Hacker News Reader

> the most compelling mass-market use case I saw from Apple is... watching a movie on an airplane

It’s also an environment steeped with signalling, something Apple excels at.

What signal does the Apple Vision Pro provide besides “please don’t talk to me”? The main flex on a plane is your seat tbh

A status signal.

"I can afford $4k to watch a movie on this plane and you can't"

Good point! The white earbuds (wired or not) are perhaps the best example of that.

> watching a movie on an airplane

I'd like to know if Apple actually designed for that. Because having watched movies on a plane in a headset, I can tell you that when it does anything other than fly straight and level existing headsets get extremely confused. It also is a very low light environment once the lights go off so how well their camera based hand tracking works without light is also a question.

During Gruber’s show it was specifically mentioned that the Vision Pro can deal with the plane moving so it will avoid that particular issue.

The hand tracking uses infrared emitters to illuminate your hands for tracking.

It won't replace a home theater because you can't watch movies WITH someone on a VR headset - they each need their own headset.

There's a bunch of solutions to that already — e.g. share audio on iOS, and "watch party" type features on Netflix/etc. Yes they require everyone to have their own screen, but if that screen is a headset that gives you a better experience, then it's a no brainer. I'm pretty sure Apple will allow you to use your digital twin inside the virtual movie theater — whether you are in the same room or not.

The long history of home media suggests that people just don't care all that much about "a better experience".

When I visit people's houses, I'm often appalled by the audio quality. It's usually nothing compared with good theater sound, which people have experienced frequently. The same often applies to image quality. Does it matter to people? Evidently not. They are entertained just the same, and go to theaters less and less.

And if we look back, people were absolutely entranced by TV in the black-and-white era, and it was the same going forward. The movie theater's advantage was generally more about exclusive, heavily promoted content. Once home video became common, despite its poor quality, second-run in-theater showings mostly died out.

Yes, a family of four could spend $12k on Vision headsets and then find high-tech solution to keep their media in sync. Or they could spend $250 on an adequate 50" TV and then be able to see each other's expressions. That sounds like the real no-brainer to me.

Honestly I find most theaters’ a/v quality unimpressive. Old screens with remnants of thrown sodas, poorly tuned sound systems, etc. I am sure there are some brilliant theaters with Dolby vision + atmos.

My simple 5.1 system and not so simple qd-oled display is just SO much better for me than the theater.

BUT - my wife doesn’t really care. She’ll happily watch a movie on a laptop although she does say the theater sounds no better than home. I’d guess she’s closer to the norm than me.

Consider that it’s the end times and people spend a huge amount of their precious free time binging streaming services. Birth rates are down, and “everyone gather around for family time!” is not a very frequent occurrence in most families I’ve seen.

Clearly, Apple shares my dystopic Vision and cannot wait!

Ok. So? I also think solo people don't care much about "a better experience". Indeed, bingers seem almost definitionally people who do not care about good experiences.

Regardless, if that family of four watches separately, $1k on 4 adequate TVs also seems like a perfectly fine solution. If the kids aren't just watching stuff on their phones, which seems pretty common in my experience.

Well my point was a little tongue in cheek so sorry if it offended! Was partially just lamenting our culture and what pandemic+inequality+polarization+digitization has done to it.

I guess if I had to crystallize a real point out of “family togetherness is out of style”: people definitely care about their viewing experience, just not in the super rational pragmatic way I think you do. Take retina screens, for example - Apple pushed them hard and I anecdotally know people justify their purchases with them, even tho I suspect there were and are more economical options that would give a viewer 99% of the same experience.

The kind of people who could imagine spending $3500 on any gadget are the kind of people who like cool tech backed by cool ads in cool packaging, IMO. And cmon… Sitting in your living room and feeling like you’re in a movie theater on the moon is new and fun and cool, however you slice it.

I was referencing the original post. In 10 years, it wouldn't be $12k, probably more like $1k for 4 headsets.

But the point is that people still generally won't care. You can drastically improve the sound quality of a television for $1K, and most people don't do it. You could have 3d goggles for a while there for a similar price point, and no one did it.

I don't necessarily agree with this, but let's roll with it — it doesn't change my prediction that in 10 years, 50% of people in commercial flights will be wearing a headset

...and if people buy that device for travel, many of them will use it instead of a home theater

the long history of media is also that it leads to a 50” TV that costs $250! ;)

If the experience involves me becoming more isolated from the people sat in a room beside me then it’s far from a no brainer.

Back when we had a baby sleeping in a room with us my wife and I would each put in separate earphones so we could watch something together without disturbing the baby. It was a very crappy experience to not be able to remark on a single thing to each other. That experience plus being harder to see each other too? No thanks.

> It was a very crappy experience to not be able to remark on a single thing to each other.

That was caused by your baby, not by the devices. 2 people in a small apartment together with their own devices watching what appears to them to be a movie-sized screen would definitely be something many people would like. No big device on the wall. No shaking the people in the apartment next door with your sub-woofer. And you can still comment to each other all you want. (Obviously the price will need to come down for that to be common.)

> That was caused by your baby, not by the devices.

It was both. The earphones we were wearing meant we couldn’t hear a word the other was saying, irrespective of whether we’d wake up the baby. The Vision Pro has speakers on the side of it too.

I guess I’m not a huge fan of the wall space wasted on my TV but I can’t say it bothers me enough that I want my entire family to strap a headset across our faces every time we want to watch something. Cables coming out the back, a two hour battery life… I’m not doubting the Vision Pro will have uses but I cannot imagine it being a preferable movie-watching experience than a TV.

If the earphones were AirPods you would be able to hear each other talk wiht transparency mode turned on. It doesn’t block external sounds.

If you and I are on an airplane together, both sitting next to each other but virtually somewhere else, it could be compelling.

Currently my two (separated) parents and my two siblings each live in a different city. If all five of us could get together to watch a movie in VR and feel that presence, I think it would be pretty darn fun.

By the way — I'm all for real life, "touch grass" type of experiences too. Both can coexist.

Sure, I can buy the remote use case. But it’s still not going to replace my home theatre setup I use with people I live with.

It could certainly replace mine if I had one. My husband doesn’t like to watch things on that kind of screen and we have very different tastes in viewing so we are generally watching things separately. Our together time is doing other things without screens. A virtual home theater sounds quite appealing.

I agree, it probably won't replace my home theater setup either. But I wonder if you and I will not be the majority?

You can already do that in VR. But it doesn't replace your home theater, which is the point I made.

I guess we're talking over each other... what I was saying in my original post was:

> As simple as it might look, the most compelling mass-market use case I saw from Apple is... watching a movie on an airplane.

I don't think this use case is well addressed by the current hardware on the market, mainly due to resolution and optical aberration issues

>but if that screen is a headset that gives you a better experience, then it's a no brainer.

Sure, let me replace this $2000 4k oled tv with 4 x $3500 headsets so I can watch a movie with my family.

$2000 and $14000 is basically the same, right?

To be clear, I was fast-forwarding 10 years. By then you'll be able to get a high-resolution dual micro-OLED headset for less than $300. They will be on a similar trajectory to smartphone displays.

> Soon enough the category will be a replacement for your home theater and/or your mobile entertainment device (i.e. tablet).

It will probably split in separate categories, the same way we currently have different PC categories ("windows", "gaming" and "macs", whatever people envision in these names).

Your mention of tablet is interesting, as the market is also split between iPad(android), chomebooks and windows tablets, but most people probably only think about the iPad as a "tablet" and the rest as "computers".