10 ms·

I feel like you could hop in a time machine and read something similar about the first iPhone, comparing it to the existing smartphones at the time. "No physic

by jmuguy 3y ago

I feel like you could hop in a time machine and read something similar about the first iPhone, comparing it to the existing smartphones at the time. "No physical keyboard? Wow, ok Apple!". Its definitely possible that the Vision Pro will be a dud, but it seems odd to assume that Apple hasn't verified basic things about the product like "is watching a movie a good experience".

user3939382 3y ago
I still want a physical keyboard :(
Schroedingers2c 3y ago
With their cash-pile they could have even rented a private plane just to test the Vision Pro on a plane and make sure it's a good experience.
- catach 3y ago
  Apple already rents or probably owns private jets for their executives. https://qz.com/work/1167463/apple-is-forcing-ceo-tim-cook-to-fly-in-a-private-jet-for-business-and-personal-use https://qz.com/work/1167463/apple-is-forcing-ceo-tim-cook-to...
thunky 3y ago
Every criticism of the Apple Vision is met with this same empty defense of "remember the iphone", instead of an actual response to the criticism.
- Karunamon 3y ago
  Every criticism of the Apple Vision is, at this point in time, pure speculation. As such, they are both inherently low-value as well as uninformed. The time for this type of talk will be when people actually get their hands on the device. Seriously, the headline here is why something "may" be lousy for watching movies.
  - criddell 3y ago
    Is the screen in the back of the headrest lousy for watching movies? Some may think so yet millions of people do that every day.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      The visual quality may be lousy, but it's relatively comfortable. It really doesn't matter how good the screens in it are, or how much dumb "tech" it is full of, if it's just generally not comfortable to wear. Being 500 grams with most of that in the front (for that stupid glass and "face" thing), it's not going to be a good time. Without a back to front strap, it's not going to be comfortable, and the "solution" for the weight of just clinching it tighter against your face is the WORST solution (believe me I've tried) and only results in more discomfort. I don't know how lightweight you have to get before something is comfortable to wear on your face for extended periods, but it is probably closer to 250 grams than 500
      - criddell 3y ago
        Welders wear face shields that are more than 500 g for very long periods. I have no doubt that Apple will be able to figure something out. At this point though, all of this is speculation. I expect v1 to suck, v2 to be a little bit better, and v3 to be the one that gets it right. I'm guessing that's about 5 years out. The launch unit probably should be a heavy mess and if it isn't, maybe they weren't ambitious enough.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        Welder's face shields do not have the "gasket" pressing against your face, they are closer to a hat, with the way they distribute the load onto your head and how they otherwise do not touch you.
        criddell 3y ago
        There are all kinds of different shield setups. For example, the one I link to below is a two piece setup where goggles clamp to your face and then a wide shield hangs from the goggles: https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/equipment/welding-gear/helmets/Pages/arcspecs-goggles.aspx https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/equipment/welding-gear... There are all kinds of attachments you can get that can bring the mass into that 500g neighborhood. The ones from the previous generation were easily 500g.
- generalizations 3y ago
  Because with the iPhone, a lot of people think that Apple earned the benefit of the doubt - if Apple thinks they can pull this off, then liklier than not, considering what they've done in the past, they probably can.
  - jonplackett 3y ago
    Ditto Apple Watch and iPad.
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      >Ditto Apple Watch and iPad. Maybe the iPad, but large phones became popular and the whole tablet hype sort of disappeared. The Apple Watch? The only people I know who own one are people so deep in the Apple ecosystem they need it all. Seemingly good product (everything Apples makes is), but not a game changer.
      - macintux 3y ago
        There appear to be no hard numbers, but with well over 100 million sold by 2020, they’re not exactly a niche product.
        itsoktocry 3y ago
        I didn't say niche. I said not "game changing". The fact that Apple fans want every Apple device does't make the devices amazing. My opinion, of course.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        The best estimates I could find were around 35 million a year. At a conservative $400 APU that’s a $14 billion dollar a year business and no one doubts its profitable.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >if Apple thinks they can pull this off, then liklier than not, considering what they've done in the past, they probably can. Or you can consider an even longer past; has any company in history ever been able to consistently "hit-it-out-of-the-park" with products? Or is there an element of luck here that distributes these things. In other words, does one game-changing innovation make it more likely or less likely to produce a second?
- Topfi 3y ago
  Part of that is, in my eyes, that it is an apt comparison. Some of the things that ended up making a touch only interface work well on the iPhone (I used Windows Mobile 6.0 with only a touchscreen at the time, so I am speaking from experience) were, at least partly, things public analysts, even those steeped in the field, could not really predict by what had been showcased during the announcement. Predictive text being utilized to change the virtual size of touch targets on the keyboard, yet keeping the design static to improve accuracy, was something even those with years working with and on touch only smartphone interfaces did not figure out in its entirety until after the phone was in their hands. The iPhone is a good parallel because just like with it, this is trying to further an existing class of devices and history has shown that, for as many things as I can criticize about them, Apple is very good at adding these unnoticeable optimizations and hidden tricks that make experiences work much more flawlessly. Adding to that, though, I will admit that the first iPhone was severely flawed in other ways, like lack of MMS and 3G. These however were not issues with the UX (compared to Windows Mobile which supported these but had UX issues out of every orifice), but rather conscious feature restrictions, on which Apple ended up back paddling. In fact, that is my main concern with the AVP, Apple intentionally restricting it in ways that will make the hardware less appealing and impactful. The AVP, in my eyes, should in the long term replace both Macs and iOS devices (at least iPads), but to do that, should enable the creation of software on device. I hope that, just like with 3G and MMS, Apple will see the light between V1 and V2 regarding local macOS app support (or at least Xcode). If that happens, I will buy one at their asking price. As it stands, I will wait for reviews and only buy one if it means a distinct improvement to my workflow, even though I'll need to take my MacBook with me. Apple should, just like with Xcode on the iPad, stop being afraid of letting new classes of compute device replace the old. To bring this back to the original iPhone, imagine if Jobs had announced that it is not an iPod on top of being a browsing device and phone, because they feared cannibalizing iPod sales. Would have been shortsighted, to say the least. Lastly, I will freely admit that past performance should not be used to predict future successes. It is possible that Apples methods may have changed since then, and they have not put as much consideration into solving the UX issues plaguing current pass-through AR devices, in which case justifying the price will be (even more of) a challenge. I doubt it though and, even if, more recent history (Apple Watch) has taught them a thing or two about pivoting a seeming failure into an impressive success.
