Most features seemed kind of whatever, but that 8K ultra-wide viewing experience looks sick! Having something like that on a flight is going to be great.
They did a great job at getting more features and brand partnerships also, but I couldn't help to notice they snuck in that "people have been using Spatial technology for so long and we are now improving it even more".
It's marketing speak, I know, but they should be humble if they want it to succeed.
They've been trying to follow Steve's old presentations ways but it's been so long that it just feels like a copy of a copy without anything genuine left in it.
As someone who stupidly watched a bunch of Apple's keynotes around 2005-2015 it all feels like yet-another-corporation presentation using Apple's style. Pretty off-putting.
Very much this. I know Steve Jobs was a showman, but at least he was charming in a way.
Like, I know you're twisting me around your little finger, but I'll let you do it, because it's kind of fun.
Whereas now, it feels more like car salesmen (and saleswomen of course) trying to sell me a new car even though my "old" car is still perfectly fine. And they know it and I know it.
I am so glad presentation training for Cook at least helped some. I remember whenever I heard him speak in the initial days, I couldn't supress the word "valium?" appearing all over my thought-spectrum. It was actually very distracting trying to listen to him speak.
Screen sharing works well. I regularly use it when I'm showing my family something I'm doing by casting to the TV or one of our MacBooks.
That said, I don't think it supports casting "back" to the laptop that you're using for Mac Virtual Display. That would be a big improvement I think.
Realistically, if it's something on my Virtual Display, I just take of the VP for a moment and my MBP screen comes back on.
ETA: I just tried to stream back to the MBP that I'm using with Mac Virtual Display. It "works", but not in the way I'd hoped. My view is streamed to the MBP, but the screen doesn't come back on - instead, the virtual display shows what I'm seeing in the headset. Not helpful, and more than a bit nausea-inducing :(.
Even if i am in the office and someone is sitting right next to me i still do screenshare. I don't like leaning over peoples shoulder or having people over mine
There are improvements happening with third-party screen-casting apps.
"Universal Desktop" is the best IMO at the moment, as it supports streaming individual windows in addition to the entire desktop. It's far from perfect, unfortunately, but it's a step in the right direction, and shows what will be possible soon.
I originally thought I wanted multiple virtual displays in visionOS. After using a couple of tools that support that... I've realized that's not a good use of the technology. I think per-window streaming is the right way forward at this point.
TableTopKit sounds pretty interesting. It's always stood out to me as probably one of the best initial use cases for AR. Now you just need a group of friends with $3500 to spare each...
> Now you just need a group of friends with $3500 to spare each...
This is something that has bothered me a bit about this discussion.
While the base model AVP is $3,499, that's not the whole cost. Add $599 for two years of AppleCare+ (honestly essential for a new, relatively fragile and very expensive device), and either $200 or $400 for the storage upgrade.
Buying in to the visionOS ecosystem is ~$4,300 right now.
The idea of it is making me giggle. Someday I'm going to get seated on a plane next to someone overflowing with Vision Pro dongles. One cable going to power, another cable for the mandatory SSD they store the 8KUW content on, and another cable powering their DAC and Sennheiser headphones. Eat your heart out, home theaters!
The proliferation of dongles and adapters is a function of Apple's apparent ultimate goal of moving everything possible to wireless. The Vision Pro doesn't even have a way to connect external devices. I think that's intentional.
Yes, it's a huge limitation right now. Over time, all of those dongles has led to more and more peripherals supporting Bluetooth. Bluetooth has gotten better in the process.
You'll be sitting next to someone on a plane with a fully self-contained headset. They may have peripherals in their carryon, but you won't see them. The era of the "personal area network" is almost here, it's just hard to see because we're in a transitional period still.
The proliferation of dongles and adapters is evidence that not everything will make the jump to wireless. Especially since with Lightning Apple tipped their hand and revealed that their ultimate goal was to license a subset of DRM-encoded USB standards. It feels pretty obvious that Apple's movement towards wireless is mostly about killing the specter of standardized connectivity.
Look at external drives; how is wireless going to replace this anywhere? Bluetooth can't even hit SATA speeds, much less 4k streaming speeds without re-encoding and compressing the source material. You might get somewhere with WiFi Direct, but Apple doesn't support that in the first place and requires people to use their proprietary alternatives.
Seriously, I want you to sit down and ask yourself one question. If Macs went full-wireless tomorrow, do you sincerely believe that the majority of Mac owners wouldn't own new wireless dongles?
