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Comment by jb1991 | Hacker News Reader

jb1991

I use quite a few Apple products every day of the last 10 years, and I’m very impressed with certainly all the technology and reviews and explanations of how this device works and what the user experience will be. However, this is the first Apple device that really makes me pause. All of the marketing material, the WWDC videos, all of it feels very uncomfortable to see all these people isolating themselves in a room with big goggles on. I find it really hard to comprehend this is the direction that technology is taking our lives. Imagine walking into a house, and a lot of the people are just sitting around by themselves in corners with goggles on. The whole thing just feels very strange and post apocalyptic to me.

And these 3D spacial moment recordings, imagine children growing up in a house where when something nice happens, the parent rushes to put on goggles and stare at them through them, their little virtual eyes displayed on the outside, it’s frankly creepy to me.

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You're taking a backwards-looking view of this.

Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. "It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings".

In fact the very opposite is the case. Now, we go into nature to isolate ourselves.

In the future, going into virtual reality will be where you go to interact with others, and you'll take the goggles off to isolate yourself.

There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:

- your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else

- you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost

- you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required

- you spend zero time on travelling

- you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa

As long as the technology is good enough (and please remember that qualifier, because people normally respond with an implicit assumption that the technology is not good enough) - as long as the technology is good enough VR is strictly better than current reality.

You forgot the /s (i hope).

> people normally respond with an implicit assumption that the technology is not good enough

Because it's not good enough and there's no real plausible means by which it will be good enough.

I mean this was a core argument in the Matrix, and many agreed that it wasn't worth doing even when the virtual reality was absolutely flawless and a land of limitless bounty.

And there's no tech in progress that has a path to that kind of immersive experience. Even if that kind of thing is possible which I have doubts about my great-grand-children will be long dead by the time it shows up.

You're not going to hang out with friends in foreign countries for free you're going to be isolated in your house with a piece of plastic on your face.

We're hanging out with friends in foreign countries for free right now on this website, many people have friends they only communicate with via text, and some only with voice, and others with video, and others physically

No we’re not we are staring at a glowing screen and typing stuff.

So what's the difference between standing next to someone talking to them, and typing to them?

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law

We'll make cars so cheap only the rich can afford horses. We'll make air travel so cheap, only the rich can afford travel by ship. We'll make AR/VR so compelling only the rich can afford travel.

Asimov kind-of wrote about this phenomenon in 1956's "The Naked Sun", the second of his Elijah Bailey series. I won't give plot spoilers, but the main connection is that a group of people on another planet have grown accustomed to virtual holographic "viewing" being the main mode of interacting with other people, while physically being in their presence is deemed unwholesome, embarrassing, or otherwise uncouth, causing people to go to great extents to avoid it.

I don't know that Vision Pro is necessarily taking us on that sort of path; I'll probably hold my judgment until they've proliferated enough that I actually know someone who has one. But your point that the virtual world is becoming where we go to interact with other people while physical spaces are used for individual isolation is a good one, and my contribution here is to tie it to a book that is over 65 years old to show that it's not even a particularly new idea.

Also Philip K. Dick in _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_

"while physically being in their presence is deemed unwholesome, embarrassing, or otherwise uncouth, causing people to go to great extents to avoid it."

Reminds me of the sex scene in Demolition Man.

Your proving his point of the dystopia

I wonder what impacts this might have in mental and physical health of people

Wow..... I have to completely disagree with you and feel quite sorry that's the way you feel about your life. You sound similar to the Japanse Hikikomori men that I read about.

1. People do not really go into nature to "isolate" themselves. As you said, you can do that in your own house. There's a plethora of reason nature is good for.

2. Everything else you're listing as "advantages" are less equivalents of what can be done in real life already.

3. Hanging out with friends virtually is no where near the same emotionally or physically. This has been scientifically proven. You NEED to be talking to people in person and interacting with them. Otherwise, you will be emotionally stunted.

I hike for days to get to parts of the wilderness that no one else is in. I do not go to nature to hear or see other people. Gp is spot on with that.

I'm very normal and sociable and well adjusted. But our relationship with our surroundings and each other is changed due to technology. And will continue to evolve.

I meant to say "just to isolate themselves". Yes that's sometimes part of the reason but typically it's not the only reason, as you can isolate yourself inside your own home quite easily.

It will evolve into a mess of mental illness and likely the end of our race in my opinion if that's the way we go. We can already see this happening. Less people are reproducing, more people are mentally ill than ever, a lot of people see the human race as a blight on the planet etc. We will not evolve, we'll just die out or be something so far removed from what we are it won't be recognizable. It's obvious that digital communication doesn't meet our emotional and physical needs.

Also, did you ever think about the reason why you're "isolating" in nature? It's likely to get away from the modern technical world that's stripping you of something. Sort of ironic in regard to your stance on wholeheartedly accepting every facet of VR into our daily lives.

> In the future, going into virtual reality will be where you go to interact with others, and you'll take the goggles off to isolate yourself.

This sounds deeply shitty.

With that framing, I agree. However, I don’t think it needs to be. I’m hoping it’s more that virtual reality is where to go to interact professionally and you’ll take off the goggles for your personal time.

If, instead of needing to live in close proximity to work opportunities, often in an expensive and crowded city with a long commute, people could live wherever they want and commute virtually, that would be a huge positive in my book. That is already possible for some professions, such as software development. But good VR/AR will open the door to other professions that still require in person collaboration today and will improve those that are already remote capable. Then, at the end of the day, you take off your headset and live your life wherever/however you choose.

Yeah I agree that work is by far the most optimistic use case here. Still though, I work remotely, and it kinda sucks, for exactly this same reason. It is certainly a huge advantage to be able to live anywhere and not be tied to any specific location to get work done, but there are huge disadvantages too. I haven't personally figured out what I think the right way to square the circle is, but I think it might be more like the trend toward 2-3 hybrid work weeks rather than total isolated remote. At least for most people.

We're already texting far more often than talking, in person or on the phone. Perhaps you're used to that and don't feel strange, but I bet there are people who consider that shitty.

Yes, that is also strange and shitty. (But actually no, I talk in person a lot more than I text. I have to make an effort to see people that way, but I think it's worth the effort.)

Weren’t they trying to sell high priced virtual real estate in the metaverse next to snoop dog? Would decor not be monetized just like skins and items in gaming?

I would argue that the ancient man living in the woods is absolutely right about cities—a person in a concrete jungle is dangerously isolated from reality. We know the negative effects of too little sunlight, we know the positive effects of exposure to nature. We know the negative environmental effects of the infrastructure that makes the concrete jungle possible, but those effects are invisible to the resident of the jungle.

