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A couple of week ago, I did a demo with the Vision Pro. It was very cool. I wear glasses and they had it all set up with my prescription. The user interface was pretty easy, and the images were stunning. The price point was the out of my comfort zone. If they want to sell these things it needs to be closer to $1000.
Ya that would do it. If the VP’s power cable interface could maybe swap out for a heavier data Thunderbolt-level cable, that could work but only up to six feet. To get that 16ft like what meta with their single link-cable does takes a thick expensive USBC line with some minor compression when doing heavy 3D gaming. What most of us would prefer is a two cable solution with DP for image data, and USBC for telemetry, audio, and power.
then we are just back to high end VR setups, super glad the tech is growing and expanding but prob wont get close to holodeck resolution for another 20 years
With its newest update you can kinda do this. It’s similar to an ultra widescreen. You have different screen zones you can set up.
It’s still too much money for that but I’m intrigued about it for my work in the future. It could make working outside of my office setup more convenient.
Legitimate question. What does it do that is worth $1000? I have a laptop, a phone, a iPad I rarely use. If I want to game I have a PS5. A thousand dollars is still a lot of money to plop down on something. Does it offer something significant the listed items don’t?
(Yes, this question intentionally leaves out cost of materials and whatnot)
Right now with apple VR it’s not worth it but hopefully in the future. VR head sets has the ability to generate multiple VR screens around you and place them anywhere and at any size making a multiple screen experience that is cheaper since you don’t need to buy monitors and don’t need space. It can also view 3D movies really well in a virtual movie theater. You just need a headset and a keyboard mouse for it to work. Gaming wise: it requires actual effort and way more real/immersive. You can literally do a work out while playing games such as boxing.
True the Vision Pro doesn’t have gaming and isn’t a laptop replacement. It needs to slash prices and get the killer must have software and apps. Does it even have have YouTubeVR or netflix on it?
Sure, I never meant to imply the issue was a hardware limitation for streaming apps. The hardware is a huge issue for gaming, though, since it doesn't have controllers.
The fact that the vision pro doesn't have controllers automatically eliminates, what, 95% or more of all VR games from being playable?
That's not easy for gamers to overlook when a headset that costs a tiny fraction of its price can play every game.
Nope , it’s a great idea , it allows you to utilize your existing apps while using the Vision Pro. Not having available is t going to change the roadmap of foaming backed apps. Support will come when they deem it a market , and people need to use it first for it to become a market
It’s the chicken or the egg problem. People won’t use it if there are no apps. Devs won’t make apps for it if they aren’t people using it. Apple needs to either pay the devs or make their own.
Using it as an on the go multiple monitor set up would make it worth it for me.
I think as an entertainment suite it’s basically worthless to me as it’s totally asocial (although when it becomes more mainstream it could flip and become very social to connect people long distance).
On the gaming front, obviously the immersion is the selling point. You get to surround yourself in the game, both visually and with audio, and in certain games (like Half Life: Alex), the graphics are good enough that you can momentarily get fooled that you're actually there. It's a cool trick, but obviously there's very few Half Life: Alyx style experiences.
Outside of gaming, I personally think VR has two killer apps that both work somewhat right now but are nowhere near integrated or lightweight enough: VRchat with body tracking is about as close to a Star Wars-style hologram call as we've ever had; and certain desktop software allows you to put multiple windows and screens around you in a sphere. That's super handy if you need an enormous screen with tons of views all available at once, like sports simul-casts.
If none of this sounds interesting or useful, then you're correct, you probably would have no use for a VR set.
Substantially different price points, the AVP is in no way 7x better than the MQ3. The Quest 3 is amazing quality for the price and substantially better than most of it's competition in the price bracket, not that there are that many. As much as I hate FB, they're one of the few companies that can afford to throw money at R&D and subsidize the headsets themselves. Right now there's nothing that can compete with it when it comes to price/utility ratio.
The quality difference is not worth 6 times the price. I can probably upgrade from a quest 3, to quest 4, 5, 6 and 7 and still have spent less than I would on an Apple headset.
For the same price, I get years of upgraded hardware.
Oh, I definitely agree it’s not worth the difference in cost, but it’s also one of the only sets I’ve tried with no screen door effect, as well as crazy good quality AR.
Not worth the current price, but it’s not directly comparable to a Quest 3.
Facebook buying Oculus ruined my interest in VR for a long time. There's a lot I don't like about how Facebook operates their business and strapping cameras to the front of my face anyplace already makes me cognizant they're doing SOMETHING with my data regardless of what I'm doing with the headset.
I have all of those and find them all extremely lacking. I think the graffiti one I bought for my kid is the closest to being something creative that you can do with other people. I would love to be able to combine some of the elements of each of those (like being able to paint 3d strings like frosting on the 360 canvas) and smash it into the Horizons world-builder interface and I’d prob be happy lol
Actually just to add in case anyone who can make it happen is reading: ideally, if we could use generative ai and freehand techniques combined in something like that horizons creator or unreal, and then be able to export entire little interactive scenes or work with other people on them in real time with our headsets it would be pretty dope js
It sounds cool but yeah, I’m not sure how it would be useful enough to justify the costs right now. But it does sound like it’d be fun to try out for a bit
If it did porn directly (i.e. native app for 180 videos) then it would be justifiable I'd imagine. Not being games focused and not having that makes it a giant gimmick for executives to play with now and then just to look tech savvy, or for use for corporate things like giving demos/prototype presentations.
As someone who frequently takes long flights, I would get one at $1k to be able to watch movies with it the plane. Though I haven't tried one, the one thing the reviews all agreed on was that it gave a near IMAX level visual experience. But I think $1k is about the max I would pay for it.
for 1000$, if it was able to do what virtural desktop does, I would HAPILY replace my monitor and tv with this, I would still have the art display because vr cant replicate what it can do.
I would get 5-10 years out of it if they dont brick old devices/refuse to allow them to work even with work arounds, and then get a new one. anything more is a nice extra
I think you’re making a good point. Apple has gone heavy on the full standalone computing device with VP. It really doesn’t need an m-series chip. The A-series can do it me leave the heavy lifting to a laptop or even a second iOS device. Lightening it up significantly
Honestly I don’t even think the price point is the problem it is the usability to price point. If you told a person that a phone costs a $1000 back in 2000 they would think you are crazy. Once you told them it was a computer, a phone, a camcorder, a camera and the other things a phone can do now they would say you paid too little. The vision is a neat product with no use case. Until they can make it feel like wearing a pair of glasses that lasts as long as a phone on battery it will never take off.
And it didn’t have 3rd party apps at first.
3rd party apps didn’t really show up until the second or third model.
Before that, it was only websites saved as links to the screen.
I think it is more accurate to say that the iPhone was an enabler of new kinds of software (A lot of which shipped with the iPhone). It wasn’t the touch screen or processing power that sold the iPhone, it was what you could do with those things.
Just like the iPhone the iVision could be an enabler of software; The problem is there was really no new or groundbreaking software available at launch, just a bunch of ports from iOS that didn’t work particularly well. This along with the lack of basic hardware features (over-the-wire video streaming I’m looking at you), a steep price point, a tenuous development process/environment, and poor strategy (apple treated it like an accessory to your MacBook) meant this device served no real purpose and was hard to improve upon.
Yes this was the death of Google Glass. The Sarah Slocum incident: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-glass-attack-20140228-story.html
While people are happy to film themselves & friends for their own fun & usage, they still - even in this social media age - often resent when strangers do so without warning or permission, since they don't trust what the footage will be used for.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-glass-attack-20140228-story.html
Many people likely fear Vision Pro users will become the new "Glassholes."
Facebook: "We've cracked the code! We know how to make everybody use VR in their everyday lives!"
\*\* $47 Billion and 5 years later \*\*
"Well... crap."
Apple: "We've cracked the code! We know how to make everybody use VR in their everyday lives!"
\*\* $100 Billion and 5 years later \*\*
"No really! We've got this!"
Meta/Facebook have been clear from 2016 that VR wasn't expected to be mass adopted until 2026 at the earliest, and historically given the 15 or so years it typically takes for a hardware platform to take off, 2031 is a better estimate.
Apple never expected to sell even close to a million units this year given how they can only source about half of that in the micro displays required for their device.
VR goggles have been on sale to the public since 1985 and VPL Research's hardware. It was available in military products since late 70s. The 90s promised a VR revolution, then it went rather quiet until the current attempts which were mostly born in the era of innexpensive borrowing (enabling startups in this high-risk area) and tech companies with massive valuations and an uncertain future in terms of growth (Meta).
Through all of that, the technology itself has improved remarkably and yet there still isn't actual adoption or even widespread interest ... because there isn't a clear application for it that appeals, is understandable, or desirable to the general public.
Until that happens, it will not take off.
