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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

#271
post #105

I feel like this will be a spectacular flop. It’s the first major new Apple product announcement that I completely forgot about (and I mean completely) in the time between announcement and ordering. Nobody I know is even talking about it, unlike when the Apple Watch came out, or the iPad. The experience needs to be as life-changing as the iPhone if you’re going to normalize people wearing ski goggles around the house…

Not to mention, there is no chance I would ever wear this at home in front of my family. My guess is that many feel the same; it’s just too anti-social and weird. If it can be used for VR/AR, there might be some industrial applications, but Apple seems to be positioning this more as a replacement for monitors.

These days I feel like when I'm around close friends and family I want to have mutual experiences. We're already on our phones so much, etc that it takes away from that.

I feel like this is for loner people who want experiences

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

#272
post #237
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…

Can you describe the tasks you will actually be doing like this and why this headset is actually helpful?

> the ability to walk around the room and place different open Safari windows and apps around my physical space as I think and study some new topic

This seems like a perfectly reasonable task and why it is useful.

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the mass market version of the tech. This iteration is a developer kit that early adopters can also buy. Apple has always said that they want a version that fits in a glasses style form factor as their mass market product, but the tech wasn't there yet. > Apple CEO Tim Cook said that it will be a while before the technology available for augmented reality glasses rises to Apple’s standards, according to Br…

When they released dev kits, that’s what they called them. This is a Pro product release. I’m personally inclined to believe that this product is more likely to kill off the entire VR/goggles dream than lead to a $500-$1000 iteration that’s at least as big as iPad. Glasses? Like the ones I have on my face? Not in my lifetime… This is Tim Cook’s trash can Mac.

> Glasses? Like the ones I have on my face? Not in my lifetime…

Your remaining lifetime must be pretty short.

Technology evolves at a ridiculously fast pace. Just as a reminder, the Nokia 3310 was one of the most popular phones in 2000. We went from tiny, monochrome displays to foldable full-color displays with magnitudes higher resolution in what most call a quarter of a lifetime.

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

#274
These products are fundamentally disturbing and depressing. The push by Apple, Meta, et al to normalize long term, general-purpose use of AR/MR is at best an attempt to generate a new iPod/iPhone craze by manipulating people into thinking they need a bulky $3499 gadget (that’s three thousand four hundred ninety-nine, not thirty four ninety nine, Mr Patel) that actually impinges on their ability to interact and integrate with the world rather than augmenting it. At its (much, much) worst, it’s an attempt at an evolutionary leap in corporate surveillance and extending the walled garden further into our perception of reality. Thinking about people going about their daily routine with this ridiculous parasite strapped to their faces, grasping at the air around them like the blind searching for the bathroom at an airport, fills me with more dread and sadness than any episode of Black Mirror. I cannot comprehend the mind of someone who willingly and enthusiastically pays that sort of money to insert a lossy, delayed, artifact-laced layer between themselves and the world directly in front of them. This is the enshittification of reality, processed via a corporate filter and the people around us replaced with clumsy and cringy simulacra.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically a laptop on your head, so a meaty 60w charger could be needed to power and charge it.

Then I guess that is fine, since airlines are typically providing 75 watts per seat.

A couple watts of heat dissipating into your face and head the entire flight is.... Not optimal. Heat is a rather important issue for VR hardware. You can't really positively ventilate the actual part that goes over your face, or else you dry out your eyes and that's pretty unenjoyable.

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

#278

These products are fundamentally disturbing and depressing. The push by Apple, Meta, et al to normalize long term, general-purpose use of AR/MR is at best an attempt to generate a new iPod/iPhone craze by manipulating people into thinking they need a bulky $3499 gadget (that’s three thousand four hundred ninety-nine, not thirty four ninety nine, Mr Patel) that actually impinges on their ability to interact and integr…

Fifteen years ago, when Facebook was growing exponentially through social pressure and gamification, a few misfits and weirdos made the conscious decision to opt out of the entire ecosystem of surveillance, exploitation and social alienation.

Since then, millions more have quietly joined those misfits and weirdos, and the opt-out trend feels like it's accelerating.

There must be strong demand for products that are actually good and healthy for those who use them, products that don't systematically make their customers ill in order to further enrich a few billionaires.

Ignore for a moment how you might monetize it to make yourself a billionaire. Instead, imagine what would be most useful, most healthy, most beneficial for the customer. Then build that.

The result probably won't make you a billionaire, but you could live pretty well. And the world would be better for it.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I do is buy a smart TV, never connect it to the network (thus making it a dumb TV), and plug an Apple TV (or other devices) into it. So far, this has worked - I haven't seen any ads from the TV itself (the apps running on the Apple TV are another story), and it can't phone home about what I'm watching or otherwise doing with the TV.

> and it can't phone home about what I'm watching or otherwise doing with the TV Are you sure? The old idea of giving TVs built-in cellular backup connection is probably still too risky/expensive - dealing with people extracting and repurposing the SIM card with a free (for them) data plan is a hassle. But what about eSIM ?

Intriguing and possible I suppose; Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. However, I imagine the numbers would show it's unnecessary these days. My humble estimation is that most people, at least in the developed world, connect the TV to wifi for the convenience if available.

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

#280
This product, and every similar headset to follow will never appeal to a mass market for daily hours-long usage.

It's uncomfortable, isolating, constraining, expensive, anti-social and its use cases are at best temporarily impressive but quickly grow old.

The entire product category simply sucks. I'm sure the incidental 3D movie experience is great, but most people don't watch movies every single day for hours on end whilst sitting alone on the couch.

It's slow to operate, can't easily be shared with others and having gigantic screens surrounding you is a useless novelty without utility. Watch people with big monitor setups. They watch the middle one whilst the other 2 are stale and only get the occasional peek. This super-multitasking idea is a myth and not how people work.

Consider how when people own both an iPhone and an iPad, they almost always use the iPhone, even for use cases in which the iPad is superior. It's quicker, more flexible, hassle-free, always ready.

Another issue is that the type of content/experience that would truly shine on such a headset, is impossibly hard/expensive to make. So that leaves out 99% of app developers.

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