The Apple Vision Pro
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
That is, at least there is a way to load up the media player of your choice and watch porn.
Look, I get that corporate America is strangled by puritan values from the payment processing networks on up, but it is arrogant and willful ignorance to pretend that adult content consumption is not a major part of the VR/MR story.
You want to know what the people who actually use VR the most do with their headsets most of the time? VRChat and SexLikeReal, which is the PornHub of VR if you don't know.
Steve Jobs was a dude who loved to talk about doing LSD but in his later years, he became awkwardly fixated on preventing people from using Apple devices for the stuff most real people do.
He's been gone a long time. It'll be a shame if their vision for spatial blah blah is sanitized and safe for work, even after dark.
I think having it watered down will actually push the dream of wearable computers for common use by making people feel less uneasy around it.
General purpose computing directly implies that each user is free to do what they want with it, just like the MacBook Pro they bought from the same company.
The world would be a lot more awesome if people weren't entitled to feel "uneasy" about what people they will never meet are doing legally in the privacy of their own homes.
I don't agree, but I respect that this strategy is seemingly self-evident to a certain brain wiring.
PornHub says that red states often represent their heaviest users, demographically. Can you even imagine how different things would be if the rugged individualists defended freedom of thought as passionately as they defended weapons?
In other countries, souvenir shops sell genitalia-shaped pastries or bottle openers.
I’m glad to see this sentiment expressed here. I have grown increasingly frustrated with this very thing over the past few years. Anything which even approaches, erotic or titillating is immediately suppressed, censored, and pretended like it never existed in the first place. Apple is one of the worst here, but far away not the only one. All of the AI companies are exactly the same: try and generate an image of a woman and a bathing suit with DALL-E and you will inevitably fail.
Instead, they pretend over and over that these are simply productivity devices, meant to enhance our capabilities as workers or consumers of Disney-level entertainment.
I am a human being, who occasionally gets horny. I masturbate. This is not something that corporate America recognizes, and in fact, seems eager to censor and suppress.
A world curated by conservative HR departments is not one that is particularly appealing to me, and the Vision Pro seems like it is the month of this attitude.
I realize this is a bit of a different take, it does seem related though. At the same time I get that you'd like to do what you want with your device and that makes sense too.
One is sinister and gives pearl clutchers new talking points. The other describes what should be a basic aspect of owning a computer.
Numerous American companies recognize this and are developing services and products tailored to your needs. The comment just above yours highlighted some of these companies.
However, Apple may not be the best-suited company to take action in this regard.
How is that not a dichotomy, and (possibly) hypocritical?
We as a culture have a weird relationship with horny, and it’s mostly a negative one. Sexuality is fine. Horny is not.
But I also don't know why you think the Vision Pro can't play videos or go to websites. It can do that stuff.
(Actually, I'm informed by a VR porn enthusiast that it doesn't support some stereo video formats. I guess you have to stick to 2D.)
I think this is largely driven by the concern that the model could be used to (whether intentionally or inadvertently) generate an image of a person who looks underage. That's a gray area of law (not to mention morality) that people are very hesitant to test, so it's better to just block porn entirely.
The really obvious MR sex app is one that overwrites your partner with somebody else like Strea or Bremington. Not sure if most partners would like that. You might get something that feels like motion sickness if there is too much of a difference in breast size.
I'm right at the edge of turning off autocorrect altogether, just because it has a habit of changing previous words, not just the one I'm typing. If I only ever talked with very generic English this might be okay, but when I'm using subject matter lingo it fails utterly and becomes a tremendous nuisance to try and convince it to leave that text alone. Sometimes even deleting the correction and re-typing what you want doesn't stop the behavior.
I'm going to become a luddite and carry wads of cash and wear a tinfoil hat.
This is my startup idea: less of this crap. The logo is going to be a rabid woodland creature wearing a tinfoil hat.
Wilful ignorance - or sensible marketing?
Apple's ability to get celebrities and subway riders using their product in public depends on completely denying that it's a $3500 masturbation aid.
When Jobs acquired Apple, his vision of computing appliances was restarted - iPod, iPhone, et al. They have a lot more functionality, but the iOS walled garden keeps enough of the users happy - at least in the Silicon Valley/USA.
Look at early 20th-century Sears-Roebuck shopping catalogs online - one of the pages showed a hand-sized motor and the various attachments one could buy to attach to it - want a blender - get the motor and the blender attachment, et al.
An early 20th-century motor-based ecosystem similar to the battery-powered power tools you see today.
Eventually the idea of a generic motor that gets specialized with whatever particular attachment you want was refined to combine a motor and each particular attachment into its own separate integrated device - no swapping of motor and attachment anymore. There are pros and cons to both systems, but the integrated specialized appliance approach won for the most part.
This sentence is backwards. About the only users not happy with the iPad as computing appliance are the ones in Silicon Valley USA or drinking its "car makers should design for garage mechanics not for driving" koolaid. (Commenters here, for instance.)
If you accept the premise the best tech disappears behind "the job to be done" for users, if you acknowledge driving is not about tinkering under the hood, to run an errand a driver shouldn't need to even know how it works under the hood, and most drivers are better off picking up groceries or kids or traveling, not ever opening the hood, then you will have a better time making cars for the drivers who buy Apple because it's an appliance farther along the novel engineering utility curve, where tinkerability is for engineers, utility is for users, and most users are not mechanics.
See also this, on Apple's "brand promise" and the EU's DMA:
https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/215-buildi...
My opinion? They are, but of a somewhat restricted sort.
From Apple's perspective, it's important that using the device in public doesn't have a stigma.
Otherwise, we don't need to wait for deepfake AI / AR apps to undress people.
Creeps could go in public, see a person they like, and put porn next to them without anyone knowing.
Without restricting porn, an AR device just becomes a machine to violate others boundaries. There's a reason cell phones in Japan cannot turn off the shutter sound.
Does this affect anyone else more than imagining the same thing using one’s brain?
I don't want to discuss it too much because there's enough nuance here for people to hang you with no matter what you say, but, a brief parable: I spent exactly 1 sentence pointing out to someone you could make porn with Stable Diffusion and they started hosting a SD instance for deep fakes in our non-technologist community with girls in it, and also started what I still think of as a "porn dungeon" chat room.
It was immensely frustrating trying to verbalize why this was antisocial and why there was a set of people who were legitimately upset by it. They never really understood fully.
