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

theverge.com

331–340 of 386 posts

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

#331

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…

> 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.

But.. that's the point. Of course 90% of the time you look right in front of you. Everything else would be tiring.

The advantage of a multi-monitor setup, or spatial computing with Vision Pro, is that for those 10% of times when you need to do something else, that other window is right there. No need to alt-tab through a bunch of apps to find your log file viewer. It's always there, just a glance away, and you can cross-reference multiple windows without them overlapping another.

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I guess it depend on what model we talk about. I considered the M3 the "base" model so we're talking $1600. Then M3 pro is $2000 for the 14" and $2400 for the (which I include because there is no M3 14"}

The Max prices do start to hit $3500 but by that point these are essentially top of the line builds instead of the bare minimum cost of entry.

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

#333
After watching the video, I have two conclusions:

1. Vision Pro will definitely replace all kind of monitors, such as TV, projectors, etc., because it provides a completely immersive watching experience

2. Besides that, due to the limitations of latency and noise issues in the low light situations, it will still be an entertainment toy instead of a productive tool

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

#334

After watching the video, I have two conclusions: 1. Vision Pro will definitely replace all kind of monitors, such as TV, projectors, etc., because it provides a completely immersive watching experience 2. Besides that, due to the limitations of latency and noise issues in the low light situations, it will still be an entertainment toy instead of a productive tool

Re 1. It would but it has a fatal flaw for this use case - only you see the content, so it only works when solo watching. In the review they note that the experience is “lonely”, even if you and your spouse both had Vision Pro you would still watch content separately as there is no way (at least right now) to sync your experience. This most probably will be addressed in a software update, but the first point still stands - you will need to buy as many headsets as you have people in your house that want to watch content together.

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

#335
post #16
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…

But VR has been going on for a while now. I have a VR headset, I use it occasionally and I love it because it allows things that wouldn't be possible in any other platform. But strapping something on my face is not something I'd want to ever use as my main system. It's like a racing wheel, you use it for some games but it doesn't replace a controller so it's just a very niche product.

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

#336
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to see a common theme of "It's great, but not there yet."

Can you think of examples where a company starts making a product in a new category and nails it on the first iteration? Experience shows that they will keep on iterating on it year after year. The thing I was most interested in was if they could nail an intuitive UI right from the outset.

Valve with the Steam Deck

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

#337

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…

> 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. But.. that's the point. Of course 90% of the time you look right in front of you. Everything else would be tiring. The advantage of a multi-monitor setup, or spatial computing with Vision Pro, is that for those 10% of times when you need to do something else, that…

> you can cross-reference multiple windows without them overlapping another

This is what people always say about this, but you can’t look at two different monitors simultaneously.

Your fingers are already on the keyboard. Once you get the two apps together on alt-tab order, they are one kepress away from each other, and you don’t have to move your eyes or head at all if they are overlapping or just next to each other in the same monitor.

I do this as well as using a tiling window manager than can be completely controlled from the keyboard, and I am much faster at getting information between different windows than colleagues who have multiple monitors. They spend a lot of time trying to remember where they put the other window, looking back and forth between many monitors many times, looking for their mouse pointer, and also, they too still have to alt-tab.

The farther apart two windows are, like on two monitors, the harder it is to copy text from one and paste it in the other, etc etc.

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

#338
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could imagine that might have been why it came about originally but that line of thinking doesn't seem to justify the R&D spend alone. I'd imagine they have some belief in it being able to make new business of its own. If I'm not mistaken this is the first properly post-Steve product?

The Apple watch was 100% post-Steve, conception to delivery [0]. This is definitely the first post-Jony Ive product though. (Rumors are that Ive was against the idea of doing a headset from the start, so it happened either without him, or after he left, depending on when it started.) - [0] https://www.wired.com/2015/04/the-apple-watch/ > Ive began dreaming about an Apple watch just after CEO Steve Jobs’ death in Octo…

Nah, Ive is cited on a bunch of the patents for Vision Pro core technologies, including the first inventor listed on the EyeSight display patent, filed in 2018, 6 years ago:

https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...

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

#339
post #335
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…

But VR has been going on for a while now. I have a VR headset, I use it occasionally and I love it because it allows things that wouldn't be possible in any other platform. But strapping something on my face is not something I'd want to ever use as my main system. It's like a racing wheel, you use it for some games but it doesn't replace a controller so it's just a very niche product.

It’s not about that. It’s about if some new fundamental discovery shatters all barriers leaving VR in an uncontested position of technological supremacy. You know, the arguable position of the “smartphone” which apple leads in.

The transition from the PC/laptop has been brutal to the prior entrenched players. I’m inclined to agree with OP that this is a play that is about more about creating options now. Might be that Apple executes the winner and happily cannibalizes itself but it does not want to be in a position where it is 5 years behind in terms of R&D if another company breaks through first.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 roo…

It can be used on planes, and that was even part of the original demo. It has a "travel mode" specifically for this use case, which I assume just tells it to ignore the motion sensors and use the camera only.

Ah, so the creator of the video must've just forgotten to turn on the travel mode then?
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