- synetic 3y ago
  When the iPhone came out the criticism was cost and lack of keyboard. When the iPad came out the criticism was the name and it’s just a giant iPhone. When Airpods came out the criticism was that it looks ugly and who would wear them in public. Similar with the watch. It’s easy to criticize. My complaint about the criticism of the Apple Vision is that it largely boils down to: It’s different and doesn’t solve existing problems and I can’t imagine people using it. Great products sometimes don’t solve existing problems. They sometimes create a need. I’m very excited about the possibility of the Apple Vision. If it’s as good as Apple touts, and this remains to be seen, then I think it will usher in a new era.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    > Great products sometimes don’t solve existing problems. They sometimes create a need. Oh god, you're giving me flashbacks to the "courage" keynote...
    - synetic 3y ago
      I gather you disagree with the statement. You don’t think there are any examples of a great product that ended up creating a new demand/desire? It’s interesting that now very few phones have a headphone jack. The vast majority of the headphones sold are wireless.
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        No, I largely agree with you actually. I just disagree with the way vendors harness those needs: in the headphone jack example, Apple gave themselves exclusive rights to convenience functions WRT wireless headphones. In the iPhone's case, they invented a new class of software that (somehow) deserved an unprecedented service fee to sustain. So, I agree. It's very courageous, not for Apple but for the user who so absent-mindedly gives up on platforms they control. Who can blame them, though? Most people's idea of "open computing" these days boils down to their web browser and Xbox. Maybe people are ready to jump from frying pan to fire.
- lijok 3y ago
  Because it's much cheaper to criticize than to rebut that criticism. And when the criticism is consistently along the lines of "vision pro [bad | expensive | weird | just like other bad thing]", people will naturally search for rebutals that are just as cheap to provide as the criticism.
  - thunky 3y ago
    I don't think it's a cheap criticism to say that it's a negative to have a computer strapped to your face for long periods of time (which is one of the points the article makes). If Apple Vision was the form factor of a pair of sunglasses (more like what xreal is doing) then I wouldn't be so critical.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      >If Apple Vision was the form factor of a pair of sunglasses (more like what xreal is doing) then I wouldn't be so critical. I have no idea when/if the technology will get there but a HUD in a fairly ordinary-looking pair of glasses you could wear on the street seems potentially interesting. I'll keep an open mind about the Vision Pro but the use cases I've seen don't seem super-compelling to me--at least at this point.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        We literally already tried this. Google glass existed, and was super hyped up, and nobody liked it.
        ghaff 3y ago
        Google Glass really didn't work very well and didn't really have a decent software story. I'm not inclined to write off AR for all time just because Google Glass failed.
        MikeTheRocker 3y ago
        Google Glass was also only very primitive AR in that there was no scene understanding capabilities. There was no ability for the system to convincingly augment the real world (for example, using plane detection to anchor digital entities to real world geometry). It was purely a small, low resolution, monocular, semi-transparent display providing essentially smart watch level functionality in a face-worn form factor. It was a cool but unsuccessful idea that was ahead of its time. TL;DR: I agree; don't use Glass as a reason to write off AR glasses altogether.
- eddieroger 3y ago
  At the time, "good" smartphones all had keyboards, and ones without tended to not be great. No one had held an iPhone that didn't also work for Apple, so it was a lot of armchair analysts declaring it dead on arrival. They were wrong. So far, the author, and nearly everyone else, has yet to wear this new device, let alone on an airplane. All the analysis on previous headsets is great but moot, since the reality of Apple's version isn't tested yet. And, based on how wrong all those iPhone analyses were, it's a fair benefit of the doubt to think maybe Apple will do right by this headset as well.
  - ztrww 3y ago
    > . And, based on how wrong all those iPhone analyses were, it's a fair benefit of the doubt to think maybe Apple will do right by this headset as well. why? It’s not like companies which previously released successful products don’t fail all the time. Also the iPhone even back then had some clear use cases (web/media/maps and later camera) it’s just that all other people mostly sucked at these things. Nobody has quite figured out what can you do with a VR headset besides gaming.
    - eddieroger 3y ago
      Because their hit ratio is still positive? I mean, the iPod Hifi was a dud, so I know Apple isn't perfect. But even taking your point about no one has figured it out yet, why go to a place of "it's gonna suck" before actually trying the thing? The specifics aren't known yet by anyone not under NDA, so why speculate something will be bad, as the author did?
      - ztrww 3y ago
        > of "it's gonna suck" I didn’t say that. IMHO it’s as silly as those saying that it can’t fail and it will revolutionize the world because it’s Apple. > The specifics aren't known apps and real world use cases will probably matter much more than the specs. I highly doubt gen 1 will be that successful or that Apple expects it to be though. It seems much more like a developer preview than the end product. > Because their hit ratio is still positive? Corporations are made up from people and many of those who developed their most successful products initially are no longer there
- tnel77 3y ago
  I feel like their response was a decent rebuttal. Give the product a chance in the wild before assuming it’s a steaming pile of garbage.
- khazhoux 3y ago
  I see it opposite. Most of the Vision criticisms can be summarized as “This won’t meet my pre-defined notions of what a user experience should be.” Instead of trying to at least imagine what a different UX might be. Smartphones are great examples of how user behavior can change. No keyboard turned out to be fine, and people wound up plenty happy to watch videos on tiny screens.
- brookst 3y ago
  It’s a valid meta-criticism. The product isn’t out yet, and the criticisms all boil down to “I imagine their approach doesn’t solve the problems I imagine people have”. So we can argue hypothetical rebuttals to these hypotheticals, but we can also note that this pattern has repeated over and over. Apple has failed before, but “it doesn’t have a physical keyboard” and “what improvement can they bring to the commodity mp3 player” and “what’s wrong with command lines” and “who wants a small iPhone on their wrist” and “wires make earbuds socially acceptable” are valid things to remind this year’s doomsayers of.
