I'm not very excited about the product itself, but if you are at all interested in spatial computing, it's worth reading through Apple's design and developer resources:
While I don't think there will be a mass adoption by people willing to put on goggles throughout the day, it's clear that a lot of Apple's ecosystem is being directed toward environmental and situational computing, and the SDK backs that up. Using gaze detection to focus on more than one device in a room, surfacing certain interactions in specific rooms, and low-lag screen mirroring from devices are all pretty high-cost investments that are likely to find uses in other products. I look forward to what kinds of "continuity" type features this tech introduces.
I know a lot of people are rightfully concerned with the viability of this product, but I'm unbelievably excited! Definitely going to be pre-ordering one and picking it up on release day if I can!
I'm sure it won't be perfect or anything, but I'm mostly just stoked about the possibilities I see with this thing.
What do you see with it? I see a better in some ways (display, cameras, maybe finger tracking) VR headset than an alternative like the Quest 3 but also with some serious downsides, no controllers, insanely high price and potential weight issues because of all the metal/glass.
What's interesting to me is that it seems to fully get rid of the screen door effect, and could actually be useable for work with virtual huge screens. I didn't really get into VR games, and maybe I should take another crack at them with something cheaper from meta before investing in the Vision Pro.
Anyway, there's no way my work will buy me one, and I'm not buying one with my own dollars just to lock it to my corp account, so not sure I could even use it for my dream use case.
Yeah, the high density displays are a big thing for me too. Also, the possibility of polished software that’s properly designed for the form factor (most AR/VR software that isn’t a game has felt kinda duct-tapey up until now).
I also think that compared to say the Quest Pro/3 it has more potential to be host to the first few apps that kick off the “iPhone moment” for AR. The capable hardware is certainly a factor here, but the bigger one is that it has a massive, enthusiastic dev base who can write apps for it on day one. Furthermore, those with iOS apps already can dip their toes in the platform by getting an AR-optimized app by doing little more than checking a tickbox in Xcode.
There is no iPhone moment possible. The iPhone replaced at least 2 existing devices at a digestible price.
Indeed, if you bought an iPad Nano plus a good feature phone or one of the early smartphones you would be close to the iPhone price.
In France, it was launched at 600€ (8GB version) with a contract; but just the year prior I had bought a Windows mobile smartphone that completely sucked for 250€ (LG, under contract as well), plus a 210€ iPhone Nano. All in all, you are not that far from the price for a device that was truly something else and had all the functionality of the previous combo and much more.
The iPhone worked because it was priced pretty cheap considering everything it brought to the table. In fact, I am absolutely certain that people started buying iPhones because they intuitively understood that they would save money by staying ahead of the curve while bringing a lot of usefulness into their lives.
It is extremely doubtful that something like that will happen with the Vision Pro, firstly because it doesn't really replace any existing device and its pricing is completely disconnected from ordinary people's reality.
The iPhone was 5 years ahead of anything on the market, yet it did not cost 3 to 7 times the equivalent technology.
Actually, as I said I'm pretty sure it worked because people figured out that while it lacked some features or had "not as good" specs on paper for certain things, it was a far more usable and useful device. If you looked at its competitors at that time a Nokia N95 8GB would go for 300€ under contract (700€ naked) and the most popular Samsung/LG big feature phones/smartphone were around that price.
The iPhone was not expensive. This is a mythology created by Apple fanboys under Tim Cook that gaslighted everyone with "clever" diversification and an insane pricing ladder where he keeps selling old technology for twice the price of its competitors just because he benefits from the Apple brand halo.
When you look at it the first iPhone was what is now called a "Pro" iPhone; it was the best Apple could sell, but it was also the best in the market overall, there wasn't any alternative with a better integrated package.
Even if we make a charitable comparison and take for example the most expensive iPhone 3G at 700€ (16Go version) and ignore the Pro Max iPhone (which is an extreme outlier) and go for the "base" Pro iPhone at 1230€ ; you go from 68% of monthly minimum salary to 90%; a rather substantial 22% increase. For what is essentially the same thing relative to the overall market.
If you were to just consider inflation, 700€ in 2009 would be around 890€ today. This is already 80€ more money than the "base" iPhone 15. This base iPhone is technologically underwhelming, its only redeeming quality is the fast silicon but it is largely unnecessary and as to make up for the lower amount of RAM (that nowadays is way more relevant to what you can do with your phones that pure benchmark speed). It is basically the same thing as a Samsung S23, expect sold at a 300€ premium.
This is the reality that the Vision Pro is launching with, and as a "new" technology it was already bound to be expensive, but under the Tim Cook "leadership" it is bound to be a meme device considering the pricing placement. It is better technology than the competition, but not 3 times better and its potential use cases are not 3 times better than what exists.
In fact, we already know from very similar existing devices that such things are uncomfortable enough that they could not be considered as a primary device. So even if someone finds a use for them, it's going to be very niche and time bound. Nothing that could warrant its asking price.
But I find it very fitting to the Tim Cook era, it represents exactly what Apple has become with him: overpriced, overengineered, luxury show-off technology. Lots of posturing, enormous potential to display wealth; very little substance.
I don’t understand the huge screens thing. The Vision Pro has 4k resolution (if I remember correctly). Most decent monitors have the same. Isn’t this basically the same as moving your existing monitor closer to your head to make it a huge monitor?
With a real monitor, a 4K screen on your desk covers maybe 45 degrees of your horizontal field of view. And it's pixel perfect.
In VR, that 4K needs to cover over 100 degrees FOV. And any 'virtual monitor' content is being resampled and filtered, inevitably blurring/softening things.
I suspect that we're going to need a lot more than 4K resolution before you can comfortably work with small text (e.g. coding, web browsing) in VR.
> Apple Vision Pro features ultra-high-resolution displays that deliver more pixels than a 4K TV for each eye.
That is likely some clever wording, but according to the announcement, a non-pessimistic interpretation does seem like each eye is getting more than 4K.
Maybe a little. If the existing monitor could also use your entire visual field for workspace and easily be used anywhere.
I travel often and I’m looking forward to always having the ability to have a large high resolution display to work on. Also seems cool for entertainment. It’s returnable like anything else.
Maybe the biggest difference is that you can place virtual screens and windows arbitrarily as needed, rather than being restricted to parts of your desk where a stand or VESA mount can fit.
So one could for example have the benefits of multiple screens while lounging or in the middle of a flight. Even at a desk, window/screen placement would be more flexible than otherwise possible.
If "all" this thing does is replace a 4K monitor for existing MacOS stuff, I would consider saving up to buy one.
It would be nice to work in various locations with the equivalent of a big 4K screen.
I am unfortunately one of those people who really cannot work on a laptop screen, I need lots of real estate. (And laptops are ergonomically bad even if you don't mind the small screen)
I actually currently have 3 4K monitor + keyboard workstations in various rooms in my house. (Office, living room, garage) because I like to work in various places depending on the weather, who else is home, etc.
Because a monitor only displays what's on it. A vision headset can show you different content depending on where you're looking.
It's kind of like comparing a monitor that's locked to a single app with a monitor that has multiple spaces you can switch between. They both have the same resolution, but one of them can display much more stuff.
Any chance you could share a snap of your setup ideally with windows distributed around as you prefer? I’m always interested in other peoples’ approach in this area.
I’m a laptop only person. I never understood how a single monitor would be better. But quantity has a quality all its own and 4 monitors seems like it could enable novel approaches.
I think it may have something to do with less strain on your eyes when focusing on distant screen than one up close. I have Quest 2, I really enjoy watching flat 2d videos on it. Even with screen-door effect, sometimes, I prefer to watch shows on it.
I'm largely an ignoramus about how eyeballs function. But this sounds... suspicious. When a screen is inches away from your eyeball, isn't your eye focusing on that? I'd expect a VR headset to cause more eye strain than almost any alternative. Am I misunderstanding something?
My understanding of it is that the eye-strain that people tend to get isn't from your eyes focusing on the glass, but rather due to the Vergence-Accommodation Conflict (VAC)[0]. Essentially, there's a mismatch between the vergence (a movement of both eyes in opposite directions simultaneously for a binocular-style effect), and the accommodation of the eye (the way your eyes change focus based on distance).
When those two things aren't in alignment, you can get a feeling of eye-strain. The way the lenses bend the light make it so the focal length that you're focusing on is further than the screen in front of you, so that isn't what is causing the eye strain.
Mind you, this is just my layman's understanding of the subject, so definitely take it with a grain of salt.
This occurred to me. I think I might actually just shell out for a nice monitor instead. The reviews are going to have to be pretty unbelievably positive for me to actually get a vision pro.
People use "screen door effect" and "overly low resolution" interchangeably even though they aren't the same thing. The screen door effect--visible gaps between pixels--in the Quest 3 is minimal, but the resolution is still low enough individual pixels are obvious. It's not usable for a lot of the work-related cases Meta promotes.
I won’t buy it because I don’t have any use it for it. But $3500 for a gadget is not crazy.
I look back at what some of my computer set ups cost over the years in non inflation adjusted terms
- An Apple //e with a duo disk drive, a green screen monitor, and a dot matrix printer in 1986 was $3000
- A Mac LC II with 10 MB RAM, an 80MB hard drive, a laser printer a little 12 inch monitor, and a //e card with a separate drive - $4000 with an education discount.
- A PowerMac 6100/60 with 24 MB RAM, 250MB hard drive and a 486 DOS Compatibility Card and a $500 13 inch monitor - $3300 in 1996.
I won’t buy one because just like the 1st gen iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, it usually doesn’t last as long as the second generation and Apple usually makes rapid advances between the two.
But if Apple addresses all of your other (very valid) concerns, price wouldn’t hold me back from it if I could find a use for it.
$3500 for a headset isn't crazy. $3500 for a headset that isn't allowed to do the overwhelming majority of VR things is.
Even if it could, it's not even remotely a competitive price. 90s hardware cost what it cost because that's what was available. Today, there is plenty of competition for VR, and Apple is explicitly ignoring it.
