learn the particular product niche making statements that seem not terribly informed. Most of the "wow" reviews could have been done with an original Rift.
But... no one is buying Quests. I mean, my kids have one and claim to love it. I had a ton of fun with Google Earth on a Rift S a few years back. But the market is a tiny niche thing.
How does selling a premium version of a niche product make money? I just don't see it. And what I find striking is the number of "Apple People" out there who haven't bothered to learn the particular product niche making statements that seem not terribly informed. Most of the "wow" reviews could have been done with an original Rift.
It’s niche in its current form yes, but I don’t think the AVP is Apple’s endgame for visionOS. It exists merely so a robust platform and ecosystem can be developed and will be there from day one for more broadly appealing products in the future.
That just sounds like marketing non-speak. Couldn't you have said exactly the same words about Quest 3 when it launched? All these discussions come down to something to the effect of "Apple will be successful because Apple". But... I don't see it. They're a follower in this space, not an innovator. If there was magic dust to sell a billion headsets Meta would have found it by now.
I touched on this elsewhere, but it’s my belief that Meta has largely fumbled its strategy with the quest.
In short, outside of games it’s not a very appealing platform. It’s underdeveloped, with a middling SDK and shoehorned-Android UI that isn’t great for much except games, but despite this Meta thinks it’s good enough for developers to willingly lock themselves into their tiny walled garden. Enthusiast users aren’t too interested in the Quest as a platform either; see how many use the standalone Quest headsets exclusively for PCVR (including myself) — why buy games on Meta’s platform which is almost certainly seeing its demise sooner than later when the same games can be owned on the proven Steam instead?
Meta has also been weirdly rigid, with an inability to read the climate and roll with the punches. Their metaverse stuff has all fallen flat and yet they press forward with it instead of embracing what is working and moving in that direction.
And of course, Meta has a less than sterling reputation, being Facebook. A lot of people are reluctant to spend money to invite an array of Facebook cameras into their homes.
Apple is unlikely to suffer any of these problems to any significant extent. Their attempt may also fail, but they have a lot more going for them.
In short, outside of games it’s not a very appealing platform. It’s underdeveloped, with a middling SDK and shoehorned-Android UI that isn’t great for much except games, but despite this Meta thinks it’s good enough for developers to willingly lock themselves into their tiny walled garden. Enthusiast users aren’t too interested in the Quest as a platform either; see how many use the standalone Quest headsets exclusively for PCVR (including myself) — why buy games on Meta’s platform which is almost certainly seeing its demise sooner than later when the same games can be owned on the proven Steam instead?
Meta has also been weirdly rigid, with an inability to read the climate and roll with the punches. Their metaverse stuff has all fallen flat and yet they press forward with it instead of embracing what is working and moving in that direction.
And of course, Meta has a less than sterling reputation, being Facebook. A lot of people are reluctant to spend money to invite an array of Facebook cameras into their homes.
Apple is unlikely to suffer any of these problems to any significant extent. Their attempt may also fail, but they have a lot more going for them.
At best, and most forgiving, the AVP is trying to not be a VR headset. I guess it's pretty "resolutionary" to not be the thing that you obviously are.
I find amazing how they keep being surprised by stuff Microsoft was demoing in 2015 with Holo Lens, do those people never read any kind of news?
I think thats a pretty typical apple fanboyism response you are going to get from anything they release. Basically all of their products are iterations of some other existing product on the market. All the new things coming to iphone or mac. Its all been done because it has to have been done before, since unlike how they pitch them, computer companies don't make new things, they assemble existing things in potentially new ways perhaps, but nothing is novel; "apple silicon" is just another TSMC product running ARM architecture, not hand crafted in cupertino by free range artisans or anything. Boring hardware vendors are the ones who make things, who then sell these components on the market, and then Apple cobbles together a computer from what is available among the hardware vendor's inventory same as any other computer on the market. The layers get deeper still, when you consider what the hardware vendors produce is just what is able to be produced on the tooling the toolmakers are currently selling to them. Really its the toolmaker's toolmaker's toolmaker who brought you that iPhone, but Tim Apple walks up on that stage and gets the applause.