  - as_bntd 3y ago
    why would wires make earbuds socially acceptable?
    - massysett 3y ago
      This was a retort people used against AirPods. They look like funny Q-tips sticking out of the user's ears. But really they don't look much different from earbuds, which people wear all the time, so shouldn't AirPods be fine? The response was that the wires on the earbuds make them socially acceptable.
      - as_bntd 3y ago
        I really struggle to see how the earbuds being wired changes their social acceptability in comparison to wireless ones. I don't understand the retort.
        brookst 3y ago
        It never made any sense. But people who saw AirPods as doomed to fail insisted that they looked dorky and embarrassing because… they didn’t have wires. It doesn’t make sense in hindsight, like the “iPhone will fail because it doesn’t have a physical keyboard” doesn’t make sense. But that’s the pattern here. Vision may fail, but if so, it will not be just because it’s different than current paradigms.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Or “remember the iPod” or “remember the iPad” or… All of Apple’s product launches get criticism leveled at them, and if they are successful, people forgot about the criticism. If the product is unsuccessful (Mac cube), people forget about the product.
- jerf 3y ago
  The iPhone is not the relevant comparison point to me. Pretty much as soon as the slab-of-glass smartphone design was technically feasible, slab-of-glass phones took over the market. The iPhone was a very good pass at it, but it was going to happen anyhow. Such predecessors as there were were not that old. It was not an idea that had decades of failure behind it. The iPad is the more interesting one to me because tablets had been a Next Big Thing for a long time, to the point that the common wisdom was that they weren't going to happen. Phones become slabs-of-glass because of the constraint of fitting into a pocket. Tablets couldn't compete with laptops in the absence of that constraint. The iPhone was the birth of a new industry; the iPad breathed life into an already dead industry. (Granted, that industry seems to be trending back towards dead, or if you prefer, "a stable niche that isn't going anywhere due to the ease of just making a Phone, but Bigger, but isn't going to take over the world", but if anything that makes Apple's accomplishment even more impressive.) This seems a much closer comparison to VR. Even before the current push represented by the Oculus and similar gen products, VR headsets had been a Next Big Thing for decades now. I'd still characterize the field as basically dead, at least at an Apple scale. If it hasn't outright plateaued, its first derivative is certainly only marginally positive. If the Apple Vision product succeeds it'll be another breathing life into a dead industry play.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    I think it's closer to the mouse. When I was in seventh grade our computer room had an Apple II and a TRS-80. Apple had made floppy drives standard. The try-80 had a tape recorder and magic incantation for storing and retrieving programs. One day reading the latest computer magazines was Steve Jobs talking about a computer so easy to use a 2 year old could use it. I could not begin to comprehend what he was talking about. He was talking about the Lisa. I don't know how long it took me to find out what in the world was going on. It maybe like 2 mouses in that it has eye tracking and hand tracking. Which might make 2x as good as a mouse.
  - dgreensp 3y ago
    I get what you’re saying, but I think people underestimate the novelty of Apple’s design decisions on things like the iPhone, declaring them obvious in hindsight. When the iPhone was announced, the phone team at Google working on the unreleased Android platform apparently went “shit, back to the drawing board.” Getting rid of the physical keyboard (for everyone) was controversial. “Pinching” to zoom into a web page, putting a desktop-quality browser on a phone, putting accelerated 3D graphics on a phone… there are too many things that were new with the iPhone to remember them all now, especially when Android went and did all the same things. It’s true that Apple capitalized on it being possible to put all that hardware in your pocket. They tend to be the ones to actually try it and figure out the UX paradigms. Make it not suffer from prominent lag, make the touchscreen good, the display quality good, the multitasking appropriate for the device’s capabilities, despite the research and cost of parts, and then figure out what the user experience is that takes advantage of the tech being able to keep up with the human, is simple to operate, and is going to make people want to spend a thousand dollars on it.
- dan-robertson 3y ago
  I think the issue with the OP is that it does not strike me as very well considered in a way that’s similar to ‘old iPhone criticism’. It seems anchored to past decisions[1] for other devices and the reasons they were made, and seems overconfident for an opinion on a device which the author does not have detailed specifications for. I think two things could have made the article more useful: 1. A better structured article. This was a mix of random details and jargon with speculation about the new device that didn’t feel well tied together. 2. I would expect the view of a sceptical expert to be more cautious and considered; to say what things might be difficulties, why they were difficulties for things in the past, how Apple seems to be planning to deal with them, where that approach might fail or succeed, and then some estimate of whether it seems easy for them to solve the problem. That is, it should be more clear what the assumptions are that are being relied on for the estimation. To take a stereotypical iPhone criticism for example, it would be bad to merely say that the lack of keyboard or badness of touchscreens makes it impossible and better to say that good touchscreens and some kind of solution to keyboard problems would be needed, and you don’t think improved sensor resolution would work and the problem seemed hard because X or Y. Like, I’m not saying that the author needs to be right but I think they could do a better job of having convincing reasons that they have tried to thought of the ways they might be wrong. [1] There was some discussion of a device the author worked on in the ‘90s(!) but I didn’t see discussion of more recent work. Capabilities of much of the tech going into this Apple thing will be quite different.
_1 3y ago
You don't need a time machine .. it's on the internet. > Third, users will detest the touch screen interface due to its lack of tactile feedback. Using a thumb keyboard, as on the very popular Treo phone, allows the user to feel the keys and know subconsciously that he’s about to press this one and not the one next to it. A touch screen doesn’t allow that, so the user will have to be looking at the keyboard at all times while using it. http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-to-flop-product-to.html http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-...
- realusername 3y ago
  What was pretty much what happened until smartphones got some better predictive typing software. That made the keyboard much more usable. His mistake wasn't in assessing the issues, just that he could not see that there's software solutions to fix those.
  - Steltek 3y ago
