The reasons people are sending back their Apple Vision Pro headsets | Hacker News Reader

The reasons people are sending back their Apple Vision Pro headsets

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44 pointspg_123477 comments

I just wish I could really have been in the room when the facial interface was discussed. So much of the discussion of the AVP has been dominated by folks talking about the lightseals, and I wonder the impact that has had on the return percentage. I have virtually every other consumer VR headset, and the reality is comfort is largely a solved problem. But I'm sure someone, in some meeting at Apple, there was a tradeoff made between comfort of the device and its aesthetic, and I think with this they REALLY missed the mark. They also trained their retail team NOT AT ALL about how to deal with this, as they seem just as confused about the different seals as the customers are.

But for a technologist, it is definitely an amazing piece of tech, and having used all of them the thing that sticks out the most is how unremarkable it is in terms of features (it does, quite literally, just do things I have seen in the other ones), but with a level of polish and fit that truly is transformative, much in the same way of other products that Apple has put out.

Can you describe what a technologist is? Is this just someone who's interested in gadget broadly or is this a professional classification?

I bought the 256gb version with the intent on using it as a new and novel medium to rebuild my app building skills from conception to end after half a decade in the enterprise space. I have to say it met my expectations and for whatever gaps in UX and the featureset exist, they seem solvable and that is very exciting. Needless to say, I’m keeping mine. Influencers be damned.

I think there is something that often gets overlooked with VR headsets becuase people don't even know how to describe it well and that's this: they are not sharp, edge-to-edge. The reality of current VR is that every headset has a pretty small cone of focus in the center. Everything outside of that cone is simply out of focus. You have to train yourself to "look with your head and not with your eyes" and it's just unnatural. A lot of the eye strain comes from looking at thing outside of the center cone of focus and trying to focus on them, only realizing that it's impossible. The larger the FOV, the larger the part of the image that is not focusable.

I really expected Apple's headset to do better. I never thought they would ship a headset with an image that's so soft around the corners. I expected some kind of reverse OIS magic that would allow you to actually look around and see a sharp image, edge to edge.

I do not want to re-learn how to look.

> I really expected Apple's headset to do better. I never thought they would ship a headset with an image that's so soft around the corners.

Just out of curiosity, are you speaking from direct experience with a headset or based on reviews/photos?

Direct experience.

The Vision Pro is the best headset I've ever used, but it's still bad. I suspect one reason they went with a relatively narrow FOV is to minimize the out of focus area. So the narrow FOV minimizes/masks the problem but it's really just as evident in the Vision Pro as it is in any other headset. Unless you train yourself to "look with your head" it's just not possible to use for an extended period of time.

You can try it yourself. There is a cone of focus that extends about 30º off center axis. Within that cone things are sharp. Things then degrade pretty rapidly.

I actually don't understand why this isn't mentioned in more reviews. It's the #1 thing I care about. I'd much rather have a low resolution image thiat's tack sharp across the frame than high resolution screens paird with optics that produce soft corners.

Excuse me but isn’t it the physics of lenses which makes it impossible to have a lens that is more than say 60° wide ?

It does do eye tracking. Eye tracking is presumably the way or at least one way around what you're talking about here. That said I haven't tried the AVP so I have no idea just how good the eye tracking is.

It does do eye tracking, but the lens itself doesn't move. All it does is increase the resolution of where you are looking, but if you are looking at an area that's out of focus it doesn't help much. In some ways I actually think it makes it more fatiguing, because your eye expects to be able to focus and it just can't.

keeping mine :)

I bought it intending to return it, I use it every day. literally have dreams about operating in 3d space now (whether that's good or bad I don't know).

I like the alternative this implies of dreaming in 2D :p

What’s your use case? I’d imagine the macOS display extending is wildly cool.

I have a couple of different places that I live right now because of RTO (my house, an apartment near my office, a vacation home). My house has the best desk set up, it doesn't make sense for me to reproduce it else where.

So at the apartment/vacation home I can have a desk set up as compelling through using my macbook with it. then I have a bunch of apps up in 3d space around it (teams, outlook, photos, safar/spotify, safari/tradingview). I sit on top of Haleakala in full immersion while I work now.

as I walk around the house I have different windows open, for intance at my kitchen table I have twitter and another safari browser for hackernews/googlenews.

I've also found a fun use for it is to demo it for different friends/friend groups, so I have a little demo I run them through for it taking spatial photos/videos, viewing panoramic photos, viewing spatial photos, then I show them other apps based on what I know about them, NBA app, apple tv + immersive videos, and show them fun configurations for having so many apps open.

also around the house it has mostly replaced my doom-scrolling on my phone. my eyes are getting older so cruising around stuff on my phone is getting harder/blurrier.

