Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and if there really is a viable Apple-scale device here.

The overarching XR vision makes sense to me -- that you could instantly drop into any kind of environment you might want to, whether for work or entertainment or socializing.

But who creates these environments, and for what purpose? They seem like they'd be quite expensive if done well, and if not done well, you wouldn't want to go there unless you had to. If there aren't great places to go, what justifies a $3K headset?

Meanwhile, with the reality of technical limitations, how good is the experience really going to be?

I suspect you're going to be able to pay $3K to buy into some games and productivity software that, once the novelty wears off, are going to feel pretty mediocre and may never really get past the tech demo stage. And your hardware is going to be dreadfully obsolete in about 2-3 years too.

IDK, maybe I just have a lack of vision and I'm too down on this stuff.

I would like to try it and see!

For me it comes down to optics. I've tried damn near every VR headset ever made, including many that never made it to production, and they all suffer from the same core issue: poor optics. Even industrial headsets that costs thousands are still using flat screen and lenses with fixed focal points (with few exceptions, but even then nothing truly extraordinary).

Current optical designs mean that there is a large out of focus area when you look anywhere that isn't forward. That's just never going to fly for the general consumer. For VR to truly go mainstream you needs an optical system that is truly sharp, edge to edge. That probably means some kind of active optical system (like reverse OIS) or some kind of magic lens that currently only exists in theory. Instead what manufactures keep doing is trading off FOV for sharpness.

If Apple has implemented a new optics system here I think they have winner and the industry will change overnight. If it's the same as current designs just a little better it feels DOA to me.

I'm optimistic because I can't imagine Apple, of all companies, putting out a headset that's blurry at the edges.

This is true - but let me say this, you couldn’t pay me to wear an Apple Watch all day and you won’t be able to pay me to wear a headset.

There’s just no dang reason to use these things like their creators want. Someone needs to be brave in these organizations and say “hey look, we tried pushing Siri for years and never gained the loved adoption that chatGPT has, why are we trying the same strategy here?”

If the compute offering is not excellent, it does not deserve to be in a new context. Period.

I can imagine a headset that allows me to have the equivalent desktop space of quad HiDPI displays for the price of one display, and the ability to bring that anywhere. The ability to edit video on a display that is absolutely massive would be a win for me.

Yes, this can definitely be true, but is the context really so that you can be social with someone else - or is it for you to have the creative space to work on an idea?

I feel there's no idea of what the context is anymore - and that's what's killing all of these devices. No one can say 'this is the emphasis we gave these products for this reason' - because they all want the success of the iPhone, everyday use and wear.

We have to allow the pendulum to swing back to specialized devices - that's why Teenage Engineering is so captivating.

You seem to be conflating "anywhere" and "social" in a way the post you're replying to wasn't using at all.

I mean to speak to the visual displays facing outward to show facial expressions to the room - if a true rumor, that’s an odd way to spend a BOM

The price of one Apple display?

> you couldn’t pay me to wear an Apple Watch all day

That's your preference, but it's clear that lots of people not just willingly, but enthusiastically do this; makes this an odd example. Likewise Siri/Alexa I guess - I would never use them but some people do dozens of times a day and love it.

[read the rest of the thread :)]

Yes yes yes - a lot of people enthusiastically drink 3+ CocaColas a day too! Doesn’t make it a good use of technology nor dietary choice :)

Not really a useful analogy, I think. Most people do, or don't do, something that empirically is not optimal for their health. If your suggesting there is an objective downside - I think you have an uphill battle there.

No, just engaging with the ‘everyone else does it’ part which felt emphasized. Proving lost potential is hard without an example of something better - which I would argue is the Oura ring, but less popular for different reasons.

And for Siri and Alexa, you probably use ChatGPT, so you know the difference when you see it

I'm having trouble making sense of your point, I guess.

You seem to try to draw a parallel between largely failed tech (VR) and largely successful tech (apple watches, etc), and then to massively popular consumer product (coke); then suggest there is 'bravery' in rejecting the 'way these creators want you to use their products'

I sort of get the idea applied to VR as it has never really clicked for anything. But the analogies are all to things that are unambiguously successful with consumers. They are all very much "pull" not "push" at this point. Well, maybe less so with voice apps, that's more "bundle".

