Live data from Hacker News

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

hugo.blog

581–590 of 863 posts

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

#581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why Apple doesn't do it. They want you to buy both a MacBook and an iPad.

For each family memeber too! There's something incredibly sinister about how Apple operates that people just accept. All those dark patterns and control is just so icky I don't understand how anyone aware of this can submit to this. Just from sheer self-respect.

That's why I don't buy Apple

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

#582

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…

> It's also a beta product in many way.

I can't remember if it was here or somewhere else I saw the point made that the current Vision Pro is the worst one Apple will ever make. All future Vision* products will likely be technically improved from the current model. So if the Vision Pro is good right now it really can only be refined and get better.

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

#583

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…

According to this article, the differentiator for the Vision Pro are the tiny, high density OLED screens.

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

#584
post #502
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…

If what you said were true then this is a fatal strategic error on Meta's side. This entire time, they could have built a real OS, solidifying their first mover advantage.

They started to, and then they gave up on it.

https://www.engadget.com/meta-dissolves-ar-vr-os-team-204708...

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

#585
post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple leveraged their existing OSX OS stack, for Meta this would mean either heavily forking android OR starting their own OS. Both would take 5+ years to get meaningful traction. Remember google fuchsia, the code-repo was public in 2016, intial release was 2021, and it's still not anywhere near where it'd need to be for a VR headset.

I think that kind of under sells it. Yes Apple had all sorts of existing technology they could leverage. But they still built a completely new spatial UI paradigm for it. And an entirely new interaction model that hasn’t been seen before. Using looking at something to replace a mouse isn’t new but taking that combined with using a pinch gesture to “click“ and some of the other things they’ve come up with is a unique…

Didn't oculus have pinch to click before Vision Pro came out?

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

#586

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…

Ya know the funny thing about Pebble, looking back as someone who is on his 3rd apple watch: At the time, I honestly thought Pebble was doing it the right way! And in hindsight, I still think that at launch, they had the perfect idea - for that point in time. Their initial success even matches that.

When the tech advanced, and use cases evolved, and users had become accustomed to the limitations of the apple watch style of smartwatch - which regarding battery life STILL HOLD TRUE... once all that was the case, Pebble had to deal with the "and now what?" and they couldn't.

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

#587
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To support copy&paste all you need is a common format for 3D objects, like HTML is for 2D documents; glTF might be a reasonable candidate. The problem with the Apple approach is that there are no apps and games, and there probably won't be many given it's a 3500$ device with few users that Apple exerts its tyrannical grip over (or if there will be, they will be ports of Unity/Unreal, PC or Android VR apps, not using…

Any scene description format would work (but please not obj or stl), it would be good to see a standard emerge for this, though. USD might be it.

I really hope USD is not it. Having worked with it trying to build stuff for the vision pro, it's a massive software library pretending to be a file format. It is inexorably linked to the source code that processes it to the point that making a processor for the format is a non-starter, and that seems to be by design.

The codebase is dense, hard to compile, using outdated dependencies, and doesn't play nice with anything else. Documentation is sparse, often incorrect, and severely lacking in anything like a new user guide. Everything assumes you work for Pixar already and know the ins and outs of their pipeline.

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

#588
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…

Damn. Like I never thought of it that way. You need that OS layer. That should be metas core competency if they want to win. Games are something that runs on top of other people’s platform. I thought Zuckerberg did all this to stop being a layer on top of somebody else’s stack but all they did was the exact same thing with Oculus.

That is what always bugged me about the pivot to “meta”. They never had to find product market fit to succeed. They were never hungry. They could just throw money until something clicked… but money alone doesn’t make a revolutionary product. You need somebody hungry enough to see the world in a different way and then execute the fuck out of it.

Dunno how this relates to apple though. They have equal amounts of cash to throw at problems until they are “solved”. Perhaps the “operating system” is a solved problem already to some extent and maybe there isn’t anything truly new?

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

#589

No matter how much I contemplate about it, there was still no “killer” app that affords me to buy a VR set. I’ve tried them, it’s nice. But it really has no place in my life. And how could this change? Even with better displays etc. the whole idea of disconnecting my main sense - the eyes - from my surroundings is so strange to me that it seems irreconcilable. Can anybody relate?

Racing sims are the killer app, because depth perception really helps with sense of speed, and tight corners on a monitor are often outside the field of view and you can't just turn your head to look at them. Even then, it's not something I can do indefinitely. I've played GT7 on a friend's PSVR2, and sometimes elevation changes in particular tend to mess up the brain for a moment. It's somewhat disconcerting. Also,…

Mind that the two racing games I've tried were Redout and Trackmania Turbo, which have some more extreme movements like loops and high speeds, but being sitting in a VR headset and not feeling the accelerations that match your movement is just a recipe for motion sickness even if you don't normally feel motion sick. Add in the shitty FoV in all current VR headsets and I think we are a far way from that being a killer app.

For me the only apps that kept any of my interest are rhythm games like Beat Saber or Pistol Whip.

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

#590
post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that kind of under sells it. Yes Apple had all sorts of existing technology they could leverage. But they still built a completely new spatial UI paradigm for it. And an entirely new interaction model that hasn’t been seen before. Using looking at something to replace a mouse isn’t new but taking that combined with using a pinch gesture to “click“ and some of the other things they’ve come up with is a unique…

Didn't oculus have pinch to click before Vision Pro came out?

I own one of each, and develop for the Vision Pro through my job, it's the very same story it's always been. Apple hasn't 'invented' much here, but the magic is in how it's assembled, even in its current state, using apps in a 3d space feels better than anything the quest has ever done. Even simple things like 'touching' a panel just feels more natural on the vision pro than the same experience on the quest, mostly because the quest does things like forcing the ghost hand to stop at the surface of the window, instead of continuing to track your hand through it and just using the intersection as the touch point. It's a small difference in the interaction that makes a world of difference in usability, which Apple is very good at.
Post reply on HN