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Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#741

Post by theshrike79 »

hackernewds wrote: post #721
slg wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better analogy is probably something like the Apple Watch. Apple certainly wasn't the first smartwatch, but anyone who owned one before that was obviously a geek (said lovingly). Apple made the first mainstream acceptable smartwatch by smoothing over a lot of the complaints about their competitors, while adding some of their own in the process, just like the Vision Pro. It took a few iterations, but today people…

> Apple made the first mainstream acceptable smartwatch by smoothing over a lot of the complaints about their competitors, Really? Why do Apple fanboys make these kinda claims.. same as wireless Bluetooth pods, or fingerprint readers, or faceID. There are ample examples of these done well on the hardware side prior. The main advantage Apple has is its seamless integration with software, which of course it pairs well…

"Done well" was the Nokia motto. They did solid phones with a ton of features. Look what happened to them?

Their problem was that none of the features was _usable_. It was like they released the first MVP the engineering team got done and forgot that people needed to use it too. But it gave them a bonus and another line on spec sheet, so all was good.

For example Nokia had Copy & Paste years before Apple. But it was shit. They _had_ it, but you could copy very specific text bits to other very specific locations. Even Android had the same issue, you could copy some bits not others.

Apple isn't innovating, they haven't for a long time. They rarely come up with something "new" that _nobody_ has done yet.

What they are pretty much the best at is getting the tech everyone else has tried and packaging it to a usable form factor for the normal non-Hackernews consumer.

Wireless BT headphones existed before the Airpods, but they made it so seamless even my mom could do it and hasn't needed any help with them. Open box, insert in ear, done.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#742

Post by kj99 »

Takennickname wrote: post #693
kj99 wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you assure us that Vision Pro is nowhere close to that? Do you have one? As someone who bought the original iPhone, it was extremely impressive, but had many many flaws. The browser was practically unusable over 2g and the whole pinch to zoom the New York Times desktop site was never actually practical. I think the parallels are clear. I also bought the original MacBook Air. Now that truly was terrible and st…

Except when the iPhone came out all the reviewers were like "holy shit, this is mind blowing" while with this one everyone is like "it's a shittier oculus quest with some apple polish"

The verge is probably the most critical. Here’s what they say:

“marvelous display, great hand and eye tracking, and works seamlessly in the ecosystem, … The Apple Vision Pro is the best consumer headset anyone's ever made”

Yes, they also list a bunch of flaws. But the people trying to make out that the reviews are saying it’s a shittier oculus quest are not being honest.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#743

Post by Roark66 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #589
Civitello wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well there’s FOV and there’s pixel density which are both too low right now and antagonistic to one another feature wise. There’s also display brightness which is an issue and I’m not sure how that fits in to the FOV/density spectrum. And then more pixels means more compute… That prototypes exist doesn’t necessarily mean much in a space that is full of prototypes showing off one particular feature. The very hard thin…

>Well there’s FOV and there’s pixel density which are both too low right now.

Exactly. You know what is the best "goggle" type display I ever saw (and I tried quite a few)? Recent FPV goggles (hdzero) that have 1930*1080 OLED displays at approximately 46 degrees fov. I'm very glad the manufacturer decided to use the his low fov instead of increasing it to 55deg and more like others. The picture is insanely crisp, and looks better than looking at a 4k display. Another huge benefit is that entire picture fits within your "focus cone" so there is no need to gaze around. It is not a VR display, it's purpose is different, but it shows us what visual quality is possible.

I'd love if manufacturers, if they can't make 16k displays that fill the entire fov, create variable pixel density displays. Best quality in the center. Deteriorating towards the edges. That would be much cheaper, but then for good illusion one would need eye tracking and motorised optics which would probably be more expensive in the end...

Oh, well, I'm pretty happy with my fpv goggles (for fpv) I just wish there was a way for them to display different picture for each eye. They already have head tracking, I wonder what VR would be like with this huge ppi narrow fov goggles. Would it be more or less immersive?

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#744

Post by ugh123 »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #728
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…

I can’t get over how goofy and stupid it looks, and how awkward those gestures are. There’s a video circulating of someone cooking while wearing it and gingerly pinching a virtual timer and placing it on a pot of boiling pasta. It looks so stupid that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Maybe younger people might think differently but for me, this stuff is dead on arrival because of simply how uncool and stupid it ma…

I think thats the author of the wsj article

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#745

Post by michaelbuckbee »

redsoundbanner wrote: post #708
nox101 wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the implementation needs a lot to be desired but just in case you were not aware, the Oculus Rift shipped with this feature and it still exists via the link on Quest AFAIK. You pick the last icon on the UI bar that appears and it lets you select any window to pop out separately Here's a screenshot of 4 windows plus the deskop. https://pasteboard.co/hPKLrKgp5vjy.jpg This features has been there for nearly 9 yea…

I think people know about that but aren't interested because the resolution is obviously too low on current headsets.

Too low and all the surrounding UI is an impedance mismatch.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#746

Post by tsimionescu »

ravenstine wrote: post #580
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…

Wow, I remember when it was announced, to press materials gave the impression that it would be closely integrable with macOS. I was picturing using VS Code from within it. Which I guess I could do if I set up VNC... but I'm not paying thousands for that. Is an AR productivity tool really so hard? Apple owns the whole stack here. Nintendo can do Mario Kart AR in your living room with an RC car, but I can't get unlimit…

> but I can't get unlimited AR desktops for software development etc?

You can't because it's computationally impossible. There is simply no computing device that can render unlimited high-res desktops at 60Hz per eye.

Not to mention the need to stream all that data to the headset - since you're not going to put a high-end graphics card needed to even attempt this in anything approaching a wearable form factor. Good luck getting multiple 4k or even just HD streams between your laptop and your AR headset over Wi-Fi.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#747

Post by ugh123 »

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…

>Want it for productivity? it can't run MacOS applications and if you want to use your actual Mac it can't do multiple monitors.

Do you mean a Mac's external monitor visible through the vision pro AR view?

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#748

Post by sigmoid10 »

hackernewds wrote: post #719
vunderba wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. 8 years out from the original Oculus rift which had 110' FOV and we're still somehow staring through the AR/VR equivalent of a submarine periscope.

a whole eight years???

I still have one of the Oculus Devkits at home from their initial campaign. It's more than 10 years old now. I've noticed the biggest improvements to VR over the last decade were in useability - not the screen. Once they figured out low latency by switching the screen to black after every frame every device upgrade felt like a tiny improvement in resolution at best. Size 12 font text on a 2m screen wasn't really readable yet, but I still don't use VR for text work today (even though I could) so it also doesn't matter. Right now it's still a question of usability rather than the screen.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#750

Post by jojobas »

kj99 wrote: post #686
jojobas wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iphone was made from pretty much what was available to other manufacturers plus some secret software sauce, and was priced like a Blackberry of the time. There was immediately plenty of use cases that competitors kinda did, but not so well. These googles are as bespoke as it gets, are priced at 7x the competition and more than a flagship laptop, steer clear of the most popular existing use case, which is games, and o…

> Iphone was made from pretty much what was available to other manufacturers plus some secret software sauce, and was priced like a Blackberry of the time. Neither of these statements is remotely true.

Samsung CPU, samsung oled display, Balda touchscreen analogous to what LG has used previously, Marvell wi-fi, Skyworks cellular, various Intel and Infineon aux chips. $499 vs Blackberry's 8320 at $449.

Not even remotely.

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