Misleading headline. The root issue, that Vision OS has no support for 180 degree side by side video, isn’t specific to porn.
I’m sure there will be 3rd party video players that support that format and other common VR video formats in no time. I have some ripped 3D Blu-rays I’d love to watch on a Vision Pro in SBS format.
Apple has enough product development experience to know this use case exists but I suspect you are right, they didn't support the feature as a whole and the discussion was only partly about the porn use case. The cynic in me suspects the lack of support is more about them preparing an apple friendly (read not friendly to the res of the market) format that they want to force the industry towards.
Apple's default video players are severly lacking in almost all of their platforms. Try to open an mp4 file you downloaded on your iPhone or iPad and you will be presented with one of the most atrocious "players" ever.
But that's because Apple has never cared to support on-device video viewing on their mobile devices outside the gallery app. They think people only use streaming apps and websites to consume videos so they haven't bothered with it.
I'm sure we will get VLC on the Vision Pro or something similar that will take care of it. Platforms that publish 360 content will have to distribute their own custom solutions
> Apple's default video players are severly lacking in almost all of their platforms
Try opening the TV app on a multi monitor Mac. It is nearly god damn impossible to make it full screen on the monitor you want rather than the one it happened to open up on originally (I think based on app bar placement which annoyingly cannot be tied to a specific monitor or made to appear on all monitors)
To control which monitor an app opens on a multi monitor Mac setup. First hover over the dock on the monitor you want the app to open on. Then open the app. It will treat that monitor like its main monitor.
This is probably an extension of their hostility to mp3s. They wanted to force people away from downloaded or ripped content and toward their own store.
That is ahistoric. Apple was forced into FairPlay by the labels, not by choice. They moved to non-DRM'd M4P as soon the labels let them.
As for why they preferred M4P (AAC) to MP3, it was a licensing issue. MP3 was patent encumbered until 2017. Apple, being Apple, didn't want to pay to license the encoder I believe.
> However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC "end-user" codecs.[52] The terms (as disclosed to SEC) uses per-unit pricing. In the case of software, each computer running the software is to be considered a separate "unit".[53]
[…]
> The AAC patent holders include Bell Labs, Dolby, ETRI, Fraunhofer, JVC Kenwood, LG Electronics, Microsoft, NEC, NTT (and its subsidiary NTT Docomo), Panasonic, Philips, and Sony Corporation.[16][1] Based on the list of patents from the SEC terms, the last baseline AAC patent expires in 2028, and the last patent for all AAC extensions mentioned expires in 2031.[57]
Yes, AAC is also patent encumbered, but the structure of the fees was apparently "better" for Apple. This was heavily discussed … Jesus, 15 years ago now … when everyone was pissed Apple didn't use MP3s.
Basically, AAC was cheaper for Apple so that's what they used.
But AAC was as "open" as MP3 and there was never any "lock in".
Small correction although you’re mostly right: m4p is the FairPlay encumbered file extension and unencumbered AAC audio files are (by default in iTunes) m4a.
> This is probably an extension of their hostility to mp3s.
Apple was never "hostile to MP3". Even iTunes 1.0 (considered an "MP3 player" back then) supported ripping CDs to MP3, using the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder that was far superior to alternatives (especially at that time).
have you reported this issue to the VLC devs? VLC is by far the player with the most widely supported video codecs. I'm sure they will fix it if you report the issue to them.
> The cynic in me suspects the lack of support is more about them preparing an apple friendly (read not friendly to the res of the market) format that they want to force the industry towards.
An alternative hypothesis: they're working on a proprietary format that only works on Apple products with no intention of spreading it to the wider indistry. They've got a long history of it (itunes drm on mp3s, iMessage, lightning and various other ports, Airdrop)
You know that on the Apple Vision Pro, you can't even reorder the homescreen apps, and everything is forced to be alphabetical right? Clearly some corners were cut getting the v1 release shipped. Personas (which are still in beta) are clearly a higher priority than this for Apple.
Good points. The current product is a combination of prioritization and ability to execute. Some features undoubtedly were intended to make it but were cut/scaled back due to time while others are actual product decisions that indicate the direction Apple is taking us. I suspect the UI is a bit of both. Apple is -very- controlling of their UI and their default always seems to be 'remove the option from the user until we are absolutely forced to give it to them'. I can believe the home screen is a bit of product and time and it is possible the codec stuff is the same, but the cynic in me is still saying Apple has consumer unfriendly reasons for not supporting the codec.
The quality of MV-HVEC (the spatial video format used by Vision Pro) is much better than 180º dual-eye video used widely in porn (and not natively supported by VisionOS). The history of porn indicates they will adopt MV-HVEC faster than anyone else, though it seems Disney and the NBA want to try to move fast too!
I am very curious about MV-HEVC. Why is the quality better, isn’t it just a container?
How does compression work vs say a side by side as a single stream in HEVC? Does either format allow them to compress based off of redundant information from the views being so similar?
> The multiview extension of HEVC (MV-HEVC) provides support for coding multiple views with inter-layer prediction. It is was designed as a high-level syntax only extension to allow reuse of existing decoder components.
If it was just a container, you’d need 2x independent HEVC data streams decoded independently into 2x video streams. It sounds like MV-HEVC is a single encoded data stream decoded into multiple video streams.
A very tiny amount of porn customers are willing to shell 3500 for far from perfect goggles. Porn these days, unless peer-to-peer paid on ie tiktok, is about masses. Tiny revenue, but hundreds of millions cases.
Lonely hackers will make something work pretty quickly, but for very small market.
A small market for now, but it's a smart move if Apple continues development of this headset and there are future generations. If you're the first to get a catalog of 360º videos up for sale, you'll probably dominate the market when/if it catches up with you.
