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I will happily go on the record as saying that this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone, perhaps even more so. --- EDIT: To clarify this statement... - Fo

• znagengast 3y ago
  Compared to how much progress the iPhone made from initial launch to now, the potential for this product line is very exciting.
• newaccount74 3y ago
  I think more iPad level. A successful product, but not something everyone will have.
  • jonwinstanley 3y ago
    Not for a while, but this is v1. When they’re cheaper, smaller and lighter who knows
  • bunga-bunga 3y ago
    At 3500 this will be niche at best. They'll sell half the units of Watch Ultra if they're lucky.
    • turnsout 3y ago
      Yeah… It's like sure, this replaces a TV for ONE person. If I want to watch a movie with my wife and daughter, I'm out $10,500
      • Dudester230602 3y ago
        Keep in mind the battery is not enough for a movie. So the entire family will also be plugged into a wall wart. Mind the wire for any bathroom breaks!
        • thrill 3y ago
          It's a 2 hour battery with a dedicated cable and looks easily swappable in seconds.
          • Dudester230602 3y ago
            Yes, even for that family of rich Apple executives, it will get tired by the third time.
          • ladyanita22 3y ago
            For a 3500$ device? Fantastic!
          • paul_f 3y ago
            The running time of the CD-ROM was designed to play Beethoven's 9th symphony in its entirety. You would have thought Apple would plan the battery life to allow you to watch all of Avengers: Endgame, or maybe Oppenheimer, without pausing to swap the battery.
    • wahnfrieden 3y ago
      iPhone rollout not only first model
• braymundo 3y ago
  I can’t wait to see the second generation. And with Apple giving some good attention to game developers, the possibilities are incredibly interesting!
• vertigolimbo 3y ago
  It won't. Sadly. Can't justify spending 3K on... family calls, tiresome multiscreen development environment, finally - games? Won't happen unfortunately.
  • sebzim4500 3y ago
    The original iPhone was also a bit of a waste of money so that doesn't really disprove their point.
    • tsunamifury 3y ago
      iPhone was an immediate iPod/phone/web browser/email replacement on day one. It’s day one utility was one of the best ever
  • LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
    > tiresome multiscreen development environment ...that fits in your bag. This is huge for folks like me that want to travel without lugging around a large display. If the visual integrity is there, it's gonna be worth it for me.
    • doix 3y ago
      Yeah, the resolution will make it or break it for me. I tried working in a valve index using Simula and couldn't really get into it. Despite technically having much more screen space and screens, it felt like I was much more constrained.
      • vertigolimbo 3y ago
        Si senior. Same experience with quest 2. It has to be perfectly executed. In the Apple demo the guy was hitting virtual keyboard? If vr misses two keys, I am done with it and back to gaming only.
      • IanCal 3y ago
        I'm interested to know what sort of resolution you'd get looking at a "screen". You get over 4k per eye, but that means 4k-ish for your field of vision.
• kllrnohj 3y ago
  What's different about it compared to Occulus or Samsung Gear or any other existing attempts at this? Virtual movie theaters and virtual monitors haven't really been compelling use cases for putting an ugly sweat box on your face so far. What about slapping an Apple logo on it and pricing it even further out of reach changes that in your mind?
  • seanalltogether 3y ago
    Most VR so far has been designed to isolate you from your surrounding environment, and is the opposite. Also the ability to use it without controllers makes the whole thing feel less intrusive/burdensome to use.
  • newZWhoDis 3y ago
    Less space than a nomad, too
    • kshacker 3y ago
      Lame? For those downvoting, see the parent comment and also this: https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i... "Lame" was a historic comment and parent commenter should have included it :)
  • sgt 3y ago
    Usually Apple comes along and builds it so well that people will actually start using it. Oculus and the others are still a pretty niche thing.
    • raydev 3y ago
      > Usually Apple comes along and builds it so well that people will actually start using it Agreed, but Apple have put themselves in a weird spot with the $3500 USD price tag.
      • andrei_says_ 3y ago
• confoundcofound 3y ago
  Do you think people will enjoy living with a headset strapped to their face? The shots of that dad playing with his daughters while wearing the device seemed like a stretch that I'm surprised Apple took. This is the company that takes its "Human Interface Guidelines" seriously.
  • oezi 3y ago
    I think the remote worker in a hotel was a more likely take. A lot will depend on the quality of the virtual avatar generated for you while in a video call.
  • bsaul 3y ago
    Yes, that part also shocked me. It looks like they've completely lost their mind, and don't realize they're shooting a remake of black mirror..
