Apple Reveals 'Vision Pro' Headset | Hacker News Reader

Apple Reveals 'Vision Pro' Headset

macrumors.com

137 pointsclairity160 comments

The hardware is no doubt impressive, as expected, but I just can't see myself in any of the situations they keep showing in VR/AR demos.

Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos? Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them (and plugged in to a socket) instead of on a couch with their family/friends? Would I want to be in a group call with generated avatars of people rather than their actual faces? If the kids are having a fun moment would I want to run inside, grab my headset, strap it on and record a video, or just go join them? Would I rather work on this all day instead of a laptop?

And the one thing I could maybe see this being useful for – gaming – was barely even mentioned in their keynote.

If I'm dropping $3,500 and cutting myself off from the outside world (and no, that weird eye display thing doesn't count), a half-assed substitute for consuming the same content as I would on any other screen isn't going to cut it. Show me the actual future, in terms of software/content/communication/immersiveness, then we'll talk.

I laughed most at the idea you’d wear this at your child’s birthday party

i agree, looks neat, but i wouldn't get one. seems like a product in search of a market. AR/VR is just to immature of a market ("too early") for an apple-sized company, and i think this one will be a pretty big flop in the near-future.

You can't watch a 2+ hour movie - the battery only lasts 2 hours.

Would require the headset being plugged in.

That's the only feature I found interesting.

Btw, the lone guy on a couch is not going to be looking at vacation photos, but they can’t show that at wwdc

Haaa, i see what you did there

I think its a growing separate population

I’ve toured sublets recently and met the current tenants, and some of them are not using ipads, laptops and TVs for their digital entertainment consumption, but instead using a Quest or other wireless headset.

Trying to imagine spending $3499 for some giant goggles and then ruining my daughter's birthday refusing to take them off. I hope my divorce lawyer will have Facetime, at least.

A little bit dystopian looking, but I think the potential is massive here. Just imagining the potential for the 3d photos/videos to basically put you back into places and times and truly experience either places or people who no longer exist feels absolutely monumental alone, ignoring all the other potential here.

On the dystopian front, I believe that the problem is that any AR/VR headset is going to require a similar form factor to include all computational pieces and sensors. I truly believe they would've made it look a lot more like regular glasses if it was feasible. I think over time the Vision Pro will start to approach something of the sort when that technology becomes available.

Can't wait to see it mixed with multimodal GPT. E.g. real time advice and visual hints while repairing something.

I like that it doesn't look like regular glasses. Hopefully that will encourage people to use it in their home or workplace, but not in public

To me the important part of this is not how it looks, but the potential for this.

It is clear that this is a a first product in a category that will change a lot over the next several years, especially as the hardware improves.

I don't see Apple discontinuing this quickly like Google Glasses and Microsoft HoloLens.

I would not wear this out, but in a few years maybe things can shrink down enough to make that more realistic.

Couldn't agree more- the technology just doesn't exist to deliver something of this sort in a way that doesn't come across as dystopian, which is unfortunate. They'll definitely iterate to bring it to a more seamless solution that seems less like going into a different world and ignoring reality.

I think also, this is not something that can be developed in a vacuum. I mean look at the Apple Watch. When it was first announced it was advertised as something very different from what it morphed into.

We have a lot of UI and software interaction that we need to figure out before we have the proper hardware.

This will remain very niche, but it is a starting point.

Also if enough people start wearing it all the time people will just get over the weirdness. It's not impossible that will happen.

Good point. Things are weird until they're normalized- just look at what happened with the airpods

When were airpods weird? People had already been wearing apple earbuds since the iPod came out and had been wearing headphones since the Sony Walkman

it was a very very short period of time. But there was a time where people were made fun of for talking to themselves with little white stubs sticking out of their ear. It's an interesting read through the initial airpod announcement thread on reddit.

https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/51mxn5/the_new_airpo...

Some of my favorite comments. Pretty crazy that people didn't really understand wireless earbuds while today they're taken for granted.

"Cigarettes in my ears"

"They forgot that people are less likely to adopt new technologies that make them look stupid."

"Yeah, they should at least be able to strap to each other."

"My feeling on these headphones is entirely contingent on sound quality. As it is, I could get a pair of bluetooth headphones from Audio Technica for under 100$."

