The Apple Vision Pro is supposed to be the start of a new spatial computing revolution. After several days of testing, it’s clear that it’s the best headset ever made — which is the problem.
I very much do not want AR. There will be ads everywhere. What happened to the anger people had toward Google Glass and the feeling that people wearing them would be recording everything around them basically all the time?
The biggest problem I see from these kind of devices is: you’re isolating yourself. For example, it looks very cool that you can see a movie with a similar experience to a theatre, but you’re completely isolated using it. I don’t see a family, each with one of these devices on, watching a movie on the couch at the same time. It’s complicated enough when people have their smartphones out while eating with others…
That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t its uses, but it’s more limited than what the try to sell to you. You’re by yourself when you’re using this device, even if you can see others.
Yes and no. I’ve used a Quest to watch movies in a theater with different people from around the world and it was a very social experience. I’ve also attended a few support group meetings for dealing with loss in VR and that was honestly a really positive experience.
That’s interesting. It’s a bit funny that new technology can take us closer to those far, and at the same time take us far from those close. :P
Agreed on that, it’s a weird dichotomy. I think in a way the internet as a whole has had that effect on people.
Connections in real life don’t feel a deep as I remember them being in the past and its so often you see a group of people out to dinner or drinks together staring at their phones. Meanwhile I have a lot of pretty decent connections online with people I’ve never met in person or maybe only once or twice.
That’s an interesting perspective because I often feel the opposite. Especially post pandemic, I’ve gotten really into going out to bars and just talking to people. I barely even use my phone and sometimes will put it on do not disturb (unless wife calls) even while talking to people I barely know. They’re interesting folks.
But also I do have friends I made on the internet and have been greatly changed by internet interactions. Hell even my ideology was as I grew up on XKCD. But I’ve isolated myself to nothing but the internet before. Once with depression and fear as a queer teenager, and once with depression and fear as a person living through a global pandemic (thank fuck I had my wife for that), and I need quite a bit of face to face communication too or my brain loses its shit. And I need real irl community.
Based on the amount of screen time zoomers are reporting (saw some article about it recently and it was insane), I think there’s a boatload of people who are glued to devices and not being present.
I’m a good bit older than that and I’ve definitely been making an effort to get off my phone. I took all the social apps off about 3-4 months ago and it’s been a big improvement. Gonna keep finding ways to unplug. I need to stop posting here during the day so much honestly. I’d probably get a lot more work done.
Yeah I definitely do spend a lot of time on the phone it’s just I also need irl people time.
One thing I give Apple credit for is keeping ads out of the primary operating system. I’ve got an Apple TV and a Google TV (I refuse to use it’s full name). Apple TV is just a grid of Apps whereas the Google homescreen immediately hits you with an ad for a show on a streaming service you might not even have. Even the Google remote has dedicated buttons for Netflix and YouTube and I’m not a Netflix subscriber.
I guess it’s the difference between Apple being a hardware/software company and Google being an advertising company.
Apple TV is just a grid of Apps whereas the Google homescreen immediately hits you with an ad for a show on a streaming service you might not even have.
Apple TV+, the streaming service, does show ads for content. It’s one of the worst, in my opinion, at pre-roll ads for other shows you didn’t click on.
Then, in the interface, you’ll get banner-like ads for other stuff, mostly Apple TV+ exclusives. Also, the interface also does push casual browsing (or search) into the paid buy/rent options also.
Apple’s days of focusing on user experience above all else has shifted towards getting you to pay for stuff. Just because it mainly steers towards stores they own (app store, music/movies/TV, services subscriptions) doesn’t make it any less intrusive of advertising.
Apple TV+ is an app though (which I never use). I’m talking about the operating system and the extended area above the apps is only applicable to the apps you put there (all of which for me just show the stuff you’re currently watching).
Apple TV+ and Apple Music do have first party status, subtly favored by the operating system itself. The Siri/search integration is tighter with those services than competing services, which is especially important on a TV interface (where there isn’t a keyboard or mouse or touchscreen). I think search for music still only looks at the Apple Music catalog and won’t search Spotify/YouTube/Tidal.
