Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#181

Post by haswell » Mon, Jul 03, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #159

haswell wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring primarily to the hardware side of this from a roadmap perspective. I don't think early politics about how apps get shipped plays too much into the core planning for the device, e.g. form factor, manufacturing, user interactions, structure of built-in apps, etc. are all pretty much orthogonal to the app distribution model. But even then, there were clearly two camps, which means there was a disagreement…

Yeah absolutely. I just don’t think that consumer tech companies which make 10 year plans (instead of a broad high level vision) and try to stick to them tend to be that successful. > are all pretty much orthogonal to the app distribution model. I’m not sure it’s only the distribution but the entire existence of native third party apps that they weren’t sure about.

I was including 1st party vs. 3rd party in my mind when I mentioned distribution. Admittedly that word is doing some heavy lifting.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#182

Post by ttepasse » Mon, Jul 03, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

goosedragons wrote: post #160

trws wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m actually curious about specifics here for macOS aside from things like hidden scroll bars. Mainly because I find it to be one of the most discoverable. If you go into the ‘help’ menu in any application, you get a search box that searches all the menus of the application, if a shortcut exists for the action it’s listed alongside it. Admittedly Qt and KDE can do this too, but only for QT apps, while on macOS it’s e…

How do you show hidden folders in Finder? You literally have to memorize a keyboard shortcut. How do you switch apps in full screen mode, you need to know trackpad gestures or keyboard shortcuts. Every post like 2004 addition to MacOS seems to be reliant on trackpad gestures to the point using the operating system with a mouse is a negative. The search bar in the menu is fine if there is a menu to search. IIRC or at…

> How do you switch apps in full screen mode, you need to know trackpad gestures or keyboard shortcuts.

The Dock also works, although you have to move the pointer downwars to show it. In a lot of ways Clicking on Icons is MacOS foundation mode and everything else is superfluous. I, as a Poweruser, forget that sometimes.

> IIRC or at least last time I used it the screenshot tool had no menus and was extremely unclear as to how to save a screenshot as a file in the location you actually want.

The Screenshot tool btw. is also an App under Applications → Utilities. If you use that, you’ll get a floating palette with different options including for different locations. Those options then get also used by the Poweruser ⇧⌘n shortcuts.

(I don’t necessary disagree with you, there is too much invisible navigation.)

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#183

Post by dagmx » Mon, Jul 03, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #171

dagmx wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho this is the foible of many technical people in that they want to advertise unique use cases. But the problem is: 1. The people who aren’t already engrossed in the field, don’t have a good view on how to bridge between their current world view and the new one. 2. The people who are already in the space don’t need to be sold on unique cases. Very few post-jobs-return Apple products show dramatic new use cases even…

>Unique VR experiences only matter to a fringe set of users I disagree with this. Why would someone buy a headset instead of use an ipad or desktop? If there is nothing unique to VR why should people put a heavy thing on their head for about the same experience? >Take the ability to run iPad apps on it natively. VR enthusiasts will scoff at it No, where have you seen this? Everyone likes the ability to run these apps…

> Why would someone buy a headset instead of use an ipad or desktop? If there is nothing unique to VR why should people put a heavy thing on their head for about the same experience?

Because the experience can still be enhanced by the form factor and be compelling. Watching a movie isn't unique, but watching it on a 100ft display while trapped in a plane is compelling. The entire pitch is progressive experiences, and has been for every product they've shown since the iPhone. Take what you're used to doing and make an experience that progressively scale to the form factors.

> No, where have you seen this?

Countless posts here on HN and in the virtual reality community (like /r/virtualreality) that bemoan the device as a glorified iPad, and hate the amount of 2D windows shown.

> Most big developers don't care about devices unless they have a large amount of users

Big developers will take the risk, and are already doing so. Apple showed off multiple developers like Unity, Disney and more making apps. ( more here https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/developer-tools-to-cr... )

Part of that is that the visionOS allows for progressive experiences, which is not something other HMDs allow for. Developers aren't building an app for visionOS. They're adding to their existing codebases for iOS. Their investment therefore isn't a niche new platform, but the entire ecosystem.

There's a huge first mover advantage in software on these platforms as has been shown by the iPhone where people were going ga-ga over fart apps, and beer drinking apps. Those people made bank because they delivered fun knick-knacks before the market got saturated.

Even looking at other HMDs, it's often the big players and the indie players that move first. The middle of the spectrum are the ones who move last when the ecosystem is there. The Oculus Quest launched with a Star Wars game available.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#184

Post by turnsout » Mon, Jul 03, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #179

turnsout wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, I disagree with the premise—plenty of Android users buy AirPods. But putting that aside, why does the success of AirPods invalidate the point that Vision Pro could be successful without being as big as the iPhone?

Airpods are an existing product category (headphones) that everybody with a phone already uses. Couple that with Apple products being a status symbol, advertised everywhere, and it's not hard to see how Airpods could succeed even at a $200-ish price point. As for AVP, it is a brand new category where the use cases are yet to be identified. It costs 2 months' rent, it has no killer apps that people are going to line u…

The history of Apple is a history of "no one in their right mind would pay a premium for THAT." A $500 unsubsidized phone? A $350 watch to get notifications? Stupid-looking $200 earbuds that will fall out of your ears?