I guess you lost me early in your argument, and I was trying to point out why (and figure out what you were actually trying to say)

Aye captain, I can see that.

My premise is that watches failed (even though they sell millions of units) as the bar for success is higher for Apple, and they left a lot on the table by just putting a mini phone on your wrist.

So I think screens on wrists is a dumb use of compute. Then I went in a roundabout way to say, a dumb use of calories / sugar is Coke. Sugar and Compute have better uses, so their lost potential is taking issue with how their creators made the goods to be consumed.

The watch is the coke of computing - completely unnecessary for 9/10ths of the use cases and leads to bad habits. Just as a beverage can be crafted to be like Athletic Greens, so could the watch be crafted to use the wrist compute context better.

To provide some example, watch should have gone screenless and used haptics to communicate with us in new ways; and explain when it was important to move to a screen context (which is technically all it does now too) - with this view, it becomes one strata closer to excellence.

Apple Watch has failed?

Watches failed... how? "Did not adopt my theoretical UX scheme" is not the same thing as "failure".

A thread on the orange site is very definitely not representative.

> you couldn’t pay me to wear an Apple Watch all day

> pushing Siri for years and never gained the loved adoption that chatGPT has,

I say this politely, maybe you have bad taste?

Lots of people voluntarily pay for an Apple Watch for the privilege of wearing it all day. When Apple released the HomePod mini it quickly grabbed market share against Alexa et al. Siri has been available on apple devices for years, and a huge chunk of consumers use it regularly.

The nice thing about a lot of tech, is that you don’t have to use it how the creators want. The first gen Apple Watch didn’t focus on fitness and health, but the latest ones do became that’s how people used it. I’m not sure how you think the “Siri” strategy is repeated here, but Siri is a success.

I’m very skeptical that apple will find a winner with a VR headset but you’re not exactly providing an argument that you understand consumers. A much simpler argument is that it’s too expensive and does too little - the original HomePod is a good example. Apple of all companies can make the hardware good, but ultimately it’s still very expensive to generate VR content.

Just because there are sales, doesn’t make it good business.

And I guess you’re right; the simplest argument with my taste is: VR/AR are technologies looking for solutions

* meaningful solutions. And maybe SOL and others are right that hands free readers are the most meaningful solution for these head worn devices.

[Apple Watch was always going to be fitness (everything before it was fitness). HomePod is amazing but not communicated correctly for people to know it’s there. Siri is horrid to deal with as a developer, tho dictation is amazing as an interface. There’s too much to talk about - basically Apple achieved the center of the digital life for all the devices Jobs put up on the screen in the 90s and now they need the new devices / activities and nothings been as universal as the past]

> Current optical designs mean that there is a large out of focus area when you look anywhere that isn't forward

You sound like you are a year or two out of date with your "current" understanding. The industry has moved to pancake lenses which make the view clear edge to edge. There's no more out of focus peripheral view, in recent headsets you read and look around using your eyeballs and not your head just like you would naturally.

It is already known that the Apple headset uses this updated optical system, along with micro OLED displays at super high resolution (approx double current industry standards). The clarity and focus are going to be absolutely amazing.

You mean like the pancake lenses in the Quest Pro? Those are still what I'd consider garbage tier old tech. Probably the best we are going to get down the path of fixed focal point acrylic lenses, but definitely not what I'd call sharp edge to edge. The edges might qualify as "very soft" instead of "totally out of focus" but that's about the best you can say.

Quest Pro is probably the leading example yes. If you're calling that garbage, then I think you're (a) setting impossibly high standards and (b) out of sync with most people's perception, as most people perceive these has having "edge to edge clarity".

Oddly enough, the reason I have so many VR headsets is because I mostly give demos to non-tech people. Quest Pro still gets the, "Pretty cool, but why is it so blurry," comments. Not as much as other headsets, but still enough that it will never fly for general use. Meta, to their credit, does a good job of masking the poor optics by keeping texture detail to a minimum in their own software and encouraging developers to do the same.