This misrepresents and belittles the amount of effort required to create something. Generally speaking, people don't buy tech, they buy products — Ideally great products.
While the iPhone 1.0 was incredibly primitive by today's standards, and wasn't the absolute cutting edge tech/compute-wise, it was indeed very polished and fantastic at what it set out to do: Combine an iPod + Internet Communicator + Phone. It had real mass-market use cases it set to solve during development, and solved those right out the gate, despite the many improvements that would follow.
Vision 1.0 doesn't seem to have many particular use cases in mind, and the ones it has seem incredibly niche. There's a lot of really cool tech that's meandering for a reason to exist. This alone makes it unlike any Apple product they have released in recent memory.
While the iPhone 1.0 was incredibly primitive by today's standards, and wasn't the absolute cutting edge tech/compute-wise, it was indeed very polished and fantastic at what it set out to do: Combine an iPod + Internet Communicator + Phone. It had real mass-market use cases it set to solve during development, and solved those right out the gate, despite the many improvements that would follow.
Vision 1.0 doesn't seem to have many particular use cases in mind, and the ones it has seem incredibly niche. There's a lot of really cool tech that's meandering for a reason to exist. This alone makes it unlike any Apple product they have released in recent memory.
The iPhone 1.0 was a $499 product though and it was also a very useful smartphone when it launched, which was already basically an established market by Blackberry and others.
I'm curious how much that will impact the device.
I mean, will a lot of people do this? Transforming a $3500 device into a $2500 refurb over night?
I wonder if they will get a lot of these.
Of course, my problem is I can not test it. I need eye glass lenses to test it (apparently), so I don't even think I can go into the store and give it a 30s look. The barrier to entry is quite high for me.
I mean, will a lot of people do this? Transforming a $3500 device into a $2500 refurb over night?
I wonder if they will get a lot of these.
Of course, my problem is I can not test it. I need eye glass lenses to test it (apparently), so I don't even think I can go into the store and give it a 30s look. The barrier to entry is quite high for me.
I imagine a not-insignificant number of those who preordered will return it. Anecdotally, everyone I know who bought one plans on doing just that. Sales numbers have been higher than expected, but I do wonder where they net out after returns.
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The Apple stores have a machine to test your eyeglasses and match them (if possible) with the set of lenses they have in-house for testing. Lots of people were demo-ing that way when I visited on Saturday.
Not sure about your specific condition, but contact lenses should work. So ~20 bucks for cheap dailies?
So adding to global pollution and consumption for use of and production of items that will end rubbish is ok then when it's not really essential.
??? I was writing about it being a hurdle to even try this out. How did you get it being about the returning part and not about trying it out in the store.
Here's my complaints, while we're complaining:
+ Apple appears to have worked *VERY* hard to make sure that there is no VR capability in it's VR headset. Most obvious is that it cannot play SBS video, as far as I can tell, at all. Though I'm sure that content providers will make an AVP app that will play them, in short order, what a weird thing to have left out. WebXR VR video does not play either. You may be in the know, but for the sake of stating it clearly: I will not play adult content from any of the websites you'd expect it to. Beyond that there are absolutely zero immersive experiences to be had with those fantastic 4k-per-eye OLED displays... so high-rez windows on a blurry re-displayed image of my crappy office.
+ The controls suck. "suck" meaning "fails to meet expectations". Seriously, eye/tap-controls (combined with the buttons on the headset itself) are identical to the amount of control the Oculus Go controller had, with less precision. The eye-tracking rarely looks exactly where you want it to, and the taps often don't register or release correctly. This is absolutely infuriating when you're trying to do anything. Furthermore, it's a 3DOF control scheme on a machine that is supposed to be "spatial". Watching my wife try to operate the thing, she is waiving her hands and trying to grab things... NOPE! only look-and-tap controls for everything. Want to position that window on the wall? You've got to physically stand up in front of where you want it and 3DOF control it into place, then go sit back down at your desk. In fact...
