Apple Debuts VisionOS 2

I understand this argument and see where you're coming from, but I just don't agree.

Can you provide examples of where Apple has substituted non-standard connectivity where standard-compliant would have worked as well?

You mentioned Lightning. That's a great example from my perspective: I was enthusiastic about the move to USB-C on iPhone. Now that it's happened, my opinion has changed. I actually miss the lightning connector now that it's gone in that role. I can look around my office and find a dozen Lightning cables, all of which are very old and still work just as well as they did initially. I've never had to replace a Lightning jack on a device, and the only cables I've tossed over the years are ones where my kids wore out the cable itself through repetitive stress. In retrospect, I find Lightning to be a superior connector to USB-C.

It sucks that we have a mix of both right now, but that's a consequence of Lightning having failed to gain wider adoption, not of it being a bad product.

From my perspective, it feels like you're seeing Apple in the role of Microsoft in the 90s: basically "embrace, extend, extinguish". I 100% agree that Apple is doing the first two steps of that, but I can't think of an example where they've even attempted to extinguish the competing standard and capture the market. As far as I can see, wherever Apple has made decisions counter to the prevailing standard, they did so because the path they chose was more compelling overall.

I leave open the possibility that I'm just not seeing the "evil" aspects here through myopia.

> Look at external drives; how is wireless going to replace this anywhere? Bluetooth can't even hit SATA speeds, much less 4k streaming speeds without re-encoding and compressing the source material.

I think we're agreeing here - the future I'm predicting isn't here yet. The tech hasn't caught up to Apple's vision. The status quo is far from optimal.

> You might get somewhere with WiFi Direct, but Apple doesn't support that in the first place and requires people to use their proprietary alternatives.

The difference here seems to be the way we're framing it.

You seem to be saying that fully wireless isn't possible right now, so products should be built with that in mind.

I'm saying that Apple wants fully wireless devices, and is willing to compromise usability in their devices for much of the market in order to move closer to their vision. I believe they're doing that intentionally to drive the development of the necessary technology to make it a reality.

Firewire was once the gold standard for external storage, especially if you were working with video. Firewire "lost" that battle and USB-C "won" - but we now have external storage devices with the transfer speeds necessary to work with large files directly on the external device. Once that became apparent, Apple killed Firewire support. In fact, they killed it earlier than a lot of people would have preferred. People were left with lots of money invested in Firewire hardware that simply didn't work with the next generation of Apple devices.

If Apple was trying to kill off USB-C, it would have made much more sense to go all-in on Firewire back when it still had a chance. Instead, they killed it when it was still superior to USB-C - a format that they did not control - because they judged that the market was moving that direction and that USB-C would soon catch up.

> Seriously, I want you to sit down and ask yourself one question. If Macs went full-wireless tomorrow, do you sincerely believe that the majority of Mac owners wouldn't own new wireless dongles?

I'm truly trying to discuss this with an open mind, and consider your perspective fully. I do see where you're coming from. Most of your conclusions I agree with. The only place where we seem to actually disagree is on what we judge Apple's motivations to be.

To answer your question: yes, if Macs were fully wireless tomorrow, there would be a plethora of adapters.

Apple would release their own. They'd be expensive, but they would work well. Third-party adapters would be cheaper, but they'd be less robust and either only partially implement the standards or would be almost as expensive as Apple's.

... but I believe that hardware manufacturers would soon start supporting the wireless standard by default. Prices for those devices would come down quickly, and before long non-Apple devices would support it as well. At the end of the day, the entire ecosystem would benefit. Non-Apple devices would have physical ports for much longer, and as a result would be easier to use and require fewer adapters. During that transitional period, Apple products would cost their users more because of all the required adapters.

Bottom line: I see Apple as developing a vision for the near future and designing their products to match that vision. Their doing so drives the market as a whole to improve and makes everyone's lives easier at the end of the day. That works for Apple because they see their market as being more affluent and able to bear the cost of forcing these advancements.

I don't think that's evil. I think it's a rational tradeoff. You don't have to agree with me on that :)

It was just made obsolete by the iPhone.

But it took Apple over two years to sell the first 1 million iPods and the Apple Watch didn’t take off like gangbusters.

I still chuckle at that one.

I was younger then, and wasn't as "tied in" to tech news. I misremembered that part it seems.

The first iPod I saw in the wild was in ~2003-2004. I remember thinking it was really expensive for what it was, but it seemed crazy that it could hold an entire library of music.

I'm older now, have more disposable income, and am much more immersed in tech in general.

> I know some people that have VR headsets but nobody, personally, that has the vision pro.

I have a Quest 3, a Pimax Crystal, and a Vision Pro. Of those, I no longer use the Quest 3 - my kids game on it quite a bit, or I'd sell it.

The Pimax Crystal is a great piece of hardware, and works very well for playing PCVR games. I use it for War Thunder (combat flight sim). The software is terrible, but I have it set up to work well with my single use case for it. I'm happy with it based on that.

The Vision Pro is more flexible, and has more utility than the Crystal. It's inferior for gaming to the Quest 3, but not as bad as people seem to be saying it is, and is improving rapidly.

I've gotten the Vision Pro working for PCVR (via ALVR). It's very rough and requires a lot of tinkering to get running, but it works. Honestly, it's about on par with the Crystal in that area, but the Crystal is superior in terms of FOV - and that's very important when you're using it to fly imaginary airplanes in imaginary combat.

> Vision pro is a new product in a market that has little adoption.

I agree. In fact, I think people are making a mistake comparing it directly to things like the Quest line. Yes, it supports many of the same things and has many of the same capabilities. It's targeting a completely different use case, though.

My iPad Pro is more capable hardware-wise than most people's laptops, but it can't do a lot of things a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop can do. That doesn't mean it's worse though, because it's not in competition with those laptops. I have laptops, and still carry my iPad with me and leave the laptops at home most of the time.

> Maybe it is more like the ipad? Or maybe it is just different than any previous apple release.

It's a mix. The produce category is very different, but Apple's approach is pretty consistent. They enter a new market at the very top, implement a few features, and refine them. They don't try to do everything all at once.

As a result, it's not right for everyone. It's only right for people whose use case coincides with the feature set that has been implemented to date. As that feature set expands, so will size of the market.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/09/bill-gates-said-s...

> Steve Jobs['] ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things," Gates wrote. "This time somehow he has applied his talents in getting a better licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music."

In a generation or two, they realized it was fitness and health which was the target market and honed in on that.

Not saying the trajectory will be the same - Apple Watch is inherently both cheaper and easier to use since you just strap it on your arm instead of closing out the world, just saying they both started out as products without a really compelling purpose.