10 ms·

Apple's Vision Pro headset deserves to be ridiculed

91 points by cdme 3y ago

whynaut 3y ago
Author should've read up on the tech first.
princevegeta89 3y ago
Nothing to ridicule the product itself really, but being immersed in a fake world on a regular basis is probably not good. I am assuming this version 1.0 that will come out will be a "testing the waters" sort of a product which could lead the way to some useful applications like Media, AR, and Communication Services
- keernan 3y ago
  >fake world Our perception of the world is already "fake". Our body has sensors that probe our exterior and provide input to our brain which attempts to create it's best picture of our surroundings. But it's a "fake world" because it is incomplete and often inaccurate. These products are simply rough versions of what will some day [2050?] be coordinated digital "brain streams" - replacing the streams from our current sensors - that create whatever reality is intended for the brain to perceive... including streams coordinated with streams going to others... so we can all be in the same virtual space with coordinated live streams replacing our sense of sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing - together with other inputs our current senses don't include ... and it will be impossible for the brain to distinguish between digital input from "natural input" But I digress... and I'm not even stoned... but I've been thinking about this exact subject since approx 1980 (although back then I insisted everything I said above would exist by the year 2000... ha!)
jarym 3y ago
No one is going to force him to buy one. Especially if it makes him feel isolated. And one nitpick, a device with a 2 hour battery life (or all day if connected to the mains) is clearly not for all-day use. At least not the v1 product they presented today.
- pattyj 3y ago
  Agreed. However, I think the author fears that, just like smartphones, some will become socially pressured into getting one and it will cause them harm. So they're issuing a kind of public warning.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Or, just like smartphones, we're going to have to put up with people around us using them inappropriately in public.
- solarmist 3y ago
  I’m wondering if the battery pack is hot swappable. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    Knowing Apple I would only be slightly surprised if there was some DRM chip which would lock a specific battery pack to the headset (and the other way around).
    - solarmist 3y ago
      It’s a MagSafe cable, doesn’t that already pretty much do that?
- paraboul 3y ago
  Are you implying that voicing concerns about the potential societal implications of technology is no longer valid or justifiable?
  - jarym 3y ago
    No one is preventing him from voicing his concerns. I do object to "ensure that every time we someone with that ugly Apple ski mask strapped to their faces we let them know how ridiculous it is" - that bit sounds like he wants to harass anyone who doesn't share HIS concerns.
granzymes 3y ago
I just don't think the watch market is really there. I feel like its shrinking steadily among younger people as the need for a time teller is replaced by the modern cell phone. I believe people have convinced themselves into convincing companies that they actually want a high tech wrist watch when, in reality, the market isn't that big and it is shrinking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291898 To me these seem pretty stupid. Major features (to me) of ear-buds with wires and 3.5" jack are: 1) being attached with wires means I don't easily lose them when they slip out of my ear/hand/pocket. 2) the 3.5" jack actually keeps them pretty solidly attached to my phone (again, less risk of losing them). Walking around with two loose tiny objects seems less than ideal - at least to me; I'd lose them within days. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169937 $350 and not out until "early 2015" Dead in the water. That's insanely expensive and too late in the smartwatch market in my mind. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291889
- graypegg 3y ago
  I’ve seen this reposted a bunch. Is it really adding anything to the conversation being repeated verbatim? Yes. People have been wrong in the past.
  - granzymes 3y ago
    Hey, I went into HN search myself to pull these quotes! It was actually quite fun, I recommend scrolling the old threads. In all seriousness, I think it is helpful context that people have ridiculed every Apple product launch since the iPhone.
    - rospaya 3y ago
      So you are suggesting that Apple can do no wrong and therefore we shouldn't criticize any of their products? And you believe you are positively contributing to this thread?
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
basisword 3y ago
>> Host of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast and author of “Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation” So…man who hates tech hates new tech. Shocker.
- sundaeofshock 3y ago
  Talk about judging a book by its cover. From the description of their podcast: “Tech Won’t Save Us challenges the notion that tech alone can drive our world forward by showing that tech is inherently political and ignoring that has serious consequences. It encourages listeners to think beyond the confines of the capitalist tech industry, to consider how we can dismantle oppressive technologies, and how technology can be developed for the public good.” This is one of my favorite podcasts about the tech industry. It’s thought provoking and I can’t recommend it enough. https://techwontsave.us/ https://techwontsave.us/
yellow_postit 3y ago
Just felt an overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness in so many of their demos. The ones of parents wearing the helmet while interacting with children just were straight up depressing to me as a parent. I’m all for spatial cameras in the phone and having better ways to view them later but this “future” looks lonely.
- n42 3y ago
  I agree. I think the work they put into the eyes feature is evidence of their concern about this issue. I'm really curious to know what the "feeling" is like to be in a room with someone wearing one of these.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I'm really curious to know what the "feeling" is like to be in a room with someone wearing one of these. Me too. I'm predicting "creeped out".
  - hn92726819 3y ago
    Honestly probably better than being in a room full of people with their camera off. It is painful to pay attention in meetings like that
  - reportgunner 3y ago
    I would imagine it's like being in a room with someone who is wearing a $3500 pair of diving goggles.
- tiedieconderoga 3y ago
  It does feel like they're well into the uncanny valley. We'll see how they fare against the ineffable "ick" factor. Google Glass cost half as much and was in a much tighter form factor, but it failed because the general public perceived it as creepy and isolating. If this product gets associated with people striving to wall themselves off from the world in their own personal dreamscape...well, I don't know. Maybe that sort of personality type will become a virtue in the zeitgeist. Maybe it already is.
robertoandred 3y ago
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
- mdavidn 3y ago
  I think this entire product line is a terrible idea but ... A wire to a pocket battery does seem like a good compromise.