You really shouldn't be surprised. Anything Apple fields is part of their eco system, even the Macs are getting more so with every passing day. Apple would like to impose their values on your hardware, whether you like it or not. You're headed straight for digital Disneyland.
I've always found Apple's moral position on these kinds of [USA Puritanical] things (porn, gambling, and so on) pretty weird. Of all the tech companies not beholden to the pressures to censor from advertising customers and external brands, Apple is least reliant on these external forces. You'd think they of all companies wouldn't care because a laissez faire attitude wouldn't lose them revenue. Yet, the AppStore has some of the most puritanical rules on the web. Huh...
Steve Jobs once literally said, "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and Android phone." For him, it seemed to be a deeply rooted personal belief.
I have been wondering for a long time about why the App Store is so puritanical, does the App Store have any sort of age ratings? As in anything enforced.
Like Death Stranding is out now and it's 17+ but is there any check? Does Apple just not want to take on the requirement of doing that check? (Which honestly is kinda valid, can you imagine how certain places would react if Apple allowed kids to download a pornhub app?).
But it is still unfortunate, especially the impacts it has also had on non porn apps but similarly restricted apps like Grindr.
The problem with allowing porn in the app store is that it is very hard to monitor. If apple allows a porn app that accidentally does something illegal, it also opens up the app store in terms of liability. Everything from payments using stolen credit cards to illegal content is just a headache for them that they don't want to take.
Do they get more revenue from AppStore sales or advertising? At any rate, if it's easy to see puritan-aggravating things, such people might be aggravated into not making a purchase. At Apple's scale that likely turns into something similar with Amazon reducing their page load times by ~100ms to see a ~1% increase in sales.
> I've always found Apple's moral position ... pretty weird.
Honestly, I find them refreshing. Granted, this isn't a technology problem probably so much as an app problem, but in general, the fact that you can't easy find sketchy apps on the App Store easily makes it far easier for me to bring into a family environment.
What's _ironic_ about this is that iTunes/Apple Music will gladly show you pornographic music videos/album covers/music EVEN IF you try to avoid them. I contact Apple Support a few months ago because we were listening to one album and then the infinite playlist started spewing lyrical garbage over my speakers.
I'm glad we have the Classical app now, because at least that is curated but heck even the kids playlists on Apple Music are pretty iffy at times.
My brother had to go through a lot of hoops to lock my nephew out of YouTube kids after he started wandering down some nasty rabbit holes there. Unfortunately, my nephew is mostly non-verbal on the autism spectrum, so it's not the sort of thing you can sit him down and have a conversation about why the content is inappropriate.
Content moderation is a very poorly solved problem at scale.
While your complaint about Apple is generally true...
If you'd read the article, you'd see that it's because Apple hasn't supported SBS video - one of the most common 3d video technologies. It has nothing to do with imposing values. No reason has been given, although "SBS isn't supported to keep porn off their platform" is ludicrous conspiracy.
The fact that SBS, which is the most popular format for 3D movies, not necessarily porn movies, is not supported in a product advertised for its 3D capabilities, after so much time that has been used for preparing its software for the official launch, does not have any decent explanation.
Perhaps they did not use specifically porn as the reason for not supporting it, but in any case this is hard to explain otherwise than a measure to make difficult the use of any content that is not provided through Apple, i.e. if this is not anti-porn it is at least an anti-competitive measure.
It's the same reason that YouTube VR videos aren't supported.
From what I've gathered, it's basically that they're mostly too low quality, compared to the AVP's resolution.
Apple wants to limit video to only a super premium experience, which they seem to be working on but it hasn't been launched yet.
In other words, they don't want the VR video experience to be the same as 4K or 8K SBS on a Quest 3, because then you'll just buy a Quest instead.
I'm not defending this, but I am saying there's a logic to it. The AVP isn't anti-porn (I'm sure you can watch the regular 2D kind on the web just fine, Apple isn't limiting your content there), nor is it anti-competitive. It's just not implementing a feature.
Quality is a pretty good guess, there. I know nothing about porn, but I've watched a few VR-first films. In my mind, the only good attempt at the genre has been a ten minute real-time rendered thing that invites the viewer to come sit down and look around the room while the story happens around them. Small scale. But it makes sense to me. Flat screen cinema didn't start with Lord of the Rings. Even if it was technically possible, that would have been a disaster.
It's very tempting for a filmmaker to carry whatever techniques they are used to in traditional film and use a fancy camera to make it "VR". It takes a long time for the lessons we've learned to actually take root so we can tell a story without throwing the viewer around in some gravity-defying kaleidoscope of headaches.
Apple is up against a widespread misconception that VR means motion sickness for a huge number of people. Largely because of cheap garbage like Gear VR, and content designed for it.
It's not a conspiracy, if there is an avenue through which porn could make it onto their platform and Apple has control over that avenue it will be closed. In software, in hardware or through the TOS and a review process. You can count on it.
A web browser allows porn on your platform. So Apple has failed since the launch of the iPhone to do this. A Developer creating an app that plays Side-by-side 3d Videos is perfectly allowed by ToS.
I have porn on my iCloud Drive, photos, even within certain apps (well... adult but not porn. at what point does someone sending you a photo change to porn?), and through the browser.
This is factually untrue.
While the puritanical nature of the App Store is weird, particularly when they have no issue with drug and sex references in their keynotes. You are way off.
I know HN is cynical but really: the headset ships with the ability for immersive environments that replace the entire user’s surroundings, and apps already exist that are fully immersive.
I’m sure there will be 3rd party video players that support that format and other common VR video formats in no time. I have some ripped 3D Blu-rays I’d love to watch on a Vision Pro in SBS format.