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Comment by danielbln | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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