    The criticism still holds (witness car tactile-vs-touch UX discussions) but a touch keyboard is not worse enough to outweigh the advantages of overall more screen space.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      And more importantly, the apple reality distortion field is enough to compensate for small issues like "it has no copy and paste" and "it's missing a keyboard", especially when it had plenty of upsides, like an OS that didn't make you feel like it was written by the lowest bidder, a nice screen (compared to contemporary smartphones) so you wouldn't hate watching videos on it, and iTunes integration, which was leagues better than the niche integrations smartphones had at the time. The complaints were valid, but they weren't nearly enough to make the device bad. Now, how many people can spend $3500 on a headset where the main use cases are "watch a movie", when those same people probably also have a really nice TV? Everyone keeps talking about how it's "very interesting" but how many of you have actually tried to watch a movie in a VR headset? It's not comfortable, not just from screen specs, since those don't really matter. The weight and face gasket suck to have on. You can't engineer that away.
realusername 3y ago
The critics were right on the first iPhone though, I remember it being a flop in my country just because of the lack of MMS support. It's the 3GS that really made the brand. Tech features do matter sometimes.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > The critics were right on the first iPhone though, I remember it being a flop in my country just because of the lack of MMS support. which country?
  - realusername 3y ago
    France. Probably like in most of Europe, MMS was the primary means of communication for everybody to share pictures and (very bad quality) short videos along with MSN messenger. The first iPhone had neither. Phones that didn't have any of that usually were from the older generation like the 3310. That lack of messaging options combined with the very high price at launch made it a non-starter. All of that got fixed on the 3G.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Well considering that the first iPhone only sold 10 million (the number that SJ said was his goal at introduction) and that it didn’t go on sale in France until 5 months after it was introduced in the US, that’s not really much evidence toward anything. https://www.thestreet.com/technology/iphone-to-debut-in-france-10384755 https://www.thestreet.com/technology/iphone-to-debut-in-fran...
      - realusername 3y ago
        Maybe it's also the lack of unit availability but the fact that you could not communicate with friends made it a non-starter.
    - mrtranscendence 3y ago
      In the US the initial iPhone was a bit of a sensation. Demand outstripped supply at first, and people waited outside stores for hours to snag one. It sold less than future models would, because it seemed fairly expensive and the value proposition wasn't yet 100% clear to many. But basically everyone knew about the iPhone and had an opinion one way or the other, generally positive. Even now the iPhone isn't as popular in mainland Europe as it is in the UK, Ireland, and the US.
michaelmcdonald 3y ago
I'm as big of an Apple fanboy as they come; however I clearly remember "Antenna Gate" and how simply holding the iPhone 4 caused signal attenuation of a rather severe degree.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Wasn't the iPhone 4 wildly successful though? It's when I got my first smartphone, so maybe my memory is biased.
  - kemayo 3y ago
    Insofar as the fix to the Antennagate issue was to use a case (to avoid bridging the two antennas connected to the rim of the phone with your sadly-conductive skin), it didn't really affect the vast majority of people who bought the phone and immediately put it into a case to protect their expensive device.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  The iPhone 4 was successful and even despite the fake controversy, the GSM version sold for three years without any changes.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    What fake controversy? There was a real design flaw that apple responded to by insulting the intelligence of their users.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      The same design flaw that contemporary phones had?
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        Contemporary phones did not have that design flaw. The antenna on the iPhones was exposed externally and could be shorted out, making it non-functional. Name a contemporary smart phone that also allowed you to short it's antenna by holding it
gorjusborg 3y ago
Your feeling represents one extreme, which is that hindsight proved Apple was right and critics were wrong, and that history will repeat. The other extreme is expecting history to repeat by demonstrating that people have consistently over estimated the probability of success in the VR space. I don't know which is right, but my gut says that VR is not something that will go mainstream in its current form (HMD). It's too 'bluetooth earpiece', and doesn't match the prestige image that is particularly strong in people that favor Apple products. Notice that I am not criticizing anything technical with AVR, which I think is a peripheral issue.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  How many legit hardware companies have tried a headset lately? Sony, and theirs is apparently really ergonomic, just tied to gaming. Other than that, not many. The trend I see is software companies like Facebook, Valve, and Microsoft over-estimating their odds of success at making hardware devices.
- xenospn 3y ago
  If the experience is profoundly "life-changing" (obviously an exaggeration), all of the other objections will fade away. I think they've created a device capable of at least one, if not multiple, "killer apps" that are not possible using todays hardware.
- haswell 3y ago
  There is a large spectrum of possibility between those two extremes. While I agree that blindly expecting history to repeat is problematic, it’s worth considering that this seems to be Apple’s strong suit, and while there are plenty of questions about how the market will react to this product, the early demos seem to confirm that Apple has indeed accomplished something that the other headsets have not. I think this is why some people are so bullish about this tech - and not for no reason. > It's too 'bluetooth earpiece', and doesn't match the prestige image that is particularly strong in people that favor Apple products Apple took something that was decidedly uncool (Bluetooth earpieces) and turned it into a status symbol (AirPods) despite these earpieces looking pretty goofy when they first landed. And again, I think the optimism comes from their demonstrated ability to achieve this kind of shift in perception/public consciousness. The reality distortion field in the form of top tier marketing from Apple has the best hope of making progress in this area compared to those that have come before. Could this all still be an enormous flop? Maybe. It could also be a Newton, and a decade later we’ll get the product Apple really wanted to ship: the iPhone (compact glasses).
macintux 3y ago
I was reminded of the “display expert” who wrote a long piece explaining that Apple had to be lying about the original iPad’s battery life.
snowwrestler 3y ago
Ok but the iPhone also launched with Edge connectivity, no copy/paste, web apps only (no App Store), barely made it a day on a charge, etc. We think the iPhone is great today almost entirely because of Apple’s iteration since launch. The initial model had promise but also major shortcomings that were obvious at the time. So “remember the iPhone” is probably not as strong a reassurance as it might seem on the surface. In general, Apple “version 1” products are often flawed. But Apple generally does not launch a product unless it intends to iterate on it for a long time (one of their not-so-secret keys to success).

