Hacker News Reader

Comment by kitsunesoba | Hacker News Reader

One aspect of the Vision Pro that I think is perhaps not talked about enough (and isn't mentioned in the linked blog post) is the sheer number of apps this thing will be running from day one, and how little it takes to have a first-class visionOS app.

iPad apps will run unmodified as basically virtual floating iPads which is nice, but not anything too special. What's much more interesting is that existing iPadOS apps can be transformed into first-class visionOS apps by just checking the "visionOS" checkbox in Xcode, which gets the app the full 2.5D treatment with all of the various controls taking on the expected visionOS appearance and behavior.

This means that the Vision Pro is probably going to have by far the best selection of day-1 apps that any AR/MR headset has ever had. Most of these apps won't be anything revolutionary of course since they're adapted versions of existing apps, but it makes the platform much more practically usable.

View on HN

You can run android apps on the quest and I'm not sure people care that much.

People sound like they are over-rating how good interacting with 2d apps with goggles can be. It is "really neat", a really wow experience the first few times but it quickly gets old and things like "scratching your nose" or "drinking coffee" become far more valuable features than anything the goggles can provide.

I think we are in for a frustrating few years where the faithful go absolutely bananas over this because of the Apple brand until people quietly admit that they don't actually like having their peripheral vision filled with fake scenary or app windows or whatever. It's much nicer to see your real cat snoozing on your desk instead.

you’re really glossing over two major elements:

1. The ease of use of installing Android apps. This is the constant flaw of all the “well XYZ also does this” arguments from tech folks that ignore the flow of the process

https://www.androidcentral.com/how-sideload-apps-oculus-ques...

That’s not exactly something most people will be doing

2. As the person you’re replying to said, the iPad app can adopt visionOS features within the same codebase. The android apps cannot, because there’s no progressive API.

1. That would be relevant if talking about mass adoption but for the enthusiast market, when people want something e.g. custom songs in beat sabre or to play quake, we are delighted to use Sidequest. I'd happily sideload any app that I could experience some value in using with a headset but it's only things like Google Earth that make sense to me. As far as I can tell, for something like a spreadsheet, learning a new keyboard shortcut is more world changing than what a headset can offer.

2. I just don't rate them. The magic of 3d headsets that differentiates them from 2D for me has been "presence". To stand in front of a massive temple in Skyrim or something and feel like you are there, it's special and can't be replicated in 2D to the same extent. As soon as you get into a focussed state e.g. a game loop churning out iron daggers to level a skill, presence doesn't matter. Your area of attention is quite small and having a headset on is just a pain in ass. 2d apps are in the latter category for me.

My basic rule of thumb is that if you don't already render the content in 3d on a 2d screen, "spatial" doesn't have much to offer besides gimmickery.

Don’t both your points boil down to: “for my use cases, I don’t care” but then you’re applying them to the general use case that the OP is talking about.

You’re also oddly fixated on games, which is clearly not what the product is focused on delivering.

That’s just incongruent and reductive to the argument at hand.

But to your last point, that’s exactly what the progressive APIs let you do. You can integrate 3D elements on top of your windowed iPad. You’re thinking in “either 3D or 2D”, whereas this is allowing developers to progressively adopt the entire gamut within the singular app which can target iOS and visionOS.

The quest just can’t do that.

> oddly fixated on games

Well, the reason I bought a number of headsets was for developing productivity applications. I just found that it was a bit of a deadend and that the only meaningful value was in existing 3d experiences (games, modelling, visualisation). I couldn't find the value in spatialising 2d productivity experiences. Hence the heuristic, if there was any value, we would already be wasd-ing our way around a 3d view in our 2d tools. There have always been a stream of 3d experiments like debuggers or knowledgement management tools but they just don't offer value compared to 2d text-oriented experiences.

Some of the talk about Spatial, feels like a pendullum swing back to Hacker's "Gibson" or Jurrasic Park's "Unix, I know this" 3d interfaces that were assumptions of what would be useful in 3D, and we have made real versions of these, but they just suck. Classic case of imagination / reality mismatch that often comes with tech.

> allowing developers to progressively adopt the entire gamut

That is just the "how", not the "why".

I still want to be able to tell a coworker to "go past the routers, turn to the left and go past views until you get to models; the one you're looking for will be the one on top of the pile on the right".

It would be "wow" for sure, but also - spatial memory is one of the easiest to hijack and repurpose for something useful. Of course, being able to visualize the codebase like this would require a Smalltalk-level system (I'm seeing a chance here for Smalltalk & Moose/Roassal/Mondrian/GToolkit/etc.).

The problem: once you get to that model, you need to read it. And until now reading lots of text in VR wasn't the best experience, not without things costing $10k+. So, the idea is shelved and waits for a good opportunity in the future... Maybe.

The annoyances of sideloading combined with the Quest 2's middling SoC (which can make it drop frames or chug in some cases) were enough for me to not even bother. I mostly use my Quest 2 as a dumb headset cabled to my tower with PC link and play the Windows/Steam version of Beat Saber, which is way more mod friendly and never stutters.

> You can run android apps on the quest and I'm not sure people care that much.