Also, it's pretty clear that cities are too large for our social apparatus. The ancient man living in a tribe has a deeper personal connection with his fellow villagers than anything we develop in a city, much less in the worldwide city we call the internet.

Given all that, I think it's reasonable to take a backwards-looking approach to this. Evolution happens on the time scale of millennia, and our biology has had only had a few hundred years to adjust to the modern city. Rushing headlong along the same path into full, always-connected VR is hazardous.

> Also, it's pretty clear that cities are too large for our social apparatus

Citation needed? Humans have been living in cities for thousands of years.

At an extraordinary cost to human health. Sewage problems spread disease. Malnourishment due to only eating bread. The average height of a Paleolithic man far exceeded the height of a Neolithic man.

This is Berkson's paradox - Neolithic men may have been less healthy, but that could be because the hunter-gatherers died or stopped having children when they ran out of food rather than living off bread.

Cities of the past are nothing like those of today. Nor the lifestyle of them.

Taking the Roman Empire as an example: Rome was by far the largest city in the empire at a total of ~1 million people. The others were estimated to have 500 thousand or fewer, with only 25-30% of the population living in a city at all.

Modern cities are enormous by comparison and our urbanization rate is completely flipped. 80% of people in the US live in a city, and we have 50 metro areas with a higher population than Rome had during the empire. Our largest metro area is New York/Newark/Jersey City at 20 million people, 20x that of imperial Rome.

And remember that Rome itself was an anomaly in its day, and the Roman Empire in general was an anomaly in European history.

> Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. "It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings".

Forest man is on to something. Can I live in his family’s hovel and keep my antibiotics? Thanks.

Chances are you won’t ever need those pills provided that you survive beyond age 5.

If this is the future I do not want to live in it. No VR is ever going to match the actual experience of travelling to a place unlike any you've ever been. No emulated persona is ever going to match looking into a loved one's eyes. I can see the benefits of AR/VR for productivity or for niche consumption, but it could be 'strictly better than current reality' only with the narrowest of cherrypicked definitions. No thanks.

Wait until neuralink becomes a real thing.

Do I want it? Of course not.

While I agree with your sentiment, if VR becomes a 99.999999999% match it’ll change human existence whether we personally like it or not.

In the future I'm sure there will be ways to manipulate/drug your nerves, emotions, to want to live in that World and enjoy it.

WHYYYY?

You are approaching the territory of describing enslavement in your description.

I can't tell if you're trolling or not...

No, this idea was stupid when Zuckerberg promoted it, and it's still stupid with Cook promoting it. VR goggles are a dead end. Invisible VR or AR has lots of applications, but the technology is years away.

Your comment is such a great bait :D As much as things could be really cool in VR, the simplest argument here is that as a human you can do much more than just look at things and listen to things...

> There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:

> - your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else

Except it isn't.

> - you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost

Except you can't.

> - you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required

Except you can't.

> - you spend zero time on travelling

Except you don't.

> - you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa

Except you don't.

This is an incredibly dystopian view.

Let's not kid ourselves that VR will not be monetized to the breaking point just like any other platform. Enshitification is inevitable.

In other words, corporations will do what they already do, sell lies, create demand for those lies and in exchange demand more of the irreplaceable things like time, land and resources.

You are not looking far enough ahead.

In the future people will be in their pods, only connected within virtual reality and everything will feel as if it was real.

This allows for much more optimal space and resources management.

Either you left off the "/s" or you're missing their point. Who will be doing the space and resource management?

This is not a future where individual consumers have control. This is a future where corporations give consumers enough of an illusion of control that they don't notice how much they've actually given up.

> Who will be doing the space and resource management?

AI, obviously, they are far better and meticulous planners then humans. AI will evolve to maximise shareholder value at all costs.

There is no guaranteed path for the future. Humanity makes the future it will live in. So I am just looking ahead in a different direction from you.

I find it hard to not throw a plethora of insults at you for the vision you endorsed. The Matrix was not an instruction manual, it was a warning.

Why do you want that to be the future?

I admire your restraint in engaging with GP -- kudos!

FWIW, it looks (to me) like "the world's most comfortable jail for your face".

That you cannot even peer out of this jail, but instead have an ersatz rendered version of you depicted on the outside, is even worse.

Our trajectory of pursuing a frictionless world, at any cost, is going to be our doom.

I find value in maintaining HN a civilized online space.

In the future it won't be possible to have a life as it is like now and it's only possible in virtual realities. The scenarios that are normal and natural for people can only be offered in those pods.

You might not even be able to tell any difference when you are in a pod. In fact you could be in the pod right this very moment and you could be the main player where all scenarios are created and catered specifically for you to throw various challenges at you which might feel stressful, but you'll be able to surmount them. These scenarios give meaning to your life.

As I expected you do not want to engage in actual dialogue and answer the question I asked. You are just posturing that it is inevitable and therefore do not want to answer why you favour this dystopia to the detriment of any other possible future.

Moreover you are also steering this towards the simulation hypothesis which is a dead end for a debate.

I will no longer entertain this charade.

I haven't said I favour that. It does seem inevitable however. How would you expect humans to end up? In 10 years? In 50 years? In 200 years?

People are already out of their natural habitats, and they will be even more. Is there going to be some sort of magical future moment where people achieve what they wanted to achieve and will they be happy?

How could it happen if environment is going to completely change? What once gave rewards to humans, in the future can not, since there wouldn't be similar events that have built humans throughout the evolution.

People are already addicted to smartphones, people are depressed and have issues with their mental states, despite World being more comfortable and safe to navigate than ever before, people are overall not necessarily more happy.

Being in a permanent state of happiness doesn't exist for humans and it shouldn't.

It doesn't right now, but it's debatable whether it should or should not.

E.g. if you are able to produce a method or substance to produce heroin like effects in people without tolerance build up, should people be allowed to consume that?

> Except you can't.

Some of these objections sound like saying we're not really listening to music on our phones, I guess because there's not really a band playing, or because of the lossy sound encoding or something.

In fact, we _are_ listening to music, in a way that people seem to enjoy and which has been democratized far beyond previous possibilities for listening to music.

First of all, people still go to concerts and will not stop anytime soon. Even if people enjoy music in a variety of ways, people very much still enjoy live music for being live. So it is a bad counter example.