by jmuguy 3y ago

user3939382 3y ago

I still want a physical keyboard :(

Schroedingers2c 3y ago

With their cash-pile they could have even rented a private plane just to test the Vision Pro on a plane and make sure it's a good experience.

catach 3y ago
Apple already rents or probably owns private jets for their executives. https://qz.com/work/1167463/apple-is-forcing-ceo-tim-cook-to-fly-in-a-private-jet-for-business-and-personal-use https://qz.com/work/1167463/apple-is-forcing-ceo-tim-cook-to...

thunky 3y ago

Every criticism of the Apple Vision is met with this same empty defense of "remember the iphone", instead of an actual response to the criticism.

Karunamon 3y ago
Every criticism of the Apple Vision is, at this point in time, pure speculation. As such, they are both inherently low-value as well as uninformed. The time for this type of talk will be when people actually get their hands on the device. Seriously, the headline here is why something "may" be lousy for watching movies.
- criddell 3y ago
  Is the screen in the back of the headrest lousy for watching movies? Some may think so yet millions of people do that every day.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    The visual quality may be lousy, but it's relatively comfortable. It really doesn't matter how good the screens in it are, or how much dumb "tech" it is full of, if it's just generally not comfortable to wear. Being 500 grams with most of that in the front (for that stupid glass and "face" thing), it's not going to be a good time. Without a back to front strap, it's not going to be comfortable, and the "solution" for the weight of just clinching it tighter against your face is the WORST solution (believe me I've tried) and only results in more discomfort. I don't know how lightweight you have to get before something is comfortable to wear on your face for extended periods, but it is probably closer to 250 grams than 500
    - criddell 3y ago
      Welders wear face shields that are more than 500 g for very long periods. I have no doubt that Apple will be able to figure something out. At this point though, all of this is speculation. I expect v1 to suck, v2 to be a little bit better, and v3 to be the one that gets it right. I'm guessing that's about 5 years out. The launch unit probably should be a heavy mess and if it isn't, maybe they weren't ambitious enough.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        Welder's face shields do not have the "gasket" pressing against your face, they are closer to a hat, with the way they distribute the load onto your head and how they otherwise do not touch you.
        criddell 3y ago
        There are all kinds of different shield setups. For example, the one I link to below is a two piece setup where goggles clamp to your face and then a wide shield hangs from the goggles: https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/equipment/welding-gear/helmets/Pages/arcspecs-goggles.aspx https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/equipment/welding-gear... There are all kinds of attachments you can get that can bring the mass into that 500g neighborhood. The ones from the previous generation were easily 500g.
generalizations 3y ago
Because with the iPhone, a lot of people think that Apple earned the benefit of the doubt - if Apple thinks they can pull this off, then liklier than not, considering what they've done in the past, they probably can.
- jonplackett 3y ago
  Ditto Apple Watch and iPad.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >Ditto Apple Watch and iPad. Maybe the iPad, but large phones became popular and the whole tablet hype sort of disappeared. The Apple Watch? The only people I know who own one are people so deep in the Apple ecosystem they need it all. Seemingly good product (everything Apples makes is), but not a game changer.
    - macintux 3y ago
      There appear to be no hard numbers, but with well over 100 million sold by 2020, they’re not exactly a niche product.
      - itsoktocry 3y ago
        I didn't say niche. I said not "game changing". The fact that Apple fans want every Apple device does't make the devices amazing. My opinion, of course.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      The best estimates I could find were around 35 million a year. At a conservative $400 APU that’s a $14 billion dollar a year business and no one doubts its profitable.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >if Apple thinks they can pull this off, then liklier than not, considering what they've done in the past, they probably can. Or you can consider an even longer past; has any company in history ever been able to consistently "hit-it-out-of-the-park" with products? Or is there an element of luck here that distributes these things. In other words, does one game-changing innovation make it more likely or less likely to produce a second?
Topfi 3y ago
Part of that is, in my eyes, that it is an apt comparison. Some of the things that ended up making a touch only interface work well on the iPhone (I used Windows Mobile 6.0 with only a touchscreen at the time, so I am speaking from experience) were, at least partly, things public analysts, even those steeped in the field, could not really predict by what had been showcased during the announcement. Predictive text being utilized to change the virtual size of touch targets on the keyboard, yet keeping the design static to improve accuracy, was something even those with years working with and on touch only smartphone interfaces did not figure out in its entirety until after the phone was in their hands. The iPhone is a good parallel because just like with it, this is trying to further an existing class of devices and history has shown that, for as many things as I can criticize about them, Apple is very good at adding these unnoticeable optimizations and hidden tricks that make experiences work much more flawlessly. Adding to that, though, I will admit that the first iPhone was severely flawed in other ways, like lack of MMS and 3G. These however were not issues with the UX (compared to Windows Mobile which supported these but had UX issues out of every orifice), but rather conscious feature restrictions, on which Apple ended up back paddling. In fact, that is my main concern with the AVP, Apple intentionally restricting it in ways that will make the hardware less appealing and impactful. The AVP, in my eyes, should in the long term replace both Macs and iOS devices (at least iPads), but to do that, should enable the creation of software on device. I hope that, just like with 3G and MMS, Apple will see the light between V1 and V2 regarding local macOS app support (or at least Xcode). If that happens, I will buy one at their asking price. As it stands, I will wait for reviews and only buy one if it means a distinct improvement to my workflow, even though I'll need to take my MacBook with me. Apple should, just like with Xcode on the iPad, stop being afraid of letting new classes of compute device replace the old. To bring this back to the original iPhone, imagine if Jobs had announced that it is not an iPod on top of being a browsing device and phone, because they feared cannibalizing iPod sales. Would have been shortsighted, to say the least. Lastly, I will freely admit that past performance should not be used to predict future successes. It is possible that Apples methods may have changed since then, and they have not put as much consideration into solving the UX issues plaguing current pass-through AR devices, in which case justifying the price will be (even more of) a challenge. I doubt it though and, even if, more recent history (Apple Watch) has taught them a thing or two about pivoting a seeming failure into an impressive success.
