First Impressions of Vision Pro and VisionOS | Hacker News Reader

First Impressions of Vision Pro and VisionOS

daringfireball.net

52 pointsryanwhitney10 comments

> Is it a compelling product, though? It’s a famous Steve Jobs axiom that technology is not enough, that you don’t make compelling products — let alone entire platforms — starting from advanced technology and working backward. You start with a vision for the product and platform experience and then create new technology to make it real. I simply can’t say whether Vision Pro is going to be a compelling product. I spent too little time with it, the software as of today is too far from complete, and, most importantly, the whole experience is too entirely new and mind-bending to render any such conclusion.

This is the only debate. What’s the user experience that they started with to walk back to VisionPro? That’s usually simply put in an SJ keynote - “here’s what you’ve been trying to do, here’s how you can do it now”

Am I still going to shell out the dough? Absolutely. Though I did the same for HoloLens and the whole lot.

I don’t believe so. But Apple is acting here as its own Xerox PARC trying to do the right thing.

They’ve done immense RnD into what is clearly (to me) the next computing platform. Now they have to release and see who figures out what to do with it exactly.

From memory no one knew that the biggest seller for GUI Macs would turn out to be desktop publishing. But when it happened they grabbed onto it.

Did anyone know what a personal computer would be used for either? Wozniak and Jobs were selling it to other enthusiasts. They didn’t think about spreadsheets and GUI or anything of what people would do with it exactly.

Vision Pro is the Apple 1. And without the Apple 1 how do you get to Apple II and Macintosh ?

I think you're right. They know the future will be something like this. And that it's critical they're in the middle of it. They've likely mapped out early-adopter sales and figured it helps justify announcing now and getting developers thinking, rather than maintaining secrecy for another two years.

Going public means they can test it in a full workplace like Apple Park without keeping it hidden in select labs.

Yeah, I do wonder if that's the right frame, the Apple I one.

The recent self-litmus test I ran was, would my grandmother and I really love this? Would we sit in line like we did for the iPhone and get one for each other so we can stay connected?

VP is a resounding yes. That said we also got pebbles... though it was just the best at the time... she died too early to see the rest

You're going to shell out $3500 for a device that you're not even sure you're going to get much use out of? You're richer than me.

to be fair, a lot of people buy a new $1200+ smartphone every year or even every two years, to only get a marginal increase. or lease a car for $400-800/mo without really _needing_ to.

i think a lot of people will pick up a Vision Pro just to see the hype

In that case they're at least using the phone a lot. I can see someone shelling out $3500 for this and then pulling it out to show people when they have visitors and otherwise never touching it.

There are always going to be people richer or poorer on the scale when debating something like this. Someone might spend $3500 for a week away reading beside a pool and have largely forgotten about it six months later.

I've wastefully spent money (not $3500 though) on new tech that I liked the idea of and wanted to see more of in the future, but provided little guaranteed immediate benefit. e.g., Oculus DK1. Or a wristband that let you control your laptop with gestures. Or a table tennis robot. Or a pod that monitored audio queues in the house. And who knows what else. I imagine for this individual, it's not dissimilar, just scaled up a bit.

If Vision Pro can deliver something that allows someone to watch movies and browse hands free and maybe have a courtside NBA experience, even if it never becomes a work-all-day solution, that's worth something to many people.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford

"What’s the user experience that they started with to walk back to VisionPro?"

What if Apple is envisioning entirely new user experiences that the masses have yet to even begun to contemplate?

I have been dreaming for years to build a AR based 3D design tool where I can use my hands to shape/lathe 3D primitives and joint/fuse them together to design complex shapes, with a glove that has haptic feedback, so that I can feel the virtual objects as I manipulate them in 3D space with full visual and audio cues.

This might be just the platform to attempt this (of course, I need to source the haptic glove elsewhere)

It definitely sounds amazing, though I'm surprised with such a convincing demo they decided to delay the release until who knows when.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com