Go look for other headsets with similar features and especially optical quality. You won’t find anything much cheaper. The quest (even considering the pro) and pico devices are toys in comparison
This thing is literally not able to run arbitrary software. It is only allowed to run Apple's OS, and only allowed to install software from Apple's app store, written with Apple's app toolchain, and compiled with Apple's app libraries.
There is a whole world of software that this device will never touch, simply because it's not allowed.
Oh ffs. So really for you the quality of the hardware, the price, the whole experience—these things are irrelevant because you can’t sideload. It’s an Apple product what did you expect? “This is the year of Linux on desktop” people are not the intended customers.
It's not irrelevant! Quite the opposite, the overall experience is precisely what is relevant.
It's exactly what I expected from an Apple product. That's why I was never enthusiastic about this hardware to begin with: I knew anything I would want to do with it would be arbitrarily impossible. That's Apple's business model. Just because I'm not the target audience doesn't mean I don't exist!
The target audience is anyone who is willing to pay $3500 for a walled garden. For fucks sake, I'm allowed to be critical of that business model.
You’re allowed to be anything you want, it’s just a predictable, well-trod take.
It’s no different than the people who show up in new iPhone announcement threads complaining about iOS and the App Store. We’ve heard all this before literally all the time — Google sells Pixels go buy one of those and be happy. Some of us like what Apple does with their ecosystem.
Like it love it or hate it, but this is what Apple does.
They sell premium hardware with a walled garden of software that meets the full expectations of 80% of people in general and 90-95% of people who can afford these devices.
For their target audience, $3000-3500 is probably the perfect the price point for the “first” generation of a new (to them) tech platform. Insofar as it allows them to turn a profit, ship best in class mass-manufacturable hardware, and not price out their core demographic of new adopters.
What normal VR things can’t you do? Gaming is the obvious one but I think as soon as people start developing games for the vision App Store, that problem is going to resolve itself.
Pretty much. Under Tim Cook, Apple has become the greediest corporation ever, for products that are just about competitive with the overall technology market.
But since they have fanboys that created some sort of cult they can get away with absurdity.
I have been an Apple customer since the first iPod but nowadays their pricing makes absolutely no sense considering their products' positioning compared to the rest of the market.
But somehow you cannot say that and you will be gaslighted about Apple pricing that always have been this way (even though it is demonstrably and factually not true).
At least for the iPhone there was a good excuse: network operators were not very keen on letting a completely open device run on their network, and still today there are limitations on what you can do with a fully rooted Android device. It somewhat makes sense; the nefarious potential is pretty big.
But for a headset? No reason at all to have it locked down from the get go.
You can buy 7 Quest 3s for the price. Or 14 Quest 2s.
How many people did what you did though? Were those all Apple branded monitors + printers? There were much cheaper alternatives in the same time frame.
I paid full price for a 3DS on day one, doesn't mean it was the right price for it to be a success.
I do not own Apple stock, I don't work for them, and I'm not buying one (although I'll be watching with great interest)
However.... whether or not you think any of these products are worth it, the Apple Vision Pro is objectively pretty far ahead of the Quest 2/3 in terms of capability.
I could also buy 10 Android BLU F92 5G phones for the price of 1 iPhone 15 Pro Max. I won’t be doing that either.
All indications is that Apple will only be able to manufacturer 2 million of them. Is there any doubt those will sell out.
As far as how many people did it. Back in 1992, Apple was the number one seller of computers when they started selling “low cost” Macs. Apple didn’t start struggling until Windows 95.
Apple was more valuable than Microsoft until the mid 90s if I recall correctly
While Apple sold a lot less Apple //e’s than low cost Commodores and Atari computers, they were much more profitable.
Yes, there is doubt they will sell out. How many $3500 things does Apple sell? Most of what they sell doesn't come close. There's no obvious business need for a Vision Pro unlike a $3500 MacBook Pro config either.
And a Quest 3 is a much closer competitor to the Vision Pro than a Blu F92 5G is to a iPhone 15 Pro Max...
Do you think the iPod would have been the same sales success if it cost 700% more than a Nomad instead of being basically the same price? $399 for 5GB iPod, $500 for 6GB Nomad?
How many months did it take for Apple to lower the price of the iPhone to $400 and drop the 4GB model again? Or did they do that out of the goodness of their hearts?
$400 was still more than the “free” phones that carriers were giving away and it’s my understanding that in the rest of the world, most people still have to drop the cash for the total cost of the phone
You don't slash the price of something selling within your expectations after a few months. And you know that crummy $0 free on contract phones weren't the competitor to the iPhone. It was $400 on contract smartphones like the Palm Treo 750 or Cingular 8525, actually comparable devices.
And you still ignored the rest of my point. Today in 2024, most of the world is paying full price for their phones up front. Apple is competing in a market where you can buy an Android for tenth of the price . Yet, Apple is selling enough iPhones to make it one of the most valuable companies in the world
The current crop of Apple fanboys apologist has left all logics and facts out of the door, so I don't expect telling them something true will have any effect.
In fact, they are the sole reason Apple has been able to charge those ludicrous price lately. It seems they exist only to validate and rationalise any stupidly greedy decision Apple is making. At this point it really has become very close to a cult...
Personally, I'm excited for the productivity aspects of it. I think my main use case will probably be relaxing in my comfy chair with a macbook on my lap projected into a much larger screen with some other floating windows like documentation, youtube tutorials, etc. off to the sides. I currently don't have any extra screens for the macbook, so being able to utilize some native apps for stuff like that seems quite helpful!
That aside, I'd imagine I'll use it for watching movies and tv since I live alone currently and could enjoy the immersion without blocking other people out. I already have a PSVR 2 for gaming so I'm not too worried about the potential or lack thereof for games. One thing I'm going to try out though is game streaming services like Geforce Now. If I can play really high fidelity flat games using a M+KB / Controller on the headset that would be awesome!
I feel like these tongue in cheek responses mentioning porn being the main use case are pretty cringy. It’s not that hard to accept that other people have different things in mind. Sheesh.
It's a valid argument. We got VHS over Betamax because of porn. The VR headset that best supports it is going to win. Since this is Apple, probably not this.
When I was a computer technician for a very large company in the mid 90s, you would not believe how much porn I saw on peoples work computers and they were always complaining about needing a bigger hard drive.
Last thing I listened to was Technology Connections, doing their long-format series on the format wars. According to him, porn haven't played a major role. He highlighted that the beta tapes of the time were shorter and the players a bit more expensive, than the VHS system. Because of this, VHS players sold more, so the market was bigger, so the catalogue, including porn, was bigger as well.
Honestly, I can't imagine a better use case for this thing.
It's not like users will be allowed to play real games or install a real OS.
I'd like to know how it handles itself when you throw 8K120fps HEVC or AV1 at it. If it can't do that, then how could it ever compete with a $2500 PC and a Valve Index?
For what it's worth I currently play flat games on Quest 3 via Xbox Cloud Gaming (i.e. streaming) [1], in passthrough mode (i.e. mixed reality with the virtual screen floating in the air) using a PS4 controller paired with the Quest 3, and it's definitely very playable, if much lower visual quality than just playing it on a 4K TV (30hrs into Starfield at the moment). But I like it because I can take my giant floating screen in any room of the house or in bed and don't have to stop when my partner wants to use the TV.
I'm pretty sure this will work on day 1 on Vision Pro since Xbox Cloud Gaming already works on Safari with PS/XBox controllers paired to Macs/iPads/iPhones, and with the supposed higher quality display, passthrough, and user interface (the Quest hand tracking is insufferable) I expect it will be even better.
While I understand what you mean, you gotta be extremely strapped for space for that to be a true argument. For the 500 bucks a Meta Quest will cost, you could get a pretty decent 4K TV or display. Definitely not the best thing around but its potential uses case and potential future usefulness infinitely better ?!
Personally, I still think VR is mostly something like 3D TV/movies where you end up paying a lot more for nothing of real value, just a novelty factor.
I get the entertainment aspect, but come on, don't fool yourself. You won't be more productive with this thing than with your MacBook or any other Laptop.
Sure, but I'm pretty productive with my MacBook too, so I can certainly see myself utilizing the features I described to help out with some struggles of using a single display laptop.
The entertainment aspect is a massive draw too—I don't want to downplay it by any means, but people were asking for some of the reasons that I want one, so I was genuinely answering with some of the features I envision using and how.
For me, it's visionOS that I find interesting. I don't know if it's going to be any good, but I'm intrigued by the idea of a full-on general-purpose OS on a headset.
I'm excited about using it in the office as a replacement/enhancement to external monitors. Maybe it will suck for that - I don't know. But I never really cared about any of the use cases for VR or AR.
I see no indication that it's even usable as a PCVR device, like the Quest series.
I'm picking up a Pimax Crystal for that purpose. I'll probably get an AVP, but don't expect to be able to use it for gaming. That's not its purpose. It's a MacBook Pro built into a headset.
I couldn't care less about the product itself, because I'm only interested in VR, but I'm hopeful it will drive engagement towards AR/VR. Then, hopefully, other companies will throw more significant amount of money towards R&D in VR and the technology will improve.
Look, if i would have 3k to throw around, i would also try it out.
I don't and don't think its reasonable at all.
I do own a htc vice pro + wireless extention from intel + valve controllers, i like that, i do not use it often enough to even justifiy that setup but its 2k and i bought the wireless and the valve controllers one after the other.
Light is not the same thing as anthropomorphically generated electromagnetic radiation. We evolved with sunlight we did not live with these anthropomorphic created electromagnetic polarized frequencies until very recently.
And yes, I’m aware of the radio waves around me constantly and that’s a problem as well. So I was adding any more of it going to do anything to help us?
There have been plenty of studies for a long time regarding this and a practical 'study' going on for now a long time across the globe with billions of people.
What is your specific worry? getting cancer?
The paper you reference states the same: "Hence, VR headsets and mobile
phones are safe."
And yes light is the same thing as anthropomorphically generated electromagnetic radiation, depending on what radiation you talk about. like the light coming from the display. If you mean the specific wireless connection, than no.
