Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#131

Post by jwells89 » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #9

testfrequency wrote: post #5

It’s been pretty disingenuous of Apple to have all their marketing photos with the single strap, when the unanimous opinion is that strap doesn’t work at all for comfortability or longevity. Similar to AirPods Max, they oddly chose heavy materials just for the sake of finish - rather than functionality. If they truly cared about the user experience of the actual software/hardware, they would have went with better mat…

It looks like something designed to look good in photos. Something like a Quest 3 with the upgraded head strap is probably way more practical and comfortable.

I wish more headsets would ape the design of the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap.

Have never owned a Vive but have that head strap connected to a Quest 2 with 3D printed adapters (a setup dubbed by the community “frankenquest”) and it works quite nicely.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#132

Post by SushiHippie » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

I'm not really interested in apple and its ecosystem.

But this review got me really hooked, and I didn't even notice that it was 30 minutes long. Easily the best tech review I've ever seen. And it also felt very well-balanced between the good and the not so good things about the vision pro.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#133

Post by wharvle » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

addandsubtract wrote: post #44

Hamuko wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't the watch be on your non-dominant hand?

Wouldn't your dominant hand be on your mouse?

There's either got to be a big generational gap on preference for this, or a lot of folks out there have developed mousing ambidexterity.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#134

Post by jbellis » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

Topfi wrote: post #92

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have racked up hours upon hours of actual, productive work in my Quest 2 and 3 I have a lot of questions. Would you recommend them? Do you work primarily in VR? I haven't tried VR but the use-case I envision is to put on a VR headset and be "at work".

> Would you recommend them? Yes, no, maybe. Thing is, I've never used a device or software that I haven't found faults with. Overall, the Quest has turned into a solid, though still imperfect, platform, with Meta pushing updates at a consistent, but also breakneck pace, sometimes at the expense of addressing existing issues. Hand tracking from the early days of the Q2 has made massive leaps and has become my preferre…

I use my xreal air as my airplane display. I would love the Quest 3's higher resolution but my understanding is that compared to the XA the Q3

- Requires controllers - Requires wifi instead of plugging in the cable and it just works* - Has fairly limited battery life

Am I mistaken on these points / do you think it would work on an airplane despite them?

* To be fair, the XA only "just works" in vanilla display mode, the fancy xreal multiple virtual monitors feature called Nebula doesn't work well enough to be worth the hassle.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#135

Post by jayd16 » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

Interesting that gaze-to-focus is panned and not because it doesn't track well. I've worked in VR games for a while and gaze tracking excites designers but I find it a very annoying input mechanism and we usually don't ship it. Maybe it's still the right call for the AVP but being able to interact with things you aren't looking at is important.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#136

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

nox101 wrote: post #106

PaulHoule wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good analysis. Part of it too is that Apple feels pressure to do something innovative. They made some big bets in the 2000s that paid off very well but a company that has a hit like the iPhone becomes profoundly conservative. The trouble is that there aren't many market opportunities bigger than smartphones, there's a possible iCar and an iHouse and that's about it. Apple's worst fear might be being successful as a n…

I wonder if an iTV would sell. All mondern smart tvs are covered in ads and spying. monitors of similar sizes cost 3x to 4x. so to me there might be a market for a non spying iTV with bultin Apple TV for say 1.5x. Or not, not sure enough people care about those issues.

10 years ago I thought Apple would fail if they tried it because they'd have a chauvinistic attitude about having HDMI or any other ports that aren't Ethernet. (You can't plug your phonograph into an iPod) For that matter I'd expect them to have a chauvinistic attitude about connecting to my home theater.

Back then you were just going to have to deal with the rubbish cable box but I think Apple wasn't going to stand for it.

Today Blu Ray seems to be on the way out and so is the cable box (now we have the spectacle of seemingly competitive vMVPDs that are all priced the same within a few dollars), it now is going to be a fight over game consoles.

TVs though have a serious race to the bottom and the TV with an Amazon Fire TV built in is going to be attractive to a lot of people.

(Also already Apple makes a "TV" removes the tuner and replaces the HDMI ports w/ something else and calls it a "monitor" and charges 5x. No way are they going to cannibalize that market to sell something that only costs 1.5x)

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#137

Post by jsheard » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:12 PM UTC

nonfamous wrote: post #130

jsheard wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's $200 for an extra battery, all of the accessories have a steep early adopter tax. Besides, has anyone confirmed whether or not the AVP has an internal backup battery so you can hotswap the external battery without rebooting it?

According to the linked review, hot-swapping is not possible - disconnecting the battery powers down the device.

In that case if you want to use it for many hours without access to wall power you're better off buying a generic USB power bank and plugging that into the Apple battery. Very elegant.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#138

Post by wharvle » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:12 PM UTC

chris-orgmenta wrote: post #128

wharvle wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's booting? Nothing I use with any frequency gets rebooted except for updates, more or less. Exception: non-Apple stuff. Because those things tend to die while "sleeping" and unplugged, very quickly (my secondary work Windows laptop, which burns almost half its battery per 12 hours in "sleep mode"; my Steamdeck, which is barely better than that; the Switch though it's almost always on the dock anyway so that's ra…

I agree that we should pretend that my question said "from standby" instead of "boot"

If it's like iOS devices, I'd assume less than a second to interactive, potentially so fast that most people don't notice it isn't instant.

If it's like macOS, maybe 2-3 seconds to interactive.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#139

Post by orangecat » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

mostlysimilar wrote: post #94

monkeynotes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way will this tech destroy phones as you know them today. What is going to destroy phones is natural language. Maybe, maybe in the distant future this tech will be mature enough to provide the visual support to a natural language first device. xBox addressed a very well defined product sector with a couple of big players doing stuff that is well understood. xBox wasn't a toe in the water, they planned a whole stra…

Hard disagree. Phones and computers do text/images/video. Voice input and audio output is a poor substitute for text and not at all a replacement for images/video.

Right. And there are too many scenarios where audio I/O isn't usable (quiet libraries, loud streets) so you always need an alternative.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it's not

#140

Post by spywaregorilla » Tue, Jan 30, 2024, 4:14 PM UTC

jwells89 wrote: post #123

spywaregorilla wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well we're in 2024 now and people still try to suggest Beat Saber (2018) is proof that VR gaming is good.

The problem with VR gaming is that it’s been hamstrung by requiring either a substantially beefy gaming PC or limited onboard midrange smartphone with underwhelming developer buy-in. If the rumors are true that Valve is working on a standalone VR headset based around an AMD APU, I think that might be the shot in the arm that VR gaming needs, with hardware more powerful than can be found in the Quest lineup as well as…

eh. disagree. as someone with a beefy gaming pc there's nothing good.

Alyx is very well made, but its not hard to see that they designed around fundamental limits that make VR suck. they don't overcome them. They perhaps manage to cover it with enough polish to get people to not notice. but its hard for anyone with design or, let's call it "gamer sense"