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Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#901

Post by Thlom »

kaonwarb wrote: post #380
checkyoursudo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are current watches good? I genuinely don't know and am interested. I hadn't gotten one because I was an early iPhone adopter (Gen 1), but haven't been willing to be an early adopter since then. But I would like a watch, if they are good now.

I find them exceptional for a somewhat narrow range of activities (I love going on a run or hike navigating by my Apple Watch while streaming whatever music I want in the world to my AirPods - no phone, nothing to carry), and only slightly useful for a broad range of other things (notifications, weather, etc - conveniences).

What I love best with my Apple Watch is that I can respond to Duo/Okta/BankId directly from my watch and don't have to look for my phone or pull it out of my pocket.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#902

Post by Thlom »

habitue wrote: post #732
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm not really an Apple fan nor am I going to buy this thing, but this seems like a criticism that goes away as soon as everyone does it. We all look stupid staring at our black rectangles, with notches at the top, with little headphone stems sticking out of our ears. It looks stupid at first and then you get over it

People said this about voice assistants as well, we would get used to talking to them in public after a little while. I've still not seen anyone speaking to Siri or Google in public. The only thing most people use them for is setting timers when cooking ...

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#903

Post by rchaud »

bnralt wrote: post #638
jsjohnst wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Nobody thought Apple making a phone was odd. Phone + MP3 players were already in everybody's pockets. Telcos were making money selling ringtones for $2.99 a pop. Apple already had a digital music store. It all lined up. And that was before they tested the waters with the Moto ROKR in 2005.

Back in 2010 there were rumours of Apple building TVs and cars. Those would be weird because they're in areas where Apple had no experience and no software content to provide.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#904

Post by monkeynotes »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #77
monkeynotes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not VR though. The AR angle of this device is why it's compelling. VR is completely blind to your surroundings, Apple Pro could in principle make your public park look like Jurassic Park with full size dinosaurs etc. Blending our reality with an overlayed real time rendering is a massive benefit over straight VR.

It is VR, though. Sure, Apple built the headset so that it mimics AR devices, but it definitely is not one itself. The technology to build an AR device with the capabilities that Apple boasted is simply not here yet. I'm sure that Apple top-talent is hard at work trying to break the barrier (if it didn't yet), but that'll be for a future version, just not this one.

I don't understand, every definition of AR I can find conforms to what Apple has made. This one from Wikipedia for instance:

"AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects"

What is it missing?

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#905

Post by monkeynotes »

CharlesW wrote: post #168
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is VR, though. Sure, Apple built the headset so that it mimics AR devices, but it definitely is not one itself. The technology to build an AR device with the capabilities that Apple boasted is simply not here yet. I'm sure that Apple top-talent is hard at work trying to break the barrier (if it didn't yet), but that'll be for a future version, just not this one.

When you say "AR devices" I think you specifically mean AR devices that do optical compositing vs. AVP's digital compositing, yes? > I'm sure that Apple top-talent is hard at work trying to break the barrier (if it didn't yet), but that'll be for a future version, just not this one. To me, it feels like AVP is the final nail in the coffin of the optical compositing evolutionary branch of HMDs. Even if it's someday po…

When I say AR I mean exactly what it's defined as. Put this in the previous comment, it's the Wikipedia definition:

"AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects"

There is nowhere in there that says the output has to have pure optical through. Digital composition seems to fit into the definition.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#906

Post by monkeynotes »

pests wrote: post #69
monkeynotes wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not VR though. The AR angle of this device is why it's compelling. VR is completely blind to your surroundings, Apple Pro could in principle make your public park look like Jurassic Park with full size dinosaurs etc. Blending our reality with an overlayed real time rendering is a massive benefit over straight VR.

Its not true AR though. Its "record reality then display in VR". You're never looking at the world. Always through screens.