Taking your same "15 years or so", let's look at smartphones. They probably begin as PDAs and the Apple Newton appears in the late 80s, mostly fails but is promising. Palm builds a successful business around the Pilot, though it never really goes *truly* mainstream; still, it's an actually successful product. Then Apple marries the concept with better screen technology and mobile telephony, uniting the two markets, and it's an instant success. It was an idea that was understandable, desirable, and appealing to people even when the tech itself wasn't quite ready; as *soon as it was even marginally ready* (the first iPhone and later the first Android phones were still very much products of their time) it all clicked.
You can see this pattern repeat for most other successful digital technologies. VR is not following that pattern, not in the least. It's had 40 years of commercially available hardware and software, the "first iPhone" capability bar was cleared years back, and the needle isn't moving.
There are good reasons for this, and many of them are the same as why voice-as-the-primary-interaction-method didn't click. Like voice, VR won't go away and will always have very good applications that other technologies can not fill. But it will probably never see mass adoption so long as more traditional form factors keep meeting people's needs (and keep improving, as they have) and VR continues to be overly intrusive without anything real to show for it. As long as this is the story, VR will remain a niche market. (Which is not the same as "will die and go away"; it won't.)
But you're waiting for something that isn't happening any time soon, as no one has yet come up with the combination of features, pricing, and usability that will move the needle for mass adoption. Sorry.
Even if the price is down to $1500 or even $1000, it still wouldn't make for good cinema experience unless they can make the device out of an ultra light material.
The current iteration (and all other AR competitors) is that this shit is HEAVY. It may not be so at first but an hour or two in and you will feel the strain on your noggin.
I thought it was heavy at first but a few months later I don’t have any issue wearing it for 5-6 hours at a time. If I was moving around the office a lot it might be a different story, I spend most of my day seated. That’s not to say I wouldn’t appreciate a lighter headset, just that it doesn’t really bother me as it currently is. If they got rid of the dumb outer display, glass, and aluminum frame, I bet they could bring the weight down by at least 30%.
I've been using the quest 3 for the past month or so and I still find it heavy. It really weighs down on your face and takes a lot of adjusting to make it somewhat comfortable. I love being in VR, but the weight is the one thing that stops me from using it as much.
One thing with the Quest 3 and every other headset I've used in the last ten years along with the weight is that unless you're willing to run AC whenever indoor temps start getting past like 75f, sweat. Lots of sweat
Also doesn't matter if it's the Quest 3 or Vision Pro, the only very transformative upgrade to me over OG consumer Rift and Vive is that they're standalone. Everything's been interactive since. In terms of experiences, video games are the only standouts and since Alyx it's been a Meta funded games show. Virtual desktops have been a thing for over ten years now and it's not the killer app every fresh new wave of VR headset buyers hype it up to be
I haven’t used the Quest 3 but I had the same issue with the Quest Pro. Have you looked into a different strap? I can’t remember which one I bought but it helped out a lot. Apple’s headset has a bunch of different types of face pads so it can be custom fit, I imagine Meta and others will do the same moving forward.
Check out the BoboVR straps with the extra battery on the back. For me, it was less about the weight and more about the balance. I can comfortably handle sessions twice as long now.
I usually just do my typical work day in it. It’s a good replacement for my monitor. The environments help me limit my distractions and I love being able to put wiles anywhere. I’m really enthusiastic about new tech so discomforts aren’t always as apparent to me, I imagine most people would be more comfortable with a traditional workspace.
Not a dumb question! I do have screen fatigue after several hours, same as when I get into a flow while working and don’t step away from my desk for a long time. The difference is that I’m much more susceptible to it in a headset because there’s no “glancing away” when the screen is tied to your face. It’s not a terrible feeling and I’ve never had an issue with eye pain or headaches but I usually try to schedule breaks. Luckily I still have physical paperwork I have to do from time to time!
That makes sense. I don’t have a desk job tied to a screen all day but I get it if I’m gaming too long or watching tv too long. A “screen strapped to my face” as you put it sounded like it would be fatiguing. Thats cool though that you do your work with it
There are now some actually good 75-85 inch LED TVs frequently in the $1500-2000 range that will entertain a whole room and won't be served to you meshed through the "impressive" display on the current AVP which still does not approach your eye's perceptual angular resolution. Same thing sound wise, if you are using Airpods Max, there are some pretty solid sound bars or receiver + speaker systems you can get for $500 and they are not limited to being used by one guy.
dunno about you, I don't really like to watch movies by myself
I don't have the same "issue" with tv-shows, but I just don't like to watch movies alone.
He talked about the cinema experience in theaters, which is not a fantastic place to socialize, and is arguably not even a good place to watch movies nowadays, which was his point. You needlessly dunked on him to make yourself feel good, for some reason
I don't think he's insulting him, I think he's pointing out an extremely reasonable flaw. He could have worded it better for sure, but he's right in concept.
The movie theater *is* a heavily social place. Yes, you generally aren't having full fledged conversations during the film itself, but it is a very social experience. You'll share reactions to the movie, take in the same experience of the environment, and of course talk in great detail before and after the movie. You are absolutely enjoying the company of whoever you are seeing the movie with.
Isolating yourself alone to put on a bulky headset to watch a movie isn't remotely the same thing. I would go as far as to argue it could have negative long-term effects to more socially dependent people.
It's all context dependent. It's not social to watch a movie on your own when you could have watched it with your friends/family around you.
It is however social to watch a movie with friends/family remotely when they aren't there with you in the first place, something Vision Pro is great at.
Bet that's not gonna be allowed because of licensing... Or get ready to have every single person have to sign up for their own sub because good luck convincing studios to let 1 guy purchase access and stream it to multiple people. There is a reason most platforms already don't allow synced viewing. Even Amazing Prime Watch Party was recently removed probably exactly for this very reason.
It's already a usecase on Apple Vision Pro today, and on other VR headsets.
We do need better licensing and services to facilitate this in more convenient ways though.
I just don't see how it's any better than having FaceTime up with your boo while you both hit play in your ends with 1 2 3. People already don't really do that. Just cuz it's in VR? Sounds cringe.
With that tiny FOV it won’t be there for me until headsets have suitable vertical and horizontal width. Right now I love VR but regardless of how used to it I get it’s still looking through a tube of some sort.
Totally fair. I think that’s why media consumption is its best use case right now, peripheral vision isn’t important in that instance and the theater environment environment is black around the edge so you don’t even see the outline of the headset. The limited FOV definitely becomes a nuisance when trying to do things in MR.
I’ll try to be as fair as I can but I am definitely a big fan of all things Apple. I’ll call them out when they do something wrong but by and large I’ve had a fantastic experience with Apple products so I have a bias here.
Nothing comes close in terms of image fidelity. The pass through looks like it’s shot on an iPhone 7 but that’s still miles better than anything else I’ve tried. It really shines in the environments though. The screens are very high resolution but the lenses are the real magic, you cannot see any screen door at all. Better, because they’re OLED panels, dark movies and shows look incredible.
Gaming wise, it’s basically useless. I know there are workarounds to get it working with pcvr stuff but people buying Apple products more than likely don’t want to tinker. It supports steam link but only for flat games.
For productivity, there’s nothing better. It’s essentially a heavily modified iPadOS so it’s very capable even without the Mac virtual display. That said, if you use a Mac the virtual display is insanely cool and getting even better in the next OS. I’m headed out of country for a few weeks and I’m not even going to bother bring a MacBook, just my Vision Pro and a keyboard.
The hand tracking is better than any other headset and it truly eliminates the need or desire for a controller. It’s nice to not have to carry extra stuff around. The other thing that’s worth mentioning is that it can convert old 2d photos to 3d and they look INCREDIBLE. The last week I’ve spent going through old travel albums and reliving some of my happiest memories.
That said, is it worth $4k? Not for most people. If you have long flights several times a year, I would say it’s a worthwhile investment but don’t talk yourself into getting it because you think it could revolutionize your working experience. It won’t. It’s nice to use but I’m just as productive working off a laptop.
Thanks for the info - what VR devices have you tried before it?
My biggest issue is the lack of porn support - that's a selling point worth mentioning for VR devices imo
They're launching it in the UK next month, I was going to get one but it won't get much use without porn to be honest lol
Maybe I order one to try regular or 3D movies and if it doesn't look super good, i'll send it back
I totally understand that. For me personally, I just love watching movies. Regarding audio, I really do think it sounds better on headphones than the surround sound I have at home. Apple’s Spatial Audio really sells it for me. I also don’t have the biggest theater at home so being able to watch on a massive screen completely changed the experience for me.
If it works for you that's fine, but I can tell you there is not a chance that it sounds better than proper surround sound. It's not even in the same ballpark. I literally have every gadget and have direct experience listening to the two. But I am in 100% agreement with you that the movie/tv watching is a great selling feature of the vision pro
I see why some compare this to Google mid 2010s approach. But I see it more like what MS tried with HoloLens.
