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Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#851

Post by peebeebee »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #385

This device isn't it. The iPhone had issues when it launched, but it was magical. The Vision Pro isn't magical. It has the same issues as the Oculus. The weight in front of the face is felt after using it for a while so definitely not something that can be used for long hours. And the dinosaurs and stuff are nice gimmicks, and really cool but wear off after a while. What is required is a device as thin as sunglasses,…

It wasn't magical. Technically, it couldn't do a lot of things that other smartphones could. I had a Windows smartphone that could run Excel, with a slide-out keyboard for fast input. 1st gen iPhone was a bare-bones consumer device with the best touchscreen technology and a good (but very basic) UI. That is all it took to redefine the market.

It could not even copy-paste. It had horrible internet.

Vision Pro may be the first OS that does things "the right way" in AR/VR too. Big difference is that iPhone was a real consumer device, this seems more like a development device. Which may be a smart move, because after all: (Phone) Apps made Apple win, and not enough apps made Windows lose.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#852

Post by orthoxerox »

volemo wrote: post #674
mvkel wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the surprise to me too. Lower FOV than a Quest 3? Inexcusable.

That’s a double edge sword though. Were they to make it 180°, we would critique it for spreading the precious pixels. “With those 4K your virtual monitor is 1080p at most!”

They certainly could do something clever, like having a screen with gradually decreasing pixel density and quickly moving it around so its center is always where you're looking it.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#853

Post by darkwater »

fouc wrote: post #835
darkwater wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3500USD, an external battery and still "looking weird", I don't think you are going to see too many of them on planes, unless it's some die-hard Apple fanboy. If they manage to make next iteration slimmer (like, half the size) and with a battery in it, this might start to happen. But the market will be anyway smaller than the smartwatch one.

prices will come down, there'll be a non-Pro line, you think the market will be smaller but you forget it replaces displays, so people with laptops will migrate to using this, and then Apple will come out with headless laptops.

Until the ergonomic radically improves, it will be a niche device for enthusiasts.

IF they manage to produce some AR device that 1) you almost won't notice you are wearing 2) it has pass-through light capabilities so being real AR and not VR mimicking AR, THEN it can get mass-adoption, at least for office workers or to replace big TV screens.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#854

Post by orthoxerox »

sangnoir wrote: post #577
eep_social wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I wouldn't call Motorola a failed acquisition - Google bought Motorola as a shield in an increasingly litigious environment: this was the age of Apple going "thermonuclear", Microsoft and patent trolls were wantonly shaking down Android vendors, and beginning to cir…

> Motorola (under Google) had the best value-for-money smartphones - their midrange was solid, and reasonably priced while everyone else was continuously shifting to flagships, with each release priced higher than the last.

And they still do under Lenovo. Multiple-day battery, almost stock Android with very useful enhancements.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#857

Post by teekert »

Agraillo wrote: post #796
teekert wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think iPhone is often made more mythical than it was. Sure it was good and we could finally use our sausage fingers to navigate it. But I recently heard someone say on Radio that iPhone was the first phone with a touch screen. Meanwhile me an the guys (yeah all guys) we’re rocking Sony Ericsson P800’s and the like in 2003,4,5. I had an HTC touch when iPhone came out and I was most envious that you could do two f…

Many things Apple related are very often about applying existing technologies to a novel place. Many forget that the touch screens at the time were resistive [1] that required pressing (small but nevertheless) at the screen and mostly usable with styluses. As long as I recall the novelty was to apply a capacitive touch screen [2] to navigation, it does not require physical force and that's where the fingers shined. […

Sure. But one can argue that capacitive touchscreens were about to happen anyway (like ARM laptops..). And HTC with their touchflow were moving into sausage friendly UIs.

But I agree, Apple is absolutely good at taking all this tech at the right time and making a compelling product. Steve insisted on glass/capacitive and that is just the best choice. Also, the UI didn’t feel like a layer (that you could easily get out off) as with touchflow. I’m also an iPhone user atm. Switched from Android about 3 years ago. The whole experience feels like higher quality to me still now. Although I have friends that would argue against that.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#858

Post by 14u2c »

parentheses wrote: post #726
ravenstine wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm surprised we still don't have an X-like "render on the drawing device" model. Rather than sending pixel, you send a higher abstraction model from which the UI can be drawn.

Absolutely. This is how RDP works as well. It's one the few areas where I think the Windows ecosystem has a better approach.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#859

Post by treprinum »

jojobas wrote: post #682
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…

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 used capacitive touchscreen whereas the competitors used resistive touchscreens in their smartphones, which instantly added more usability to iPhone compared to Nokia N95/97 that was already a fully featured pocket computer in mobile case and likely much more powerful than the original iPhone. Apple did the dirty logistics trick on other smartphone manufacturers by buying all production of capacitive touchscreen factories and similar key components 3 years ahead, leaving other phone manufacturers unable to respond.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#860

Post by camgunz »

My feeling is that Apple went entirely the wrong way here. They made an expensive device that doesn't meaningfully move the needle on AR/VR or AR/VR UX. As a result, they've narrowed the market so much that they can't convince app developers (who they've spent the last few years alienating) to develop for it, and are cannibalizing future sales (to Nilay Patel's point) by convincing people that a lot of these technologies (vision tracking, passthrough) are cul-de-sacs.

If they'd made something like "Vision Air" that was essentially Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses plus AR for $999 they'd sell millions, they'd have a market for app developers, they'd convince people there was a point to having them. That's an actual interesting product and it's closer to where they want to be anyway.

This feels broadly like a staff retention project, or some kind of market positioning strategy or supply chain capture strategy or something. I just can't believe this product was the point of all the time, effort, and money Apple spent on it.

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