It’s not a glaringly obvious promotion of their own products, but that’s what I mean when I say that Apple pushes users towards their own stores. On desktop and mobile, they’re pushing Apple’s own paid cloud storage (and won’t let competing services fulfill the same functionality), at the OS level.
There are ads on the app store, which I’d consider to be part of the “primary operating system”, especially since it’s the only way to install apps.
Not to mention constant ads for icloud. In the photos app, and even notifications from the settings app. (It’s possible to turn these off, but not easy or intuitive).
After switching to Android, I haven’t seen a single ad in the operating system, (I think Play Store does have ads, I just haven’t got any for some reason). The closest thing is Google photos sometimes asking me to turn on backup.
Edit: Ignore my complaint. You learn something new every day.
- Open the Settings app from the Apple TV home screen.
- Select Remotes and Devices.
- Click on TV Button to switch the setting to Home.
Original: Except for the fact that the remote has no home button anymore. It always opens the Apple TV+ app. Otherwise I agree though, ad-free experience, best TV-box I ever owned.
You can change that in the settings. It’s been that way since the remote with the touch pad. It can either go to ATV+ or Home. One of the first things I do with a new ATV is change it.
You can also double click the TV button to switch between open apps.
I’m fairly certain you can remap that Netflix button
Regardless of the function, Netflix paid to get their name advertised right on the remote.
There will be ads everywhere.
Too late.
What happened to the anger people had toward Google Glass and the feeling that people wearing them would be recording everything around them basically all the time?
People feel that way all the time now, so AR glasses no longer seem as intrusive to most people.
Yeah they realized that if we’re constantly tracked we burn out on it.
I’m always reminded of this video when I think about just how bad AR could be. But then again, it could be pretty cool if we can only keep control over our tech.
Quick! Hide it before some LinkedIn lunatic use it as some inspirational post about how AR tech will revolutionize our lives.
I don’t think these glasses are intended for general public use right now. I know big businesses that want them for manufacturing quality control but outside that what is the point of AR?
As an industrial engineer I can think of plenty of uses of it has a halfway decent pathway overlay. Part picking with highlighted parts can be amazing and it could revolutionize assembly.
Outside factories, I’d love a gps hud on my car, and on walks. Not enough to sacrifice the little privacy I have in my own eyes though.
Edit: sorry was thinking AR glasses in general not these specifically. I wouldn’t even let my QC team use these. If the battery connection breaks you’re blind in a manufacturing environment and that’s dangerous
I don’t want something that’s an electrical failure from me being unable to see strapped over my head while driving.
At least Google Glass was transparent.
Oh full agreement there. I think a google glass like tool has a handful of potential applications. This specifically, I’d never put it on someone in a manufacturing environment for the exact same reason you won’t drive with one.
Hololense glasses already provides the uses you are referencing for part picking with their dynamic 365 program suite. I have personally implemented some uses at a few locations.
Outside of sku management or manufacturing, it is a stretch. I don’t imagine people using these for every day use. There is little functionality that currently supports any use outside of a workplace.
Spoken like someone who lacks vision.
How about going to a foreign country and being able to navigate the streets like a local thanks to the overly guiding you to your destination like Waze? How about being able to read signs and communicate with locals thanks to the instant translation services built in? How about a virtual assistant that can walk you through an oil change specifically for your car? How about a cooking assistant that can warn you if your pot is about to boil over or if you forgot to add the butter? How about taking my shitty dystopian studio apartment and giving me a balcony view of a tropical beach?
There are countless applications for AR ranging from the mundane to the extremely helpful. The tech needs to be developed more before it will be adopted by the masses, but it’s far from useless.
By 2030 we’ll have AR in a sunglasses form factor with integrated AI that will be able to digitally remove the clothing of everyone you see with a good degree of accuracy for what’s underneath.
Ok my bad, I wasn’t talking about what the technology is 10 years from now. I was just saying in 2024, what technology exists for a general consumer that makes AR worth even talking about.