But I'm sure they had moment with the Taylor Swift deepfake stuff from last week.
There's isn't really a 100% logical Spock reason why it's bad, other than other humans find it deeply distasteful.
MacBooks can access an unrestricted amount of porn yet the public doesn't immediately equate computer users -> using porn right now.
Just in case you're being serious, you realize that people can already imagine others naked in public or just snap a picture or video of them using their phone and upload it to your AI undressing service.
It being strapped to your head adds absolutely nothing, and you might be projecting your own fantasies.
So uh, can't people already do this with phones? I could watch porn on the train in front of people right now?
What NEW boundary does AR violate?
There is no new boundary except for the one puritans dream up. A holographic projection of their own inner monologue on the topic, if you will. ;)
It's all just so painfully dumb, and we have to weather the same arguments literally every time there's a new content format.
Answer is no.
I think the idea of a general purpose OS without a company involved in deciding whether you are allowed to run programs or not is a thing of the past. If Apple and Microsoft could go back in time and change macOS and Windows to be like iOS where everything has to be approved and signed by Apple they almost certainly would. The only reason they haven't already (IMO) is that people are already used to those platforms being open, and there would be too much outcry to change it. Even then, they are certainly trying to chip away at it...
Think how much money would be collected if these companies got to extract 30% of every transaction carried out on every PC in the world. I'm sure they (plus Google) are busy trying to figure out if they can bring the "Apple Tax" concept to the web as well.
The easiest way for me to buy something from any stripe or Shopify website (when on an Apple device) is to use Apple Pay.
Would love an informed reply, sorry for Google Laziness as I'm outdoors
They definitely do make some money off Apple Pay transactions via interchange, but it's probably something like 0.1 to 0.3%.
Android is the most used OS on the planet, so no. Not even close.
What was Windows RT if not an attempt to move Windows over to a walled garden model?
Windows S was another attempt.
I think it's just easier for platforms to ban porn rather than deal with the criminal and financial risks of enabling it.
$3500 for a device that can't do the number 1 application of its technology.
1) there is no access to video/depthmap stream like in iPhone ARKit so it's not possible to roll your down Object Detection or ML Model or even simple QRCode scanner
2) Latency for Image Tracking seems to be around 1-2fps comparing to iPhone ARKit
3) in some WWDC videos hand tracking seems to be not as precise and also having latency
4) You cannot implement something similar like Mac Expose because iOS/iPadOS/visionOS is much more limited than MacOS
5) At least on iOS/iPad depthmap from lidar is much worse than those provided from TrueDepth (and even those got significantly worse from iPhone 14+)
Overall for productivity I find some future iteration of XReal glasses more compelling and better direction:
- much cheaper
- very lightweight
- work with connected to desktop or mobile phone
- can have lower latency since connected directly with usb-c cable
- can possibly have less software limitation if connected to desktop
Ideally I would like to have some combination of google glasses / meta ray-ban / xreal so that you can wear it outdoor for simple HUD and AI voice control but can be connected to smartphone or laptop to provide AR experience similar like in xreal but just with better resolution.
All APIs are provided begrudgingly and with a deep distrust of anyone using them and as much friction placed between developers and users.
Ultimately the upside of an open platform is that you can know with certainty that eventually literally any common need or deficiency it has will be addressed by the open market - if you are desperate enough you can pay and do it yourself. For example, when people didn't like Microsoft's desktop updates they created an entire alternative desktop shells. And there are now something like a dozen of these, some of which are / were commercial products. In an open platform, anything not addressed by the platform owner simply becomes a market opportunity for a third party developer. Of course, there are lots of downsides, but this is the upside.
But Apple's choice here to ship VisionOS as a fork of iOS and more importantly as a completely locked down system means that his ultimate conclusion is "maybe Apple will fix this" and alludes to hints of rumours they might do it. But this is what we are reduced to - disempowered, we simply hope that our overlords will have mercy on us, their interests coincidentally aligning with ours long enough that they do what we want. Or you buy into a competitor, but this just gives you a choice of tyrannies, not actual freedom.
None of this matters if you think Vision OS is a niche or a dead end. But if you actually buy into the idea that down the track this is the ultimate future of all computing, then it should be very concerning to be completely disempowered over it. I actually love the idea of a truly "spatially" aware operating system and I think eventually this is indeed where computing will go. So that is why I'm both excited by and very concerned about the direction Apple has taken.
It's the same situation as the loss of headphone jacks and removable batteries. Some of us care deeply about those things but, antithetically to the point you've made, the market has decided that those things are no longer important to the vast majority of people.
This is just as true of paid, closed source software. And when it gets abandoned, you can't fix it if it's important to you.
> For the vast majority of people that aren't tech nerds like us, the "locked down system" is preferable because it gives an incredibly consistent, polished experience for 99% of the use cases people need it for at the expense of the ability to customize it to your heart's content.
I think that macOS is a great example of a system that is closed enough that a non-technical user will get the polished experience they're looking for, but allows technical users to get under the hood and customize it to their needs. Of course, it isn't open enough for some people, but it is open enough for a great many very technical people.
It's not true of most paid, closed source software, though, while it is true for most open source software. At least in the former, the money people pay for the software directly contributes to its longevity and sustainability.
The current state is not the end state, the device has been available for four days.
But I am enjoying using it for work in a way I haven't heard reflected yet, that touches on some people's complaints about window management. Rather than surrounding myself with a "sphere of screens", I find it more pleasing to align windows with the walls of the room I'm actually in. Notes, todo lists, calendars, email, all open at the same time up against the walls of my physical room. I stand at my standing desk as usual, with my macbook display in front of me, and then I walk around to look at different things.
It may not be better but it's a different, pleasant experience.
Also, art is great on the VP. I put the album art of the currently playing music full size on one wall and it's actually given me a new appreciation for that.
I've seen a bunch of people baffled about why you would want to stick a note in VR space, as if it didn't also still integrate with iCloud as usual.
Is there a way to manipulate the windows that I'm missing, or do you physically get up and attach the screens? I can't seem to find a way to adjust the... yaw?... without grabbing the window, walking, and turning.
And along those lines, that's also the only way I've found to have smaller windows far away. Otherwise pushing a window away also blows it up to an unreasonably large size, and I can't make it much smaller by grabbing the corner. In contrast, a window near you can be the size of a large iPad, which you can then get up and walk to the wall, with it maintaining its size.