    • astrange 3y ago
      Like 1984, Black Mirror isn't a dystopia because of technology, but because it's in England. If you leave I expect everything's fine. Also solves being converted into Cybermen for the 100th time.
      • basedmember 3y ago
        This is the funniest comment I've ever read on HN. After 3 months I've spent in London a year ago, I can never understand while people online hate England so much.
        • l33t233372 3y ago
          It’s like the Ohio of Europe
        • astrange 3y ago
          London is not representative of England, it's basically a different country.
• meling 3y ago
  I agree. This was more amazing than I had expected upfront. I can envision myself using this for developing code as well, but I think I will have a hard time convincing my boss…
• alexb_ 3y ago
  I will happily go on the record as saying that this will be as revolutionary as the Apple TV. Perhaps even less so (if such a thing is possible).
  • fsloth 3y ago
    Apple TV is excellent? Is there a better device? (If you don’t want to use the apps bundled with tv).
  • mryingster 3y ago
    Unironically, the Apple TV is my favorite Apple device. It does exactly what it says it does, is inexpensive, and has a good interface. It just works.
    • jw1224 3y ago
      Fully agree! Their "hobby" has turned into possibly the best experience in their lineup (from a UX perspective).
    • ghaff 3y ago
      It's sort of evolved to the "What's that Chromecast thing again?" for me. (Which I thought was super-underrated.) And I guess I could maybe upgrade my big TV which would be an absolute hassle and is perfectly good for my purposes--and might not even be better at this point. Not a frequently in my hand thing but for ~$100 and really nice, perfectly good.
    • moelf 3y ago
      Apple TV is one of those apple devices you can't use unless you're "apple enough" -- you can't even set it up without having an iOS device to do 2FA.
      • khazhoux 3y ago
        Correct. Apple products are really not meant to be used as one-offs if you are otherwise in Android/whatever ecosystem.
• deleted 3y ago
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• doctoboggan 3y ago
  Agreed, I think this is going to be big, but it does very much have the feel of a first apple product. Especially wearing it to record 3d videos, I am sure now that there will be a 3d camera on the next iPhone pro.
• justinator 3y ago
  Oh wow an anonymous hn user makes an optimist statement about new technology - lots riding on that!
  • jw1224 3y ago
    You can invest in my opinions, from just $3999™!
• SanderNL 3y ago
  And I will go on record saying this is nice and all, but fundamentally just some incremental progress. Absolutely not an iPhone moment. The idea of having a fully immersive 3D environment around you is cool, but I haven’t had any VR experience that didn’t turn out to be eventually a headache let alone actually productive. Even with gaming I can only name a few titles that actually benefit, but for the ones that do the effect is quite something, I’ll admit that.
  • comment_ran 3y ago
    That's definitely a big concern about the physical pen. If it's too heavy or if it's too hot, it will overperform or perform some CPU intense work. Also the fitting using your eye with such a close contact with the digital device is another issue.
  • jonwinstanley 3y ago
    Not sure how you can say it’s incremental. I’d say it’s quite a jump from the other mixed reality products we’ve seen so far
    • Demmme 3y ago
      Incremental because it's not new. It was totally clear that a device for 3.4k can have the values apples headset has.
      • throw74775 3y ago
        > it's not new. I’m not aware of any remotely comparable product.
    • LordDragonfang 3y ago
      It's a jump from what we've seen in the consumer space. It isn't priced like other consumer VR hardware though, it's 4-8x the price; much closer to enterprise pricing. If you include the wider space with things like the Varjo XR3 (which released 2 years ago at only 2x the price) then it looks a lot less impressive of a jump. Plus there's things like the Bigscreen Beyond which actually manage a slim form factor. Really the only thing Apple has a chance to differentiate on is software, and they've got a lot of catching up to do there.
• zjaffee 3y ago
  Strongly disagree that this will be as revolutionary as the iphone. The iphone, and smart phones as a platform were revolutionary largely because of how portable they are. This is much more comparable to a laptop than a phone, and it doesn't introduce new communications technology like the iphone did with there now being near universal real time access to people's cameras and gps location. This feels like what the apple watch was to the iphone but instead to the MacBook pro.
  • comment_ran 3y ago
    Unfortunately, I strongly disagree with this comment as well. It is because how portable this device is, you have to think about the... Imagine you have an infinite amount of screen just in your pocket. What you say causes what you do, and that's a huge thing.