Secondly, all of the examples above were examples of trying to avoid reality. A pathological form of escapism. Why push so hard for such a shitty future where escapism is the only option? Black Mirror is a warning not a manual. Are you really that unimaginative that you can not imagine a better future than the shittiest of dystopias? Also, good enough technology is not an argument. More optimistic scifi like Star Trek has the holodeck with a realism level of ~100%. Yet people don't just spend all of their time in it because reality is amazing in it's own way. Why bring about a future where reality is so undesirable?

Also, as I said, there is absolutely no way VR spaces will not get enshitified the same way all current platforms are. In all VR spaces you will absolutely be the product while also being milked for every single micro-transaction you can pay.

> Secondly, all of the examples above were examples of trying to avoid reality.

1) What makes reality important? 2) What is the definition of reality?

> In all VR spaces you will absolutely be the product while also being milked for every single micro-transaction you can pay.

How does that differ from reality? Are you not paying for the walls that are presumably around you right now?

I will not dignify your questions with an answer because they are a philosophical derailment. And turning the conversation into one about solipsism and epistemological nihilism is a dead end. Related to this, the simulation hypothesis is nothing but repackaged theism. Many have treaded this territory and nothing of use was discovered.

Besides, I was the one who asked first the much more pragmatic question of why some people consider such a dystopian future to be desirable.

You pose these questions, and then when asked to clarify, claim derailment?

If you think reality is important, then it's upon you to define reality and why you think it's important.

the answer is "the law of cause and effect" and "the problems"

More like "we're not really listening to music on our phones for free". These days everything is a subscription. Then games are released where every cosmetic change is paid for, so you can be max level with the best gear but you'll still look like a beginner character because you haven't paid for the cosmetic upgrades to go along with the extra gear you won along the way.

Change the wallpaper in your virtual apartment, huh? You'll absolutely be paying for that. Some people will save money by just coping with the walls being non-stop ads for anti-depressants and pills for erectile dysfunction. Perhaps they'll take their headset off and do everything through command lines. Pity if the headset eventually evolves into implants that pump images and sounds directly into your brain.

Well I don’t know about you, but if I want a free app to change my wallpaper and there isn’t one I’ll just write one. It’s totally a choice to pay.

Talking about wallpapers is derailing the conversation. The point was that just as we see the social networks of today and the games of today getting enshitified so will every VR experience get enshitified.

As for writing it yourself, care to talk about the price of the developer account, the approval process, the risk of getting banned, the ever changing API surface, the time you use for all of this, etc. etc.? You are NOT the owner of anything in the "metaverse". You are just allowed the privilege of playing in the platform owners sandbox as long as you pay. When the platform owner will decide it is profitable to exploit users ability to set wallpapers there is nothing you as a user or as a developer on top of the platform will be able to do to counter that.

Here, read this (1) and watch this (2) and tell me you feel confident the same will not happen to any "metaverse".

(1) https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16heGLKlTA

Your app does not need to get approved if you are the only one using it - in fact you don’t even need to have a developer account if you’re the only one using it and are ok resigning the app occasionally.

With regards to enshittification: all the examples listed were software companies or service companies. I don’t see any hardware companies on there, and I’d go so far as to say hardware companies that sell with high margins do not undergo enshittification. From the article: “… they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers …” Apple doesn’t have business customers. Their core business strategy is not to sell ads, or data, but rather hardware.

Your first paragraph misses the point. The argument was not about the current rules of any current platform. It was about the potential for abuse on future VR/AR platforms by platform owners. The platform owners are the rule makers and can change the rules at any point. Others platforms like the gaming consoles are proof the rules can be a lot tighter.

Apple is in no way excluded from enshitification.

Apple refusing to support more than one external monitor on non-Pro or non-Max M* laptops is an example in hardware by virtue of being intentional market segmentation.

On the software side, ads are slowly encroaching previously ad-free spaces on Apple software too. Apple is also a services company providing everything from an ads platform to apps marketplaces to media to payment services to banking services and leveraging their position in anticompetitive ways. It's platforms are subject to the same pressures of enshitification.

The part you quoted is just one of the steps. The strategy for a platform is to act as an indispensable middleman and abuse everyone both upstream and downstream.

As long as the technology is good enough...but it's not, so quit shilling

You omitted my favorite use case: reducing commuting and business travel.

the mental gymnastics people are using to justify dropping $3500 on this is amazing

>Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. "It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings".

A city is literally millions of people all wanting to live in the same place to be close to other people. I couldn't wait to move from the countryside to a city in order to be near more people like myself.

Communications technology is great, it helps me connect with even more people with common interests, as right now, and with my family while we are apart. It is in no way shape or form a substitute for being physically with people. There's something primally satisfying and emotionally anchoring about actually being together. That's why online discussions can so easily escalate into verbal knife fights and abuse. It's emotionally disconnected and I suspect the same will be true of VR.

I don't know if you've ever seen Serial Experiments Lain. In it the protagonist slowly descends into an underground of hackers while finding herself isolated in a room with all sorts of mid 90s aesthetic crt monitors, servers, tubes and wires. And that is more what my current office looks like as opposed to someone hanging out on a couch wearing this headset. If the user interface is to be believed you can in theory do real work with just your eyes and your voice to dictate. It got me thinking. What is really a dystopia? What if our current keyboard and mouse desktop setups, laptops, and displays are the real dystopia?

Thank you for bringing Serial Experiments Lain back into my recent memory.

Literally laughed out loud to this comment:D

Notably that show features a gargoyle who seems very proud to be walking the streets with all their cool hardware.

With the Vision Pro, Apple is going to let us become the prettiest gargoyle at the ball.

> it the protagonist slowly descends into an underground of hackers while finding herself isolated in a room with all sorts of mid 90s aesthetic crt monitors, servers, tubes and wires.

My Meta account name is “regretbuy” (IIRC), but I love the menu scene in Superhot because it looks so similar to your description.

> What if our current keyboard and mouse desktop setups, laptops, and displays are the real dystopia?

Im not following. Why would that be the dystopia?

same antisocial outcome but shittier subjective experience

Shittier in that it’s real rather than virtual?

Shittier in that my partner's hands and sometimes back are wrecked from a relatively short time using them.

I’m not sure wearing headsets all day and air typing is going to be a lot better ergonomically.

You should look into how the Vision Pro works, it actually doesn't include air typing. You can use a keyboard from traditional to a small one in your lap, if you want to use a virtual keyboard you're not lifting your arms to select letters, and most text entry is voice because STT is good enough now.

there's a scene in Lain where a junkie is wandering around, wearing chunky AR goggles, haptic gloves and a backpack full of computer, festooned with cables, gibbering euphorically about how wired in he feels.

so the show portrays AR - at least in that setting - as almost degenerate.

of course, Lain has an unfair advantage in not really needing any kind of interface to live in the Wired.

