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Notes on Vision Pro

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311–320 of 700 posts

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#311
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, 100%. The interfaces in Minority Report were spectacular in terms of cinematic movie appeal. Artistically it was a great choice, and they certainly weren't intending to inspire a bunch of wrong-thinking UI choices in the real world.

The dystopian future has a bustling physiotherapy and occupational therapy industry.

You're talking like I didn't need to go to physiotherapy and occupational therapy to deal with my wrist issues and the lack of muscle tone in my glutes.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#312
post #258
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can safely treat “reviewer on YouTube” as “stranger at a bar” in terms of accuracy. They get paid to get clicks, not to deliver accurate or expert advice, and that heavily favors “why don’t they just…?” comments glossing over challenging engineering decisions.

I think it was MKBHD who seems to know his stuff

How many industrial design projects has he done, though? He doesn’t have any particular expertise in the area so while it’s fair to ask why they picked the trade-offs they did, it’s pretty far-fetched to think one of the best industrial design teams in the world forgot about a primary success factor, especially given how much other effort they made to hit weight targets. Absent someone who’s actually worked in the field saying it’s unnecessary, I’d give the benefit of the doubt and assume that they used aluminum instead of plastic for a good reason.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#313
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People generally agree that VR games are miles ahead of ordinary games in terms of immersion. The adoption problem seems to be that there is no affordable VR console with a lot of big exclusive games. The Meta Quest comes close to a decent price point, but there aren't many publishers making elaborate games for it. A chicken/egg situation with regards to adoption and game investment. Basically, a Game Boy or Switch f…

"Exclusive games" have little to do with adoption. They are a vendor lock in thing. Games need to be good and immersive, not exclusive.

A game needs to be purpose-build for VR, that makes it almost an exclusive.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same about Dyson or Oxo or Bodum. Having a single esthetic and coherent product line is a choice. On the face of it, it sounds like a company would want coherency, but in practice it means leaving a lot of money on the table for every single of your products. Any consistent design decisions means anyone who's not pleased by it has no option in your lineup to go to. That's of course a gamble Apple is…

Your point is valid, but that ... diversity? ... comes at a _very_ steep price. Not only for the manufacturer, also for the consumer! With Apple I _know_ a couple of things about any future purchase, without ever having used, held or felt the particular product. Namely: 1) Build quality will be significantly higher than competitors, 2) It will hurt my feelings to look at the bill after checkout, 3) It will work as ad…

I totally see this point, in particular as an opportunistic Apple customer myself. Apple doesn't need to do marketing regarding some aspects of their products (e.g. build quality) and can focus their messaging on more specific parts.

On the other hand, that doesn't seem to be what most consumers long for. Apple had two runaway successes with the iPod and then the iPhone, but to note, the iPhone is not the best selling phone brand nor dominates the international market. Same way Apple is not the #1 computer maker.

So yes, focus and consistency brings tremendous value, but there are many other ways to get that level of value, and many customers will have different priorities.

(I also don't think any brands need to be #1, being profitable should be enough, but I am more and more interested by how Windows has stayed at the top for so many years. In particular Apple progressively feels closer to Sony when it was at its peak: superbe products, strong ecosystem binging, coupled with also a heavy dose of strategy tax on how to benefit from what the other companies are doing)

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#315
I use quite a few Apple products every day of the last 10 years, and I’m very impressed with certainly all the technology and reviews and explanations of how this device works and what the user experience will be. However, this is the first Apple device that really makes me pause. All of the marketing material, the WWDC videos, all of it feels very uncomfortable to see all these people isolating themselves in a room with big goggles on. I find it really hard to comprehend this is the direction that technology is taking our lives. Imagine walking into a house, and a lot of the people are just sitting around by themselves in corners with goggles on. The whole thing just feels very strange and post apocalyptic to me.

And these 3D spacial moment recordings, imagine children growing up in a house where when something nice happens, the parent rushes to put on goggles and stare at them through them, their little virtual eyes displayed on the outside, it’s frankly creepy to me.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#316
post #315

I use quite a few Apple products every day of the last 10 years, and I’m very impressed with certainly all the technology and reviews and explanations of how this device works and what the user experience will be. However, this is the first Apple device that really makes me pause. All of the marketing material, the WWDC videos, all of it feels very uncomfortable to see all these people isolating themselves in a room…

I don't disagree, however when was the last time you walked into a room where at least one person wasn't solely focused on their phone.

The 3D photo thing is super weird, they could release a stand alone camera in future, BUT, I think this is a v1 product, imagine where it'll be in 5 years time, or an SE model which isn't wrap around. I already wear glasses so having AR glasses is no big leap.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#317

I think Apple is doing smart things here with their software: - leverage existing content means they won't have an empty room problem or a big "now what?!" moment for users after the novelty wears off. Without Steam, most existing VR platforms would be completely pointless. So far VR is for games and most of those are published on Steam. That's because most VR hardware vendors suck at software and end up outsourcing…

If the strategy is fully about content (which would make this device about selling services on top of the Vision Pro), why is the Vision Pro specced as it is, and why is the price point so high?

The specification of the device seems to be complete overkill for the kind of strategy you are describing, which frankly does not need extreme hardware power, and makes it cost prohibitive to many of the people who would otherwise buy the content.

All I can think of is that there are lower specced and lower priced devices coming, but I am sort of at a loss as to why they didn’t start with those - as if this fails, they aren’t going to get off the ground.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#318

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 a divergent squint on both eyes when tired/exhausted. I yet to try VR with eye tracking. Furthermore, I think the future would be some kind of brain reading implant/scanner.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#319
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…

not only that but how they manage to keep it all relatively hush hush until the big reveal.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#320
post #315

I use quite a few Apple products every day of the last 10 years, and I’m very impressed with certainly all the technology and reviews and explanations of how this device works and what the user experience will be. However, this is the first Apple device that really makes me pause. All of the marketing material, the WWDC videos, all of it feels very uncomfortable to see all these people isolating themselves in a room…

I don't disagree, however when was the last time you walked into a room where at least one person wasn't solely focused on their phone. The 3D photo thing is super weird, they could release a stand alone camera in future, BUT, I think this is a v1 product, imagine where it'll be in 5 years time, or an SE model which isn't wrap around. I already wear glasses so having AR glasses is no big leap.

> I think this is a v1 product

This is exactly what I tell myself. This is equivalent to their five hundred dollar original iPhone with no App Store or even copy and paste functionality. I expect the SE to cost a third of this if not a fifth.

Edit: five hundred dollar iPhone typo

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