At least pls tell me that you don't have quarz cyrstals around you for protection. But if you would take this serious, you do not use wifi? You do life in a metal mesh?
Why do people have to constantly degrade the legitimate science going on between the question of man-made electromagnetic radiation and human health?
One of the biggest differences between light and electromagnetic waves created by humans is that they are polarized. Light waves are not polarized they are scattered. Light waves are also not pulsed.
Cancer? Maybe. What about cataracts? What about tinnitus? What about mood disturbances? What about Parkinson’s?
EMFs affect our neurology and it’s been published and papers over and over. There are non-thermal effects in biological beings that are underplayed by the industry.
Is this going to affect everyone the same way? No. Because genetics matter. The fact that electromagnetic radiation seems to stimulate voltage gated ion channels will mean that people with, different genetics in these ion channels will have different effects to electromagnetic radiation.
And in fact, I am one of these people who are sensitive to it. Both low frequency and radio frequency, EMF cause mood, disturbances, insomnia, and tinnitus. And when, using laptops with high levels of low frequency electromagnetic radiation i have nosebleeds. Other people have seen this happened to me in real time.
“If such individuals exist, they represent a small minority and have not been identified yet. The available observational studies do not allow differentiating between biophysical from EMF and nocebo effects.”
Even the Wikipedia article does not say it does not exist!
The studies don’t only include people who are genetically susceptible to EMFs. so if only one and 10 people have the sensitivity, the probability they will be in the studies are reduced.
Then you have the problem in the studies of people claiming they have the sensitivity when it is an anxiety or psychological issue. These are widely known issues with the studies that say there’s no effect.
As for myself, the last five years I have consistently noted how I slept, and how I felt and then only afterward measuring the frequency, magnetic and electric fields, and the radio frequency electronic radiation.
If I do not know if they magnetic field or electric field is strong, then there is no way placebo effect could occur, correct?
This is the same with the laptops that I measure high magnetic fields, giving me bloody nose. Apple computers have very low EMF emissions, while most other laptops are very high. I discovered accidentally because I work a lot with computers. It was only after measuring the fields that I noticed what was going on.
My last experiment was my tinnitus. I had someone put a cell phone on the table behind my head streaming videos. One was a video off-line and the other one was a video from YouTube. They were the same video. But the one that was streaming from YouTube after 5 to 10 minutes my tent is increased. This did not occurr with the other Video playing when the phone was on airplane mode.
Regarding my sleep, I live in a minivan and I can sleep 10 hours when I am in low or absent EMF area. If I am in a high area, especially with bid man 5G, my sleep is interrupted and it must I get 4 to 5 hours of sleep.
I can guarantee you as I’ve worked as a network engineer for one of the largest networking companies that I was way more skeptical of this than you will ever be.
"If such individuals exist, they represent a small minority and have not been identified yet." -> You should talk to them then.
A good blind study would be a EMF isolated room (shielded mesh, etc), a assistant you don't see (no visual or accustic cue at all) and a procedure you can repeat.
You go out, the assitant sets up the experiment (which is recorded, somehow EMF free), either activates an active EMF (perhaps constant file transfer, radio antenna etc.), the person leaves the room (the source is hidden), you enter, you wait x minutes (probably more than one), you either say yes or no and leave.
If you are clearly above random and you can show this result, you would be a good candidate for proper research.
Your assumption that you proof your EMF sensibility by recording the messurement after is way to unprecise. You might hold your EMF device wrong, ignore values, might have some visual or accustic cues etc.
What device do you use to messure EMF? What range? 5G has a broad spectrum, your sector antennas might send while you messure because someone is doing something close by etc.
I already told you what I purchased. Now you’re just trolling me and it’s useless to continue with you. I was a freaking network engineer I think I know how science works.
> I was a freaking network engineer I think I know how science works.
The fact you think having been a network engineer has much to do with the scientific method, does not bode well.
I've got a published paper with my name on it. It's about forecasting octopus reproduction using satellite data. Even despite that, I don't go around calling myself a proper scientist, because I appreciate the difficulties of proper experimental design and eliminating confounding variables and know that even "proper scientists" don't get it all correct on their first attempt any more than I as a software developer get bug-free code on my first attempt.
I literaly have a polarizing filter for my camera.
And bluntly saying: yes you do fully read as someone with a head problem. You would not survive a blind study regarding EMF and your nose bleeding and would be a very famous person if you could proof that.
All EMF fields we have and face daily are not strong enough at all for any 'ion channels'. Are you even aware how many fields you walk through every single day? Public transport, power lines, wifi etc. your own electric cable has a magnetic field.
Weird that you actually connect ion channels/EMF with blood vessal issues at all.
"Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) is a claimed sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, to which negative symptoms are attributed. EHS has no scientific basis and is not a recognized medical diagnosis, although it is generally accepted that the experience of EHS symptoms is of psychosomatic origin."
Here, we systematically clarify how neuronal ion channels are particularly affected and differentially modulated by EMFs at multiple levels, such as gating dynamics, ion conductance, concentration in the membrane, and gene and protein expression. Ion channels represent a major transducer for EMF-related effects on the CNS.
Since you don’t know enough about the polarization of light, it’s not fair to me to comment on your ignorance about man-made electromagnetic fields in the rest of what you said.
And please post something deeper than a Wikipedia article, or actually just look up anything that is opposite of your current bias.
If you can't prove it, why do you yourself believe it? You said you "know how science works" but you've been arguing that 0.1 watts of non ionizing radiation that can't penetrate the skin causes cancer and in a previous thread you were arguing that humans aren't smarter than mosquitos.
I can’t prove it to other people. I proved it to myself, but when other people want proof, they don’t sit down with me to investigate it.
I’m not arguing that not ionizing radiation causes cancer. I’m arguing that it causes neurological problems. And because it can’t penetrate the skin deeply does not mean it cannot affect ion channels.
And also I wasn’t saying that we’re not smarter than mosquitoes I’m saying that they have different intelligence.
You’re not even listening to me, so how can you learn anything?
I don't mean to discount what you're experiencing.
The article you linked to would set off alarm bells with anyone familiar with scientific publications, or even an undergraduate level of physics education. It's more like a blog post purporting mysticism.
The cited author, Dr. George L. Carlo, is a "a world recognized medical scientist, best-selling author and attorney", as indicated here [0]--a pseudo-science website that earns money by exploiting EMF fears (and sells "WiFi blockers").
"At Tech Wellness, our goal is to be your trusted source for information about EMF and all things wireless energy. That’s no small feat, because when you start looking around you’ll see a lot of pretty crazy claims and contradicting information out there—and some of it is downright scary."
The source you linked to isn't associated with Nature, despite the URL.
If you look closely at what Tech wellness sells, you’ll find that all of it is scientifically proven. It’s not like they’re selling crystals or pendants. Go ahead and show me one thing there that you think does not block electromagnetic radiation.
And this is the main research scientist who wrote the paper.
You do not know enough about electromagnetic radiation to keep commenting like you are.
Dimitris J. Panagopoulos, Electromagnetic Fields - Biophysicist, was born in Athens, Greece, where he lives and works. He has a Degree in Physics and a PhD in Biophysics both from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). He completed his PhD on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) in 2001, and two post-doctoral studies on the biological effects of microwaves (2004), and on cell death induction by Wireless Communication (WC) EMFs (2006). He worked as a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Cell Biology and Biophysics, NKUA, (2002-2014), where he gave undergraduate and graduate lectures on Radiation- and EMF-Biophysics, and performed research on the effects of various types of EMFs in experimental animals. During 2014-2018 he worked as a research associate at the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Laboratory of Health Physics, Radiobiology and Cytogenetics, researching effects of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation on human cells. Since 2018 he has been working as a researcher at the Choremeion Research Laboratory, Medical School, NKUA. His experiments were among the first that showed damaging effects of man-made EMFs on DNA and reproduction. He has also shown beneficial effects on reproduction of EMFs mimicking natural ones. His theory on the biophysical mechanism of action of EMFs on cells is considered the most valid amongst all proposed theories and is cited by nearly 700 scientific publications. This theory has explained the sensing of upcoming earthquakes by animals and the sensing of upcoming thunderstorms by sensitive individuals through the action of the natural EMFs associated with these phenomena. The same theory has recently explained the induction of oxidative stress in cells by EMF-exposure. Dr. Panagopoulos has shown why the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) is not a proper metric for non-thermal effects, why man-made (totally polarized) EMFs are damaging while natural EMFs are vital, and why highly varying real-life exposures from mobile phones and other WC devices are significantly more damaging than simulated exposures with invariable parameters. He has also shown that genetic damage caused by WC EMFs occurs similarly in human and animal cells. Dr. Panagopoulos has also argued that photons are strictly wave-packets, not particles of light, and that man-made electromagnetic radiation does not consist of photons but of continuous "classical" polarized waves, in contrast to what has been postulated by quantum physicists in the past 100 years. He is the first or sole author in more than 40 peer-reviewed highly influential scientific publications, which are referenced more than 1600 times by other scientific publications and has been included in the Top 10 cited authors by the Mutation Research journals.
Among other issues, that paper is about VR headsets that use 60GHz antennas, which are much higher energy than normal radios. The Vision Pro doesn't have one and the technology has been more or less phased out.
Yes, See my problem? I can’t seem to find any testing on Apple VR headset regarding to SAR or any other type of radiation. That’s emitted from it.
All I can find is, you’ll have an extremely strong Wi-Fi signal right next to your head probably for long period and you would use a cell phone that close to your head. I’ve had to find an SAR rating for it anywhere.
you realize all living beings have been exposed to huge amounts of EM radiation since the inception of life in the universe, right? The fact that it's now human made doesn't give it magical properties that cause it to be more damaging. your body itself, right now, emits EM radiation. The piece of fruit next to you emits it. there is zero science showing that the energy received or sent by your every day electronic devices has any amount of harm to living beings. go stand outside for 5 minutes, you'll get getting a dose of EM radiation significantly higher than your phone pressed against your head for a year.