"The only user interface is by tapping the AirPods to talk to Siri, even to adjust the volume. No thanks."

"I don't see any consumer base other than die hard apple fans that can use these pair of head phones, earphones or whatever they are called.

Runners would definitely not buy these as there is a high risk of them falling out of the ears.

Even for a regular person there a huge risk of running into one another making the earphones fall and stepping on them.

Interesting scenario would be when 2 airpods users run into one another and damage their devices and then sit over a coffee just to discuss how foolish decision they made buying this piece of shit."

And then Nostradamus showed up in the comments

"It looks like the kind of thing people will mock before they use it and then when they use it they'll realize that it's actually pretty good overall and everyone will just kind of simmer down about the whole thing."

> Even for a regular person there a huge risk of running into one another making the earphones fall and stepping on them.

This is my favourite bit. Does this person just go around running into people all day every day? Maybe they need to look up from their phone more.

yeah my immediate reaction was to laugh at how ridiculous it looks but the features are amazing. i didn't expect much but damn they hit it out of the park if all of it works as well as they are saying.

Like all headsets, a lot will depend on the image quality. If it’s smooth and high res, it could be a monitor replacement - and that would be a killer app. But if it’s janky, pixelated or blurry or still has the screen door effect, it may just be tiresome.

They say 4k display per eye.

23 megapixels total, or about 3 4k monitors worth of pixels. Should be super clear.

If it's really that good, it seems like there's a strong case to make for buying one of these instead of a display panel upgrade. 3 quality 4k monitors is pretty pricey - and take up a lot of physical space when not in use, can't follow you anywhere, etc.

You can't really compare visual fidelity between VR headsets and flat panel monitors that way. The resolution is spread across your entire field of view. 4k per eye still good, but no where near what you'd expect from a 4k monitor sitting a few feet away.

23 megapixels across both displays, but you are only looking at them as one, so in reality about half that.

The Apple keynotes in the last couple of years seem like some weird ads created by these evil corporations from Robocop or Black Mirror. I'm expecting them to present a new urban pacification robot or something similar, so you never have to leave your house and live magically in your loft meditating in the amazing virtual space created by the new Vision Pro.

This is obviously off-topic; so perhaps we should move it elsewhere... however;

It gets very slightly worse every year. I often get the feeling like the presenter has had a "cleanse" of all unclean thoughts, bitterness and humanity and all that's left is an excessively soft, fragile and beige demeanour. Almost inhuman.

I guess it's a risk aversion tactic by Apple, as it is a $1T company; it must have a lot of protectionism.

Meta acquired Oculus nearly ten years ago. Apple just made Zuckerberg's whole product vision obsolete with this announcement. Quest could be (maybe) what's Android for mobiles.

At least for now, the Quest is going after a much different market being 7-10x cheaper.

~$4000 vs. ~$400

There is space for both, this will actually help Occulus if it strengthens the supply chain and makes better apps available for them.

It is 7x the price of Quest 3, which to me means very different product vision, Ferrari vs Nissan different.

Aside from that, pretty sure Apple is not subsidising this headset, whereas Meta is.

Yeah. The value prop of the Quest 2 is really good as far as a hardware product, but the cohesive product vision for AR/VR that Apple just presented is far beyond anything Meta has shown to the public.

So is this selectively dimming parts of the screen to achieve the darkness effect on UI elements, or is it taking a 3D map of your face and projecting it onto a screen on the end?

It seems Apple's primary selling point will be decent software, which the VR space desperately needs. E.g.

> Vision Pro also allows users to connect to their Mac and expand its display in a virtual space, including alongside apps running on Vision Pro itself.

has been possible for a while, just poorly. Hopefully this'll create some good competition.

I think it must be a semi-transparent screen. Because otherwise the interior cameras would need some sort of illumination inside the goggles, which would be very distracting and draining on your eyes.

Edit: Whelp, I was wrong. I wrote this before they had announced the method on the keynote. Turns out you are creating a digital scan of your face, that is dynamically rendered based on the perspective of the outside observers in realtime. Quite impressive. Possibly overengineered. But But arguably a necessary feature to make this feel more friendly to other non-headset users and family members or coworkers.

