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

theverge.com

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

#311

Post by LoganDark »

whynotminot wrote: post #126
coffeebeqn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's a lot to question about AVP, but this doesn't make sense. What are you hitting your head on sitting in your seat on an airplane? If you've got the aisle seat and someone needs to move, they do the same thing they do when you're wearing your noise canceling headphone or taking a nap--tap your shoulder. It's not rocket science. The device has breakthrough--when someone comes near (eg a flight attendant), it bre…

> I'd argue airplanes are one of the use-cases for this device that makes the most sense.

It's unfortunate that it can't be used on planes yet, then. I saw a video where someone tried it, and apps were just left behind in space by the airplane's movement. It makes sense why this would be the case, but it also should be obvious that if you're in a sealed room, apps you open into the room shouldn't fall through the room if it's moving.

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

#312

Post by AnonC »

erklik wrote: post #250
naravara wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every parent I've talked to has found that pretty appealing. We're already looking at pictures and videos of our kids on the phone a lot of the time anyway. Which required us to be holding our phones in hand while playing with our kids. It only seems weird because it's unfamiliar. But it's not more dystopian than trying to capture special moments with a camcorder.

> We're already looking at pictures and videos of our kids on the phone a lot of the time anyway. Which required us to be holding our phones in hand while playing with our kids. A phone in the hand is objectively far less intrusive than a full on mask on your eyes that prevents half of your face being seen by your kids.

As said by another commenter above [1], the iPhone 15 Pro can shoot spatial videos that can be viewed on Vision Pro. When the Vision Pro was announced, Apple was its typical self by not revealing anything about another future product (plus, the iPhone is its flagship, and Apple likes to keep the excitement coming from its actual announcement). Shooting spatial videos will be a standard feature on all iPhones in a couple of years. It will stay if the Vision product range continues to do well enough while Apple iterates and figures out the product positioning (Apple is generally good at these things). If it doesn’t work out well enough for Apple’s satisfaction, this will go the way of 3D Touch on some older iPhones. Nevertheless, the technology in it will continue to push its other products — existing and forthcoming, and vice versa.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39195946

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

#313

Post by mlinsey »

iteratethis wrote: post #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…

The comfort, cost, and battery issues seem like must-solves before this is a true mass-market success. But they sound like the kind of thing that can be improved over time. As for the anti-social aspect...you'd have done very well for the past 20 years betting on tech that furthers increasingly solo (in the real-world) behavior...it's a trend that might bottom out, but certainly hasn't yet.

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

#314

Post by wkat4242 »

Pretty good and well balanced review that shows the limitations of the technology. Much more balanced than the initial hands-ons after apple's presentation where people like John Gruber were saying it's the best thing ever. I already doubted they were fair.

Only thing that annoys me about this review that he has to mention constantly that it messes up his precious hair :/

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

#315

Post by wkat4242 »

renhanxue wrote: post #292
bombcar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing feels very ... "original xbox" to me. Hear me out. It was argued that a big part of the original xbox for Microsoft was making sure they had a toehold in the gaming console market because that market had a change of disrupting the personal computer - and if that happened, they wanted to be there for it and have something ready to go. They did something similar with phones, and we can see how it specta…

> just in case this VR stuff takes off I think the last few years have pretty conclusively proven that there is no VR train to miss. It remains mainly a novelty (with some niche uses) and none of its fundamental issues have been resolved.

I think it's pretty great already tbh. I use it almost daily.

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

#316

Post by hammyhavoc »

bombcar wrote: post #16
Topfi wrote: post #6

This is a very in-depth, informative and factual review. My hats off to the Verge; great job. I have racked up hours upon hours of actual, productive work in my Quest 2 and 3, so to say that I am a big proponent of the ideas that Apple is trying to advance would be an understatement. This makes me all the more disheartened to read that, for all their efforts, this release is mired by the same drawbacks that I have en…

The whole thing feels very ... "original xbox" to me. Hear me out. It was argued that a big part of the original xbox for Microsoft was making sure they had a toehold in the gaming console market because that market had a change of disrupting the personal computer - and if that happened, they wanted to be there for it and have something ready to go. They did something similar with phones, and we can see how it specta…

Now do Microsoft and the HoloLens.

