Live data from Hacker News

Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

291–300 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#291
I could see this taking the place of a TV screen in some households, (smaller ones of course unless you want to spend $15k for the whole family to all watch TV in a living room!). I think a killer feature for this is to pair it with a treadmill and project trails and famous city scapes while you run. That last bit for me might be a reason to buy it as if its winter and icy where you live running on the thread mill is a forced indoor exercise.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#292

I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software. Between this and the Quest 3, we have powerful, polished and consumer friendly devices, but beyond a few niches (fitness, simulation, gaming to some extent), there is nothing to convince users to put the headsets on. I am hoping we will see a lot of experimentation in the coming years, and I am excited for what the Apple ecosystem will bring to t…

I think you've got it backwards. There are plenty of reasons you'd want to put on a VR headset if it weighed as much as a pair of glasses, had a 180 degree field of view and like 5x the resolution of current headsets.

The reason the software doesn't exist is because compelling hardware doesn't exist for it to run on, so nobody bothers to write it.

Apple is imagining this device will be used for productivity but it's still painful to actually wear for long periods. We're a long way from being limited by software instead of hardware.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is VR, though. Sure, Apple built the headset so that it mimics AR devices, but it definitely is not one itself. The technology to build an AR device with the capabilities that Apple boasted is simply not here yet. I'm sure that Apple top-talent is hard at work trying to break the barrier (if it didn't yet), but that'll be for a future version, just not this one.

When you say "AR devices" I think you specifically mean AR devices that do optical compositing vs. AVP's digital compositing, yes? > I'm sure that Apple top-talent is hard at work trying to break the barrier (if it didn't yet), but that'll be for a future version, just not this one. To me, it feels like AVP is the final nail in the coffin of the optical compositing evolutionary branch of HMDs. Even if it's someday po…

Same here. If there's some breakthrough they're not going to ignore it, but I would bet anything that current Apple far-forecasting plans for the "Vision 10" amount to current Vision Pro functionality in oversized wraparound shades, relying entirely on the camera passthrough for vision.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#294
post #132

It is interesting how many here are excited about this for productive computer work. It’s also what Apple advertises with. But what is the account situation like? For years I’ve been complaining that I can’t easily use my private iPad with my company Mac because they have separate Apple IDs. Things like sidecar for a quick virtual whiteboard are basically impossible. AirPods have gotten better over the years where to…

> But is the Vision Pro like that as well? It's actually far worse. There's a single user and a "guest mode", but for AR/VR to work with, there's a calibration step, which means that the guest has to go through that step every single time they want to use the device. It might be fine for a real guest using it once, but it would be basically impossible to share the device with someone else. Having to setup the device…

The only reason the guest mode exists is to incite the “guest” to also purchase an AVP after having experienced it.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#295

I could see this taking the place of a TV screen in some households, (smaller ones of course unless you want to spend $15k for the whole family to all watch TV in a living room!). I think a killer feature for this is to pair it with a treadmill and project trails and famous city scapes while you run. That last bit for me might be a reason to buy it as if its winter and icy where you live running on the thread mill is…

I’m looking forward to learning about geography from a huge atlas

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#296
Apple failed to make a compelling argument for purchasing their device. Where's the "killer app"? The original iPhone was a better phone, and a general computing device with a web browser to boot.

Is it to watch movies on a 100" screen on an airplane? The xReal weighs 75 grams and does that for four hundred dollars. It has a HDMI port too, so I can play my steam deck or switch.

Where are the cool AR apps? Where is the contextual data popping up as I drive my car? None of that exists!

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#297

I could see this taking the place of a TV screen in some households, (smaller ones of course unless you want to spend $15k for the whole family to all watch TV in a living room!). I think a killer feature for this is to pair it with a treadmill and project trails and famous city scapes while you run. That last bit for me might be a reason to buy it as if its winter and icy where you live running on the thread mill is…

The weight would be a major problem there, and needs to be improved before they can honestly pitch cardio with it on.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#298

I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software. Between this and the Quest 3, we have powerful, polished and consumer friendly devices, but beyond a few niches (fitness, simulation, gaming to some extent), there is nothing to convince users to put the headsets on. I am hoping we will see a lot of experimentation in the coming years, and I am excited for what the Apple ecosystem will bring to t…

I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software.

How about enabling AIs to create layouts of information on behalf of the user? Like, what if an AI could arrange all of your information for you in a scheme derived from Archy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software)

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s going to be presented as a 5k Retina display to your Mac, with a 2550x1600 at 2x rendering, downscaled somewhat to a bit over 4k of so. Therefore it will appear kinda like a retina imac. 27 display but not quite as sharp.

Seems like it would be less than that though? Depends on your typical FOV to your monitor. If the headset manages to be 4000 pixels wide, but that is filling say 110 degree FOV, then if your virtual display is 44 degree FOV, it's only going to be represented by about 1600 pixels wide. 4000/(110/44) = 1600. I wish we knew what the actual resolution of this headset is and what the FOV is. They say it's 23 MP total, so…

I think your math is correct, and it will be very limited compared to a real-life retina screen, but I think there's also a perceived resolution increase from having binocular vision and moving.

If you hold your head steady while looking through a window with a plastic screen on it, things outside are obstructed. If you move your head slightly back and forth and focus in the distance, the screen pretty much disappears.

Your brain can do some motion smoothing to determine the "actual" content, even if it's sampled. I'm not sure how you could quantify it, and it only helps a relatively small amount, but it's there.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#300

What's the killer app? Quest headsets have been out for years and haven't seemed to find one. Well.. besides 3d porn

I've seen a few ideas that seem really interesting, just not at the price point Apple is offering. And honestly I'm just going to wait for these headsets to be smaller and lighter too before buying one. I don't think anyone at Apple is under the impression this device is going to be a money maker, but more of a gen-1 device to provide a place to start from for further work. - Learning instruments in a guitar-hero way…

> virtual workouts

Or real workouts. I want to be able to have floating text to read on my runs, and real time biometric data directly in my field of view rather than on my watch would be cool too.

Post reply on HN