It looks like it uses IR inside, like eye-tracking in other headsets usually does. There's a setup step to get a facescan in color.

See-thru is a lot easier design-wise. It would be my choice if it was possible.

Otherwise, a live image works too. Doesn't even need to be 3D.

I'm extremely sceptical about so many aspects of this device: Are the displays going to be sharp enough to feel immersive? Are the controls going to be accurate enough to not be annoying? Will it be comfortable for extended use? Will the virtual screen system truly offer more than a normal screen? And there's so many more things...

However, I have to concede that Apple has a history of entering a market only when they think they got it right. And often enough, they do get it right, so I'm also hopeful that a lot of these concerns won't be big issues.

I'm definitely excited to try it out.

This is going to be used for so much porn...

That might be a good sign if it is, just because it would mean the headset isn't "locked down" inside a walled garden of approved apps and content.

It'll be locked down. Facetime will do just fine for this purpose.

Apple isn't policing what multimedia you view and what websites you browse.

Oh sweet summer notarized child...

"locked down" means what apps you can install.

Does it have Safari?

I think I saw the Safari icon. I do not see why they would limit it.

This is actually a win if u could actually do that against apple lockdown and their stance against porn

Indeed - and optimized ;)

"FaceTime on Vision Pro can display life-sized individuals over video calls. There is an optimized experience for viewing photos and videos."

Assuming it can be jailbroken..because Apple sure as hell isn't going to let that happen natively.

> because Apple sure as hell isn't going to let that happen natively.

How are they going to prevent going to a website and streaming video? Or having a (private?) session with a model on some messaging/streaming app?

Neither of those will have 3D capabilities or be able to use any of their spatial APIs. Seeing regular 2D photos/videos on a VR headset is nothing special.

I didn't hear anything like cryptography being used to restrict 3D images to only ones from your device (or even only other Vision Pros), seems like an enterprising studio could just buy one to record with if there's really no way to get existing videos onto it (is there an eye-contact issue with existing content? seems like this could solve that if there is).

Nudity detection

Apple sure as hell doesn't care what you use the headset for if you pony up the money for the headset lol (outside of the obvious, i.e. illegal stuff)

Where porn can be played, it will always be played. They teamed up with Unity3d to make app development easier so I guarantee someone can make VR porn with that and find some workarounds to get it working

I don't think this particular device will be, but I can't imagine it will take long for others to start working on alternative hardware and software combinations to do this, similarly to how much effort is being put into using LLMs to generate explicit content right now.

The FaceTime demo was interesting. Sure you can see you friends calls floating around the room...

But what do they see? And what happens when you call your friend who also owns a Vision Pro?

They just showed that people wearing a Vision Pro get a digitally mocked up version of themselves shown to others.

That explains why every other user was a floating head; that would let them generate the same.

The demo for that looked pretty rough. The user's facial expressions looked unnatural, and the lip movements were poorly synced to the audio. I guess there's only so much an "encoder/decoder" model can make up with limited input data.

wondering how they deal with the issue that the face starts moving before we start making sound. I guess the network latency will help.

This seems like a step backwards from just seeing a real persons face on a regular screen :(

I guess a Metaverse nightmare cartoon avatar?

They just went over it, looks like they're relying on a motion-tracked digital persona (probably using some sort of NeRF approach)

The sad thing is, people are going to wear these in public, and nobody is going to think they look dumb, because Apple.

I will think they look dumb (and I'm an Apple user...)

They do look dumb. But compared to most other VR headsets, I think they are the best we have seen so far.

The problem is, that you are still going to look weird walking around with these. I am also not sure if that is practical (ie the battery/power situation).

These look at least somewhat inspired by Daft Punk's helmets, which feels almost intentional, since the guys from Daft Punk have made about the most socially acceptable robot "look" that a layman knows about.

I can't imagine people walking around with them on. But I would absolutely wear one of these on a train or bus.

People relentlessly mocked the appearance of AirPods when they first came out, but we all know how that ended up.

I still find people wearing their Airpods 24/7 rude.

Why on earth is this something you care about?

Not GP, but I don't care if a random person does it. I care when someone who is, ostensibly, intending to interact with me does it. You can't actually tell whether they're engaging with you fully or not, like if I were conversing with someone (in person) and started typing this comment at the same time.