Although, it isn't a huge deal for me now. Walking around a physical space is part of the "new way of working" I'm exploring. Monitors beat the AVP if I'm going to be parked in a desk anyway, but the AVP unlocks a workflow in which I'm fully digital but also less tethered to a desk, which is interesting to me.
If Apple could find a reasonable solution for typing on a non-physical keyboard I'd be very happy. Not sure I want to resort to Keyboard Pants.
Even something like an American Sign Language interpreter would be amazing... and could learn to speak to deaf people, to boot.
Pretty hard for me to imagine parents handing their young kids AVP instead of an ipad to watch videos, or an adult putting on AVP as they go to sleep instead of the pad on the side of the bed. Some people will prefer AVP on a plane over an ipad perhaps, but not all. Maybe teens will prefer it for casual watching, but many people will prefer something where it is less awkward to get up and pee or get a snack or interact with someone else in your house.
There is already a social stigma around people being focused on their phones/screens, and the disconnect it creates with people around you. But that disconnect is somewhat virtual in that the phone is absorbing your attention, but it's not a physical barrier.
These AR glasses all, by design, create a very real physical barrier between the wearer and their surroundings. It also doesn't help that they look goofy, and sometimes slightly creepy. I think this creates a much bigger barrier to widespread adoption, it is a much larger conscious decision by a user to wear an AR kit. You can't just glance at it and get sucked into the content stream, it is a very distinct process to put it on/take it off.
I've been intrigued by the Apple Vision, and other AR devices, but it still feels like there isn't a breakthrough moment for them.
Many shops, cafes and restaurants insist on playing music I really hate. Certain types of popular music make my skin crawl.
My favourite tech product of recent years has been effective noise cancelling headphones I can keep in my pocket to block that out.
;-)
[0] not much better than the creepy face-screens in Jamin Winans' amazing low-budget movie, Ink
AVP is a V1 product, but it’s already clear that Apple understands this and is interested in solving it. It has the best pass through of any VR headset, with reviewers able to do real-time tasks like playing ping pong or playing catch. And it has a screen on the outside that displays some weird virtualized version of your eyes to try to pass through in the opposite direction. And, lastly, in has a “persona” which it can use to make you seem like your not using AVP in FaceTime as much as is possible.
These are, mostly, janky attempts to solve the problem, but it’s easy to imagine them getting more refined over time. It’s easy to imagine that someone walking down the street wearing future versions will be able to make eye contact with other people and will appear as their persona to other AVP wearers rather than someone wearing a headset, though likely with some green aura that’s only blue for wearers of other copycat headsets (there’s no way that Apple isn’t carrying their green bubble social stigma into the spatial computing market). All the building blocks are there for that physical barrier to feel a lot less physical, they’re just really, really raw and don’t quite work yet.
But also this is the first version. The original iPhone didn't have copy/paste or the ability to shoot video.
The software will continue to get refined and the hardware will get smaller. It'll eventually fit into roughly standard sized glasses and I think that's going to change everything
I eventually did get iPhones, but vividly remember being laughed at -- as a Mac user -- for choosing the little white HTC Magic with a trackball because I prioritised the idea of actually being able to edit text (which we now do on iPhones with a force-touch gesture not much more elegant than that trackball and lacking some of its nuance.)
When I look at my Apple Watch, even that feels too big (thick) to me, so thinning AVP is quite far off IMO.
On the other hand, all the research to make things thin will finally pay off when it happens. If Vision Pro can go half its weight and double the battery (even if detached like now), that will probably be the point when it becomes a serious platform.
It's like saying, "Sure, Ferarris are cool, but my VW can also drive to the track." (No shade thrown to VWs. Love the boxy, 90s-era Jetta.)
Usual disclaimers: Is it for everyone? Probably not. Is it expensive? Very. Is it perfect? No. "Essentially the same?" Not at all.
There absolutely is for 4K content though.
If you're happy with 1080p the Quest is perfectly fine. Not for the AR experience of a screen in your living room, but for a VR experience watching a floating screen in space.
Also I think the group of people who are shelling out $4k for the AVR are going to be heavily biased to justify the expense. I don't think there's a $3000 difference between the two devices. Maybe $500.
It's no different than consumer GPU's. There will be enthusiasts who purchase the GTX 4090 for $2000 but the average consumer is far better off buying something like a 3060Ti for $340.
My favorite example of this is a site called Logical Increments [0] that clearly shows just how expensive pushing to the next tier of quality is as you scale up.
I wish the Quest 3 was as good as the vision pro. It isn't. It's not even close. The display specs are way more than enough to be able to observe this.
Yeah, Vive -> Index -> Quest 2 -> Varjo Aero[^1] -> Quest 3 -> Vision Pro.
Yeah FOV is worse, yeah it costs more, virtually order of magnitude more.
People are responding to "The quest 3 does essentially the same at roughly 10x lower price.", i.e. dismissal of there being a significant qualitative difference.
I never, ever opted into watching video on any headset until now. Like, yeah, I tried it. I watched stuff. This is organic "I want to watch stuff, where's the VR headset?" instead of "here's a VR headset, I can watch stuff"
Something that escaped me until a week ago was a good visualization of the pixel density. I thought the Aero was amazing. It is/was.
I assumed Vision Pro was marginally more or less than the Aero.
Actually, Aero::Vision Pro is roughly Vive 1::Aero.
[^1] that one is important, that's real street cred, you know I care, invest, and know what I'm talking about
I think it depends on use case. Is having a bunch of high resolution floating screens the killer app or just a gimmick? For most current VR users, they're not going to see a significant benefit from higher resolution Beat Saber.
That in itself is a false question, no? Nobody says they are as good. I haven't seen even the most ardent Meta fan suggest such a thing.
It's not a question of whether they are as good but whether the difference matters enough. There is a curve with very sharply diminishing returns and a lot of threshold effects (once you get close to screen door effect going away, nobody cares that you made it 1% less noticeable any more etc).
It's definitely very personal, so this is completely normal, but I don't think you are even slightly representative of where the general public would fall. For reference, I myself and a number of people I know quite happily use Quest 3 as a monitor replacement. It's borderline - Quest Pro was not good enough - but Quest 3 is - for me.