AirPods got so much hate in 2016, it can be hard to remember. They were far from a sure thing.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#185

Post by rchaud » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 1:02 AM UTC

turnsout wrote: post #184

rchaud wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airpods are an existing product category (headphones) that everybody with a phone already uses. Couple that with Apple products being a status symbol, advertised everywhere, and it's not hard to see how Airpods could succeed even at a $200-ish price point. As for AVP, it is a brand new category where the use cases are yet to be identified. It costs 2 months' rent, it has no killer apps that people are going to line u…

The history of Apple is a history of "no one in their right mind would pay a premium for THAT." A $500 unsubsidized phone? A $350 watch to get notifications? Stupid-looking $200 earbuds that will fall out of your ears? AirPods got so much hate in 2016, it can be hard to remember. They were far from a sure thing.

Apple Watch can only be said to be a moderate success at best, considering Apple themselves have never disclosed how many they've sold.

As for unsubsidized phones, the US is the only country that sold them on contract, and the iPhone didn't take off until Apple had AT&Tcut the price to $199 to match other flagships. The Nokia N95 for example retailed at $730 and sold millions in 2007.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#186

Post by acdha » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #91

Tepix wrote: post #5

Even if they only build 100,000 units, it should be enough to build hype and get developers onboard for their more affordable mass market 2nd gen device coming in 2025. For context, Oculus sold only 56,334 of their DK1 devkits.

The Oculus Quest series sold around 20 million units so far, still not a lot of hype.

I’m curious what the usage figures are like: everyone I know who bought VR rigs basically stopped using them and if the WSJ was right earlier this year the best MAU was a third of the total sales:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-parent-bytedance-battles...

I suspect that gets back to the space / isolation problem: if you don’t live alone there’s probably just not enough time where you’re using VR to be worth the purchase price to most people. That doesn’t get better until they’re cheap enough that the entire household can have their own or people find professional reasons to own one.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#187

Post by peterlk » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 2:04 AM UTC

trws wrote: post #157

JohnFen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. iPhones and the Apple desktop OS. In both of them, I am lost as to how to accomplish anything but the most common stuff. The design of the OSes is such that it's not obvious how to do anything, and they provide very little guidance. You have to already know how to do what it is you're trying to do. This is even worse on Apple smartphones, because a lot of stuff is done using mystery gestures that you have to al…

I’m actually curious about specifics here for macOS aside from things like hidden scroll bars. Mainly because I find it to be one of the most discoverable. If you go into the ‘help’ menu in any application, you get a search box that searches all the menus of the application, if a shortcut exists for the action it’s listed alongside it. Admittedly Qt and KDE can do this too, but only for QT apps, while on macOS it’s e…

I’ll give you a very specific example. When turning on the flashlight, I have to hold the flashlight icon for a specific period of time. If I hold too long, I get the dimmer option. If I don’t hold long enough, it doesn’t turn on. The iphone expects what feels to me like a zen-like stoner’s calm press of the button. This is absolutely infuriating to me. Every time. Just turn the damn light on when I press the button.

Did you know that you can hold the spacebar to move your cursor around on iOS? Without my friend telling me about that feature, I also found text selection in iOS to be deeply frustrating as compared to Android

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#188

Post by slowmovintarget » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 2:33 AM UTC

SSLy wrote: post #21

slowmovintarget wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLS gives no cypher overlap error.

get firefox

Firefox is the only browser that gives that error message. The same error yields a different message on Chrome.

I switched back to Firefox Developer Edition in 2017-ish.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#189

Post by thunky » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 2:47 AM UTC

ilinx wrote: post #138

JohnFen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple does UX well. I hear people say this often enough to question my own sanity, because I don't find Apple's UX to be very good at all. I find it confusing and it makes things difficult to figure out.

Could you provide an example of the sort of thing you’re talking about? Because I’m the type of person the other commenter was talking about (I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem for a very long time), and I feel I’m too close to it to have a reasonably objective viewpoint on it one way or the other.

My dad got an iPhone despite us being an Android family because word on the street was that they're easy to use.

For the life of him he can't he can't look at a text message while in a phone call and then get back to the call menu.

He unknowingly mutes notifications for contacts and has no chance of figuring out how to unmute them.

He accidentally calls his contacts all the time.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#190

Post by xp84 » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 4:04 AM UTC

ilinx wrote: post #138

JohnFen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple does UX well. I hear people say this often enough to question my own sanity, because I don't find Apple's UX to be very good at all. I find it confusing and it makes things difficult to figure out.

Could you provide an example of the sort of thing you’re talking about? Because I’m the type of person the other commenter was talking about (I’ve been in the Apple ecosystem for a very long time), and I feel I’m too close to it to have a reasonably objective viewpoint on it one way or the other.

How about iOS Settings? There are, counting now, 8 sections of settings before the ninth which is “all third-party apps alphabetically” (that last one is mainly where you can grant/deny a short list of entitlements for those such as location, cell data, etc.)

Those 9 sections are all unlabeled for some insane reason (I suppose maybe this type of plain table view thing has never had a UI element to make headings?), so even the intent of the designer is unknown. If you want a certain setting, you just have to keep scrolling. There is Search in here, though the search is mediocre and it’s still hard to find things.

Oh, and Settings has a junk drawer too called General, which seems to mostly mean “someone was forced to pull 15 or so items into a subfolder, and it also uses the “random groups without headings” method of organization.

All of this seems low-effort and like the designers didn’t learn even basic lessons from 40 years of GUI design (or like the ones calling the shots are fine art majors more concerned with words like “uncluttered” and “elegant” than “usability” and “discoverable.”