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Notes on Vision Pro

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691–700 of 700 posts

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#691
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…

You might enjoy Ken Kocienda's "Creative Selection", which gives his first-person account of Apple's creative process.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR games? Sure gaming, but I didn't know VR games specifically made so much money. Either way, if I was gaming, playing a new single player 2D (Last of Us, etc) game on a MASSIVE screen on the Vision Pro seems so exciting. Beat Saber and throwing my hands around? Not so much.

Have you tried a VR "Big screen" experience? It's a massive gimmick. It's not special. The quality of what you are looking at is lower than using a nice monitor, and sitting in some empty environment that hosts this big screen is dumb.

It's impossible for me to try anything because it doesnt exist right now. There is no VR experience that has high resolution. If the resolution was better, it would be great. Don't care about the "environment" Just project it into my living room like a home theatre.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR games? Sure gaming, but I didn't know VR games specifically made so much money. Either way, if I was gaming, playing a new single player 2D (Last of Us, etc) game on a MASSIVE screen on the Vision Pro seems so exciting. Beat Saber and throwing my hands around? Not so much.

Yes, VR Games. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-quest-store-revenue-1-billio...

Very cool! I had no idea

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't said I favour that. It does seem inevitable however. How would you expect humans to end up? In 10 years? In 50 years? In 200 years? People are already out of their natural habitats, and they will be even more. Is there going to be some sort of magical future moment where people achieve what they wanted to achieve and will they be happy? How could it happen if environment is going to completely change? What…

Being in a permanent state of happiness doesn't exist for humans and it shouldn't.

It doesn't right now, but it's debatable whether it should or should not.

E.g. if you are able to produce a method or substance to produce heroin like effects in people without tolerance build up, should people be allowed to consume that?

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#695
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 Let's be real. You can have all the money in the world, but that doesn't guarantee you access to talent. It doesn't guarantee that you made insightful technical decisions that hamstring you later in the product cycle. It doesn't free you from short-sighted managers or employees who just care about making…

John Carmack led them to a very strong technical base. Based on his testimony they squandered it.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#696
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of funny that meta stock didn’t drop on the vision pro announcement. What does that say about the market’s assessment of meta’s vr/ar prospects?

The market is hedging it's bets. If Vision Pro will succeed Meta could be seen as the cheap-ass alternative. 3500USD vs 500USD is like Ferrari vs. Kia. Not everyone can afford the former. If Vision Pro doesn't succeed, the market will likely move on from VR completely, leaving Apple and Meta in the same place. Money spent, product introduced, tried, didn't work. Move on.

Apple has the stubbornness and funds to drive this for a decade, and they will. Apple Vision Air AR glasses are coming even if they don't sell a single Pro unit for five years.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of funny that meta stock didn’t drop on the vision pro announcement. What does that say about the market’s assessment of meta’s vr/ar prospects?

maybe the odds of meta dropping the whole vr thing have increased? then they can stop lighting piles of money on fire because zuck read snow crash as a teenager? OTOH, maybe apple will show meta how a headset can actually be done and they can mimic their way to product market fit?

I much prefer Meta dumping billions into VR rather than targeting ads and worsening teens' depression.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#698
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent iPads based on M series chips now support swap. I think it was added in iPadOS 16 last year.

It's different-ish. iPadOS is still a more limited/controlled OS and the swap policy is also more limited. You can see it in the open source kernel where it's called "app swap", so it doesn't swap out the OS, but on macOS it can. "Limited" makes it, well, limited, but it has performance advantages: fewer unexpected page faults mean audio/video processes won't unexpectedly drop a frame as often, and there's fewer disk…

Where can I read more about this?

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#699
post #537

To me, Apple Vision vision's, so-called spacial computing, is exactly what I was always looking for in a portable computing device: beefy processor, pixeless experience, app and file navigation using natural eyes and hands movement. This has the potential of replacing all desktop, laptop and tablet I may own. Now I just have to wait for a Linux compatible version. Because there's no way I'm gonna use any Apple softwa…

> Now I just have to wait for a Linux compatible version. That'll probably be about 15-20 years. Apple will have to prove that their interfaces work, and the rest of the industry will have to follow, and hardware will have to be hacked, and new paradigms built, and eventually -- maybe -- it'll be possible to do a non-janky version of this on linux. But the UX is paramount here, and linux is notoriously bad at that.

I think VisionOS apps can spawn multiple windows, so you could just spin up a fancy Remote Desktop app that serves Wayland windows and snaps the mouse to whichever window you're looking at.

Re: Notes on Vision Pro

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different-ish. iPadOS is still a more limited/controlled OS and the swap policy is also more limited. You can see it in the open source kernel where it's called "app swap", so it doesn't swap out the OS, but on macOS it can. "Limited" makes it, well, limited, but it has performance advantages: fewer unexpected page faults mean audio/video processes won't unexpectedly drop a frame as often, and there's fewer disk…

Where can I read more about this?

The xnu source code on github. The rest of it… well you just did read about it. There's an older book called Mac OS X Internals that covers some of it.
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