I appreciate Karl as the technical Bulldog for AR, doing really good technical analysis for the field. Even as someone steeped in this space, the fact of the 3-element AVP was news to me. That is a pretty big difference from other designs and tells me they are reaching for anything they can to squeeze optimizations out. AR is really really hard.
Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
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Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#12Anyone else worried that Vision Pro will simply be a large iPad and not macOS like, ie closed app store and not geared towards productivity? The fact that to run VSCode you need to mirror your own Mac simply boggles the mind, it's like Apple wants to cut off the potential of the device at the knees simply to continue selling services.
I think the bigger factor is that Apple is trying to push this as more of a workplace productivity machine than the iPad, so third party developers will hopefully be more amenable to porting those types of apps than they were to iPadOS.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#13> In many ways, the AVP can be seen as the “Meta Quest Pro done much better.” If you are doing more of a “flagship/Pro product,” it better be a flagship. Ok. I'm fine with being told "you aren't the target audience" but... name 5 things I would do with it if I bought one. Why would I put it on my face/what would I gain from it? Gaming? Productivity? What can it do that a screen + monitor + mouse + keyboard / iPad / i…
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#14Anyone else worried that Vision Pro will simply be a large iPad and not macOS like, ie closed app store and not geared towards productivity? The fact that to run VSCode you need to mirror your own Mac simply boggles the mind, it's like Apple wants to cut off the potential of the device at the knees simply to continue selling services.
Why worry ? It's already guaranteed to be the case. Apps will not have direct access to the cameras, meaning that the Vision Pro is destined to keep being a toy fully steered by Apple. You also cannot access any depth information, or anything that would make it useful as a general 3D computing device. You can't access eye tracking, so say good bye to foveated rendering. And since you can't have foveated rendering, we…
EDIT: See cma's comment below which adds more info: apps that use their own render still support foveated rendering too.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why worry ? It's already guaranteed to be the case. Apps will not have direct access to the cameras, meaning that the Vision Pro is destined to keep being a toy fully steered by Apple. You also cannot access any depth information, or anything that would make it useful as a general 3D computing device. You can't access eye tracking, so say good bye to foveated rendering. And since you can't have foveated rendering, we…
Foveated rendering is supported by default. Most apps will rely on the OS's renderer and not their own so they don't have to do anything with eye tracking to have it enabled. EDIT: See cma's comment below which adds more info: apps that use their own render still support foveated rendering too.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#16Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#17Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#18> Pancake (MQP) versus Asperical Refractive Optics (AVP) Guttag's section about the lenses not being pancake and being refractive only I think is wrong, Apple says: "combined with custom catadioptric lenses," which implies reflection is is used like with pancake. (source: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vis... ) > It should be noted that the AVP displays about 3.3 times the pixels, has more a…
The contradiction being introducing a new product with a screen? Guess what, watchOS will still suggest you go outside, whether you use a MacBook or a Vision Pro.
This analysis is not particularly sharp.
The vergence issue he is very hot about, but like anything in this space the question is “is this good enough for a lot of people” not “did they solve this to my personal satisfaction (having not used the device)”
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#19Anyone else worried that Vision Pro will simply be a large iPad and not macOS like, ie closed app store and not geared towards productivity? The fact that to run VSCode you need to mirror your own Mac simply boggles the mind, it's like Apple wants to cut off the potential of the device at the knees simply to continue selling services.
You can do VSCode Remote in a browser on an iPad so I'm not too worried. I think the bigger factor is that Apple is trying to push this as more of a workplace productivity machine than the iPad, so third party developers will hopefully be more amenable to porting those types of apps than they were to iPadOS.
I'm sorry but that's exactly the problem, I want the app natively (well, as native as you can get with Electron), executing code that I have on my file system. I don't want to execute remotely through a browser.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#20> In many ways, the AVP can be seen as the “Meta Quest Pro done much better.” If you are doing more of a “flagship/Pro product,” it better be a flagship. Ok. I'm fine with being told "you aren't the target audience" but... name 5 things I would do with it if I bought one. Why would I put it on my face/what would I gain from it? Gaming? Productivity? What can it do that a screen + monitor + mouse + keyboard / iPad / i…
A wearable that acts as if i have floating monitors anywhere sounds like a massive win, in a device that appears to be far more portable than actually bringing the aforementioned accoutrements with me everywhere i go.