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Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

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Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#561
post #197

Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one…

Yeah absolutely. Every time I’ve been in my local Apple Store, I’ve basically been talked out of purchasing, or it becomes a huge hassle of upselling and extra worrying charges, and quite frankly, stupidity and lack of knowledge from the pseudo-smart staff. All they can do is toe the party line and what they’ve been trained to say and do, which kind of falls apart when faced with someone who has used Apple computers…

What a miserable experience!

Meanwhile I had the opposite experience in a Google Store recently. I picked a phone case off the shelf in 10s, told the nearest employee I wanted to buy it, and he immediately whipped out a credit card scanner and I bought it right there in 30s. Didn't even need to go to the checkout counter or anything. It probably helps that that store is less crowded than the Apple store, but their training at least seems to involve making the purchasing flow as efficient as possible.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#562
post #5

Having messed with VR/AR tech since the DK2, the Apple Store presence could be the killer app that VR/AR needs. The manual learning process of ordering special fit lenses, adjusting the headsets, etc would be a great fit with Apple’s store model.

So the killer app for a $3.5k product is an app that helps you buy other expensive products from the same company? Maybe I misunderstood, but if not count me skeptical.

Are you not familiar with the iOS ecosystem?

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#563
post #197

Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one…

Makes me glad that i have been buying everything from them online for the past 5 years. I think i would walk out if i had your experience

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#564
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't think that is at all possible.

I think you'd need to be able to control the direction of each photon coming out of the screen, so that it landed in the intended place on the retina after going through the misshapen cornea/lens. That's basically what a corrective lens does. Doing it dynamically for each thing we call a pixel indeed sounds like science fiction.

you could do it with lasers, using lasers to draw directly on the retina. I don't think there would be any way to do this with a pixelarray type screen.. maybe if you could map each pixel to a point on your retina and then modify the rendering .. maybe. the concept reminds me of a generative art piece that Kyle McDonald built: https://www.fastcompany.com/90167836/disco-meets-computer-vi...

Essentially pile up a bunch of mirrorballs. Point projectors at it. Then map where each pixel from each projector ends up on the walls/ceiling/floors.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah absolutely. Every time I’ve been in my local Apple Store, I’ve basically been talked out of purchasing, or it becomes a huge hassle of upselling and extra worrying charges, and quite frankly, stupidity and lack of knowledge from the pseudo-smart staff. All they can do is toe the party line and what they’ve been trained to say and do, which kind of falls apart when faced with someone who has used Apple computers…

What a miserable experience! Meanwhile I had the opposite experience in a Google Store recently. I picked a phone case off the shelf in 10s, told the nearest employee I wanted to buy it, and he immediately whipped out a credit card scanner and I bought it right there in 30s. Didn't even need to go to the checkout counter or anything. It probably helps that that store is less crowded than the Apple store, but their tr…

There's gotta be a lesson here: if your customer is ready to hand you money, best you just go ahead and take it without further delay.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#566
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that you need special fit lenses and a store appointment Sounds like a serious shortcoming if you can't share the device with friends and family.

You can. The Vision Pro supports a primary user that retains settings/user account/AppleID and a secondary user with gets a “guest” account that resets.

Interesting - where did you read/see this?

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#567
post #197

Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one…

Yeah absolutely. Every time I’ve been in my local Apple Store, I’ve basically been talked out of purchasing, or it becomes a huge hassle of upselling and extra worrying charges, and quite frankly, stupidity and lack of knowledge from the pseudo-smart staff. All they can do is toe the party line and what they’ve been trained to say and do, which kind of falls apart when faced with someone who has used Apple computers…

Not necessarily. I already have a MBP but I wanted something lighter to bring to coffee shops or use in taxis, so I bought a nicely specced MBA. Yes I could have gotten a MBP for the same price but they’re literally different form factors and bigger isn’t always better.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I organized a trip to a VR center for the entire team at work. Everybody had fun, but more like going to a theme park. Nobody ever talked about it again or bought one, just zero interest. And these are tech people.

Many people even by their mid 20s begin to lose the ability to embrace or even enjoy paradigm shifts. Moving from flat gaming to fully immersive 3D gaming just doesn't do enough to budge the hardened neural pathways that have embraced 2D gaming over the years. It's a frankly common case of being "stuck in ones way". Will VR and AR be the future? Absolutely, and a large part of the current population will be left behi…

I have no doubt that AR will be the future (VR? I don't know: I'd like to retain a sense of my surroundings when I'm working). However, I think most of the population will adapt.

Smartphones for the 60+ age group was a paradigm shift. It was very difficult at first, but within 3 or 4 years, it became pervasive worldwide. Somehow I feel that AR is less of a disruption than the "swipe" mode that touchscreens introduced around 2008 or so.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#569

This product has opened my eyes to "AR" glasses in general, but I think its way overkill for what I want to do.. My use case is being able to code with a giant screen anywhere (plane, hotel room, etc). I just want a few giant editor windows and terminals open. I don't care about gaming, AR gimmicks, etc. From what I understand, there are a number of sub $500 options. (xreal air, rokud air, TCL NXTWEAR, etc). However…

Text editing is actually a harder problem than gaming. For gaming you can very well do with relatively low resolution and big bright objects to shoot at. But displaying clear text requires way higher resolution. I tried Pico 4 headset, and gaming-wise it is fine, you almost forget you are not in your room anymore, but run a browser, and eyes start bleeding out from horrible font rendering. It is somewhat better on Qu…

I also tried replacing my monitors with a Quest 2. While the idea of not needing space for monitors and have your setup anywhere with you is cool, the resolution just wasn't there yet.

Re: Apple plans a slow, appointment-only rollout of Vision Pro

#570

This product has opened my eyes to "AR" glasses in general, but I think its way overkill for what I want to do.. My use case is being able to code with a giant screen anywhere (plane, hotel room, etc). I just want a few giant editor windows and terminals open. I don't care about gaming, AR gimmicks, etc. From what I understand, there are a number of sub $500 options. (xreal air, rokud air, TCL NXTWEAR, etc). However…

Closest thing I can think of would be Big Screen Beyond, which I believe will support 3DOF mode without trackers at some point (you should confirm this), and according to YouTuber “Sadly It’s Bradley” is decent for productivity work.

But actually resolution is extremely important for that kind of work and only the highest resolution headsets available today can actually work well for that.

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