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Comment by Kluggy | Hacker News Reader

I've had a HTC Vive, Quest 2, and the Valve Index. It's much higher fidelity than any of them by a very large margin.

The virtual desktop feature is pretty similar experiences.

The hand tracking controls are classic apple (it just works). The eye tracking can use some more work.

I do feel that this could be the future. It's a huge step forward in certain areas, and I think the rest will be fixed. In a generation or two, this is going to be really compelling. I never felt that way about any of the other headsets I own.

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Slightly better resolution but a narrower FOV and worse reflections is not going to turn any HMD from a single digit millions user device into a hundreds of millions of users device. This entire approach is, I think, an evolutionary dead end. People who care about their faces and hair aren't going to strap a 1.5 lb dorkbox to their faces. And no, making it a 1 lb or even an 0.5 lb dorkbox isn't going to fix things if you still have to mash it to your face. People like their faces and won't agree to have their faces look silly for little appreciable gain over a phone and/or laptop.

Will mirror this as someone who uses a Quest 2 somewhere around 10-12 hours per week. In terms of hardware the Vision Pro is much better, which already shows and will only become more evident as intense apps make obvious the difference in CPU+GPU horsepower between the two headsets.

Right, but this gets to the flip side of my argument: what you're saying is that it will do what the Quest does better, at a higher price point.

But... no one is buying Quests. I mean, my kids have one and claim to love it. I had a ton of fun with Google Earth on a Rift S a few years back. But the market is a tiny niche thing.

How does selling a premium version of a niche product make money? I just don't see it. And what I find striking is the number of "Apple People" out there who haven't bothered to learn the particular product niche making statements that seem not terribly informed. Most of the "wow" reviews could have been done with an original Rift.

It’s niche in its current form yes, but I don’t think the AVP is Apple’s endgame for visionOS. It exists merely so a robust platform and ecosystem can be developed and will be there from day one for more broadly appealing products in the future.

That just sounds like marketing non-speak. Couldn't you have said exactly the same words about Quest 3 when it launched? All these discussions come down to something to the effect of "Apple will be successful because Apple". But... I don't see it. They're a follower in this space, not an innovator. If there was magic dust to sell a billion headsets Meta would have found it by now.

I touched on this elsewhere, but it’s my belief that Meta has largely fumbled its strategy with the quest.

In short, outside of games it’s not a very appealing platform. It’s underdeveloped, with a middling SDK and shoehorned-Android UI that isn’t great for much except games, but despite this Meta thinks it’s good enough for developers to willingly lock themselves into their tiny walled garden. Enthusiast users aren’t too interested in the Quest as a platform either; see how many use the standalone Quest headsets exclusively for PCVR (including myself) — why buy games on Meta’s platform which is almost certainly seeing its demise sooner than later when the same games can be owned on the proven Steam instead?

Meta has also been weirdly rigid, with an inability to read the climate and roll with the punches. Their metaverse stuff has all fallen flat and yet they press forward with it instead of embracing what is working and moving in that direction.

And of course, Meta has a less than sterling reputation, being Facebook. A lot of people are reluctant to spend money to invite an array of Facebook cameras into their homes.

Apple is unlikely to suffer any of these problems to any significant extent. Their attempt may also fail, but they have a lot more going for them.

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