    • prmoustache 3y ago
      Except even regular sunglasses are often inconvenient to carry around. So this will never get in your pocket. The rear revolution will be when the info goes directly to our brain, bypassing the eyes. VR headsets looks to me like half assed interim "what if" devices.
      • comment_ran 3y ago
        Good point. Remember, they demonstrate that they put these devices as a module, so I'm not sure it is possible to make it a portable device. You can easily get rid of part of the panel part and put it into a very small bag, and the rest of things can just like a rope, something similar to those things, you can easily fold them into small spaces. I'm actually thinking the same thing as you. The real revolution is going to be directly connecting our brains, so we don't bother using our eyes to kind of sensor our physical world, that's kind of like the matrix. I'm not sure that's going to be in the near future or in the life we have, but I'm really looking forward to that kind of scenario.
• jonplackett 3y ago
  I will happily go on record as saying I do not have $3,499 to spend on this, but I wish i did.
• rafark 3y ago
  Loved it. It’s exactly how I imagined it. People didn’t have high expectations because they thought this was going to be a gaming device. I posted quite a few comments in the past months telling people vr glasses like this had so much potential for broader applications. I’m glad Apple is making this a reality. It’s going to be a wild success.
• ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
  I completely agree. I'm one of the weird people who tried out the Google Glass. It was finnicky, 0 actual interaction with the modern world, lasted a good 45 minutes, melted your face, and had terrible audio. But the thing is, if you could peak THROUGH the shortcomings, it was abundantly clear how an eyesight driven, glass form factor is the destination for computing. Smartphones were even less advanced at the time, but even then, we I tried for a few weeks making more extensive use of it, I would catch many glimpses of how "neat" this technology would be... even doing simple things like effortlessly capturing a picture on the spot, or videoconferencing with my gf (now wife!) showing her stuff in the grocery store and asking her what to get. The AR capabilities, mixed with the essentially VR potential for movies/games, will totally be a thing and it'll totally live on our face as glasses. There can be details as to when exactly, price points ,etc., but the ubiquity of this sort of computing device will eclipse the iPhone when it comes time, and until then, slowly but surely change the nature of "working on a screen."
  • jbverschoor 3y ago
    Yes, Google Glass was fun, and geeky, but was SO bad. This seems to be an actual well thought out product. The resolution is a lot higher than the meta quest 3, and delays will be super small. They're marketing this for productivity, which for me is the main selling point for VR at this point. I want a more spatial desktop, and I want multiple screens on the go.
• mantenpanther 3y ago
  Only if it‘s comfortable to wear and not sickening. It must be a huge improvement over current devices like PS VR2, which I can physically not tolerate for long.
• epolanski 3y ago
  > For personal/entertainment use it completely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema. You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing. Also, a TV can be watched by multiple people, and a home cinema will obviously deliver better sound. > For business use, the days of multiple displays and screen management seem set to be a relic of the past. I look forward to coding in an IDE which isn't constrained to a physical device sat on my desk, or replying to emails "on the beach" versus under fluorescent lighting. The IDE is an interesting perspective I too as a developer am thinking about. But there's a reason you can be as productive in 2023 as in 1983 using emacs or vim. Because it's insanely hard to replace the simplicity of text buffers and a keyboard. > In response to the obvious criticisms (high price, battery life, form factor)... this is Gen 1. Look how quickly the iPhone and Apple Watch evolved between generations 1 to 3, and look how the price changed as production capabilities and economies of scale evolved. Smart watches have been anything but a groundbreaking technological revolution.
  • kjreact 3y ago
    > You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing. Well Apple showed someone using the headset while lying down in bed. I’d say that Apple is making a bold statement about the comfort of their product. We’ll need to wait for hands on reviews to determine if it indeed is as comfortable as Apple implies it is.
    • blitzar 3y ago
      > Well Apple showed someone using the headset while lying down in bed. The box of Wheaties showed someone shooting the winning buzzer beating home run touch down in double overtime to win the world series of superbowl cups. Somehow I doubt that, due to the bowl of Wheaties I had for breakfast, my afternoon will look much like that.
      • tomcam 3y ago
        Noted. I will eat 2 bowls of Wheaties
• samwillis 3y ago
  The accessibility of this product is going to be transformative in industry. There have been similar AR headsets for woking in some industrial sectors, but this makes it possible for all companies to develop apps specific to their work place. Every factory, every distribution centre, every construction site, every industrial site, every hospital, can have this integrated to guide their workforce in complex tasks. Imagine this for surgeries, or complex construction tasks, even just finding items in a warehouse. This is going to be massive in the workspace, thats where I think people probably underestimate it. We may all end up with one of these - or the none "pro" version - at home, just as we have iPads laying around. But many of us are going to end ups waring these for many hours a day during work. Taking of a headset when we go home will end up being a joy.