Those use cases already exist to an extent with current products. I use google translate every day on the jobsite, google maps already provides step by step navigation, youtube videos guide me on car repair, smart sensors with phone and smartwatch alerts for almost anything you can imagine, rollable and thin film transparent displays for walls and windows. Its hard to see AR/VR overtaking existing technologies except for niche use cases. The tech is gonna have to advance well past 2030 projections to be both cheap and feasible for practical use. Batteries will need an order of magnitude higher energy density and microchips will need to pass the teraFLOP barrier while consuming less than a watt of power, all while fitting into a comfortable and unobtrusive form factor suited for long term daily use. I don’t see that happening anytime in the next decade honestly.
Glass arrived on the scene in 2013. Since then recording in public has become much more normalised… smartphone camera use, cars with dashcams and CCTV/face recognition have all increased in popularity. YouTubers, live streamers, creators etc. If it were released again today, I’m not sure it would achieve the same hatred it did back then, at least on the “creepy camera in public” point.
The review was great, and the fact that Apple went it’s way to try and do something to be seen as an innovator is awesome, for one reason only: they failed horribly.
Granted, this is the best VR handset that could be done with today’s tech, and even then it’s bad. There’s no use outside niche applications, and too much constraints and trade offs for it to be reliable. We need a huge advance in tech for AR be feasible and socially acceptable.
And you can’t even play proper games with this thing.
It’s not even that it’s not feasible. The entire idea is stupid. VR makes a lot of sense in entertainment and AR will one day be really great for small things like showing map directions and notifications but the concept of a virtual computer controlled by waving your hands around is just silly. It will never make sense.
The main use case I think right now, really is the expanded monitors view. For people that travel a lot it might be a real use case
To carry the whole VisionPro bag, keyboard and mouse instead of simply taking your laptop? The review makes it clear it’s not usable without peripherals, you will still need some desk. It’s solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
I work on 3 monitors during the day, with multiple virtual desktops. It solves for that, and that alone. That being said, I wouldn’t pay $3500 for the privilege, especially when it ONLY operates in the Apple ecosystem, which I don’t care for. Other VR desktops exist, but they’re all kinda “meh”. I’ll invest when a device can be used neutrally as just a VR monitor tool.
The stuff I’ve seen is saying it can only do one extra display from a mac. Is there another way? The high resolution capabilities also suggest one full quality display would max out wireless bandwidth.
Spatial window arrangements essentially makes an entire 360 space of a room the monitor. You don’t need many views at that point.
So you’re talking about placing app windows everywhere? Then you’re limited to placing apple’s available apps for the device everywhere around you aren’t you? Which doesn’t sound like what you want. I’m taking your 3 monitors comment to mean you’re not running 3 monitors worth of mobile apps (because that would be wild if you were!). The 360 degree desktop setup here is going to be more like 360 degrees of ipad apps seems like. Maybe a windows remote desktop sort of app with multiple instances/windows all around you? Multiple safari instances all connected to some sort of web based remote desktop? I too want “spatial computing” to be more platform agnostic and want to be able to just paste applications or desktops on blank walls or floating in space.
Oh no, I meant Vision Pro and laptop to get an extra large screen
What kind of people that travel a lot you think may benefit? Genuinely curious. All the guys who do travel can mostly do everything with their phone because they have other guys working for them in the office doing the actual multiple screens stuff. Or maybe these are the only ones I saw in my life on the road )
Software engineers that work remotely? My uncle has to spend at least 8 hours travelling a month often by plane to attend meetings he still has to do despite being most of the time at home
I’m a systems engineer who spends most of my time coding, and I have a quest 2. Unless apple has somehow fixed the big issue of VR headsets having no peripheral vision (you have to move your head to see things not in the cone in front of you, can’t just shift your eyes) and relatively shit resolution, using a VR headset as a large screen/screens for text content would still be headache inducing.
The amount you’d have to zoom the text in order to be readable for long periods of time would make it unreasonable to try and code in.
I would love for VR to actually work as the movie idea of an infinite desktop, but in my experience it really falls short in that use case. I’ll admit, a quest 2 is a real budget headset, so maybe higher end ones work better for it, but the one high end headset I’ve used had the same limitations.