Lain turned out to be an AI iirc

I'm hoping for more of a Dennou Coil future myself.

The dystopia is corporate control and the lack of freedom to hack our device as we wish.

So I just watched Serial Experiments Lain last weekend, and the wires are a strong aesthetic in the show, but that is not what the show is actually about. The horror at the heart of the show is about depersonalization caused by constantly being Connected to the subconscious of other people. It's a show about the fears of a constantly connected world brought on by the internet, not the user interface of that connection.

I think the (standing-)desktop setup with keyboard, mouse, and monitor(s) is already close to the ergonomic optimum for any kind of work that is heavily text based (from Excel sheets to technical and prose writing to coding to email and chat, and forums like here), despite the ergonomic shortcomings that remain. (The one exception being pure reading or markup tasks, where tablet-style devices are great.) Our bodies haven’t really evolved for written communication, but it’s nevertheless still the most effective in many ways, given how our hands and eyes work. I don’t think there is any dystopia in it. Rather, we should embrace it for the many purposes it is effective for, and work to improve it within its paradigm, rather than chasing a fantasy of replacing it with somehow more intuitive or natural means, which generally turn out to only be good for casual or low-text use.

It'll become accepted I'm sure, if it breaks through; could anyone have imagined walking into a living room 30 years ago [0] and seeing everyone hunched over a phone? Or 80 years ago and seeing everyone around a television?

I mean I get what you mean, but I also think that some things get normalized in subsequent generations. Our 15 year old and his gf have their phones out at all times, frequently switching to interacting, glancing at random videos, messaging, games, etc. Unthinkable 20 years ago, but for them it's tuesday.

That said, VR headsets have been a thing for a while now, at all price ranges; Google Cardboard and clones would make any smartphone into a rudimentary 3d headset, but as far as I know nobody normalized that into their daily life to e.g. watch videos. Head-mounted DVD players were a thing as well for a while I think, but again, never became normalized. Google Glass was the first 'big' AR system, and it was hated for being so obvious and its wearers being so blatant in glancing one way and having a camera aimed at you (which might have been recording) at all times; it might be interesting to see what today's iterations, Snapchat's Spectacles [1], Facebook / Ray Ban's Stories [2], Bose Frames or Amazon Echo Frames will do, I think they'll be much more accepted because they're not as obvious.

[0] I had to edit that one a few times, had to think about when mobile phones became daily use items

[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/us/snapchat-spectacles-2-0,review-...

[2] https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/ray-ban-stories

> could anyone have imagined walking into a living room 30 years ago and seeing everyone hunched over a phone?

True, but I don't recall smartphones ever being unveiled with promotional videos of people all being hunched over them at dinner.

Smartphones were promoted by enabling us to do things on the go: making and receiving phone calls, getting directions, finding restaurants in the area. This is why this feels different: the experience that is promoted is one that feels already slightly dystopian.

I wonder if anyone will feel brave enough to wear this on a bike...

Until the time they're arrested for using a smartphone while biking, or for relying on the computer not to malfunction just to avoid riding blind.

Skiing was what I was wondering.

Specialized AR goggles exist. Not for me but I guess I can understand the appeal to some.

https://ostloong.com/sirius/

Recon Jet made an HMD that is sorta similar to Google Glass, but designed more like ski goggles / sunglasses. One of its use cases when it came out around ten years ago was skiing, but I never used it for that. I mainly used mine biking with its ANT+ integration.

Or driving. It would interesting to have directions overlaid on the view of the road. The exit I need to take could be outlined and highlighted for example.

Until it crashes, and then you crash.

It's not proper AR, It's VR with passthrough which means it's purely active. If it fails it goes black.

I can’t imagine putting a CPU as complicated as the M2 in between my eyeballs and the road. It is too big and complicated.

I guess we don’t really know what the R1 does. It is hypothetically possible that there’s a failsafe road-eyeball path just goes through that chip, maybe that could be made as reliable as various other critical computers…

It's not as failsafe as glass.

I guarantee you Mercedes or Lamborghini would _love_ to have a fully enclosed interior with screens instead of windows, but it's a critical safety feature and anything that makes it less likely to work is just not happening.

We’re basically converging on fully enclosed interiors anyway, just without the VR headset (the pillars for the windows are ridiculous nowadays). Maybe the argument could be made that it’d be safer for everyone (especially pedestrians waiting at crosswalks) if drivers had a headset system.

Getting rid of the windows and making the headset totally necessary seems like riskier proposition though. For the Apple thing on a normal car, the backup option of taking off the headset is always there (assuming sufficient warning can be given before a failure, which is a big assumption, but should be doable).

Drive-by-wire systems exist, so it isn’t as if replacing some normally mechanical steps with electronics is impossible. The electronics just need to be made sufficiently reliable.

Wasn’t there a vampire movie maybe fifteen years ago, where the vampires drove fully enclosed cars via camera during the day? Daybreakers?

There is a separate processing path for the video pass through that is suppose to be distinct from the OS. If one crashes the other shouldn’t.

Yes I know the difference between in theory and practice .

I think that's both inevitable and terrifying.

I'm thinking it might have an onboard battery that affords a few minutes after the current battery is depleted to allow hot swaps.

Not a great solution to using these in such situations, because bugs as you say, but it might be a feature that allows people to feel so daring. Oof.

The iPhone was introduced as having three features:

1. An iPod - that was already isolating people

2. A phone

3. An internet communicator

I’m confused. Are we judging a product category based on how it’s promoted, or how it’s used?

I don’t think my opinion of smartphones would be any different if early promotions had shown the downsides, or bigger upsides, or bizarre and unrealistic scenarios. Am I wrong to be anchored on how they’re actually used, which literally nobody foresaw?

We're judging it based on the vision for how it will be used, as evidenced through its initial promotion.

Do you judge Viagra based on how well it reduces blood pressure?

I agree that demo was dumb and dystopian. But it's silly to latch on to one imagined usage, ignore the others, and have no interest in what the reality will be.

It would be silly to latch onto it, if it were the vision of some random fan, but it is the vision of the company creating the product, so no, it's not silly to consider it critically.

I don't think OP is saying smartphones aren't dystopian in practice, just that no one set out to create the dystopia. That part of the Vision demo showed that the designers thought that this additional contribution to our dystopia was a positive thing, and that's concerning.

Precisely. And you can withness this in sibling threads. For some reason, today some people actually openly desire or pretend to desire the dystopia.

My suspicion is that this is related to the longtermist movement.

