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Notes on Vision Pro

notes.andymatuschak.org

51–60 of 700 posts

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#51
I echo the awe at the hardware and the disappointment at the paradigm. I wish the keynote had three extra demos:

- Something whimsical to inspire developers. Give me files represented as physical blocks that I can pile, or a task manager that shows processes as plants around me. Close apps by scrunching their screen like paper. A globe with my geotagged pictures.

- A game, any game. Beat Saber was the killer app for me to get my Vive, and Valve already spent tens of millions of dollars to create a triple-A VR game. Neither seem compatible with the Vision Pro input methods. Apple could at least play their strengths, like an AR hide-and-seek, or a horror game with eye tracking.

- Content creation or professional work. The last thing we need is another passive device to watch 3D TikTok. Show someone customizing their "home screen" environment to look like a fantasy potion shop; or a mechanic looking at a 20x magnified broken part; or an SRE watching their kubernetes cluster as a floating 3D graph; or a VFX artist in the scene scrubbing forward and backward to adjust an effect.

It feels like inventing the first smartphone, camera apps and all, but it doesn't make calls and the only input is tapping on icons.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#52
post #32

But it does put an enormous amount of pressure on the eye tracking. As far as I can tell so far, the role of precise 2D control has been shifted to the eyes. I've got one good eye and one bad eye. The bad eye is legally blind, has an off-center iris and is kind of lazy w.r.t. tracking. I'm extremely curious to know how Vision Pro deals with this. One certainly hopes there's some kind of "single eye" mode; certainly s…

I have pendulum nystagmus since birth. My eyes saccade and shake very rapidly, even when I'm focused on something. Folks who talk with me certainly notice. I really hope I won't be locked out of using vision pro just because its input modality isn't compatible with my body...

One could hope they have an accessibility mode where the eye targets are larger. Or they offer a hardware controller pointer.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#53
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you guys say this? Amazon's "View in your room" feature does a decent job of placing a furniture in AR. We can even walk around/towards it. And that tech is just Apple ARKit right?

I don’t think it’s that good. “Decent” is accurate

right.. so maybe Apple just thinks it is not good enough yet. They must be stretched on onboard compute capacity already.

And some might argue you just switch apps to find that "screen".

Personally I would put something interesting on the ceiling and look up at it.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#54
post #51

I echo the awe at the hardware and the disappointment at the paradigm. I wish the keynote had three extra demos: - Something whimsical to inspire developers. Give me files represented as physical blocks that I can pile, or a task manager that shows processes as plants around me. Close apps by scrunching their screen like paper. A globe with my geotagged pictures. - A game, any game. Beat Saber was the killer app for…

Nobody may need TikTok on their face, but that doesn’t mean many wouldn’t want it.

TikTok on your face likely has better market potential than the dreadful Horizon Worlds.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#55
post #19

Interesting notes. I'm disappointed even though it's entirely predictable that VisionOS is built on the iOS/iPadOS foundation rather than OSX. I guess we'll see how "walled in" it is but it's hard to see any reason Apple isn't going to be just as constraining and controlling about what happens on this OS as they are on iOS, if not more so. Which ultimately means I'll be very reluctant to ever adopt it in any meaningf…

> I'm disappointed even though it's entirely predictable that VisionOS is built on the iOS/iPadOS foundation rather than OSX.

They’re the same foundation, iOS is a fork of OS X and was originally announced as such. I’d be shocked if there isn’t a well maintained internal build of iOS which keeps parity with macOS windowing etc.

The difference in restrictions between the platforms is entirely arbitrary. If this device appeals to Mac users or would-be Mac users, I’d be shocked if it doesn’t at least eventually allow a Mac-like environment.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#56
His comments on anchoring virtual tools in physical space reminds me of the work Microsoft was doing with Hololens and Windows Mixed Reality. If I recall correctly, there were APIs for anchoring things in space.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#57
post #19

Interesting notes. I'm disappointed even though it's entirely predictable that VisionOS is built on the iOS/iPadOS foundation rather than OSX. I guess we'll see how "walled in" it is but it's hard to see any reason Apple isn't going to be just as constraining and controlling about what happens on this OS as they are on iOS, if not more so. Which ultimately means I'll be very reluctant to ever adopt it in any meaningf…

Also it’s locked to Siri which is dogshit and falling further behind by the second. Apples speech to text is atrocious, the OpenAI tools blow it out of the water, as does Google’s.

No matter how fancy the visuals, it’s hard to have a pseudo-hands free voice interface that doesn’t uh, work?

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#58
post #50

This is a bit of a rant, but I bought a Quest Pro last year, and I feel it was a total waste of money. It's actually embarrassing how much of an unpolished piece of garbage it feels like. Sure, it's fun as a PCVR headset, but as a productivity tool or as a multimedia consuming device, or as a social tool, it completely misses the mark. And I'd say that 80% of its failure can be attributed to bad software. It's buggy,…

Fitness and gaming wasn't demoed much yesterday, but are going to be insane on the Vision Pro - so I guess it was just too obvious to demo. Or is it?

Also Meta could catch up if it was just software. But how big of a deal is the M2+R1?

Anyway the metaverse was already being retracted, else this Vision Pro could have hammered Meta.

Clearly Occulus has to evolve to match VisionPro. Controller has to be optional. It has to have better AR. Meta has to be the more "open" alternative to Apple's ecosystem barriers.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#60

But it does put an enormous amount of pressure on the eye tracking. As far as I can tell so far, the role of precise 2D control has been shifted to the eyes. I've got one good eye and one bad eye. The bad eye is legally blind, has an off-center iris and is kind of lazy w.r.t. tracking. I'm extremely curious to know how Vision Pro deals with this. One certainly hopes there's some kind of "single eye" mode; certainly s…

Track record wise, apple is one of the best in terms of serving accessibility. So I’d bet greater than 50% odds that they’re thinking about lazy eye or one eye or derivatives there of.

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