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Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#631

Post by jsjohnst »

nvarsj wrote: post #505
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.

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.

> This iPhone trope has gotta die

It’s not a trope if it’s true. Most hard core nerds didn’t get it until they had tried it hands on (including myself, I panned the device hard until I tried it). Then it was the exorbitant price point ($650 at a time when nobody really paid for phones). Then it was the lack of hardware keyboard. No “real” apps. No copy and paste (even my older at the time Symbian S60 devices had that). The list goes on and on.

I get it, if you were at another phone manufacturer, you might’ve been scared, but the reality is the iPhone didn’t really pick up steam in the market until 3G or 3GS.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#632

Post by mvkel »

pquki4 wrote: post #625
mvkel wrote: post #616

Wild that the Quest 3 sounds like a better device. Call me crazy, but if Apple can't figure this out, maybe the concept itself is flawed.

agreed. Reading these reviews, I just keep thinking -- yes Apple does this better, and that is interesting, but... the Quest 3 can almost do all of these at a fraction of the price. And the biggest investments -- screen and cameras -- need to see real use cases yet. I am not convinced that people are actually going to replace their monitors or TVs with Vision Pro and wearing this for many hours straight at this point…

Exactly. Marginally better (or worse!) in virtually everything.

And Apple is supposed to be the master at taking a bit longer to nail it.

If anything they just inadvertently demonstrated how flawed strapping a screen to your face is if you're trying to do something.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#633

Post by zmmmmm »

hamburglar wrote: post #583
askonomm wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious about this so I tried surfing the web and seeing how I click on things. I am literally unable to click on buttons or text inputs without actually looking at them. If I try to only use a corner of my eye, I miss the buttons 90% of the time. How do people not look at what they are clicking?

My guess is that people actually do look in order to aim their mouse but by the time they click, their eyes have already moved onto wherever they’re looking next.

yep this is it

one reviewer said they kept hitting "No" and "cancel" when they meant "Yes" because their natural progression was to look at the buttons in order, pick out the one they want to press but actually click it after they finish scanning all of them with their "mouse" paused on the one they want to hit. It's kind of fascinating that the VisionPro's input method works so well when it does work that it tricks people into doing this, because they really do just expect it to work like magic.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#634

Post by zmmmmm »

Civitello wrote: post #567
al_borland wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest thing for me, from the Verge review, was the limited field of view. Apple sold it as filling the users entire field of view and it sounds like that isn’t the case. When I first saw the reality of the Microsoft HoloLens, that was my disappointment there as well… Google Glass as well. I don’t want to feel like I’m wearing an AR device, as so far, that’s what everything has looked like. Limits of the technol…

> field of view...Limits of the technology It really isn't though, at least not for long, as of mid 2023 there are publicly showcased compact lightweight prototypes with 240° FoV.

they are paying the price for their obsession with super high resolution. I think it's a mistake, from my perception Quest 3 at 25ppd is nearly good enough, and its panels are nearly half the resolution. They should have traded 20% resolution for 10 deg FOV either side. In fact, with appropriate optics the effective resolutions sacrifice could be even less than that.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#635

Post by bnralt »

askonomm wrote: post #579
JacobThreeThree wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This has always been the case and this technology has been around for a while. I'm surprised Apple would have chosen to use it for user input.

I was curious about this so I tried surfing the web and seeing how I click on things. I am literally unable to click on buttons or text inputs without actually looking at them. If I try to only use a corner of my eye, I miss the buttons 90% of the time. How do people not look at what they are clicking?

From when I've used them in the past, the issue is the difference between looking in the general direction of something and using your eye like a joystick that jumps around if you happen to glance a little to the left or right.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#636

Post by paulkrush »

nvarsj wrote: post #505
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.

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.