There’s been backlash to being on phones all day. iOS even guilt trips you every week with stats. It even guilt trips you for being too sedentary. If anyone is going to guilt trip you for doing too much of something, probably apple.

You should understand the guilt is on the recipient side (you). Here the sender (Apple) may have genuine concern about their users health or have marketing incentives to express the same concern. Probably a mix of both.

Or Apple just has liability concerns so it includes these options as a feature.

Regardless of whether they are doing it out of genuine concern or to cover their own asses, they aren't reporting my usage or lack of activity so that I can not do something about it. If they wanted me addicted, they would do something else.

That is exactly my understanding too. Though I think « inform » is more appropriate than « guilt trip »: my first understanding of your comment was « Apple wants to makes me feel guilt when using their products ».

I’ve never felt guilt from those stats. They might make me evaluate the last week, but IMHO guilt isn’t really a helpful emotion when it comes to past (not active) behavior.

> could anyone have imagined walking into a living room 30 years ago [0] and seeing everyone hunched over a phone? Or 80 years ago and seeing everyone around a television?

True, but is it so different to be hunched over a phone than hunched over a book. You can still just look up and be present. With a headset, well… there isn’t such a parallel.

Maybe the Sony Walkman is a better comparison because finally you could go out in the world buffered from it.

Sure ! And still the Walkman only takes one sense away, AR/VR intervene in two senses.

> You can still just look up and be present.

AV is slightly different b/c it's trying to let people still be present. Is it enough and will it work still remains to be seen.

Isn’t AR comparable to a headset the same way VR is to noise-cancelled headsets ?

GP said 'AV' (not 'AR') for 'Apple Vision' I assume - which 'tries to allow people to be present' through the 'EyeSight' feature (where it reveals the wearer's eyes, becomes translucent).

Correct. Apple Vision (AV) is also AR first which will help people remain present in their environment. Will it work that way in practice remains to be seen.

and apple just showcased how their headset DOES allow for intrusion and awareness of the world around it

I was getting an economics graduate degree 20 years ago, and at that time we had economic reports describing the upward arc of mobile phones to be exactly what they became, with all the negative social issues we see today forecast with "we'll need to do something about this" repeated over and over. It was seen as the mechanism the "rest of the world" gets access to computers and the Internet.

Yes people imagined that. There's a movie about the company General Magic where you will see people filmed at the time imagining just that.

Seeing people hunched over watching the news isn't honestly that much of a stretch: https://twitter.com/HistoryInPics/status/411376204231753728?...

> Our 15 year old and his gf have their phones out at all times, frequently switching to interacting, glancing at random videos, messaging, games, etc.

Yes, and this is a bad thing.

Was it better when we all gathered around the radio?

> gathered around

Yes, because by definition this is a shared experience. Phones are isolating because no one knows what you're looking at and it's rather hard to share the small screen even if you want to.

young people definitely gather online. people revel in twitch streams, voice chat on disc, and all sorts of online gaming, video calling, and more. these are still shared experiences although they are not in person.

there is a lot of isolating tech (most social media) but it's also quite cultural-- yes it's global, but america f.e. is largely idealistic and materialistic and it shows.

i don't think the mode of interaction is the issue

Yeah the question at the root of this is how much the "in person" thing matters. I think the answer turns out to be "a lot". And back when I was in college a decade and a half ago, I was super optimistic about the internet and wrote essays arguing that the answer to this would turn out to be "not at all". But I think after watching this develop for a long time now, that it has not gone well.

Yep, like the other commenter said, it's right there in your comment: "gather".

This whole thing would have been much better if they’d positioned it as a work and personal entertainment machine, similar to a bunch of monitors with a Mac mini, and replacing iPads or single-viewer TVs.

By trying to show interactions with other people, it’s just highlights a weird isolation - what it’s not pointing it out is that the advantage for people like me who work in a private home office where I’m already isolated - this just helps me work there better. I don’t have to cram my small table with monitors any more, and when I do watch a movie or show there I can do it on a giant screen.

Even the cameras could have been highlighted much better, either by photographing a complex machine, or an art collaboration across countries.

> This whole thing would have been much better if they’d positioned it as a work and personal entertainment machine

Honestly most of the presentation had this exact vibe for me. That the Vision Pro is directly positioned as a device for deep immersion, like movies, gaming, and engrossing work. The two exceptions I remember were those moments where a person plopped their Vision Pro on to take a 3D moment of their children and the one where a person answered a FaceTime call with the Vision Pro while packing their suitcase. I don't see those moments happening in reality with this sort of device.

> similar to a bunch of monitors with a Mac mini, and replacing iPads or single-viewer TVs.

Except the Vision Pro maps your home, visually and acoustically. I suppose it's acceptable if one already has a Roomba and an Alexa.

From a privacy point of view? Yeah, I’m ok with that if it stays on device, as is usually the case with Apple. The iPads and phones have lidars as well, no? And I’m going to be napping my home to plan renovations etc. Much rather have everything on device.

I don't disagree, however when was the last time you walked into a room where at least one person wasn't solely focused on their phone.

The 3D photo thing is super weird, they could release a stand alone camera in future, BUT, I think this is a v1 product, imagine where it'll be in 5 years time, or an SE model which isn't wrap around. I already wear glasses so having AR glasses is no big leap.

> I think this is a v1 product

This is exactly what I tell myself. This is equivalent to their five hundred dollar original iPhone with no App Store or even copy and paste functionality. I expect the SE to cost a third of this if not a fifth.

Edit: five hundred dollar iPhone typo

A fifth? ... You mean like the $100 iPhone they're about to release?!

cognitive dissonance is real. what is the totl retail now days? like $1500?

I know! ... my guess is the price will stay the same for the Pro version for a long time ... released with a lower spec slightly cheaper version ...

Then they'll keep adding features to justify the price ...

Then after a few years, the price will start creeping higher and higher.

And then, when the implanted-AI version comes out, it'll be $15,000 for Pro Pro AI Max version ...

"Literally Think Different!"

/only semi-joking ... this was basically the iPhone playbook and why wouldn't it be applied to the Vision?

That's a good point, maybe eventually some of the tech will leak out and not actually require wearing the goggles.

Regarding phones, I see your point there too, but at least with phones people can still look up make eye contact, easily set the phone down when needing to interact with someone; unlike these, there is a definite wearing-them and not-wearing barrier that many will probably not cross on a whim, so we'll just get used to interacting with virtually projected eyeballs on the outside of them. Very strange to me.

You can just flip the goggles up if you’re talking to someone. That’s often what people with tinted safety goggles, like welders, do.

Having to take AirPods out of your ears is more obtrusive I think.

