Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

It's really not that difficult, you put the thing on your head and instantly have a three monitor setup whenever and wherever you want. And of course with the right software, you can go past that and use your whole surrounding as your "desktop", watch movies on a virtual IMAX screen, go full virtual realty or whatever else you can imagine.

The problem so far has simply been that none of the existing headsets work for this. Resolution needs to make it past 30 PPD to be usable for text. All the exiting consumer ones are between 10 and 20 PPD.

You also need the right software. SteamVR has basically nothing by default, you get a blurry view of your desktop if you go the menu and that's it. You can enhance it a little with Steam overlay addons, but it's all a crude "make desktop show up in VR", not a "userinterface build for VR". Oculus is a bit better, but still not great. Microsoft tried with WMR Portal to bring the full Windows desktop into VR and it is about the closest thing to what Apple is doing now, but it was still riddled with problems, lots of bugs and limitations that made it impossible to take full advantage of VR (max window size was restricted to 1920x1080, no way to anchor virtual windows to the real world, no real passthrough mode).

What Apple has shown so far look much better than anything else out there. The resolution is good enough that you can actually read text, the passthrough cameras are good enough that you can actually see and interact with the world around you in proper 3D and color and the software seems to be completely focused on making 2D content in a virtual space work well, something none of the other companies spend much effort on.

There is an alternative reality somewhere where VR went the other direction, focus on making it cheap and accessible and focus and producing proper full VR games, basically the original vision behind Oculus. That could have worked, Oculus delivered a couple of great games in the early days of VR and before Facebook joined them, they were even able to produce $300 headsets. But all that got derailed by Facebook, who raised the price to $600, gave up on PC based VR and forced everything on mobile. They also largely gave up on games and focused instead on "Metaverse", which means that the Quest2 games out know, still look a lot worse than what we had 6 seven years ago on CV1 or even DK1. The insane amount of money Meta has spend so far simply doesn't show in the actual product and especially not in the software.

Anyway, since this alternative reality didn't happen, we are now basically stuck waiting for VR headsets to get enough resolution that 2D content becomes enjoyable in them, as that's the only way VR will get content. Native VR content is still just too rare and the quality is often not great. Apple's VisionPro is the first device that crosses that threshold and has the software to go along with it.

People also said the same about the apple watch, and from my experience they were right. You use it, then you stop using it after you're bored charging it all the time in addition to all the other devices, for no real benefit.

Yes, i know they're selling a lot of watches, but i only see very few people wearing them.

> But they were widely used by business people, and I’m assuming that was an important aspect of permeating into the other demographics.

Similarly to how VR headsets are used by gamers and tech enthusiasts today. Just like VR for gaming, not everyone was willing to pay exhorbitant prices to lug around a briefcase of a phone, and use it only for poor quality phone calls.

> AR/VR devices are attempting this the other way around: their current use cases seem to be mostly recreational, and we are hoping they will eventually come up with some productivity use cases.

Sure, but the actual current use case doesn't matter. Once the capabilities, price and user experience improve, it will become more appealing to a mass audience.

Think of the iPhone: there were certainly devices that had the same functionality of "an iPod, a phone, and an internet mobile communicator" before it. But Apple saw the right opportunity when the tech got good and cheap enough to vastly improve the user experience and expand the capabilities beyond just a mobile phone. It's what they're good at.

> Someone in this thread talked about how they are surprised that tablets have sort of flopped

But tablets didn't flop. They got merged into 2-in-1s, foldables, "phablets", etc. They've certainly replaced laptops for many users. The only reason productivity is limited on devices like the iPad is because Apple wants to, for whatever reason (possibly to avoid cannibalizing sales of their other products?). But the iPad is still selling well, AFAIK, and many professionals use it. Google and Android never prioritized the tablet form factor, so it understandably lags behind. So productivity is restricted mostly because of software, and the touch interface makes it more suitable for consuming content. If you need to be productive and the software is not a problem, you add a mouse and keyboard, and there's your 2-in-1.

Yeah, that’s just aging, unfortunately.