Yes, but these apps aren't native to the interaction patterns of AR/VR. They're adapted touch apps, which makes them as awkward as touch apps adapted to a desktop OS are.

Native visionOS apps have full affordances for eye and hand-based navigation and should be a good deal more pleasant to use in AR than emulated touch apps will be.

Interaction has not been the sticking point for me (keyboard aside), it's the lack of a "why".

I quite enjoyed browsing the web in various VR headsets, it's a fun novelty experience, but it's not sticky as a tool because it's not adding anything to the experience yet adds the irritation of goggles.

Dead on. Vision will attract a bunch of apple die hards that haven’t spent a few years with the quest already and realized why vr still has huge issues road does not fox at all.

Namely it’s not AR…

FWIW, I've been using a Quest 2 for 7-8 hours per week for the past year and some change and I'm considering a Vision Pro.

I’m sure the Android app experience is as thoughtful as Apple’s

I always say Apple is the best embedded software company in the world and people look at me like I'm insane. They deeply care about software and it shows (even if sometimes we don't agree with their vision). Companies tend to get too hung up on hardware and end up forgetting the software, in my opinion.

Do systems on a chip count as embedded? I don't mean the vision pro, I mean their hardware architecture in general. I did some embedded work at university and it was a lot of fun, but SOCs for macbooks seem like such a different thing than little PICs that I never considered them the same thing. Actually curious

The nice thing about ipads and iphones is that you just pick it up and use it. You might not even do so consciously. You're not really playing Candy Crush. You're idling.

You have to say "Ok I'm going to play Candy Crush now" and get your headset, put it on, and then do that, with largely your full attention unable to multitask because it's big.

I doubt people will want to use any of these apps beyond the gimmick novelty.

There's a big difference between apps that "work on" a platform and apps that are "built for" a platform.

Consider Android tablets, folding phones, or basically any Android device with a large format display. Basically all modern Android apps work on those devices, with practically no effort required of the devs. But most Android apps were built exclusively for smartphones, with small vertical displays. Only apps which have been developed to account for large displays actually provide a good user experience on those devices. Sure, there's still value in having a big library of apps that technically work on the new platform. But if the AVP experience for an app is worse than the platform it was built for, most people will probably try it out and quickly switch back to the platform they used before.

The AVP really needs a killer app to convince people to invest in it. If it can capture that investment, there will be an incentive for devs to start building their apps for it and it can grow from there. I'm concerned that I haven't seen anything that looks like a "killer app" for the AVP yet.

>. But most Android apps were built exclusively for smartphones, with small vertical displays. Only apps which have been developed to account for large displays actually provide a good user experience on those devices.

While there are apps that do this on IOS (Snapchat , Instagram) I believe the introduction of Stage Manager on iPad has prepared IOS app makers for dynamic windowing better than Android Tablets and folding phones have.

My first thought when seeing this was "neat," but my second still eats away at me: what about the tactile experience?

If you can fill your physical space with floating virtual iPads, what will it be like to touch and manipulate them? You don't get to actually press against a screen when you press or scroll. If you wanted to "hold" a screen while manipulating it with the other screen, what will that be like?

I'm just speculating. I find touch and weight etc to be important, personally.

I'm also concerned about the weight of the headset, again, because I find touch and weight to be important.

And about how it works for people with glasses who can't wear contact lenses (perhaps you could have prescription lenses built into the headsets one day?)

The Apple ecosystem is definitely being underestimated. Both the AW and iPad would not be what they are today without that ecosystem out the box.

I'm still not sure if it's enough to be successful, but if an AR/VR device is to finally take off, an iteration of the VP is probably it.

It may have the biggest selection of day-1 apps but definitely not the best.

You really believe that an app made for touch on a fixed 2D screen will miraculously be pleasant to use in VR/AR just by checking a box?

Equating "first class" with bare minimum ports sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. Let's hope that does not happen and people actually make apps specifically for VR.

This is mostly a cheap trick to inflate vanity metrics. Giant iPad screens are not what people think of when you say “spatial computing”.

Only spatial computing apps matter.

Highly disagree.

One of the clear goals of the product is to serve as an alternative to monitors. In that sense, any productivity tool (like the newly launched Final Cut Pro and Logic Studio for iPad) would immediately be extremely useful in visionOS, even if it’s not fully spatially aware.

It may not be the flagship spatial computing experience, but that doesn’t mean it should be thrown out as a “cheap trick” either. It likely is the more common experience for day to day interaction with the device, which is Apple’s goal.

Oh really? Then why not just allow us to throw iPad Apps up on any monitor if that’s so ground breaking?

Hear yourself man, you’re saying be able to look at iPad apps on a big monitor is the killer app for Apple Vision Pro.

You already can?

MacBooks with Apple Silicon processors can run a shitton of iPad apps natively. App developers can choose not to have their apps listed in the store if they want, but many do.

Or you can just… plug an iPad into a monitor with USB-C.

Or use continuity and interact with the iPad like an extended monitor.

When the Apple ecosystem works, it's extremely powerful.