I think people really into VR get so used to looking around with their head and having low expectations that they don't notice just how poor it is. By comparison it's good. In isolation, not so much.

One of the perplexing things about Quest Pro is that Meta keeps the default UI rendering at the same scale for the Pro as for the Quest 2. The result is that all the home environments look blurry and poorly antialiased. It's hard to judge the lenses themselves properly actually without connecting it to PCVR mode and looking at some ultra high resolution content there. It really is very impressive when you do that.

It’s not. That’s the fanboy “Maybe you got a bad sample,” or “You’re just using it wrong,” angle. Every VR headset has one. Apple will no doubt adopt this strategy if their headset is garbage. I mean, they’ve done it before.

What do you mean by blurry? Like screen door effect? If it's actually blurry, likely the IPD is wrong or you haven't positioned the headset correctly. Although, I suppose it would be great for the lenses to auto position themselves based on pupil location.

Center sharpness is decent. I’d even call it “good”. The edges are very soft.

It is easy to miss the forrest for the trees, which I think is what is happening if your users can't get into immersion because it's not instant Retina focus. Good enough does not need to be perfect once the experience kicks in and you are actively engaged in doing something you otherwise could not do in the real world. If I'm at the theater; yes, if asked, I might tell you the seat could be more comfortable this way or that way, but it should not matter so much once the show starts.

If 50% of the screen at the theater was out of focus it would probably give people headaches and they'd walk out. But with VR some people expect users to just "deal with it" and then wonder why VR isn't taking off.

"Setting impossibly high standards" in very particular areas is something Apple excels at. When Jobs first announced the iphone, engineers at other phone companies thought the smooth scrolling / touch responsiveness was impossible. They actually thought Apple was faking it.

they are also extremely good at marketing it.

The "retina" display was a great example of that. People argued about whether it was true and whether Apple was really the first, but it didn't matter in the end. I expect the same here.

It’s interesting to dismiss this criticism as “impossibly high standards” when VR as a market is clearly a disaster. The person you replied to is of the same opinion as the vast majority of consumers, who have either not purchased a headset or did, but now leave it in a closet gathering dust. VR clearly will not be viable on a massive scale until it takes a major leap forward.

When those major leaps occur, Apple should be well-positioned. Remember they play the long game. My office mate had Apple's first tablet 30 years ago - the Newton. And even further back - 40 years ago - Jobs said he didn't want the Mac to have a keyboard and mouse. He rightfully considered those to be a very artificial means of human-machine interface. His engineers made him understand that current tech didn't yet fulfill his dream. But that dream was eventually realized.

Those major leaps will occur. Apple has the wherewithal the stay the course. I'll look at the first generation VR headset the way I looked at their first tablet 30 years ago. Or their first computer 40 years ago.

What dream was eventually realized? We still use kb and mouse

I suppose he must mean touchscreens? Which are about as inhuman as it gets.

Yes and no. Certainly the market thinks it's the best option at the moment.But certainly it won't be the interface we use in 20 years.

What if it only seems like impossibly high standards? Many companies might not be directly tackling that because they're prioritizing other problems too highly.

It sometimes takes courage to challenge the status quo, to take the risk to establish a new standard. To identify and pursue the "right" standards.

My prediction is that negative refraction materials will arrive in a few years. Optics problems solved.

Had this Twilight Zone-like dream that all our visions of the future which include a screen are utterly wrong, Sci-Fi included.

It's somewhat hard to argue that the Command-Line Interface is better overall than the Graphical User Interface, look at Apple, they made $2.75 trillion for themselves from the GUI. But with large language models now the easiness and even the beauty falls back into the CLI, a simple blank screen with a blinking prompt awaiting your commands, and maybe we could remove the screens altogether. Why do I have to write this message while staring into, funnily, an Apple screen, when I could be drinking my coffee admiring the city skyline and the mountains nearby while whispering gently the words into the wind. Why must I know that for whatever need that I have from a software product, I must press some menu button, then 3 drop downs down, select some weirdly named options, and then go back and drag and drop some asset into the window: just do the thing already, I don't care about your software-y details. The GUI might be dying, perhaps we should strive to kill it.

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