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Notes on Vision Pro

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Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#61

Post by armchairhacker »

I think the big usecase of the Vision Pro is just a larger screen and immersion. That's what it looks like Apple highlights in the demos.

Imagine developing with the ultimate 10x setup: several files, documentation, and debuggers open at once, with a zen nature background. Or making music, or painting, or even writing a research paper.

Imagine playing a video game but the environment wraps around you. Imagine watching movies in a virtual theater with a simulated 100-inch TV (one of Apple's demos). Even reading and browsing the web can be improved with an ambient environment and extra space for more stuff.

Is it worth $3500? For end-users probably not, but if it genuinely makes professionals and hobbyists substantially more productive, it will be worth $3500 or even way more. How much money would you spend to write, code, create faster?

Of course, this assumes the VR actually performs, and whether a bigger screen and immersion actually makes people work faster. As of now it seems VR is still a gimmick which impresses people at first, but doesn't provide much outside of niche experiences; which, if this holds for the Vision Pro, makes it very much not worth the price.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#62

Post by endisneigh »

balaji1 wrote: post #53
endisneigh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it possible to track your position that accurately in an arbitrarily large space?

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#63

Post by cubefox »

dvt wrote: 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,…

The Quest Pro has actual VR games and proper VR controllers though. I doubt that such games are possible or probable with eye pointing and finger clicking alone. Apple also didn't include any VR games into their presentation.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#64

Post by dilap »

dvt wrote: 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,…

tracks with what carmack said when he left. what a shame!

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#65

Post by kfarr »

atchoo wrote: post #39
kfarr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely pros and cons. I remember reading that because of the tight integration with iOS this allowed them to achieve best in class latency for iPad + pencil that couldn't be achieved on any other platform. Having followed Oculus / Quest development that low latency is not optional in this context and every millisecond counts so I can see why they would go this route. On the other hand, the closed ecosystem is def…

> best in class latency for iPad + pencil Hmm. Marketing horse-puckey. A 2018 Dell XPS that has a Wacom digitiser and OneNote gives me lower latency and better inking experience than an iPad and pencil 2. I used them side by side for long-form writing for a while and the iPad was left in the dust.

You might be right it's more marketing than substance, but FWIW this is the article I was thinking of praising low latency of iPad + stylus: https://danluu.com/term-latency/

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#66

Post by macintux »

TX81Z wrote: post #57
zmmmmm wrote: 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?

It has to be evident to Apple that Siri needs dramatic changes. They keep building hardware that needs robust voice support.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#67

Post by dilap »

TX81Z wrote: post #57
zmmmmm wrote: 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?

if i understood the wwdc keynote correctly, they completely redid the text-to-speech, so this should actually be good now (maybe)

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#68

Post by dvt »

balaji1 wrote: post #58
dvt wrote: 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…

> Also Meta could catch up if it was just software.

This was Microsoft's warcry for years: who cares if Apple has better software? We have better hardware. Well guess what, software matters and it matters more than hardware. If you have both, you have literally a generationally-defining product (e.g. the iPhone), but even if you just have the software, you'll still eat your competitor's lunch. Why does everyone have MacBook Pros these days? Prior to Apple Silicon, it certainly wasn't the hardware.

Meta's about to get a rude awakening because "we can fix the software later." As if technical debt doesn't exist and as if you can so easily get engineers that eagerly want to clean up someone else's mess.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#69

Post by mikenew »

balaji1 wrote: post #58
dvt wrote: 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…

> I guess it was just too obvious to demo. Or is it?

Gaming can't be good, because there's no controllers. Even if the hand and eye tracking is absolutely S-tier, you're never getting something like button input from swinging your empty hands around, twitching your fingers. Just the occlusion from the back of your hand would be enough enough for that to be impossible.

Fitness might be more doable, but even then I think you're going to be very limited with hand tracking only. I think there's a reason why Apple skipped over those segments almost entirely.

EDIT: I meant "VR" controllers, as in things that are tracked in 3d space. Of course you can use a game pad or MKB, but that kinda misses the point of being in VR in the first place.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#70

Post by makeitdouble »

throw74775 wrote: post #35
zmmmmm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately its more about the openness of the OS. If they built on iPadOS but they made a reasonable experience for freely sideloading apps, I'd be OK with it. Or even if they support WebXR really well, I might (just) find a way to be OK with that. But if they lock this down and position themselves as rentseekers to take a cut from every piece of software that runs there regardless of how much they contributed to it…

You don't think they are contributing something by creating this platform?

From a developer POV it's about the difference with the other platforms. If Apple provides a platform that bring the dev 50% more profit than the status quo, sure taking a cut of that extra profit could make sense.

If that same dev would have made the same profits on other competing platforms, Apple is just fragmenting the market and it's take should be limited to basically management fees.

I hope this new platform brings newer applications and innovations, but also expect competition to adjust, making it a situation where Apple is just one of the many platforms.

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