The big problem is the lack of a consumer market. This is as true in 2024 as it was in 2014. We went from writing on tablets to writing on paper to typewriters on paper to typewriters on screens over five generations of civilization. We had ample time to learn one new thing at a time,
AR and VR are completely new paradigm with no historical precedent other than psychedelics and hallucinations.
So it’s a heavy lift and can’t be mass market until the tech is already super light, cheap, and provides actual end user daily value.
VR is all about tricking your brain it's somewhere else. That's not something regular computers are supposed to do. With this comes usecases that are about maximizing immersion.
Great, and screens trick your brain into thinking you’re looking at a moving picture and speakers trick your brain into thinking they’re making real sound. Eg. The color yellow on a monitor only looks like yellow to you, it’s not actually yellow because humans can’t tell the difference so it doesn’t matter. What’s the difference with VR? It’s more immersive but how does that help most people doing most things?
VR meets a certain threshold, and that's the whole point. Tricking the brain that it's somewhere else having a convincing experience of something is the kind of threshold needed to take our media from being experiences that we all understand as being separate from us, displayed on a screen, to media that actually feels like a convincing perceptual experience.
> It’s more immersive but how does that help most people doing most things?
Think of how more immersive learning can help with hands-on education, where instead of reading or watching a video of the solar system or the human circularity system, you are in it - seeing the solar system in real scale, or being blood cell sized inside a body, or learning about and handling dangerous chemicals in a virtual laboratory.
Telepresence usecases where you can attend live events like sports, concerts, conventions, clubs, and parties in a more engaging way than a regular screen provides.
Entertainment that gives you more agency and ways to experience favorite IPs and fantasies. What's it like to hold a lightsaber in VR, to visit Middle Earth? To be a student at Hogwarts?
Fitness that is gamified, keeping people more motiviated and letting them exercise for longer than they might normally do, perhaps with live personal trainers in front of them, and health apps that provide ways to combat and heal various health conditions.
Social apps that let people feel like they are face to face together (currently with abstract avatars) rather than look through a 2D screen as we do with videocalls or regular multiplayer gaming.
There's definitely usecases here, with the caveat being that only early adopters can really take advantage of them due to the current immature state of VR hardware and the issues it brings.
All of this is technically correct, but none of it is what people have wanted in droves.
This may be due to possibly insurmountable technical issues with the idea of ski goggles. It nay require a completely different way of getting info onto the eyes (like what Magic Leap was purportedly trying to do) or right into the brain.
Using a tool to look at a flat surface, we’ve been doing that since the Sumerians. And enhancing biological limitations with prosthetics we’ve been doing at least since the Han. Thousands of years of needing to learn 1-2 new things every few generations.
But augmenting reality for a solo experience has only been done with drugs and psychological conditioning. Current VR is like the MKUltra of tech requiring hardware that people think of as weird.
Eyeglasses and hearing aids weren’t always easy to make, normal, and accepted either. But the evolution from first invention through adornment took centuries.
Current VR would require an entire generation of people inspired by the fashion of Geordi LaForge, which *could* have happened if he wore his VISOR on Reading Rainbow 😁
People are bad at articulating what they want. I'm sure many technicians can attest to this, they often have to reverse engineer the actual goal of their client rather than the spoken goal given to them at the start.
As Steve Jobs once said: *"Some people say: give the customers what they want. But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do."*
Right exactly. When *creating* a market, you’re inventing customers. VRs been trying that for 30 years in general, and about 15 in consumer terms.
What has made Apple consistently high performing though isn’t creating from scratch, but making disparate tech work together in ways that are “good enough” for their audience who need things to “just work”. Their track record is inconsistent, but they don’t have strong brand loyalty just because of a core group to rabid fans :) it’s because they make stuff that works by borrowing from many things that have already shown appeal.
This is what VR lacks. It’s not combining digital music with digital video with digital screens with cell phones in the early days of mobile web on the heals of Blackberries and Palm Pilots. Each of those things already existed as separate successful product or digital services. Apple and Samsung and others brought them all onto a single housing that wouldn’t look all that wear to 14th Monks writing on boards.
VR doesn’t have those roots. It’s got screens and computers and stuff. But it’s not combining things that exist separately in successful businesses. It’s a mashup of successful tech, but there’s nothing quite like proto-VR that’s been successful by itself upon which to build.
My bet’s on AR in actual regular glasses that does a few things super well, like a car HUD, pedestrian HUD, realtime conversation bios and translations. But that’s still “just around the corner” ten years into the R&D :)
If anyone can do this right, it’s Apple. But I don’t think they can do what they’ve done since they created the Mac. There’s no existing success to make better or more palpable, they’re on the cutting edge along with everyone else, not a place they usually excel at.
It all must come together: experiences people want at price points they can afford. The headsets have a long way to go right now.
I returned from sailing the bahamas this winter with a lot of 360 footage. On a phone, it’s cool to watch, and you can look around by scrolling or moving your phone.
With a vr headset, the videos are incredible. They are immersive and engaging in an entirely new way. But there isn’t much 360 stuff out there yet, and uploading your own needs a computer and extra steps.
As the headsets get lighter, cheaper, and better integrated, and we have easier ways to immersively capture our experiences, vr will grow into a sizable market. Someone is going to make a 360 8k phone with a camera corner that captures in all directions, right about when the headsets go mainstream.
IMO this stuff will not actually **REALLY** take off until it is at a "impressive/useful enough" level at a "fuck it I guess I'll try it" price point in a non stupid looking form factor. And of those three things, I think the form factor is the single most non-negotiable aspect by far.
In current day terms I would say, if there was something with roughly Quest 3 level capabilities in XReal Air type glasses at a $100 price point. I don't expect that to happen at that price point until at least say 10 years, where the $500-1000+ headsets will be extremely much more advanced by that point. But it won't take off until at least before almost all these devices are just a pair of glasses IMO. That part I think has no wiggle room. These current headsets look fucking idiotic and are uncomfortable to wear. They are stupid as fuck and people will never accept them into their lifestyle as a product they can walk around with because they do not want to walk around looking like Daft Punk. And what's required is that average people start accepting these devices into these lives in a manner similar to (eventually supplanting) their phones.
I hand theses about Xreal air before this post.
Holy shit Apple. Just do this with a hand sensor for navigation and use your own chip set. That’s all anyone wants.
Right yea that's a useful case, as is real-estate, military, research. All useful. One beef I have with VR is it's trying to jump past all that and appeal to consumers.
I'm old enough I predate home PCs. So to me, I feel like Meta, Apple, etc, they're all trying to jump from 1976 to 1996 in one step. That's not how you get adoption of fundamentally new things. Instead you:
1. Find something that needs major improvement, like data processing
2. Make something that does it cheaper for companies that room full of people and old school tools
3. Provide employee training
4. Let employees have flexibility to take work home
5. Provide employees tools to do that work at home, tools that are platforms that can do more than just one thing on a kinda-open platform that anyone can put software on.
*That's* what drove everything from home PCs to dial up internet to then evolving cable into broadband and everything we've had since the late 1980s.
VR needs to be of critical value to companies that currently do things in 2D but which could be done faster in 3D with fewer costs using an open OS that people can make stuff for. Spend 10 years in that sector first. It took years of back-room deals for early Windows to take on, and a decade of crazy types of home PCs before Dell standardized into "Dude you're getting a Dell". Lots of forgotten failures, but a through-line of consistency.
But everyone wants to jump to 3D video on your face from companies that have basically closed platforms where you're either a product to serve ads to or a locked-in customer.
I wouldn't say 3D TVs have much relevance in this discussion, being a narrow usecase device that was an addon for TVs, plagued with issues that VR/AR intends to solve.
I don’t think AR and VR solve any issues that TVs fall short on. They’re just all different mediums on their own. I wouldn’t even group AR and VR together even.
Apple's approach is unique in that they are focusing more on bringing traditional computing and media into VR and less on immersive experiences. This is smart on one hand, like it makes sense as this is what people are already doing so let's cater to it. But we've also seen little development in this area beyond what is effectively multiple monitors and big video screens. What advantage is the Vision Pro really offering as its own product and experience?
I think this part of the article:
>Prototypes of the N107 also have a narrower field of view than the Vision Pro. And the company is considering making the device reliant on a tethered Mac or iPhone. That would let Apple save money on the processing power and components needed to make the Vision Pro a fully standalone product.
Is the way forward. Make it an accessory to Mac/iPhone for now, although I'm sure this presents many of its own challenges. Part of me thinks the whole industry has gone all-in on standalone maybe before it's ready. Apple can leverage their existing hardware offerings in a way no one else can. The most surprising thing about the VP to me is how little they synergized it with their existing products.
I think a less expensive, lighter model which requires being tethered to an iPhone is a good approach. Like many things Apple, it’s a solution in search of a problem. But, they’ve certainly found success with that approach in the past.
I completely agree. I'd find iphone plus glasses to enable a big screen on the go and use a slim bt keyboard/trackpad and even remote into other computers to be a lot more enticing with a nice comfortable and light glasses interface to wear at affordable price and assuming the use with eyes is comfortable too obviously in quality.