I mostly look at it as a replacement for my phone at home and a complimentary piece to my macbook.

still really lacking overall in apps so doing more than I would like in Safari. I really also wish there were more apps to take advantage of 3d space. like imagine health/strava where you can scroll through the run and and it has a 3d map to show you where you went, and charts of a 3d plane with all of your health metrics that you can tab through and move through/select with your fingers.

there's a lot of potential here imo.

Do you wear glasses? Do one need to wear glasses when wearing this thing?

I have an astigmatism so I actively avoid wearing glasses, I probably do need them though.

I do not wear glasses in this device, I just use windows that are often the size of my walls in the VR space.

they offer lenses in store by Zeiss I believe, I do not know the details, glasses most likely won't fit with this device.

You can get lenses with your prescription that magnetically attach directly from apple

Yes but I've heard the device doesn't support users with astigmatism for some reason (there's lenses for the meta quest that support it). Maybe the correction messes up the eye tracking? Or the review that mentioned this was wrong.

Yes, more info about (lack of) support for astigmatism please. I'm not seeing this topic in reviews and in first-person accounts.

According to Apple it's supported: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213965

I don't remember exactly where I read it but I'm 100% sure I read it in one of the earliest reviews. The reviewer must have been wrong and I can't find who it is now. I looked up some of the reviews, but maybe they've retconned their review. I don't know.

Good thing is that it shouldn't be a problem for us with astigmatism. Bad thing is I still couldn't possibly afford a Vision Pro :)

It would be instructive to know what percentage are returning them or at least have some basis for comparision to other first gen Apple products.

I have the original HTC vive, and that thing's been a box for years. I'm glad I got to experience it, but I don't need to own one day in and day out.

I completely understand why people have returned them.

It feels like there is a tricky customer match problem with products like this where, for what is kind of a beta product, you want to target people for whom the price tag is not that big of a deal. If someone is spending a really substantial-to-them amount of money, they are probably going to have really high expectations and will be disappointed that it is very imperfect in a lot of ways. I wonder how Apple’s marketing team approached this, and whether they maybe missed a bit.

If you want people to not be disappointed in a beta product you need to market it as a beta product. At no point has Apple even implied AVP isn't ready for prime time.

> what is kind of a beta product

What makes AVP a beta product?

I think it more targets the “apple enthusiast”, or at least the “tech enthusiast”, who is used to paying a $$$ premium (at the cost of polish) to be the First at a new thing. Every company does it but Apple has a strong pattern of “v1 is setting up for v2” — e.g., the original iPhone being expensive af with no apps, but getting 3G and apps the next year.

Also, I’d wager the people buying this can mostly Certainly afford it, given how expensive it is. For those people the money is meh, or justified (business expense, app platform). For others who are Maybe affording it, returns seem like an easy failsafe if it doesn’t meet expectations.

“v1 is setting up for v2”

Especially with AR devices. Microsoft's original HoloLens had very limited adoption. Now they have HoloLens 2 out. Adoption is still fairly limited, but gaining traction after the upgrade.

Very similar to Google Glass. It wasn't meant for consumers. I believe you had to have a developer account but that didn't stop some people.

I believe ar becomes a big thing when they have the size of a pair of glasses with 2x 16k screens. Only then it will become mass adopted, replace phones and a life without is nearly impossible. Now its too big.

Are we anywhere close to getting that resolution at that density? I think it would require a similar form factor to what you said, but lower resolutions are probably workable. The biggest thing would likely be privacy issues, just like with Glass.

MicroLEDs will fuel the next display revolution and are smaller than some bacteria. They can eventually achieve the perfect pixel density for AR/VR while having better display characteristics than even OLEDs.

Hmm, I was hearing 5k ppi with microLED. 8k displays and cameras for a set of glasses would probably be plenty.

You need 16K per eye to beat human visual density.

But do you actually need to beat human visual density to make a widely adopted product? I'm not convinced that screen resolution is the factor holder back adoption, even at the current densities.

... except when you're working with text ?

Why 16k, given that actual physical displays we use day to day are usually 4k at best, and often less than that?

It seems to me that 8k per eye would be plenty, and even 4k per eye is perfectly adequate for many things.

Those 4k screens are at quite a distance right. 2cm in front you will see pixels. Thats why 16k inside ar/vr glasses.

You see the pixels, yes, but so what? It's still the same pixel density per amount of content you see. I can see pixels on my 4K display, too, because it's placed pretty close to my eyes, but it's still a very useful piece of equipment. Would I like 8K? Sure, and I'll get it when the price is right, but that doesn't make 4K non-viable.

I'm waiting on my https://visor.com which should be on par visuals wise, much better form factor (comfort), and is 1/3 the price

Just curious but have they charged your credit card for the pre-order? That makes me nervous w/ the 90-day limit to most chargebacks.

They are giving full refunds at any time last I checked, I paid for a founder's edition for black friday

Yeah, yikes. They'll give full refunds until they won't and I'd hate to be left holding the (empty) bag here.

I guess at this point you may as well ride it out if the money doesn't matter that much to you.