> Having to take AirPods out of your ears is more obtrusive I think.

I don't own airpods but I don't mind if someone comes to talk to me with airpods on. I think it would be stranger having someone come up to me and talk to me with the goggles on.

People often try to talk to me while I'm walking the dog and I keep having to tell them to repeat themselves after I pause the audio and turn off the noise isolation.

> People often try to talk to me while I'm walking the dog and I keep having to tell them to repeat themselves after I pause the audio and turn off the noise isolation.

Well that is just plain rude. I meant if someone with airpods on comes to talk to me, I am reasonably sure they have transparency on or something like that.

We should be moving away from that not further into it though.

I don't see phone as being equivalent to a VR headset. Phone is just a few sq. inches of distraction whereas the VR stuff is a 360 degree false world full of delusion.

In your mind it's not that different. Consider the importance of media on shaping your thoughts, beliefs, memories, emotions. Whether delivered through a cinema screen or a tiny phone doesn't matter.

VR/AR has wow factor, but you quickly get used to it, and then your concerns are mostly pragmatic: the headset is huge, the battery life short and so on.

Although AR at least has pass through, which is a big benefit, as it doesn't completely hide your real surroundings.

I'm a fan of VR/AR but found Apple's reveal video to be profoundly sad. There's a sense of isolation running through the whole thing. The immediate connection many people made was to Black Mirror.

The father wearing the headset and recording his children play around him really hit that note. From the children's perspective, instead of their father's face they see a pair of black goggles and rather than their father's eyes they see a digital facsimile.

>The father wearing the headset and recording his children play around him really hit that note.

"Hold still son so I can record this moment, I've only got 10 minutes out of the 2h of battery left on this headset" lol

The mental illnesses kids will have growing up with tech addicted parents are gonna be epic. Therapists are gonna be printing money.

people already film their kids on their phone, take live photos of their dogs, and tiktok/insta themselves in a cool place.

having the ability to share parts of our lives remotely and also remember them is profound. i often look back at photos of the past few years, and remark at memories i've forgotten, places i've been, and i share those things with others as well.

sure no one wants 10 people in a room interacting thru their apple vision pro, but i really don't think it's fundamentally different. and if i could have a 3d video of my deceased family that looks more real than a photo, i'd love that.

look at the parts of the tech that connect us more; there will always be negative things, loners, tech addicts, etc.

and as for the mental illness quip, i honestly don't have an answer because it's so outlandish we can't even begin to quantify it

You must be fun at parties

> The father wearing the headset and recording his children play around him really hit that note

Yeah that was a mistake. It should have been a worker recording how to assemble something to make a training vid. The family recording thing probably turned off a lot of people.

Precisely. Some mechanical training or live assistance is entirely plausible. I experienced a similar thing with HoloLens and other than the limited FOV it was really convincing as a tool.

Apple unironically going for the dystopia angle is a weird flex.

I mostly agree, but on the other hand: when I was a kid in the 80s, my dad spent my birthday parties walking around with a shoulder mounted video camera. It was lame, but not quite dystopian.

And people get completely sucked into those few sq. inches of screen, tuning off from the real world.

In my life it got to a point with some friends where I introduced the idea of everyone taking their phones out and putting them face down on a stack on the table, if you really need to check your phone for something important one has to voice out "I need to check my phone", taking a break from hanging out to check it. It annoys me to no end when in the middle of a conversation someone takes their phone out just to check a message, or Instagram, or any kind of trivial notification, and end up lost in it for a few minutes, it's been really great to make them more aware of the behaviour as it completely tunes me off from a conversation seeing someone you're trying to communicate with staring intensely into their screens.

At least in VR I know that they aren't present, easier to adjust, with phones it just annoys me absolutely.

This is just good manners, I don't check my phone in the middle of a conversation and my friends don't do it either.

I also teach my kids not to do that.

I can't expect that every single person I met or I'm friends with will adhere to "just good manners", given the ubiquitous presence of those few sq. inches of screens around us there will always be instances where good manners aren't followed.

So what’s your point again? Is the Apple Vision making things better or worse?

It’s the world of instant information and social contact that makes phones distracting, not the screen dimensions. Actually I’d say the small screen form factor makes this problem even worse - makes it socially acceptable to be half-present with people, the worst thing. It feels like no big deal to glance at a phone while talking to someone, and feels churlish for the other person to take issue with it.

But if someone didn’t remove their VR headset when getting into a conversation with me IRL… I can’t see that ever becoming commonly accepted. It’s completely different from phones because you wouldn’t even know if and when they are glancing at messages or other content (or even filming you), so there’s just way more social norms for the tech to contend with. With a headset, there is a 100% clear distinction between when you’re using it vs when you’re not, and a distinct act putting it on and taking it off, whereas with phones you can flick a glance at it.

Direct-to-brain AR will be another matter though. Then we will be forced to accept that anyone we are talking to may be secretly engaged with other stuff at the same time.

> The 3D photo thing is super weird, they could release a stand alone camera in future

We can call it "iPhone"

They showed the iPhone camera can be used for taking Facetime calls on tv using Apple TV boxes, so it would make sense for them to add a way to use an iPhone as additional camera.

Strapping on goggles to record a family moment feels super weird to me too. I wonder if future iPhones will have the sensors required to take 3D photos.

I expect current iPhones can do a good enough job. Lidar + just waving it around + AI make this mainly a software problem.

Yeah, I'm betting the next iPhone will have a new record mode.

I don't think this is something most "normal" people will do. However, I can see use cases in industry where grabbing a quick photo of some equipment etc might be useful, or in sports where for example cyclists could have a heads up display and use the camera to capture a beautiful view they discover.

As a parent myself, the idea that someone would stop what they are doing to put on goggles to take a photo seems crazy. You would miss the moment. The only reason I use my phone for most photos over a DSLR or Mirrorless is because the phone is right in your pocket and instantly available at all times. I'm pretty sure the newer iPhones already have lidar sensors don't they?

Not enough people have seen the movie Strange Days.

Watching recordings of people doing interesting things could be the killer feature.

Porn is obvious, but even just experiencing the recording of someone walking through some beautiful place will be a treat.

> they could release a stand alone camera in future

I would prefer a lens that could adapt an existing camera to 3d photography / video. Some already exist, like:

- Canon RF 5.2mm F2.8 L Dual Fisheye: https://www.dpreview.com/news/7991481617/canon-shows-first-f...

- Loreo 3D Lens 9005: https://www.oddcameras.com/loreo_3d_lens_9005.htm

> however when was the last time you walked into a room where at least one person wasn't solely focused on their phone.

Do we want more of that ?