This comment is totally ignorant on the science behind electromagnetic fields that are used for telecommunications. If light or like anthropomorphic EMF, it would be a laser. If telecommunication radio frequency waves were not polarized they could not transmit any information.
I'm not sure I understand the metaphor. What is wrong with lasers? If they are pointed at your eye they could be harmful, but we don't have an 'eye' for the waves that are pointed at us, and a laser powerful enough to do damage to us for other reasons like heat would show likewise the same damage in non viewable wavelengths.
No one is contending that EMF waves can't harm people, since it is know that they can if they are of specific type and power. People are asking how it is possible the ones that exist that are of low power used for communication could harm some incredibly small number of people and not everyone, since it is a physical effect. If you flipped it and someone said they were immune to bullets, would you believe them?
What in the world is anthropomorphically generated electromagnetic radiation? This isn't a phrase that's coming up in any search results and my colleague with a PhD in particle physics has never heard of this phrase.
This device uses a puck. It’s going to be down on your belt right about where your cell phone with the same radios already is. This feels silly. Put on your tinfoil hat I guess? Even if you don’t own a cell phone, how often are you surrounded within several feet by up to dozens over people with one? If you live out in the woods then why do you care anyways?
I just read from someone else that the puck is only the battery that the Wi-Fi is in the headset. So just imagine strapping a Wi-Fi router to your head!
You make it sound like the puck being down near your groin is any better.
But there are still electronics in the headset and I can’t wait to get a hold of one to measure the EMFs that are coming out of it.
And the jokes about the tinfoil hat I don’t get it. There is so much research around this, and so many questions. Still, you think the evidence is all in. And we have an industry who is trying to downplay the non-thermal effects of electro biotic radiation because it would damage the industry if anything harmful came out.
Even when you pre-order, you try it on at the store to get fitted for the appropriate mask, and on top of that you have 2 weeks to return it for a full refund (if it's the same as other apple products—no reason to believe it won't be).
Additionally, I've spent the months since the announcement reading reviews and stuff from people who __have__ gotten their hands on the headset and they all seem to address any concerns I personally have.
Certainly not pushing anybody else to be impulsive for FOMO, but as an enthusiast, I'm pretty excited and am very fortunate to be able to afford something like this.
A high-end MBP is costly, but is generally seen as a workhorse that will serve you well for at least 3 years. Spending a similar amount of money for a gadget with a questionable purpose and quick obsolescence is certainly out of reach for the majority of people not living in the SF tech bubble.
It's out of reach for the vast majority of the human race, sure, and perhaps it's a "bad idea" for even a majority of HN, but there are quite a few people who can and will drop the coin on it, for one reason or another.
As mentioned elsewhere, the people who went to the Vision Labs are buying them on release day, so there must be something there.
Unfortunately the lenses are not expensive, which likely means that they are mass produced. If you have an uncommon prescription, you probably can't get the right lenses.
This could mean anything from a limit on physical thickness to not supporting something like prism correction. It'd be nice if they were more specific. There are already some good VR headset prescription lens makers I'm sure are gearing up for the Vision Pro--I wonder if Apple is going to go after third parties making inserts.
You make it sound like opticians hand-hew lenses from blocks of glass with various levels of craftsmanship. AFAICT, they take measurements and send the prescriptions off to be made by specialist manufacturer. Glasses are regulated medical devices with real oversight, not some rinky-dink industry that Apple can waltz in and be the best manufacturer by default.
Recently my optician kept getting me the wrong (Zeiss) lenses, i.e. I could see much worse with the new lenses than I could with my 3-year-old lenses.
I got excuses like: "oh, these are better for computer work but worse for distance". Great... why are my old lenses more clear for both computer work and distance?
I went home with the new lenses and tried them for a night and a day. Unusable.
I went back and the optician's second attempt failed too. Now for computer work they were better and for distance they were still worse.
Attempt #3 was a match for my old lenses. Neither better nor worse. Mission accomplished? $500 well spent.
I'm sure in all 3 cases Zeiss made impeccable lenses. But it comes down to the optician's interpretation of the prescription I brought in (from a laser eye center's 8-machine exam I got the previous week) and their clinical examination of my eyes.
I expect that whatever Apple's Standard Operating Procedure will be for supplying the right lenses to people, it'll be mostly superior to your average optician.
> I expect that whatever Apple's Standard Operating Procedure will be for supplying the right lenses to people, it'll be mostly superior to your average optician.
I love that your anecdote has determined that most opticians will be worse at their job than an Apple Genius who might get two-three hours training on fitting the headset.
Apple is a 2.8 trillion dollar company because they're good at process. They don't expect or rely on the Apple Genius to get the fitting right. That would be their biggest ever blunder.
Getting the fitting right is built into their products from years earlier in the design process.
The Apple Genius is perhaps the last or second-last step in an SOP that results in their customers not angrily returning hundreds of thousands of headsets and swearing off the entire ecosystem.
Now sometimes Apple get things woefully wrong (e.g. butterfly keyboards, antenna gate) and refuse to admit defeat for years.
But on average, across years and dozens of product variations, they have a good hit/miss ratio.
But yet a poor experience at an optician for you leads you to the claim that "strip mall opticians" are generally poor at fitting glasses. But somehow we don't have mass revolt and complaints about optical care.
This reminds me of Om's gushing review of these that he thinks will put movie theaters out of business because now the whole family "will sit on the couch together, each watching the same movie on their Vision Pros".
Oh good, one more step towards Gargoyles (a subculture of people choosing to remain continuously connected to the Metaverse by wearing portable terminals, goggles and other equipment; they are nicknamed "gargoyles" due to their grotesque appearance - from Snow Crash).
>With Mac Virtual Display, users can even bring the powerful capabilities of their Mac into Vision Pro, creating an enormous, private, and portable 4K display, ideal for pro workflows
this to me would be the more immediate selling point(compared to more consumer type stuff), if this is good enough to replace external monitors so I can essentially have my ideal setup wherever I want. Companies could offer these as a return to office incentive, in theory they would cut back on a lot of the productivity complaints of open office compared to home office.
I see the value of that function mostly in public spaces. When you sit on the train, in a plane, waiting at the airport, etc it's currently difficult (though not impossible) to bring a good screen setup, and the risk of shoulder-surfing limits the kinds of data you can work on. A VR headset theoretically solves both issues.
Of course Apple are hardly the first to promise this, and ever other implementation I've tried so far suffered from being incredibly inconvenient due to the low resolution of VR headsets. The Apple Vision Pro at least has 4k for each eye, which should allow you to simulate 1080p screens at a comfortable distance. That might be enough to make it viable if the controls work out good enough. Still not enough to beat physical monitors when you have the space for them.
The incentive is that you can take your headset off and have a real face-to-face conversation with your coworkers. And when you want to go back and focus, you put the headset back on and are free of distractions.
I tried this for a few days with the Quest 2 in a coworking space. I thought it was cool, but the displays weren't good enough and I had trouble reading small text.
You have a device that can present a virtual reality that you can share with people all around the world and you want to use it to visit an office and block out the people there? That seems a little backwards to me!
so do I, haven't looked too deeply into Apple Vision honestly. My post was just conjecture on the most viable use case short term. there was an HN thread discussing it, seems like it would come down to how well Apple can do eye tracking to dynamically give higher resolution where you are looking - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37037563
for me it just comes down to being an ergonomic improvement over my laptop alone while traveling. If it can do that, I'd buy one and write it off as a business expense
This is the use case I really want to pan out... but so far have been disappointed. My latest attempt was the Quest Pro, and while the virtual monitors were useable for the first time, they were something around 1080p and the latency was too distracting.
Has anyone seen a negative review from someone that has had a chance to try it a few times? All of the reviews I have seen have been pretty phenomenal. That is one of the reasons that I am looking to give it a try. If the UI and screen quality is so fantastic, it will be a great virtual screen for productivity and entertainment.
The virtual content looks like physical objects, it’s incredible. The camera feed was a bit blurry though, not sure if that will be in the final device
The virtual objects and eye tracking are the features that, if they nailed it, seem to really set it apart. When they first launched the iPhone small details like the scrolling and pinch to zoom were just done so well, it changed the game with user interaction. I'm hoping the advances in this device have a similar impact on users.
> Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to spend time with Apple’s soon-to-be-released Vision Pro, a spatial computer that you wear on your face.
He lists two times. The initial reveal when Apple let some of the press use it, and after 17.2 was released when Apple let some of the press try spatial videos captured on their own phones.
That’s all Apple has let the press have, at least publicly. I’m sure they’ll be getting their review units soon. But right now those two times are all we have discussions from.
You’re correct. However I think they only get to use their app, maybe they also get a short tour.
Either way they’re under NDA so they won’t talk about it if they want to keep their developer account. They can say they went to one of the workshops and that’s basically it.
The most prominent critical feedback has been the weight. I would like to know what straps the users used. Also if the double strap one is better for weight
When the Apple Lisa debuted in 1983 it cost $9,995 (equivalent to $29,400 in 2022). The Lisa wasn’t a success but the personal computer was - I think there are some parallels to draw here
People always make the mistake, year after year, product after product, of doing simple paper comparisons of features and drawing similarity conclusions between different products. They miss that implementation and ecosystem are things that you don’t see on paper.
The Quest 3 offers many of the same technical points on paper, but it’s also not capable of many of the things the Vision Pro can deliver.
Whether that’s multitasking, or having a massive media+App Library, or having a warp free passthrough.
The products aren’t comparable anymore than comparing a budget/subsidized Android phone with a high end Android/iOS phone. They do the same thing, but the details matter.
People saying the Quest 3 and the Vision Pro both support AR reminds me of the feature comparison checklists back in the day between iPhones and Windows Mobile. Yeah, they both have a "browser." They both have "apps." Turns out there's a difference.
Expect there were extremely large differences both in software (how you could use your device, with just a finger instead of stylus) and hardware (glass and better overall display).
And they did that at the same price the high-end phones were at the time.
