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Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#531

Post by Aeolun »

TillE wrote: post #356
epolanski wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two iWatches were borderline pointless/bad. The first two iPhones weren't as innovative as they make them,just more polished than other symbians with cameras and internet, it took off with apps really in third iteration. I think visionpro has lots of opportunities in the next iterations, early users will provide feedback this gen.

> The first two iPhones weren't as innovative as they make them Yes they were. Multi-touch in particular was a revelation. Making a big screen with one physical button is a simple idea, but making it work well was the hard part that nobody else had figured out. Those first iPhones were dog slow, sure, but they absolutely defined how smartphones work ever since.

> Those first iPhones were dog slow, sure, but they absolutely defined how smartphones work ever since.

I don’t think this was my experience at all. The first iPhone was always snappy until they started adding random crap everywhere (e.g. by the release of the iPhone 4 the original was near worthless without really old firmware)

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#532

Post by IggleSniggle »

nvarsj wrote: post #505
Johnie wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of iPhone 1. Everything you've said is reminiscent of the reviews of the first iPhone.

This iPhone trope has gotta die. I worked at Motorola when the iPhone came out. Every single engineer knew this thing would blow everything else out of the water. It was one of the largest leaps in consumer tech devices ever. I assure you the Vision Pro is nowhere close to that.

I remember being angry that my Moto Razr V3 had the power to run awesome software but as a teenager I didn't have an easy way to boot stuff up on it. IMHO it was a perfect phone, except there was no way to run what I wanted. The best I could do was program text messaging services and use those. They discontinued the phone rather than give consumers the freedom to just use the hardware. I thought the iPhone was dumb, but when the App Store came out that was game over. I really missed the convenience of having buttons and being able to text with my phone in my pocket, but at least it was consumer programmable... even if you had to pay a $100 premium to become a "Developer" in order to do so.

Eventually the Moto X came along. I thought it was the perfect phone. Its voice assist features worked better than most voice assist features even today. You could easily do everything you wanted to do with the phone in your pocket and your earbuds in.

It had the perfect size screen. It had a great ambient-on watch-face screen that looked nice sitting on your desk among clutter. The dimple in the back was a really nice touch, it made it like a worry-stone[0] in your pocket. It had a lower resolution, but I kinda liked that about it. I think Motorola was bought or something, but whatever the reason, the next phone in the series ditched every single thing that made the Moto X special.

Those two devices were both my favorite mobile computing devices, and probably the closest I've come to getting fan-angry about a company screwing up their own magic.

More to the point: you might have been able to see it at Motorola, but even looking back, I don't understand why Razr couldn't have won against the iPhone. The Razr was a surprisingly capable little machine!

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worry_stone

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#533

Post by zmmmmm »

TillE wrote: post #356
epolanski wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two iWatches were borderline pointless/bad. The first two iPhones weren't as innovative as they make them,just more polished than other symbians with cameras and internet, it took off with apps really in third iteration. I think visionpro has lots of opportunities in the next iterations, early users will provide feedback this gen.

> The first two iPhones weren't as innovative as they make them Yes they were. Multi-touch in particular was a revelation. Making a big screen with one physical button is a simple idea, but making it work well was the hard part that nobody else had figured out. Those first iPhones were dog slow, sure, but they absolutely defined how smartphones work ever since.

yep ... i'm generally downplaying Apple's "innovations" but I will say, there was huge scepticism that you could have a phone without a physical keyboard and Apple overnight turned that around. That was a real contribution, IMHO much bigger than anything in Vision OS so far.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#534

Post by makeitdouble »

patapong wrote: post #26

I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software. Between this and the Quest 3, we have powerful, polished and consumer friendly devices, but beyond a few niches (fitness, simulation, gaming to some extent), there is nothing to convince users to put the headsets on. I am hoping we will see a lot of experimentation in the coming years, and I am excited for what the Apple ecosystem will bring to t…

> I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software.

It's a 600+ grams headset with a battery on a leash for $3500. I wouldn't say the hardware is mainstream ready or fulfilling it's side of the contract yet.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#535

Post by enos_feedler »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #503
Johnie wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of iPhone 1. Everything you've said is reminiscent of the reviews of the first iPhone.

The first gen iPhone had a much better UX than other phones, so missing a few features like copy and paste was palatable. I do think future generations of AVP will do well. Iterating and applying learnings and customer feedback will make this a good product.

You could say that about literally any product. The most important factor that will determine success is the starting point. Initial conditions matter. I actually believe this a developer tool from start to finish. It will end of life a lot quicker than we expect. The real product is going to be lightweight glasses we wear all day. But when? How many iterations of the AVP to meet the developer needs for seeding this future product that might be 10+ years away?