Does it matter what “we” want?

If you want to use your phone less, use your phone less. Complaining about how other people use their phones “too much” is just kids-these-days.

Yes, it does matter what "we" want. This is how society and culture works, by people debating what's good and what isn't good, and deciding to regulate some of the things that really aren't good through law, and "regulate" other things that aren't good through cultural norms.

Within my circles, the "regulation" of not having everyone on their phones constantly in social settings has been slowly but surely taking root for years. And that's a good thing. I hope (and believe) the same will be true of these headsets.

Does that work for free access heroin too ? Military grade weapons ? Driving under influence ?

There is a reason we live in organised societies, with rules and limitations, and it's not so that you can do "whatever you want whenever you want"

At some point we have to decide where we want to steer the ship

Rather than releasing a stand alone camera, I’d expect the vision pro headset to act as one too. In other words I’d expect it to be able to take spatial pictures whilst not being worn. Less creepy, and more like taking a picture with your camera / phone.

Or make an iPhone that can take spatial pictures.

This is just plain obvious. Not sure it'll be part of the '23 lineup; WWDC does not showcase new iPhone hardware features, but they have the hardware ready and miniaturised enough for the headset; if it doesn't make it's way to the Pro iPhones by '24 at the latest I'd be very surprised.

The sports clips and experiences are also not captured by people with headsets standing on the sideline; I'm not sure why a lot of commenters see this as the bleak new future?

> however when was the last time you walked into a room where at least one person wasn't solely focused on their phone.

Yeah and that's really bad.

I have a friend who used to do this, even back when phones first started coming out. He couldn't resist just being on his phone, trying to talk to him was a nightmare.

I think it's weird because the example they used of the birthday is trying too hard to be family-friendly and social.

The HoloLens had some great examples of highlighting where to hit a mechanism to make it work. I have no idea if it was any good in reality.

That doesn't work for Apple, at least not for advertising.

I think it would have been neat to have shown a sports person/dancer/musician looking through the eyes of their instructor to correct their posture, etc. Or at least show them reviewing the recording together.

>And these 3D spacial moment recordings, imagine children growing up in a house where when something nice happens, the parent rushes to put on goggles and stare at them through them,

Isn't this what used to happen with camcorders and now with smartphones?

Hell, how many people watch live music events and the like in-person through a smartphone camera (assuming recording is okay)?

I understand where you're coming from, but it pays to take a step back and look at things from a wider and more fundamental perspective.

I don't think this is much different of looking at people in the 90s SMSing all the time and what happened after that with smart phones, you can criticize what you are currently living. The VR/AR is just a normal, technical and market, evolution.

In the 80s people started using walkmans to hear their own music instead of listening in their living room with their family speakers.

I think that the social criticism starts much much earlier. Nothing special about Apple.

Another take, adding AI to the equation, is that probably the humanity ego is huge and all these stuff is harming it and we are not as important and intelligent as we thought. We are amazing creatures for sure and will fight for our humanity in the way other animals do for their survival.

Agree. This was the first wwdc that really made me feel like apple's vision of the future is really not mine.

And made me question my work choice as an iOS user and developer, this time from an ethical perspective.

I dont think this is ever going to happen. Phones sell because they made computers unintrusive. This tech has some time go until it becomes as simple to wear as sunglasses or even less. IMHO something like a new google glass is more likely to win this space

> Phones sell because they made computers unintrusive

Respectfully, how does this make any sense? Didn't mobile phones end up becoming the most intrusive technology on Earth? (I'm not sure what you specifically mean by "intrusive", but I'm assuming that you mean "the extent to which the object interrupts your life/tasks/etc.").

Phones sell because they are:

1. Convenient

2. In most civilizations on Earth, it became a necessary item in order to live (authentication, payments, maps, etc.).

I'll skip the lesser points, such as the fact that they took over the camera for >99% of people for 99% of the time.

> Didn't mobile phones end up becoming the most intrusive

I mean intrusive in blocking yoru attention and isolating you from the environment and blocking sensory input. While it grabs your attention it doesnt isolate . Phones are attention-grabbing but nowhere near as intrusive as goggles

I would say it’s a comfort/accessibility issue. Smart phones are just easier to use. Not from an efficiency perspective. There’s just less physical resistance.

This is labeled a pro device. Their home use marketing really misses the mark IMO.

The fact that I can mute out the rest of the room while working is a plus not a minus.

I'm skeptical this will be there on a technical level to justify the price but the concept of working in VR is objectively an improvement, especially once you factor in the portability of the system.

For entertainment - it's probably going to be the same as computer games - everyone had one for work and it was expensive and awkward - but work drove adoption and people started playing games on it.

I think this is the main failure of VR so far, it's trying to force people into this alien experience just for entertainment. I have plenty of ways to play games/watch video, I probably wouldn't use it if I had it for free let alone paying large sum of money.

If I'm using VR day to day for work - then I might occasionally game on it - this is the road to widespread adoption.

People already had computers for work. Nobody is going to have one of these sitting around for years until a Prince of Persia or Doom type game emerges.

Apple needs to build an app store for this and fast.

The video call virtual avatar literally looks like a reanimated corpse. Like honestly if you were directing a sci fi movie where you were talking to a brain in a tank “that doesn’t know he’s dead yet” that’s how you’d art direct it.

Can see it becoming a faux pas to answer a video call as the creepy avatar.

I know Zuck got clowned on for the horizon avatars but at least they were just lame and low quality, not outright creepy/gross.

The 3D spacial capture will ne done on the iPhone in one or 2 generations. I would bet a lot of money on that. That way Apple’s almost certain that all Vision Pro owners will upgrade their phones. They just couldn’t show it captured that way yet as it’s not yet available on the iPhone.

iPhones have had lidar for years.

Wearing a VR helmet at a family event is a big NO. I'd rather use a tech that would use footage from multiple cameras in the room, then build a sort of 3D-recording of some moment that I would be able to immerse myself in later, with full freedom of movement and pause-rewind.

Of course it would need some tech to fill in the blind zones obscured from cameras, but likely with generative AI and data from before and after the occlusion occurred such technology seems plausible.

> Wearing a VR helmet at a family event is a big NO.

Imagine how that scene with the dad filming the kids playing would look if the kids had the Vision goggles on, too.

At that point it'd be easier to host family events in Minecraft or at whatever Minecraft imitation Meta will come up with.

My dream is to become a fully wired in cyborg. I thought many hackers felt the same but I guess not.

I don't know if you are joking, but it is for many. Bar the wired part. Why not wireless?

Wake the f. up Samurai, we have a city to burn.