If it's in Immersed, then I've probably talked to you. I'm not saying it can't work, I'm saying it has around double the clarity. This is trivially perceived. I'm definitely not special here. You should really go look through an AVP at an Apple store. If you have a high res computer display, you can also somewhat emulate it.
A lot of companies are going to buy it just to figure out what types of apps can be made for the platform.
Users want to be able to do things like connect to their computer and be able to read small text on the virtual monitor.
Both headsets are not equal on the "readable text" metric.
The AVP fitting into standard sized glasses like swim goggles is a possibility but it'll be more like Cyclops visors. I am not sure if it will ever achieve a Rayban form factor.
I don't have kids and the price is still outlandish for my household of well-earners. I would never pay more than $2k for this.
For example I would like, and could reasonably afford, a decent technical camera rig and a 45mp+ digital mirrorless camera to go on the back of it. I know how to use it properly to get value from it.
The outlay for this is more than the Vision Pro by a small margin.
But there are many things I probably should spend that money on before that.
The Vision Pro, as amusing as it surely is, is way, way down the road beyond even that purchase.
Having the money to spend on something — whether a personal or business expense - means engaging with the opportunity cost of spending the money.
And even if you comfortably have the money, you still question the value.
What is going on right now is a lot of people have a Vision Pro on fifteen day approval and they are all feverishly writing blog posts and tweets to explore every possible way that they could get other people to validate their impulse purchase. Because that’s what it is. Unless you’re going to build an app for it —- go all-in on that ecosystem —- it’s a weird thing to prioritise spending $3500 on.
Only if you claim that having "a screen" is the only metric that counts.
> Apple is very proud of the displays inside the Vision Pro, and for good reason — they represent a huge leap forward in display technology...
They also look generally incredible — sharp enough to read text on without even thinking about it...
The displays are the main reason the Vision Pro is so expensive — they’re at the heart of the Vision Pro experience and what makes the whole thing work. You are always looking at them, after all.
https://www.theverge.com/24054862/apple-vision-pro-review-vr...
Arguable, imagine getting up to pee and not interrupting your movie at all.
To the sound of me peeing?
FOV is the most unforgivable. I can't for the life of me imagine who is deciding that 110 is sufficient. I would give up just about every single other specification in a headset for 180°+, and I have owned just about every consumer headset released since DK2.
I'm having a very difficult time imagining how that would be physically possible.
I'm actually curious what the highest theoretically possible FOV is for a conveniently sized device strapped to your face, and how close we are to it already.
How do you get the light into the outer edge without making the headset absurdly wide?
Curved screens aren't the issue here. The issue is the lenses and light paths between the screens and eye.
VR requires collimating lenses. Not just a screen, curved or not.
How about a microscopic lenticular array in a close-fitting shell over each eye (kind of like swim goggles) or even in a special contact lens. The goal is to have appropriate lenses in front of the pupil. This lens array can then be targeted by extremely precise laser projectors, exploiting the lenses to illuminate parts of the retina that would not otherwise be visible from the same projector location through a naked eye.
Curved lenses are not common now but there’s no theorerical reason they couldn’t exist.
Pimax 8k has 200°: https://pimax.com/product/vision-8k-x/
Valve Index is 130°, which is right at the line of becoming acceptable and achieving presence. I seriously can't believe Apple released this thing with functionally no difference to the $500 Quest 3 beyond higher screen quality.
https://pimax.com/pimax-headsets-fov/
The horizontal FOV is only 159°:
https://vr-compare.com/headset/pimaxvision8kx
And it's only 103° FOV vertically. (For comparison, the Quest 2 is 93° vertical.)
But I'm very happy to know 159° horizontal is possible. From more research online, it seems that the wider the FOV, the more distortion you get, so there's a tradeoff?
Also it seems very clear that Apple prioritized resolution (sharpness) over FOV. For a given display panel, the more you spread it out, the blurrier it gets.
Heartless physics? :)
I think you underestimate peoples' willingness to throw money at early versions of Apple hardware.
It may be amazing on a plane, but even then only when you're traveling by yourself.
I wrote in the productivity section of yesterday’s Article, “To put it even more strongly, the Vision Pro is, I suspect, the future of the Mac.” I’m kind of irritated at myself for not making one critical observation: the Vision Pro is the future of the Mac if Apple makes software choices that allow it to be.
I’m mostly referring to the Mac’s dramatically larger degree of openness relative to other platforms like iPadOS: so many of the capabilities of a Mac are not because of its input method, but because applications and users have far fewer constraints on what they can do, and it will be difficult to replace the Mac if the same constraints that exist in iPadOS exist in visionOS.
Frankly, I’m dubious Apple will allow that freedom, and I should have tempered my statement because of that. I do think that visionOS is much more compelling for productivity than the iPad is, thanks to the infinite canvas it enables, but if you have to jump through the same sort of hoops to get stuff done that you do with the iPad, well, that ability to project a Mac screen into the Vision Pro is going to be essential.
Locking this things down like iOS/iPad OS is going to severely limit the potential, and that makes me very sad.
Of course this is Apple, and like any publicly traded company they see $$$ above all else, and they know they can make the most money by locking the device down, forcing people to use approved apps purchased only via the approved app store, and doing everything they can to prevent people from truly owning the device they bought.
At least until now you kind of sort of was forced to interact with actual human beings if you met them face to face although already the smartphone made a dent in that. Now... much less. See https://disconnect.blog/apples-vision-pro-headset-deserves/ for more.
Of course, it'll be a success, everyone was in agreement openly wearing a bluetooth phone headset https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bluetooth_headset.jp... was basically a sure sign of the wearer being an asshole but Apple painted it white , rotated it downwards and presto! it's now trendy.
The Airpods aren't just trendy, they're actually an excellent pair of earphones.
Because Apple was totally the first to make wireless earbuds that could allow you call people.
But hey, if it helps you sleep at night
The first says you have half my attention and I can interrupt you at anytime, the second says my attention is somewhere else when on and at you when off.
That’s what makes it asshole vs socially acceptable.
https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
I've watched many reviews by hardcore VR enthusiasts, and none of them have suggested it's only "slightly" better, with the only comparable clarity coming from devices that are only available through business contracts. Comparing it to my 2/3/Quest Pro (for the short session that I did), I also didn't see anything "slight" about the improvements.