Rebelgecko 3y ago
This post has big "No wireless, less space than a nomad, lame" energy. Right off the bat, the whole "don't sit too close to the TV or your eyes will fall out" concerns seem a bit ignorant. AFAIK every VR headset uses lenses so that your eye focuses as if it were looking at something much further away (Oculus headsets are 1.3-2 meters). Unless there's evidence that Apple screwed this up, seems like a moot point. Full disclosure- based on the typos and unnecessary FUD in the first section of the article, I didn't bother to read the whole thing.
mjamesaustin 3y ago
I find it amusing that the first headset with a very thoughtful approach to trying to maintain connection to other people is faced with even more forceful condemnation of its isolating effects. Apple developed and invested significantly in a system to make interaction possible and (relatively) natural between users of the headset and others in their environment. I applaud that first step towards an AR future that doesn't isolate us from others.
- turtletontine 3y ago
  I think that’s exactly the problem, the “relatively” natural is still pretty darn awkward and freaky. With gaming VR, you’re not expected to be interacting with people who are co-present at the same time, it makes sense to spend an hour or two in this space having some fun. With this, the intent is clearly to have you wear it all the time and let it be your entire interface to the world. And that, Apple trying to insert itself into regular human face-to-face interaction where technology is completely unnecessary, is what’s off putting about this.
- te_chris 3y ago
  Because it’s reshaping your current purely analog relationships to people by inserting a massive corporation between you and them.
- bentcorner 3y ago
  I think it's commendable they tried but at the same time I'm going to be 100% annoyed conversing with someone who has one of these things on pointed at me while I'm trying to talk to them. Call me old fashioned but if these things ever catch on mainstream it's going to take me a while to adjust.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I'm going to be 100% annoyed conversing with someone who has one of these things on I suspect that I won't be willing to interact with them.
- JohnFen 3y ago
andrewstuart 3y ago
I would have called it innovation. Computing does tend to be about looking at screens. And companies do tend to be about profit.
major505 3y ago
I dont think the idea is ridicule for things like gaming and work. But to sell it as a social experience is kind of ridiculous.
blobbers 3y ago
When are people going to realize that an immersive version of World of Warcraft is really what folks want? These are real people paying real money who want to be locked in a virtual world for hours. Give people who WANT a better experience something better. Instead, they keep trying to shove Netflix and photo reels down our throats along with a bunch of casual fast games that people get bored of fairly quickly.
- KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
  ? That's a software problem, I'm sure this device will be able to serve that usecase fine.
- khazhoux 3y ago
  The API is so that developers can launch their WoW. But yeah, it's surprising they didn't have any demo like that today.
  - babyshake 3y ago
    I wasn't being really close attention the whole time, but I didn't see any demos that were full on VR. Everything was AR.
  - spacemadness 3y ago
    They tried to keep this as far from gaming related as possible in true Apple fashion.
- ianmcgowan 3y ago
  The choice is clear - Ready Player One or Minority Report?
npunt 3y ago
Garden variety no-analysis hot take demonstrating a lack of understanding of how platforms launch & grow and what trajectory this is going in. Personally I think Apple missed a bit in the marketing by positioning this so heavily on average consumer use cases (3d pics of kids!) rather than professional use cases, where yes, having immersive shared environments can be helpful while avoiding any of the legitimate 'consume your life' issues with tech in our personal lives. "Boot up an office at home when you need it" is an extremely compelling use case and is compatible with the ideals of making computing (and work!) more humane. Unfortunately the author doesn't seem to understand product positioning or have the vision to see possibilities enough to discuss the consumer v work nuance. And the isolation critique could have been interesting but it just defaulted to 'big company bad, tech bad.' Critics are essential, we deserve better ones.
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
  it may lack understanding the technicalities around marking and product launches... but instead it has a mundane understanding of what most people actually consider important in life fortunately his critique is not around the specifics of how this product was made (and 'launched') but about whether this product should be made in the first place technologically it looks about the same as a hololens, which seems like the same 'product idea' as already launched by microsoft whenever ago; but where is that now?
  - npunt 3y ago
    Any 'should this product be launched' critique should come armed with an understanding of what the product's trajectory is and what it could be capable of, which the author failed to demonstrate. That's not particularly surprising, most people aren't very imaginative, so it read like something most people would write: a hot take with a few old talking points. Re:HoloLens, it failed because Microsoft is not an organization that can build category-defining consumer products. Vision is worlds apart technically from the HoloLens' tech demo level quality. Whether or not it succeeds in the market, Apple was not fucking around or half-assing the tech. This was spare no expense, leave no nuance unpolished, culmination of a decade of deep technical investment and the merging of 30 different workstreams stuff. I can hardly imagine the complexity of the product roadmap that led to it. Re:mundane understanding, I'm not so sure. Taken as-is with the gen1 hardware we saw, I think Vision should have been targeted a bit more at workplace than consumer given the form factor. But more broadly, the whole product is really just a prelude for what experience we can expect within an AR glasses form factor in the coming decade(s), and products like this need to put a stake in the ground on what they're going to be about. To give you some sense of why HoloLens never made it: it was timed wrong for the tech (way too early), it was incubated in a company that has never defined a consumer product category and lacks the talent / organizational structure / gravitas to do so, Microsoft lacked the courage to invest in it, it failed to define valuable broad market use cases, it couldn't leverage developers, it lacked multi-year investments in like 10 different key technologies, it had entirely the wrong form factor, etc etc. There wasn't a snowballs chance in hell HoloLens was going to be a consumer product without being fundamentally different.
pupppet 3y ago
I wonder how much they could have saved removing that front-facing screen. Bet you any money it's gone next revision, replaced by some LED that signals what you're looking at.
anonymousiam 3y ago
