Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right • Hacker News Board

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#371

Post by bitwize » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

noneeeed wrote: post #30

I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot on. It's also a beta product in many way. Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product, they have made no attempt to make it even remotely affordable to most people. But they also know that every aspect of the hardware will improve over the next decade, and as it does they will have ironed out many of the problems with how we use AR/VR and w…

I think of the Vision Pro as the 1984 Mac of VR/AR. The original Mac was next to useless and, adjusted for inflation, cost twice what the Vision Pro does. But it changed the world.

(Yes, it was near useless. The original Mac had 128k of RAM, which allowed for only the smallest of applications. It wasn't until the Mac 512k came out that people could do real work on these machines.)

The next rev of Vision products from Apple, or maybe the rev after that, will just be leaps and bounds beyond what anyone else is doing in the space. No new paradigm of computing truly begins until Apple starts it.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#372

Post by baby » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:10 PM UTC

johnwbyrd wrote: post #356

What I want is a dollar for every evangelist and every early adopter that has told me that the ?R explosion is right around the corner. I have worked in the game industry for 30 years and would be well retired by now, had I made my money by listening to people tell me how ?R would be mainstream in Just A Few Years Now. The tech industry NEVER tires of telling that story and hearing it. Yet it never, ever, EVER happen…

Buy a Quest 3, VR is already here, not sure what you're talking about

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#373

Post by baby » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:12 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #178

I'm going to die on the hill that gaze sucks. I really hate focus follows gaze and not having a workable keyboard or buttons makes it hard to actually use this for productivity. It's fine for an alt mode type thing but as the main form of input I kind of hate it. That said, forcing your hands to be full of controllers also sucks but at least you can play a game. I don't have a solution but it needs to get solved for…

^ agree with this take. If you're slow with tech, then this is amazing! And I think Apple has been great at making interfaces that are natural to use and easy to get into if you're not tech-savy. But for someone who's used to multi-task, or perform operations without looking at what I'm actually operating on, it sucks. I tried using keynote to create diagrams in Vision pro and the experience was so infuriating, I had to painfully look at everything and keep my focus on them while I also tried to repeatedly snap my fingers as the Vision Pro failed to detect it half of the times. I just want controllers.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#374

Post by _heimdall » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:13 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #264

_heimdall wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Microsoft's hololens first launch around 10 years ago? It was AR rather than VR, but it was absolutely pitched as an early product meant for very specific use cases to act as a proof of concept before consumer versions.

I personally used a HoloLens for a few minutes and it had severe problems with field of view and brightness of the display. AR works for enterprise or the military to train people or present information at least the US military for the HoloLens [1]. Google finally axed the Glass Enterprise project in 2023 which was much longer than the original version. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/13/23871859/us-army-microsof…

Google Glass was pretty slick honestly, ahead of its time.

I had a friend that worked on the team for a couple years when it first started. The use case of a headsup display for directions while driving was a great experience.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#375

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

fouronnes3 wrote: post #67

noneeeed wrote: post #30

I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot on. It's also a beta product in many way. Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product, they have made no attempt to make it even remotely affordable to most people. But they also know that every aspect of the hardware will improve over the next decade, and as it does they will have ironed out many of the problems with how we use AR/VR and w…

Hopefully you're right, but the cynic in me thinks we've been saying the same thing about every VR headset that has come out in the last ten years.

Given my age, I would say the same applies to all headsets I have seen since 1994, when I saw someone using one to play Doom at the Lisbon computer fair.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#376

Post by _heimdall » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #247

_heimdall wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how we could possibly quantify and compare better, happier lives before and after TVs or smartphones, but it would be impossible to narrow down the metrics to peg the change over such a long period of time on just those technologies. The scale is just too big and the timeline to long to possibly know why happiness may have increased, if it did at all. > quite clearly huge numbers of people DO want TVs an…

Pretty sure meth addicts really want meth, based on the chemical reactions involved between the brain and meth.