Which other headsets have you used that you're comparing it to?
as a standalone it's best in class minus 6dof gaming. people are excited for the future of this and other products
I.e tech jewelry, which is on par with pretty much everything else Apple sells.
Is the iPhone tech jewelry? It costs about the same as flagship Androids and many not tech-savvy people prefer it because of its ease of use.
Apple uses this magical new idea called market segmentation, if you didn't know.
You realize how much you're hurting your argument when saying this?
iPhones are in no way “easier to use” than Android phones, if anything the lack of a back button and more limited Windows support makes it marginally harder for beginner to use but that's not hard to overcome either so it's not a deal breaker in any way. But it's not easier, except in Apple's marketing pitch and Apple fan's head.
The only thing saying things like this shows it that's you're an Apple fan whose PoV is too biased to be worth reading.
On the other hand iPhones are very predictable. There’s one button or one gesture that takes you home and one gesture to take you back. Also, apps always stay with their limits, don’t blend in the OS beyond notifications,widgets and playback controls.
That’s also part of the reason why Apple wants to keep it as a walled garden.
iPhone’s are miles ahead of any Android in ease of use. Once you deep dive, they might be about the same but Apple still has the consistency advantage.
The fact is, no matter what interface you use, you are going to become accustomed to it, and over time you are going to be just as efficient at doing stuff.
I can easily make arguments about iPhone shitty notification system compared Android, or lack of easily accessible settings, but we both know that people who use the iPhone don't really have an issue with it.
This is the same "vim vs IDE" pointless arguments that people used to have.
I've yet to encounter a single app that “closes” when pressing the back button…
> or one gesture that takes you home and one gesture to take you back.
And while gestures are ok in terms of UX, they aren't discoverable at all, hence my argument about bigger barrier to entry for beginner with iOS.
> That’s also part of the reason why Apple wants to keep it as a walled garden.
Nope, the reason is a mix of company's culture and profit motive. Since job's death Apple has largely departed from its former design consistency obsession.
> Once you deep dive, they might be about the same but Apple still has the consistency advantage.
The consistency advantage Apple has only exist compared to different Android phones (jumping from one Android brand/OS version to another is generally confusing), but it only matters when you change phones, and people have refrained to upgrade their iPhones to newer iOS version for years now so jumping to a new iPhone also come with a feeling of confusion if you were used to a former iOS version.
As I said before, most of what you're talking about doesn't really exist except on Apple's marketing and fanbase mind.
Here is how to reproduce: Tap back button until the app closes.
Oh you will say that the app didn't close, it went into the background? Maybe, maybe not - users can't tell without further investigation.
This alone makes it 10x harder to use than iPhone. On iPhone, there's no concept of closing the app. Well, there's but its not a relevant thing %99 of the time because apps are very limited on what they can do in the background and its very obvious if the are doing something(you see controls on the screen because they will have to use some system service like playing audio).
As I said, I've never encountered the “maybe not” option, so I'm suspecting you're making stuff up again…
> This alone makes it 10x harder to use than iPhone.
Come on. You realize you're embarrassing yourself, don't you?
Maybe you should consider writing arguments defending your position instead of personal attacks though. It keeps conversation useful for everybody.
Another thing about the Android is its toxic hateboy mentality among the fanboys, they can't just tell what they like about something and tell why they believe its better. They also feel the need to take down the competition and insult the users of the competition. Unbearable bunch really, and those are the people you have to deal with the moment you have issue with your phone.
Saying that iOS is “10x easier” because some trivial reason is a good way to shoot your argument in the foot, and you should be embarrassed to have made it. That's what I'm saying.
And as such the conversation cannot be useful for anyone except as a procrastination apparatus (and an occasion to practice a foreign language, but tbh that's mostly an excuse).
Also, most people using Android give no shit about Android (I could even use an iPhone now that the European Commission is breaking the walled garden), it's an operating system, not a sport team. We just get annoyed when Apple cultists are mindlessly parroting the credo coming corporate marketing without an ounce of reflection.
This is why it's embarrassing: you're supposed to be an intelligent being with critical thinking but somehow collectively fail at using it. This is an endless source of disappointment.
Sorry, this is just delusional. Android has no unified standard for how the OS is implemented between devices. Every time you get a new android phone, you need to relearn new UI quirks specific to that device. I honestly don't know how someone could claim with a straight face that Android is easier to use than iPhone.
All android phones have the home screens, the bottom app drawer, the app switcher, and the top drop down menu for quick settings. The only big differences between Android phones are extra features that a phone may have. For example, Pixel has a bunch of interactions you can do with it that you can't do with other phones.
Because Apple is a religion[1], that's it. Worshipers will say whatever it takes to defend their cult, that's basic human psychology.
[1]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/anthropologist-confirms-apple-...
“Everytime” is in fact every 3+ years in average! At this rate, even iOS changes its UX in a way you need to learn new stuff, and that's fine.
And while there are undeniable differences from one device to another, it's a completely pointless metric! For the user the only thing that matter is what happens on your device.
Pretty much no-one cares if their neighbors' phone is the same as their own, what matters is how easy it is to use your phone. Also I can tell you, as an Android user, it's orders of magnitude easier to use any other people's Android phone than it is to use an iPhone with its undiscoverable hand snaps to get to the previous screen! Long term iPhone users (and MacOs users for that matter) have internalized the idiosyncrasies of their platform, and forgotten that there's actually an non-trivial learning process. Obviously it's “much simpler” once you've already learned it, it's the kind of statements people make about the command line as well…
Hey, let me try!
Also I can tell you, as an iPhone user, it's orders of magnitude easier to use any other people's iphones than it is to use an Android with its multiple runic symbols crammed together and baked into the OS that always takes up a portion of the screen! Long term Android users (and google users for that matter) have internalized the idiosyncrasies of their platform, and forgotten that there's actually a non-trivial learning process.
Its the same story with luxury cars. For the vast majority of people, something like a 250 hp crossover with part time AWD is pretty much the most functional vehicle you can buy. The driving use case for the average person doesn't depend on things like driving dynamics, higher horsepower figures, exhaust notes, or even interior trim. But if your dopamine circuits are trained on being in a BMW and feeling the leather and hearing the engine and experiencing short bursts of higher acceleration, then you are going to think that your current vehicle is better than the former, but you are not making that decision on anything objective.