If I'm on a trip somewhere, I usually have a couple of small USB-C SanDisk 2TB drives for photo and video storage. I'm a photographer, and don't always have sufficient bandwidth to upload all of the photos I take via Lightroom - plus, I want a physical copy "just in case".
> Especially since with Lightning Apple tipped their hand and revealed that their ultimate goal was to license a subset of DRM-encoded USB standards. It feels pretty obvious that Apple's movement towards wireless is mostly about killing the specter of standardized connectivity.
I understand this argument and see where you're coming from, but I just don't agree.
Can you provide examples of where Apple has substituted non-standard connectivity where standard-compliant would have worked as well?
You mentioned Lightning. That's a great example from my perspective: I was enthusiastic about the move to USB-C on iPhone. Now that it's happened, my opinion has changed. I actually miss the lightning connector now that it's gone in that role. I can look around my office and find a dozen Lightning cables, all of which are very old and still work just as well as they did initially. I've never had to replace a Lightning jack on a device, and the only cables I've tossed over the years are ones where my kids wore out the cable itself through repetitive stress. In retrospect, I find Lightning to be a superior connector to USB-C.
It sucks that we have a mix of both right now, but that's a consequence of Lightning having failed to gain wider adoption, not of it being a bad product.
From my perspective, it feels like you're seeing Apple in the role of Microsoft in the 90s: basically "embrace, extend, extinguish". I 100% agree that Apple is doing the first two steps of that, but I can't think of an example where they've even attempted to extinguish the competing standard and capture the market. As far as I can see, wherever Apple has made decisions counter to the prevailing standard, they did so because the path they chose was more compelling overall.
I leave open the possibility that I'm just not seeing the "evil" aspects here through myopia.
> Look at external drives; how is wireless going to replace this anywhere? Bluetooth can't even hit SATA speeds, much less 4k streaming speeds without re-encoding and compressing the source material.
I think we're agreeing here - the future I'm predicting isn't here yet. The tech hasn't caught up to Apple's vision. The status quo is far from optimal.
> You might get somewhere with WiFi Direct, but Apple doesn't support that in the first place and requires people to use their proprietary alternatives.
The difference here seems to be the way we're framing it.
You seem to be saying that fully wireless isn't possible right now, so products should be built with that in mind.
I'm saying that Apple wants fully wireless devices, and is willing to compromise usability in their devices for much of the market in order to move closer to their vision. I believe they're doing that intentionally to drive the development of the necessary technology to make it a reality.
Firewire was once the gold standard for external storage, especially if you were working with video. Firewire "lost" that battle and USB-C "won" - but we now have external storage devices with the transfer speeds necessary to work with large files directly on the external device. Once that became apparent, Apple killed Firewire support. In fact, they killed it earlier than a lot of people would have preferred. People were left with lots of money invested in Firewire hardware that simply didn't work with the next generation of Apple devices.
If Apple was trying to kill off USB-C, it would have made much more sense to go all-in on Firewire back when it still had a chance. Instead, they killed it when it was still superior to USB-C - a format that they did not control - because they judged that the market was moving that direction and that USB-C would soon catch up.
> Seriously, I want you to sit down and ask yourself one question. If Macs went full-wireless tomorrow, do you sincerely believe that the majority of Mac owners wouldn't own new wireless dongles?
I'm truly trying to discuss this with an open mind, and consider your perspective fully. I do see where you're coming from. Most of your conclusions I agree with. The only place where we seem to actually disagree is on what we judge Apple's motivations to be.
To answer your question: yes, if Macs were fully wireless tomorrow, there would be a plethora of adapters.
Apple would release their own. They'd be expensive, but they would work well. Third-party adapters would be cheaper, but they'd be less robust and either only partially implement the standards or would be almost as expensive as Apple's.
... but I believe that hardware manufacturers would soon start supporting the wireless standard by default. Prices for those devices would come down quickly, and before long non-Apple devices would support it as well. At the end of the day, the entire ecosystem would benefit. Non-Apple devices would have physical ports for much longer, and as a result would be easier to use and require fewer adapters. During that transitional period, Apple products would cost their users more because of all the required adapters.
Bottom line: I see Apple as developing a vision for the near future and designing their products to match that vision. Their doing so drives the market as a whole to improve and makes everyone's lives easier at the end of the day. That works for Apple because they see their market as being more affluent and able to bear the cost of forcing these advancements.