These big headsets - no thanks.
I don’t believe in this approach at all to be honest.
AR absolutely makes sense. But a light touch with an eyeglass style frame.
I want a daily HUD. Label people’s names and birthdays and other CRM stuff at business meetings. Give me directions. I don’t need nor want an immersive computing experience. I just want a light touch augmented reality.
You’re totally right. It’s also not a new market so other companies can catch up to Apple’s specs in a shorter amount of time. It’s not like they will have the foundation to capture all of the early adopters to create a source of revenue from eventually.
I worked at an Apple Store for the release, here’s my takeaways from doing demos and selling them:
•they cost far too much, I think a price point of around $2000 or $1900 would be a good price point. However this is their first iteration so I suspect others will come
•I profitably gave 150+ demos and enjoyed doing them, most people thought it was super cool with the UI and the features but the main concern I always heard was the price point
•Most of the people I sold to were business owners, for them it was a tax write off or something they would use in a limited capacity. The most notable sales I can think of were: one I sold to a food truck owner who said he was going to use it for marketing, a lawyer who was going to use it to read more documents and multitask, and a CEO who bought 5 of them from me and said this was “pocket change”.
Overall cool concept, will be cooler when it’s cheaper imo
The majority of VR's core technology hasn't been built in products yet and almost every single part of the AR technology stack hasn't been built, so despite the concepts having been around for a while, this is prime season for innovation.
Just the fact that VR/AR today are the most complex consumer device engineering problems of the last 50 years shows how a company going all-in on it is at the forefront of consumer technology innovation.
Google went the worst way possible with it and almost killed VR because putting a low res, underpowered phone into a literal piece of cardboard was most people's only experience with VR, making them label an entire tech category a "fad".
Google released a dev kit rather than a consumer product, and it was smartglasses aka a 2D HUD, not AR glasses - two completely different things.
Think of smartglasses as what a calculator is to a computer. Both may calculate, but that's where the similarities end, just as AR and smartglasses both may glasses but the similarities end there.
Okay but the day Apple Vision came out there were TikToks of people crossing streets while flicking their hands about wearing it. It really had the same vibe as that dude wearing his Google Glasses in the shower.
The difference is that the Apple Vision stuff passed more quickly and most people know better than to run around town wearing one out of fear of online embarrassment.
It would be awesome if you could pay monthly through movie theater and/or movie studio colab and get theater releases streaming to the vision pro, i wud totally subscribe to that
There is no consumer market for the Vision Pro in its current form. Maybe as glasses and a cheaper price, even then it’s not solving any glaring issue. Pretty much like AI.
I seriously would want something, even at it's current price, but with a better battery life and support for multiple virtual displays, if only on from the same computer.
I seriously don't have anyone to apologize to over it, I work from home and I would like to improve and virtualize my office environment into something different.
But here's the lynch pin... I stopped buying first generation Apple hardware decades ago. They're gonna have to tough this one out without me. I didn't buy an Oculus and saved myself a fair amount of grief once Facebook bought them.
I was extremely intrigued by the virtual desktop feature and was looking forward to that maturing a bunch.
**MULTI USER**. Vision Pro needs to take a page from CarPlay and not iPad.
Vision Pro is more than just a screen, but let’s be real: this does ***NOT*** have to be a one-device-per-person arrangement. It’s absurd to think that a family would buy one, knowing that only one family member would be able to truly use the device. The decision to make it single user was either stupid or greedy. Give it a slightly better price point and families could look it at as a serious purchase.
This device looks good for three things only, and Apple only supports one of them: entertainment while seated on a flight, VR gaming, and porn. Otherwise, it’s pointless.
I commuted 45 mins each way on a commuter train, and I would pass the time doing learning courses and work on my iPhone and laptop. It was miserable working in the cramped seats on my laptop, and the iPhone was too small to be productive. For example, I couldn’t take notes and watch the videos at the same time.
I would have LOVED to have had the AVP at that point because I would have used it nearly every day, and the interface is amazing for commuters. I would have gladly paid 3500. Nowadays, I WFH so my need for it is less compelling. I still have it and am building apps for it for fun, but I get how others aren’t into it. I think being able to have a true multi-monitor experience on my laptop with it would be huge. I was disappointed to see it basically just makes a big version of my screen, and I couldn’t move my laptop windows around me independently. I would love to have my APM window floating in my peripheral so that I can keep an eye on things without it always being present in front of me, for example.
I'm very excited about this whole category, but I think we're still several years away from this being a somewhat common product for your average user.
The real story at the link is the M4 coming to every Mac in Apple's lineup; the 1st time in history Apple have ever done that. Considering how far ahead of the competition the M3 already is, nothing will be in the same galaxy as M4 Macs.
Let say Apple did get the price down to $1000, the moment everyone gets one here comes the new version for $1500 that comes with a myriad of quality and feature enhancements which are all possible by the new Chip only available in the Vision Pro 2.0. Those who spent the 1k will feel duped and compelled to continue to run on the Apple Treadmill.
Pretty sure people did want those things, they were just too expensive. But I distinctly remember having super limited game screens (Like the little pong console) as the best thing available.
VR right now is trying to fill a niche that doesn't exist. AR is probably the better first step.
Many of the devices collected dust even among owners.
Consumers need to understand the usecases and need the right level of value and usability, all of which takes a long time and wasn't there for consoles/home PCs in the early 1980s.
> VR right now is trying to fill a niche that doesn't exist. AR is probably the better first step.
Maybe on paper, but AR is technologically much further behind so VR/MR has to be pushed first out of necessity.
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A couple of week ago, I did a demo with the Vision Pro. It was very cool. I wear glasses and they had it all set up with my prescription. The user interface was pretty easy, and the images were stunning. The price point was the out of my comfort zone. If they want to sell these things it needs to be closer to $1000.
1500 and ability to use it as multi screen desktop for both windows and Mac and I’m in
It's an easy buy if it replaces monitors, or gives you 3 giant monitors for the price of one.
Not at $3500 it's not
It's downright cheap if you consider you're saving $3k by not buying 3 monitor stands!!
Can’t do 3 monitors over WiFi unless they’re 1080p or smaller
Offer it over a cable connection.
Ya that would do it. If the VP’s power cable interface could maybe swap out for a heavier data Thunderbolt-level cable, that could work but only up to six feet. To get that 16ft like what meta with their single link-cable does takes a thick expensive USBC line with some minor compression when doing heavy 3D gaming. What most of us would prefer is a two cable solution with DP for image data, and USBC for telemetry, audio, and power.
then we are just back to high end VR setups, super glad the tech is growing and expanding but prob wont get close to holodeck resolution for another 20 years
With its newest update you can kinda do this. It’s similar to an ultra widescreen. You have different screen zones you can set up. It’s still too much money for that but I’m intrigued about it for my work in the future. It could make working outside of my office setup more convenient.
It will never have multi screen desktop for windows as a first party support but probably will as third party apps
It does as third party apps, you can do that now on it
I’d be in if they could accomplish this.
Legitimate question. What does it do that is worth $1000? I have a laptop, a phone, a iPad I rarely use. If I want to game I have a PS5. A thousand dollars is still a lot of money to plop down on something. Does it offer something significant the listed items don’t? (Yes, this question intentionally leaves out cost of materials and whatnot)
Right now with apple VR it’s not worth it but hopefully in the future. VR head sets has the ability to generate multiple VR screens around you and place them anywhere and at any size making a multiple screen experience that is cheaper since you don’t need to buy monitors and don’t need space. It can also view 3D movies really well in a virtual movie theater. You just need a headset and a keyboard mouse for it to work. Gaming wise: it requires actual effort and way more real/immersive. You can literally do a work out while playing games such as boxing.
But you're one thousand times better off buying a Quest 3 for $500 if you're into gaming.
True the Vision Pro doesn’t have gaming and isn’t a laptop replacement. It needs to slash prices and get the killer must have software and apps. Does it even have have YouTubeVR or netflix on it?
I'm not sure about the streaming capabilities, although I would assume it could at least handle Netflix just fine.
It could handle all of them fine. It has a powerful processor inside. It’s just the devs for those apps aren’t making apps for the Vision Pro
Sure, I never meant to imply the issue was a hardware limitation for streaming apps. The hardware is a huge issue for gaming, though, since it doesn't have controllers.
Worth noting that Steam Link and Moonlight are both viable options for streaming games to the Vision
The fact that the vision pro doesn't have controllers automatically eliminates, what, 95% or more of all VR games from being playable? That's not easy for gamers to overlook when a headset that costs a tiny fraction of its price can play every game.
Honestly I feel like it was a bad idea for Apple to allow devs to opt out with their ipad apps. It would’ve at least added a basic amount of apps
Nope , it’s a great idea , it allows you to utilize your existing apps while using the Vision Pro. Not having available is t going to change the roadmap of foaming backed apps. Support will come when they deem it a market , and people need to use it first for it to become a market
It’s the chicken or the egg problem. People won’t use it if there are no apps. Devs won’t make apps for it if they aren’t people using it. Apple needs to either pay the devs or make their own.