  • alexb_ 3y ago
    What about $3500 says "accessibility" to you? You're just re-vomiting out all of the same promises VR companies have been making for the past half decade. No company is going to spend $3500 on a tool that easily breaks for low stakes jobs and is untested/unreliable for high stakes jobs.
    • mcculloughrt 3y ago
      I work in construction. $3500 is a paltry, pocket change amount of money compared to project budgets. Standard single-building commercial / institutional new builds can be tens of millions to low hundred million, "big" projects are often north of a quarter billion dollars, and well over a billion is not unusual for so-called "mega projects". Risk (from defects / mistakes) is often roughly proportional to budget. The placement of seemingly minor and easy to miss elements at the initial critical stages of a concrete pour in a high rise, for example, is pretty high stakes with rework costing hundreds of thousands to potentially millions. We have processes for mitigating that of course, but none that approach it in such a direct and observable way as AR, and none are incompatible with being done alongside AR. Paying $3500 + software for something that helps mitigate that risk in a totally new and complementary way is very very interesting to many companies. edit: To be clear, I'm not convinced that this particular device is revolutionary compared to those that already exist, which have their own challenges. I'm just objecting to the idea that there isn't a market for it at that price even WITH challenges.
• anonymouse008 3y ago
  You're speaking mips and bits... This is not what got Apple to where it was. It was recognizing what we wanted to do to go further, individually and together, and amplified that with technology. This literally amplifies your ass to the couch. I'm shocked. Stunned. And sad.
  • jw1224 3y ago
    > This literally amplifies your ass to the couch. I'm shocked. Stunned. And sad. Were you “shocked/stunned/sad” about Apple TV? A product which physically relies on your ass being sat on the couch? Think a little bigger here! This goes well beyond entertainment value. Imagine the general business uses in industry, manufacturing, medicine, conferencing, telecommunications, let alone any form of interpersonal interaction over long distances… These are all things we take for granted with FaceTime, Google, GPT… All these are new but ubiquitous technologies, which allow us to enhance our human abilities and connect with each other in new and novel ways.
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    • anonymouse008 3y ago
      You and I both know the TV was not Apple's 'One more thing...' to such a cringy degree. Preface: I've been in the VR/AR space a long time. I started a company with a friend around the launch of DK1 - we wanted to sell VR Computer Boxes. We had so many dumb but beautifully naive ideas. I will only offer high level themes (although incomplete) that should hopefully explain why I take such issue with this release: We already have the best vision system on the planet, 'our eyes'. Spatial Computing in humans is not vision and audio alone - proprioception underlies all. What you cover with a headset, you cannot faithfully recreate with cameras and software. Use the brilliant chipset advantage to bring super 'low cost' computing embodiments to every corner of life - then integrate with devs Ambient Computing is the next iteration of 'mac at the center of your digital life' AirTags, Beacons, and AppClips don't get the corporate strategic attention they deserve Apple Watch should be 'the wand' for life out in the real world, with AppClips, Beacons and such
• fnord77 3y ago
  A TV is often a social device. this thing is not
• lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  Not this version probably, just like the first version of the iPhone wasn't stellar. But as a new product line, this is the first VR/AR device I've seen that demonstrates a vision for the future that might work. For a one-day ubiquitous product, $3k is the entry level price. None of the existing devices support this vision - they are just VR hardware. Their lower price doesn't matter because that's not what's going to go mainstream.
• gigel82 3y ago
  I will go on record as saying this will be one of the biggest flops in Apple's modern hardware history. They've shown no innovative scenarios that Hololens / Quest / Google Glass (and similar devices) hasn't shown before. Those things flopped because they didn't have the scenarios and nothing changed now.
  • hajile 3y ago
    For me, the big difference is apps. I have a Quest and there's not much usable stuff for it. I can see a lot of those ipad/iphone/mac apps as useful on an AR device. Quality also matters. I don't really like looking through the Quest for very long. Fresnel lenses and meh screen combined with a terrible processor means the visual experience isn't very good. I'd bet a lot that their custom lenses and screens combined with a decent SoC offer a HUGE jump in visual fidelity.
• geerlingguy 3y ago
  Is this the new reverse-Dropbox reverse-iPhone HN groupthink meta? The question is, will we link back to this in 10 years as a gotcha as AR/VR is still 10 years away from mainstream then?
