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Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

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Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#61

Post by FreeTrade »

dmix wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Nreal seems more like an Apple product than the Apple product.

Apple doesn't need it to be in a sunglasses form factor for it to be successful. Xbox never leaves the house and is a major product. They just need sufficent use cases that people will actually use and stuff like rethinking UIs from static monitors/TVs/ipad screens -> flexibly overlayed around you, how people watch movies or how data is delivered visually/contextually while you're at home or in the office is a pretty…

Apple products are a status purchase. Half the value comes from reminding other people that you have them. Very little opportunity for that with this new device.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#62

Post by FreeTrade »

dougmwne wrote: post #14
robg wrote: post #3

As a media consumption device it seems really cool, but I don’t see how the 10th or 20th generation version is relevant for daily life or work. Magic Leap spent over $4 Billion on the physics of high definition light onto the retina. There just doesn’t seem to be any way around the reality of the limitations in the AR approach. In 20 years it will still be a bulky headset with battery life limitations preventing the…

I agree. AR is dead in the water until we invent magic displays that may be decades away. VR has some nice gaming and fitness applications and I think like handheld gaming as a niche, VR gaming will never take over completely but will always be its own little corner of gaming.

An addictive game that incorporates a full body workout will be the killer app. Meta will get there first.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#63

Post by jc_dc »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #48
kingds wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s insane to argue that the iPhone 15 isn’t radically different from the iPhone 1. since 2007 smartphones have become capable of replacing so many of the separate gadgets people used to have. cameras and mp3 players (and phones!!) are basically a thing of the past thanks to the iPhone. i’m bearish on Apple Vision but if Apple can improve it at the same rate as the iPhone it will be here to stay imo

> cameras and mp3 players (and phones!!) are basically a thing of the past thanks to the iPhone This was all true with the first iPhone though. That's the point. I'm sure that the Vision pro will be refined, but what will be necessary to make this a mass market device seems more fundamental than just a lot of refinements. When the iPhone came out, I remember thinking it was too expensive and not for me, but I definit…

It’s because you probably had a phone before the iPhone. If you’re not already a vr user then it’s hard to imagine how this will fit in your life.

For me, if I happen to get an opportunity to strap a vr device to my face be interested to play around, but not motivated enough to go out of my way for it.

As a developer, I already spend a fortune on devices and simply can’t see any of our products benefiting from vr…this was true with oculus, and is still true with vision pro.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#64

Post by johnfernow »

kibwen wrote: post #51
johnfernow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shrinking this technology is all it will take for similar devices to make workstation monitors and gaming consoles completely obsolete. Do people want that? I love playing games in my Quest 2 for an hour or two, or the PSVR2 at my friend's house, but I dread the thought of spending 8+ hours a day in it while I work. No, not just because of the weight, but because I like the feeling of fresh air on my face and sunli…

> There's almost never a situation where I need more than two things visible at once. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I point out that OSes have had built-in support for virtual desktops for years now, and that using them to extend your monitor infinitely and switch between them with a single keypress is far more ergonomic than having to crane your neck to see a screen that's not directly in front of you at t…

True. I mostly use virtual desktops to separate work content from personal project stuff, as well separate non-productive stuff from both of them.

But yeah you phrased it well, craning my neck to see a screen does sound much worse than a keyboard shortcut. I have my 2 monitors positioned so that I can mostly just move my eyes, but I can't fit more than 2 monitors in that space (either IRL or in a VR/AR without them being too tiny to read.)

If I didn't have virtual desktops, I'd have to just close out of more stuff, which isn't a huge deal but any amount of friction can disuade you from working on something you're not obligated to do. I definitely wouldn't have my work tools, two separate IDEs, a game engine, 3 different browser windows, Slack, Discord and Spotify all open at once in various virtual spaces, where I have to crane my neck to see them. Maybe the Vision Pro also supports virtual desktops, but I still struggle to see in what scenario it speeds up my workflow.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#65

Post by wkat4242 »

bottlepalm wrote: post #38
wkat4242 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also said the iPad would replace laptops and it hasn't except for the 0.1% that have complement adapted to its limitations. Doesn't mean the iPad is bad, but it's inherently much better at being a content consumption device. I think this is how we should view the vision pro. It's not "the new laptop", it's something entirely new that has its own pro and cons that are not necessarilya complete match with existi…

They never opened up iPad for general purpose computing. iPad and iPhones for that matter could easily power laptop and desktop devices if Apple wanted them to.

Well if you ask Apple they did. It's basically what the iPad Pro is. Apple certainly views the iPad as a general computing device.

Apple doesn't give you full access to your device, but they are also adding a lot of strings attached on Macs, with their notarisation, immutable OS partitions etc.

Sure, you can still turn it off on Mac but it's basically an all-or-nothing, so you have to turn of all protections just to change one little thing. And you lose functionality, like the ability to run iOS apps: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/if-you-disable-sip-all-...