The Vision Pro is nothing like this, in hardware it is a noticeable improvement to what already exists (but not that big compared to the latest gear in the premium segment) and the software is largely a copy of what already exists with no clear use case. You could say the eye/hand tracking is the killer feature but it has to been seen how reliable it actually is in practice and it doesn't enable any particular application. In fact, it seems obvious that for many things done in VR people will quickly need to associate some controller.
All that at 3 times (at least) the price of the closest competitors.
The iPhone worked not because it was a magical innovation, but because it was the recipe that had all the right ingredients in the good proportions following the right cooking process; at a palatable price. Pretending otherwise is history bending.
But you can always wish and dream, I'll give you that much.
It is not fair to compare the Quest devices, given what we know about the Vision Pro so far.
The AR functionality on current-gen gaming headsets is terrible, and the screen door effect is glaringly obvious.
What Apple is advertising blows the Oculus devices away. Whether the difference is worth the extra $3000 is a question that has yet to be answered, but it’s a category error to compare them directly.
Every functionality that i see in these videos already exists in Q3, but presumably in lower resolution. Is hardware going to be the differentiator that makes it so much more useful? It's also theoretical atm
During the first iPhone release nay-sayers also brought up that the Blackberries already did what the iPhone did, it didn't stop it. The iPad was just "a big iPhone" that no one was going to buy, the Apple Watch was just another smartwatch, the iPod was just another MP3 player, etc.
Apple historically has been able to improve on current existing technology to deliver an experience that the rest of the industry had to catch up to, they aren't in the business of releasing completely new unseen product types since the 80s...
In fairness to the naysayers, nothing Apple has released yet is like this. The price is enormous even by Apple's standards, and the value proposition appears to be entirely unproven.
Only time will tell where the market goes with this one. Just concluding off pricing alone though, I think it's ridiculous to expect Vision Pro to be remotely as successful as the iPad or even the Apple Watch. Cupertino has their work cut out for them on this one, that's for sure.
> Is hardware going to be the differentiator that makes it so much more useful?
The tech journalists who got an early look seem to think so. Obviously time will tell if this holds up under real world conditions.
I was a VR early adopter and have used the best consumer units available. The thing that always held it back for me was the obvious screen door effect and the isolation of these headsets.
Apple seems to have focused on both of these issues, which makes the device intriguing. Being able to immediately interact with the room in high fidelity will make a huge difference. The AR mode on the Valve Index is awful, but also really cool. If Apple delivers on half of the room AR, it’s a huge step forward.
And a lack of screen door effect makes it viable for real productivity use cases.
Quest 3 screens are lower res, just barely enough to make text somewhat workable for me. It is also missing the eye tracking. Latency with hand tracking is not as good I hear and the passthrough is also lower res.
Also the software is much more restrictive. Barely any “flat” apps and doesn’t support the hybrid 2d apps with depth. Also can’t pin apps around a physical space. Some of that is coming but it’s clearly way behind in terms of software features. Which I’ll add lower latency streaming from other devices to as well
Passthrough also is pretty poor quality, enough to navigate a room but too blurry to read text and the cameras don't handle phone screens that well. Definitely usable but you'll notice you're still wearing a headset.
The Quest is fully cordless whereas the Vision Pro has a cord that goes to a battery pack that you wear on your waist. Though neither device requires you to be tethered to a computer.
The Quest devices are all fully wireless and have a pretty decent existing library of Quest-specific games and apps that you can play even if you don't own a computer.
You could also connect them to a PC wirelessly and play any PC VR games that your computer is capable of running. It used to be a little more cumbersome to set up, but Valve recently released a native SteamLink app on the Quest store that vastly simplifies the whole PC VR experience.
The thing I'm most excited about here is Sony's microled display. If this product is successful it could jump-start the micorled supply chain for mass production. Microled would be great for smartphones not just for definition but also for battery life.
Edit: its micro-Oled/OLEDoS not micro-led. Not sure what the battery performance is like.
While it is incredibly unlikely I will get a version one of this product without some major feature being announced.
I am excited for this to come out, and to have a company that won't just abandon it actually try their hand at this. I stand by my opinion that if anyone can manage to make a device like this mainstream, it will be Apple. They have the money and the patience to do it.
Now "If" that will happen is still up in the air, but given how many other products have just disappeared after a single less than successful product I have high hopes.
Especially given all of the groundwork they have already been putting into place for this on iPhones for years with their AR kit.
That being said for me the single biggest thing I need to see improved to consider this is how it works with a Mac. This will likely be a more closed platform meaning I can't use it for coding, but if I can hook up my Mac and do more than just a virtual display and actually control the windows independently, it will likely be a very quick purchase for me. Considering how much my monitors right now cost, this price isn't that insane. But the idea of having a truly portable Mac work station would be incredibly invaluable.
Edit: I also stand by my opinion that Apple likely knows this version will not be a success and they already know it's going to take a few versions to hit mainstream. I feel like this is emphasized by the "Pro" name being added giving them room for a non pro version later.
Linus from LTT pointed out in WAN shows that you don't want a first gen Apple product anyway because it's always a beta product. It's meant for only the most hardcore Apple fan boys / tech enthusiasts, the see what works and what doesn't and quickly replace it with a new better version with much longer support.
It is amazing how the hype for this went off a cliff, especially as the LLM stuff went into orbit.
There is a large contingent that understandably want a new iPhone type success, along with new App Store level opportunities, but like with the VR wave I suspect they will be disappointed by this one. The computing industry appears to have run out of obvious things to do with what it has developed.
I don't think hype was ever _that_ high anyway, plus, this is how it is with every product more or less. You hear about it, there's a wave of interest, then generally speaking it tapers off until closer to launch. We now have a launch date so I anticipate interest continues to go upward until launch day and we'll start getting real world feedback as to whether it's a game changer or a flop.
Personally, VR type stuff does not seem like it's going to be a big deal for me. But. I do believe that if Apple can make my work flow better for the work day with a device like this, it would be a big win and that is where my hype for this is coming. It actually allows that separation of work and home easier if work is always in the headset, so there's a potential work life balance win in here.
As an industry (area) matures, each successive developmental innovation is usually successively smaller, more incremental, less game-changing. Since the iPhone, Apple has made a relative but smaller success of e.g. the iPad, AppleTV, AirPods, Watch, and AirTags. Several of these were not immediately successful (in Apple mega-corp terms, at least).
For the VR stuff, we have to expect they have a long term plan, incorporating compelling unique apps or content delivery, and later cheaper hardware models. I think we need to give them 3-5 years before we judge the success or failure of (let’s call it) their Vision franchise.
I want this to be successful, but even as an iOS / macOS dev, I haven't seen enough really strong differentiation in Apple's dev offering so far that would make it so that someone would absolutely want to use VR for a non-gaming app compared to an app on iOS.
There's some pretty great innovations there like how Spaces and gestures work, but they're more incremental improvements rather than anything that would really get the general public very willing to adopt AR/VR for daily use outside of games.
I’ve tried some work related VR goggles when our GIS department started using some for their drones. Maybe I’m just an old man yelling on my lawn, but I really don’t think I’ll ever want to put a screen on my head for anything other than novelty “fun”. I know some people like it, but for me it’s just annoying, so I do wonder if I’m in the minority or the majority thinking like this.
I think the idea of the “office less” office is great, but the annoyance of having something covering my head is just too great. Maybe the technology has evolved enough for it to be not annoying, but I wear glasses and even those I wish I didn’t have to wear.
I think you're in the vast majority, because one of the precedents for VR headsets is COVID masking, and people didn't like that physical experience even if they needed the sense of safety. I also think the videochat fizzle post-COVID is a negative indicator.
I am not sure that’s a good comparison, as you got no immediate visceral value from wearing a mask, whereas presumably you will from this fantastical device.
Even among the most concerned populations there was a sense that a mask wasn’t going to help you in a significant and specific way, more at a population level. And in more than half the US at least it was seen as absolute bullshit.
Biggest question for me is how it feels on my face. If it makes airplane travel more fun for cross country flights, that alone is worth the cost to me.
There's something weird going on with the ranking of this post on HN.
How does a post created 2 hours ago with 225 points and 256 comments reach rank 74?
This product is the first step to the real future of tech. Just like the iPhone took years to catch on (similarly to Vision Pro, the big problem was price), this product's successors will be the market leaders for all tech in 5 years (maybe longer, but I think 5 years is fair).
Did the iphone take years to catch on? Apple sold >1m units in the first six months, 10m in the first full year, and then had near double digit sales growth for a half decade - even though it launched during the global financial crisis.
The iPhone was virtually the only capacitive touch screen phone in 2007. The commercial competition was non existent.
The Vision Pro isn't that, the specs are already matched by the Varjo on the higher end, and there's already competition forming to match the price target from all over the place.
Sure, "made by Apple" will be a seal of a quality that attracts followers of the brand, but it's probably more on par with the Pro Display XDR in terms of impact. And we'll wait for something akin to the Studio Display to see what Apple has really to offer against the competitikn at a reasonable price.
Not really sure what you mean by it taking years for the Iphone to catch on... It was highly coveted from its release in 2007. The 3G was a massive step forward, but by 2009 and the 3GS release, it was completely mainstream- at least to those who could afford it.
I don't think this is going to get picked up by anyone who has the money, not even close.
I see this having a real future in some special cases, but for this price not as a general use tech. I saw a movie where a guy was repairing a ship with some AR (not VR) glasses/eyepiece that was identifying the parts he was looking at and helping with information on what is that, what it does, how to assemble or disassemble etc. Like having the instructions in your hands while having your hands free to work. Voice commands should be included. But creating the app showing the instructions and then loading good models and information in the app is probably the big challenge.
I work in manufacturing, there are so many maintenance operations and a limited amount of experts that can do it. With the right price and the right apps and docs, this can make a huge difference.
I just read the release section of wikipedia and it doesn't sound like it took long for the iPhone to 'catch on'.
"As of Q4 2007, strong iPhone sales put Apple no. 2 in U.S. smartphone vendors, behind Research In Motion and ahead of all Windows Mobile vendors.[50]"
Im also pretty sure that, why its interesting, the benefit is still less than runing your outfit (literally) and this alone will be a deal breaker for A LOT of people.