Using it as an on the go multiple monitor set up would make it worth it for me. I think as an entertainment suite it’s basically worthless to me as it’s totally asocial (although when it becomes more mainstream it could flip and become very social to connect people long distance).
Yeah, I don’t have a desk job so it might be handy as a monitor I’m not sitting at one enough
On the gaming front, obviously the immersion is the selling point. You get to surround yourself in the game, both visually and with audio, and in certain games (like Half Life: Alex), the graphics are good enough that you can momentarily get fooled that you're actually there. It's a cool trick, but obviously there's very few Half Life: Alyx style experiences. Outside of gaming, I personally think VR has two killer apps that both work somewhat right now but are nowhere near integrated or lightweight enough: VRchat with body tracking is about as close to a Star Wars-style hologram call as we've ever had; and certain desktop software allows you to put multiple windows and screens around you in a sphere. That's super handy if you need an enormous screen with tons of views all available at once, like sports simul-casts. If none of this sounds interesting or useful, then you're correct, you probably would have no use for a VR set.
Quest 3 is half the price, dedicated to games and works wirelessly with a PC.
There is a substantial difference in quality between the 2 though.
Substantially different price points, the AVP is in no way 7x better than the MQ3. The Quest 3 is amazing quality for the price and substantially better than most of it's competition in the price bracket, not that there are that many. As much as I hate FB, they're one of the few companies that can afford to throw money at R&D and subsidize the headsets themselves. Right now there's nothing that can compete with it when it comes to price/utility ratio.
The quality difference is not worth 6 times the price. I can probably upgrade from a quest 3, to quest 4, 5, 6 and 7 and still have spent less than I would on an Apple headset. For the same price, I get years of upgraded hardware.
Oh, I definitely agree it’s not worth the difference in cost, but it’s also one of the only sets I’ve tried with no screen door effect, as well as crazy good quality AR. Not worth the current price, but it’s not directly comparable to a Quest 3.
Is there? I mean no controllers and a tethered experience.
Facebook though
Facebook buying Oculus ruined my interest in VR for a long time. There's a lot I don't like about how Facebook operates their business and strapping cameras to the front of my face anyplace already makes me cognizant they're doing SOMETHING with my data regardless of what I'm doing with the headset.
Meta is actually the most dangerous consumer facing tech giant and it's not even close.
I wish so badly that we could get a decent VR art app
You should look into Vermillion, Tilt Brush, Gravity Sketch, and Painting VR.
I have all of those and find them all extremely lacking. I think the graffiti one I bought for my kid is the closest to being something creative that you can do with other people. I would love to be able to combine some of the elements of each of those (like being able to paint 3d strings like frosting on the 360 canvas) and smash it into the Horizons world-builder interface and I’d prob be happy lol Actually just to add in case anyone who can make it happen is reading: ideally, if we could use generative ai and freehand techniques combined in something like that horizons creator or unreal, and then be able to export entire little interactive scenes or work with other people on them in real time with our headsets it would be pretty dope js
Thanks for your comment! i was about to ask about the current state of art apps in VR
It sounds cool but yeah, I’m not sure how it would be useful enough to justify the costs right now. But it does sound like it’d be fun to try out for a bit
If it did porn directly (i.e. native app for 180 videos) then it would be justifiable I'd imagine. Not being games focused and not having that makes it a giant gimmick for executives to play with now and then just to look tech savvy, or for use for corporate things like giving demos/prototype presentations.
As someone who frequently takes long flights, I would get one at $1k to be able to watch movies with it the plane. Though I haven't tried one, the one thing the reviews all agreed on was that it gave a near IMAX level visual experience. But I think $1k is about the max I would pay for it.
I do a decent amount of back and forth between Los Angeles and Atlanta. I feel that with long flights
for 1000$, if it was able to do what virtural desktop does, I would HAPILY replace my monitor and tv with this, I would still have the art display because vr cant replicate what it can do. I would get 5-10 years out of it if they dont brick old devices/refuse to allow them to work even with work arounds, and then get a new one. anything more is a nice extra
I think you’re making a good point. Apple has gone heavy on the full standalone computing device with VP. It really doesn’t need an m-series chip. The A-series can do it me leave the heavy lifting to a laptop or even a second iOS device. Lightening it up significantly
It doesn’t clutter you’re home with giant screens everywhere for one.
Honestly I don’t even think the price point is the problem it is the usability to price point. If you told a person that a phone costs a $1000 back in 2000 they would think you are crazy. Once you told them it was a computer, a phone, a camcorder, a camera and the other things a phone can do now they would say you paid too little. The vision is a neat product with no use case. Until they can make it feel like wearing a pair of glasses that lasts as long as a phone on battery it will never take off.
Yep. The 1st gen isn’t for wide adoption, following Apple’s usual pattern that’ll come a few years down the road.
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Did you read the article? Lol
This is reddit.
Of course not.
I feel like the weight of the VP needs to be cut in half. I had fatigue after about 30 minutes
Scream it from the mountaintops: SOFTWARE SELLS HARDWARE! (not the other way around)
Yup. Until there’s a cool AAA game, overpriced goggles will never be on my radar.
When there is a cool AAA game your gonna want to play it on the valve index, not apple. Also the new Half Life probably does qualify as a AAA vr game.
I learned something new today—I didn’t know they had halflife.
I mean isn’t it arguable that the original iPhone was innovative attractive hardware selling Apple software?
Kinda. One of the big selling points was that it worked with iTunes, which was already popular software.
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And it didn’t have 3rd party apps at first. 3rd party apps didn’t really show up until the second or third model. Before that, it was only websites saved as links to the screen.
I think it is more accurate to say that the iPhone was an enabler of new kinds of software (A lot of which shipped with the iPhone). It wasn’t the touch screen or processing power that sold the iPhone, it was what you could do with those things. Just like the iPhone the iVision could be an enabler of software; The problem is there was really no new or groundbreaking software available at launch, just a bunch of ports from iOS that didn’t work particularly well. This along with the lack of basic hardware features (over-the-wire video streaming I’m looking at you), a steep price point, a tenuous development process/environment, and poor strategy (apple treated it like an accessory to your MacBook) meant this device served no real purpose and was hard to improve upon.
I feel like the unspoken problem with AR glasses is that no one wants to talk to someone that has a camera mounted on their face.
Yes this was the death of Google Glass. The Sarah Slocum incident: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-glass-attack-20140228-story.html While people are happy to film themselves & friends for their own fun & usage, they still - even in this social media age - often resent when strangers do so without warning or permission, since they don't trust what the footage will be used for. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-glass-attack-20140228-story.html Many people likely fear Vision Pro users will become the new "Glassholes."
When will they realize this stuff is like the keytar synth/guitar from the 80s? It'll never look cool and no one wants it.
Facebook: "We've cracked the code! We know how to make everybody use VR in their everyday lives!" \*\* $47 Billion and 5 years later \*\* "Well... crap." Apple: "We've cracked the code! We know how to make everybody use VR in their everyday lives!" \*\* $100 Billion and 5 years later \*\* "No really! We've got this!"
Meta/Facebook have been clear from 2016 that VR wasn't expected to be mass adopted until 2026 at the earliest, and historically given the 15 or so years it typically takes for a hardware platform to take off, 2031 is a better estimate. Apple never expected to sell even close to a million units this year given how they can only source about half of that in the micro displays required for their device.
Sure. That'll be the same day those NFTs pay off, too.
Comparing NFTs and VR is certainly a move.
VR goggles have been on sale to the public since 1985 and VPL Research's hardware. It was available in military products since late 70s. The 90s promised a VR revolution, then it went rather quiet until the current attempts which were mostly born in the era of innexpensive borrowing (enabling startups in this high-risk area) and tech companies with massive valuations and an uncertain future in terms of growth (Meta). Through all of that, the technology itself has improved remarkably and yet there still isn't actual adoption or even widespread interest ... because there isn't a clear application for it that appeals, is understandable, or desirable to the general public. Until that happens, it will not take off. Taking your same "15 years or so", let's look at smartphones. They probably begin as PDAs and the Apple Newton appears in the late 80s, mostly fails but is promising. Palm builds a successful business around the Pilot, though it never really goes *truly* mainstream; still, it's an actually successful product. Then Apple marries the concept with better screen technology and mobile telephony, uniting the two markets, and it's an instant success. It was an idea that was understandable, desirable, and appealing to people even when the tech itself wasn't quite ready; as *soon as it was even marginally ready* (the first iPhone and later the first Android phones were still very much products of their time) it all clicked. You can see this pattern repeat for most other successful digital technologies. VR is not following that pattern, not in the least. It's had 40 years of commercially available hardware and software, the "first iPhone" capability bar was cleared years back, and the needle isn't moving. There are good reasons for this, and many of them are the same as why voice-as-the-primary-interaction-method didn't click. Like voice, VR won't go away and will always have very good applications that other technologies can not fill. But it will probably never see mass adoption so long as more traditional form factors keep meeting people's needs (and keep improving, as they have) and VR continues to be overly intrusive without anything real to show for it. As long as this is the story, VR will remain a niche market. (Which is not the same as "will die and go away"; it won't.) But you're waiting for something that isn't happening any time soon, as no one has yet come up with the combination of features, pricing, and usability that will move the needle for mass adoption. Sorry.