• moralestapia 3y ago
  >this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone I'm not so sure about that but I'm 100% sure that if anyone manages to pull that off it's going to be Apple. Corollary: if this doesn't make AR/VR finally go mainstream then forget about it, it's 3D TV again.
• wongarsu 3y ago
  Having multiple private large-scale screens anywhere, even on the train or plane, is huge. Many VR headsets tried delivering that, but so far the resolution just wasn't there. The article is a bit light on actual details, but at least the price point gives an indication that Apple might make it possible.
• shadowgovt 3y ago
  I think it's a good risk, and the kind of risk Apple is well-positioned (as a combined owner of hardware, software, and third-party software ecosystem) to take. Major we'll-see risk factors I identify: 1) $3,500 is expensive, any way you slice it. That makes it price-competitive with a workstation. 2) The stand-up-and-work environment they demo'd doesn't work for a lot of people. But if you sit down, you lose a lot of the benefit of that panoramic space. 3) Their gesture interface has to be rock-solid (meaning no false negatives but also no false positives) for it to be part of a daily work environment. 4) We've been experimenting with headsets for long enough to know that for the average user, the amount of time you can comfortably use one is lower than the amount of time seated at a mouse-keyboard-monitor UI. 5) The battery life is 2 hours, which is like nothing. You can use it plugged in, but then you're plugged in (meaning not only that you're tethered to somewhere, but that you've got the constant pressure of the tether disrupting your head motions, which adds up over time in irritation). All of that having been said, if anyone has a prayer of overcoming these obstacles it's Apple. They've got the software / hardware / UI / UX integration in-house to take a solid run at the challenge.
  • comment_ran 3y ago
    I completely agree with your point about risk. When we're talking about risk, the opposite of risk is a great benefit, just like a starship. Captain Kirk said great risk we have, the more potential gain we probably gain. Stand-up work environment is also huge for me. I don't like sitting all the time in front of a desk. But I'm not sure if I sit down, all the benefits gonna last. Maybe it's just a choice. Maybe I can sit down doing some different kind of things. Or maybe I can lay on my bed, just do something else. The gesture interface has to be rock solid. I agree. Especially you're already doing something more fine-tune level things.For example, you want to manipulate a 3D object, but I think we can, or the engineering can finally overcome those difficulties by using those optical algorithms to track, to kind of think about a new way to interact with computer. Actually, if you think about the way we communicate with computer, all we're talking about is the keyboard, but does the keyboard is the only solution to all the problem we have? I don't think that is the only problem. The battery lapsed two hours, I'm not sure what exactly they mean. If it's just two hours, maybe it's a replaceable charge or something like that, maybe we can bring a bigger external battery. I'm not sure, but if it's just only working for two hours, that's going to be some potential issues here.
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• outworlder 3y ago
  > I will happily go on the record as saying that this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone, perhaps even more so. It seems to have the potential. The UX seems incredible. Little details like using eyes as a pointer make it for a far better experience (no, moving your head to point is not the same). Looking at your Macbook to pull apps from it is the sort of thing that can make it intuitive for the average user. A proper review of what this could do would take an article. I think the main things we need to know are: * What sort of apps can we use? Is this IOS-like, or can I run XCode on it? Having to own the headset plus a macbook is not going to make or break it, but it changes the value of the device at its current price point. * Can we comfortably use it for 8+ hours a day? * Is text really crisp enough for productivity usage? I don't think this version is quite there yet, but give it a few iterations and we may be able to ditch physical monitors altogether. I've been waiting for that for a while. At $3499 it's quite a gamble. At $999 it would have been a no-brainer, as that's the price of a phone. It does have way too much hardware for a lower price point, so it's understandable. But the more devices that exist, the greater the network effects.
  • wintogreen74 3y ago
    >> Can we comfortably use it for 8+ hours a day? With 2 hours of battery life this is not a problem.
    • sebzim4500 3y ago
      In the video you could see someone using it while there was a wire going into his pocket, presumably that's a battery extender.
    • notJim 3y ago
      It's indefinite if plugged in. You'd be in your office or wherever with the device plugged in for productivity use.
  • Miraste 3y ago
    I'm not sold on eyes as a pointer just yet. The Quest Pro can do this and it does not feel great. Based on experience with a lot of other headsets: > Can we comfortably use it for 8+ hours a day? No. Even if the ergonomics are perfect, the screens aren't good enough for this. > Is text really crisp enough for productivity usage? If they match the leaked resolution, no.
