Virtual movie theaters and virtual monitors haven't really been compelling use cases for putting an ugly sweat box on your face so far. What about slapping an Apple logo on it and pricing it even further out of reach changes that in your mind?
Just look at the virtual avatar they demoed compared with Meta’s. Apple went with a more professional looking avatar instead of a cartoony one.
Another app that was shown was a Birds Eye view of a basketball game. I’d love to be able to watch a sporting event live from that perspective (if I could stomach the entry fee for the experience).
I was on the fence about this product, thinking that there wouldn’t be many good use cases, but their presentation gave some activities that I’d want to try on the hardware. Whereas Meta’s presentation didn’t show anything I was interested in.
Apple is giving developers 6+ months to make even more interesting apps. I think there’s a good chance that this could be a successful product. But I should hold my judgement until I’ve seen the caveats of this device (ie comfort, battery life, display quality, etc). I’m sure we’ll see more in-depth looks in the coming months. We can judge it more fairly when these reviews come out.
That was Disney’s presentation not Apples. Am I the only one who thought that part was Magic Leap level total fantasy BS?
Some stadiums have cameras that fly over all the stadium but no idea if it was BS or not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IISMmjWOFoM
Although it appears to just be playing a human animated 3D sequence at the same time as a non-live video.
Is there anything specific to the Vision Pro in that feature? Couldn’t they just offer that as something that you could choose to watch on TV?
A TV wouldn’t be apt at creating a 3D-ish AR viewing experience. It also doesn’t have the controls to navigate such a scene easily. What I’m looking for is like a holographic 3D display of the game on my table top.
With eye and head tracking in the headset, you can watch what you want to watch during live events and eventually in interactive motion pictures/motion environments.
This is just like how grocery stores have made us all become cashiers.
I'm not doing that, it's work, and I'm not going to do work.
I don't see any reason live sports would be different here, do you? It'd be cool but it hardly seems "revolutionary", more like something you do once or twice for the novelty before going back to just not doing that.
Yes with the headsets I have, you can surf the web and technically try to write code, but it's not a good experience. And those displays basically still suck. You can see the pixels, and the lenses create weird effects. If Apple has solved this, and the presence of the screen and lenses is just "forgotten", it's going to be a huge step forward. It'll be a device to actually be productive on, let alone watch movies and play games, IMO.
I have hundreds of hours in VR, doing fiddly simulator things, and it's not an enjoyable experience, but rather something you put up with to get to experience something you wouldn't otherwise get to experience, like flying a real as it gets plane.
A couple really nice monitors are $500. A laptop with a really nice built in screen is $2000, even if you want the apple logo on it.
Having infinite floating windows in VR is actually pretty useless. Either they are all tiny and unreadable because you need INSANE resolution to get 1080p quality at normal viewing distance, or you have one giant screen pressed against your face and your eyes find that very uncomfortable. VR is tiring on your eyes, worse than looking at a screen all day.
I wish rich kids would stop trying to attain a minority report style dream of computation and focus on making actual, usable, good UIs that are enjoyable, easy, and productive to work with. This is none of those.
Apple seem to think they have solved these issues. We'll see.
- existing apple ecosystem;
- the fact that this looks far more AR focused than the VR focused stuff I've currently seen;
- the public's perception of the Apple brand and its build quality (questionable if real, but an undeniable public perception nonetheless) could get around the "ugly sweat box" vibe you've described;
- the willingness for app-makers to build for the ecosystem;
- the 4k and (apparent) visual quality;
...could make this successful, or at least iPad-like in terms of dominating a market.
Hard to know for sure though until we get some actual reviews and footage of people wearing it.
I don't think it's a great comparison. The MP3 players in the pre-iPod era were all made by tiny players no-one had heard of. The Oculus in particular has absolutely massive backing and still hasn't amounted to a lot.
I suspect the differentiator will be software, not hardware. In particular the willingness of third parties to create software. Apple has a good record there at least.
Apple's product, on the other hand, is extremely wonky. Who is this thing actually for? Based on the demos, it just looks like a second screen for my phone. It's also outrageously expensive. So Apple is asking me to seriously buy into the ecosystem and have confidence that this will be an important device in my collection.
I don't know, to me this isn't like any previous Apple take on a well defined market. In fact, this is Apple's take on a very undefined market with an unknown trajectory. It kind of feels more like when Apple went off the beaten path and added a touch bar to the MacBook Pro. It was an interesting idea and a lot of very long man hours went into making it work, but at what cost? In the end, it turns out, people just wanted simple tactile keys.
that's actually the playbook for new product launches for Apple. That was the same issue with Apple watch - they had no idea who it was for when they launched the first generation. It was just a watch with a screen that told time and gave you notifications. Then, they realized people loved using it for tracking health, and each generation they keep coming up with more and more ways to use it as an all-around health tracker. Now, Apple watch is as ubiquitous on people's wrists as iPhones are in people's hands
However, point still stands, they knew they wanted an iPod shuffle with health and personal safety device at launch. They even went all out with a Nike partnership to help promote it.
It didn't catch on until several years and hardware iterations later.
If this "incredibly crisp text" is true, then I want it. Nobody has done this yet.
Agreed, but Apple have put themselves in a weird spot with the $3500 USD price tag.
For people making 10x what we make, these are on the level of $300.
And Apple gets to iterate and present v2 in a year or so, at 1/2 the price.
...One can also translate it into coffees. Just 700 coffees! Ok, better not.
It's sexy. Also, it's Apple, which means–given the price tag–it's unlikely to be shit, and if it is, I'll have some semblance of support.
In Apple's 10 minute video about this device the "AR" part came up exactly twice:
1) When the lady was interrupted by a friend to talk about sushi or something. This is literally Occulus' passthrough mode. It was a temporary "see around me" mode switch in practical usage.
2) The dad filming his kids. This was just depressing.
All the other examples had the room around them, so the "AR" part, as a glorifed skybox. The person was isolated & alone.
Like maybe Apple will figure out something that Microsoft's Hololens didn't. That's certainly possible. But they also didn't showcase any such examples, either.
When the Apple Watch was introduced, I thought that the form factor would change after a few years. It’s almost been ten years and it doesn’t seem like Apple will be making any big form factor changes to the product.
Apple will just have to make it fashionable to wear dorky scuba masks everywhere. Maybe the price tag will be sufficient…
It's an open question whether these will fit into their intended social contexts, whether that's the office, home, or public. If anywhere, I'd guess they wouldn't look weird in an office or on a single person at home (since there is nobody to look at them), but not in public or in a family setting.
Probably the fact that Apple has an excellent track record of entering nascent consumer electronics markets late (e.g. iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch) at high price points, nailing the execution, and eventually dominating said markets with arguably superior products.
It's the same story again and again. If you've already decided Apple is charging $3000 for "slapping an Apple logo on it" and nothing else, you may as well have been one of the people back in ~2001 who swore up and down that the iPod was just an overpriced late entry in a market full of mature, attractive offerings like the Archos Jukebox line. In retrospect, to be clear, you would have looked quite silly.
I'm not saying this thing is absolutely going to be a success, but the problem with previous attempts at virtual displays has been that the execution is always shit, and Apple's greatest strength is nailing the execution. I don't think betting against them here is a good bet.
And that it's very light weight and more comfortable fitting and probably wont be a sweatbox.
Apple Vision v3 will not be a sweat box. And even right now, Occulus interface has to evolve to match this. Controller has to be optional. It has to be AR.
For those downvoting, see the parent comment and also this: https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
"Lame" was a historic comment and parent commenter should have included it :)