To be entirely fair to the other commenter, they want it the other way around (iPad on a monitor not iPad as a monitor) which is why I didn’t include Continuity.

AFAIK it’s only Mac->iPad. If you’re running an app that also exists on your Mac (or equivalent like a browser) then you’d be able to take over the context on your Mac but it isn’t technically “[throwing] iPad Apps up on any monitor”.

They’re most definitely on an anti-Apple/Vision Pro crusade given their replies, but they asked for a specific thing and I gave them the exact thing they asked for.

> Hear yourself man, you’re saying be able to look at iPad apps on a big monitor is the killer app for Apple Vision Pro.

That’s not what the person said, but also it might actually be the “killer app” for the vision pro.

Having a large, high-fidelity monitor anywhere you go would be extremely useful. Maybe useful enough to get people to keep coming back to the Vision Pro after the novelty wears off.

A big monitor everywhere you go isn’t a solution to any real problem. It comes from the same line of thinking that describes work as people sitting at a computer typing for 8 hours straight. It’s just not realistic.

Multi monitor setups are overrated anyway. I work entirely off a laptop screen and only a portion of that screen is where my focus is most of the time. Having multiple monitors at my desk is mostly for decoration and looking like you’re a big deal. Switching a virtual desktop isn’t hard.

Some creative types could legitimately use multiple monitors to lay out a lot of content, but I also don’t think those creatives will necessarily prefer an Apple Vision Pro over their existing tools, unless they’re doing something truly spatial like sculpting out a life size car or something. But that’s definitely not the norm. Most people are just going to browse web sites and stare at spreadsheets.

> Multi monitor setups are overrated anyway. I work entirely off a laptop screen and only a portion of that screen is where my focus is most of the time. Having multiple monitors at my desk is mostly for decoration and looking like you’re a big deal.

I staunchly disagree with this. I work from home and as such have no reason to optimize my desk for showing off or acting like a big shot, and find that having at least one extra monitor is a huge productivity boost because for most tasks, it practically eliminates the need to juggle applications or windows — everything that's relevant for the task at hand can remain visible the whole time without a cramped tiled windows setup. Virtual desktops are great but to me, work best in concert for switching tasks rather than being used as a tool to corral windows on a single screen.

When I need to work away from my desk, it's somewhat frustrating even with a 16" laptop.

> A big monitor everywhere you go isn’t a solution to any real problem.

I get that you don't care about having a big monitor, but it shouldn't be surprising that other people want big monitors. Personally, I hate working on my laptop screen, if I can use the Apple Vision Pro as a remote monitor while traveling, that's certainly worth some amount of money to me.

The original comment specifically denied what you’re claiming was said:

> basically virtual floating iPads which is nice, but not anything too special

Instead, it was saying that being able to interact with those apps in a spatial way will be valuable:

> What's much more interesting is that existing iPadOS apps can… [get] the full 2.5D treatment with all of the various controls taking on the expected visionOS appearance and behavior

u can.

> This is mostly a cheap trick to inflate vanity metrics.

No, it's a way to mitigate the "chicken and egg" problem for the platform. Having existing apps to make the device immediately useful is important, even if they're not all exploiting the capabilities of the platform immediately.

I’ve been at this a long time and it actually isn’t. It keeps many developers from starting from scratch to take full advantage of the hardware, then disappoints the user

without disagreeing with your statement "Only spatial computing apps matter", there are two other considerations:

Nobody knew what the point of a microcomputer was back in the Apple II days (at the time I thought it was crazy that anyone would buy a computer rather than design and build their own). The best anyone could imagine with was keeping recipes and playing games. Yet the killer app was Visicalc, with analysts and accountants buying their own (expensive!) apple IIs and visicalc and getting around MIS (what's called IT these days).

The second consideration is "onramp". Clicking a button and being able to experiment with an app you've already written yourself is way better than being given sample code. Likewise the crufty skeuomorphic cues (from the desktop metaphor of PARC and then the Mac to the "leather" of the ios notepad and shiny "wheels" of its date picker) are important onramps that get people using something so that they can develop the correct metaphors. It wasn't Apple who came up with "pull to refresh", it was the developers (Brichter's app Tweetie, then quickly adopted by others).

So while you're right in the long game, I think your dismissal is premature.

Yet the killer app was Visicalc

That’s the question: what is the killer app for VR? Seems like it could be gaming but I didn’t see a lot of gaming examples during the keynote.

Gaming is at best an onramp or else the product is a failure. Apple's watch revenue alone exceeds the console manufacturers' revenue and last year was almost as large as the revenue of consoles and console games.

When I say onramp: Visicalc made the Apple II but I do think gaming got it into the home.

Yeah, I'm not sure how the "thing that no one has mentioned" is literally the USP they demoed and essentially a glorified projector.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool and I'm intrigued, but 2.5D controls are about as groundbreaking as skeuomorphism.

This could end up being like the Post-PC paradigm that the iPad was supposed to herald in. My last experience with the iPad a couple years ago was mostly interacting with iPhone apps with few iPad apps fully taking advantage of the platform. Vision Pro could end up in a similar boat with respect to the spatial computing paradigm.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com