The facetime video (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vision-pro/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vis...) shows the faces of the people she's online with, but they will not be able to see her face while she's wearing the "spacial computer", unless it generates a fake avatar for them.
- larksimian 3y ago
  It generates an avatar for her. They show it in the demo, it looks really good.
  - toyg 3y ago
    If I call you and get an avatar, I will assume you're an absolute phoney. A rich phoney, but still a phoney. It's like calling and getting a "virtual background" - to me it says you're ashamed of where you are.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Calling people “rich phonies” and also “if you have a virtual background I assume you’re ashamed of where you are” Now that is an insufferable combo if I’ve ever seen one.
      - toyg 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - Jcowell 3y ago
      > It's like calling and getting a "virtual background" - to me it says you're ashamed of where you are. it’s not a matter of being ashamed , it’s a matter of , what right do you have to see Into my home without my consent? Not everyone I video chat is someone I want inside my house.
- ashtonbaker 3y ago
  that's exactly what it does.
wojciem 3y ago
Hardware is impressive as expected - engineering porno. One use-case that i can imagine having this headset is as a replacement for external displays. But that would need to be conditioned on great pass through and ability to use physical keyboard and mouse.
not_your_mentat 3y ago
iSnorkel sold separately.
pcurve 3y ago
"But this is another moment where we need to recognize that isn’t true, and we do have the collective power to stop technologies that don’t serve us" ??? I'm not a fan boy, but if there's a market with unmet needs that can be solved by $3,500 helmet, so be it. The market will decide. I think Apple will have no problem with 500,000 in pre-order by the time this ships. $3,500 is a lot of money, but many consumer electronics have cost far more adjusted for inflation. It's not an insurmountable cost. The question is, is the product compelling enough? I personally think it is.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Exactly. There is no royal we here. Just people who will either buy this thing or won't. And then people like this who are telling other people what to do and think. Which is never a good look. I'm not actually an Apple fan boy. I have a Pixel 6 and a Manjaro computer at home. I do use a mac book pro for work but without having bought into the I everything ecosystem. But, I can see the attraction of this device. I don't have that kind of cash rolling around in my bank account so I won't be able to get one any time soon. Also, I'm not in the US so I wouldn't be able to anyway at the launch. But I think the price point isn't that steep and very reasonable actually. People spend much more on sports cars, plasma TVs, and other things they don't need but that are a hell of a lot of fun. And this looks like it should be fun to use. And arguably this could end up delivering a bit of a premium experience over e.g. the best plasma TV money can buy. It certainly looks like the ultimate in personal entertainment. For anyone with the cash on hand, this kind of looks like a very desirable thing to own. People make the mistake of focusing on just the hardware. Which looks awesome. But what really caught my attention here is the fact that they lined up a lot of compelling content and applications and are effectively leveling up the content ecosystem they already have. That is the smart move because they were already leading here. So, they are technically extending their lead combining scarce and premium content with a superior premium experience that you can't currently get from anyone. It's basically premium squared. Having the disney CEO on stage is a bit of a stake in the ground. Avatar, Star Wars, etc. all in glorious 3D. And some of the apps aren't that bad either. And they cleverly sneaked in some announcement about making it easier for game publishers to port their games over to mac. Unrelated at face value, but duh, which game publisher would not want a piece of this action?!. And basically infinite screen real estate to project your applications in your field of view alone is quite a step up from having just a laptop screen with some shitty external screen to extend that. Looks like that should work with just about any 2D application too. You could spend many thousands on expensive monitors and still have less real estate. I could see myself using that professionally just coding. They will sell as many as they manage to produce, which probably will be around a million or so. This could be a multi billion business in its first year. It will be some time before they have real competition so they can ask whatever they want for this. Apple has got a new money printing machine here. And it's not like their old ones were struggling.
wvenable 3y ago
We've wanted virtual environments from moment that William T. Riker stepped onto the Holodeck. We've been dreaming of a cyberpunk reality since the first snow crash. It feels strange to blame Apple for this "vision" of computing.
- toyg 3y ago
  That "we" is a bit of an assumption. Was a relatively small group of tech-enthusiast and socially-awkward people, trying to hide behind cool digital lives? Sure, guilty as charged. Was the world population at large asking for the same...? Eh.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    I remember owning a computer when most people didn't have one. I remember owning one of the earliest smartphones and sitting on the bus every day being the only person playing on my phone. I remember being the only person with a smartwatch (the Pebble).
    - toyg 3y ago
      Yeah, and now there is plenty of backlash for the world "we" have built for ourselves. The problems are starting to outweigh the benefits, even for enthusiasts.
antiterra 3y ago
As someone whose entire social world opened up because of the internet, I find the overall attitude of the author to be highly questionable. It’s one thing to be wary of being forced to isolate or avoid contact, but it’s another thing entirely to suggest that solitude at work definitively equals an overarching loneliness.
1270018080 3y ago
Every blogger needs to fire off their hot takes today to maximize clicks.
davidy123 3y ago
Strapping one of these on your face is undeniably quite nasty, and the video eyes just kind of make it creepier. And their shiny reps going on about how everyone can participate, meanwhile it's Apple only is really the icing. I think though that the dream is for it to get smaller and more human adapted until you get all the benefits, with normalized cues that make it more social, perhaps more social than the now-ubiqitious smartphone and headphones. But that is a long ways away. The other thing that I think is not emphasized enough is that this headset is really a two way interface for personal AI, where it could be very compelling. Apple prefers to sell it as an entertainment/work device, but with all those sensors and upcoming multi mode AIs, it would be a whole new category. I think Apple realizes others have taken the "AI" flame, but they know it's important, so instead for now emphasize machine learning, but this will eventually become more like the interface for AI assisted imagineering and self guided entertainment.
fizx 3y ago
