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Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#171
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I got rid of my apple watch is because it would congratulate me for successfuly completing my exercise for the day just from turning over on the sofa. It would also tell me how good I slept when I forgot to wear it to bed. So, at least for me, that ML doesn't work

I didn't give it up, but I did laugh one morning at 2:30AM, laying in bed, dozing off and getting startled by the watch telling me I've been sitting for awhile and it suggests I get up and move a bit.

It's rare, but I've been woken up at least once by a "congratulations on completing your stand/exercise!".

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#172
post #10

Oh boy: "Listen to me, do you want to use a computer that is always looking at your hands?" It took a second for that warning to sink in.

I think we're past that. Our phones have already seen so many things we could find embarrassing.

One smart thing Apple usually does when using cameras for sensing (see Face ID) is never showing you the image, making it feel a lot less creepy.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#173
post #153

This review confirmed this is exactly what I need. I don’t care about my hair messing up, I work from home. I don’t care if the display doesn’t look as good as reality, that was never my expectation anyway. The display just needs to look good enough to work with fine text and hi-res images. I don’t care if it’s too heavy to wear for hours at a time, I always work in 25 minute blocks anyway. Breaks are good. I don’t c…

Same for me but there was a single sentence that more than halved my interest in buying this: you can’t have multiple floating windows of MacOS. It’s all in one single floating window. This is by far the biggest flaw for me, and a really stupid one. Hopefully a software update changes this

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you think of examples where a company starts making a product in a new category and nails it on the first iteration? Experience shows that they will keep on iterating on it year after year. The thing I was most interested in was if they could nail an intuitive UI right from the outset.

VR headsets have been around for many years now and why does anyone believe a somewhat better version of those things would hit critical mass? It seems like the form factor is as much the problem as any of the implementations. Many people really wanted an Apple version to be a game changer. Maybe this game can’t really be changed?

If this was $500 I’d call it a game changer, and hopefully it gets there in 5 years

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#175

I ordered mine on day one and it'll get here Friday. I work from home and intend to use it at my desk for (1) a bigger display for my mac and (2) native apps for things like Slack/video conferencing/notes/imessage/etc and hopefully I can have a productive environment with it. I figure it'll be cool to work at a national park or on the moon or some such, and to have more real estate to put my apps. I plan to use my ph…

I can't imagine this being a good computer monitor. Low resolution + pixel scaling issues would make this be a pretty uncomfortable experience. But, i haven't tried it (nor do I plan to any time soon), so I can only guess.

Review said text was perfectly readable and not blurry and when combined with multiple floating windows it seems like it’d be serviceable

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#176

I think this is like a modern example of the Apple Newton in the sense it's impressive, has uses, but it too soon to be widely adopted. I think this device will flounder, early adopters will struggle to make full use of it because of all the compromises. Take it on the plane? Why? It will run out of power in 1-2 hrs (if you remembered the full charge before you board). Lugging all that bulk just for a movie on the pl…

The plane thing is funny. I can’t imagine anyone actually using VR in economy. At best you’ll annoy people next to you and the flight attendants if they need you to move or respond. At worst you’ll hit your head on something or whack someone with the controllers

Using it in economy is actually a top use case for me. Working on my laptop is miserable for multiple reasons, the biggest of which is that I can’t even tilt the lid open past 90 degrees out of fear the person in front of me will recline and catch my screen in the seat crevice and smash it. Lots of photos of this happening online

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#177
post #153

This review confirmed this is exactly what I need. I don’t care about my hair messing up, I work from home. I don’t care if the display doesn’t look as good as reality, that was never my expectation anyway. The display just needs to look good enough to work with fine text and hi-res images. I don’t care if it’s too heavy to wear for hours at a time, I always work in 25 minute blocks anyway. Breaks are good. I don’t c…

Same for me but there was a single sentence that more than halved my interest in buying this: you can’t have multiple floating windows of MacOS. It’s all in one single floating window. This is by far the biggest flaw for me, and a really stupid one. Hopefully a software update changes this

But you can have one floating macOS window (for your workhorse app) and then infinite other visionOS and iPadOS windows. For me, that’s good enough, most of my other monitors are just Safari tabs or something that can be replaced with iPad apps anyway. Anyway the fact that you can continue to use your phone with the headset on means you could theoretically use another computer with external monitors for desktop apps while having lots of extra virtual space for iPad/Safari apps.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#178
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AirPods were post-Steve? And they were both widely mocked at launch and wildly successful.

Like so many Apple things, I thought AirPods were dumb until I got some (as a gift). I'd tried some Logitech wireless earbuds just a couple months before first trying AirPods. Those were dumb. God they sucked. I've avoided the Watch for that reason. The little conveniences of various Apple-thingies are the sort of stuff you can't un-experience, and then you're stuck buying the damn things forever.

I think about this frequently while using my AirPods. It's annoying that we're all becoming accustomed to spending anywhere from like $130 to $250 on in-ear headphones that aren't guaranteed a particularly long lifespan, to replace wired headphones that an acceptable quality pair can be had for like $15.

But I'll be damned if the AirPods experience isn't far more convenient, and has me using them more than I ever did with wired headphones because they're so quick and easy to use. I can pop one in an ear and immediately I'm listening to a podcast while doing laundry. No cord tethering my head to my pocket, nothing to get snagged on a doorknob, it just works. When I pull one out of my ear it pauses, and resumes when I put it back in. When you only have one AirPod in, it knows and automatically converts the audio stream to mono so you still hear everything.

Still would be nice to have the 3.5mm jack back, but I certainly haven't felt a desire to go back to wired headphones since I got AirPods.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#180
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could imagine that might have been why it came about originally but that line of thinking doesn't seem to justify the R&D spend alone. I'd imagine they have some belief in it being able to make new business of its own. If I'm not mistaken this is the first properly post-Steve product?

> If I'm not mistaken this is the first properly post-Steve product? Jobs publicly bemoaned the lack of, and presumably thought a lot about, "headphones for video". I think it's a safe bet that he set the stage for Apple Vision (and probably sketched out a 50 year plan) with current Apple leaders before his death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO0OGmNDKVg > "You know, the fundamental problem here is that headphones…

Yeah, I honestly hadn't thought about those statements in quite a while. Thanks for bringing them back to mind. It makes me ponder whether they had a very rough, early prototype of an FPV display device at that time, and if so, what that looked like. The interviewer briefly mentions what was available at the time, which Steve calls "lousy", so it could also be that he was more fascinated by the inherent concept.

As is often the case, I'd give a lot for companies such as Apple to be more open with their ancient prototypes once a new device gets launched. Sometimes brands, such as Microsoft[0] in the console field showcase iterative prototypes or even produce full-on documentaries of their history, but rarely for new device categories.

I understand why that's not possible, but still, one can dream.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJYsA1jXf60

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