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#536

Post by [deleted] »

Johnie wrote: post #424
zmmmmm wrote: post #276

Lots of surprises on the downside from all the reviews. Pass through much more limited in quality with motion blur, pixelation, distortions, limited color and dynamic range. The eye tracking driven input method which was seen as holy grail turns out to be annoying after a while because people don't naturally always look at what they want to click on. Personas straight up aren't ready. The lack of AR features is the b…

Reminds me of iPhone 1. Everything you've said is reminiscent of the reviews of the first iPhone.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#537

Post by slg »

nvarsj wrote: post #505
Johnie wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of iPhone 1. Everything you've said is reminiscent of the reviews of the first iPhone.

This iPhone trope has gotta die. I worked at Motorola when the iPhone came out. Every single engineer knew this thing would blow everything else out of the water. It was one of the largest leaps in consumer tech devices ever. I assure you the Vision Pro is nowhere close to that.

The better analogy is probably something like the Apple Watch.

Apple certainly wasn't the first smartwatch, but anyone who owned one before that was obviously a geek (said lovingly). Apple made the first mainstream acceptable smartwatch by smoothing over a lot of the complaints about their competitors, while adding some of their own in the process, just like the Vision Pro. It took a few iterations, but today people from all walks of life wear smartwatches. Certainly not as ubiquitous as smartphones, but Apple made smartwatches a standard piece of tech that millions of people own and they made plenty of money along the way.

The Vision Pro will probably be similar. For example, anyone wearing a VR/AR headset on a plane today would likely get stares. I bet a few years from now there will be several people on every plane wearing one of these. That doesn't mean Apple will make the best VR/AR headset or that VR/AR headsets will be a piece of tech that everyone owns, but Apple is capable of mainstreaming a piece of technology in ways that the Facebooks and Googles of the world aren't even if that is due to their marketing prowess and the strength of their brand just as much as their technical expertise. And in that sense, the thing that is more important than any of these reviews dropping today is the Super Bowl commercial Apple has almost assuredly bought to show this thing off in two weeks.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#538

Post by thuuuomas »

mbreese wrote: post #515
zmmmmm wrote: post #276

Lots of surprises on the downside from all the reviews. Pass through much more limited in quality with motion blur, pixelation, distortions, limited color and dynamic range. The eye tracking driven input method which was seen as holy grail turns out to be annoying after a while because people don't naturally always look at what they want to click on. Personas straight up aren't ready. The lack of AR features is the b…

> Want it for entertainment? people want to enjoy photos, videos, movies with other people and it can't include them This is a disingenuous argument. Your other points are much more valid than this one. You don’t have a VR headset to interact with other people in the same room. If you want to watch a movie with other people around you, there are many other (cheaper) ways to do that (and Apple can sell you a nice Appl…

What does disingenuous mean

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#539

Post by oomun »

makeitdouble wrote: post #521
oomun wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

genuine curiosity, how often are you clicking something without looking at it at least for a moment? or, how often do we believe other people are clicking something with out looking at it? im examining this for myself...hard to feel organic while im actively focusing on it, but i at least glance at my mouse pointer target while traversing the pointer towards the target across my screens

A lot. I also started thinking about it reading the reviews, and the main cases to me are: - checking something before commiting an action: for instance reread the product name before pushing the purchase button. The pointer is already on the button, I keep it there while checking the order, so I just need to click. - focus switch: pushing another window to the forefront doesn't need a super accurate click. I assume…

your first example is p solid, i agree there will be a micro-tedium related to re-focusing on a confirmation button in that type of scenario

assuming that, in the AVP UX, the user could not linger hand-gesture focus on the button then immediately click after verifying whatever info they are reading as they will have to move the eyes up (to read lol) then back down to focus the hand-gesture control back onto the button

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#540

Post by makeitdouble »

crooked-v wrote: post #284
kevinak wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't 'miles' ahead of the competition. If anything it is way behind. For example, look at Varjo: https://varjo.com/products/xr-4/

The XR-4 is already 665g as a tethered headset. I imagine it would be (literally) painfully heavy as a standalone device.

To set a comparison point, a bike helmet is around 3 times that weight.

Less weight would be better, but there's ways to embrace that and aleviate the issues ("have the product be true to its nature" to channel my inner Jony Ive).

This time Apple chose not to, while Varjo tends to care a lot more about these ergonomic aspects. Looking at the XR-4 strap, it looks like a solid design to me.

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