• KallDrexx 3y ago
  > - In response to the obvious criticisms (high price, battery life, form factor, weird eyeball thing)... this is Gen 1. Look how quickly the iPhone and Apple Watch evolved between generations 1 to 3, and look how the price changed as production capabilities and economies of scale evolved. The original iPhone released for $599, which is ~$876 2023 dollars based on CPI. So, while most of your bullet points about iPhone improving is true, the iPhone is the wrong thing to point to for economies of scale making Apple products cheaper over time.
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• prmoustache 3y ago
  So most people prefer holding their phone in the hand to using airpods to send voice messages or having calls. What makes you think people will prefer strapping a much heavier and uncomfortable headset to watching a screen?
• mellosouls 3y ago
  This sounds like a take from somebody who doesn't realise that's already there in headsets like the Quest that this presumably won't match in numbers. What is brilliant here, are the specs giving some serious boost to the use cases already established by Meta/Oculus, NReal etc and services like Immersed, BigScreen etc. But please, less of that breathless "Apple have invented this new thing" tone, it's annoying when they haven't. Either do some basic research first, or if you have, then at least frame what you reckon is revolutionary in terms of the existing market. I am sure from the specs, if not the price, that this is going to kick up some dust, but its not obviously inventing anything that isn't there already.
  • drdaeman 3y ago
    Not only they don't realize it already exists, they don't realize how bad it is. There's never enough resolution (even with 8K headsets), eye strain from trying to focus on virtual objects is real, and camera passthrough always look fake (and may even cause mild nausea). Not to mention that most folks don't really train their neck muscles to support significant extra weight on their heads on front-back axis (we typically tilt our heads much less than lean forward or backward, so headphones are not comparable). I don't believe Apple have made some giant leap and included an autorefractor in there and made external cameras moveable and able to match you pupillary distance (and convergence!), then added some fancy magnetostrictive micro-mirror system to dynamically boost resolution at the areas you're focusing at. Not in this form factor, and if they would somehow magically make it they'd be boasting about it non-stop. If they showcase it in Apple Stores I would definitely take a peek, and I would like to be wrong - but I'm pretty sure it's a pricey gimmick that won't be anywhere comfortable for any prolonged use.
• ohgodplsno 3y ago
  I will happily go on record to say that you're critically wrong and that the only reason this will ever have any usage is the Apple Reality Distortion Field. I speak having used most available VR devices available these past few years, and currently owning a Valve Index: Watching movies: wearing something over your eyes and on your head like that for so long _fucking sucks_. It's heavy/hot enough when you're doing something that takes your attention. Watching a movie is fun for the first time, then you realize that being able to walk around, look at other things etc is infinitely better. Not to mention the fact that if you ever want to watch with someone else, well they better have 3.5k available. that makes it a non starter for literally anyone hoping to, you know, have people over. - For work: it fucking sucks. You know what's worse than having two screens taking up your entire sight? Having to physically turn your head to see more screens. It is physically sickening to have your entire attention taken up like that. - Form factor: my dude the last thing I want in public is to look like I'm wearing swimming goggles. Also, two hours is absolutely pathetic. - Price: the first iPhone cost $600. The cheapest new iPhone 14 is $1000, the most expensive is like 2000. It got worse, not better. It's going to be a fun, overpriced toy and it'll be just like every VR device people currently own: hanging on your wall and used once every two weeks, at best.
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• 1024core 3y ago
  > For personal/entertainment use it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema. TV viewing is often a social experience: friends gathering in front of a TV to watch a sporting event (say, a World Cup soccer match, or your favorite team's football game, or an NBA finals game). This takes away that aspect. I'm not sure if this is a change we really need.
  • zimpenfish 3y ago
    > TV viewing is often a social experience: Sure but "for personal use" kinda excludes "social experience" here. > it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema In my previous flat, living along, a big TV just didn't fit anywhere. A sound system would also have annoyed the neighbours. Something like this would have been perfect for getting that 4K HDR viewing experience.
• hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
  > - For personal/entertainment use it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema. I don't know about others in this thread, but for me the satisfaction of watching a movie alone is extremely low - to the point I don't do it at all.
• verdverm 3y ago
  Small, comfortable smart glasses enabling Hololens 2 like UX, I agree. Bulky, expensive passthrough? No, there are better, cheaper, more open options than this on the market. If it was going to change things, we'd be seeing people using this capability already. The main hold up here is technology advancement, not quite where it needs to be yet, but the field is showing the progress needed to reach it.
• elorant 3y ago
  iPhone price went up with subsequent generations. So I wouldn't count on Apple to drop the price at the near future.