Hm, not sure if I can agree here. There may be a handful of people like that - but that is not the market worth developing as far as I can see. You would normally either travel, or spend your time in front of 3 screens full of text. Also, having anything on your head for a long time (if you are coding, for example) is tiring. Even simple sunglasses are, not talking about a bulky headset. And, as someone also mentioned, there really must be an excellent screen for your eyes not to bleed after a long session of reading. Never tried this headset, but have serious doubts. Watching a movie is different, but at this price point you are likely getting a royally good home set up, so yet again, travel only. Again, a niche thing.
Then there is some CAD stuff, but cannot comment there. How many people in the world need that, anyway?
This leaves games as a real (though still relatively niche) market, yet to see what Apple has to offer there.
So, as I can see, if Apple wants a new big thing, we are still waiting for a killer app. And a breakthrough in tech, of course.
Pro: Video passthrough is a leap forward, hand and eye tracking are awesome.
Con: video passthrough is fuzzy, hand and eye tracking are kinda shit.
WHICH ONE IS IT!?!
I think you’re missing the point. Both are true. It is both leaps forward, but still bad.
Just because something is “best in class” doesn’t mean it’s not a piece of shit.
Yeah, VR in general sits in this “cool enough to be interesting but bad enough to be disappointing” space.
IMO we could perfect the current iteration of VR and it would still be in that same valley because it still requires 1:1 movement inside a game and outside of it, or using a controller to move which can come with motion sickness and pulls you out of the “reality”. Though AR does have the potential to get good since it uses the real world as the game world.
The iteration of VR that will get out of that valley will involve something interacting with our brains themselves rather than our senses, as well as trusting an entity that is capable of developing hardware like that. Though maybe it’s for the best that it would be difficult or impossible to trust because I suspect someone getting VR done right will lead to the end of humanity as more and more people escape to fake worlds where they can have godlike powers or where waifus are real and society crumbles around them.
The Vision Pro is the best example of video passthrough and hand/eye tracking that has ever been produced, but they’re also insufficient for it to be a seamless experience.
This isn’t really the problem, I think. MKBHD touched on this but this system doesn’t seem to have a killer app. There’s a bunch of stuff you can do with it, but which of those things can be done better than just using a computer?
Gaming is the big one but apple doesn’t care about that so what else is there? It would be good for virtual walkthroughs of a home you’re considering buying. Or at an architects office to show off the experience of a new building. But…cheaper VR headsets can already do all of that.
So what actually task can this do better than anything else?
Is was really irritated when he presented the presentation app as the most killer app for the device. On traditional VR headsets this would be a really mediocre app compared to what games do in VR…
I have a psvr, psvr2 and love it, but there is no way id spend this much for a better version. However, I thought similar about the iPad at first. What can it do that I couldn’t do with my phone or a PC. Now I sue my iPad daily.
I think it’s a case of build it and they will come. It’s currently sold out and an early adopter thing but it took a few generations for the iPhone to have apps. And at first, there was no killer app.
This isn’t really the problem, I think. MKBHD touched on this but this system doesn’t seem to have a killer app. There’s a bunch of stuff you can do with it, but which of those things can be done better than just using a computer?
It doesn’t lean into the VR aspect very much either. You can’t just use it by flapping your hands about like you’re Iron Man.
Other than that, it just acts like a virtual screen. Neat, but not particularly different from a regular screen in usage, other than the ability to resize at will, which people don’t generally do that often on their computers.
So what actually task can this do better than anything else?
Relieving fanboys of their money 🤑
They’re not contradictory. All other headsets’ passthrough is just so bad that even though the Apple headset isn’t good it’s still way ahead of them.
Psvr2 passthrough is pretty damn good
It’s low resolution and monochrome. It works to help reposition in the centre of your play area or just have a quick look to see if you should take the headset off to deal with something, but it’s not really good for AR. Unless they’ve improved it since I last fired it up, but those cameras are more meant for motion tracking than passthrough.
not really a leap forward, valve index does that.
“Magic until it’s not” basically sums up the whole Apple user experience.
This is a first generation modern Apple product: expensive, flawed, lacking in features. I’ve been a long time Apple user, and if I had the money to buy something like this (I don’t), I would definitely avoid it, and wait for iteration 2 or 3 of it. The review is good, and highlight all the reasons why you should avoid buying this device, unless you wan to develop something for it. Guess we’ll only see YouTubers using it.