I don't think that's evil. I think it's a rational tradeoff. You don't have to agree with me on that :)
> Can you provide examples of where Apple has substituted non-standard connectivity where standard-compliant would have worked as well?
I'll do you one better, actually; here's an entire product category full of it: https://mfi.apple.com/
> It sucks that we have a mix of both right now, but that's a consequence of Lightning having failed to gain wider adoption, not of it being a bad product.
And why did that happen? Couldn't possibly be because the Lightning connector is license and patent-encumbered whereas USB is a freely-implemented standard.
You make it sound like Lightning was a legitimate competitor. It was a lost cause, with Apple being the single advocate for it's adoption and refusing to concede on any of the connector's pain-points. It could have gone up against MicroUSB and still lost.
> Firewire "lost" that battle and USB-C "won"
Specifically because Apple worked with the industry to create a USB-compliant standard to supersede FireWire (Thunderbolt). Now that we have Thunderbolt it really feels stupid that FireWire even existed in the first place.
> If Apple was trying to kill off USB-C, it would have made much more sense to go all-in on Firewire back when it still had a chance.
Not really, since FireWire was still a minority connector and they could have literally never forced the entire industry to support it.
> I don't think that's evil. I think it's a rational tradeoff. You don't have to agree with me on that :)
Then surely you won't disagree with the people that get angry when Apple spurns Open standards in favor of less functional proprietary options.
All Apple has to do, to avoid criticism, is offer both as an option. Users will gravitate towards whichever product they prefer, which is a concept foreign to Apple called "competition".
Apple to kill standard is hard, especially you seems to hear the phrase embrace, extend and extinct … but that is for guy with market share of 80 if not nearly 100%.
For little guy (strange argument but look at market share) it can only innovate and keep on moving so no one just copy you (android) and go cheap. That is the Apple only game play. It never the first mostly (xerox …) but it somehow find the pain point and solve user issues.
The problem of Apple is not many area left (unless we do not know when we are using terminal like device whilst someone invent music) and it may go extinct in the long term, by copycat …
I wore mine on a flight for the first time last week. It was actually a lovely experience for me, save for being more than a bit self conscious. No cables and it made it way easier to not feel cramped while staying in my small space. No dongles, though, save for being plugged into the under seat power.
Interesting, I've never really felt the need to upgrade from the in-flight display (or my laptop screen) for flight entertainment. I've got an original OLED Oculus Quest that's great for watching movies on, but the thought of bringing it with me on a trip just reeks of wasted carry-on space.
It's good to see it's not abandoned but it just feels so barren. Forget a killer app, how about something that isn't video? A new background makes the top new features list, really?
It's a neat device but it seems like Apple can't be bothered to really invest in software that justifies the price tag.
Without buzz they're not going to get dev support either. It's not trivial to port an app to hand gesture controls.
It's Steve Jobs talking about their opportunity and it's not hard to see how this strategy is in large part what he executed at Apple. It's about building out the best product you can for the "Professional" class and then also capturing all the market share by people with lots of money that think they need Professional product. Part of that strategy though sorta has to be continued investment, because you can't get a bunch of people to buy $3000 headsets and burn them and not suffer some sort of fallout for that.
When you compare it to how its basically a meme at this point that Google is going to kill anything that isn't an instant success or even stuff that is successful but they just don't want to anymore. Apple is sorta the polar opposite. I have an iPhone 11 in my pocket, released in 2019 this thing still works great and iOS 18 will support it 5 years after purchase.
I don't think the Apple Vision product is particularly compelling right now, but if they keep iterating on it I imagine I'll probably want the Vision Pro 3
Vision Pro must be the worst failed product Apple has ever made, and they made Newton.
I remember all the hype about it on Twitter, and then it all went away when people started to realize just how pointless this device is, with all the Apple restrictions that limit its applications.
Probably none, they were both massive hits immediately, nobody was calling them failed products months after release.
edit: That said I'm reading now that the early reports that Apple downgraded their expectations for year 1 from 800k units to 400k units after launch were wrong, and instead they were always projecting 400k units.
The iPod was nice because of the storage, but competitors (like Zune) had more storage and were cheaper. It took a while for iPod to get "good" and gain adoption.