+ The whole thing really feels like you're supposed to be sitting at a desk the whole time you're using it. Everything is a floating window, and is expected to stay that way. When you walk around, all your windows stay where you placed them in space, but in front of the "pass through" at all times. And, if you try to layer your windows on top or "too close" to each other, then you get a "gradient of passthrough" in all of your surrounding windows that are not in focus. So, you can't read the news on the built-in Safari and work on your 80-inch virtual laptop screen next to each other without one-or-the-other half-disappearing (unless you put them far enough apart that you'd have to swivel in your office chair to look from one to the other. Walk a few feet and all your windows are back where you left them. Still, you'd think that the multiple windows would be great for multitasking but...
+ Not a multi-tasking device. It's very difficult to switch between active windows. If you grab the bar to move the window (easiest way to focus a window, and most obvious) it'll move that window away from where you put it. Also, because your eyes move faster than your hand, you'll often look somewhere before you tap... often the little "close window" circle. Anyway, then you're back up and moving your windows back where you want them. So, I want my 300-inch TV on that wall over there... and my laptop screen on my desk... and my chess board floating off to the right... and my YouTube music playing... but, The virtual desktop hijacks almost all of my input and all of my Siri commands, the Apple TV stops playing if my music website is playing music and vice versa, but the chessboard's background music plays just fine without interruption somehow.
+ AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 2 or GFYS. The Max's don't fit right and don't seal well enough for noise canceling, and the AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 1 don't have the low latency Bluetooth. Great, that's $700 of equipment that "Just [kinda] works."
+ Ok, there's the weight, but what *REALLY* sucks, is that there's no overhead strap. The included over-the-head strap still attaches at the back of the device. Fully resting the entire weight of the AVP on your cheekbones and nose. I eagerly await a 3rd party solution to this problem, but, where are they going to attach it? I suppose a halo-strap is ideal, but it'll need to put something onto that sleek design. I'm about ready to glue a strap over the worthless and invisible EyeSight display so I can get this thing off my nose already.
+ Oh, yeah, and this morning I tried to snooze my alarm clock by looking at it and tapping my fingers together... so it's also breaking my mind.
I'm not going to be returning my headset. I bought a first-gen product and I knew that things wouldn't be great. But, I remember getting that Virtual Boy/Google Cardboard/Oculus Go/Quest1&2 and being blown away by them each a bit more than the one before it. The AVP did not even remotely impress me.
+ Apple appears to have worked *VERY* hard to make sure that there is no VR capability in it's VR headset. Most obvious is that it cannot play SBS video, as far as I can tell, at all. Though I'm sure that content providers will make an AVP app that will play them, in short order, what a weird thing to have left out. WebXR VR video does not play either. You may be in the know, but for the sake of stating it clearly: I will not play adult content from any of the websites you'd expect it to. Beyond that there are absolutely zero immersive experiences to be had with those fantastic 4k-per-eye OLED displays... so high-rez windows on a blurry re-displayed image of my crappy office.
+ The controls suck. "suck" meaning "fails to meet expectations". Seriously, eye/tap-controls (combined with the buttons on the headset itself) are identical to the amount of control the Oculus Go controller had, with less precision. The eye-tracking rarely looks exactly where you want it to, and the taps often don't register or release correctly. This is absolutely infuriating when you're trying to do anything. Furthermore, it's a 3DOF control scheme on a machine that is supposed to be "spatial". Watching my wife try to operate the thing, she is waiving her hands and trying to grab things... NOPE! only look-and-tap controls for everything. Want to position that window on the wall? You've got to physically stand up in front of where you want it and 3DOF control it into place, then go sit back down at your desk. In fact...
+ The whole thing really feels like you're supposed to be sitting at a desk the whole time you're using it. Everything is a floating window, and is expected to stay that way. When you walk around, all your windows stay where you placed them in space, but in front of the "pass through" at all times. And, if you try to layer your windows on top or "too close" to each other, then you get a "gradient of passthrough" in all of your surrounding windows that are not in focus. So, you can't read the news on the built-in Safari and work on your 80-inch virtual laptop screen next to each other without one-or-the-other half-disappearing (unless you put them far enough apart that you'd have to swivel in your office chair to look from one to the other. Walk a few feet and all your windows are back where you left them. Still, you'd think that the multiple windows would be great for multitasking but...