synetic 3y ago
When the iPhone came out the criticism was cost and lack of keyboard. When the iPad came out the criticism was the name and it’s just a giant iPhone. When Airpods came out the criticism was that it looks ugly and who would wear them in public. Similar with the watch. It’s easy to criticize. My complaint about the criticism of the Apple Vision is that it largely boils down to: It’s different and doesn’t solve existing problems and I can’t imagine people using it. Great products sometimes don’t solve existing problems. They sometimes create a need. I’m very excited about the possibility of the Apple Vision. If it’s as good as Apple touts, and this remains to be seen, then I think it will usher in a new era.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > Great products sometimes don’t solve existing problems. They sometimes create a need. Oh god, you're giving me flashbacks to the "courage" keynote...
  - synetic 3y ago
    I gather you disagree with the statement. You don’t think there are any examples of a great product that ended up creating a new demand/desire? It’s interesting that now very few phones have a headphone jack. The vast majority of the headphones sold are wireless.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      No, I largely agree with you actually. I just disagree with the way vendors harness those needs: in the headphone jack example, Apple gave themselves exclusive rights to convenience functions WRT wireless headphones. In the iPhone's case, they invented a new class of software that (somehow) deserved an unprecedented service fee to sustain. So, I agree. It's very courageous, not for Apple but for the user who so absent-mindedly gives up on platforms they control. Who can blame them, though? Most people's idea of "open computing" these days boils down to their web browser and Xbox. Maybe people are ready to jump from frying pan to fire.
lijok 3y ago
Because it's much cheaper to criticize than to rebut that criticism. And when the criticism is consistently along the lines of "vision pro [bad | expensive | weird | just like other bad thing]", people will naturally search for rebutals that are just as cheap to provide as the criticism.
- thunky 3y ago
  I don't think it's a cheap criticism to say that it's a negative to have a computer strapped to your face for long periods of time (which is one of the points the article makes). If Apple Vision was the form factor of a pair of sunglasses (more like what xreal is doing) then I wouldn't be so critical.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    >If Apple Vision was the form factor of a pair of sunglasses (more like what xreal is doing) then I wouldn't be so critical. I have no idea when/if the technology will get there but a HUD in a fairly ordinary-looking pair of glasses you could wear on the street seems potentially interesting. I'll keep an open mind about the Vision Pro but the use cases I've seen don't seem super-compelling to me--at least at this point.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      We literally already tried this. Google glass existed, and was super hyped up, and nobody liked it.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Google Glass really didn't work very well and didn't really have a decent software story. I'm not inclined to write off AR for all time just because Google Glass failed.
        MikeTheRocker 3y ago
        Google Glass was also only very primitive AR in that there was no scene understanding capabilities. There was no ability for the system to convincingly augment the real world (for example, using plane detection to anchor digital entities to real world geometry). It was purely a small, low resolution, monocular, semi-transparent display providing essentially smart watch level functionality in a face-worn form factor. It was a cool but unsuccessful idea that was ahead of its time. TL;DR: I agree; don't use Glass as a reason to write off AR glasses altogether.
eddieroger 3y ago
At the time, "good" smartphones all had keyboards, and ones without tended to not be great. No one had held an iPhone that didn't also work for Apple, so it was a lot of armchair analysts declaring it dead on arrival. They were wrong. So far, the author, and nearly everyone else, has yet to wear this new device, let alone on an airplane. All the analysis on previous headsets is great but moot, since the reality of Apple's version isn't tested yet. And, based on how wrong all those iPhone analyses were, it's a fair benefit of the doubt to think maybe Apple will do right by this headset as well.
- ztrww 3y ago
  > . And, based on how wrong all those iPhone analyses were, it's a fair benefit of the doubt to think maybe Apple will do right by this headset as well. why? It’s not like companies which previously released successful products don’t fail all the time. Also the iPhone even back then had some clear use cases (web/media/maps and later camera) it’s just that all other people mostly sucked at these things. Nobody has quite figured out what can you do with a VR headset besides gaming.
  - eddieroger 3y ago
    Because their hit ratio is still positive? I mean, the iPod Hifi was a dud, so I know Apple isn't perfect. But even taking your point about no one has figured it out yet, why go to a place of "it's gonna suck" before actually trying the thing? The specifics aren't known yet by anyone not under NDA, so why speculate something will be bad, as the author did?
    - ztrww 3y ago
      > of "it's gonna suck" I didn’t say that. IMHO it’s as silly as those saying that it can’t fail and it will revolutionize the world because it’s Apple. > The specifics aren't known apps and real world use cases will probably matter much more than the specs. I highly doubt gen 1 will be that successful or that Apple expects it to be though. It seems much more like a developer preview than the end product. > Because their hit ratio is still positive? Corporations are made up from people and many of those who developed their most successful products initially are no longer there
tnel77 3y ago
I feel like their response was a decent rebuttal. Give the product a chance in the wild before assuming it’s a steaming pile of garbage.
khazhoux 3y ago
I see it opposite. Most of the Vision criticisms can be summarized as “This won’t meet my pre-defined notions of what a user experience should be.” Instead of trying to at least imagine what a different UX might be. Smartphones are great examples of how user behavior can change. No keyboard turned out to be fine, and people wound up plenty happy to watch videos on tiny screens.
