The Use Case for Mac Virtual Display | Hacker News Reader

The Use Case for Mac Virtual Display

joshstrange.com

3 pointsjoshstrange8 comments

The last time I went to a tech conference, I squeezed a 32” monitor into a suitcase and set the Mac up when I got there. I have done enough coding on the AVP now to know I’ll be happy to just take that instead of the display. Plus I get my own IMAX-like cinema on the long-haul flight.

It really is a no-brainer for my use-case.

If you travel a lot or don't have external monitors I understand the utility you get from the AVP. That's not my life though so the math works out a little differently.

I'm very glad that the AVP/MVD does work for people and I hope the number of people it works for grows over time as Apple improves the hardware. The content consumption angle is also totally valid and I enjoyed it, just not enough to balance the cost especially since it's a solo experience.

Yep - but when I travel for work, I usually travel alone (ie: not the family) so the non-shared experience works well for me.

Plus I wrote the OS for the prototype, so I'm biased :)

I agree that solo travel is a perfect candidate for the AVP. If I spent an appreciable amount of time in hotel rooms I'd probably keep mine.

> Plus I wrote the OS for the prototype, so I'm biased :)

That's pretty awesome. As I've said multiple times the UI/UX is by far the best I've ever used in VR/AR. Text entry is rough but pairing a keyboard solves most of that. The eye tracking isn't perfect and sometimes frustrating but the vast majority of the time it works very well. Really it's the iPad apps where eye tracking struggles the most, mainly if they never supported pointer devices and if their UI is too close together.

Author describes "massive" differences between 14" & 16" MacBookPro displays... while I sit here on my 43" primary screen thinking "even 27 inches seems small these days."

My secondary screen is "only" 28 inches.

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I'm currently working with an elderly macular degeneration client, a former painter, who is quite rapidly growing fond of the freedoms AVP proposes to offer.

Her only resistance is the frustration of being eighty-plus-years-old. Computers surprisingly understand her parkinsonianisms well.

The hardware simply isn't there yet. Pixels per degree needs to be a factor of two or three better than it is now, without foviated rendering.

It's clear Apple had to cut corners in multiple places.

I agree, I think it was still the right call to ship this device now. It's reached a point where it is good enough for some people (either MVD or just AVP native apps) and you can't wait forever to ship the "perfect" device. Not to mention developers need to actually use it to get a feel for how to develop best for it. I know a couple iOS/iPadOS/macOS developers said they pretty much went back to the drawing board after attending and AVP lab where they could test what they had been building in the simulator.

I look forward to what Apple comes out with for v2, v3, etc.

I think this is a take that gets missed a lot.

Reportedly, they can only make 1 million of them this year. Apple has close to a billion customers. It only has to be useful for 0.1% of them at this stage.

It’s certainly good enough for that.

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