We ridiculed the first generation of bluetooth headsets, calling Jawbones "douchenozzles". People will come around sooner or later on some generation of an apple VRset.
toyg 3y ago
Most people don't like to wear glasses, even less like tight-fitted masks. One will always look like a dork wearing this, social ostracism will continue ("seen any fish yet?"...). Phones and watches, you can seamlessly integrate into a traditional-looking lifestyle. Something like this, you just can't.
- drdaeman 3y ago
  What I don't get is why there is no counterweight. This headset doesn't look balanced (just a mesh in the back) and the presentation screamed "that neck is gonna hurt" in those scenes where an actors were sitting in front of a laptop or desk, hands on a keyboard and/or touchpad, head tilted slightly forward. Unless the plan is to sell it for extra $299.
drumhead 3y ago
The headset looks like an amazing product on paper, buts it's pricing is way out of the normal apple range. Whe the iPod, iPhone, iPad, watch came out, they were expensive but affordable. Enough to build up market share and make app stores for them a viable proposition. With this headset at this price it's not going to get the same volumes, so who's going to write apps for it. It feels more like a Lisa than a Mac at this stage, and I'm sure a cheaper version is on the horizon.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
https://www.pcworld.com/article/516523/ipad_first_impressions.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/516523/ipad_first_impression... No Second Coming: Apple’s iPad Just a Big iPod Touch But at the end of the day, the show’s centerpiece – the iPad — is just a big iPod Touch. Lots of folks will want it, in a hypothetical sort of way. But it’s hard to imagine all that many of them will fork over the initial $499 for a crippled version, or as much as $829 (for the 64 GB/3G model you’d want).
ojkelly 3y ago
There’s nothing of substance here for why it should be ridiculed, other than the authors fear Apple has the ability to bring VR to the mainstream. But hasn’t Oculus/Meta Quest sold something like 20 million units? > Stop this future of computing > Tim Cook and his fellow Apple executives clearly asked themselves whether they could create a headset as their latest hardware product, but don’t seem to have spent as much time considering whether they should. Has the author considered why people are currently buying these headsets? And why a company with a long history in mobile computing would get in on it? > … The risk with Apple entering this market is that it does have a unique ability to legitimize products. The article is probably not worth your time, it wasn’t worth mine.
- albertopv 3y ago
  I don't think it's going to be mainstream at 3500$, probably not even at 1000$.
kypro 3y ago
I left a comment on the announcement thread a couple of hours ago basically saying how I wasn't sure what to think. But, the more I've thought about it since the more I've changed my mind. In fact, I think I actually quite dislike the product... The idea that I might now decide to talk to my girlfriend while wearing my VR headset because it has my eyes on the front is absolutely absurd. I really struggle to understand the rational of Apple doing that unless they want people to walk around wearing these things 24/7. And the way this was branded as being a great device for conversations with other human beings or taking photos of special moments with children is just kinda gross. While Meta has said similar things about the communication applications of VR headsets, I think I prefer that they've made it more of a virtual experience than an attempt at directly replacing real experiences. In Meta VR you're a cartoon when you interact with people and this makes it feel more video game than something that is trying to replace real world interaction. And unlike the Quest the fact Apple's headset doesn't have a controller probably means it's going to suck for gaming. So it seems Apple doesn't think VR gaming is the killer app, but instead believes interacting with your kids is. Not to mention the price point here is just absurd when compared to the Quest 3. I still think Apple's headset could be a good product for productivity if they've actually managed to get text to look sharp and have significantly reduced eye strain, but I think for now I'd rather just see how good the Quest 3 is to be honest. I know I might have to take my headset off when talking to my girlfriend and kids, but I'm not sure that's as much of a problem as Apple thinks it is.
GoofballJones 3y ago
Synopsis: Person who doesn't use Apple products is outraged by something they wouldn't buy anyway.
scrumlord 3y ago
[dead]
akomtu 3y ago
This snorkeling mask is how a well off hipster would escape reality. This ideal hipster needs to have thousands of spare cash and hours of free time every day, yet his day to day life must be nasty enough that he wants to escape it.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
karmakaze 3y ago
The best effect this will have is drive VR/AR development, now that we have an upper spec/price: 4k+ resolution per eye, $3,499. Now the others can squeeze/converge towards that. The closest thing I can see this being is delivering on some of what Magic Leap failed to do. I was also surprised by the lack of 3D content being described. Was there anything besides the photo/videos? I don't even recall mention of 3D movies (though maybe they were being shown but can't tell on a 2D demo video). What it doesn't do is deliver in aspects I'm interested in. I wanted something in the Bigscreen Beyond form factor without being room-bound. The idea of carrying an entire MacBook Pro and using it is ridiculous, I should be able to use an iPhone but running macOS on it with a Bluetooth keyboard mouse. The lack of precision input makes it a consumer device rather than a creator one.
- LexGray 3y ago
  3D movies were mentioned as a use case and there were multiple 3D app demos. The dinosaur roaring out of an educational app. The beating heart and heart take apart viewer from multiple angles. Walking around machines in place as you examined future workflow. The breathe app doing a full room fireworks thing. And a future National Geographic videos where you are traveling within the school of fish. I could see a fair use case in STEM education helping to visualize atomic structures, do dissection, or otherwise help people engage with the material. Historical videos are often pretty dry and with some machine learning they could punch up Churchill so you are in the crowd listening to his speech surrounded by a period entranced crowd. Will it get to the point that you can go to a concert and watch from the front row with seats in the boonies it is hard to say, although hopefully this contains all the AirPod pro passthru tech blocking out other people’s chatter or nearby vacuuming may be a huge boon to concentration and enjoyment.
karmakaze 3y ago
One thing I found noticeable is the repeated mention of all the tech that needed to be created and is packed into this device. It seems to be trying to make up for a lack of good use-cases and justifying its price. Normally Apple's announcements tend to gloss over the internal tech-how and focus on the delivered experience.
onewheeltom 3y ago
Remember all the mockery when Apple released the iPad?
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  And the iPod, and the iPhone, and...when has a new Apple product not been mocked?