You never know if the person you're interacting is actually listening to something and distracted or not.

Remember when I used to go to the office and I had to guess whether my colleagues were on a call, listening to music or "available" because there was no way to know from the outside since they never removed them.

This is very different though - it completely covers much of your face and there is no comparable device that is used in public, whereas AirPods are more or less the same design that we’ve seen in earphones for decades only without a cable.

I don't care if I look dumb, but don't use Apple.

I hope we all remember how much we dragged Google "glassholes" when that mess happened.

To be fair, that's true about a LOT of fashion.

Airpods look idiotic - like the worst of the 90's/00's era "bluetooth headset bro" stereotype, only on BOTH ears now.

But they're considered fashion-forward. Humans and society vote with their feet.

this guy still wears wired earbuds :D

Once the influencers get their hands on it. The youth will follow.

I would find the opposite sad. Let people wear what they want to.

Very dystopian. Can't wait for them to be required for work like smartphones /s

While I can see this as useful for work, every other application does honestly frighten me. We're human. We're embodied. Digital things can be fun, but we're meant to be in the real world.

The worst part of the presentation was the kids playing and the father with his scuba headset creeping on them with that thing recording everything.

It doesn't really send a great message to children, jm2c.

I'm also a bit scared we'll move from laying in bed with loved ones scrolling on our devices to even further isolation and distraction.

I don't see the big difference from my dad running around with a camcorder when I was a kid (and it was considered normal for families to have really embarrassing home videos watched for laughs, I think AFV made me value privacy), or a modern father using a phone to film, other than with the headset he'd have to look in my direction instead of through an eyepiece or a screen.

I do because the visor is essentially a distraction machine, not just a recording one.

Even the ad shows the father just distracted 24/7 and then interacting with the kids briefly.

I think a separate drone or cyborg will come out that does these recordings for us

We’ll consume it during a leisure time with the same headset

Reminds me of that black mirror episode: The Entire History of You

I wouldn't be surprised if this year's iPhones include 3D photo / video capture hardware, now that they can talk publicly about the headset. I doubt many people will ever wear one of these to a birthday party, but I could see people flipping a toggle on their phone to capture in 3D. It would take up a bit more storage space, but you could go through and convert to 2D after the fact if you're low on space.

this will be great for people who’ve lost their entire family in some tragic accident

Very disappointing take, mind to share at least the logic behind it?

Excuse the extremely dark humor...it's what honestly came to mind when they were showing a guy sitting alone in an eerily empty room looking at photos and videos of his loved ones as if they were still here.

Well it is a bit dark, no amount of tech can be "great" to someone losing his loved ones.

Of course, that's part of the joke. If we can't laugh, we can only cry.

(Note: I have suffered several terrible tragedies in my life...perhaps a reason why I feel free to speak flippantly about what should not be flippant)

Same reaction here. It was a classic movie scene where our protagonist is watching old home movies of their deceased family.

Combine it with an LLM and their trained voices and maybe his family isn't as dead as they really are.

Can't wait for the gothic horror renaissance, but instead of Ouija boards and ghosts, it's LLaMas and Apple Scuba Glasses.

It's better than I expected so far. I think it's quite revealing that VR was not mentioned once.

Also - this paves the way to Mac Laptops (and desktops) without displays, which to me is the big win here.

This is pretty much already a laptop without a display. It’s powered by an M1 chip and R1 visual processor (or whatever Apple is calling it), with an external laptop-size battery included. It’s laptop in new form factor.

I wonder what a serious CAD or 3D modeling app on this would feel like.

Yes, that would be awesome to see a new paradigm to 3d model.

It's existed for ages on other headsets and it's called Gravity Sketch (used to work there, the product is incredible)

Never thought of that! I do cad design for fun (3d printing/lasercutting). Not sure how actually being in the design itself would help. Although it might feel natural to just move your head around when you are in the middle of a design.

Downside is that a lot of work still is 2d: browsing websites for information. And even casual distraction like reading news, browsing sneakers…

Measuring stuff to make the product fit, requires removal of the headset. Although that might actually be done with vr if it is accurate enough (0.1 mm). Interesting.