In the same way, people like Apple products mostly for vanity. You can get a Pixel 8 for half the money of the iPhone and do all the same stuff as the iPhone.
The large majority of people out there aren't purchasing flagship Samsung phones though, most people just buy mid-range/budget phones.
> ... and many not tech-savvy people prefer it because of its ease of use.
Perhaps if you're using versions of Android from 10+ years ago this is true, but nowadays iOS and Android are pretty much on-par from a usability POV. If anything as a life-long Android user forced into an iPhone for work, I find the stupid gesture shit on iOS waaaaaay more obnoxious than anything else on Android, but that's just a case of getting used to it and the annoyance goes away slightly after a while (though it's still there for me).
I mean seriously, I imagine the large majority of people's use of phones is them clicking on whatever the default browser is, assuming whatever they're doing on their phones isn't in one of the native apps they can install with like 3 clicks. Occasionally they'll open the Camera. I don't even see how you could make these flows any simpler than they already are other than a direct-to-thought type of interface.
And that bit about a VR headset being better than an iPad for a personal video player is some seriously optimistic, overextended thinking.
Is wearing half a kilo of electronics with a two hour battery life on your head really superior to a smaller screen with all-day battery life that you can put away at a moment's notice?
(Even ignoring that video content often has more than two hours of runtime.)
a) doesn't watch films or use internet gadgets in bed, especially to the exclusion of someone else
b) would at any rate choose a film my partner wanted to watch too
c) ignoring the above, would probably buy the cheapest VR headset that offered a virtual theatre good enough
Have you ever watched a CAM version of a movie? I feel like this kind of activity peaked in late 2000s…
That’s what it felt like watching a movie in VR to me. (In my experience with non-luxury headsets)
It’s worse picture quality than my phone.
For me, watching a movie in 4K on a TV is very very different than the equivalent of ~< 720p, blurry mess with giant god rays.
If AVP can deliver on what people describe, it’s compelling. Still probably won’t buy one though
The AVP gets you to around 4K detail.
It is nothing at all like CAM. Not in color and not in resolution. It doesn't even make sense to say that because the display specs for these devices are well known.
God rays aren't really a problem watching TV content because they're most prevalent at the edges of the display, but you place your virtual screen in the middle. So they're basically a non-issue. (And TV's can have glare problems of their own if you're not watching them in the dark.)
“any vr headset that has a virtual theatre” won’t offer a good movie watching experience
I recommend using the popular SkyBox player.
I think the AVP is the first headset that can actually provide a good movie viewing expedience in a headset coming close to a full 1080p virtual screen and with high OLED contrast.
AVP has a 3680 pixel wide screen across a 100 degree horizontal FOV.
If you make your virtual screen take up a 50 degree FOV (which is still somewhat bigger than most people normally sit/view at home or in a typical theater), then you are still only getting at most 1840 pixels across the virtual screen, which is a bit less than 1080p. Nowhere near 1440p.
That doesn't mean I don't think it can be a great experience. I think it can be, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
The resolution of the horizontal on a Quest is 2064 pixels. However this fills the headsets entire ~110 degree horizontal FOV. Also, you are not seeing the edges of the panels, so we need to eliminate some of those pixels you can't technically even see to around say 2000 (cut off 32 on each side which I think is fair).
Now a 1080p video has a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels. You only have a 2000 pixel canvas that fills up your 110 degree FOV.
Now sure, if you zoom your virtual movie theater screen to fill your entire FOV, then you can say you are seeing the whole 1080p video resolution. But nobody I have ever heard of watches movies at a horizontal FOV of 110 degrees.
Industry standards are around 35-45 degrees. Yes I personally think that is a bit low. I have a 150" projection screen at home, and I sit at about a 53 degree horizontal FOV. I wouldn't want any closer. This represents sitting like 1/3 to the front of a typical movie theater.
However, even at a 55 degree virtual screen, that means the virtual screen is only 1000 pixels across on a Quest 3. this isn't even full 720p resolution which would need 1280 pixels across. Let alone 1080p needing 1920 pixels across.
Now the AVP does better obviously. It's 3680 pixels across 100 degree FOV. If we subtract a few due to not seeing the edge and say about 3600 pixels, and if we say the virtual screen is again 55 degree horizontal FOV, then that gives us a virtual theater screen of about 1850. A little shy of the 1920 for 1080p.
So at best, if you make your virtual screen huge, like 60 degree horizontal FOV, then I could concede you get about a 720p virtual screen in a Quest 3 and about a virtual 1080p screen in a AVP.
Last point I will make is that even at this it's not quite equivalent because you lose a bit of resolution too due to your head being slightly askew and the video pixels not being able to line up straight with the physical virtual theater screen pixels in the headset. So the resulting image becomes a bit softer since the pixel mapping isn't 1:1.
I haven't used an AVP, but I have used many other VR headsets including a Quest 3, and the quality of the virtual movie screen looks quite low to me. Nowhere near even my old 1080p projector on my 150" projector screen. Let alone my current 4K projector on the 150" screen.
So the 2064 pixels becomes about 2500 in practice. So a screen width of 1920 is perfectly doable.
The image doesn't get "softer", surprisingly, because of the constant resampling at 90 or 120 hZ with tiny constant head movement. Any individual frame might be a little softer, but the actual viewing experience doesn't lose any detail at all.
Yes, the virtual screen is huge. It's like IMAX. But it's not a problem -- it's actually great. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Now when I go to a movie theater, I find the screen annoyingly small.
If you find the quality of the virtual screen on the Quest 3 to be low, first make sure you use an app like Skybox that lets you make the screen as large as desired. And then second, do a live comparison with the same content on your laptop (play a file, not a streaming service that might deliver a different bitrate). You'll find that you really are seeing all the same 1080p detail.
But I cannot see the individual pixels and aliasing on my TVs, computer monitors, and projector screens.
The PPD (pixels per degree) of the Quest 3 is about 25. The average human eye has the vision capability of about 60 PPD+.
Plus after using OLED TVs and monitors I can't go back to using an LCD for video, so the contrast in dark scenes looks poor and washed out to me in the quest.
In this regard the AVP is much better as it's using OLED panels with near-infinite contrast.
Otherwise, at home I am normally used to movies on my 150" 4K native JVC projector setup where I sit about 11ft away from it giving me about a 53 degree horizontal FOV. I don't want it to be any larger of my FOV, and I wouldn't want to in VR either.