91 points by cdme 3y ago

Author should've read up on the tech first.

Nothing to ridicule the product itself really, but being immersed in a fake world on a regular basis is probably not good. I am assuming this version 1.0 that will come out will be a "testing the waters" sort of a product which could lead the way to some useful applications like Media, AR, and Communication Services

keernan 3y ago
>fake world Our perception of the world is already "fake". Our body has sensors that probe our exterior and provide input to our brain which attempts to create it's best picture of our surroundings. But it's a "fake world" because it is incomplete and often inaccurate. These products are simply rough versions of what will some day [2050?] be coordinated digital "brain streams" - replacing the streams from our current sensors - that create whatever reality is intended for the brain to perceive... including streams coordinated with streams going to others... so we can all be in the same virtual space with coordinated live streams replacing our sense of sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing - together with other inputs our current senses don't include ... and it will be impossible for the brain to distinguish between digital input from "natural input" But I digress... and I'm not even stoned... but I've been thinking about this exact subject since approx 1980 (although back then I insisted everything I said above would exist by the year 2000... ha!)

jarym 3y ago

No one is going to force him to buy one. Especially if it makes him feel isolated. And one nitpick, a device with a 2 hour battery life (or all day if connected to the mains) is clearly not for all-day use. At least not the v1 product they presented today.

pattyj 3y ago
Agreed. However, I think the author fears that, just like smartphones, some will become socially pressured into getting one and it will cause them harm. So they're issuing a kind of public warning.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Or, just like smartphones, we're going to have to put up with people around us using them inappropriately in public.
solarmist 3y ago
I’m wondering if the battery pack is hot swappable. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.
- qwytw 3y ago
  Knowing Apple I would only be slightly surprised if there was some DRM chip which would lock a specific battery pack to the headset (and the other way around).
  - solarmist 3y ago
    It’s a MagSafe cable, doesn’t that already pretty much do that?
paraboul 3y ago
Are you implying that voicing concerns about the potential societal implications of technology is no longer valid or justifiable?
- jarym 3y ago
  No one is preventing him from voicing his concerns. I do object to "ensure that every time we someone with that ugly Apple ski mask strapped to their faces we let them know how ridiculous it is" - that bit sounds like he wants to harass anyone who doesn't share HIS concerns.

granzymes 3y ago

I just don't think the watch market is really there. I feel like its shrinking steadily among younger people as the need for a time teller is replaced by the modern cell phone. I believe people have convinced themselves into convincing companies that they actually want a high tech wrist watch when, in reality, the market isn't that big and it is shrinking. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291898 To me these seem pretty stupid. Major features (to me) of ear-buds with wires and 3.5" jack are: 1) being attached with wires means I don't easily lose them when they slip out of my ear/hand/pocket. 2) the 3.5" jack actually keeps them pretty solidly attached to my phone (again, less risk of losing them). Walking around with two loose tiny objects seems less than ideal - at least to me; I'd lose them within days. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169937 $350 and not out until "early 2015" Dead in the water. That's insanely expensive and too late in the smartwatch market in my mind. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291889

graypegg 3y ago
I’ve seen this reposted a bunch. Is it really adding anything to the conversation being repeated verbatim? Yes. People have been wrong in the past.
- granzymes 3y ago
  Hey, I went into HN search myself to pull these quotes! It was actually quite fun, I recommend scrolling the old threads. In all seriousness, I think it is helpful context that people have ridiculed every Apple product launch since the iPhone.
  - rospaya 3y ago
    So you are suggesting that Apple can do no wrong and therefore we shouldn't criticize any of their products? And you believe you are positively contributing to this thread?
    - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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basisword 3y ago

>> Host of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast and author of “Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation” So…man who hates tech hates new tech. Shocker.

sundaeofshock 3y ago
Talk about judging a book by its cover. From the description of their podcast: “Tech Won’t Save Us challenges the notion that tech alone can drive our world forward by showing that tech is inherently political and ignoring that has serious consequences. It encourages listeners to think beyond the confines of the capitalist tech industry, to consider how we can dismantle oppressive technologies, and how technology can be developed for the public good.” This is one of my favorite podcasts about the tech industry. It’s thought provoking and I can’t recommend it enough. https://techwontsave.us/ https://techwontsave.us/

yellow_postit 3y ago

Just felt an overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness in so many of their demos. The ones of parents wearing the helmet while interacting with children just were straight up depressing to me as a parent. I’m all for spatial cameras in the phone and having better ways to view them later but this “future” looks lonely.

n42 3y ago
I agree. I think the work they put into the eyes feature is evidence of their concern about this issue. I'm really curious to know what the "feeling" is like to be in a room with someone wearing one of these.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I'm really curious to know what the "feeling" is like to be in a room with someone wearing one of these. Me too. I'm predicting "creeped out".
- hn92726819 3y ago
  Honestly probably better than being in a room full of people with their camera off. It is painful to pay attention in meetings like that
- reportgunner 3y ago
  I would imagine it's like being in a room with someone who is wearing a $3500 pair of diving goggles.
tiedieconderoga 3y ago
It does feel like they're well into the uncanny valley. We'll see how they fare against the ineffable "ick" factor. Google Glass cost half as much and was in a much tighter form factor, but it failed because the general public perceived it as creepy and isolating. If this product gets associated with people striving to wall themselves off from the world in their own personal dreamscape...well, I don't know. Maybe that sort of personality type will become a virtue in the zeitgeist. Maybe it already is.

robertoandred 3y ago

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

mdavidn 3y ago
I think this entire product line is a terrible idea but ... A wire to a pocket battery does seem like a good compromise.

