My Apple Vision Pro Nightmare
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
It's no wonder at all that he hates it and everything it represents.
I'm not at all going to fault him for that, though. He has a valid viewpoint.
I just don't share it.
I want the Oasis, and the Vision Pro is a good step towards that.
Why aren't more people working on this? What would it take to change our field?
1. The tech doesn't actually work that well yet. "clicking and zooming is no way to type." "It gave me the nausea of a roller coaster without any of the thrill." "I saw the simulated version of my apartment shutter and shake, accelerating the growing motion sickness I felt when seated." "I found countless features failed the moment I took the most rudimentary security precautions, such as using a VPN."
2. He doesn't like what it does to his experience in the world. "Apple Vision Pro marks the foundation of a new architecture of total digital isolation." "I've never in my adult life vegged out as much as I did during my time with the Vision Pro." "Within seconds the Vision Pro had photographed more of my apartment and body than my laptop saw over the decade I've had it." "an extremely alarming harbinger of how tech giants are going to know even more about our private lives and radically reshape our communities once again."
These are really separate things.
#1 will probably eventually be solved. Which will make #2 get even more intense.
When the technology starts working better (not making you dizzy, input methods that do whatever you need easily) -- and predictably makes all sorts of cool things possible -- who will have the strength of will to resist becuase of #2?
I don't like what a smartphone has done to my experience of and engagement in the world, but I have not been able to resist it. Part of that is of course because everyone else has it too.
But that's why I've started resolving to myself now -- no matter how good and affordable the technology gets, I will not be getting augmented reality technology like this. No matter how popular it gets and how hard to be a resister, I plan to. I am building up my resolve now and my self-conception as someone who will not be doing this, hoping will stick as it gets harder and harder to resist.
Maybe AR devices fundamentally violate privacy? Maybe using them in public is wrong, or at least rude?
Exactly what Alan Kay has been saying for years.
Given that the author is a visiting fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project, it's hard to accept that they reasonably don't know this.
Case in point:
"Within seconds the Vision Pro had photographed more of my apartment and body than my laptop saw over the decade I've had it."
A statement that is simply untrue by any reasonable interpretation.
Also, what's more likely: that the founder of an anti-surveillance action group happened to be recorded by some mysterious unknown person in the Apple Store, or that the guy is a liar? I know which side of that bet I'd take.
> [Vision Pro is] an extremely alarming harbinger of how tech giants are going to know even more about our private lives and radically reshape our communities once again.
Given that the author appears to think of himself as a victim, utterly powerless to resist:
> Vision Pro isn't for creating content. It isn't for interacting with the world. It isn't even for walking around your own apartment. At best, at its core, it's yet another way for us to zone out and watch ever higher and higher definition TV and movies. I've never in my adult life vegged out as much as I did during my time with the Vision Pro.
Anecdotally, I find that negative reviews of Vision Pro have tended towards emphatic "this sucks for everyone" rhetoric. Positive reviews, including those from folks using the device as their daily driver now, acknowledge its limitations and rough edges.
> In the end, I followed the path of so many other Vision Pro early adopters and became an early returner.
Vision Pro return rates are estimated at 1%.[^1] It figures: this is an early adopter product. The author of this post had a bad time with it and seems to be desperately reaching to draw generalisable conclusions, rather than sticking to his own subjective experience.
Then again, his three bylines for Business Insider are: "My Apple Vision Pro Nightmare", "Weight wasn't the only thing I lost when I took a weight-loss drug", in which he cheerfully manages to find the L in "I've lost more than 40 pounds, started running again — finishing my first half marathon since Covid-19 started — and my cholesterol and blood pressure are the healthiest they've ever been. I've been freed from a growing list of medications doctors warned I might be shackled to for the rest of my life," and the feel-good hit of last summer, "The looming addiction crisis being fueled by AI".
I suspect the author would be far happier with a Linux machine he can gloat about not using very often. (Of course he tells us he doesn't have a TV in his apartment, lmao.)
[^1]: https://medium.com/@mingchikuo/vision-pro更新-美國市場需求已大幅放緩-全球發佈...
Not that it makes either "side" valid, but in fairness, the pro-AVP side has been similarly full of gushing sweeping generalizations, too:
> Apple is using beamforming to direct the sound into your ears. And unless you are blasting it out loud — you could get away with wearing it in a public place — though people in Business Class will notice the slight din from the seat next to them. Let’s face it — the early adopters are at the front of the bus.
(not to mention a little haughty)
> For the last six days, I’ve been simultaneously testing three entirely new products from Apple. The first is a VR/AR headset with eye-tracking controls. The second is a revolutionary spatial computing productivity platform. The third is a breakthrough personal entertainment device.
> The VisionOS workspace isn’t infinite, but it feels as close to infinitely large as it could be. It’s the world around you.
> The Mac Virtual Display feature is both useful and almost startlingly intuitive.
> Vision Pro is simply a phenomenal way to watch movies, and 3D immersive experiences are astonishing. There are 3D immersive experiences in Vision Pro that are more compelling than Disney World attractions that people wait in line for hours to see.
> But I can recommend buying Vision Pro solely for use as a personal theater. I paid $5,000 for my 77-inch LG OLED TV a few years ago. Vision Pro offers a far more compelling experience (including far more compelling spatial surround sound). You’d look at my TV set and almost certainly agree that it’s a nice big TV. But watching movies in the Disney+ and TV apps will make you go “Wow!” These are experiences I never imagined I’d be able to have in my own home (or, say, while flying across the country in an airplane).
> "My four magic moments"... My last magic moment came when the Vision Pro became what I have always wanted — the future of television (and video.) A screen like none before. I opened up the Apple TV app, and picked an immersive video film of highliner Faith Dickey.
For people with motion sickness this device sucks, but otherwise it's an amazing piece of tech.
I still want one but i see a very lonely future if this becomes widespread, especially coupled with AI agents.
Granted, I've yet to try the Vision Pro, so don't take what I've just said as an implication that it can be lumped into the glorified tech-demo category. In fact, next time I walk by an Apple store, I plan on trying it.
Also, there wasn't anything necessarily wrong with the Newton. It had the right idea, but was too early for its own good, to the point where the benefits didn't outweigh the bugs. Apple tried again with iPhone and iPad, and succeeded, so I don't think you can really look at the unique snapshot in time that was the Newton and draw that many parallels to the Vision Pro, which is obviously lightyears more powerful and capable than the Newton even at its worst.
What the author says towards the end is pure professional complaining:
> It isn't for interacting with the world. It isn't even for walking around your own apartment. At best, at its core, it's yet another way for us to zone out and watch ever higher and higher definition TV and movies. I've never in my adult life vegged out as much as I did during my time with the Vision Pro.
As if existing devices don't essentially fill that niche already? There really isn't anything special about the Vision Pro besides its ability to represent digital space in a different way. If you're vegging out with it, that's really a problem with you and not the tech. People veg out reading books – literal pieces of paper. If the tech seems to be controlling you, then your frame of mind is out of whack. Society normalizes the consumption mindset because it's easy and profitable. You can choose to integrate technology into your life in a way that is healthy. You really don't need any of this tech to be happy in your everyday life.
Yes, people don't have classical free will... yet at some point, that fact becomes a cop-out against encouraging others to do what's actually best for them, whether they realize it or not.
It was a weird article to read, I’m so confused how he thought this sort of technology he’s been waiting for since his teenage years would work.