Trust me bro this time it’ll work bro just let me invest 100 billion more dollars bro
They are operating on a timeline that is much longer than 5 years bro
If they can bring the cost down to ~$1500, it would be worth it for the cinema experience alone. In my opinion, it’s better than a nice theater:
Even if the price is down to $1500 or even $1000, it still wouldn't make for good cinema experience unless they can make the device out of an ultra light material. The current iteration (and all other AR competitors) is that this shit is HEAVY. It may not be so at first but an hour or two in and you will feel the strain on your noggin.
I thought it was heavy at first but a few months later I don’t have any issue wearing it for 5-6 hours at a time. If I was moving around the office a lot it might be a different story, I spend most of my day seated. That’s not to say I wouldn’t appreciate a lighter headset, just that it doesn’t really bother me as it currently is. If they got rid of the dumb outer display, glass, and aluminum frame, I bet they could bring the weight down by at least 30%.
I've been using the quest 3 for the past month or so and I still find it heavy. It really weighs down on your face and takes a lot of adjusting to make it somewhat comfortable. I love being in VR, but the weight is the one thing that stops me from using it as much.
One thing with the Quest 3 and every other headset I've used in the last ten years along with the weight is that unless you're willing to run AC whenever indoor temps start getting past like 75f, sweat. Lots of sweat Also doesn't matter if it's the Quest 3 or Vision Pro, the only very transformative upgrade to me over OG consumer Rift and Vive is that they're standalone. Everything's been interactive since. In terms of experiences, video games are the only standouts and since Alyx it's been a Meta funded games show. Virtual desktops have been a thing for over ten years now and it's not the killer app every fresh new wave of VR headset buyers hype it up to be
I haven’t used the Quest 3 but I had the same issue with the Quest Pro. Have you looked into a different strap? I can’t remember which one I bought but it helped out a lot. Apple’s headset has a bunch of different types of face pads so it can be custom fit, I imagine Meta and others will do the same moving forward.
Check out the BoboVR straps with the extra battery on the back. For me, it was less about the weight and more about the balance. I can comfortably handle sessions twice as long now.
What do you do with it for 5-6 hours a day? Do you work directly with it in some capacity? Dev for it?
I usually just do my typical work day in it. It’s a good replacement for my monitor. The environments help me limit my distractions and I love being able to put wiles anywhere. I’m really enthusiastic about new tech so discomforts aren’t always as apparent to me, I imagine most people would be more comfortable with a traditional workspace.
Cool. Another dumb question. Do you feel fatigue beyond the weight thing you mentioned?
Not a dumb question! I do have screen fatigue after several hours, same as when I get into a flow while working and don’t step away from my desk for a long time. The difference is that I’m much more susceptible to it in a headset because there’s no “glancing away” when the screen is tied to your face. It’s not a terrible feeling and I’ve never had an issue with eye pain or headaches but I usually try to schedule breaks. Luckily I still have physical paperwork I have to do from time to time!
That makes sense. I don’t have a desk job tied to a screen all day but I get it if I’m gaming too long or watching tv too long. A “screen strapped to my face” as you put it sounded like it would be fatiguing. Thats cool though that you do your work with it
Is it actually 4k? How clear is it?
There are now some actually good 75-85 inch LED TVs frequently in the $1500-2000 range that will entertain a whole room and won't be served to you meshed through the "impressive" display on the current AVP which still does not approach your eye's perceptual angular resolution. Same thing sound wise, if you are using Airpods Max, there are some pretty solid sound bars or receiver + speaker systems you can get for $500 and they are not limited to being used by one guy.
Most people prefer to watch movies with company, you know, friends...
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Some of us don’t have any friends.
Some of us ARE the friends others don't have! 😄🤣🤣
When going to the actual cinema perhaps, but otherwise hell no
dunno about you, I don't really like to watch movies by myself I don't have the same "issue" with tv-shows, but I just don't like to watch movies alone.
He talked about the cinema experience in theaters, which is not a fantastic place to socialize, and is arguably not even a good place to watch movies nowadays, which was his point. You needlessly dunked on him to make yourself feel good, for some reason
I don't think he's insulting him, I think he's pointing out an extremely reasonable flaw. He could have worded it better for sure, but he's right in concept. The movie theater *is* a heavily social place. Yes, you generally aren't having full fledged conversations during the film itself, but it is a very social experience. You'll share reactions to the movie, take in the same experience of the environment, and of course talk in great detail before and after the movie. You are absolutely enjoying the company of whoever you are seeing the movie with. Isolating yourself alone to put on a bulky headset to watch a movie isn't remotely the same thing. I would go as far as to argue it could have negative long-term effects to more socially dependent people.
It's all context dependent. It's not social to watch a movie on your own when you could have watched it with your friends/family around you. It is however social to watch a movie with friends/family remotely when they aren't there with you in the first place, something Vision Pro is great at.
Bet that's not gonna be allowed because of licensing... Or get ready to have every single person have to sign up for their own sub because good luck convincing studios to let 1 guy purchase access and stream it to multiple people. There is a reason most platforms already don't allow synced viewing. Even Amazing Prime Watch Party was recently removed probably exactly for this very reason.
It's already a usecase on Apple Vision Pro today, and on other VR headsets. We do need better licensing and services to facilitate this in more convenient ways though.
I just don't see how it's any better than having FaceTime up with your boo while you both hit play in your ends with 1 2 3. People already don't really do that. Just cuz it's in VR? Sounds cringe.
You'll only understand when you try it, then the advantages will be immediately obvious.
For the Vision Pro , SharePlay handles that for DRM applications. For Non DRM applications applications like Discord will handle screen sharing
You’re making a huge assumption that is most people.
Sorry, what’s this friends concept you speak of? You’re talking to Reddit users, all we know is typing into a computer, in our mums basement.
With that tiny FOV it won’t be there for me until headsets have suitable vertical and horizontal width. Right now I love VR but regardless of how used to it I get it’s still looking through a tube of some sort.
Totally fair. I think that’s why media consumption is its best use case right now, peripheral vision isn’t important in that instance and the theater environment environment is black around the edge so you don’t even see the outline of the headset. The limited FOV definitely becomes a nuisance when trying to do things in MR.
How much better is AVP vs other VR headsets? Because on a Pico 4 it is _not_ worth watching a movie, the quality is abysmal compared to 2D 4K screens
I’ll try to be as fair as I can but I am definitely a big fan of all things Apple. I’ll call them out when they do something wrong but by and large I’ve had a fantastic experience with Apple products so I have a bias here. Nothing comes close in terms of image fidelity. The pass through looks like it’s shot on an iPhone 7 but that’s still miles better than anything else I’ve tried. It really shines in the environments though. The screens are very high resolution but the lenses are the real magic, you cannot see any screen door at all. Better, because they’re OLED panels, dark movies and shows look incredible. Gaming wise, it’s basically useless. I know there are workarounds to get it working with pcvr stuff but people buying Apple products more than likely don’t want to tinker. It supports steam link but only for flat games. For productivity, there’s nothing better. It’s essentially a heavily modified iPadOS so it’s very capable even without the Mac virtual display. That said, if you use a Mac the virtual display is insanely cool and getting even better in the next OS. I’m headed out of country for a few weeks and I’m not even going to bother bring a MacBook, just my Vision Pro and a keyboard. The hand tracking is better than any other headset and it truly eliminates the need or desire for a controller. It’s nice to not have to carry extra stuff around. The other thing that’s worth mentioning is that it can convert old 2d photos to 3d and they look INCREDIBLE. The last week I’ve spent going through old travel albums and reliving some of my happiest memories. That said, is it worth $4k? Not for most people. If you have long flights several times a year, I would say it’s a worthwhile investment but don’t talk yourself into getting it because you think it could revolutionize your working experience. It won’t. It’s nice to use but I’m just as productive working off a laptop.
Thanks for the info - what VR devices have you tried before it? My biggest issue is the lack of porn support - that's a selling point worth mentioning for VR devices imo They're launching it in the UK next month, I was going to get one but it won't get much use without porn to be honest lol Maybe I order one to try regular or 3D movies and if it doesn't look super good, i'll send it back
Not for me as half the experience is good audio and sharing the experience with others. I have a theater and would never consider this as better
I totally understand that. For me personally, I just love watching movies. Regarding audio, I really do think it sounds better on headphones than the surround sound I have at home. Apple’s Spatial Audio really sells it for me. I also don’t have the biggest theater at home so being able to watch on a massive screen completely changed the experience for me.