Rebelgecko 3y ago

This post has big "No wireless, less space than a nomad, lame" energy. Right off the bat, the whole "don't sit too close to the TV or your eyes will fall out" concerns seem a bit ignorant. AFAIK every VR headset uses lenses so that your eye focuses as if it were looking at something much further away (Oculus headsets are 1.3-2 meters). Unless there's evidence that Apple screwed this up, seems like a moot point. Full disclosure- based on the typos and unnecessary FUD in the first section of the article, I didn't bother to read the whole thing.

mjamesaustin 3y ago

I find it amusing that the first headset with a very thoughtful approach to trying to maintain connection to other people is faced with even more forceful condemnation of its isolating effects. Apple developed and invested significantly in a system to make interaction possible and (relatively) natural between users of the headset and others in their environment. I applaud that first step towards an AR future that doesn't isolate us from others.

turtletontine 3y ago
I think that’s exactly the problem, the “relatively” natural is still pretty darn awkward and freaky. With gaming VR, you’re not expected to be interacting with people who are co-present at the same time, it makes sense to spend an hour or two in this space having some fun. With this, the intent is clearly to have you wear it all the time and let it be your entire interface to the world. And that, Apple trying to insert itself into regular human face-to-face interaction where technology is completely unnecessary, is what’s off putting about this.
te_chris 3y ago
Because it’s reshaping your current purely analog relationships to people by inserting a massive corporation between you and them.
bentcorner 3y ago
I think it's commendable they tried but at the same time I'm going to be 100% annoyed conversing with someone who has one of these things on pointed at me while I'm trying to talk to them. Call me old fashioned but if these things ever catch on mainstream it's going to take me a while to adjust.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I'm going to be 100% annoyed conversing with someone who has one of these things on I suspect that I won't be willing to interact with them.
JohnFen 3y ago

andrewstuart 3y ago

I would have called it innovation. Computing does tend to be about looking at screens. And companies do tend to be about profit.

major505 3y ago

I dont think the idea is ridicule for things like gaming and work. But to sell it as a social experience is kind of ridiculous.

blobbers 3y ago

When are people going to realize that an immersive version of World of Warcraft is really what folks want? These are real people paying real money who want to be locked in a virtual world for hours. Give people who WANT a better experience something better. Instead, they keep trying to shove Netflix and photo reels down our throats along with a bunch of casual fast games that people get bored of fairly quickly.

KaoruAoiShiho 3y ago
? That's a software problem, I'm sure this device will be able to serve that usecase fine.
khazhoux 3y ago
The API is so that developers can launch their WoW. But yeah, it's surprising they didn't have any demo like that today.
- babyshake 3y ago
  I wasn't being really close attention the whole time, but I didn't see any demos that were full on VR. Everything was AR.
- spacemadness 3y ago
  They tried to keep this as far from gaming related as possible in true Apple fashion.
ianmcgowan 3y ago
The choice is clear - Ready Player One or Minority Report?

npunt 3y ago

Garden variety no-analysis hot take demonstrating a lack of understanding of how platforms launch & grow and what trajectory this is going in. Personally I think Apple missed a bit in the marketing by positioning this so heavily on average consumer use cases (3d pics of kids!) rather than professional use cases, where yes, having immersive shared environments can be helpful while avoiding any of the legitimate 'consume your life' issues with tech in our personal lives. "Boot up an office at home when you need it" is an extremely compelling use case and is compatible with the ideals of making computing (and work!) more humane. Unfortunately the author doesn't seem to understand product positioning or have the vision to see possibilities enough to discuss the consumer v work nuance. And the isolation critique could have been interesting but it just defaulted to 'big company bad, tech bad.' Critics are essential, we deserve better ones.

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
it may lack understanding the technicalities around marking and product launches... but instead it has a mundane understanding of what most people actually consider important in life fortunately his critique is not around the specifics of how this product was made (and 'launched') but about whether this product should be made in the first place technologically it looks about the same as a hololens, which seems like the same 'product idea' as already launched by microsoft whenever ago; but where is that now?
- npunt 3y ago
  Any 'should this product be launched' critique should come armed with an understanding of what the product's trajectory is and what it could be capable of, which the author failed to demonstrate. That's not particularly surprising, most people aren't very imaginative, so it read like something most people would write: a hot take with a few old talking points. Re:HoloLens, it failed because Microsoft is not an organization that can build category-defining consumer products. Vision is worlds apart technically from the HoloLens' tech demo level quality. Whether or not it succeeds in the market, Apple was not fucking around or half-assing the tech. This was spare no expense, leave no nuance unpolished, culmination of a decade of deep technical investment and the merging of 30 different workstreams stuff. I can hardly imagine the complexity of the product roadmap that led to it. Re:mundane understanding, I'm not so sure. Taken as-is with the gen1 hardware we saw, I think Vision should have been targeted a bit more at workplace than consumer given the form factor. But more broadly, the whole product is really just a prelude for what experience we can expect within an AR glasses form factor in the coming decade(s), and products like this need to put a stake in the ground on what they're going to be about. To give you some sense of why HoloLens never made it: it was timed wrong for the tech (way too early), it was incubated in a company that has never defined a consumer product category and lacks the talent / organizational structure / gravitas to do so, Microsoft lacked the courage to invest in it, it failed to define valuable broad market use cases, it couldn't leverage developers, it lacked multi-year investments in like 10 different key technologies, it had entirely the wrong form factor, etc etc. There wasn't a snowballs chance in hell HoloLens was going to be a consumer product without being fundamentally different.

pupppet 3y ago

I wonder how much they could have saved removing that front-facing screen. Bet you any money it's gone next revision, replaced by some LED that signals what you're looking at.

anonymousiam 3y ago

The facetime video (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vision-pro/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vis...) shows the faces of the people she's online with, but they will not be able to see her face while she's wearing the "spacial computer", unless it generates a fake avatar for them.