I've defined this elsewhere in the comments. Please provide a common definition that aligns with yours

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#907

Post by whywhywhywhy »

kalleboo wrote: post #667
wkat4242 wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of having multiple virtual screens I would prefer a lot more if I could simply spread individual Mac windows around my virtual space. In mixed reality the whole concept of a virtual monitor makes no sense, it's just an unnecessarily limiting abstraction you could easily do without. The whole room is your "desktop". It's basically what the SimulaVR guys are aiming at, and I'm surprised Apple didn't go this way…

I don't think Apple wants you to use Mac apps. They want developers to make Vision Pro apps. That's why the Mac integration is the minimum they could get away with.

Hope they are not really betting on that, think it's clear to everyone that OS fatigue hit when they had 3 OSes and lots of companies stopped bothering after that didn't pan out as worth it now this would make 6 OSes...

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#908

Post by camgunz »

sudhirj wrote: post #863
camgunz wrote: post #860

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 technolo…

This is generally true of most of the product line... the iPod Nano / Shuffle were very popular but not the first iPod, the Watch is popular now, but the first one wasn't a all that, same with AirPods, and of course the iPhone itself. Apple has visibility into the Vision Air, and the Pro 2 & 3 and maybe 4 as well, so I'm curious to see where in are in 3 years or iterations.

TL;DR: I'll be super surprised if this thing makes any dent in tech/culture whatsoever. It's way too expensive (we're not too far out from used car territory here [0]) and breaks no meaningful new ground.

Eh I think there are a couple of important differences.

The first difference is that the iPhone wasn't 300% the price of the contemporary Nokia N95. It was actually around 30% cheaper ($500 vs. $730). The Vision Pro is $3,500 and its closest competition is the Quest Pro at $1,200. I don't think anyone would argue that the experience justifies the price difference.

The second difference is that the iPhone foretold how people were going to use phones in the future. The technology was good and convincing enough that it--to my sorrow--killed other ideas instantly. The Vision Pro obviously hasn't done this. People are buying the state of the art when they buy the Vision Pro, but people were buying the future when they bought the iPhone, and everyone knows it.

And I mean, inventing the future is a bonkers high bar. I admit we shouldn't be holding any company--including Apple--to that standard. It was a confluence of a talented, experienced team, world events, and technological progress. I'm saying I find it hard to square the fact that buying the future (the iPhone) cost less than the then state of the art, whereas Apple's clearly not created the future here, and priced it way out of bounds. It would be like if the iPhone ran the best version of Symbian and had the best resisitive touch screen or physical keyboard that could possibly be made, and then they sold it for $2k. We wouldn't even be talking about this product as a real product if it weren't Apple selling it. We'd assume only rich people would buy it and it would impact the culture not at all.

Also, that's what's happening! Well, that's the best case. The probable actual outcome is people not only get used to the idea that AR/VR has hit a ceiling and is really expensive, but a few really obnoxious people wear the Vision Pro to cafes and everyone gets the idea that it's extremely uncool. This thing is at best a dev kit and at worst a bauble.

[0]: https://indianapolis.craigslist.org/search/cta?hasPic=1&max_...

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#909

Post by seunosewa »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #879
tsunamifury wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple used to excel at making the right trade off here. Choosing what feels right over numbers.

They were and are good at this. But the decision to ship this in this state before their typical quality bar was Tim Apple’s. He reportedly overrode the design team and demanded it ship now to enter the market and iterate in public. Even though he’s otherwise hands off with the product itself. This was all widely reported but has been missing from recent reporting now that it’s out.

It was a good call. It needs to get to early adopters and establish the existence of an alternative to facebook's metaverse vision.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#910

Post by bjacobel »

al_borland wrote: post #565
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…

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…

The end goal here - multiple people who are isolated by the technology they're wearing experiencing a simulacrum of human interaction mediated by that technology - is not only unbelievably depressing but also honestly just really boring. We've already built this. It was called the "metaverse" and it sucked. Everyone left.
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