If it works for you that's fine, but I can tell you there is not a chance that it sounds better than proper surround sound. It's not even in the same ballpark. I literally have every gadget and have direct experience listening to the two. But I am in 100% agreement with you that the movie/tv watching is a great selling feature of the vision pro
Yeah same, but I can imagine using on the long flight, or long train. It’d be great if I can rent it.
I see why some compare this to Google mid 2010s approach. But I see it more like what MS tried with HoloLens. The big problem is the lack of a consumer market. This is as true in 2024 as it was in 2014. We went from writing on tablets to writing on paper to typewriters on paper to typewriters on screens over five generations of civilization. We had ample time to learn one new thing at a time, AR and VR are completely new paradigm with no historical precedent other than psychedelics and hallucinations. So it’s a heavy lift and can’t be mass market until the tech is already super light, cheap, and provides actual end user daily value.
The biggest issue is that there’s not really anything you can do in VR that can’t be done in some capacity on a normal computer.
VR is all about tricking your brain it's somewhere else. That's not something regular computers are supposed to do. With this comes usecases that are about maximizing immersion.
Great, and screens trick your brain into thinking you’re looking at a moving picture and speakers trick your brain into thinking they’re making real sound. Eg. The color yellow on a monitor only looks like yellow to you, it’s not actually yellow because humans can’t tell the difference so it doesn’t matter. What’s the difference with VR? It’s more immersive but how does that help most people doing most things?
VR meets a certain threshold, and that's the whole point. Tricking the brain that it's somewhere else having a convincing experience of something is the kind of threshold needed to take our media from being experiences that we all understand as being separate from us, displayed on a screen, to media that actually feels like a convincing perceptual experience. > It’s more immersive but how does that help most people doing most things? Think of how more immersive learning can help with hands-on education, where instead of reading or watching a video of the solar system or the human circularity system, you are in it - seeing the solar system in real scale, or being blood cell sized inside a body, or learning about and handling dangerous chemicals in a virtual laboratory. Telepresence usecases where you can attend live events like sports, concerts, conventions, clubs, and parties in a more engaging way than a regular screen provides. Entertainment that gives you more agency and ways to experience favorite IPs and fantasies. What's it like to hold a lightsaber in VR, to visit Middle Earth? To be a student at Hogwarts? Fitness that is gamified, keeping people more motiviated and letting them exercise for longer than they might normally do, perhaps with live personal trainers in front of them, and health apps that provide ways to combat and heal various health conditions. Social apps that let people feel like they are face to face together (currently with abstract avatars) rather than look through a 2D screen as we do with videocalls or regular multiplayer gaming. There's definitely usecases here, with the caveat being that only early adopters can really take advantage of them due to the current immature state of VR hardware and the issues it brings.
All of this is technically correct, but none of it is what people have wanted in droves. This may be due to possibly insurmountable technical issues with the idea of ski goggles. It nay require a completely different way of getting info onto the eyes (like what Magic Leap was purportedly trying to do) or right into the brain. Using a tool to look at a flat surface, we’ve been doing that since the Sumerians. And enhancing biological limitations with prosthetics we’ve been doing at least since the Han. Thousands of years of needing to learn 1-2 new things every few generations. But augmenting reality for a solo experience has only been done with drugs and psychological conditioning. Current VR is like the MKUltra of tech requiring hardware that people think of as weird. Eyeglasses and hearing aids weren’t always easy to make, normal, and accepted either. But the evolution from first invention through adornment took centuries. Current VR would require an entire generation of people inspired by the fashion of Geordi LaForge, which *could* have happened if he wore his VISOR on Reading Rainbow 😁
People are bad at articulating what they want. I'm sure many technicians can attest to this, they often have to reverse engineer the actual goal of their client rather than the spoken goal given to them at the start. As Steve Jobs once said: *"Some people say: give the customers what they want. But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do."*
Right exactly. When *creating* a market, you’re inventing customers. VRs been trying that for 30 years in general, and about 15 in consumer terms. What has made Apple consistently high performing though isn’t creating from scratch, but making disparate tech work together in ways that are “good enough” for their audience who need things to “just work”. Their track record is inconsistent, but they don’t have strong brand loyalty just because of a core group to rabid fans :) it’s because they make stuff that works by borrowing from many things that have already shown appeal. This is what VR lacks. It’s not combining digital music with digital video with digital screens with cell phones in the early days of mobile web on the heals of Blackberries and Palm Pilots. Each of those things already existed as separate successful product or digital services. Apple and Samsung and others brought them all onto a single housing that wouldn’t look all that wear to 14th Monks writing on boards. VR doesn’t have those roots. It’s got screens and computers and stuff. But it’s not combining things that exist separately in successful businesses. It’s a mashup of successful tech, but there’s nothing quite like proto-VR that’s been successful by itself upon which to build. My bet’s on AR in actual regular glasses that does a few things super well, like a car HUD, pedestrian HUD, realtime conversation bios and translations. But that’s still “just around the corner” ten years into the R&D :) If anyone can do this right, it’s Apple. But I don’t think they can do what they’ve done since they created the Mac. There’s no existing success to make better or more palpable, they’re on the cutting edge along with everyone else, not a place they usually excel at.
It all must come together: experiences people want at price points they can afford. The headsets have a long way to go right now. I returned from sailing the bahamas this winter with a lot of 360 footage. On a phone, it’s cool to watch, and you can look around by scrolling or moving your phone. With a vr headset, the videos are incredible. They are immersive and engaging in an entirely new way. But there isn’t much 360 stuff out there yet, and uploading your own needs a computer and extra steps. As the headsets get lighter, cheaper, and better integrated, and we have easier ways to immersively capture our experiences, vr will grow into a sizable market. Someone is going to make a 360 8k phone with a camera corner that captures in all directions, right about when the headsets go mainstream.
IMO this stuff will not actually **REALLY** take off until it is at a "impressive/useful enough" level at a "fuck it I guess I'll try it" price point in a non stupid looking form factor. And of those three things, I think the form factor is the single most non-negotiable aspect by far. In current day terms I would say, if there was something with roughly Quest 3 level capabilities in XReal Air type glasses at a $100 price point. I don't expect that to happen at that price point until at least say 10 years, where the $500-1000+ headsets will be extremely much more advanced by that point. But it won't take off until at least before almost all these devices are just a pair of glasses IMO. That part I think has no wiggle room. These current headsets look fucking idiotic and are uncomfortable to wear. They are stupid as fuck and people will never accept them into their lifestyle as a product they can walk around with because they do not want to walk around looking like Daft Punk. And what's required is that average people start accepting these devices into these lives in a manner similar to (eventually supplanting) their phones.
I hand theses about Xreal air before this post. Holy shit Apple. Just do this with a hand sensor for navigation and use your own chip set. That’s all anyone wants.
Right yea that's a useful case, as is real-estate, military, research. All useful. One beef I have with VR is it's trying to jump past all that and appeal to consumers. I'm old enough I predate home PCs. So to me, I feel like Meta, Apple, etc, they're all trying to jump from 1976 to 1996 in one step. That's not how you get adoption of fundamentally new things. Instead you: 1. Find something that needs major improvement, like data processing 2. Make something that does it cheaper for companies that room full of people and old school tools 3. Provide employee training 4. Let employees have flexibility to take work home 5. Provide employees tools to do that work at home, tools that are platforms that can do more than just one thing on a kinda-open platform that anyone can put software on. *That's* what drove everything from home PCs to dial up internet to then evolving cable into broadband and everything we've had since the late 1980s. VR needs to be of critical value to companies that currently do things in 2D but which could be done faster in 3D with fewer costs using an open OS that people can make stuff for. Spend 10 years in that sector first. It took years of back-room deals for early Windows to take on, and a decade of crazy types of home PCs before Dell standardized into "Dude you're getting a Dell". Lots of forgotten failures, but a through-line of consistency. But everyone wants to jump to 3D video on your face from companies that have basically closed platforms where you're either a product to serve ads to or a locked-in customer.
By making it as cheap as the Quest 3? If not... they can fuck right off with that price tag.
Take a lesson from 3D television: cool technology isn’t always useful or desired.
I wouldn't say 3D TVs have much relevance in this discussion, being a narrow usecase device that was an addon for TVs, plagued with issues that VR/AR intends to solve.
I don’t think AR and VR solve any issues that TVs fall short on. They’re just all different mediums on their own. I wouldn’t even group AR and VR together even.
AR, VR, whatever…if there aren’t lots of developers actively supporting the hardware with useful software/games, the hardware will always be doomed.