larksimian 3y ago
It generates an avatar for her. They show it in the demo, it looks really good.
- toyg 3y ago
  If I call you and get an avatar, I will assume you're an absolute phoney. A rich phoney, but still a phoney. It's like calling and getting a "virtual background" - to me it says you're ashamed of where you are.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Calling people “rich phonies” and also “if you have a virtual background I assume you’re ashamed of where you are” Now that is an insufferable combo if I’ve ever seen one.
    - toyg 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - Jcowell 3y ago
    > It's like calling and getting a "virtual background" - to me it says you're ashamed of where you are. it’s not a matter of being ashamed , it’s a matter of , what right do you have to see Into my home without my consent? Not everyone I video chat is someone I want inside my house.
ashtonbaker 3y ago
that's exactly what it does.

wojciem 3y ago

Hardware is impressive as expected - engineering porno. One use-case that i can imagine having this headset is as a replacement for external displays. But that would need to be conditioned on great pass through and ability to use physical keyboard and mouse.

not_your_mentat 3y ago

iSnorkel sold separately.

pcurve 3y ago

"But this is another moment where we need to recognize that isn’t true, and we do have the collective power to stop technologies that don’t serve us" ??? I'm not a fan boy, but if there's a market with unmet needs that can be solved by $3,500 helmet, so be it. The market will decide. I think Apple will have no problem with 500,000 in pre-order by the time this ships. $3,500 is a lot of money, but many consumer electronics have cost far more adjusted for inflation. It's not an insurmountable cost. The question is, is the product compelling enough? I personally think it is.

jillesvangurp 3y ago
Exactly. There is no royal we here. Just people who will either buy this thing or won't. And then people like this who are telling other people what to do and think. Which is never a good look. I'm not actually an Apple fan boy. I have a Pixel 6 and a Manjaro computer at home. I do use a mac book pro for work but without having bought into the I everything ecosystem. But, I can see the attraction of this device. I don't have that kind of cash rolling around in my bank account so I won't be able to get one any time soon. Also, I'm not in the US so I wouldn't be able to anyway at the launch. But I think the price point isn't that steep and very reasonable actually. People spend much more on sports cars, plasma TVs, and other things they don't need but that are a hell of a lot of fun. And this looks like it should be fun to use. And arguably this could end up delivering a bit of a premium experience over e.g. the best plasma TV money can buy. It certainly looks like the ultimate in personal entertainment. For anyone with the cash on hand, this kind of looks like a very desirable thing to own. People make the mistake of focusing on just the hardware. Which looks awesome. But what really caught my attention here is the fact that they lined up a lot of compelling content and applications and are effectively leveling up the content ecosystem they already have. That is the smart move because they were already leading here. So, they are technically extending their lead combining scarce and premium content with a superior premium experience that you can't currently get from anyone. It's basically premium squared. Having the disney CEO on stage is a bit of a stake in the ground. Avatar, Star Wars, etc. all in glorious 3D. And some of the apps aren't that bad either. And they cleverly sneaked in some announcement about making it easier for game publishers to port their games over to mac. Unrelated at face value, but duh, which game publisher would not want a piece of this action?!. And basically infinite screen real estate to project your applications in your field of view alone is quite a step up from having just a laptop screen with some shitty external screen to extend that. Looks like that should work with just about any 2D application too. You could spend many thousands on expensive monitors and still have less real estate. I could see myself using that professionally just coding. They will sell as many as they manage to produce, which probably will be around a million or so. This could be a multi billion business in its first year. It will be some time before they have real competition so they can ask whatever they want for this. Apple has got a new money printing machine here. And it's not like their old ones were struggling.

wvenable 3y ago

We've wanted virtual environments from moment that William T. Riker stepped onto the Holodeck. We've been dreaming of a cyberpunk reality since the first snow crash. It feels strange to blame Apple for this "vision" of computing.

toyg 3y ago
That "we" is a bit of an assumption. Was a relatively small group of tech-enthusiast and socially-awkward people, trying to hide behind cool digital lives? Sure, guilty as charged. Was the world population at large asking for the same...? Eh.
- wvenable 3y ago
  I remember owning a computer when most people didn't have one. I remember owning one of the earliest smartphones and sitting on the bus every day being the only person playing on my phone. I remember being the only person with a smartwatch (the Pebble).
  - toyg 3y ago
    Yeah, and now there is plenty of backlash for the world "we" have built for ourselves. The problems are starting to outweigh the benefits, even for enthusiasts.

antiterra 3y ago

As someone whose entire social world opened up because of the internet, I find the overall attitude of the author to be highly questionable. It’s one thing to be wary of being forced to isolate or avoid contact, but it’s another thing entirely to suggest that solitude at work definitively equals an overarching loneliness.

1270018080 3y ago

Every blogger needs to fire off their hot takes today to maximize clicks.

davidy123 3y ago

Strapping one of these on your face is undeniably quite nasty, and the video eyes just kind of make it creepier. And their shiny reps going on about how everyone can participate, meanwhile it's Apple only is really the icing. I think though that the dream is for it to get smaller and more human adapted until you get all the benefits, with normalized cues that make it more social, perhaps more social than the now-ubiqitious smartphone and headphones. But that is a long ways away. The other thing that I think is not emphasized enough is that this headset is really a two way interface for personal AI, where it could be very compelling. Apple prefers to sell it as an entertainment/work device, but with all those sensors and upcoming multi mode AIs, it would be a whole new category. I think Apple realizes others have taken the "AI" flame, but they know it's important, so instead for now emphasize machine learning, but this will eventually become more like the interface for AI assisted imagineering and self guided entertainment.

fizx 3y ago

We ridiculed the first generation of bluetooth headsets, calling Jawbones "douchenozzles". People will come around sooner or later on some generation of an apple VRset.

