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A developer's view of Vision Pro

david-smith.org

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Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#91

Post by scarface_74 »

thefounder wrote: post #15

I would buy this if it can replace my current monitor(s) for development/coding. Price is not issue for many people as long as it can do your daywork easier.

I’m a “hybrid digital nomad”. My wife and I travel six months out of the year and we stay in our “Condotel”[1] that we own the other six months. We can’t buy anything that we can’t carry in our four suitcases since we can’t keep anything in our unit when it’s rented out.

I might buy it just for the multi monitor setup and to get rid of my extra USB-C video/usb-c portable monitor and my iPad for a 3 monitor setup in smaller spaces.

[1] a Condotel is where you own the entire condo unit. But it gets rented out as a hotel room when you aren’t there and you get the income minus the property management fees

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#92

Post by k2enemy »

king_magic wrote: post #88
ladberg wrote: post #20

> In short, my brain has crossed a Rubicon and now feels like experiences constrained to small, rectangular screens are lesser experiences. I left Apple 1.5 years ago but was working on the Vision Pro while I was there. I have spend many hours working in the headset and I know exactly the feeling he's describing! Leaving felt like going back in time to using clunky technology and I've been waiting for outside world t…

I guess the big question I have is... what's the point of an extremely expensive headset when it looks like Quest 3 at 7x less the price is going to deliver a roughly similar experience, quality-wise?

I think the simple answer is that the Quest 3 will not deliver a roughly similar experience, quality-wise.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#93

Post by robert_tweed »

ladberg wrote: post #47
macintux wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your experience with it, what do you think about the fatigue factor, either visually or just neck strain? From all accounts it’s quite heavy.

For reference I was already pretty used to gaming in VR on inferior headsets before working on the Vision Pro, so I might be more forgiving of issues than your average person. I'd say that eye strain wasn't really an issue at all for me. When you take off the headset after a while inside of it you kinda get a jarring transition back to normal vision instead of passthrough, but passthrough doesn't have any noticeable…

How is it in terms of heat & condensation build-up? Is there a certain amount of time after which it starts getting uncomfortable?

Also, is passthrough good enough for things like typing, so you don't get an uncanny valley sense of the keys being just slightly off visually compared to your proprioception & touch?

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#94

Post by ladberg »

megaman821 wrote: post #82
ladberg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! My motivations were mostly comp based (I'm in HFT now), I loved the product and the team I was on! Feel free to ask any questions here and I'll answer anything I can (e.g. no unreleased info, but maybe go into more detail about the kind of stuff that was shown to devs at WWDC). No blog right now but maybe in the future :)

Do you feel there are any large leaps left for this type of device or will it be incremental improvements to price, speed, battery life, etc from here on out?

Not exactly sure at all, I wouldn't have been able to predict this large of a leap before finding out about it myself.

I do think a bunch of incremental improvements will eventually allow different use cases though. E.g. you'd never take it on a run or a bike ride in its current state but with enough weight and battery improvements you could have a HUD for exercise stats + navigation when biking with stuff like a videogame-esque ghost of your PR to race against. Just a random idea, there's a lot of stuff you can dream up.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#95

Post by MBCook »

eddieroger wrote: post #68
swozey wrote: post #50

I play VR games like Skyrim VR quite often and my biggest disappointment, outside of the ridiculous price - is that it's completely gesture controlled. Are there going to be controllers at all? How would you play a game with guns? Make a pew-pew gun with your fingers?

The promotional video on Apple's site shows a user picking up and using a PS5 controller. iPhones and iPads can pair with third-party controllers today as well as keyboards and mice, so there's really no reason to think that this wouldn't work with those as well, particularly since Apple showed it happening in their video.

I think it’s very clear this is not positioned for gamers.

It may be powerful. It may work very well in some ways (there may be limitations without hand held controllers like an Oculus or PSVR2).