I guess I just am not as certain that I'd classify chemical addiction as a true "want", but maybe that's wrong.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#377

Post by x0x0 » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #121

joenot443 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a lot of tablets before the iPad but it wasn’t until the iPad that tablets really took off as a serious market segment. Ditto with AirPods and Bluetooth earbuds. In the past, once Apple started pouring R&D money into a specific product type, the entire industry around it tends to advance very quickly. I’m optimistic about the Vision Pro, and I actually think the n+2 Meta release will be much better off for…

My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do this, over and over? Why are they the only ones who seem to be able to knock a product category out of the park and legitimize it? Is it just the vast amount of money? Are they the only ones who can create products? Is everyone else that bad? Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes…

Their competitors are shockingly incompetent.

Consider Google. A couple years ago, a reporter documented the nearly (iirc) 20 attempts Google has made at a messenger. Meanwhile, Apple made one and ground away at it until it became great.

Google is a company that -- and this is true -- dropped trou and put apps on my phone called "Google Meet" and "Google Meet (Original)." And don't forget Duo. See also having "Google Pay" and "Google Wallet."

With a side of Android is kinda meh and look at pics of various Google execs at industry events. There's a solid chance there's an iphone in their hands.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#378

Post by smoldesu » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

ugh123 wrote: post #351

smoldesu wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely underplay it - Meta is big on services, selling people a quest for sideloading or Blu-Ray streaming probably threatens their bottom line. Hard to blame them when the hardware costs the same as a Switch though. At the price Apple is asking (and the hardware margins they enjoy), I'd expect more capabilities than just spatialized iOS. I'm not sure the Apple customers in my life would buy a Vision Pro eve…

It's possible Apple isn't truly interested in typical VR/AR gameplay, or at least the way we (and Meta) have been thinking about it. The high price (as of now) and focus on utility leads me to think their long term game here is as a complement to macbooks, and AVP is a Display replacement, rather than a standalone unit. I can see them pushing this on Enterprise customers a lot.

Time will tell. I worked at a startup that bought Apple Silicon build servers day-and-date with announcement (despite our stack not building on ARM). There is certainly a demand for anything with the "made in Cupertino" label.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#379

Post by Karrot_Kream » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

alt227 wrote: post #334

swatcoder wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That interpretation seems pretty out of sync with their financial history across divisions, their operating margin across divisions, their customer loyalty across divisions, and pretty much everyone's experience of the world, but maybe you're right. You may not like their products, and you may think their customers are idiots hypnotized by villianous marketers or something, but that's kind of the point of it all: by…

>You may not like their products, and you may think their customers are idiots hypnotized by villianous marketers or something. Thats quite a stretch to assume that opinion from my comment? I actually love Macbook Pros. IMO they are the best Laptop ever built. However in the global market of laptops they are not patrticularly successful. The entiety of the MacOS ecosystem (of which Macbook Pros are a small percentage…

That's the difference in strategy. Apple only cares about profits not about market share. Market share only matters when margins are low and you need volume to bring revenue numbers up. When your margins are high, you can have a much smaller market share but also use that to create a more opinionated brand image and drive brand loyalty.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#380

Post by giobox » Fri, Mar 15, 2024, 6:23 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #81

fouronnes3 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully you're right, but the cynic in me thinks we've been saying the same thing about every VR headset that has come out in the last ten years.

The cynic in you is overly cynical. Ten years ago was pre oculus rift. We weren't saying anything about VR headsets. Five years ago was pre valve index. We didn't have CPUs in a headset. Nor a battery. Cameras were only used for tracking. The things we were saying would improve is "screen door effect" and "tracking", both of which have.

> Ten years ago was pre oculus rift. We weren't saying anything about VR headsets.

Rift DK1 was released in ~2013, and lots of gamers bought it throughout 2014. We got the first "consumer release" for the original Rift in 2016. I think its more than fair to say 10 years - we were absolutely talking a lot about Rift DK1 in 2014.

> Five years ago was pre valve index

Valve's first consumer VR headset was the HTC vive, released in 2016:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Vive

"The first-generation Vive was announced in 2015, as part of a collaboration with video game studio and distributor Valve Corporation, and implementing its VR software and hardware platform SteamVR; the first-generation consumer model was released in April 2016."