Despite the price: A lot of corporate phones are top seller phones. I don't get budget from my company to buy this one AND any other deivce and you need both, a laptop and that device as you will not use it 8h a day
cell phones were a proven product by the time the iPhone came out, Apple just made a way better one. VR is still unproven beyond enthusiasts at this point, so it's a bigger risk of failure in my opinion
You are delusional, the iPhone was cheaper at launch than it has ever been after.
If they changed the price, it cannot be just a small change, and they cannot lower the quality that much (because the much cheaper alternatives are not that far). It seems pretty obvious that Cook's greed got the better of him and instead of absorbing the startup price of this new venture he decided to pass all costs to consumers (plus the usual fat margin of course).
If they drop the price in half at the second gen, it will look extremely bad, even by Apple's standard.
In any case that ship has sailed...
Two features that are really clever from a product perspective:
1. Using the spatial cameras/features to scan your own face. I'm surprised Quest 3 doesn't do this... As soon as I saw the concept, I thought, "DUH! So smart it's obvious in hindsight!"
2. EyeSight, to enable people to still "see" your face when you wear the device. Very cool... As a Quest 3 user in mixed reality, I think I freak my family out when I walk around and talk to them.
The Quest 3 cannot do that, its depth sensor is far too low resolution to scan a face with a good fidelity level.
Unfortunately, it also means the quest 3 probably will probably never be very good at dynamic occlusion in mixed reality (ie: hiding partially virtual objects that are behind real life objects).
Many people like being able to see people's eyes when another person is talking to them. And a live image of eyes would be considered better than a sticker.
The face scanning allows the entire face to be shown to other users in the virtual environment. Presumable an image made up of the face scan + the live view of the eyes
Well, I'm certainly going to go into an Apple Store and see if I can test one out. I'm really excited about the potential for productivity focused VR and while this isn't that yet, hopefully it'll get there. In the meantime I've got my SimulaVR pre-ordered.
While I don't plan to purchase one, I do feel a desire to buy an iPhone 15 Pro just so I can start capturing spatial video just in case this DOES succeed. I won't purchase one, because I'm always a few generations of iPhones behind, but the desire is there.
I have the 15 Pro, and I don't think it's worth it. There's dual camera sensors, but they're extremely close, and the depth effect only works when recording up close. I've taken a few videos of my kid, but I can't watch them.
There are converters from the iPhone's depth format [MV-HEVC](http://www.hevc.info/mvhevc) to stuff that can run on Quest devices, but they don't seem to be that great. (You need to have it in a different format like Side By Side, or SBS.)
From the accidental tech podcast accidental leaks from Vision Labs (you have to listen between the lines) you’re going to want much much more resolution than the 15 Pro does. Wait for the 16 or further, I’d say.
Fair, though I'm also getting married in April. I've considered renting one for a single day, if that's even possible, because once moments past you can't really get them back. It's the same for people with kids, you can wait and just capture through all our existing great cameras, but if spatial video is eventually a thing you'll wish you had that from when they were a certain age, too. Even if you don't have the viewing device anytime soon, you'll wish you had the capture later.
That said, I think a professional photographer will be more than enough. I'm just explaining the buying impulse that I have for capture.
As someone who got married in an April, I can highly recommend just using a professional photographer, and if you really want, pay a bit extra to make sure they bring an assistant with an iPhone 15 Pro Max.
You could rent one, but hire someone to do that; you won't have the time to run a camera.
'Spatial video'? I guess this is just an Apple marketing term because they don't want to say 3D? Can you imagine how boring non-spatial video would be?
I think we're saying the same thing, that it's not the same as 3D video.
Totally fine to say their version of it is bad because you can only change perspective very little. But saying it's "only" 3D would I think confuse people more, since it'd be wrong.
I would call it "3d with parallax using sensor-derived depth data." 3d mesh models can be rotated and are still considered 3d, not 6dof or any new term.
I like that description very much. It's a bit wordy so don't exactly fault Apple for not using it in marketing materials. But I do prefer it for more general use and might steal that!
The Vision Pro might be an impressive hardware on its own. Yet, I suspect it might come with certain limitations, such as requiring a Mac or iOS devices for full functionality. This is a significant reason why I, personally, would not consider the Vision Pro, even if it were offered at half its original price.
>With Mac Virtual Display, users can even bring the powerful capabilities of their Mac into Vision Pro, creating an enormous, private, and portable 4K display, ideal for pro workflows
I think if Apple allows people to run an instance of MacOS on these devices like a VM (i.e. without the need to purchase a Mac, it looks like the CPU is M2 on these devices) that would be the killer feature. This will make the price more reasonable for people who are considering renewing their Macs.
I’d also want to be able to see the image on these devices live remotely e.g. on an iPad or TV similar to Quest 3.
To be honest I am incredibly disappointed that most of the app mockups I have seen from developers are just 2D windows floating in a 3D space with traditional simple point and click ux. I know that it's only possible to do so much in a simulator, and we'll have to wait to see what devs can really do with the tech, but if this is all we get I think this product is DOA.
Hard disagree. Pretty much a ll of the UIs I’ve tried on other headsets that try to make everything 3d really suck. Most of the content we view on devices IS 2d. Trying to turn it into 3d and making the user “move” stuff around just sucks especially with hand tracking where there isn’t even haptic feedback.
Just having apps that can be contextual and pop up when and where you need them is useful and interesting. Using eye tracking to make interactions with 2d apps faster and smarter could be interesting.
Trying to 3dify everything just because you are in vr is about as dumb as that old desktop os that tried to have the gui be an actual desktop projected on your flat screen.
They didn’t say everything should be 2D. You seem to be dealing in the extremes of the gamut.
The UI paradigm here is progressive. UIs that make sense in 2D can be 2D and slowly introduce 3D elements into the mix.
That provides an easy on road for app developers. They can take their iPad app and augment it.
Not everything is better with extra dimensions. A lot of data and interaction is better off reduced down in fact.
But even if theoretically everything was 2D (it’s not, but sake of argument), you would still benefit from being able to make content break out of your physical bounds. In a cramped space? You can still have giant monitors.
I was an early adopter with the original PlayStation VR. The screen door effect was an issue but the biggest one is that I couldn’t last more than 30 minutes before getting nauseous. Granted I get seasick and likely susceptible more than most but I really hope Apple have solved it for people like me. Either way Im pre-ordering as well.
I don't get seasick at all, rough seas. If I try a roller coaster game, or even a game where you can walk forward VS teleport I'm close to vomiting. It's frustrating.
The PlayStation VR was not very good. Modern headsets, including the AVP, are much better at presenting a consistent low-persistence view - you should feel much better with it.
I have a really bad prescription (something like -12.5, -13), and I've had multiple pairs of glasses before. Changing from one pair to another gives me a headache. How am I going to use this device?
I wonder how easy / hard and fast it will be to port over quest applications to the Vision Pro. Also wonder how hackable it will be. I'm guessing if it's anything like the iPhone / iPad it won't really be.
>Also wonder how hackable it will be. I'm guessing if it's anything like the iPhone / iPad it won't really be.
Fortunately visonOS is a macOS fork, not iOS. The idea for Vision Pro is to be a fully fledged computer replacement, not a secondary mobile device like iPad/iPhone.
A test I would like someone who gets Apple Vision Pro to do is if they can catch a ball (repeat a few times) while wearing it.
Brain already anticipates the 10-20ms lag from light hitting retina to visual cortex processing, but if the glasses introduce more 10s of ms of lag, it's going to give headaches to most people.
Human brains have been wired to throw up if they notice the senses are woozy. (Survival instinct incase human has ingested some poison).
Is it just me misremembering, or is the light seal (last picture carousel on the website) a lot larger than when they originally presented it last year?
It looks like it will stick out to the front a lot. They seem to "hide" this fact by having nearly all pictures at a 90 degrees angle from the face.
It looks the same to me. A lot of the models wearing the headset appear to be shots from last year's WWDC. The image of the light seal on its own looks like it matches those original images.
The main issue I have with the Vision Pro is that Apple learned with the iPad what to do and what not to do when it comes to their customers, chiefly to have an app store that you could not install software outside of. Had the Mac been invented today, it surely would follow the same model, and the Vision Pro is very likely to be following such a model.
If I can't use it to have my own applications, whatever they might be, that I don't want to put on the app store, like emulators, virtual desktops, or hell, even code editors, then what's the point (for consumers like me)?
Do you know how Apple wants you to run a code editor on Vision Pro? That's right, own a Mac and literally stream the video output to the Vision Pro, even though they literally contain the same Apple Silicon hardware (same as the iPad). How insane is that? I hope open competitors pop up where I can just run Windows or Linux (or even Android at this point) and install whatever apps I want.
Sidenote, but imagine in 20 years when everyone's wearing miniaturized versions of AR/VR glasses: https://vimeo.com/166807261
Shameless plug: I've built a web app which allows you to stream PC games/software to Vision Pro using webRTC without any restriction. https://windowsvisionpro.com
I'd say it's zero percent insane — that is: one hundred percent sane. This first iteration of the headset is going to have a very short battery life. You do not want to run your IDE right on the headset. Video streaming is probably the lower energy draw of those two possible approaches.
The point is unless legally obligated to, as in the EU, Apple does not and will not allow their services business to be disrupted. Watch, even in 5 or 10 years when battery power becomes sufficient to run a code editor all day, Apple will still not allow it. This is in fact exactly what happened with the iPad. I had a Windows Surface (which have their own issues) and what I liked was that it was an actual computer. I wanted to replicate it in the Apple ecosystem but turns out that it's impossible. iPads have the perfect form factor, hardware and even accessories to do so, such as the magnetic keyboard, but the software simply will not allow them to cannibalize MacBooks.
It's funny, because Jobs himself said, "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will."
> Do you know how Apple wants you to run a code editor on Vision Pro? That's right, own a Mac and literally stream the video output to the Vision Pro
Source for this? I could believe not wanting a compiler on Vision Pro for battery reasons, but I don't see a reason why something like Sublime Text or VSCode (w/wo Remote) won't be available.
