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I agree the simple monitor replacement use case is probably one of the best in terms of real world usefulness.

But it's also the one that is most open to competition because it has no ecosystem link. There are already half a dozen alternatives at $400-$1k type range that give you virtual monitors. eg: the XReal Air [0]. It's interesting that even while they are generating some interest, it doesn't seem to me that AR glasses as monitors on their own are taking off yet in a mainstream way.

So it's going to be a question of how much more it can add to that or do better than that. Is just branding it Apple enough? Maybe. But I feel like it needs at least something else than purely being a monitor to compete with the alternatives.

[0] https://xreal.com/air/

Resolution information is conspicuously absent from this page.

Yeah, I'm not sure even this one is going to really be high res enough to make a good monitor replacement, but the other hmds I've seen certainly aren't.

11.5Mpx per eye I think it said in the video.

Or almost 50% more than 4K, per eye.

That's still not capable of producing a central "work area" the angular size of a book at the reading distance with a reasonable angular resolution figure.

Speculating but what if this screen pixel density is not uniform but much more dense in the center and they use eye tracking to shift those screens mechanically similar like the shift camera sensor array for image stabilization?

Google saccades. No chance eye movement can be reacted and catered for fast enough.

From wiki:

>Saccades to an unexpected stimulus normally take about 200 milliseconds (ms) to initiate, and then last from about 20–200 ms, depending on their amplitude (20–30 ms is typical in language reading).

Are you sure? Seems like plenty of time - even current iphone camera since many generations have 240fps and most android even handle 720fps mode - current iphones should handle it probsbly even in software (except their camera has quite high latency last time when tested) but they handle it in hardware R1 chip anyway. Since they using probably something like truedepth IR pattern projector, with 720fps grayscale camera should be easy to have very fast motion detector just checking only regions around dots

You'd have to process and mechanically move some lenses and screens at around 50hz in sync with moving imagery.

Yeah definitely this would be the most tricky part, but someone mentioned here those screen are the size of post stamp - so if that's true they probsbly closer than lenses in standard correction glasses and the shift wouldn't have to be that big

If they alternate eyes rapidly, like active 3D glasses do, couldn't that double or nearly double the perceived resolution (if each eye is offset by 1/2 pixel from the other)?

1080p per eye resolution[0], not really a proper display replacement.

Works pretty well for games and media though, these are semi-popular in the Steam Deck community.

These also have zero processing and require a device to connect to, there is no positional tracking either so the display floats wherever you move your head to.

[0] https://vr-compare.com/headset/nrealair

This is also now the most private display. You can work in public with no risk of leaks.

It'll probably work well until you start making the "boob honking" gesture with your hands. Then we'll be able to tell.

Cough, Senator Al Franken, cough.

Totally. Meta framed any VR device as a metaverse device, which I have no desire to ever participate in. I just want to use "VR" the same way I use my laptop.

With a big IF. If leak is interpreted as someone recording our screen from our back. What about someone stealing it? Are we aware with our surrounding while using it?

The presentation talks exentsively about that. Default mode is complete passthrough and you can dynamically change how much of your surroundings you want to see.

Also, it scans your eyes for identification. Someone stealing your device probably won't bring them at all closer to your data.

Same use case for me.

Laptops have terrible ergonomics it’s near impossible to get proper posture while traveling.

- Laptop stands help but introduce a new set of problems around the distance of the screen and keyboard height

- Hard to find adjustable office chairs anywhere

- If you’re in a city where you’re walking for hours a day, carrying a larger laptop gets tiring

Sounds like you know that this new product weighs less than a large laptop.

The poor ergonomics of laptops are unrelated to their weight.

The last bullet point in GC's comment was related to weight.

Hmm, I guess you could take it that way. But things that light only really get tiring if the weight is poorly distributed. It's more about the size and sort of bag it's likely to be in.

Quest Pro weights 722g while MacBook Air 15 weights 1.5kg. How can you expect it's twice heavier than Quest? It's completely unacceptable for most people's head.

It's a logical assumption and the battery is not head mounted.

I just wish this ran something more like macOS instead of iOS.

Like the iPad, it seems I wouldn’t be able to do anything productive on the Reality Pro due to the lack of any sort of meaningful coding tools.

On the demo video they show it connecting to a macOS laptop wirelessly.

Sure, but that comes with two downsides:

1. Since it's an extended display over wireless, bandwidth limitations mean you're limited to just a single 4k resolution monitor floating in space (they mentioned that it simulates a single 4k monitor in the demo)

2. You also would have to bring your laptop with you

To me, one of the major value propositions for something like the Vision Pro would be that it could replace your laptop entirely. But it doesn't seem like that will be the case, at least based on what they've announced.