The iPhone was closer to the Vision Pro. It was obviously a revolutionary product, but it was extremely limited, and it took several OS versions before it got to the point where it was really ready for mass adoption. The iPhone 3G or 3GS was probably the first one that really got traction.
I use my Vision Pro every day. It's far from perfect, but it's been valuable for me. There are some things that are just significantly better on visionOS. There are tons of rough edges, limitations, and missing features still - it's getting better each release, but it's got a ways to go yet.
I recommend the Vision Pro only if you really know what you're getting into, or actually need it for a business purpose. If you're writing apps for visionOS, you need one. If you're an enthusiast and have the disposable income for it, go for it.
Bottom line: it's not going to replace any other single device for you at the moment. It's more of an "early access to the future" kind of thing than anything else - but it's a future I really do believe will come in a couple of years at most, and in five years I think we'll look back at this period the same way we look back at the original iPhone.
In other words, the criticisms we're seeing here are valid, but they're not the full story. You can't judge the success of a platform based on the first iteration. As visionOS and "spatial computing" mature, these comments will seem silly unless you can put yourself in the context they're being made today.
I don't think it is the same as iphone/ipod. I knew a lot of people that had the original iphone and ipod. Everyone had phones and a lot of people had mp3 players, iphone/ipod were just a different phone/mp3 player. I know some people that have VR headsets but nobody, personally, that has the vision pro. And the original iphone/ipod _did_ replace a single device. Vision pro is a new product in a market that has little adoption. Maybe it is more like the ipad? Or maybe it is just different than any previous apple release.
I'm overall bullish on AR/VR but the time horizon on it becoming mainstream has turned out a lot longer than I imagined when I first bought an HTC vive 8 or so years ago. :)
The first time I encountered an iPhone was on a business trip to Chicago to meet with a vendor. I was working for a large corporation in the LTL transportation space at the time. Before that, I had heard about it but hadn't really spent time researching it.
I'm older now, have more disposable income, and am much more immersed in tech in general.
> I know some people that have VR headsets but nobody, personally, that has the vision pro.
I have a Quest 3, a Pimax Crystal, and a Vision Pro. Of those, I no longer use the Quest 3 - my kids game on it quite a bit, or I'd sell it.
The Pimax Crystal is a great piece of hardware, and works very well for playing PCVR games. I use it for War Thunder (combat flight sim). The software is terrible, but I have it set up to work well with my single use case for it. I'm happy with it based on that.
The Vision Pro is more flexible, and has more utility than the Crystal. It's inferior for gaming to the Quest 3, but not as bad as people seem to be saying it is, and is improving rapidly.
I've gotten the Vision Pro working for PCVR (via ALVR). It's very rough and requires a lot of tinkering to get running, but it works. Honestly, it's about on par with the Crystal in that area, but the Crystal is superior in terms of FOV - and that's very important when you're using it to fly imaginary airplanes in imaginary combat.
> Vision pro is a new product in a market that has little adoption.
I agree. In fact, I think people are making a mistake comparing it directly to things like the Quest line. Yes, it supports many of the same things and has many of the same capabilities. It's targeting a completely different use case, though.
My iPad Pro is more capable hardware-wise than most people's laptops, but it can't do a lot of things a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop can do. That doesn't mean it's worse though, because it's not in competition with those laptops. I have laptops, and still carry my iPad with me and leave the laptops at home most of the time.
> Maybe it is more like the ipad? Or maybe it is just different than any previous apple release.
It's a mix. The produce category is very different, but Apple's approach is pretty consistent. They enter a new market at the very top, implement a few features, and refine them. They don't try to do everything all at once.
As a result, it's not right for everyone. It's only right for people whose use case coincides with the feature set that has been implemented to date. As that feature set expands, so will size of the market.
>The iPod was nice because of the storage, but competitors (like Zune) had more storage and were cheaper. It took a while for iPod to get "good" and gain adoption.
You aren't remembering the iPod years very well at all. The Zune came out 5 years after the iPod. The iPod was already dominant by the time it came out (had at least 70% market share and was selling millions of units). The early competitors were MP3 CD players and the Creative Nomad. The iPod outclassed every single one of them.
What was suppressing early sales of the iPod was the size, the lack of Windows compatibility, and the ability of common people to buy music for it.
It was quite chonky in Gens 1 and 2 and even Gen 3 was a bit too large for most people. So when the iPod mini came out sales absolutely took off. Second, was the lack of Windows syncing. That came in 2002 with Musicmatch, and then was made vastly better in 2003 with the release of iTunes for Windows. And with the release of iTunes for Windows people also had a way of buying songs for the device.