I think the biggest difference compared to all previous endeavors is that VR/AR devices are still this thing that collects dust in the corner even among the biggest enthusiasts.
Most people had some form of portable music player (like Walkman) long before iPod was a thing.
Every household had been equipped with phones long before Apple made iPhone. Cellphones were also a huge deal before iPhone.
Watches are old as time (pun intended). Fitness trackers was also a big thing before Apple Watch.
VR/AR? Most people don’t really care - despite multiple efforts from all the biggest tech companies. Is a more premium Oculus from Apple the solution? I guess time will tell, but I have doubts.
I also think they’re too big and bulky and haven’t found the right way to use them yet. When they can be integrated with glasses and can truly “augment” the world around you, that’s when they’ll pick up. Think of a party where you can automatically display the names of people and key bio info with them. Or a sporting game where you can pull up stats on players. Or navigation where it overlays arrows on the street. For now you just get “toss our window up in your field of view with these clunky goggles”
Isn’t that how google glass did it? It all sounds good in theory until you realize there is a looong road until it’s sleek and most people are not willing to use it in the awkward stage.
Google glass wasn’t AR though, it was just a display strapped to some glasses. It didn’t do 3D or head tracking or anything.
You’re right about the bulky phase. That’s really where they should be putting R&D. I think google glass had a better look, but all of these trials and missteps are ultimately what pushes it forward until there is a version that people really end up embracing.
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I think a big problem with apple doing this is that they literally decided to make the body of the device out of steel, which is much heavier than other materials like plastic. The bigscreen beyond is the currently lightest headset, but the only things in the headset are the displays, processing and tracking are outside of the headset and no passthrough cameras. So basically with current lens and display technology its still not possible to get glasses like formfactor in VR headsets, let alone with integrated cameras, processing, movable ipd, eye tracking, etc.
I don’t want to make predictions because I may, most probably, fail. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Some products need more times than others, and some need to get something (and innovative app, for example) that justifies its existence.
Time will tell. But still, it’s a first generation. Even the iPhone was not that good in its first generation. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
I turned the video off immediately when he said it’s 34 99 spaced out rather than three thousand four hundred ninty nine dollars so it sounds as fucking terrible as it actually is price wise. Fuck apple and fuck this reviewer
What a weird thing to get hung up on.
What you don’t like people talking to you like you’re a retard ? But 3499,99 is not the same as 3500,00. It would be bad information, the verge « journalist » sure can’t allow it.
I would quote it as $3500 or thirty-five hundred dollars. It’s a common practice for radio since $3499.99 is read as thirty-four ninety-nine ninety-nine which is heard as $349,999
This value is too much for any VR/AR goggles in my budget. I’d read this as a thing for very specialized industrial purposes (say CAD/CAM) or a toy for rich people.
And if it’s just a toy for rich people, it’s not going to be well supported. If it’s a CAD/CAM tool or a tool for disabled accessibility then all the software will be proprietary and overpriced as well.
Roch people pay for apps, so perhaps even if it is just for the rich, it can be successful. The thing about technology, though, is selling those same apps for less to mass market later is still profitable as it costs no more to produce them.
One of the weirdest things about it that I’m sure Apple put a whole lot of time, effort, and money into is the EyeSight feature (the see-through eyes), and yet every image or video I’ve seen of it so far looks horrible in real life. I get the idea behind it, but that they prioritized that over actual content just seems assbackwards, there still doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot to do in this thing. It’s a feature that really should’ve been left on the cutting room floor in an effort to bring the cost down. And they’re trying to pitch this as AR (which it’s not, or “spatial computing”) when really this thing would probably benefit more if they pitched/leaned into it being a VR device.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In Apple’s photos, it looks like a big, bright screen that shows a video of your eyes to people around you so they feel comfortable talking to you while you’re wearing the headset — a feature adorably called EyeSight.
On the top edge, you’ll find what feel like larger versions of some familiar Apple Watch controls: a digital crown that adjusts both the volume and the level of virtual reality immersion on the right as you look through the headset and a button on the left that lets you take 3D photos and videos.
You can also see Apple’s incredible video processing chops right in front of your eyes: I sat around scrolling on my phone while wearing the Vision Pro, with no blown-out screens or weird frame rate issues.
