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Apple Vision Pro review

wsj.com

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Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#801

Post by saagarjha »

xattt wrote: post #201
losvedir wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't think "mirroring" is quite the right term. It's effectively a 4K monitor for the laptop, with the laptop screen going black. Most (all?) Mac laptops don't have a 4K screen, so you have more screen real estate than "mirroring" would make you think. But this is sufficient for many use cases (or at least, mine). I pre-ordered one with the idea that my main work will be on the 4K monitor, with most of my su…

Is it mirrored as some HEVC video stream from the laptop, or are UI elements actually rendered on headset itself?

It's streamed from the laptop. Technology-wise it's very similar to a screen sharing session but initiated from Apple Vision Pro instead of a Mac.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#802

Post by nicbou »

makeitdouble wrote: post #540
crooked-v wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A bike helmet is around 400 grams. I just bought one.

A motorbike helmet is heavier (3kg), but the weight is wrapped around your head, not hanging in front of it.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#803

Post by kybernetikos »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #371
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first iPhone was pretty terrible. I couldn't get my Marketing peers to take it seriously (which they came to regret). The first Watch was awful. I love my Series 8. Don't get me started on the first Mac...

> The first iPhone was pretty terrible. I definitely do not think that opinion was widespread. If anything I think that the biggest discussed shortcoming of the first iPhone was that it was only available on AT&T.

My memory of it was that when it first came out, it was worse in all ways compared to the best of what already existed, save one, and that was capacitive multi-touch. That was a big enough improvement in itself that nothing else mattered.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#804

Post by saagarjha »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #90
nickrubin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like someone is working on a Mac app that does exactly this, and they seem to have a functional prototype: https://x.com/TheOriginaliTE/status/1751251567641346340?s=20

Unclear if Apple will allow this in the store edit: Yes I know you can build apps before they're in the store

The visionOS side of this, which is the one that requires App Review, is a glorified VNC app. They will probably review it thoroughly but it doesn't seem like it breaks any rules.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#805

Post by saagarjha »

dns_snek wrote: post #200
LeoPanthera wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it's open source, you can sideload onto any iOS device by building it yourself.

Iff you pay an annual $100 dev fee. Yes I know you can technically do this without a paid dev account, but it's practically useless because it has to be re-done every 7 days.

Surely considering the fact that you are streaming your Mac to Apple Vision Pro you should be able to easily resign it on that very device? :)

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#806

Post by saagarjha »

seanalltogether wrote: post #384
tiltowait wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inability to break out Mac windows curbed a lot of my enthusiasm for the AVP. I hope Apple will eventually add it, but I'm not going to spend $3500 on that hope.

Without a tethered connection the bandwidth simply isn't there.

As long as you keep your expectations modest you can probably do an acceptable job for casual usecases.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#807

Post by TeMPOraL »

dieortin wrote: post #459
TeMPOraL wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be a great, sneaky way of installing an ad blocker onto wetware - users will train themselves to not even gaze at anything resembling an ad, lest they look at it long enough for the headset to register it as a click.

Apps are not able to register where you’re looking. Only the headset itself does.

Sure, but the proof of looking is in the clicking. The threat scenario I'm describing here is "looked at the ad long enough for the headset to interpret it as wanting to click on it".

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#808

Post by mcny »

brtkdotse wrote: post #785
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…

> 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. This has been know for at least 30 years in the eye tracking business and it even has a name - The Midas Touch problem.

> This has been know for at least 30 years in the eye tracking business and it even has a name - The Midas Touch problem.

I wanted to see how it is possible but sure enough, I found a paper from 1995 that cited even older research about this.

https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/barfield.pdf

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#809

Post by saagarjha »

ehsankia wrote: post #208
wtallis wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming an arbitrary collection of windows instead of a single finished, composited framebuffer increases the bandwidth requirements by at least an order of magnitude. That's never going to work well over WiFi.

As long as the total number of pixels is less, I don't see what that has to be true, at least bandwidth wise? Compute wise, the vision might have to do slightly more to separate the buffer and composite them into the AR view in different places, but the bandwidth should be direction proportional to the number/size of each window. If I can fit all the windows on a 4K screen, then I don't see why the software can't spl…

Some of the windows will be obscured by others. If you stream a 100 windows to visionOS, it's possible to lay them out so that none of them cover each other and you have to render them all. On a flat screen there is a limit to how many pixels you need to paint.

Re: Apple Vision Pro review

#810

Post by saagarjha »

jayd16 wrote: post #247
wtallis wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming an arbitrary collection of windows instead of a single finished, composited framebuffer increases the bandwidth requirements by at least an order of magnitude. That's never going to work well over WiFi.

Just compress the stream. Total pixels increase the vram on the device but popping out a static window shouldn't take any more than a trivial amount of streaming bandwidth.

Keep in mind that you are popping out a static window 60 times a second or so.
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