  • LUmBULtERA 3y ago
    Apple likely started with the "Pro" moniker fully intending for non-pro versions to come out at lower price points.
• Ylmaz 3y ago
  Every team in my company got the new meta headset for free. I used it for like 30 seconds and i've never seen anyone else using it.
• skilled 3y ago
  Nobody will remember/care about this as soon as the news sites stop talking about it (in a few days), enjoy your iPhone moment prediction.
• bequanna 3y ago
  Man, I for one sure hope this isn’t the future. But maybe it is. Just another step away from one another, further into isolation.
• SkyPuncher 3y ago
  I have an NReal Air. It offers similar capabilities to everything you mentioned (though much worse resolution). If I have the preference, I still choose a screen. Screens are easy, screens a casual, screens exist in the real world. I can share them, I can walk away from them, I can position them where _they will never, ever move_. Screens have (and will always have) higher resolution. Screens don't require me to mess with some cord and pull a headset off to find my snack or walk to the bathroom. I prefer my Nreals in two situations: * When I'm traveling/on-the-go and want more screen real estate. * When my wife is using the main TV and I don't feel like hauling the Playstation downstairs.
  • zmmmmm 3y ago
    Sounds like the Vision Pro addresses your main issues - it's fully wireless, albeit with the somewhat ridiculous cord hanging off and battery pack in your pocket. And you can walk around your house with (presumably) near perfect pass through view of the real world. And then the resolution - I think you could be wrong about that. It's surprisingly hard to compare, but the Vision Pro is going to get you pretty close to high enough resolution that it doesn't matter any more. It's interesting though you seem to view the fact that it's close to impossible to move your monitors as a plus - that part sounds very weird to me.
    • SkyPuncher 3y ago
      It does and it doesn't. The cable is really about how it runs down your shoulder/back. It gets caught on stuff and pinched between your body and seat, pulling it off. This is a problem even when using magnetic usb cables or Nreal with a usb-c based phone. Taking it off is still necessary for anything outside of a trivial task. It's really scary to think about dropping a $3.5k device in the toilet/sink or having it fall off your head. > It's interesting though you seem to view the fact that it's close to impossible to move your monitors as a plus - that part sounds very weird to me. In the video, all of the virtual monitors are "perfectly" aligned with the user and the surrounding environment. It looks beautiful, but presents some challenges that I hope Apple has installed. For example, if you use this at a desk, how do you ensure that the screens anchor directly in front of you every time you use it? Are the just slightly off? Do they read the room and reset when they recognize it? Do you need to "recenter" every time you use the device? How do you put a TV in the perfect place in your room?
• deanc 3y ago
  We've had all these things since the very first VR headsets. I remember sitting in a movie theatre setting trying to play a 1080P movie and it looking like a potato. Forgetting the AR/VR debate for a minute, the thing holding these back from wide adoption has been resolution and comfort. I have yet to use an XR device where I can simply play a video without it being jarringly blurry and pixelated. I've yet to use an XR device that isn't a chore to wear and sweaty (although I do trust Apple to address this one). Let's see. The proof will be in the pudding when I try one of these in an Apple store next year.
• air7 3y ago
  I'm willing to take the opposite "bet", and say that I think this will receive very little traction. The single reason being that it's uncomfortable to use. That's it. It's an "Emperor's New Clothes" type saying: It doesn't matter how impressive the capabilities are, if it's uncomfortable, people will, after the initial allure fades, just not use it. IMO The only viable future for VR/AR is when the form factor will come down to normal looking/weighting glasses that I might look around for while having them on.
• niho 3y ago
  The thing that amazed me the most with the presentation was that they never showed typing on a virtual keyboard. It seems like you need an actual physical keyboard to do any typing. The keyboard was famously considered a make it or break it feature internally at Apple when developing the original iPhone. It is very telling that they haven’t managed to solve this basic HCI problem for the Vision. Steve Jobs would never have released this. I’m sad to say it, but this is not a “Pro” device. It’s a Prototype device. Apple Vision Prototype (And I’m sorry, but the eyes are creepy —- uncanny valley)
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    The dual-touchpad style VR keyboard like the original Vive has is probably the only usable virtual keyboard. Everything else is one by one, find and peck typing. If you want to experience it, get a steam controller or a steam deck and use the trackpads on that keyboard. You get used to it very fast and you can get really usable typing speed. It won't work for programming though because anything that needs more niche than basic punctuation would require chording or multiple inputs, which sucks.