That doesn't make it not 1080p -- which is what you were originally claiming it was less than.
I can absolutely see the individual pixels on my 1080p projector too. It's not a problem. It's inherent to 1080p content. It's just what the content is. You're not losing any detail.
And I'm happy you've got $5,000+ to drop on a 4K projector, with the space for a 150" screen. But 99+% of people aren't comparing their VR headset to that. If mean sure, I were you, I wouldn't be watching something on a VR headset either.
Even with an iPad, they are still sharing the space with you because they peripherally see what you are are doing, watching, etc. If something particularly interesting was on the screen you could point it out to them etc. I can completely believe it's mind blowing (I do it with my Quest 3), but I can't see how this isn't something that will ultimately harm your connectedness to the people around you.
At that point I'm genuinely more interested in watching a tomato grow in my garden
This is like saying "for the price of car, you could buy 20,000 bicycles". While that's true, I'm not going to ride my bike from Texas to Disneyland.
I would not suggest getting all of them anyway. It’s just to observe that the opportunity cost of disappearing inside an expensive virtual device is matched by the financial cost.
One gadget is the equivalent of the outlay of an entire well-funded hobby that might broaden your horizons.
One can choose to go into a consumption mode with an AVP or be active and move oneself outside through a real 3d space, the landscape we live in. What is better for the health? Mental and physical.
I would guess that the AVP is a temporary device to get 'us' into a future with different hardware for spacial computing. Something for the developers and early adopters -> the actual mass market(s) then will look differently.
The current trend in tech is that the stuff&servives we use is becoming more and more a mental burden to us: information overload, distraction, noise, manipulation, control, ... the future that has been warned about is now here and a lot of people can't handle it.
The AVP is the 3d version of it. It has potential, but there are a lot of warning signs on its effects on society. People get more and more disconnected from the reality. We'll already see lots of people staring at screens, instead of interacting with their immediate surroundings. This will get worse...
> During the pandemic, we got a very clear picture of the incentives of the tech industry. Once many of us were isolated in our homes to avoid contracting or spreading a contagious virus, tech companies saw their revenues and profits soar as we spent much more time in front of our screens engaging with their services. Companies that were already massive with almost unimaginable valuations and earnings took it to a new level because we were so isolated from one another, and it showed just how much they’re incentivized to get us to spend more time looking at our screens.
...
> I see the Vision Pro and these attempts to have us work in the metaverse or go through our lives with headsets on our faces through a similar lens. The goal of these companies is to isolate us so more of our interactions occur through the products and services they offer, instead of just living our lives and actually interacting with people throughout the course of our days instead of apps and chatbots.
I just didn’t want to go through early product hassles.
I have bought Go, Oculus 1, and Oculus 2 products. The Oculus 2 hits a sweet spot: I always use it once or twice a day now for 5 to 15 minutes to run around playing ping pong, watching live concerts for 1 or 2 minutes just to see what performers are like, etc. I should have bought an Oculus 3, probably, but for quick fun the older model is just fine.
I hate to bet against Apple but Meta may win the escapist just having fun market. Two Apple products have however totally changed my life style: the Apple Watch lets me comfortably function in the world while having no other digital device with me: perfect for quick calls, messaging, checking calendar, etc. while I am out of my home. Much less intrusive to being a human being than carrying around an iPhone. The other product is the iPad, which does a little of everything, and is such a great form factor. I have an Apple Pro Display XDR monitor that pairs perfectly with a modern iPad Pro.
I look forward to something like the Vision Pro in the future that revolutionizes my life like the Apple Watch and the iPad.
EDIT: it is true that a good iPad Pro and an Apple Pro Display XDR together cost about $9000 and as spectacular as watching movies on this combination is, apparently the Vision Pro for $3500 is better, the iPad Pro and Pro Display XDR also have other excellent functionality.
Which, to me is odd why they would think this because this is an Apple product. You will only ever be able to use it the way Apple wants you to use it. If it doesn't fit your imagined use case, Apple expects you to adapt.
i never expected it to be good as a productivity device because my own experience is while screen real estate is nice what really matters is the ergonomics of your work space and wearing a pair of ski goggles is never going to be ergonomic
Pretty much another iteration of cycle of VR adopters. Many of us went through this with original devices.
Which... is reasonable, I guess? But it does ignore two quite significant elephants in the room:
1. No, I will not put that on my face, nor accept anyone in my proximity to do so without [social] repercussions (see: Google Glass)
2. No, it does not do anything I actually want. My 4K, soon 5K, soon 8K monitor displays my movies, code, or whatever, just fine, and the fact that I can get custom overlays or whatever, while making me nauseous, just isn't that appealing? (see: anything Oculus/Meta, Microsoft, HTC, etc. have achieved so far: some subset of fans will lap their product up, but broad marketplace acceptance is... nowhere to be found?)
It's quite possible that VR/AR will take over the world at some point, but right now, it more seems like 3D TV/cinema: a supply-side fad that lacks consumer acceptance.
"Those are air bubbles," he snapped. "That means there's space in there. Make it smaller." -Steve Jobs
Strap this onto your face and enjoy the ride. -Tim Cook
No, it's survivor bias
I'm more worried about people trying to drive with this thing on.
Apple products typically enjoy widespread popularity, though the Vision Pro appears to cater to a somewhat limited demographic that is serious enough to make the purchase. There are numerous instances of people confidently wearing these devices in public. Among the footage I've encountered, one particular video caught my attention, showing someone using a Vision Pro while driving a Tesla and getting pulled over, though I'm unsure about the video's authenticity.
And that's ignoring the software issues from Apples willful ignorance around user profiles/accounts on other devices in the iOS/iPad ecosystem ..
Huh, yeah, Mom and Dad and their 2.2 kids on the couch, all plugged in to an AVP, for only $14,000 (I'll round down to 2 kids)...
[0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1aiuwm4/change_f...
[1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1ai9eqc/light_se...
[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/comments/1aiq3si/wtf_remo...
Some users cannot use the thinnest lightshield: their eyes or eyelashes touch the lens.
Apple did make them interchangeable and exchangeable (for free), so it seems like the major FOV issue is with their scanning and auto-selection (for some users).
Moreover, are the latest iPhones or iPads really that much better than the first versions, each seems like incremental improvements, not dramatic leaps forward.