I was younger then, and wasn't as "tied in" to tech news. I misremembered that part it seems.
The first iPod I saw in the wild was in ~2003-2004. I remember thinking it was really expensive for what it was, but it seemed crazy that it could hold an entire library of music.
> The iPod was nice because of the storage, but competitors (like Zune) had more storage and were cheaper. It took a while for iPod to get "good" and gain adoption.
What are you talking about? When the first Zune launched, there were already 160 GB iPods, which was more storage then the Zune's 120 GB max (and more storage then you needed unless you watched a lot of videos on your iPod). I can't find MSRPs, but what I can find indicates that they were comparable on price as well.
> The iPhone was closer to the Vision Pro. It was obviously a revolutionary product, but it was extremely limited, and it took several OS versions before it got to the point where it was really ready for mass adoption. The iPhone 3G or 3GS was probably the first one that really got traction.
The iPhone 3G was the second generation iPhone, launched about a year after the first gen. The first gen also sold over 6 million units, while the Vision Pro has yet to crack a million.
I agree that the Apple Vision story isn't finished. But we shouldn't go re-writing history to defend it. Regardless of how much you like it, the Apple Vision Pro hasn't set the world on fire. And it's not clear what Apple can do to get the general public excited about it.
They’re probably remembering the Creative Zen/Nomad series. I think I had a 30GB or 60GB jukebox model well before iPod had similar storage capacities.
True! I remember a quite funny meme where the iPad being held by Jobs during WWDC was photoshopped and replaced with 4 iPhones taped together: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ipad-spoofing
> When iPad came out plenty of people had the notion that "no one really needs that, it's just a toy".
Remember the iPad Mini? People were calling full-size the "Maxi iPad".
That's the phase that we're in right now. The utility isn't quite there, but the promise is.
These days I use my iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard as my primary web interface. That wasn't possible at first, but if you looked at the product with the future in mind, it was forseeable.
Truly, no one was saying this except for obviously wrong people. In 2007 the first iPhone was borderline magic. The core of the user experience has not changed because it never needed to change. They 100% nailed the UX on the first try. Everyone was agog. We knew it was the future.
I’d compare it to ChatGPT, but honestly there’s way more skepticism of that than there ever was of iPhone.
Plenty of people were skeptical of the iPhone when it came out. On launch, it was very very expensive, carrier locked, and relatively lacking in features compared to other phones. The app store was not in place. You had the Apple apps and mobile safari which was very limited in those days -- and that was it.
The revolution that was the iPhone required two pieces, both of which needed each other and only one of which was present at launch: touchscreen UI, and the app store. Those two were not fully in place until after 2008. Even then, it took some time. I think of that ~2006-2011 period as the era of BlackBerry. Of course, the vision was clear by 2010 or so. iPhone 4S/iPhone 5 was really when the rocket ship went parabolic.
Regardless of what people said or are saying now, the main difference is that people that bought the initial iPhone loved it and used it all the time. Most Vision Pro owners stopped using it 2-3 weeks after purchase.
The iphone built on existing product categories with product-market fit: PDAs, cellphones, MP3 players, smartphones. The path to improve the initial product was clear. There was a clear target.
Vision Pro launches in an unproven market (VR/AR) with only a handful of games with significant adoption that AVP can't run as well as competitors due to lack of controllers (e.g Beat Saber experience would be worse due to higher latency of hand tracking). Path to improve the product is uncertain because the target market is not clear yet.
I both bought iPhone and Vision Pro on day one. And my enthusiasm and engagement with each product are completely different.
The Vision Pro is probably closer to the Apple Watch launch - the Apple Watch launched as this weird high-end fashion thing with like expensive ceramic and gold options, and it didn't really know what it wanted to do.
In a generation or two, they realized it was fitness and health which was the target market and honed in on that.
Not saying the trajectory will be the same - Apple Watch is inherently both cheaper and easier to use since you just strap it on your arm instead of closing out the world, just saying they both started out as products without a really compelling purpose.
Apple Watch is an cheap iPhone accessory. Vision Pro is an overpriced strap-on full facial PC. There's no comparison between the two that makes any sense at all.