But that’s not what Apple is trying to sell. And they clearly don’t want to be pigeonholed as another fancy gamer device.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#96

Post by bamfly »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #19
Temporary_31337 wrote: post #4

I was kind of waiting for the day where a touchscreen based app would be more productive than a traditional laptop with keyboard. Yet, after many years all we got is fruit ninja and a concession from apple in the form of attachable keyboard for the iPad. So I’m equally sceptical that the investment in headset based interface is actually worth it.

I think some artists use an ipad with a stylus rather than tablet input to a laptop/desktop, but other than this I can't see how anything else could compete with a keyboard in terms of productivity. Maybe if someone makes a really, really good voice to text interface.

I could see walking around the room thinking and doing clicky-stuff and looking at things, then sitting in front of a keyboard to type. Basically, what I do when I'm on a call and have wireless headphones on.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#97

Post by sfpotter »

MBCook wrote: post #90
Dudester230602 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think reviewers who don't get excited about Apple products stop getting invited to new Apple products.

David Smith is not a reviewer. He’s been a longtime app developer with a huge number of apps. Apple has even featured a few of them. He may be best known for Pedometer++ and Widgetsmith which was the app that went viral on TikTok when widgets first came out for the iPhone.

Apple gave him an exclusive invitation to be one of the first people to try the device on.

Do you think Apple is unaware that he has a popular blog and is a popular developer of software that runs on Apple products?

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#98

Post by [deleted] »

eddieroger wrote: post #68
swozey wrote: post #50

I play VR games like Skyrim VR quite often and my biggest disappointment, outside of the ridiculous price - is that it's completely gesture controlled. Are there going to be controllers at all? How would you play a game with guns? Make a pew-pew gun with your fingers?

The promotional video on Apple's site shows a user picking up and using a PS5 controller. iPhones and iPads can pair with third-party controllers today as well as keyboards and mice, so there's really no reason to think that this wouldn't work with those as well, particularly since Apple showed it happening in their video.

[deleted]

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#99

Post by ladberg »

robert_tweed wrote: post #93
ladberg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference I was already pretty used to gaming in VR on inferior headsets before working on the Vision Pro, so I might be more forgiving of issues than your average person. I'd say that eye strain wasn't really an issue at all for me. When you take off the headset after a while inside of it you kinda get a jarring transition back to normal vision instead of passthrough, but passthrough doesn't have any noticeable…

How is it in terms of heat & condensation build-up? Is there a certain amount of time after which it starts getting uncomfortable? Also, is passthrough good enough for things like typing, so you don't get an uncanny valley sense of the keys being just slightly off visually compared to your proprioception & touch?

Heat and condensation build up is a complete non-issue due to the built in fans! I've never once felt hot or stuffy inside the Vision Pro, and I totally do on other VR headsets.

I don't really look at my keyboard while typing so that's also a non-issue. For stuff where you really need hand-eye coordination it's totally fine at normal arms-length but gets worse as you get closer to your face. Finding a key on the keyboard with your eyes is not a big deal but if you try to drink from a glass of water you'll likely spill it on yourself the first time (and then eventually get used to it).

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#100

Post by MBCook »

bee_rider wrote: post #18
agentultra wrote: post #8

I'm curious how the economics work out. I don't think it's unrealistic to believe that the customer base that are going to be buying visionOS applications is going to be very limited compared to everything else. Very few people are going to shell out 3.4k for a niche product like this. HoloLens found it's niche in commercial sectors like manufacturing and logistics so there's a potential path to make a profitable sof…

I suspect the only play would be: develop developer tools for those developers who do have the budget for a long play. If Apple wants AR in their normal non-gaming, non-niche segment to work out, they are going to have to come out with a sleek $1000 device in a couple years. They’d have to be very stupid to not realize that, and it couldn’t possibly be the case that you get a trillion dollars by being stupid, right?

Don’t forget the iPhone wasn’t an instant hit. It got a lot of discussion but it took a few years/versions before it became THE phone. Same with the Apple Watch. And even the iPod didn’t take off until it was on Windows after a few years.

This will likely be similar.

When the iPhone came out, not only was it limited it was $600 and no subsidy at a time most people were getting free camera phones.

It took a while (and a price drop) for people to see enough value to pay the price.

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