It’s not like saying that, but saying that doesn’t seem too absurd anyway.

as a game developer: they really are. the finer details are different, but the primary mode of interaction is pretty much the same. you bob and weave around rapidly while shooting at enemies who shoot back at you and a lot of the locations you fight your way through are pretty similar structurally to classic doom levels. they even have somewhat similar music styles.

it's not bad for them to have the same fundamentals! it's important to recognize our roots and know the difference between something truly and fundamentally different vs something that is just extremely refined and iterated.

Smartphones can do more, but are they radically different? Same look and feel, modestly better battery life. From v1 the camera is the biggest addition to what Jobs said - iPod, phone, browser. If AVP has the same incremental improvements, it will still be a bulky media device at best and I’ll still want to take it off for phone calls, work, and even taking photographs. Still cool, but not spatial computing.

> cameras and mp3 players (and phones!!) are basically a thing of the past thanks to the iPhone

This was all true with the first iPhone though. That's the point. I'm sure that the Vision pro will be refined, but what will be necessary to make this a mass market device seems more fundamental than just a lot of refinements.

When the iPhone came out, I remember thinking it was too expensive and not for me, but I definitely wanted one and was jealous of the few people I knew who had one. I just don't have that feeling with the Vision Pro - to the point where I feel if I was given one for free I still couldn't see myself using it much.

That's sort of rare for Apple devices - even if I think some things are ridiculously overpriced I would always be happy with a free one and make good use of it.

The iPhone 1 is perhaps a stretch, but how have things meaningfully changed since the iPhone 4? (which in 2010 introduced the front-facing camera, something that radically changed how many people use their phone.)

That was over 13 years ago, and while SOCs have become faster (though OS's, apps, and websites have become more bloated), the devices have become larger (which makes it easier to type and fit a larger battery), and the cameras have definitely improved, but I can't think of anything I regularly do on my current phone that the iPhone 4's hardware wasn't capable of supporting.

The iPhone 4 already replaced many people's dedicated flashlights, watches, cameras, and GPS navigators back then. Sure, software has changed. Online dating is far more prevalent, but the iPhone 4 definitely could run dating apps, even if it was less common. Likewise, paying people through digital apps is much more common now, but it's not like Venmo or PayPal didn't use to run on the iPhone 4.

The way we use our phones since the iPhone 4 released has changed, but not because of hardware changes. I mean modders have gotten Android 14 running on the Galaxy S3, which released nearly 12 years ago.

Radically different, yes, but linear with the progression of all tech. I wouldn’t say that the iPhone has significantly outpaced Android devices for example.

Likewise, I’d be surprised if apples headset outpaces oculus in any significant way over the next 20 years.

Will it ever be a primary computing device? Not for me..maybe some future generation. Why? Cause I don’t want to spend my workday in a cave. When I pause to think through something, I look away from my monitor etc…

Agreed all around, just isn’t the future of spatial computing we’re being sold on. As an entertainment only device I’m sold if I were traveling more.

Well if you ask Apple they did. It's basically what the iPad Pro is. Apple certainly views the iPad as a general computing device.

Apple doesn't give you full access to your device, but they are also adding a lot of strings attached on Macs, with their notarisation, immutable OS partitions etc.

Sure, you can still turn it off on Mac but it's basically an all-or-nothing, so you have to turn of all protections just to change one little thing. And you lose functionality, like the ability to run iOS apps: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/if-you-disable-sip-all-...

Unfortunately the vendor deciding what you can and cannot do on your computing device is basically the "new model" which they managed to sneak onto us because there was very little opposition to it when iOS was introduced. It also enabled the app store rent seeking of course which was the main point.