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Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#551

Post by vikramkr »

Johnie wrote: post #424
zmmmmm wrote: post #276

Lots of surprises on the downside from all the reviews. Pass through much more limited in quality with motion blur, pixelation, distortions, limited color and dynamic range. The eye tracking driven input method which was seen as holy grail turns out to be annoying after a while because people don't naturally always look at what they want to click on. Personas straight up aren't ready. The lack of AR features is the b…

Reminds me of iPhone 1. Everything you've said is reminiscent of the reviews of the first iPhone.

I checked a couple of those old reviews and a couple things that seemed to be a common take with the iPhone that definitely aren't holding now:

- incredible amounts of hype

- loving the design

- loving the touchscreen and input (directly contrasting folks worrying about the eye tracking now)

- a sense (at least from cnet and pcmag) that it's really just an overgrown iPod so they keep comparing it to an iPod (compared to the vision where folks get that it's a new category for apple and have good comps outside anyway )

There are definitely similarities in terms of complaining about missing features that apple's probably going to add soon anyway (keyboard showing up in portrait and stuff). Lots of complaints about not supporting flash but we know how that went. Also apparently the headphone jack position was annoying.

What I'm not seeing in the current vision reviews - and maybe it's impossible to see this in real time - is some feature that has the chance to change literally everything that people arent able to comprehend just yet. These reviews being relatively dismissive of this web browsing on your phone thing is absolutely hilarious in hindsight. The only similar thing in the vision is - the passthrough eye thing maybe? Nothing else seems particularly baffling.

I'm glad I read some of those reviews. The vibe I'm getting is - the iPhone was doing something fundamentally weird with this whole smartphone thing that reviewers just didnt get, so they kept reviewing it as an iPod with really bad voice calling and a browser and being confused by all the hype. The vision though? It's a vr/mixed reality headset, we know what those are like, and apple didn't throw any real curveballs.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#552

Post by zmmmmm »

crooked-v wrote: post #277
MBCook wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m excited about the Vision Pro but I now see why some reviewers called the FaceTime “Personas” creepy. They’re like talking paintings in the Haunted Mansion ride with bunch of blur and depth of field. It’s way too weird. Joanna’s looks a bit like she’s been stuck as the replacement person in the Mona Lisa. A static picture of you or maybe your Memoji (remember those?) would be far preferable. I’m surprised Apple is…

I'd rather have just a VRChat avatar. Hook up the eye tracking and the mouth visemes and it'll probably be more likable than the Personas are.

yeah ... i regularly do Workrooms meetings with avatars and i have to say it looks and feels much less creepy - safely outside the uncanny valley but still conveying all our natural expressions. It's actually quite weird when I think about how much I forget we are avatars and just talk to the other person as if it is really them.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#553

Post by eep_social »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #532
nvarsj wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This iPhone trope has gotta die. I worked at Motorola when the iPhone came out. Every single engineer knew this thing would blow everything else out of the water. It was one of the largest leaps in consumer tech devices ever. I assure you the Vision Pro is nowhere close to that.

I remember being angry that my Moto Razr V3 had the power to run awesome software but as a teenager I didn't have an easy way to boot stuff up on it. IMHO it was a perfect phone, except there was no way to run what I wanted. The best I could do was program text messaging services and use those. They discontinued the phone rather than give consumers the freedom to just use the hardware. I thought the iPhone was dumb,…

You’re gonna love this — Motorola was bought by Google in an attempt to jumpstart their hardware business but it turned out to be a failed acquisition. They ended up grabbing the patent portfolio and selling off the rest of the biz fairly quickly.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#554

Post by Rapzid »

crooked-v wrote: post #525
Rapzid wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone I know even those who are into VR and even those who WORK in VR have zero interest in working with a headset of any kind on. And those who work in VR report their coworkers and just about everyone they talk to customer wise feels the same way. I know there are people who really want to, or think they do, but most would rather just use screens until maybe such a time the form factor becomes a pair of eye glas…

Is the problem "working in VR" or is it "with a headset on", though? I think it's completely reasonable to say that this stuff is only going to continue to get lighter and more comfortable every generation. What's that balance of interest going to look like when a headset's eventually got the same weight and form factor as, for example, big ski goggles?

> Is the problem "working in VR" or is it "with a headset on", though?

IMHO both. As for form factor lots of people already opt for contacts over glasses for comfort. I think ski googles are right out for anything that's not recreation or industry/application specific.

As for being in VR people really do like the real word lol. Going in and out of VR is a bit of an ordeal. Anecdotally I like taking small breaks from looking on my screen during the work day. Frequently. I look outside at the trees, at my cats, stuff on my desk, and etc when I'm thinking. If I have to "go in and out of VR" to do that or just not be in VR I'm going to just not be in VR.

