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Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

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Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#221
post #5

Anyone using one? If so, what for? (please give details) I got an oculus quest 2, was blown away by it for 1-2 hours, but never really picked it up again. The games were fun but very shallow, and never tried any practical uses. Would love to use VR for working on a plane. Currently use a laptop, but my neck sometimes gets sore from looking down. VR has the potential to 10x the screen real estate and prevent having to…

On rare occasions, I use it for the virtual display; it's actually usable to sit outside and work with a giant display on the deck, or to dial myself onto the beach. But it's not exactly comfortable for extended use, and most of the time I'd rather sit at my nice desktop with multiple monitors etc.

I also have a Quest 3 and if I could only own one device, I'd take the Q3 hands-down. The games are fun, they get you up and moving, and although I'm not going to argue that the quality of the screens is the same or anything, it's more than good enough. I'll happily give up the virtual laptop screen in exchange for the library of VR games on the Quest.

I'm not much for consuming media so that aspect is lost on me. Unfortunately, that seems to be the primary use case Apple has focused on, if you can call the anemic dribble of content they've put out focus.

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#222
I've had the Vision Pro since launch, and the only thing that keeps me coming back to it nearly daily is the Mac Virtual Display for my MacBook Pro.

It's just so useful to have a huge display wherever you want it - no hunching over looking down a small laptop screen. This is especially useful on a plane where I'm not even able to open the laptop completely due to the tight space.

My main gripe is: Why do I need a separate Mac at all? Even the original M2 Vision Pro has more than enough horsepower to run the virtual Mac inside of the headset, so it seems like a fake limitation.

I'm looking forward to it being lighter weight and smaller, and for them to make the Mac Virtual Display native to the Vision Pro experience without the need for a separate computer.

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really following through your reasoning. How is breaking the usefulness helping the revenue stream? Assuming you're an engineer, have you thought about what handing over a "window" from one computer to another actually entails? CRIU can do checkpoint/restore at container/process level - but you actually want it to run on both, no? So you need to split off just the I/O, but at the OS-level per window. Apple ha…

This stuff has been solved ages ago on Unix.

Oh, did Linux get IO handover and I missed it? Have they been doing it for ages with their librephone announcement yesterday?

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#224
post #23

I was super interested in the Vision Pro when it was first released. Then I found out they went with an app model and the device could only display a single MacOS window. There went my dream of surrounding myself with a bunch of vim windows and terminals. If they'd focused on maximizing the device's usefulness instead of its revenue stream, maybe things would have worked out better.

I'm not really following through your reasoning. How is breaking the usefulness helping the revenue stream? Assuming you're an engineer, have you thought about what handing over a "window" from one computer to another actually entails? CRIU can do checkpoint/restore at container/process level - but you actually want it to run on both, no? So you need to split off just the I/O, but at the OS-level per window. Apple ha…

you're focusing on the "single window" part.

the revenue-driven decision was choosing to make the OS more like iOS, locked down with an app store, rather than macos, which allows third-party applications, browsing the filesystem, dropping into a terminal, etc. with built-in first-party support.

instead of making a computer in an AR form-factor, they made an iPad in an AR form-factor.

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another comment mentions how useful it is because it's integrated with Apple's ecosystem. I mean of course it is...Apple makes it. I do wonder if that person had ever tried any of the myriad of VR device available a decade before beforehand and I do wonder how popular Apple's product would be if other companies were given the opportunity to integrate with the OS on the same level that Apple can (I feel like Apple is…

OSX is at 16% of the market (Windows is 63%). Exactly how is this breaking anti-competitive laws?

A walled garden is a walled garden, no matter the slice of the market you've been able to eat (yet).

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff has been solved ages ago on Unix.

Oh, did Linux get IO handover and I missed it? Have they been doing it for ages with their librephone announcement yesterday?

fsf and linux are not really the same entity.

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#227
post #23

I was super interested in the Vision Pro when it was first released. Then I found out they went with an app model and the device could only display a single MacOS window. There went my dream of surrounding myself with a bunch of vim windows and terminals. If they'd focused on maximizing the device's usefulness instead of its revenue stream, maybe things would have worked out better.

I actually bought one thinking I could buy a vision pro instead of a new computer, but alas, the vision pro (despite being a powerful computer) is not usable as a work computer

(I returned it)

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#228
post #23

I was super interested in the Vision Pro when it was first released. Then I found out they went with an app model and the device could only display a single MacOS window. There went my dream of surrounding myself with a bunch of vim windows and terminals. If they'd focused on maximizing the device's usefulness instead of its revenue stream, maybe things would have worked out better.

You can surround yourself with floating terminals using the Blink app. Here I code from the couch surrounded by nvim, Claude Code, etc.: https://x.com/dvdsgl/status/1948840477970841720/video/1

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#229
post #135
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not in the business of selling productivity software. Even their desktops/MacOS segment is an insignificant historical afterthought by now. To a first approximation, Apple is a manufacturer of locked-down handheld entertainment appliances whose primary function is to psychologically condition children into siphoning off money from their inattentive parents. There's no reason to suspect their vision for the A…

I'm sure you felt very clever writing that zinger about children and parents, but unless the majority of Apple devices are sold to/for children -- which I would bet is extremely not true -- it's obviously wrong.

You have deftly avoided attempting to refute the actual argument here, which is that >90% of Apple's revenue comes from their walled garden, and they have no desire to pivot back towards catering to the small and dwindling niche of power users.

Re: Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip

#230
post #23

I was super interested in the Vision Pro when it was first released. Then I found out they went with an app model and the device could only display a single MacOS window. There went my dream of surrounding myself with a bunch of vim windows and terminals. If they'd focused on maximizing the device's usefulness instead of its revenue stream, maybe things would have worked out better.

> Then I found out they went with an app model and the device could only display a single MacOS window.

There was this program called Immersed for Quest and some other VR headsets (apparently Apple's one too?) that ages ago was quite brilliant: I could connect my laptop or PC and have as many virtual desktops in addition to the real ones displayed around me. Even on my Quest 2, until the strain set in, it was cool to just kinda tune out the room around me and be in a black void surrounded by just the screens of whatever I'm working on.

Sadly, in one update they randomly removed it as a "legacy feature nobody uses", which ruined the program for me, and Virtual Desktop for the Quest also has limited screens you can display, so I can't even do all 4 of my physical ones, nor virtual ones - despite it having worked previously in the other program.

For a little bit, it was a really cool mode of working, but sadly I only got glimpses of it and would need more capable hardware like AVP for that in the first place (Quest 2 very much had its limitations).

Also, this was a pretty cool idea, even if a novelty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js7Y1H5D8cY

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