Probably because being jacked in to what amounts to a $3500 Safari browser and an Apple amusement park feels less like Terminator's HUD and more like the guy in the Matrix that decided to believe he's enjoying eating an imaginary steak in an imaginary restaurant.

I agree with you, not sure why they included that use case in the demo. It would have been better done if the dad recorded the 3d video with iPhone depth sensors (possible?) and replayed it later in VR.

I really like my Quest 2. But these devices are for when you are alone. I work alone and would love to use something that expands my workspace and provides a comfortable environment to concentrate in. Quest 2 can't really get there. And occasionally I find people to talk to in VR which is enjoyable. But when the family is home it makes 0 sense. I cannot imagine us all sitting in an empty room with goggles on, watching the same thing.

Apple's goal is surely to get away from the google form factor asap, and once we're at a pair of slick glasses I don't think you'd even think twice about it.

It feels like another pretty Apple device which is purely for consuming content, and of little use for serious work (or serious play). And $3500 is way too much to pay for that sort of device.

A UI that relies entirely on eye tracking and arm motion tracking, without a single button for 'accept' or 'back' or 'fire' in the case of games seems incredibly limiting. They didn't demonstrate text entry, did they?

I expected to see Apple's headset being demonstrated as a product for professionals, perhaps for architects, product designers, and engineers to visualise their designs for clients. Maybe it could have also found a niche in education.

But no, they seem to have iPad-like use cases in mind, and for that, the price is way too high.

For “serious play” I imagine you could hook up a Bluetooth game controller, just like you can with an iPad (and it sounds like this will run iPad apps).

Likewise for work you could use a normal keyboard. I think they did mention that in the presentation.

This ability was demoed in the third or fourth minute of the intro. (NBA 2K23 with a PS5 controller)

Ah, good catch, thanks!

The AR aspect here is really clever -- you can use normal keyboards and controllers because you can just look at them when you need to.

What I find interesting about apple devices is that despite what you said, the engineering is usually top notch and beats most competitors. For example, I use an iPad Pro for hand writing notes. I don't care about iOS or any other fancy feature there might be, I have this device purely for writing notes. But the interesting thing is that I haven't found any other tablet that does specifically the hand writing as good as this one. It turns that specific aspect into a unique selling point for me and it almost seems like the competition has given up in terms of that. With this device I could see a similar thing. Regardless of whether this brings any new features over the competition, the engineering seems to be outstanding. Because of that I could see people buy this for a specific use case that it excels at, all the while not using it for "everything". Somewhat of a ramble but I hope I could bring my point across.

I don't think anyone seriously expects the price to stay at $3500 forever. If the first gen product is successful enough to warrant a gen 2, I suspect by Gen 3 we'll see a more approachable price point.

The biggest hint for this is the name: "Vision 'Pro'". Why call something "Pro" that doesn't build on another product to enhance it with other features? The pro moniker for Apple has always been a sign of increased functionality for power users.

Mark my words; we will see a mass-market consumer focused version of this product within 5 years if gen 1 is a success.

That’s the fantasy vision, but I don’t see how it would be achievable within the next 15-20 years given the current technological outlook and considering the energy requirements and the necessary optical workings. It will require major technical breakthroughs that aren’t remotely on the horizon.

That's what people said even after the original iPhone was announced. I think there's a famous interview with the RIM boss who basically said "energy requirements make this design impossible" in 2007, and yet, it actually came out and worked a few months later.

I don’t think the current situation is comparable. You’d need more than an order of magnitude improvement in battery tech. Glasses would have to be less than 50g in total (and that’s on the high side; the sunglasses I happen to own weigh just 14g). Judging from its dimensions, the VP battery pack alone will probably weigh half a pound, and it only lasts two hours. In addition, we have no idea how to implement the required optics for 3D vision in the form factor of reading glasses, and we also have no good idea how to implement display panels that support both transparency and opacity, let alone how to achieve that in combination with those optics.

Of course, miraculous advances can occur, but you can’t just expect them to happen.

My wife an I use Airpods in the home when we're doing chores, and I'm already starting to feel uncomfortable about that. I feel annoyed when I'm interrupted from a podcast by a family member, and I'm sure they feel it. Perhaps that will lead them to talk with me less in the future.

The technology is siphoning attention from the home. Humans are highly visual creatures. The impact of this product will probably be greater.

i believe this is one of the reasons consumer VR hasn't taken off and likely won't: even if 5 people are in the same room it disconnects most people too much to be enjoyable on a regular basis. People would rather intuitively gravitate toward watching a netflix show or whatever than being bodily isolated and cut off for too long.

I haven't yet read/seen much about Apple's take on it so maybe they closed a gap I am not aware of.

> And these 3D spacial moment recordings, imagine children growing up in a house where when something nice happens, the parent rushes to put on goggles and stare at them through them, their little virtual eyes displayed on the outside, it’s frankly creepy to me.

Well, I have always found that creepy, even with old analog camera from back then (but I always found adults staring at children when something nice happens a bit creepy (or cringe ?) so that's me).

There are 3 things that standout about apple's vision product line.

First there's technology. This is clearly better than anything else in the market. Enough has been said on this.

Then there's usability and market. There's no real trojan horse feature that will get this product mainstream right now. Apple's hope is that the dev community will either build one or users will point them in the right direction with usage stats and telemetry. Maybe they will, or they won't nobody knows.

Finally there's the future. I see people comparing this to previous apple products and their past experiences with them etc. There appears to be two factions here, one that says "This is the future I want and I love it", and the other saying "This is the future I don't want and hate it". Both groups however are saying one common thing ... "this is the future". And that's pretty much Apple's bet.

I imagine eventually your phone will be also able to do these spatial video recordings so the functionally on the headset will fade into the background as a fringe use for passively capturing something while you happened to have the headset on (and enjoying the spatial videos you captured with your phone)

I’m in the same camp. There is one thing you and I have to admit though: people already live disconnected lives, staring at their phones and other screens all day long. People dining out together look at their phone while wearing AirPods. The direction was set years ago.

Once upon a time we laughed at the Back To The Future Part II's "Pizza Time" scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8oS4VbRaAA). I guess we are in the future now.

Eh, the iPhone already isolated us from our surroundings. This is the next step.

I imagine a future iPhone will be able to record Vision enabled content. I imagine you might be able to just set the Vision Pro on the table while it's recording and you do your thing.

In short, using a Vision Pro is only going to be reasonable if everyone in the room has one and is using it.

Honestly you could replace everything you said there with an iPhone and it'd still apply.

He says as he sits alone in his room on a computer…

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