toyg 3y ago

Most people don't like to wear glasses, even less like tight-fitted masks. One will always look like a dork wearing this, social ostracism will continue ("seen any fish yet?"...). Phones and watches, you can seamlessly integrate into a traditional-looking lifestyle. Something like this, you just can't.

drdaeman 3y ago
What I don't get is why there is no counterweight. This headset doesn't look balanced (just a mesh in the back) and the presentation screamed "that neck is gonna hurt" in those scenes where an actors were sitting in front of a laptop or desk, hands on a keyboard and/or touchpad, head tilted slightly forward. Unless the plan is to sell it for extra $299.

drumhead 3y ago

The headset looks like an amazing product on paper, buts it's pricing is way out of the normal apple range. Whe the iPod, iPhone, iPad, watch came out, they were expensive but affordable. Enough to build up market share and make app stores for them a viable proposition. With this headset at this price it's not going to get the same volumes, so who's going to write apps for it. It feels more like a Lisa than a Mac at this stage, and I'm sure a cheaper version is on the horizon.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

https://www.pcworld.com/article/516523/ipad_first_impressions.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/516523/ipad_first_impression... No Second Coming: Apple’s iPad Just a Big iPod Touch But at the end of the day, the show’s centerpiece – the iPad — is just a big iPod Touch. Lots of folks will want it, in a hypothetical sort of way. But it’s hard to imagine all that many of them will fork over the initial $499 for a crippled version, or as much as $829 (for the 64 GB/3G model you’d want).

ojkelly 3y ago

There’s nothing of substance here for why it should be ridiculed, other than the authors fear Apple has the ability to bring VR to the mainstream. But hasn’t Oculus/Meta Quest sold something like 20 million units? > Stop this future of computing > Tim Cook and his fellow Apple executives clearly asked themselves whether they could create a headset as their latest hardware product, but don’t seem to have spent as much time considering whether they should. Has the author considered why people are currently buying these headsets? And why a company with a long history in mobile computing would get in on it? > … The risk with Apple entering this market is that it does have a unique ability to legitimize products. The article is probably not worth your time, it wasn’t worth mine.

albertopv 3y ago
I don't think it's going to be mainstream at 3500$, probably not even at 1000$.

kypro 3y ago

I left a comment on the announcement thread a couple of hours ago basically saying how I wasn't sure what to think. But, the more I've thought about it since the more I've changed my mind. In fact, I think I actually quite dislike the product... The idea that I might now decide to talk to my girlfriend while wearing my VR headset because it has my eyes on the front is absolutely absurd. I really struggle to understand the rational of Apple doing that unless they want people to walk around wearing these things 24/7. And the way this was branded as being a great device for conversations with other human beings or taking photos of special moments with children is just kinda gross. While Meta has said similar things about the communication applications of VR headsets, I think I prefer that they've made it more of a virtual experience than an attempt at directly replacing real experiences. In Meta VR you're a cartoon when you interact with people and this makes it feel more video game than something that is trying to replace real world interaction. And unlike the Quest the fact Apple's headset doesn't have a controller probably means it's going to suck for gaming. So it seems Apple doesn't think VR gaming is the killer app, but instead believes interacting with your kids is. Not to mention the price point here is just absurd when compared to the Quest 3. I still think Apple's headset could be a good product for productivity if they've actually managed to get text to look sharp and have significantly reduced eye strain, but I think for now I'd rather just see how good the Quest 3 is to be honest. I know I might have to take my headset off when talking to my girlfriend and kids, but I'm not sure that's as much of a problem as Apple thinks it is.

GoofballJones 3y ago

Synopsis: Person who doesn't use Apple products is outraged by something they wouldn't buy anyway.

scrumlord 3y ago

[dead]

akomtu 3y ago

This snorkeling mask is how a well off hipster would escape reality. This ideal hipster needs to have thousands of spare cash and hours of free time every day, yet his day to day life must be nasty enough that he wants to escape it.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

karmakaze 3y ago

The best effect this will have is drive VR/AR development, now that we have an upper spec/price: 4k+ resolution per eye, $3,499. Now the others can squeeze/converge towards that. The closest thing I can see this being is delivering on some of what Magic Leap failed to do. I was also surprised by the lack of 3D content being described. Was there anything besides the photo/videos? I don't even recall mention of 3D movies (though maybe they were being shown but can't tell on a 2D demo video). What it doesn't do is deliver in aspects I'm interested in. I wanted something in the Bigscreen Beyond form factor without being room-bound. The idea of carrying an entire MacBook Pro and using it is ridiculous, I should be able to use an iPhone but running macOS on it with a Bluetooth keyboard mouse. The lack of precision input makes it a consumer device rather than a creator one.

LexGray 3y ago
3D movies were mentioned as a use case and there were multiple 3D app demos. The dinosaur roaring out of an educational app. The beating heart and heart take apart viewer from multiple angles. Walking around machines in place as you examined future workflow. The breathe app doing a full room fireworks thing. And a future National Geographic videos where you are traveling within the school of fish. I could see a fair use case in STEM education helping to visualize atomic structures, do dissection, or otherwise help people engage with the material. Historical videos are often pretty dry and with some machine learning they could punch up Churchill so you are in the crowd listening to his speech surrounded by a period entranced crowd. Will it get to the point that you can go to a concert and watch from the front row with seats in the boonies it is hard to say, although hopefully this contains all the AirPod pro passthru tech blocking out other people’s chatter or nearby vacuuming may be a huge boon to concentration and enjoyment.

karmakaze 3y ago

One thing I found noticeable is the repeated mention of all the tech that needed to be created and is packed into this device. It seems to be trying to make up for a lack of good use-cases and justifying its price. Normally Apple's announcements tend to gloss over the internal tech-how and focus on the delivered experience.

onewheeltom 3y ago

Remember all the mockery when Apple released the iPad?

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
And the iPod, and the iPhone, and...when has a new Apple product not been mocked?