What's the point of running a code editor without a compiler? Obviously I could write code in the Notes app, it doesn't mean I literally want a code-as-text editor, I want to run the code I write. VSCode with remote will be available as it runs on the browser anyway.
But most modern IDEs (I know JetBrains and VSCode both do...) support editing on one machine with a remote backend that compiles and runs your code. What you're complaining about isn't much different, except for some technical details of how it is implemented.
FWIW I never use a code editor with the compiler running locally, I always use VSCode Remote. Even before that I just used a bare bones editor like Atom and SSHFS (or similar) to edit and compile stuff remotely.
During the keynote I messaged a friend and said, "All I really want is to stream my Mac screen to it" .... and 60 seconds after I hit send, that's what they announced.
I really don't care about all the other stuff they tout right now, as no one really knows if that will be/is useful. But my Mac, in a headset, that is the beach head to build from.
Well, at least if you live in the EU, soon, you'll be able to sideload apps to your iPhone (and I think also iPad) and probably this law will require them to do it for the Vision (Pro).
> Sidenote, but imagine in 20 years when everyone's wearing miniaturized versions of AR/VR glasses: https://vimeo.com/166807261
I have a lot of sensory sensitivities and this is what real life already feels like to me. I look forward to VR glasses I can walk around with something that actively filters this shit out. No more billboards, blaring building lights, blinding headlights, and logos everywhere. Real life ublock origin with annoyance filters on.
Only if Apple lets you install an adblocker. That's the issue with these closed systems, they might not allow it at all and then you're stuck with it. That's one reason why I use an Android over an iPhone, superior adblocking everywhere.
Or right-click unsigned binary → Open. The system basically wants acknowledgment from the user that they actually want to run the unsigned binary in question for the first launch, after which it’ll run like normal.
Not on the most recent macOS releases. I maintain binaries of an open-source app, and used to have instructions to right-click open on first use. This stopped working recently, I forget if it was on version 13 or 14. The users would get a denial, with no option to override.
I ended up having to pay $100/yr for a developer account to be able to sign and notarize the binaries. They can now open them like usual, with just a warning that it was downloaded from the internet. But without the signature they get an uncircumventable gatekeeper error.
I keep my macs up to date and haven't encountered this. Newly downloaded unsigned stuff still works fine. Perhaps there's some sporadic/conditional bug afoot.
Is it actually unsigned? Or just not developer-signed? Those are different things! When you build an app with Xcode it automatically self-signs app bundles, even if you're not a registered apple developer. Most apps you download are probably built that way.
We use cross-compiling infrastructure on linux/docker for the app I maintain, which don't generate these signatures. This causes the resulting binaries to be rejected on recent apple devices (although they used to work just fine with user override on intel-based macs).
1. Your link gives directions for enabling a setting on M1/2/3 Macs that does allow running unsigned apps from the internet without prompting. (see the heading labeled "Big Sur and later on Apple M1 ARM64 processors").
2. Even without following those steps, I can run unsigned apps (I just have to click through a gatekeeper warning the first time I run it)
3. Requiring technical users to run two terminal commands and adjusting one setting in system preferences one time to globally allow unsigned apps seems like a reasonable trade-off to prevent non-technical users from running malicious programs... like, if I were setting up a Mac for my grandmother, I would never enable this gatekeeper bypass.
Gatekeeper is one of those things that is loud when it gets in your way, but silent if it isn't working... so having it off by default doesn't really make sense. The only way I can see having it off by default is by adding a screen to the onboarding flow that asks a question like "do you plan to submit an app to the App Store in the 12 months?", and then disabling gatekeeper if the user clicks yes.
You... can, you know. Do you actually use MacOS, or is this just something you heard on the internet? If you're using MacOS, and have somehow not found this yet, right-click on the offending app, click open, accept the "this may eat your computer" warning dialog. You'll only have to do this once per app.
This workaround does not work on unsigned arm64 app bundles on an Apple Silicon device. Yes, there are workarounds on the developer side such as signing with a self-signed certificate. The user who downloaded it could even sign it themselves.
But regardless of holes and backdoors in the gatekeeper system, the point is that you can't download an unsigned, native binary from the internet and run it on a modern (apple silicon) device with a user override. Not anymore. You have to sign binaries in order for users to be able to override-launch on their own systems. Gatekeeper will stop any unsigned binaries from the internet from being run, full-stop.
And yes, I'm both a user of macOS and an open-source software maintainer. One of my apps has releases built using a cross-compiler on linux, with a reproducible build configuration that was tricky to get setup and hadn't been updated to handle code signing. When M1 devices came out we had to go through the painful process of replicating a lot of the Apple codesign tooling on Linux so that we could apply signatures from within the reproducible build environment, just to enable to the user to right-click override like they used to.
They are delusional and will defend the Apple trillion corp to the death for some reason. Actually, the reality is that they don't want to come to terms with it.
Because while Apple pretend to be operating in good faith, they have been hard at work to make sure nothing they do not approve of can be run on their hardware. No matter what some fools like to think.
There is a greedy money related part but it also has a lot to do with dystopian authoritarian views "I know better" that are very common among the boomers currently running Apple.
In french my mother would say that those peoples are "nigauds" (dense/thick) which I find pretty fitting.
I do hope this is successful. The cult-like behavior that Apple inspires may be the big push needed to help VR become adopted by the general public. If it fails, then I'd be pessimistic that VR will have meaningful progression in the next decade.
> The cult-like behavior that Apple inspires may be the big push needed to help VR become adopted by the general public.
It's just not going to happen. The general public are not going to put this stuff on their face for anything other than short periods of time (if at all) and only for entertainment purposes (if they do at all).
You're not going to see general public families sitting on a couch watching a movie together with these things on their face. Joe and Jane Smith don't want this.
I kind of agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, AirPods basically reset the baseline perspective around bluetooth headsets. Before AirPods, bluetooth headsets were definitely not cool, and mostly just utilitarian. I mostly associated them with either business-y people in suits, or people exercising like running.
I think if there is a company that could really kick of mainstream VR/AR headset adoption, Apple probably has the best brand to do it.
That being said I have a Quest 2 with a couple years of accumulated dust in a closet, so who knows.
AirPods success have nothing to do with the actual technology involved and everything to do with the ability to display wealth, or social status.
Just like the mediocre included earbuds with iPods were very popular even as a replacement or for other devices even though there were countless much better choices at the same price.
I owned AirPods and not only they are undeserving of the hype but for the price they are extremely mediocre and have a pretty big longevity problem.
People keep buying them because everybody knows how much they cost and how often you have to change them, which makes you part of a de facto well-off group.
The biggest Apple products might be the social engineering around their products but for this to work they need people to not be too aware, so I guess it will stay that way...
The idea that anyone is signaling wealth or status with a $150 electronics purchase is kind of ludicrous.
I feel like people who believe other people are buying Apple products merely as a status symbol, are projecting their own insecurities and thought processes onto others.
It definitely expanded the market and help to make it mainstream. The ease of use and relative reliability of these devices really made all the prior stuff seem like trash.
The Mac Pro & Mac Studio made up 10% of Mac sales, which are in turn only 10% of the business. What percentage of those users bought the Pro Display? And what percentage of those bought the pro stand? It's an overpriced peripheral for an already incredibly niche $5,000 monitor.
It's already established that smartphones are a huge market, and people are willing to pay a lot for what for most people is their main computer. Android manufacturers like Samsung are also selling $1,000 flagship smartphones.
No one's claimed that no one is going to buy the vision-pro. But there's no demonstrated huge existing demand for an extremely high-end VR headset. It's unlikely that a product nobody asked for costing $3,500 is going to give the technology mass market appeal or kick off widespread adoption.
> But there's no demonstrated huge existing demand for an extremely high-end VR headset. It's unlikely that a product nobody asked for costing $3,500 is going to give the technology mass market appeal or kick off widespread adoption.
Your reply doesn’t disagree with what I wrote. At all.
At the end of the day, the $3,500 price tag is also a signal as to Apple’s thesis about how well the product might do on the marketplace. Their thesis can mean a bunch of things:
1. they think the device will appeal to a niche set of professional customers that have bought or have the ability to buy products in this price range e.g. customers of the high-priced $5,000 Pro XDR Display I mentioned. Their plan might be to grow the applications that Vision Pros can be used for, which will lead to increased demand among pro users which will in turn grow the revenue from this niche segment.
2. they don’t think there’s mass market appeal to justify selling Vision Pro units at a lower price (or at a loss like other companies have done by deploying penetration pricing e.g. Meta) as you observed. Again, their plan might be to grow the applications that Vision Pro can be used for leading to increased demand. The shiny new spatial computing tech that makes the Vision Pro exciting could slowly make it’s way into other products in their line up (or they could introduce a less capable edition at a lower price tag).
E.g. Spatial computing could eventually make it’s way into the next-generation Pro XDR Display monitors used in the office. Apple could also expand their presence in the home with a fresh take on home projectors in-fused with spatial computing, to complement their Apple TV product.
Ballmer didn't understand that phones would become a very strong consumption device. If we were just talking about productive work and phone calls he'd be right. What niche do VR headsets fill in user demand that is currently unfilled? There may well be one - I'm not posting for the sake of making Ballmer's exact mistake - but I don't know what it is.
My point was if the Vision Pro does in fact fail, it wouldn’t be because of its price tag.
Apple already knows how to sell “overpriced” consumer hardware since they have a $5,000 Pro XDR monitor and $1,000 stand to go with that “overpriced” monitor in their line up.
The monitor is not a hit so there’s no reason to assume that $3,500 Vision Pro will be an (instant) hit, since it was intentionally priced to be out of reach of many people.
I guess people assume because it’s Apple, or perhaps because of the amount of buzz they generated with the reveal for the Vision Pro, every product they make has to be a hit
I think it's the opposite. A ridiculously expensive price tag is the only way it can be successful. If it was cheaper, more people would buy, get disappointed in this, and then give up. Because it's so expensive, it selects for zealots and forgiving early-adopters.