+ Not a multi-tasking device. It's very difficult to switch between active windows. If you grab the bar to move the window (easiest way to focus a window, and most obvious) it'll move that window away from where you put it. Also, because your eyes move faster than your hand, you'll often look somewhere before you tap... often the little "close window" circle. Anyway, then you're back up and moving your windows back where you want them. So, I want my 300-inch TV on that wall over there... and my laptop screen on my desk... and my chess board floating off to the right... and my YouTube music playing... but, The virtual desktop hijacks almost all of my input and all of my Siri commands, the Apple TV stops playing if my music website is playing music and vice versa, but the chessboard's background music plays just fine without interruption somehow.
+ AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 2 or GFYS. The Max's don't fit right and don't seal well enough for noise canceling, and the AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 1 don't have the low latency Bluetooth. Great, that's $700 of equipment that "Just [kinda] works."
+ Ok, there's the weight, but what *REALLY* sucks, is that there's no overhead strap. The included over-the-head strap still attaches at the back of the device. Fully resting the entire weight of the AVP on your cheekbones and nose. I eagerly await a 3rd party solution to this problem, but, where are they going to attach it? I suppose a halo-strap is ideal, but it'll need to put something onto that sleek design. I'm about ready to glue a strap over the worthless and invisible EyeSight display so I can get this thing off my nose already.
+ Oh, yeah, and this morning I tried to snooze my alarm clock by looking at it and tapping my fingers together... so it's also breaking my mind.
I'm not going to be returning my headset. I bought a first-gen product and I knew that things wouldn't be great. But, I remember getting that Virtual Boy/Google Cardboard/Oculus Go/Quest1&2 and being blown away by them each a bit more than the one before it. The AVP did not even remotely impress me.
> We just need mass adoption of the device.
Not holding my breath.
Not holding my breath.
If they want to improve and gain wider adoption, they should try eating their dogfood. Give Apple developers the VP treatment and see what they do with it, fix the problems, enable the features, and make the real use models work.
Just having the right few thousand people use it a couple of hours a day a few days a week could have a big impact (or kill it and move on to something that will). Or save a few million and let it languish for years, draining billions.
Just having the right few thousand people use it a couple of hours a day a few days a week could have a big impact (or kill it and move on to something that will). Or save a few million and let it languish for years, draining billions.
People aren't even widely adopting the $899 macbook air, this thing is totally doomed at $3500. You'd be developing for probably a few tens of thousands of active users worldwide.
If thousands of those are internal developers, then they'll either find a use case or kill it.
How is it doomed? It's selling, and most people are liking it more than they are disliking it. And with like any new category of product (all based on existing tech, but there is no alternative to the Vision Pro, that does the same things), there is people that are going to make wild predictions of its failure, like they did with the iPad.
So yeah, VR/AR headsets aren't going to replace smartphones anytime soon. But they don't NEED to.
And it costs $3500 NOW, first generation product, but there is a reason why the put "Pro" in the name, the implication being that they fully intend to do a more affordable version.
So as usual, it's not going to be any of the extreme predictions. It's neither going to be a total failure that Apple will stop manufacturing them, nor is it going to be such an overnight success that the average joe will stop paying their mortgage and instead get a gadget.
So yeah, VR/AR headsets aren't going to replace smartphones anytime soon. But they don't NEED to.
And it costs $3500 NOW, first generation product, but there is a reason why the put "Pro" in the name, the implication being that they fully intend to do a more affordable version.
So as usual, it's not going to be any of the extreme predictions. It's neither going to be a total failure that Apple will stop manufacturing them, nor is it going to be such an overnight success that the average joe will stop paying their mortgage and instead get a gadget.
