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Notes on Vision Pro

notes.andymatuschak.org

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Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#131

Post by TheRealPomax »

noelsusman wrote: post #124
TheRealPomax wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do enjoy me some MKBHD, I'd like the opinion of someone who's not fully bought into the Apple ecosystem already. This is a good perspective to have, but it's an incomplete perspective. And I'd like to know how realistic this thing is for "not apple users". It's a VR headset, can I use it with Windows to play MS Flight Simulator or Star Citizen? Can I use it on Linux to get wall-to-wall emavs? More real world…

You should already know the answers to those questions.

Why? It's only been out for a day, you telling me everyone's already had their run at hacking it? That seems like pretending you know what folks will do with this thing.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#132

Post by TheRealPomax »

musictubes wrote: post #122
TheRealPomax wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do enjoy me some MKBHD, I'd like the opinion of someone who's not fully bought into the Apple ecosystem already. This is a good perspective to have, but it's an incomplete perspective. And I'd like to know how realistic this thing is for "not apple users". It's a VR headset, can I use it with Windows to play MS Flight Simulator or Star Citizen? Can I use it on Linux to get wall-to-wall emavs? More real world…

It’s not a VR headset, it is a computer with its own OS and M2 processor. I don’t think that VR or AR was mentioned a single time in the Apple event. They say this is the first device for spatial computing and that this is equivalent to the first Mac as far as changing OS UI goes. This will be another part of the Apple system along with Macs, iPhones, iPads, etc. You will never be able to use this as just a monitor e…

Right, so: it's just another VR headset, just beefier. Have you not been paying attention to Meta's Quest and the like? Modern VR headsets are computers, they run their own OS, with applications/games loaded onto the device itself, and they can be used as a VR display client for other operating systems.

This is an M2 computer strapped to your head: it can bloody well do VR, let's see what folks do with this device that Apple never asked them to, but they do anyway because Apple doesn't get to tell them how to use their overpriced hardware (especially if the moment you buy it, the buyback is $50 if you're lucky)

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#133

Post by lukevp »

From years of observing first-hand how hard it is to develop software, I’m shocked that Apple continually makes products that fit their aesthetic (eg. The crown and headband evoking the Apple Watch) and have coherent and mostly-baked software on launch like this. Is there a book about how they’re able to operate at scale and deliver such consistent things? Do they just have an insanely good product team? How do they document requirements? It’s fascinating to me, because I think it’s their real competitive advantage - they get to the finish line with product that would make sense to a single, invested, super smart person, instead of a pile of inconsistencies and incoherencies that contradict each other as you move through the application. The only other product I feel is delivered at Apple’s level is CloudFlare, and I think that’s why they’ve grown so fast.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#134

Post by ChristopherDrum »

JohnBooty wrote: post #21

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…

From Apple's visionOS page, re: Accessibility (https://developer.apple.com/visionos/)

"And for people who prefer a different way to navigate content, Pointer Control lets them select their index finger, wrist, or head as an alternative pointer."

This reads to me like they've got you covered (at least in principle).

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#135

Post by leviathant »

dvt wrote: post #68
balaji1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Why does everyone have MacBook Pros these days? Prior to Apple Silicon, it certainly wasn't the hardware.

Oh, I don't know about that. Admittedly there were some awful choices made between 2015 and the emergence of M1 architecture, but Apple's reputation for making well engineered hardware goes at least as far back as to when they started milling Macs out of aluminum. I'm thinking back specifically to the PowerMac G5 in 2006. It was designed well, felt solid, and when you opened it up, it continued to look well made. I recently popped open my 2015 Macbook Pro because I'm finally having hard drive issues, and for as much as I have railed against Apple fanboyism over the decades, it looked so nice inside I wanted to take a picture. (Why?! Who cares!? What would I even do with that picture?)

I got tons of mileage out of various Dell desktops and self-built machines over the last couple of decades. It was better bang for the buck, I didn't have to fuss over proprietary connectors and a locked down operating system. When the company I worked for made a big shift away from (it's okay to chuckle) Coldfusion and MS SQL Server to Ruby on Rails and MongoDB in 2013, though they offered to let me continue running on Windows, I asked for a Macbook because that's what everyone else was using. Might as well learn. Didn't much like OSX but the hardware was better than any Windows laptop I'd used. Later I bumped up to a 2015 MBP, which I only just retired this year.

While I was Windows at home and MacOS at work, last month I snagged a Macbook Pro w/ 64gb of RAM from B&H for $2400 - the first Apple computer I've ever paid for myself - and it's replaced my Dell desktop and that 2015 Macbook that my old job let me keep.

I effectively skipped the bad Macbooks, so my perspective is tinted by that. But even during the bad years, even my friends who continued to operate in the MS domain were buying Macbooks and dual booting them into Windows.

I had access to a Surface tablet through work early on. It was really nice! Just like a Zune. The Surface Pros looked pretty great too, but anecdotally, I never saw them outside the context of visiting a business that was a strictly MS shop.

I still like Windows as an OS better. But Apple's new architecture (which importantly doesn't have me carrying dongles around, or even needing them at home) was compelling enough for me to take the plunge.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#136

Post by anonred »

lukevp wrote: post #133

From years of observing first-hand how hard it is to develop software, I’m shocked that Apple continually makes products that fit their aesthetic (eg. The crown and headband evoking the Apple Watch) and have coherent and mostly-baked software on launch like this. Is there a book about how they’re able to operate at scale and deliver such consistent things? Do they just have an insanely good product team? How do they…

Hypothesis: Apple is a hardware company that also does software, and that ethos allows them to ship more complex products over much longer time scales than their competitors.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#137

Post by spartanatreyu »

lancesells wrote: post #126
mikenew wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thi…

I thought they showed a PS5 Controller being used?

1) Console controls are not a suitable alternative to proper VR controllers 2) What makes you think the PS5 controller was connected to the headset, and not the headset being used as a TV showing the output of a PS5?

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#138

Post by dvt »

sangnoir wrote: post #129
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,…

> It's insane that a billion-dollar company like Meta actually felt proud to release such a steaming pile of trash. Can you name a better product in the price-bracket?

If you have a product that's 5x as good, but 2x as expensive, literally everyone will buy it. The iPhone is the perfect case study.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#139

Post by smugma »

Reading through his notes, I couldn’t help but think “I don’t know this guy, but it seems like he has spent years thinking deeply about interfaces. Also, he sounds ex-Apple.” It made me smile when I got towards the end and my suspicions were confirmed.

Andy’s thoughts were infinitely deeper than anything else I’ve read about the device+interface so far. In particular, I liked his observations that so far it’s mostly a 2D plane, with exceptions like the Breathe app and a few demos, which might just be good for demos.

Seeing the heart in 3D reminded a lot of what we saw 10 years ago around what book publishers were trying to do with the iPad. Cool demos but limited real world use.

Here was one particularly thoughtful section:

“unlike the physical version, a virtual infospace could contend with much more material than could actually fit in my field of view, because the computational medium affords dynamic filtering, searching, and navigation interactions (see Softspace for one attempt). And you could swap between persistent room-scale infospaces for different projects. I suspect that visionOS’s windowing system is not at all up to this task.“

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#140

Post by throw74775 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #70
throw74775 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

In the iOS vs Android case, iOS does in fact typically bring at least 50% more profit to developers, often far more.
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