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

#317

Post by buffington »

wharvle wrote: post #138
chris-orgmenta wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that we should pretend that my question said "from standby" instead of "boot"

If it's like iOS devices, I'd assume less than a second to interactive, potentially so fast that most people don't notice it isn't instant. If it's like macOS, maybe 2-3 seconds to interactive.

It is an iOS device. It's essentially an iPad Pro (with a lot of obvious other hardware) running a modified iPadOS.

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

#318

Post by pzo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #258
whamlastxmas wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder what the BOM cost of the device is. At $500 they'd sell 100x as many. Hell, even at $999 they'd sell quite a lot of them. I'd probably give it a try for that price, but I'm hesitant to blow $3500.

2x iPad Pro 11 inch cost 2x$800 = $1600 - and they also have big profit margin on those. A lot of tech and sensors are similar if not the same, like: Lidar, TrueDepth, Cameras, IMU, wifi, bluetooth, M2 chip. The only obvious thing not available in iPad Pro is much smaller and higher quality screen.

Hopefully they can reduce price to $1500 in next few generations and increase functionality:

- macOS support (We can only probably dream about it)

- usb-c / hdmi out so this can replace desktop iMac when connected to external monitor (still probably unlikely)

- 3rd party access to cameras stream if given permission - hard to make any innovation with this hardware if you cannot even detect QRCodes because Apple doesn't provide any API and you don't have access to camera feed.

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

#319

Post by buffington »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #305
teeray wrote: 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…

To be fair, the iphone was subsidized by AT&T back in the day and was sold out for $200 or so, and the earpods and Watch weren't more than $300 we're arguably in a recession right now and this device is priced higher than almost any other apple product in history. Only a top of the line retina macbook pro really comes close. It's not a great time to sell super expensive tech, and not a good time to invest in such tec…

Have you even looked at the Apple store? Some of the base Macbook Pro builds cost the same as the Vision Pro. They go up from there.

The Vision Pro is hardly "priced higher than almost any other apple product in history."

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

#320

Post by tuscen »

tfandango wrote: post #121
Topfi wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that purpose, the difference between the Q2 and Q3 was so vast that I cannot oversell it. While it's still not perfect due to the resolution, the switch to pancake lenses made screencasting to the Q3 something I could do for many hours at a time and enjoy it, whereas on the Q2 with the limited sweet spot in the center, it was really only for very specific use cases. On the Q2, even slightly off center becomes unr…

Thank you. Your experience with the Quest 2 mirrors my own. I'm undecided if I will try a Q3 or skip a generation. It definitely seems like things are moving in the right direction and I'm excited about that!

I'd advice you to skip another generation. I can give my experience with it.

I have Q3 and try to use it for work from time to time and it is still not enough to replace an actual monitor, at least for me.

FOV of 110 degress is too narrow, maybe 140 degress would solve it, but I'm not sure. The thing is that apparently I glance to content without turning my head a lot and I discovered it when I tried to use Q3 for actual work. Even though the lenses and POV are much better than on Q2 and other wired VR glasses it's not enough for me still. Also sometimes reflections in the lenses are too bright and distracting and I don't know how to fix this.

Resolution is much much better than Q2 and Quest S that I also have, but it's still not enough. And IPS panel is the biggest downside of it. That should've use OLED instead.

But the main problem that stops me from using it is the smoothness of the whole process of starting to work. You can't just sit behind you desk, put on the glasses and start working. The whole process reminds me of preflight preparation: you need to ensure that the software is running and correctly setup on you PC and that's not always the case. You always need to ensure that you have controllers by your side, because hand tracking often fails, and Q3 often struggles to find my hands at all. Basically, software wise it's not there for a 100% smooth ride like with screens where you just sit at your desk and start to work without a single hitch.

In short, it's like a death by thousand cuts. Some people can tolerate some of them and can use Q3 for work, but in my case I wasn't able to tolerate any of them and that kills it for me for now. I hope for Q4 or maybe Quest Pro 2 after seeing a slim prototype that Mark showed some time ago.

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