I see no reason to think a rugpull is going on here. Renji is passionate about the space and finally building the device he dreams of because the components are finally in a good place for him to do so

that looks pretty cool

Wow this looks really cool, thanks for sharing. And it even supports Linux!

Can't wait to see the first hands-on reviews, once it ships. 1000$ would be still a to steep price to pay, but maybe the reviews will change my mind.

I'll be one of those early reviewers, took the bet on the founders edition.

I tried out their Immersed app with the Quest 3.

- experience is great, I can have way more screen real estate and my M2 hardly notices

- pixels is the main hurdle, we glance at parts of the screen normally, but with fewer pixels at the periferal, text in that area is blurry in the quest 3

Is this not some scam? How are we jumping from ski goggles to sunglasses? What's the catch/tradeoff being made here?

The trade-off is

1. No adjustment points, 3d face scan before shipping, reduce components, VR will be personal devices, not shared

2. Built explicitly for virtual desktop usage, uniform pixel density, not for gaming

3. Battery and compute in side pack rather than on device

If you think this is a small device, check out the https://www.bigscreenvr.com/

I think the simple answer is that Apple lets you return something no questions asked. So why not buy one on credit, try it, and have your money refunded before you even have to pay the credit card bill?

I bought the original watch with that plan in mind (try it out, get an idea of what it might be like, then return it and buy v3).

In the watch case I knew after two days I wasn't going to return it. But for the VP, that seems unlikely (and that even though I used to work in AR).

You don't think the even simpler answer is that VR is really not a solved problem yet for everyday users?

I really enjoy my psvr2, but I'm never going to have that headset on for more than an hour a day every few days. I thought the Quest was a complete game changer for the first month, then put it away never to be used again.

It looks like both Apple and Meta have moved the needle on the overall experience, but it seems that there is still a long way to go to get VR to the, perhaps impossible, point where it becomes as ubiquitous as mobile phones. VR remains a non-essential novelty and likely might forever remain such.

I think that’s true too, but I bet a lot of people bought the expensive VP just for a free opportunity to check it out. Had the return policy not been in place I suspect pre orders would have been negligible.

Wonder if it’ll have an Apple Watch like arc where they released and the mvp use case(health) was discovered in the market.

I’m interested to hear people’s experiences using this as a virtual workspace/ work environment, as that’s what I would use it for. Having gotten rid of my studio during the pandemic, the idea of a great work area I can just “put on” is very appealing…but I wonder how good it would actually be for focused work. Anyone?

It is silly to compare Quest 3 to this but I think Quest 3 has more functionality than this headset. Virtual Desktop app is already very established and FOV is better than AVP. The games alone makes it more fun device and it really doesn't break the bank.

People buy things for more than pure functionality. Android devices can usually do more things and for less money than an iPhone and yet..

So, does this mean… refurbished?

but it's Apple, so they don't really lower the price

Do you just say things? https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished/mac

Apple does worry about the reflection on their brand from selling refurbished stuff. When I worked at eBay, Apple maintained a low-profile account there to sell refurbished products. When word started getting out to the public that that account was Apple itself, selling what amounted to official products, they shut it down.

Do you not understand words that you read? I didn't say they don't lower the price at all. I said they don't really lower it. In case those are words you don't understand, the phrase means that even though the price is lower, it's not low enough that people would really feel it was a bargain.

The price is not low enough that I wouldn't rather just buy new.

There are Macs on there 15-23% off just looking at it quickly, how much off does it have to be to "really lower the price" on your scale?

They do lower the price. In my opinion, it just goes from very expensive to pretty expensive.

It honestly depends on the particular product. I think my M1 Mac Mini, my Apple Watch SE, and the iPhone SEs that I bought for my teenagers were actually quite reasonably priced. My iPad Pro, Magic Keyboard, and Apple Pencil feel a little overpriced on the other hand.

If these start becoming readily available for less than $3000 even if it means buying refurbished, it’s going to become really tempting to buy one.

I've seen HoloLens around and under $3k. The Dev version is $3500 including $500 Azure credits. Still expensive for me.

Mentioned in the article. Don’t blame you for not reading it, however. Sort of a low quality, highly speculative take.

Thx, commented for the giggles, not expecting particularly insightful discussion here at this time on this subject

For how many of those who have returned it, the AVP was their first VR headset?

¨People¨ - what percent?

Not sure what this summary adds over a user's direct experience "Apple Vision Nope: Why I returned mine"[0](64 points, 3 hours ago, 179 comments), or the duplicate verge summary articles [1][2](63 points, 69 comments combined)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39384158 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39374847 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39380556

is the reason "because the critical mass of people buying a nearly four-thousand dollar toy to strap on their face for clout and cult status was so monumental it created its own powerful gravity well of self-entitled fart-huffing narcissistic energy violent enough to send each unit to the RMA warehouse through quantum teleportation?"

no? well i bet its dead pixels or something...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com