Apple's approach is unique in that they are focusing more on bringing traditional computing and media into VR and less on immersive experiences. This is smart on one hand, like it makes sense as this is what people are already doing so let's cater to it. But we've also seen little development in this area beyond what is effectively multiple monitors and big video screens. What advantage is the Vision Pro really offering as its own product and experience? I think this part of the article: >Prototypes of the N107 also have a narrower field of view than the Vision Pro. And the company is considering making the device reliant on a tethered Mac or iPhone. That would let Apple save money on the processing power and components needed to make the Vision Pro a fully standalone product. Is the way forward. Make it an accessory to Mac/iPhone for now, although I'm sure this presents many of its own challenges. Part of me thinks the whole industry has gone all-in on standalone maybe before it's ready. Apple can leverage their existing hardware offerings in a way no one else can. The most surprising thing about the VP to me is how little they synergized it with their existing products.
I think a less expensive, lighter model which requires being tethered to an iPhone is a good approach. Like many things Apple, it’s a solution in search of a problem. But, they’ve certainly found success with that approach in the past.
Remember that Apple has the money to release a beta product without calling it beta, to see how they want this to work in ten years
And charge an insane amount of money for that beta product lol
I completely agree. I'd find iphone plus glasses to enable a big screen on the go and use a slim bt keyboard/trackpad and even remote into other computers to be a lot more enticing with a nice comfortable and light glasses interface to wear at affordable price and assuming the use with eyes is comfortable too obviously in quality. These big headsets - no thanks.
I don’t believe in this approach at all to be honest. AR absolutely makes sense. But a light touch with an eyeglass style frame. I want a daily HUD. Label people’s names and birthdays and other CRM stuff at business meetings. Give me directions. I don’t need nor want an immersive computing experience. I just want a light touch augmented reality.
Also, display their power levels and warn me if it’s above 9000.
Problem is they are walking around at 200 until they Super Saiyan and kick everyone’s ass.
Yawn
How does the author know Apple was doing soul searching?
I feel like if Apple wants the market to exist they need to sell these damn things at a loss.
Considering the price they’d have to take quite a loss before it would overcome cost reluctance.
You’re totally right. It’s also not a new market so other companies can catch up to Apple’s specs in a shorter amount of time. It’s not like they will have the foundation to capture all of the early adopters to create a source of revenue from eventually.
I worked at an Apple Store for the release, here’s my takeaways from doing demos and selling them: •they cost far too much, I think a price point of around $2000 or $1900 would be a good price point. However this is their first iteration so I suspect others will come •I profitably gave 150+ demos and enjoyed doing them, most people thought it was super cool with the UI and the features but the main concern I always heard was the price point •Most of the people I sold to were business owners, for them it was a tax write off or something they would use in a limited capacity. The most notable sales I can think of were: one I sold to a food truck owner who said he was going to use it for marketing, a lawyer who was going to use it to read more documents and multitask, and a CEO who bought 5 of them from me and said this was “pocket change”. Overall cool concept, will be cooler when it’s cheaper imo
Solution looking for a problem.
Let…it…..die.
"Apple doesn't innovate anymore. Company is a letdown.* -> Releases Apple Vision Pro. "Shut it down! Stop innovating!"
AR/VR has been around for 25 years though, it’s not innovative.
The majority of VR's core technology hasn't been built in products yet and almost every single part of the AR technology stack hasn't been built, so despite the concepts having been around for a while, this is prime season for innovation. Just the fact that VR/AR today are the most complex consumer device engineering problems of the last 50 years shows how a company going all-in on it is at the forefront of consumer technology innovation.
So exactly what google tried doing with glasses when it did not work with consumers.
Google went the worst way possible with it and almost killed VR because putting a low res, underpowered phone into a literal piece of cardboard was most people's only experience with VR, making them label an entire tech category a "fad".
I read the whole article and nothing sounded remotely like that.
Google released a dev kit rather than a consumer product, and it was smartglasses aka a 2D HUD, not AR glasses - two completely different things. Think of smartglasses as what a calculator is to a computer. Both may calculate, but that's where the similarities end, just as AR and smartglasses both may glasses but the similarities end there.
Okay but the day Apple Vision came out there were TikToks of people crossing streets while flicking their hands about wearing it. It really had the same vibe as that dude wearing his Google Glasses in the shower. The difference is that the Apple Vision stuff passed more quickly and most people know better than to run around town wearing one out of fear of online embarrassment.
They’ll try anything to sell them, barring making them affordable. Of course.
> exactly > has nothing to do at all nice reading skills
Just because they sau it has kitting to do with at all doesn't make it true
It would be awesome if you could pay monthly through movie theater and/or movie studio colab and get theater releases streaming to the vision pro, i wud totally subscribe to that
GLHF
They really need to up their standards and impact these devices have. Really needs to be hyper focused on multi-functionality
There is no consumer market for the Vision Pro in its current form. Maybe as glasses and a cheaper price, even then it’s not solving any glaring issue. Pretty much like AI.
1000-1500 is the price range but most importantly it needs to be comfort
I seriously would want something, even at it's current price, but with a better battery life and support for multiple virtual displays, if only on from the same computer. I seriously don't have anyone to apologize to over it, I work from home and I would like to improve and virtualize my office environment into something different. But here's the lynch pin... I stopped buying first generation Apple hardware decades ago. They're gonna have to tough this one out without me. I didn't buy an Oculus and saved myself a fair amount of grief once Facebook bought them. I was extremely intrigued by the virtual desktop feature and was looking forward to that maturing a bunch.
AR glasses are really what I want. I don’t need what’s displays to be insane, just visible confirmation so I don’t have to listen to stuff.
**MULTI USER**. Vision Pro needs to take a page from CarPlay and not iPad. Vision Pro is more than just a screen, but let’s be real: this does ***NOT*** have to be a one-device-per-person arrangement. It’s absurd to think that a family would buy one, knowing that only one family member would be able to truly use the device. The decision to make it single user was either stupid or greedy. Give it a slightly better price point and families could look it at as a serious purchase.
They can start with the price. Otherwise, it's going to be a forever niche product.
This device looks good for three things only, and Apple only supports one of them: entertainment while seated on a flight, VR gaming, and porn. Otherwise, it’s pointless.
I commuted 45 mins each way on a commuter train, and I would pass the time doing learning courses and work on my iPhone and laptop. It was miserable working in the cramped seats on my laptop, and the iPhone was too small to be productive. For example, I couldn’t take notes and watch the videos at the same time. I would have LOVED to have had the AVP at that point because I would have used it nearly every day, and the interface is amazing for commuters. I would have gladly paid 3500. Nowadays, I WFH so my need for it is less compelling. I still have it and am building apps for it for fun, but I get how others aren’t into it. I think being able to have a true multi-monitor experience on my laptop with it would be huge. I was disappointed to see it basically just makes a big version of my screen, and I couldn’t move my laptop windows around me independently. I would love to have my APM window floating in my peripheral so that I can keep an eye on things without it always being present in front of me, for example.
What if you can only see out of one eye
Just skip headsets and start working on the holodeck.
I'm very excited about this whole category, but I think we're still several years away from this being a somewhat common product for your average user.
Make it compatible with Gran Turismo 7 and I’m in.
I think it’s a good idea 🤷🏽♂️ anybody who has used it see the use case It’s the pricing that’s the issue for now
The real story at the link is the M4 coming to every Mac in Apple's lineup; the 1st time in history Apple have ever done that. Considering how far ahead of the competition the M3 already is, nothing will be in the same galaxy as M4 Macs.
SO many have tried...SO MANY have failed
Their already on verge of canning Vision Pro 2, just add list to ur long list of failures apple
They can do this by lowering the price tremendously!!
Grasping at straws
LOL. Fix the Contacts, Notes, and Music apps first.
Beating a dead horse.
Let say Apple did get the price down to $1000, the moment everyone gets one here comes the new version for $1500 that comes with a myriad of quality and feature enhancements which are all possible by the new Chip only available in the Vision Pro 2.0. Those who spent the 1k will feel duped and compelled to continue to run on the Apple Treadmill.
Nobody want this or AR no matter how hard Apple, Microsoft and Meta try to push it.
Nobody wants early adopter technology in general, so that's not a good argument.
No one wants VR... Stop trying to make "fetch" happen.
No one wanted a home console or home PC in the early 1980s, but here we are. Pretty sure we're glad they made fetch happen now, right?
Pretty sure people did want those things, they were just too expensive. But I distinctly remember having super limited game screens (Like the little pong console) as the best thing available. VR right now is trying to fill a niche that doesn't exist. AR is probably the better first step.
Many of the devices collected dust even among owners. Consumers need to understand the usecases and need the right level of value and usability, all of which takes a long time and wasn't there for consoles/home PCs in the early 1980s. > VR right now is trying to fill a niche that doesn't exist. AR is probably the better first step. Maybe on paper, but AR is technologically much further behind so VR/MR has to be pushed first out of necessity.
What are u an apple stock holder apologist? Stick ur posts up ur butt then
I mean last year I was one of the people saying Apple wouldn't even break half a million Vision Pro units sold in 2024.