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

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

#491

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #316
liendolucas wrote: post #243

One of the things that I will never understand of the Vision Pro is why on earth they went to design and build the front of the headset to have that colorful alive gradient or a truly bad rendering of the user's face. That screams bad overengineering with undesired added weight and extra power consumption. Also it seems that the front glass from some batches crack exactly the same way. Again, why go with that at all?…

This is apple. They see users break their phone screens and they go OK, lets make them more soap bar like and also give them glass on the backside too so you can’t get lucky landing on that side. All to pocket your couple hundred dollars replacing it or in applecare coverage which probably costed you more than the one screen replacement did over its life.

> users break their phone screens and they go OK, lets make them more soap bar like

They also massively strengthened the glass. (I don’t have a case on my iPhone. I drop it constantly, most recently on a double-black ski run while I was trying to get it to be a GoPro.)

> give them glass on the backside too so you can’t get lucky landing on that side

Fair enough, just noticed mine is cracked there. Not bothering me so will leave as is.

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

#492

Post by visitor4712 »

int_19h wrote: post #438
tr3ntg wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the computer or the internet did I see statements like this about AI too. How can something be bigger than the technology it is built on? The AVP is a computer. AI is a computer accessed through the internet... any computing device that accesses another computing device is further extending the "impact of computers and the internet." I don't get it. Maybe I'm…

By this logic, a computer is just a bunch of transistors. And transistors are just fancy electric circuits.

and a human is this ...

Element Symbol Percent mass Percent atoms Oxygen O 65.0 24.0 Carbon C 18.5 12.0 Hydrogen H 9.5 62.0 Nitrogen N 3.2 1.1

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

#493

Post by manquer »

halostatue wrote: post #460
manquer wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple can afford to build to standards, It is not like everyone else is dumb , they simply cannot pull it off the brand strength Apple has is without peer in the market. If another brand launched first at same price points they simply will not get the traction Apple does. Even with $3,500 price Apple likely needs sales hundreds of thousands of units to break even , no other manufacturers cannot pull it off

I think there are a lot of smaller companies that can build to standards, and then they either exceed their original vision or things explode to the point where they feel they need to move faster. I love my Apple Watch (on my second one now) and I didn't like wearing watches. Except the Pebble that I bought (I think that I got the first generation Pebble colour, but it's been a while). After that product, things went…

> to the point where they feel they need to move faster

They feel the need because unlike Apple others cannot wait years to release a product or upgrade to a successful one and still sell enough. Everyone else have limited brand recall, if they don't move fast a competitor will and they loose relevance.

The point is nobody else can sustainably build to standards the way Apple can, because Apple can take its time enter a industry late and still win big.

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

#494

Post by poulsbohemian »

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…

>My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do this, over and over?

Because they don't just treat things as hardware, but as a complete ecosystem. Sure, they price things at a point where they can afford to make a quality product, but it's more than that... There are times when things aren't perfect, but overall everything works together and is very high quality. When I've tried in the past to buy non-Apple gear, things tend to be clunky, incomplete, and put a high burden on me as a user, even in cases where the specs might be better than Apple gear.

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

#495

Post by sheepscreek »

Jasper_ wrote: post #94
gpm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The optical pathway is pretty much locked in. LEEP was invented in the 80s, and that's still the optical system used today. Compare the size to NASA's VR system from the early 90s. https://images.nasa.gov/details/ARC-1992-AC89-0437-6 It's been 30 years of massive improvements to all of the rest of computers, and VR has only shrunk a couple inches. There's not much else we can do to make it smaller.

Yes and no.

There’s an insane amount of tech in the Vision Pro. Eyesight probably occupies a big chunk. Then there are more sensors than they need. Also the CPU and 100% processing is happening literally strapped to your face.

This is like having two 5k displays powered by a mobile device*.

* 2 x 5k = 28 million pixels, compared to Vision Pro’s 23 million pixels.

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

#496

Post by freetinker »

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…

One word: culture. Apple just seems to care more, and sweat the details more.

In my experience, at other companies, product development is run on a spreadsheet by MBA PMs. Apple doesn’t operate that way.

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

#497

Post by Nathanba »

lefstathiou wrote: post #245

My two cents (as an owner of a Vision Pro): 1) This is a beta product and I wouldnt recommend it to anyone that is not a developer or in a position to create apps for it, 2) this is going to have as big of an impact on humanity as the computer or the internet did and every engineer or aspiring entrepreneur should pay it attention. This device is magical. Yes it's too heavy, yes there are not enough apps, yes sharing…

If they can't fix the ever so slight blurryness for everyone it will continue to be a niche product simply because only a small niche wants to accept such a thing. Or only a small niche of people has eyes that can deal with it. Btw I consider my Meta Quest 3 to be a terrible product in almost every way, from hardware to software, from blurryness, from weight, from app availability, from PC compatability, from having to buy extra cables, weight, the strap, passthrough, from even the simplest interactions like clicking on a button... everything was bad.

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

#498

Post by ForHackernews »

zmmmmm wrote: post #481

Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100% talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing here. In short: Apple has made a fully…

He talks about how "Gaze & pinch is an incredible UI superpower and major industry ah-ha moment" but... if that's really the case, then it's quite an indictment of the VR industry:

> The hardware needed to track eyes and hands in VR has been around for over a decade, and it’s Apple unique ability to bring everything together in a magical way that makes this UI superpower the most important achievement of the entire Vision Pro product, without a shadow of doubt.

So they had all the pieces, but only Apple put it together and realized that you'd need a VR equivalent of point-and-click? If that's actually true, it's sad.

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

#499

Post by IshKebab »

jdprgm wrote: post #486
zmmmmm wrote: post #481

Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100% talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing here. In short: Apple has made a fully…

This has been my main complaint with Oculus all the way since the Rift days. At that point I assumed it was forthcoming within a few years yet here we are 8 years later and somehow it's not all that different. I don't understand how Oculus/Meta isn't drastically ahead at this point on software.

They are drastically ahead. They have VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset at the moment (and for at least 5 years).

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

#500

Post by School-Cotton »

kergonath wrote: post #367
ryandrake wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Is it just the vast amount of money? It's not the money. They did it with the iMac when they were headed for the ground, and with the iPod when they were in a better position but still without infinite funding. Reality is actually quite simple: they spot technology advances, and integrate them into a neat, well-designed package that people actually want to buy. The first iPod was a fancy shell around an IBM 1.8'' h…

Apple is AFAICT the only company in the world (outside of ultra-luxury brands) that actually cares about user experience enough to spend however much it takes to make it good.
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