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A developer's view of Vision Pro

david-smith.org

151–160 of 371 posts

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#151

> In short, my brain has crossed a Rubicon and now feels like experiences constrained to small, rectangular screens are lesser experiences. The funny thing about this statement is that Vision Pro is in fact the smallest rectangular screen of any device he's written code for. He's hyped up. That's normal. In time he'll understand Vision Pro doesn't provide any better UX for common activities. In fact it's worse in man…

Have you worn this? Yo use pretty explicit with your complaints about its weight and comfort. Your penultimate paragraph is really unfounded and inaccurate. You can multitask with in (in a computing sense). You can share with apps that have use the appropriate APIs. And I completely disagree that "basic apps" (whatever that is) will not be a great use case. Hell, I would buy this today so I could have a monitor replacement. And I'm just a lowly sysadmin who is at home with vim in a terminal.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#152
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To code, for example, you need to hook a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I have a hunch that coding as we know it is going to look very different in ~5-10 years.

Maybe, but not in terms of needing code. You see, the rules of formal languages that encode formal rules of system constraints pre-date computers by centuries. Think of math proofs, for example. Sure, we can encode symbols as emojis, or geometric figures or whatever. But in the end, it's sequences of symbols, that's the nature of it. And tapping symbols one by one with a headset will suck, no matter how programming l…

You do realize you can use a keyboard with this? And that the VP can plug in for infinite power?

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#153

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.

It's all very well researched that touchscreens above our arms can't be used with longevity: https://www.wired.com/2010/10/gorilla-arm-multitouch/

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#154
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…

> For the past week I've been trying to explain to people how certain I am that doing work in headsets will become mainstream This gets at my main question about this: does it feel to you like it will be great for "doing work", which generally happens at discrete places, or something which will apply to life generally, which is the kind of (some would say dystopian) ideal of "augmented reality"? Or put another way, I…

> or "life scale" where you can leave the room entirely to check on the screens you left in the kitchen before coming back to sit down in front of the ones in your office?

according to the videos they show, people move around a lot in a room with these things on, grab things (e.g. their phone, cup of coffee). and makes sense, if you see basically what you have in front of you, then there's no "boundaries" you should stay in not to bump into things.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#155
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…

> ...doing work in headsets... Is it possible to use Vision Pro to build and publish a Vision Pro app? Because it seems to be another Apple device separating producers and consumers just like iPad and iPhone.

They demoed this in the State of the Union I think. Vision Pro was on with Xcode + a live build of the app that was being developed side by side. I'm not sure if Xcode was running on device or on a Mac though.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#156
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…

> For the past week I've been trying to explain to people how certain I am that doing work in headsets will become mainstream This gets at my main question about this: does it feel to you like it will be great for "doing work", which generally happens at discrete places, or something which will apply to life generally, which is the kind of (some would say dystopian) ideal of "augmented reality"? Or put another way, I…

I think it'll be great for "doing work", but I'm not entirely sure if it'll immediately outclass my in-office setup that my employer has already spent thousands on. However, I don't have a wfh setup in my small apartment because I didn't want to dedicate space for that purpose, so when I occasionally need to wfh I just use a laptop on my couch or dining table and I would love it to replace that. I think if an employer were speccing out a new office it would definitely be a viable option to have a small laptop + Vision Pro instead of desktop (or bigger laptop) + multiple external monitors.

I also don't expect it to be super dystopian or replace real life in general, but it could definitely replace the parts where you're already looking at a screen regardless.

It is technically capable of being "life scale" in the way that you describe: it tries to keep a consistent coordinate system across multiple reboots and from room to room and real life objects can occlude virtual objects, but to be honest I have no clue what the average use case will be or how the OS will enforce it.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#157
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 SDK supports a gesture detection, but the "official" solution is to pair a Xbox or PS5 controller to the device.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#158
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To code, for example, you need to hook a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I have a hunch that coding as we know it is going to look very different in ~5-10 years.

Maybe, but not in terms of needing code. You see, the rules of formal languages that encode formal rules of system constraints pre-date computers by centuries. Think of math proofs, for example. Sure, we can encode symbols as emojis, or geometric figures or whatever. But in the end, it's sequences of symbols, that's the nature of it. And tapping symbols one by one with a headset will suck, no matter how programming l…

> But if you spot something's off, you need to adjust it. Go directly for the kill, and make that surgical series of edits.

LLMs are still a really immature technology. The hype is about where it could go in future, not necessarily where it is now.

Think about when compilers were immature technology, and the science of parsing/etc and optimizations were not well understood. You could make the exact same argument you have made now about the need of editing assembly or machine code by hand when the compiler doesn't get it right.

It was indeed common practice to do this well into the 1980s. That, and inline assembly is increasingly unnecessary now.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#159
> When I sat down to write this article I was having trouble context shifting back from WWDC mode and wished that I could have gone up to a virtual cabin in the woods, opened a text editor and written it there. Or similarly while I was watching WWDC session videos in my hotel room on my 13” MacBook Pro I found myself wishing for a larger display where I could have the video, notes, documentation and Xcode open all at once.

This reinforces the idea that Vision Pro is for a portable, fully immersive work experience. Which dovetails nicely with the post-Covid notion of working in various locations as convenient/affordable. Bring a Vision Pro with you to "the cabin" or hotel or remote working location, to have a more productive experience than just a small laptop. Or college dorm, where you don't have your own dedicated work space.

Re: A developer's view of Vision Pro

#160
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't click without looking at my mouse pointer. I think it's possible eye tracking is just better than mouse/trackpad.

I often am looking at another element before interacting with it with my mouse. With eye tracking enabled menus hovering over an element immediately because I'm looking at it becomes an annoyance.

Yea, I don't think a 1-to-1 translation of mouse movements with eye tracking is the correct answer here. I do think it's probable that eye tracking + {X} can be a 1-to-1 translation for clicking for 80%+ clicks.

Maybe X is a button on the keyboard. Maybe X is a gesture.

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