Peak Blackberry was 2011. It's easy to forgot that that the iPhone takeover took years and many releases.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#637

Post by siva7 »

orenlindsey wrote: post #482

Anyone remember when Memoji came out? It was pretty mid. Lots of problems with it. Now it's really good. It works really well now. Personas are like that. Same thing with eye tracking. This whole product is 90% of the way there. But the next 9% is just as hard as that original 90%. Apple is releasing it now to push it to 99%. It'll get better.

I've never seen people (particularly young people) use memojis and i wish there was an option to disable it entirely from my phone.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#638

Post by bnralt »

jsjohnst wrote: post #631
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.

> This iPhone trope has gotta die It’s not a trope if it’s true. Most hard core nerds didn’t get it until they had tried it hands on (including myself, I panned the device hard until I tried it). Then it was the exorbitant price point ($650 at a time when nobody really paid for phones). Then it was the lack of hardware keyboard. No “real” apps. No copy and paste (even my older at the time Symbian S60 devices had that…

People thought Apple making a phone was odd. No one thought mobile phones, or even smart phones were odd. Mobile phones were common when the iPhone came out, and even smart phones weren't uncommon. And once the iPhone did come out, there was immediate interest.

AR though, that's something the public hasn't shown much interest in yet. These products are looking more like the Segway (which was once supposedly going to revolutionize transportation) - cool, popular in a few niche markets, but not the revolution that people imagine them to be.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#639

Post by rwalle »

crtified wrote: post #323
oriolid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning instruments in a guitar-hero way (Piano, guitar, drums) What would VR add here? For guitar-hero style instrument learning, there are already Yousician, Simply Piano / Guitar, Gibson and Fender apps, and quite a few others.

> What would VR add here? I'm imagining an AI VR tutor - heck, with some legal deepfake+AI style evolution, perhaps that tutor could actually be a famous player, talking to you. The 3D view gives, well, a 3D view, and all the advantages it entails. For example, when you are with a physical real world teacher, you don't have a fixed view. You can observe from any angle, the teacher can observe and correct micro errors…

May I ask if you play any instruments and taken music lessons for a serious amount of time?

My guess is not, because to me it is obvious you don't understand how this works and are just imagining things.

Speaking as someone who takes private piano lessons and have been practicing daily for the past 8 years:

If this were possible, music teachers would have already been replaced to some extent. But that has not happened yet. AI is not new. VR is not that new. Even without this, just talking about non-personalized, non-VR instructions. Have you seen those websites that "teaches" you piano just by connecting your keyboard to a computer and following instructions? Where are they now? It does not work like that. Maybe for an absolute beginner who has trouble finding a key or fret, but as soon as you get a little bit better it won't work.

Music learning is an extremely personalized experience. People pay 1-1 private lessons because it needs to be done that way. A teacher, especially a good teacher, can tell you exactly what you did wrong and what you should do to get better at it. Plus different teachers often have different opinions of music -- how a piece of music should be interpreted or played. As you get more advanced, you spend even less time on technique itself. Theoretically you could train an AI tutor that does the same thing. But no, it hasn't happen yet and will not happen. Did I mention hallucination? Do you want a teacher that hallucinates?

Plus you need lots of practice -- routines, repetitions, all those scales. AI or VR is just useless. Effective practice strategy is important, but you don't need AI for that.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#640

Post by rwalle »

oriolid wrote: post #272
willio58 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For piano it lines up the keys with the notes on your physical keyboard, so you don't need to look at a separate representation of a keyboard, you can literally see the notes fall onto your piano at the right times. Same thing with the other instruments.

The problem is that once you get past the very initial stage, you want to read ahead of what you play at the moment. At that moment Synthesia-style falling blocks notation becomes difficult to read because the blocks don't have any position reference besides the keys and no time values. Even the scrolling sheet music or tab is distracting compared stationary black and white. With guitar there's the additional problem…

exactly. Those who think VR headsets are good music teachers probably have never taken any serious music lessons or master any instruments themselves. If you have just taken one month of lesson and have been practicing daily, these things will start to prevent you from making progress, not help you.

(coming from someone who has been taking piano lessons for the past 8 years and have a Quest 3)

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