Someone on the design team saw a lensor from The Chronicles of Riddick and said "THIS - this is the future. Make sure it has the leash coming off the back too."

Ski Goggles are now going to be fashion-forward. Take the back to the future Air Mag shoes with these and you'll complete the fit.

So, all revolutionary Apple products have one thing in common: they are easy to use and work out of the box without further expansions/extras from their version 1.0 on.

Ipod: it just works. No need to swap AA batteries any more.

MBP: light and powerful, all in one.

Iphone: the whole internet in my pocket.

But, Vision Pro Headset doesn’t feel like that. The cable that goes behind… awful. You use glasses, oh well, then the headset won’t work out of the box until you buy the appropriate lenses for it. 2h of battery… well, I guess it will stay more time connected to the charger than in use.

I know, they’ll improve it substantially in v2… but my point is: if v1 is not good enough, then perhaps v2 would never come to life.

I like that they don't stick the battery on the headset. No need to stick extra weight there.

> Iphone: the whole internet in my pocket.

I think this is overstating how it was for the first version of the iPhone - not only was there a total lack of third party apps, but accessing the internet was also not great because nothing had been mobile-optimized yet.

I agree Vision Pro feels lacking in terms of the sleek feel + design that we've come to expect from Apple, but it may well be that the experience of using it is substantially better than Meta's headsets. If so, that feels about right for Apple - swoop in when the market is just starting to be worth it with a product that's better than what's out there, then stay ahead by making meaningful improvements in the first few generations.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw that cable was professor Farnsworth saying "its a suppository!"

Obgviously it doesn't plug in...down there...but it kinda looks like it in the ads

I'm torn - it can replace my monitors, but then I'm tethered and wearing a headset all day. It can replace my TV, but then I can't watch a movie with my wife or family. And $3500 can buy a pretty nice monitor and TV setup.

Is immersing yourself in your computing environment and applications something people really want to do? I'm already spending most of my workday sitting at a desk in front of my computer. The idea of wearing a headset and further isolating myself from my physical surroundings for any amount of time longer than a few minutes is incredibly unappealing, regardless of how good the hardware is.

I can imagine many use cases where I pop it on for a minute to check something and then take it off again. But none of them are something that would make me spend my own money on this. Someone else's money, maybe.

With the $3499 price tag, this isn't really something Apple intends to compete with any other VR/AR headsets.

Mass adoption seems questionable but boy there is so much potential here, in bespoke work settings like health, media, manufacturing and simulation training. Might end up being revolutionary as a work device.

Obviously this is ludicrously expensive (as expected), and I feel like that's probably going to ensure it remains a bit of a niche for now, but there are some good ideas here I hope other headsets will take inspiration from.

- External battery is something I've been hoping to see popularized for for a while. It would be nice if they could also put the compute module in there too (if they aren't already) to take even more weight off the head and possibly allow for modular compute units or connection to a PC.

- Iris scan is a natural way to handle authentication in a headset with eye tracking, I hope that becomes the standard in the future.

- I'm really intrigued by the choice to not have controllers, and what that will mean for their interface design. I see they copied the "click" gesture from Quest and some aspects of Quest's windowing system, but there seems to be some genuinely innovative stuff there too in regards to other hand gestures and eye tracking.

- I'm hopeful Apple's entrance into the market will set a standard for the level of polish and responsiveness that others will have to work to match

- I haven't heard much details about the new OS, but there's plenty of room for innovation there as well especially in regards to OS-level performance optimizations and API design.

Is it just me, or is there barely anything here that's not possible with existing Oculus headsets (or stuff that's about to be released, like eye tracking), for way less?

Also the architecture of strapping a computer to your face instead of having a powerful desktop PC stream the screen wirelessly to your face seems like a bad call. Poor battery life, little power, and that wired battery pouch thing does not inspire confidence.

The most dystopian part of it is that it takes away from TV/Gaming from being a social aspect to everyone being in their own pod and silo.

That happened already when people got iPhones. Going out to a bar changed from socializing with others into people sitting at the same table playing with their phone. I remember the first time it happened - one of the last time I actually went out to a bar.

Going to a show has turned into watching thousands of people record the show on their iPhones. It's great that I can now watch those videos with a VR headset I guess?

