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Comment by martinlexow | Hacker News Reader

From a developers perspective, Apple’s computer vision frameworks are already top-notch. I’m wondering how AI could further enhance the experience on the Apple Vision Pro. The greatest deficiency seems to me currently to lie in ideas for how this technology can be used sensibly.

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Apple Vision Pro in its current state almost looks like a parody of future tech. Heavy.. bulky … limited battery… limited peripheral vision. Just watch YouTube videos of people using the device. So far version 1.0 is a swing and a miss in my book.

If you consider it a development kit (albeit a very expensive one) it makes more sense.

Just like the first iPhone wasn't practical for everyone, this will require a few more generations.

(Although I suspect it's never going to be useful for me, with my weird prescription.)

True, but it seems more like it's placing a bet in the VR space like the first iPhone did. No one wanted iPhone v1 forever, and so I think the next few versions of the Vision Pro will be pretty interesting if this is the starting point. It also raises the bar of expectation for other VR/AR headsets. Seems like a net benefit for an area of tech that has been pretty stagnant for a while.

iphone 1 was way better than any of the alternatives at the time. Probably a better analogy were the bulky portable phones of the early 90s, which ultimately became smartphones, but after two decades!

Well, my point was that the first iPhone set a standard for smartphones that wasn't there before. After iPhone v1, people knew that "apps" were how things were going to be packaged and sold in the App Store and other app stores. It was better than anything else at the time like the Vision Pro seems to be also.

The App Store didn't launch until a year after the iPhone.

Originally, it was 'Write web apps that run in Safari'

Sadly, because that original web app vision likely would have prevented App Store revenue from twisting corporate priorities.

Vision Pro is way way better than the alternatives.

And the original iPhone was almost unusably slow and really didn’t do much.

Waiting half a minute for NYT to load and then seeing constant checkerboards got old very quickly.

Vision Pro isn't better at playing any games nor much different for watching movies.

Right now the Apple TV feels like a closer match than the iPhone to be honest. We had he same vibe of putting some games on it but no native controller, and a "revolutionary" remote control with voice commands and a touchpad.

AVP has a chance to be good at office tasks and casual tv watching for singles, but that's assuming other players don't get there faster than it takes Apple to iterate. If for instance the next xreal glass sets the bar too high the whole office/virtual monitor angle will be an uphill battle.

The first iPhone completely failed pretty much every market besides the US. The lack of MMS (critical at the time) and the very expensive price made competitors look much better at the time. It's only with the 3G that iPhones took off.

I use my Vision Pro every single day. I love sitting in my yard in the sun with my Mac mirrored in the center, a music player hanging out on my left, a web browser with documentation on the right. Using the double loop strap I don't even notice I'm wearing it after a few minutes and I treat the battery more as a UPS than something to run off of except for when I go make myself coffee and play a game or watch a video while doing so.

Having used other VR headsets (like the Valve Index) the Vision Pro is clearly leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, not just in hardware but software as well. After using the index for a bit everything would always feel a bit "weird" after taking the headset off. I don't get that at all with the Vision Pro.

I can't wait for VisionOS 2.0 to deliver a closer macOS integration (being able to give individual macOS applications their own windows (à la VMWare Fusion), and use eye tracking as the cursor) but even the current version is - for my specific use case - an absolute game changer.

What do you do wearing a Vision Pro in your yard?

I'm still mostly surrounded by large 2D panels of information (Xcode, Safari, terminal windows, etc.). I do fill the space with these panels. It's not uncommon for me to have 5-6 things around my Mac's virtual display.

I've been on a quest to maximize my flow state for over a decade, it's been a terrible beast to tame with my ADHD. I'm finding the Vision Pro helps because of the intuitive nature of the UI. My brain expects the thing I'm looking at to be the thing that receives input, and this is naturally the case in VisionOS.

I'm also having a ton of fun learning Swift and RealityKit, something I likely would never have picked up if it wasn't for this iPad strapped to my face.

How do you find coding outside different?

Honestly curious, as it's been more distracting to me, the times I've tried it in 2D form.

The Vision Pro takes away all the glare you'd normally get on a screen, and (to me) that basically reduces the distractions down to zero. If I need fewer distractions still, I'll pull up one of the environments (I like the moon!) and then all visual noise is drowned out entirely.

So you use it for web surfing?

While working it's a combination of web surfing, terminals and documentation in PDF form. When I'm not working, watching movies on the thing is an absolute treat and Moonlight works pretty flawlessly for large-screen gaming.

Similar sentiment at Blackberry when they looked at the first iPhone. Forgetting that it is a long play. And that hardware will improve every iteration.

Similar sentiment as to when Google looked at the Homepod, or when Amazon looked at the Apple TV, probably.

I get people privileging successful stories, but there's about as much meh products or failures as well, at least arguments shouldn't be about past unrelated products.

What makes you bullish that Apple will be better than Meta or Valve in this specific field for this specific product ?

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Can you elaborate on the “sensible” part? Do you not see applications for it or do you believe the applications are dangerous or not useful.

From my perspective it feels like a combination of investors thinking the gold rush will be hardware-gated during an ongoing dunning kruger crises in design as it relates to software. The interest isn't there, so most of the ideas are "your fridge could order groceries! your toilet could phone the doctor!" level.

Jarvis OS?

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