I'm about 80% sure they'll come up with an USB-C -> Vision cable you can use to plug in to your Mac.

Or the power bank is an USB-C bank and you can just detach the cable from it and plug it in directly and use the laptop's battery + get a wired connection.

Well you can have the laptop as a single screen floating in space and then other floating screens that are running off the Vision Pro, e.g. your web browser, docs, etc.

Really? On flights? That struck me as a… weird use case I could never be confident enough to do. Strapping something to your face, noise cancelling headphones in, you’ve become basically unapproachable for anyone around you. Is someone that needs to get past you going to awkwardly tap you on the shoulder and you either creepily turn over to them with your projected eyes staring back, or watch in awkward silence as you disentangle the headset + AirPod max combo. I hope you don’t get the aisle seat!

> you’ve become basically unapproachable for anyone around you

Oh! you're not the captive audience of a strangers unwanted small talk then? That's been an undesirable part of traveling solo for a lot of people. The shoulder tap will still work fine if you need to get past somebody to stand up.

So I guess yeah small talk is normally bad and uninteresting, but essentially putting a blind fold on? People are that selective about who they’ll even consider socializing with?

To be fair I’m not regularly on planes/trains so maybe I’m just not annoyed enough by it.

Not everyone wants to "socialise" with random people.

I have a set amount of hours I can be social every day, I prefer to use those towards the people I care about. Not someone who's bored on a flight and wants to chat.

> but essentially putting a blind fold on?

Literal blindfolds are standard travel gadgets though

The audio isn't noise cancelling. The speakers are on the strap right by your ears so you'll still hear everything else around you. If anything my concern on flights would be that someone next to me can hear my audio, not that I can't hear them. (but maybe you can also use AirPods)

You can also adjust your "immersion level". As in, have the screen floating in front of you and still see the space around you, or have reality totally blanked out. Seems like at a low immersion level you'd have no problem turning to address someone trying to get your attention. The worst part might be how ridiculous you look talking to and addressing someone normally while wearing these. (though perhaps like the AirPods, the perception of it being a goofy look will fade with time)

They showed AirPods working with the headset on a flight during the presentation at one point.

That’s what I was referring to, the ecosystem pairing seems pretty tight so I could imagine that will be a common combo.

Ah that totally makes sense and seems like it's Apple's way of tacitly acknowledging that people around you can hear the built-in speakers. With the immersion level turned down it seems like the noise cancelling AirPods will be a bigger hurdle to someone getting your attention than the headset itself. (putting aside the silliness you'll feel talking to someone while casually wearing it)

They also announced new feature to airpods something liked auto adaptive immersion that they detect what to noise cancel and what not dynamically depending on changing environment. On video they showed someone when someone start talking to you they will reduce immersion and the same when you start talking.

Similarly when when showed up close to you while you are in fill apple vision pro VR impression mode they will reduce it see this person slightly blended with your VR world

The immersion level is big, to be fair. Definitely good to be able to let the real world bleed in a bit.

The presentation showed AirPods in the flight scene. Presumably noise canceling on for a flight.

"The worst part might be how ridiculous you look talking to and addressing someone normally while wearing these."

Getting to avoid the typical in-flight entertainment would be worth that price, IMO.

> you’ve become basically unapproachable

I don't want people talking to me on planes.

Hey, it’ll work! Just not a product for me.

This is no different to how many people behave on long haul flights anyway. Face mask on, eye mask on, ear plugs in. Isolated from everybody else as much as they can be, trying to sleep, and they manage it in isle seats.

Also, I remember TotalBiscuit talking about using an Oculus headset to watch films on a plane and it being a better experience than the screen in front for him (I don't quite remember why). So it's not a new concept and this device just makes it less cumbersome, I guess.

> I don't quite remember why

Many such system (that I've used anyway) play very low resolution movies, on bad screens, using the laggiest Android tablets you can imagine. And you have all the other things in your eyesight distracting you.

Not to mention that they pause constantly for in-flight announcements about duty free shopping, donating unused international currency, tray tables, dimming cabin lights, etc. That alone makes it worth bringing your own content on tablet or phone with your own headphones. If a host approaches about a meal choice, you'd see them through the headset. If there was an emergency, someone would tap you on the shoulder.

I'm introverted so it's actually a nightmare when people want to have conversations with me the whole flight. I do intercontinental flights (10-15 hour) every 2-3 weeks. I'm either sleep, have my headphones on, or both.

I don't think it would feel too much worse than waking someone on the aisle up.

Being unapproachable on flights is a decidedly good thing IMO. Also, so many people already use noise cancelling headphones and/or sleep masks, how is this any different?

I've done this with the NReal Airs on flights. Absolutely amazing.

Using a laptop on a flight is very uncomfortable for me. Just being able to push the keyboard to the back of the tray table and push the screen out into the row in front of me would be worth a lot to me.

