Speaking in terms of eye health, does it matter if the screen is right in front of my eye if the focal length is farther? Or is it still unhealthy?
The physical distance does not matter except for the heat it produces
Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
81–90 of 105 posts
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apps will not have direct access to the cameras Is there any headset that does allow this currently? Doesnt seem like any kind of differentiating factor
Every single headset in the world that has cameras. The HoloLens, anything that uses OpenXR and OpenVR (so, pretty much 100% of the current PCVR market), hell even the Quest has a Passthrough API. The Vision Pro is pretty much the only one that doesn't, because Apple thinks of their users as children.
A passthrough API, but you absolutely do not get access to the headset cameras on any of those devices. Apple is very much in line with the standard here, you can make passthrough apps, but you cannot actually get the real data from the cameras.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#83Speaking in terms of eye health, does it matter if the screen is right in front of my eye if the focal length is farther? Or is it still unhealthy?
No it does not matter at all. The optics focus it much further away. As far as your eyes are concerned the display isn't right in front of them.
In fact if those optics weren't there you wouldn't see anything except a few coloured blobs.
The amount of brightness your eyes are ingesting is also much lower than walking around on a sunny day without sunglasses. Remember our eyes work logarithmically so the outside could be tens, hundreds of times as bright.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#84What does it mean that guys like this and SadlyItsBradley were not invited to try the Vision Pro? Interesting to note that the experts in the state of the field were not given a chance to try it.
I'm sure they were not because they know too much.
Apple loves keeping the "magic" on their products as long as they can. Once they are in consumers hands they can't stop teardowns and detailed comparisons but right now they won't want some wise guy ascertaining the FoV, PPD, distortion figures etc.
They want their marketing to be viewed as a class of their own, without direct specs to compare to their competitors. Once you bring it down to technical fact territory, that "magic" they're going for is lost.
Right now they're only showing it to their most loyal followers that are bound to go "wow" but don't pick up too many technical details.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Yes, yes, we know some Apple users are unable to see past the "you can't be trusted" that Apple keeps violently stabbing in your brain, you'll live in a company town with company stores and company credits and you'll be happy about it. Apple isn't telling me that I can't be trusted. Apple is telling me that it's a stupid idea to trust third-party developers with unfettered access to my data, and they're not even a l…
> Of course. Feel free to bring to market your wonderful headset that allows VC-funded startups to create a never-ending torrent of privacy hellscape diarrhea apps you can enjoy until they implode. You do realise you're describing 99% of the iOS app store here right? In fact, while the Android app store is curated in an even worse manner, I find that Android does offer a lot more high-quality ad-free open source soft…
>You do realise you're describing 99% of the iOS app store here right?
I do. And I also realize how much worse it'd be if Apple didn't gate user data behind OS-level user consent dialogs.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#86Anyone 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.
If they really want to make it a work machine, there is too many things that needs to go from iPadOS when using keyboard. For instance, customizable shortcut is an obvious thing that is missing on the iPadOS.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. If you want to do anything without going through Apple's benediction, you're shit out of luck. It's one more episode in the war on general computing, except somehow it's okay when Apple restricts what you can do with your three thousand five hundred dollar ski goggles.
To me it seems like less of a war on general computing and more like Apple is hoping to prevent mixed reality or "spatial computing" from becoming an extension on the privacy disaster that smartphones became. This seems prudent, because as personal as smartphones are, a headset like the Vision Pro dials that up tenfold. Considering what third parties have done with just the information surfaced in mobile operating sy…
That’s great for the general case, but it should be also possible for a user to do whatever they want with their own hardware.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, yes, we know some Apple users are unable to see past the "you can't be trusted" that Apple keeps violently stabbing in your brain, you'll live in a company town with company stores and company credits and you'll be happy about it. Now can the adults use their devices? The Vision Pro does not provide foveated rendering if you do not go through the Apple renderer. There's some extremely vague wording regarding Met…
> we know some Apple users are unable to see past the "you can't be trusted" that Apple keeps violently stabbing in your brain It's third party devs doing that, not Apple. They've proven themselves unworthy of trust more times than can be counted. Where there is room for abuse, abuse will happen. We might be numb to it, but it happens all the time on desktop operating systems. Examples include Adobe putting files in…
[deleted]
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me it seems like less of a war on general computing and more like Apple is hoping to prevent mixed reality or "spatial computing" from becoming an extension on the privacy disaster that smartphones became. This seems prudent, because as personal as smartphones are, a headset like the Vision Pro dials that up tenfold. Considering what third parties have done with just the information surfaced in mobile operating sy…
That’s great for the general case, but it should be also possible for a user to do whatever they want with their own hardware.
If there's a way to accomplish this without opening headset users into being easily socially engineered into figuratively selling the farm, sure.
In this particular case I think perhaps a better approach would be to allow apps to bypass App Store restrictions so long as their source code is public and binaries match that code. This would naturally deter those with shady intentions, allow FOSS projects to thrive, allow both manual and automated third party vetting of apps, and help users better know what they're getting into.
Re: Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)
#90Speaking in terms of eye health, does it matter if the screen is right in front of my eye if the focal length is farther? Or is it still unhealthy?
No it does not matter at all. The optics focus it much further away. As far as your eyes are concerned the display isn't right in front of them. In fact if those optics weren't there you wouldn't see anything except a few coloured blobs. The amount of brightness your eyes are ingesting is also much lower than walking around on a sunny day without sunglasses. Remember our eyes work logarithmically so the outside could…
But if I understand correctly the optics can't recreate how our eyes focus on near and far things in reality. So if something is supposed to be 100 meters away it will still be physically like focusing on something 1-2 meters away due to how the optics work. That's the whole VAC issue mentioned in the article.