They maybe were shitting it in public like Balmer because what they can say to journalists? That we have a worse product? There is a story about Android and Andy Rubin said that after iPhone announcement they decided they have to redesign everything from scratch.
“ We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
People seem to forget that it took two years to sell the first 1 million iPods and Apple only sold 10 million iPhones the first year - 1% of the total market.
Also the more blatant fact that OF COURSE the CEO of Palm is going to be bearish on the damn iPhone, otherwise they would have made the damn iPhone at some point!
How often does a direct competitor CEO outright say that they expect a new competitor product to not be underwhelming?
99% of the time a CEO says anything future looking that isn't regulated by the SEC, they are just leaning on suvivors bias to look good retroactively.
> Steve Jobs['] ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things," Gates wrote. "This time somehow he has applied his talents in getting a better licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music."
The iPod didn't really catch on until the 3rd gen when they dropped Firewire and went with the dock connector, and it really exploded with the 4th gen clickwheel redesign and release of iTunes store.
If you released iPod/iPhone right now, it wouldn't be as successful. I really hope VR pans out, as I always imagined it would be fun. But from every headset I've tried so far, the novelty wears off. My current problems are - it doesn't make any of my existing experiences better, and nor it unlocks new ones. Until we get a real use case and much lighter hardware, it'll be an uphill battle both for Apple and Meta to win over the consumers. Especially with AVP's pricetag.
iPod and iPhone did not cost the equivalent of 2 months' rent. Apple also had the advantage of being an exciting upstart against boring incumbents, where it could enter the market late and still claim that they were the only ones "doing it right".
It was $499 for the 4GB version and $599 for the 8GB version, in 2007. That was about twice the price of the nearest competitor, BlackBerry.
The Vision Pro is about 6x the price of the Quest 3 - but it's targeted at a completely different vertical, that didn't even exist prior to the Vision Pro launch.
I'm bullish on it, but I totally get why others might not be. Only time will tell.
It's not only about if something is 2x or 6x but also the final price. Many people can afford iPhone for $1k even though you can get 6x cheaper android model that in many cases would be good enough. Same with going to restaurant or buying a wine. But $3500 price tag is just hard to swallow - not many people have such a 'fun budget'
Yeah, sure bud. This is going to be the one - yes every other headset has failed, but that's because Sony and HTC and Microsoft and Acer and HP and Samsung and Valve and Nreal and Meta weren't Apple, and just lack the taste and common-sense to make the technology work. This time, Apple will win with their second-mover advantage and definitely won't fall victim to the pattern of releasing and discontinuing niche products like Time Machine, Airport and Xserve. Vision Pro, this will be their flagship. Someday.
> Have you not been following Apple for the last…45+ years?
Not so blindly that I would lose sight of the greater market. There is a pretty clear line in the sand between "high-demand compute hardware" and "shit that is far too expensive that nobody wants". An iPad that you wear on your face falls into the latter category, in case you couldn't tell.
And in 10 years, people like me will cite your silly little quotes when the Vision Pro is less-remembered than the Hololens.
It's one thing to follow Apple's product history, it's another thing to blind yourself with their popularity until you refuse to acknowledge their failures. People that habitually quote iPhone detractors are vanishingly rare in that first category.
Out of the major categories that Apple has had and I wouldn’t consider an XServe Mac a product category, the only failures have been the Newton, the Pippen, and the QuickTake camera. All of those were pre-2007.
Really makes you think, then. Apple is just so successful but can't find people to pay thousands of dollars for their superior, private VR experience.
I thought it was supposed to be a game-changer product offering experiences their competitors could only dream of. Where are the killer apps? Where are the people using it on a regular basis? It obviously can't be Apple's fault since they don't release failed products anymore; it must be the users who are wrong.
The first gen Mac was underpowered even for its time seeing what it was asked to do. It had one floppy drive and you had to switch back and forth between the application disk and your data disk. The Apple //e kept Apple afloat long after the Mac came out. It wasn’t until Aldus (PageMaker) released software along with the first laser printer that the Mac became useful. The early failure of the Mac is a large part of the reason that Jobs got kicked out.
The first gen iPod was Mac only, the click wheel kind of sucked compared to the later capacitive models and the iTunes Music Store didn’t come online until 2 years later. Between that, USB support and Windows support is what made it take off.
The iPhone was 2G, overpriced to the point where Apple had to cut prices six months in and didn’t support third party apps. Not having Flash support was really a big deal back then.