For it to catch on mainstream for productivity and day-to-day it's gonna have to be like eye or sunglasses with seamless AR. Via something like retinal projection perhaps. I feel like Google was onto all this hence the Google Glass.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#555

Post by CamperBob2 »

epolanski wrote: post #394
TillE wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first two iPhones weren't as innovative as they make them Yes they were. Multi-touch in particular was a revelation. Making a big screen with one physical button is a simple idea, but making it work well was the hard part that nobody else had figured out. Those first iPhones were dog slow, sure, but they absolutely defined how smartphones work ever since.

Do you remember the first phone that allowed you to play music? No. The first one to take photos? No. The first with internet? No. Yet we're supposed to give to consider the iphone a revelation because of multi touch. I had the iphone 3g. It was a more polished experience than other phones but that revelation part was just not there. Apps made it big, later. I swear people treat iPhones like a cult.

Multitouch was a huge deal because it allowed a usable Web browser to be offered. That was something no other phone came within a light year of providing.

There was a "cult," all right. It consisted of people like Steve Ballmer plugging their ears, shutting their eyes, and denying the obvious.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#556

Post by zmmmmm »

guptaneil wrote: post #513

> Does it live up to the stratospheric hype? Not so much. Oh sorry, that's from CNET's review of the first iPhone in 2007: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/original-iphone-review/ It's way too early to tell if this product line will succeed in the long term. Will the first gen Vision Pro be a runaway success? Of course not! Will later generations look as obvious as the iPhone does now? I sure hope so! For comparison,…

> I'm just glad Apple took a chance on launching such a crazy device

Probably a dozen other companies launched similar devices already. Apple is hardly going out on a crazy limb here. This is their classic iterative refinement of what other people already did.

But I do agree with the first point - the flaws in this gen 1 has very little bearing on the long term success of it as a product category. But I would argue it works both ways, in that to the extent it is successful in the niche that buys it, you can't tell yet if it will break out to mass appeal. We just don't know.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#557

Post by zmmmmm »

dottjt wrote: post #73

The thing I don't get about spacial computing is: why? I feel like being able to see everything open at once would be incredibly distracting. I like how I can swipe between app screens on my desktop so that I'm only focusing on one app at a time. Of course I imagine there are some applications where it's useful, but to me it just feels like the Apple Vision Pro is just a very large screen and they haven't quite figur…

It is interesting, I do regularly use Immersed in which I have total freedom to place windows any size anywhere I want in 3d space. Do you know what I end up doing mostly? Snapping them into the fixed 3 monitor layout in front of me just like they are physical monitors. It turns out, the way we set up physical monitors is actually how we want the virtual ones too .... what a surprise!

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#558

Post by rrdharan »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #544
starkparker wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the touch bar, and the magic mouse, and ping, and mobile me, and hi-fi. They're just a consumer goods company. Sometimes they make good things people don't appreciate at first. Sometimes they make bad things that people don't appreciate ever. Their track record is better than the mean, but comparing every criticism of a first-gen Apple product to the iPod/iPhone launches is unserious. Of course some people panned…

Does "AVP" mean Affordable Viable Product?

Apple Vision Pro (assuming you were genuinely asking).

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#559

Post by zmmmmm »

danso wrote: post #66
spogbiper wrote: post #11

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

For me it’s movies. But the fact that Netflix and Amazon haven’t updated their Quest apps in years — nor has Meta bothered building its own movie streaming solution (e.g. making the Quest Browser compatible with streaming services) leads me to think that the active user base might be slim. Can’t imagine doing work is the killer app, not while wearing a headset is more cumbersome than opening a laptop.

do you really watch that many movies all by yourself? that's the problem for me .... if I'm carving out 2.5 hours to watch a good movie I am wanting to spend that quality time and share the experience with someone else as well.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#560

Post by vikramkr »

vikramkr wrote: post #551
Johnie wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of iPhone 1. Everything you've said is reminiscent of the reviews of the first iPhone.

I checked a couple of those old reviews and a couple things that seemed to be a common take with the iPhone that definitely aren't holding now: - incredible amounts of hype - loving the design - loving the touchscreen and input (directly contrasting folks worrying about the eye tracking now) - a sense (at least from cnet and pcmag) that it's really just an overgrown iPod so they keep comparing it to an iPod (compared…

An addendum - I'm surprised at how spot on so many of these iPhone 1 reviews are outside of the not getting the browser thing (and even there folks complaining about how web2.0 is taking off and there's no js/java/flash support? Good point!). Keyboard should work in portrait mode, voice calling is bad, 3g support is needed, no multimedia messaging. No replaceable battery and not user servicable enough. Camera is OK but needs dramatic improvement. Typing urls is very hard. And of course, no games, no 3rd party apps, no app store. After hearing all these memes for however long about how the media just didn't get the iPhone or something - yeah no they did pretty well
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