I'd define success as paving the way for broader investment in the ecosystem. If third-party devs start building useful workflow tools and other experiences, it can become a cult favorite. From there, re-investment in further R&D can keep this improving.
It will be successful, but Apple won't sell as many units as Meta did with the "quest 2 or 3".
It will be successful in the price range where it is located. My guess is that it will even beat the sales quantities of the quest pro, a headset which is about a third of the price.
I hope that this is the big push needed to solve wireless displays. It feels like there are a lot of computing possibilities that open up when one device with a display can defer it's computing power to another device nearby wirelessly. Whether it's used for desktop->VR or phone->monitor or whatever.
I’m curious to see the type of adoption here. I think this is more of an enthusiast device than anything. I suspect true success of the Vision Pro will be the introduction of a smaller, cheaper headset aimed at the masses, rather than wide-spread adoption of a $3k+ device
I think adoption being limited because of price is useful here. If it was cheaper, more people would buy it and be disappointed. As it stands, only wealthy early adopters or die-hard Apple fans who can see them do no wrong will buy it. It selects for an audience that is less likely to be critical.
Cause the features in this are the features that are needed to make this widely adoptable. Using the finger gestures instead of needing additional control hardware is key but expensive. Being able to switch between the virtual world and the real world seamlessly is key but expensive. The hope is that enough people hear about it and think it's cool that is forces the R&D to push down the price on this tech to be able to make it more widely accessible. Because without those kinds of features, AR/VR will always be niche.
Also from the dev side the platform (which is Android with some AR bits bolted on) isn’t compelling enough to be locked into, even if the hardware is decent. If Facebook were to make a play to make their Android variant the Windows of AR and license it out to other manufacturers, that might work but nobody is interested in them trying to be Apple with Oculus stuff.
It may be unfair, but no one thinks 'great hardware' when they think of Meta/Facebook. At best they think neutral, at worst they think about no leg avatars and online toxicity.
I think the pricing and marketing of Meta Quest 3 position it as a device that is fit for the general public. But VR just isn't good enough yet. The Apple device will also be not good enough, but because the average person won't buy it, the air of exclusivity will keep intrigue. Maybe in another decade, we'll have something really amazing.
Serious question: why do you expect VR to take off with the general public? A decade into VR experiments, and nobody has come up with good non-gaming applications better than cartoony chat apps. It’s got a worse track record than blockchain.
Space is limited, screens are expensive and hard to transport, and people are more mobile than ever. Having your multi-monitor setup at a coffeeshop just as it is at home is a huge gain.
I’m not expecting this to replace monitors for most people now. But next monitor upgrade, if you already work on a Macbook, it might be a better option than an external display for some people.
It would be easier and simpler to use a portable LCD monitor. They do exist and are simpler, smaller, and cheaper than a VR headset. Tablets could have been used for the same use case.
But...they aren't. People don't want it. What they want is a computer so light that it's always available. Most people seem to carry phones for consumption and sometimes lightweight laptops for work.
I've seen a few people bust out portable secondary displays or use a tablet in screen mirroring mode. Personally, I find the experience still pretty clumsy. The monitors are still not at an ideal height, they're usually smaller than I'd like, they take up a lot of table space. I'm not sure VR headsets are going to take off from this use case, but if the VR headset is good enough, I'd imagine the experience of the floating screens would be far better than having a portable monitor.
Busting out a portable wireless keyboard and putting on an HMD would be pretty neat IMO, if the HMD was good enough.
Or just multiple virtual displays on your laptop? There are plenty of laptops with 4K of better resolution, which is what the Vision has.
VR lets you swivel your head to get more real estate, but it doesn’t let you look at more pixels at once. Not unless you zoom out, which is what exposé already does.
But sure, you can strap a couple kilos of hardware to your face and take on that neck strain, disconnect yourself from the environment around you, and introduce motion sickness just to avoid pressing F3.
This is not true. VR gaming is something some people genuinely enjoy doing and paying money for. There are more than handful of VR gaming studios that can run healthy businesses based on this market.
I'm not saying that the Vision Pro will make VR replace laptops, someday it might, who knows. But suggesting that there is zero value from VR is also not true.
I don't think it's a worse track record than blockchain. Things are clunky now, but there are some genuinely fun and cool experiences to be had:
- Playing table tennis in VR is more fun than in real life since you don't have to go chasing around the room to pick up balls.
- I've used VR headsets to show my parents and other elderly folks photosphere shots I've taken from mountain summits that they would never be able to access or see in person.
- There are some VR games that are quite well received (e.g., Half-Life Alyx).
- Beat Saber is a blast.
I totally agree that where the technology is today, it's not ready for broad adoption. But as displays, materials, and capabilities expand, so too do the possibilities. We're probably not going to hit sci-fi levels of VR anytime in the next decade, but we can almost certainly create compelling experiences that go far beyond what exists today.
I said "non-gaming applications." I can see the immediate and obvious application to gaming, even though I'm not a gamer myself. But the hardcore gamers that would use such a device are still a niche market. If Apple's making it, they're expect mass consumer applications though. I just don't see that.
Being able to "summit" a mountain without actually being there is an interesting use case though. Thanks for that.
Sorry, I missed that in your earlier post. In terms of experiences that work today outside gaming, I guess we mostly just have 360 videos and virtual workspaces/screens. The former is a novelty and the latter has been held back by display capabilities. The Vision Pro might actually be good enough for that latter use-case though.
Apple has been trading down the last six months. Their iPhone sales in china keep dropping. You can’t exist like that in the current MBA driven stock market.
China sales dropping is not surprising. There is a very strong tendency of the Chinese market being increasingly dominated by local players, such as in EVs. China has tech giants too, nowadays, and they're trying to get their share.
> You can’t exist like that in the current MBA driven stock market.
Their supply chains and customers will evaporate? Or you mean they can't access the market for cash at valuations that make sense?
Depending how they operate, only one of those is existential. Any number of firms that the markets soured on simply bought themselves back private and carried on existing.
Right, but once you're past the startup phase you don't need the market as a seed investor, you use it as just a convenient (cheap) mechanism for M&A or employee comp. There are other synthetic equity mechanisms for each of these that also don't require cash or "the market".
It's the "can't exist without" satisfying the MBAs that seems off. To the Amazon example, where they persistently show zero profit, that took Bezos convincing your MBAs that was fine. The option of telling the "counting things my textbook told me to count" people to ignore their textbooks is an option more CEOs could use, but don't.
I just reject the notion a firm needs market approval in order to exist.
With a minor press release and just 256GB storage, it seems like Apple is losing faith in this direction. Hope I'm wrong, underlying tech seems super cool.
The watch, no, but the iPhone was a huge deal - it started having negative impacts on legacy companies like Nokia almost immediately and Google launched a crash project to integrate iPhone-level touchscreen support in Android which had previously had a more traditional model.
It’s correct that the App Store didn’t exist but you’re still wrong about the impact (“We sold more iPhones in the first weekend of sales than in the first month of sales for any device in AT&T history.”). People kept predicting that it’d flop after the most loyal users all had one, and that just never happened.
If you weren’t working in the field at the time, it’s hard to appreciate how much that put the mobile web on the map. The places I dealt with went from not caring about it really at all to crash projects optimizing their websites because all of the executives had iPhones and wanted their apps to support them well. I know at least two large organizations where the remote access policy was changed, too. Having been involved with phone/PDA apps since the late 90s, this was very different from anything I’d seen with things like WAP just fizzling with almost no interest from clients. At WWDC in 2008, it was frenzied even before the announcement of the App Store – so many web developers had been able to get permission to attend because of all of that interest.
I'm keen for the Vision Pro, but the iPhone and iPod touch had already reached incredible market penetration by the iPhone 3GS. The reason the iPhone 4 leak was such a huge deal is because the iPhone had already left its mark on the industry.
They already did the big reveal and said it would be released Q1 2024. Should they do the big reveal again? At this point they need to get them in stores so people can try them out.
Everything is 2D, making it just a TV/phone on your face. Although these other products were never released commercially, the google glasses and microsoft's hololens both envisioned adding 3D objects that interacted with your real space. In comparison, the Vision is very dull. I'm glad they are actually selling commercially though, so maybe we can soon see these features that AR allows, from them or competitors.
Everything is not 2D. Most of the first-party apps they've showcased are, but both the launch event and subsequent videos + documentation have shown full 3D capabilities, both in VR and MR mode of operation for both first- and third-party apps (including full build support in the Unity engine, meaning a huge number of existing VR + MR apps will be deployable on to AVP relatively quickly if developers choose to invest in porting).
HoloLens was commercially released in 2016 and its successor, the HoloLens 2 in 2019, the latter of which is still available.
And the Google Glass (not 'glasses') would not have allowed 3D in any true sense as it lacked the capability to calculate the user's head pose in space, necessary for 3- or 6-DoF tracking. It was essentially a heads up display attached to your face.
I'm not saying it is limited to 2D, rather that they missed out by using something that can render 3D to only render 2D objects. Everything they showed off was just apps with layers at the most. When they showed the recreation of the guy, I thought that would be 3D, but they still distilled him into a 2D box
They have presented consuming home-made 3D photos and videos as one of the headlining features and they are already shipping 3D cameras in some of the new iPhones.
It can run 2D apps, but it isn't limited to 2D. You can build 3D experiences that interact with the space you are in or fully enclosed 3D VR experiences.
Designing for visionOS - https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
Inputs: Eyes - https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
Principles of spatial design - https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10072/
Create accessible spatial experiences - https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10034/
While I don't think there will be a mass adoption by people willing to put on goggles throughout the day, it's clear that a lot of Apple's ecosystem is being directed toward environmental and situational computing, and the SDK backs that up. Using gaze detection to focus on more than one device in a room, surfacing certain interactions in specific rooms, and low-lag screen mirroring from devices are all pretty high-cost investments that are likely to find uses in other products. I look forward to what kinds of "continuity" type features this tech introduces.