The first generation Apple Watch along with the apps and the OS were atrocious. Third parties couldn’t make native apps. They were all projections from the phone. Apple remedied it quickly.
If I were single, I would buy it just for the video watching experience and the larger screen when using it with a Mac with the improvements in the refresh rates. But it’s a very isolating experience and when I sit down to watch TV, usually it’s with my wife.
For context: in non inflation adjusted dollars, my old Apple //e setup that my parents bought me was around $3000 in 1986. My first Mac setup was $4000 in 1992 and I spent another $300 on an a new processor for it and I bought a first gen PowerMac 6100/60 + 486DX/2-66 “DOS Compatibility card” in 1994 for $3000.
I’m both buyer of iPhone first gen and Vision Pro on day one. The iPhone was an amazing value: replaced my nokia cellphone, had an amazing touch UI with a gorgeous display that was a delight to use compared to anything else at the time, loved to be able to properly check my email and browse the Web anywhere with WiFi, it replaced my iPod, watching youtube anywhere was super useful… I couldn’t get enough. Value prop was super clear on day one
The issue that makes the Vision Pro not useful is content specifically designed for it. I said in another reply, that if I were single and spent time watching videos by myself, I would buy it if it had better content.
I fly a lot. But I wouldn’t want to carry something so bulky with me
I could also see it is as a large display for my Mac since I have limited office space.
It's a pity the iPod wasn't more successful and Apple decided to kill it. I still use my iPod Classic although the battery lasts just a few days.
The newer iPods looked just like the iPhone just without phone connectivity so that was probably the nail in their coffin but I kind of liked the separation of devices for different tasks.
But what is different from the meta quest 3 just bought and surprisingly (I use hp Vr set for flying msf2020) very good. Even just compile a sample of unity to it.
Fundamentally different or just competing in the same sphere, like choosing canon or nikon.
I've been using it extensively since the week it was released, and am happy to answer questions. I do my best to highlight both the advantages and drawbacks.
I've not experienced that issue, but I've kept up with it on forums. It seems like it's specific mostly to the 512GB and 1TB models, and to the first batch. If pressed, I'd guess there's been on the order of a hundred cases of it.
The consensus seems to be that it's a combination of a design defect (the aggressive curve in that portion of the display) and a manufacturing issue (improper heat treatment of the glass?). I've not seen any reports of newly-purchased VPs having the issue.
I believe replacement of the glass is $800 without AppleCare+, and $300 with it if it's judged to have been damage rather than a defect. I'm not aware of anyone having to pay to replace the glass if it wasn't dropped or otherwise mishandled.
I'll also point out that the crack issue isn't over any of the sensors, so it's pretty much a cosmetic-only issue. Reports show the VP works fine with the front glass completely removed, for what that's worth.
There are other issues that haven't gotten as much press. I'm on my second Vision Pro; my first one had a single cluster of hot pixels on the left display, right in the center of my field of view. I traded it without issue at an Apple Store - in fact, I got a ~$100 refund in the process, as my device was originally purchased online with my employer's credit card, so the purchase was taxed at SF rates. The replacement was actually a return + purchase, taxed at the rate where I live.
My second VP has a minor issue where a white horizontal line appears on the right display occasionally. I've not yet been able to predict when it will occur. It's relatively rare - I see it maybe once every 5-10 minutes, and it lasts for only a few milliseconds. I would have already had it replaced if I didn't have to drive 2.5 hours to the nearest Apple Store. Because it doesn't impact function, I've not bothered yet. I will before my AppleCare+ runs out.
I have it set to the highest setting to reduce accidentally triggering it. It's hard to trigger on purpose and still triggers too much accidentally.
Basing in on gestures is a big step forward. I think the next step has already been implemented in Moon Player: you can touch your middle finger to your thumb to toggle gesture detection. Super useful when you're snacking and watching a movie :)
> I have it set to the highest setting to reduce accidentally triggering it. It's hard to trigger on purpose and still triggers too much accidentally.
Strange, when I had a Vision Pro I could not trigger the Control Center for the life of me. I felt like a mad man rolling my eyes around the top of my skull trying to get the dang thing to pop up so I could get out of Mount Hood and back to reality.
They did a great job at getting more features and brand partnerships also, but I couldn't help to notice they snuck in that "people have been using Spatial technology for so long and we are now improving it even more".
It's marketing speak, I know, but they should be humble if they want it to succeed.