brookst 3y ago
It’s a valid meta-criticism. The product isn’t out yet, and the criticisms all boil down to “I imagine their approach doesn’t solve the problems I imagine people have”. So we can argue hypothetical rebuttals to these hypotheticals, but we can also note that this pattern has repeated over and over. Apple has failed before, but “it doesn’t have a physical keyboard” and “what improvement can they bring to the commodity mp3 player” and “what’s wrong with command lines” and “who wants a small iPhone on their wrist” and “wires make earbuds socially acceptable” are valid things to remind this year’s doomsayers of.
- as_bntd 3y ago
  why would wires make earbuds socially acceptable?
  - massysett 3y ago
    This was a retort people used against AirPods. They look like funny Q-tips sticking out of the user's ears. But really they don't look much different from earbuds, which people wear all the time, so shouldn't AirPods be fine? The response was that the wires on the earbuds make them socially acceptable.
    - as_bntd 3y ago
      I really struggle to see how the earbuds being wired changes their social acceptability in comparison to wireless ones. I don't understand the retort.
      - brookst 3y ago
        It never made any sense. But people who saw AirPods as doomed to fail insisted that they looked dorky and embarrassing because… they didn’t have wires. It doesn’t make sense in hindsight, like the “iPhone will fail because it doesn’t have a physical keyboard” doesn’t make sense. But that’s the pattern here. Vision may fail, but if so, it will not be just because it’s different than current paradigms.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Or “remember the iPod” or “remember the iPad” or… All of Apple’s product launches get criticism leveled at them, and if they are successful, people forgot about the criticism. If the product is unsuccessful (Mac cube), people forget about the product.
jerf 3y ago
The iPhone is not the relevant comparison point to me. Pretty much as soon as the slab-of-glass smartphone design was technically feasible, slab-of-glass phones took over the market. The iPhone was a very good pass at it, but it was going to happen anyhow. Such predecessors as there were were not that old. It was not an idea that had decades of failure behind it. The iPad is the more interesting one to me because tablets had been a Next Big Thing for a long time, to the point that the common wisdom was that they weren't going to happen. Phones become slabs-of-glass because of the constraint of fitting into a pocket. Tablets couldn't compete with laptops in the absence of that constraint. The iPhone was the birth of a new industry; the iPad breathed life into an already dead industry. (Granted, that industry seems to be trending back towards dead, or if you prefer, "a stable niche that isn't going anywhere due to the ease of just making a Phone, but Bigger, but isn't going to take over the world", but if anything that makes Apple's accomplishment even more impressive.) This seems a much closer comparison to VR. Even before the current push represented by the Oculus and similar gen products, VR headsets had been a Next Big Thing for decades now. I'd still characterize the field as basically dead, at least at an Apple scale. If it hasn't outright plateaued, its first derivative is certainly only marginally positive. If the Apple Vision product succeeds it'll be another breathing life into a dead industry play.
- detourdog 3y ago
  I think it's closer to the mouse. When I was in seventh grade our computer room had an Apple II and a TRS-80. Apple had made floppy drives standard. The try-80 had a tape recorder and magic incantation for storing and retrieving programs. One day reading the latest computer magazines was Steve Jobs talking about a computer so easy to use a 2 year old could use it. I could not begin to comprehend what he was talking about. He was talking about the Lisa. I don't know how long it took me to find out what in the world was going on. It maybe like 2 mouses in that it has eye tracking and hand tracking. Which might make 2x as good as a mouse.
- dgreensp 3y ago
  I get what you’re saying, but I think people underestimate the novelty of Apple’s design decisions on things like the iPhone, declaring them obvious in hindsight. When the iPhone was announced, the phone team at Google working on the unreleased Android platform apparently went “shit, back to the drawing board.” Getting rid of the physical keyboard (for everyone) was controversial. “Pinching” to zoom into a web page, putting a desktop-quality browser on a phone, putting accelerated 3D graphics on a phone… there are too many things that were new with the iPhone to remember them all now, especially when Android went and did all the same things. It’s true that Apple capitalized on it being possible to put all that hardware in your pocket. They tend to be the ones to actually try it and figure out the UX paradigms. Make it not suffer from prominent lag, make the touchscreen good, the display quality good, the multitasking appropriate for the device’s capabilities, despite the research and cost of parts, and then figure out what the user experience is that takes advantage of the tech being able to keep up with the human, is simple to operate, and is going to make people want to spend a thousand dollars on it.
dan-robertson 3y ago
I think the issue with the OP is that it does not strike me as very well considered in a way that’s similar to ‘old iPhone criticism’. It seems anchored to past decisions[1] for other devices and the reasons they were made, and seems overconfident for an opinion on a device which the author does not have detailed specifications for. I think two things could have made the article more useful: 1. A better structured article. This was a mix of random details and jargon with speculation about the new device that didn’t feel well tied together. 2. I would expect the view of a sceptical expert to be more cautious and considered; to say what things might be difficulties, why they were difficulties for things in the past, how Apple seems to be planning to deal with them, where that approach might fail or succeed, and then some estimate of whether it seems easy for them to solve the problem. That is, it should be more clear what the assumptions are that are being relied on for the estimation. To take a stereotypical iPhone criticism for example, it would be bad to merely say that the lack of keyboard or badness of touchscreens makes it impossible and better to say that good touchscreens and some kind of solution to keyboard problems would be needed, and you don’t think improved sensor resolution would work and the problem seemed hard because X or Y. Like, I’m not saying that the author needs to be right but I think they could do a better job of having convincing reasons that they have tried to thought of the ways they might be wrong. [1] There was some discussion of a device the author worked on in the ‘90s(!) but I didn’t see discussion of more recent work. Capabilities of much of the tech going into this Apple thing will be quite different.