Does it? I mean if you are watching something with friends then you can watch it with them even if they are not physically present (assuming all you friends are rich teckies).

You're still apart. You're not gathered physically around the TV, able to make eye contact, jump around with joy, etc. It's just you and your friends in the walled garden.

Correct but that doesn’t mean that the experience can’t be shared and talked about later.

Which is my definition of a shared experience.

Their slogan should be: "scuba diving into virtual reality"

The 3D video recording/watching feature made me slightly uncomfortable by reminding me of the movie "Strange Days". I imagine the porn industry has their own use cases for it (which Apple itself will of course never mention).

Yes there will be a sort of primitive recording of experiences that you can share with other people using VisionPro(tm).

wow. The attention to spatial detail really makes this stand out from any other headset on the market.

Apple really are the kings of making incredibly advanced technology seem, for lack of a better word, magical. They showed the headset has a really fancy two axis motorized system for lining up the lenses with the user's eyes -- something literally no other headset has tackled -- but didn't elaborate on it. The assumption is it's just what's required to deliver a good experience, not something to be used as a selling point in and of itself.

$3499 is somehow not as bad I was expecting given how much Apple charges for Studio monitors. Gonna be interested to see this thing in-person at an Apple store next year.

Big if works exactly as shown. But unfortunately if it does work exactly as shown that also means you'll be locked into apple's ecosystem and it will only interoperate with other apple stuff which is only a good thing if you've already bought in.

It's a steep price to pay for 2 hours (at a time, unless you're plugged in) of something you could already do more or less well enough with what you already had.

So for glass-wearers you have to buy prescription lenses that fit inside the headset?

Interesting that accessibility was not a theme (watched the online video, not the presentation). I'm interested to see what some low-sight folk might use this. Go shopping and have all the product labels magnified 20-30x?

Here's a demo: https://twitter.com/ijustine/status/1665787127815077888

What about the weight? It is crucial, it can easily eliminate all positive sides of the device. 12 cameras, 5 sensors, 2 CPUs, battery and the front screen - looks like a heavy device.

I've liked the presentation more than I expected; not that I'm 100% sold, but previously I hadn't even considered getting one at all.

Should be worn during time of conception of child. Would make better movies, that could have a worldwide market. Just saying!

I’d pay 3.5k to have three large screen monitors working at home without cluttering up the house with 3 actual large monitors.

It's like three 80" monitors in your tiny home.

I really want to watch Interstellar in 4K on Vision Pro. I do wear glasses so I'm not sure how long I can wear this.

You don’t wear your own glasses with this device, you buy an optional set of Carl Zeiss correctional lenses that attach seamlessly inside the display and replace your glasses. It was shown in part of the livestream.

they couldn't have made more creepy yet dystopian looking marketing images / videos if they tried, crazy

Price is $3,499. Who is this product for?

Assuming I can use it as a full monitor replacement, then it's a great fit for me.

I don't mind the price (assuming it's a good product), I'm comfortable wearing a VR headset for hours at a time (not a quest 2 though, those are uncomfortable), and I'd love to have a larger display no matter where I'm working.

I like the shot of someone laying on the bed and using it. It has to be comfortable for that scenario.

So can you type? I don't want to speak into a room when filling in a private text form.

Exciting to see what mods people will come up for this device.

So this is a VR headset and not AR? Or does it also do AR? They haven't shown that yet.

I was really hoping for AR centric device, like a vastly superior Google Glass. VR isn't exactly revolutionary at this point.

It was presented as an AR headset.

edit: when Tim Cook presented it first at WWDC

Interesting that there was no mention of a metaverse or VR really.

Unity's ass was saved by this presentation.

$3.5k though?!

I see that there is a cord to it. Where does it connect to? Does it connect to the wall? I was hoping this would be usable for camping.

Battery pack on your hip.

They showed an external battery that can be used for ~2 hours if it's not plugged into the wall.

> I was hoping this would be usable for camping.

What? Why?

nothing like getting away from it all so you can plug yourself directly into the metaverse.. what

I hope it's waterproof and integrates with actual SCUBA gear so I can do all my work under water and blame nitrogen narcosis for bad commits.

No Unreal support?

$3499 though… sucks teeth

$3499.

WOW. This is just amazing.

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