A lot of work has gone into making it feel like the multitouch screen on an iPhone directly controls the phone, and when it goes sideways, like when autocorrect fails or an app doesn’t register your taps, it’s not pleasant.
I asked about this, and Apple told me that it is actively contributing to WebXR and wants to “work with the community to help deliver great spatial computing experiences via the web.” So let’s give that one a minute and see how it goes.
There’s a part of me that says the Vision Pro only exists because Apple is so incredibly capable, stocked with talent, and loaded with resources that the company simply went out and engineered the hell out of the hardest problems it could think of in order to find a challenge.
The original article contains 8,148 words, the summary contains 264 words. Saved 97%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The future Apple wants us to have:
footureAlways happy to see Simon Stalenhag’s work lol
There’s no such thing as magic.
This might be a bad take but it seems like a worse version of HoloLense. Just glancing at the pros/cons list seems like HoloLense already covered this ground at a similar price point
HoloLens have much worse display quality
That’s a fair point but HoloLens also didn’t block your vision to the environment. I imagine with today’s tech, it would’ve been able to deliver comparable or at least 80% of the image quality while still not needing passthrough and still allowing you to pin screens everywhere.
That’s the trade-off. Vision uses the passthrough approach to have a much better display at the cost of actual vision & others seeing your uncanny eyes. Hopefully AR or EyeSight improves.
Whoa whoa whoa
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I skimmed some article in which the author said the vision pro is for work, but I would argue it’s the public alpha version of what will eventually be a sleek, relatively inexpensive product for all the people who grew up with iPads and iPhones in their hands since they were in diapers.
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getting all this tech in a headset means there’s a lot of weight on your face, so Apple chose to use an external battery pack connected by a cable.
From the article. What do you mean no one is talking about this, literally every review dropped in the past day brings these things up.
Exactly. Basically the most common YouTuber reaction to putting this device on for the first time is “Oh! it’s heavy…” XD
Aluminum is cool but they really should have considered plastic or something and also scrapped that outer screen. The tradeoffs in both weight, cost, and battery life make no sense at all.
First iteration. I’m sure it’ll improve with time. I guess we all remember those solid gold Apple Watches… XDDD
From the article (did you read it?):
Since you’ll mostly experience the Vision Pro in there, the most noticeable thing about the hardware after a while is that it’s just… heavy. You’re supposed to wear this thing on your face for long stretches of computer time, and depending on which band and light seal you use, the headset alone weighs between 600 and 650 grams. I keep joking that the Vision Pro is an iPad for your face, but it’s heavier than an 11-inch iPad Pro (470 grams) and pushing close to a 12.9-inch iPad Pro (682 grams), so in a very real way, it’s an iPad for your face.
And…
[…] but it’s also very Apple that the battery is not actually bigger so it can provide more than two and a half hours of run time.
How the fuck this headset weighs over 600 grams? The Quest 2, which is pretty much a standalone Android phone weighs 500g WITH a battery in the headset. It is already a very heavy headset to be used without a strap that balances the load
Because the Vision is a first generation (unoptimized) product that has way more hardware features, such as cameras to see through it from both directions. Even the Quest Pro weighs 720g. Plus, it’s Apple, so they use some aluminum.
How the fuck this headset weighs over 600 grams?
Because plastic isn’t a premium material. Apple users expect fancy alloys with glass everywhere, Apple can’t very well show up with a plastic headset and ask $3500 for it, they need all that extra weight to convince people that they’re getting a premium
VRARSPACIAL COMPUTING device that is unlike anything ever done before. It’s all part of the grift.I’m a reformed VR enthusiast and I have got to say that it’s all a hell of a gimmick, but it’s just a really neat gimmick. Without any hard-light tech or something to make stuff that you can actually interact with it’s all just Wii-mote waggle style nonsense that abstracts things that should be button presses into complex motions constrained by physical reality that our computers/keyboards/mice/controllers allow us to escape.
They talk about it in this review though
Excuse they got devices from Apple. And you can’t say anything Apple doesn’t want you to otherwise you lose access to Apple. They are a very petty company.
It just launched for public sales