Unfortunately the vendor deciding what you can and cannot do on your computing device is basically the "new model" which they managed to sneak onto us because there was very little opposition to it when iOS was introduced. It also enabled the app store rent seeking of course which was the main point.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#66

Post by wkat4242 »

jc_dc wrote: post #50
wkat4242 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not bound to iOS: yes. Samsung DeX is just that. I can plug it into the Lenovo dock at work and have a personal pc on the go. Id imagine this kind of thing is way too geeky for Apple to make though.

Have you actually used it for general computing tasks? If so, how was it?

Oh yes, a lot. Our work environment is incredibly restricted so I can't easily connect to my home stuff. I have everything behind VPN which is blocked on the company network, I have no admin rights to do anything etc. I also require yubikeys (openPGP mode) to log into pretty much everything at home and the toolchain for this also can't be installed on my work stuff. SSH is also blocked, etc.

So, what I do when I have something I need to mess with at home, is plug in my personal phone into the work dock. It has a completely independent 5G connection so I can do whatever I want, without needing to circumvent company protections, and without even using the company network at all.

In DeX I mostly use outlook, webbrowser and Termux (which is amazing) for SSH using OpenPGP (using OKCAgent and OpenKeyChain to talk to the Yubikey). The office apps are also nice and very dex-enabled (they have a UI much more like a desktop than like a tablet in DeX mode) but I rarely use them. Same with Chrome etc, it has a full tab bar etc. Unfortunately firefox is not quite there yet, it's pretty sucky in DeX.

I use element for all my chats (using matrix bridges to whatsapp etc) and that works OK in DeX. It also lacks a good "desktop-style" interface unfortunately.

But overall it's pretty ok, it's definitely workable. There's a few annoying quirks but they're all pretty easy to work around. One of the issues is that the screen on the phone is often activated for no reason (leading me to worry about burn-in), but force-killing the apps in phone mode and then opening in DeX mostly fixes that. I wish Samsung would go all the way and really streamline this, but right now they're in a phase where DeX is basically neglected. Every few years they have a big marketing boost and they polish it up again but now they're in neglect mode :) Nevertheless it works ok though.

PS: One major usecase I've seen people use is also to use remote desktop in fullscreen which solves a lot of its quirks obviously but it's not quite as standalone as I'd like.

TL;DR: Great feature for when you need it and have a suitable dock nearby (or hotel TV and bluetooth keyboard/mouse), not something I'd use as a daily driver at this point.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#67

Post by bottlepalm »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #43
bottlepalm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an entire generation of kids growing up with VR now, much like the NES a long time ago. Many of them spend more of their free time in VR than real life.

My kid has a VR headset, along with a few of his friends. He certainly uses it but it's a huge exagerration to say that he spends more of his free time in VR than real life. Minecraft / Roblox / Fortnite you could make an argument for maybe (depending on age).

Didn’t say your kid, I said many kids.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#68

Post by bottlepalm »

wkat4242 wrote: post #65
bottlepalm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never opened up iPad for general purpose computing. iPad and iPhones for that matter could easily power laptop and desktop devices if Apple wanted them to.

Well if you ask Apple they did. It's basically what the iPad Pro is. Apple certainly views the iPad as a general computing device. Apple doesn't give you full access to your device, but they are also adding a lot of strings attached on Macs, with their notarisation, immutable OS partitions etc. Sure, you can still turn it off on Mac but it's basically an all-or-nothing, so you have to turn of all protections just to…

Can I install VS Code, Apache, PHP, SQL, use a terminal, VMs, etc.. on an iPad Pro? No? It’s not general purpose computer.

Vendors deciding what we run never took off for general purpose computing.

Apple getting away with worse business practices than Microsoft in the 90s is ironic.

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#69

Post by gnabgib »

karim79 wrote: post #19

A single Thunderbolt (or HDMI) output. Then it could double as a Mac Mini on a desk. That would help justify about 1k of the total spend. I know it sounds a bit ridiculous, but I think it's less ridiculous than a 3,5k (minimum) face computer that, for most people, will not be getting nearly as much facetime (pun intended) as a normal desktop. One wired output, just one, for the love of God.

You certainly do keep saying it again[0]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=39267923

Re: Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

#70

Post by ProxCoques »

kibwen wrote: post #51
johnfernow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shrinking this technology is all it will take for similar devices to make workstation monitors and gaming consoles completely obsolete. Do people want that? I love playing games in my Quest 2 for an hour or two, or the PSVR2 at my friend's house, but I dread the thought of spending 8+ hours a day in it while I work. No, not just because of the weight, but because I like the feeling of fresh air on my face and sunli…

> There's almost never a situation where I need more than two things visible at once. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I point out that OSes have had built-in support for virtual desktops for years now, and that using them to extend your monitor infinitely and switch between them with a single keypress is far more ergonomic than having to crane your neck to see a screen that's not directly in front of you at t…

Good point - and is the fact that most people neither know nor care about virtual desktops even after years of existence an indication that most people don't need them? I'd even go so far to say a major part of the initial popularity of the iPad was that it didn't have windowing - and so most people found it much easier to understand and use. Just see one thing at a time :-)
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