* The assumption that it’s v1 and will only get better seems to miss the physics and battery limitations
* Are the latest iPhones or iPads really that much better than the first versions
Batteries are one of the few things aside from the camera and screen resolution where things are substantially and obviously better from a decade ago. The iPhone 5S was released a decade ago - it had a 1,560mah battery that weighed ~40g and got you 10 hours of video playback at 1136-by-640 resolution. The iPhone 15 Pro has a 3,300 mah battery that weighs about the same and provides over 20 hours of playback at 2556‑by‑1179 resolution.
Similar improvements int he AVP's batteries would be a huge boon.
I was struggling to do that with Meta Quest 2 before tho, as the shape of it on my face ends up hitting the top of the can sometimes, and it is just straight up not the best experience. For that case, yeah, a straw would help.
Five more years won’t fix it. Don’t believe me? Look at the Meta Quest from 5 years ago compared to the Quest 3 or the Vision Pro for that matter. It’s barely a different experience. Useful for games and videos and that’s about it.
This concept can’t mess your hair and makeup up. It can’t be something that you can only use in isolation for thousands of dollars. It quite literally needs decades of technological progress that may never happen.
The FAQ from Apple does suggest breaks every 20 minutes "as you become acclimated". I don't quite know what that means for someone who, say, uses it for 2 uninterrupted hours a day to watch movies for example.
And taking 20 minute breaks is really more to do with motion -- using VR makes some people feel nauseous at first because of a mismatch between what your eyes are telling you and what your body is. But that's more apparent with games. It's a non-issue if you're sitting still watching a movie. No breaks needed.
Related: I've had success over the past few years purposefully correcting my computer monitor to be at ~infinity focal distance (EndMyopia method). The idea of using AVP to achieve this focal distance consistently (whereas in real life it depends on careful head placement compared to monitor) is quite tantalizing, though the lens pricing is pretty obsurd.
To adjust for this, the optics in all VR headsets are set up so that the "focal distance" is around 1-2m.
Articles aren't really addressing this concern because this kind of eye strain has been a "solved problem" in the VR space for a long time, so any tech reviewers wouldn't pay attention to it even if it's a good question.
The technical reason is wireless bandwidth for the virtual display.
But AVP isn't wireless!! You've already got a wire running down from your head to the battery pack on your waist. And from there in a real productivity setting presumably you've got the battery pack plugged into the wall. So what's the harm in having offered a TB4 input to allow multiple displays from your MacOS device?
Just feels like an aesthetic "no wires / no ports" thing which is fine if not for the giant power wire!
We are not anymore in the internet or technology of 2014, you can put significant intelligence over what you see, and people may be afraid even of things that technology can't do yet or at least that Apple should forbid in some stage (you don't have to go as far as an AR app that shows everyone around you naked, just recognizing faces and show personal data and selected social networks information is bad enough).
And that is beyond updates in hardware (at least, while it is visible that you are using it) or software.
(I know Oculus uses Android)
It’s essentially an iPad on your face (in both weight and capability). I was happy to pay its cost if it could replace my external monitors but it’s far from being able to do that. The pass through quality could be forgiven (it’s cutting edge but still not perfect) if the Mac Virtual Display was as sharp as visionOS apps but it’s not. Again, it’s better than anything else I’ve tried but it’s not anywhere close to my 3 monitors.
If Apple can continue to iterate on this and not lose interest then I can see myself buying a future version but as things stand today I’ll probably be returning mine.
The real reason Apple did this was they kind of had to? There is a sense that the future is something to do with AR/VR and Apple had not released a new product in a while.
But the headset still has all the issues of other headsets: poor field of view, heavy on the face and expensive.
I think the real signals here are that the current big tech companies have all tried and failed.
The field for disruptors here are open. If anyone has a real pirate spirit and can hack together a better ar glasses with a linux os, it might just be the beginnings of the next Apple.
Teams? I'm not using a persona in a professional setting. Also MSFT's implementation has really low information density. Slack? I need to be able to copy and paste, and the ipad compatibility app stinks. Outlook? Again, the ipad compatibility app is no good. Excel? Give me a break. I had tried the browser first, but it turns out that I have keyboard workflows that are very efficient, and requiring my gaze to shift is no good. To add to it, the gaze tracking highlights controls all over the app when I'm just trying to type, and if I glance at another window for reference, shifts my keyboard and mouse attention.
Multiple monitors projected from a real computer really would be ideal here.
Have it entirely driven (experience wise) by the external compute.
A virtual machine or performant screensharing would work, but I haven’t experienced a good solution yet, so I don’t think it’ll be any better with the Vision Pro
Everything under the condition there’s no eye and neck strain
My take here is that if you remove the hand recognition (gestures etc) and only keep some spatial awareness (in so much that turning your head lets you see your other "monitors") and the high fidelity multi-monitor experience, if you would have a better, sleeker product for the medium term.
Doesn't even have to be Apple per say, simply a thought exercise. I think I'd use something like that, because mouse / keyboard require no visual interaction (for me at least) 99.9% of the time, and pass-through would be sufficient if I really need it from time to time, but it completely alleviates needing to buy physical monitors, is the idea.
I just want better and more windows in something reasonably portable (travel). Even a stack of large e-ink panels I could lay on a large table would work great if the software would work properly.
The immersiveness is nice and all for games and videos, but def no requirement for my means.
So my rule would be: if Apple's advertising would make you buy it even though the reviews and HN comments would not make you buy it, then you can still buy it.
I'll check if Apple's stock decreases after I return it. Something tells me I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
2. Buy the Quest 3 and use it. You can do largely the same stuff, its just going to have lower quality (but still very usable). If you love it enough, sell it and buy the Vision when it gets an update.
That alone tells me that maybe Apple is on to something. It's their biggest bet yet and they are rarely ever wrong.
Not for me though.
> 2. way too expensive for an impulse purchase (for the average consumer. for example you could buy 7 Quest 3's)
> 3. battery life
for me, point 1 kills it. reason i would never buy it.
proprietary battery connector & 1 monitor limit is a very typical apple move.
i see it as another (albeit cool) vehicle for selling apps and subscriptions. neither of which i'm interested in.
its really a shame that such great hardware is hobbled by apples OS.
$3500 buys you some baller widescreen curved monitors.