It has no market. Sales will peter out to nothing after the hype because there just aren't a lot of customers out there who can drop that kind of dosh on a computer at all, let alone something that isn't nearly as capable as a computer like a headset. When you look at the sales of apples higher price SKU computers they are terrible. Mac studio sales for example are 1% of their mac sales (1). There just aren't many fish in the sea biting at these prices.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apples-most-popular-mac/
https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apples-most-popular-mac/
> It has no market.
You don't know that, it's way too early to tell.
> Sales will peter out to nothing after the hype because there just aren't a lot of customers out there who can drop that kind of dosh on a computer at all, let alone something that isn't nearly as capable as a computer like a headset
But A) There are people who do spend that much on a computer and tech in general and B) Just because it may lose momentum after the hype doesn't mean it's a failure. If you want such a product to succeed, you are going to have to bankroll it and invest on it for a few year for it to get a legitimate chance.
> Mac studio sales for example are 1% of their mac sales
And the places that have them, wouldn't have any other product. They work with Macs and they will continue to buy these premium Macs until the end of time. It's a small market but it's a loyal market, especially when entire industries (like film post production, the recording industry, pro photography, graphic design) are all Mac-based.
So this just seems like a generic anti-Apple rant.
You don't know that, it's way too early to tell.
> Sales will peter out to nothing after the hype because there just aren't a lot of customers out there who can drop that kind of dosh on a computer at all, let alone something that isn't nearly as capable as a computer like a headset
But A) There are people who do spend that much on a computer and tech in general and B) Just because it may lose momentum after the hype doesn't mean it's a failure. If you want such a product to succeed, you are going to have to bankroll it and invest on it for a few year for it to get a legitimate chance.
> Mac studio sales for example are 1% of their mac sales
And the places that have them, wouldn't have any other product. They work with Macs and they will continue to buy these premium Macs until the end of time. It's a small market but it's a loyal market, especially when entire industries (like film post production, the recording industry, pro photography, graphic design) are all Mac-based.
So this just seems like a generic anti-Apple rant.
A workstation priced high is at least something professionals already have been buying, Apple or no. Who buys at $3500 headset today? Time will tell but I think people who scoff at the price being no issue don't really grasp how expensive $3500 is for most people.
I don't scoff at the price. At $3500 it's undeniably a luxury toy, but just because it's very expensive, doesn't mean it's a failure. There is nothing else that exists that does what it does, cheaper. Time will tell how interested people are in the kinds of things such a VR/AR headset can do, especially if developers are interested in creating more apps for it.
If they want mass adoption, they need to drop the price by a factor of 4.
Why, they'd just sell out since they can't manufacture more than a few million?
Seriously, you drop the price once you're past first adopters, which you do after you know what your features are, who your target customers are, and how to make enough of them. Maybe software is different.
Total VR sales are only 15-20million a year. They're not looking to take more than 10% of that with a first product.
Seriously, you drop the price once you're past first adopters, which you do after you know what your features are, who your target customers are, and how to make enough of them. Maybe software is different.
Total VR sales are only 15-20million a year. They're not looking to take more than 10% of that with a first product.
I'm saying for mass adoption. I don't think it's going to happen either way, but if Mr. Patel is wanting specially-crafted AR advertising "experiences", I don't think it will be common for companies to invest in that to target even just 10% of the population.
Personally I'd be down if it got to 1700$ or so.
All I need is a water proof Vision Pro I can wear in swimming pool. Swimming is very good exercise but very boring, and it is also a free environment for VR. Imaging having Vision Pro when swimming, that will be the best experience ever.
What surprised me the most, though, is that when you put it on — the pass-through is certainly nothing convincing. I had the impression that reality would look like reality, but the truth is it looks like a sort of lower-fidelity, grainier, hazier dream world version of reality.
In practice, this doesn't matter much. Once you start doing work VisionOS windows are sharp and look great and that "dream world" is more in your peripheral. It's not distracting, but it was surprising. I'm not entirely sure it matters but it is perhaps noteworthy.
Is it a must-have product, money aside? No, I don't think so. It can be tiring on the eyes and it's certainly not replacing my Mac anytime soon, but I absolutely buy into the notion that this is in some form the future of computing.