_1 3y ago

You don't need a time machine .. it's on the internet. > Third, users will detest the touch screen interface due to its lack of tactile feedback. Using a thumb keyboard, as on the very popular Treo phone, allows the user to feel the keys and know subconsciously that he’s about to press this one and not the one next to it. A touch screen doesn’t allow that, so the user will have to be looking at the keyboard at all times while using it. http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-to-flop-product-to.html http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-...

realusername 3y ago
What was pretty much what happened until smartphones got some better predictive typing software. That made the keyboard much more usable. His mistake wasn't in assessing the issues, just that he could not see that there's software solutions to fix those.
- Steltek 3y ago
  The criticism still holds (witness car tactile-vs-touch UX discussions) but a touch keyboard is not worse enough to outweigh the advantages of overall more screen space.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    And more importantly, the apple reality distortion field is enough to compensate for small issues like "it has no copy and paste" and "it's missing a keyboard", especially when it had plenty of upsides, like an OS that didn't make you feel like it was written by the lowest bidder, a nice screen (compared to contemporary smartphones) so you wouldn't hate watching videos on it, and iTunes integration, which was leagues better than the niche integrations smartphones had at the time. The complaints were valid, but they weren't nearly enough to make the device bad. Now, how many people can spend $3500 on a headset where the main use cases are "watch a movie", when those same people probably also have a really nice TV? Everyone keeps talking about how it's "very interesting" but how many of you have actually tried to watch a movie in a VR headset? It's not comfortable, not just from screen specs, since those don't really matter. The weight and face gasket suck to have on. You can't engineer that away.

realusername 3y ago

The critics were right on the first iPhone though, I remember it being a flop in my country just because of the lack of MMS support. It's the 3GS that really made the brand. Tech features do matter sometimes.

andsoitis 3y ago
> The critics were right on the first iPhone though, I remember it being a flop in my country just because of the lack of MMS support. which country?
- realusername 3y ago
  France. Probably like in most of Europe, MMS was the primary means of communication for everybody to share pictures and (very bad quality) short videos along with MSN messenger. The first iPhone had neither. Phones that didn't have any of that usually were from the older generation like the 3310. That lack of messaging options combined with the very high price at launch made it a non-starter. All of that got fixed on the 3G.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Well considering that the first iPhone only sold 10 million (the number that SJ said was his goal at introduction) and that it didn’t go on sale in France until 5 months after it was introduced in the US, that’s not really much evidence toward anything. https://www.thestreet.com/technology/iphone-to-debut-in-france-10384755 https://www.thestreet.com/technology/iphone-to-debut-in-fran...
    - realusername 3y ago
      Maybe it's also the lack of unit availability but the fact that you could not communicate with friends made it a non-starter.
  - mrtranscendence 3y ago
    In the US the initial iPhone was a bit of a sensation. Demand outstripped supply at first, and people waited outside stores for hours to snag one. It sold less than future models would, because it seemed fairly expensive and the value proposition wasn't yet 100% clear to many. But basically everyone knew about the iPhone and had an opinion one way or the other, generally positive. Even now the iPhone isn't as popular in mainland Europe as it is in the UK, Ireland, and the US.

michaelmcdonald 3y ago

I'm as big of an Apple fanboy as they come; however I clearly remember "Antenna Gate" and how simply holding the iPhone 4 caused signal attenuation of a rather severe degree.

sebzim4500 3y ago
Wasn't the iPhone 4 wildly successful though? It's when I got my first smartphone, so maybe my memory is biased.
- kemayo 3y ago
  Insofar as the fix to the Antennagate issue was to use a case (to avoid bridging the two antennas connected to the rim of the phone with your sadly-conductive skin), it didn't really affect the vast majority of people who bought the phone and immediately put it into a case to protect their expensive device.
scarface_74 3y ago
The iPhone 4 was successful and even despite the fake controversy, the GSM version sold for three years without any changes.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  What fake controversy? There was a real design flaw that apple responded to by insulting the intelligence of their users.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    The same design flaw that contemporary phones had?
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Contemporary phones did not have that design flaw. The antenna on the iPhones was exposed externally and could be shorted out, making it non-functional. Name a contemporary smart phone that also allowed you to short it's antenna by holding it

gorjusborg 3y ago

Your feeling represents one extreme, which is that hindsight proved Apple was right and critics were wrong, and that history will repeat. The other extreme is expecting history to repeat by demonstrating that people have consistently over estimated the probability of success in the VR space. I don't know which is right, but my gut says that VR is not something that will go mainstream in its current form (HMD). It's too 'bluetooth earpiece', and doesn't match the prestige image that is particularly strong in people that favor Apple products. Notice that I am not criticizing anything technical with AVR, which I think is a peripheral issue.

bee_rider 3y ago
How many legit hardware companies have tried a headset lately? Sony, and theirs is apparently really ergonomic, just tied to gaming. Other than that, not many. The trend I see is software companies like Facebook, Valve, and Microsoft over-estimating their odds of success at making hardware devices.
xenospn 3y ago
If the experience is profoundly "life-changing" (obviously an exaggeration), all of the other objections will fade away. I think they've created a device capable of at least one, if not multiple, "killer apps" that are not possible using todays hardware.
haswell 3y ago
There is a large spectrum of possibility between those two extremes. While I agree that blindly expecting history to repeat is problematic, it’s worth considering that this seems to be Apple’s strong suit, and while there are plenty of questions about how the market will react to this product, the early demos seem to confirm that Apple has indeed accomplished something that the other headsets have not. I think this is why some people are so bullish about this tech - and not for no reason. > It's too 'bluetooth earpiece', and doesn't match the prestige image that is particularly strong in people that favor Apple products Apple took something that was decidedly uncool (Bluetooth earpieces) and turned it into a status symbol (AirPods) despite these earpieces looking pretty goofy when they first landed. And again, I think the optimism comes from their demonstrated ability to achieve this kind of shift in perception/public consciousness. The reality distortion field in the form of top tier marketing from Apple has the best hope of making progress in this area compared to those that have come before. Could this all still be an enormous flop? Maybe. It could also be a Newton, and a decade later we’ll get the product Apple really wanted to ship: the iPhone (compact glasses).

macintux 3y ago

I was reminded of the “display expert” who wrote a long piece explaining that Apple had to be lying about the original iPad’s battery life.

snowwrestler 3y ago

Ok but the iPhone also launched with Edge connectivity, no copy/paste, web apps only (no App Store), barely made it a day on a charge, etc. We think the iPhone is great today almost entirely because of Apple’s iteration since launch. The initial model had promise but also major shortcomings that were obvious at the time. So “remember the iPhone” is probably not as strong a reassurance as it might seem on the surface. In general, Apple “version 1” products are often flawed. But Apple generally does not launch a product unless it intends to iterate on it for a long time (one of their not-so-secret keys to success).