  • greedo 3y ago
    They did show a virtual keyboard during the presentation.
    • paul_f 3y ago
      I don't think it was virtual. Looked like a real keyboard on the table
      • jasonjamerson 3y ago
        Right before that, there was a virtual one.
  • 6nf 3y ago
    The idea is that you'll use voice recognition instead of typing
• ChuckMcM 3y ago
  I was wondering what was dragging HN down :-). That said, if it translates signs in the "real world" on the fly to your native language, that would be win for business users. The "infinite screen/screens" thing has always show promise but has always been hard to execute against. The lack of them pushing any kind of gaming experience[1] was a bit telling for me. I'm guessing they haven't fixed the vomit problem. Still think it would be awkward to be in the same physical space with people who have visors and people who don't. [1] To be fair I didn't see the keynote, just followed the website sales pitch.
• andrewstuart 3y ago
  >> this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone, perhaps even more so. Not even close. 99% of the people I know would never put a computer on their face.
• gigatexal 3y ago
  Yeah from what I can tell and being a solitary person if I had 3.5k I'd be all over this. And I am a die-hard Linux guy though I have an iPhone and an Apple Watch. Very cool stuff, albeit, if it lives up to the hype in the presentation. Very cool stuff.
• subsubzero 3y ago
  So.. Fun fact, Osterhaut group(ODG) has something just like this and it was working as Apple demos showed and it was out 7 years ago. I tried it on and for me it was the biggest game changer I felt since the 2007 iphone. Microsoft bought the patents from odg and the company ran out of money trying its own strategy. Sad story for them but I hope apple really does this right as it will be an absolute game changer. https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/03/odg-unveils-its-first-consumer-ar-glasses-built-on-qualcomms-snapdragon-835-chip/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/03/odg-unveils-its-first-cons...
• Hippocrates 3y ago
  I agree. I spent a ton of money configuring my home office. Many displays, giant motorized desk, articulating arms, cable management, etc. Easily over $3500, and I still don't feel like it's ergonomically great. It certainly can't be brought anywhere. It occupies a whole room. Now I am thinking I might not need that bulky stuff at all, and if I don't need the displays and big desk then maybe I don't need the office. If I don't need the home office then maybe I should be shopping a home that's around 75-100k cheaper with one less room. I've often wanted to work outside from my deck but then I don't have my screen real estate and I get tons of glare. This could solve that. We've long complained about the degradation of the in-office experience. These days it's all open-floor plans with a fixed monitor set and no privacy. If I could put these on and have a huge display with a beach in the background, I wouldn't as much mind sitting 2 feet away from coworkers. The benefits of something like this on flights and in airports seems obvious. Its not really weird, considering savvy travelers swaddle themselves in AirPods Max and bizarre neck-sling-pillow apparatuses already.
• c7DJTLrn 3y ago
  How can you say that before trying? Have you ever tried VR? You can see the pixels, it's not at all immersive. I find it hard to believe that Apple have somehow invented revolutionary display technology before Meta/Oculus who have had about decade to do R&D. Not to mention that "inside-out" tracking is nowhere as good as shown as show at the WWDC keynote.
• nabakin 3y ago
  > I will happily go on the record as saying that this will be as revolutionary as the iPhone, perhaps even more so. > Look how quickly the iPhone and Apple Watch evolved between generations 1 to 3 I would not compare the iPhone to the Apple Watch. They were on completely different orders of magnitude of evolution. I could see the Apple Vision Pro being half as popular as the Apple Watch (primarily due to the price tag) and I think there's a good chance it finds its market, but I think comparing it to the iPhone is way off base.
• hammyhavoc 3y ago
  If it's so good for WFH, why has Apple insisted everybody return to the office? It's got a 2h battery life, so your dreams of using it on the beach are pretty funny versus just using a laptop.
• stephc_int13 3y ago
  You should probably try it before making this kind of statement. The perfect version of this tech -could- be what you describe. But so far there are quite a few unknowns about the real experience.
• pier25 3y ago
  > For personal/entertainment use it largely replaces the need for a TV, soundbar, or home cinema. It remains to be seen if the experience is better than a large OLED TV. In terms of sound I seriously doubt it. Maybe if it had large planar drivers but I doubt you can use large headphones with it. If it's meant to be used with crappy Airpods the sound is going to be nowhere comparable to a home theater.
• wendyshu 3y ago
  So you're buying AAPL?
• ulfw 3y ago
  For people who are loners, live alone and don't share anything with others. I guess if you enjoy sitting on your couch watching TV all by yourself all day this is it, yes.