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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

I really feel for George and team. It seems like they're quite a ways from a commercial product, far enough so that market leaders are likely to be established by the time they'd be ready to ship.

Critique #1 is about unknown implementation details, and we'll know that soon enough. In the meantime, an article on IEEE Spectrum says, "…journalists who’ve tried the device say it’s competitive with other AR/VR headsets, which offer a FOV between 100 and 120 degrees. That should place the headset’s pixels per degree around 50 to 70 PPD."¹

Critique #2 talks about the massive ecosystem advantage of the Apple Vision Pro, but I think the thesis — that HMDs will not replace PCs/laptops — is the wrong way to think about their value.

¹ https://spectrum.ieee.org/apple-vision-pro

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> that HMDs will not replace PCs/laptops — is the wrong way to think about their value

For the majority of users, including most professionals, I think they absolutely will. What hurdles do you see?

Most people don't need high end workstations or gaming PCs. A good majority of the "heavy" work could technically be put into the cloud (or already is, for professionals).

Could you also argue that most people "don't need" VR either? I'd even wager it's less convenient than a physical metaphor for computing like the smartphone.

Nobody needs an XR headset, but many don't need a computer if an XR headset, Chromebook, thin client, whatever, can cover their use case. The need is to complete whatever task.

I read the comment as there being some fundamental limitation, a need, that will prevent people from moving to XR, and I would like to understand what that is. Perhaps I was being too charitable, and it's actually an opinion about others preferences, based on the first gen of a device that can replace a computer.

But, you could call me "biased" (or maybe experienced) since I've been working in VR for a couple of years now. I see it as a very obvious transition, in computing, once headsets (including the vision pro) get lighter.

>that HMDs will not replace PCs/laptops — is the wrong way to think about their value.

that was how apple justified the cost of the device, so I think its a fair critique.

>that was how apple justified the cost of the device, so I think its a fair critique.

[Citation needed]

watch the event where they presented it. it replaces a laptop, a tv, a camera, etc etc is how they justified the price.

I watched the event. Timecode for this specific claim, please.

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