Not $3500, but a lot.

How is it different to someone sleeping?

> As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500. To wear these on flights, in small hotel rooms, etc. is definitely a game changer. I have no use for video games so the Quest stuff with the controllers never made sense.

Eh? Things like watching videos on a flight were tried with Samsung Gear VR or Google Day Dream. It flopped. Want a virtual office on a flight? Well fire up Virtual Desktop on an Occulus today and you've got exactly that - no controller needed.

On a flight something like Occulus' passthrough mode looks perfectly adequate - after all, the whole point in that scenario is to isolate not to socialize. So the plain/train/bus usage seems questionable, and do you really want to travel with something that bulky?

This is not the same experience https://youtu.be/74KInxQ8suI?t=208

The low res, jerkiness, having to use controllers, etc. wether or not the apple experience is worth it is up to the person.

I don't see these as "metaverse" glasses or VR/AR as much as a $3500 display.

FWIW, that's a 4 year old video. MKBHD's video of the quest pro:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jUIE2l_9ig8

But but but. Tim said that “Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,”

"'Computing' is a trademarked word owned by Apple Computer Inc, Cuptertino California"

GearVR was a precursor to the Oculus Go, which was quite successful. It showed that lots of people wanted a device to watch media and user retention was pretty good:

From Carmack's Oculus Connect 2018 talk:

> With Oculus Go, about 80 percent of usage time has been for viewing "media" and only 20 percent for gaming.

> Oculus Go and Rift are much "stickier," he says, with users that "come back... week to week and spend a lot of time in it."

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/09/carmack-oculus-quests...

what's the virtual desktop on a plane situation you're describing ? i thought it needed airlink to a local computer or a really fast internet connection to a remote computer but maybe i'm not up to date

if the vision pro gives me a laptop-mac experience in vr without needing a separate computer with me, that's a pretty compelling use case to me

You should be able to use the headset alone as a "ipad pro" experience, computing power.

And you should be able to have your separate computer, with the lid closed, and it still be running, projecting its desktop inside the headset.

(based upon today's videos)

gotcha thanks, i didn't catch all of the presentation and only now getting around to reading the recaps

will be interesting to see what's possible in their os for it vs macos or ios

The Vision Pro has 2 hours of battery life. You're not exactly going to replace your laptop with it.

good point it's got a custom connector to the headset but hoping that it'll be possible to use a bigger battery pack or seat power outlets/usb will provide enough to keep it going longer than 2 hours

What you say is technically true but you still need the controllers for setup and that is quite annoying if you travel a lot. I read OPs level of travel as > 8 hours in air per week and > 3 nights in hotel per week.

At that level this is an easy buy.

It's super big. Much bigger than a thin laptop.

And you need your laptop also because you can't work in it the whole day.

Gz now you have to travel with two laptops each 3k expensive and you look totally funny with it in anything public.

You're still gonna have to type on something.

A keyboard fits on the tray a lot easier than a laptop if youve never tried it.

Might want to check out the Tap XR.

https://www.tapwithus.com/product/tap-xr/

From the video, you can turn the headset into an external display for your Mac[0]. This is critical since I'm doubtful I'd be able to get much work down in visionOS alone.

The use case I imagine is that you still use your laptop keyboard and trackpad like normal, but now you just have a mirrored display floating above it in whatever the ideal size/position is for you. For this to work of course you have to still be able to see your laptop. But if the marketing is to be believed it'll do that quite well.

([0]: Apple already supports turning an iPad into an external Mac display and amazingly it works quite well. It sets up a direct device-to-device wireless link (awdl/llw) and there's no noticeably latency. I assume the headset will take a similar approach)

Either bring a keyboard (like a low-profile mechanical keyboard) or fold your laptop screen down half-way and dim the screen.

feel free to be optimistic about this and help the progress by being an early adopter.

although do not discount the skepticism made through objective observations. apple has tried ar for better part of a decade with limited success. ar/vr/mixed-reality headsets have come a long way but the realities of current technologies remain.

on the other hand, we've had established music players before ipod, people using internet-connected phones before the iphone.

in retrospect, google glasses wasn't a bad form factor all along than these ski googles!

> As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500.

On trains you can plug it in, but how can it be used for air travel when the external battery lasts up to 2 hours?

You plug it in to the outlet in your business class seat.

Throw in a USB C power bank in your backpack? Also, most seats (even economy) tends to have a usb outlet these days.

No power banks on plane

In which part of the world? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of powerbanks not being allowed in carry on luggage. I travel with them all the time.

Most economy long haul flights have power outlets. I do at least 20 ten hour flights a year and always sit in economy so for me, the battery power isn’t an issue.

It's a display and a computer.