9 ms·

I bought the Apple Vision Pro and even though the tech is amazing I returned it

21 points by wslh 3y ago

mkrishnan 3y ago
[dead]
irrational 3y ago
> We just need mass adoption of the device. Not holding my breath.
- kurthr 3y ago
  If they want to improve and gain wider adoption, they should try eating their dogfood. Give Apple developers the VP treatment and see what they do with it, fix the problems, enable the features, and make the real use models work. Just having the right few thousand people use it a couple of hours a day a few days a week could have a big impact (or kill it and move on to something that will). Or save a few million and let it languish for years, draining billions.
  - mminer237 3y ago
    If they want mass adoption, they need to drop the price by a factor of 4.
    - 999900000999 3y ago
      Personally I'd be down if it got to 1700$ or so.
    - kurthr 3y ago
      Why, they'd just sell out since they can't manufacture more than a few million? Seriously, you drop the price once you're past first adopters, which you do after you know what your features are, who your target customers are, and how to make enough of them. Maybe software is different. Total VR sales are only 15-20million a year. They're not looking to take more than 10% of that with a first product.
      - mminer237 3y ago
        I'm saying for mass adoption. I don't think it's going to happen either way, but if Mr. Patel is wanting specially-crafted AR advertising "experiences", I don't think it will be common for companies to invest in that to target even just 10% of the population.
  - asdff 3y ago
    People aren't even widely adopting the $899 macbook air, this thing is totally doomed at $3500. You'd be developing for probably a few tens of thousands of active users worldwide.
    - kurthr 3y ago
      If thousands of those are internal developers, then they'll either find a use case or kill it.
    - textadventure 3y ago
      How is it doomed? It's selling, and most people are liking it more than they are disliking it. And with like any new category of product (all based on existing tech, but there is no alternative to the Vision Pro, that does the same things), there is people that are going to make wild predictions of its failure, like they did with the iPad. So yeah, VR/AR headsets aren't going to replace smartphones anytime soon. But they don't NEED to. And it costs $3500 NOW, first generation product, but there is a reason why the put "Pro" in the name, the implication being that they fully intend to do a more affordable version. So as usual, it's not going to be any of the extreme predictions. It's neither going to be a total failure that Apple will stop manufacturing them, nor is it going to be such an overnight success that the average joe will stop paying their mortgage and instead get a gadget.
      - asdff 3y ago
        It has no market. Sales will peter out to nothing after the hype because there just aren't a lot of customers out there who can drop that kind of dosh on a computer at all, let alone something that isn't nearly as capable as a computer like a headset. When you look at the sales of apples higher price SKU computers they are terrible. Mac studio sales for example are 1% of their mac sales (1). There just aren't many fish in the sea biting at these prices. https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apples-most-popular-mac/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apples-most-popular-mac/
        textadventure 3y ago
iriiririwe 3y ago
Yeah. I genuinely considered buying one, playing with it for a few days, and then returning it. I can't imagine actually using it on a regular basis and even if it were useful it wouldn't be three times as useful as the $1200 macbook I already have.
- karim79 3y ago
  I've said this before, and I'll say it again. If it had a Thunderbolt out, or HDMI or something, that it could sit on a desk and double as a Mac Mini, for example, I think it'd be more 'keepable'. Most of my friends work in the tech space, and a lot of them have at least one VR headset, most of which have been sitting in 'the drawer of stuff I'll come back to at some point' or have been given or lent to friends/family.
- mcphage 3y ago
  > I genuinely considered buying one, playing with it for a few days, and then returning it. Just make sure you write a twitter thread (or social network of your choice) to maximize those engagement dollars. Standing bravely against the tide is a good look (when the tide is low), or maybe try a different angle.
claytongulick 3y ago
Didn't realize it doesn't have chrome - bit of a deal killer right there for work purposes. Also, the inability to have more than one mac desktop is very strange. And the weird limitation on not having audio from your mac go through the headphones. I'm waiting to see if Immersed Visor [1] ever becomes real and lives up to the marketing. [1] https://www.visor.com/ https://www.visor.com/
- pfannkuchen 3y ago
  You can separately pair headphones to the Mac. Not ideal but works fine so far.
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  > Also, the inability to have more than one mac desktop is very strange. is it. sounds like typical apple to me.
jwells89 3y ago
I’m still experimenting but thus far I’ve found it to be nice for lounging usage (couch, bed, etc) because it lets me keep my head up and eyes focused several feet away instead of down and a few inches away. It does need more apps but those are coming along at a decent pace, and if necessary I can write what I need.
- whartung 3y ago
  But is it $3500 nice? I mean, there was a picture of a pair of guys wearing them out in public, eating food or something. And, you know, that's almost $8000 (with tax) of equipment there in that cafe stuck on those heads. Make no mistake, its not a criticism at all, I hope you enjoy your purchase. Maybe those guys eating were watching Iron Man or something.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    The cost is more or less the standard price of admission for early adopter stuff. Not worth it for everybody clearly, but worth considering for those who like riding the wave as a platform matures from the start. I don’t think I’d take it out in public, except maybe on a plane or in an airport lounge.
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      Not really. Quest is early adopter stuff and it's $300-500, about a tenth of the price. Steamdeck, Raspberry Pi, these are early adopter hardware and they're all sub-$500. I've been buying enthusiast hardware since the '80s and, no, $3500 is not the price of admission. I can't think of a single piece of enthusiast gear I've ever run across in computers or electronic music, that was that expensive unless it was a collectors item, one of a kind, or some other factor which absolutely does not apply to the Vision Pro which Apple markets as having mainstream appeal (see the commercials if you want to know how Apple is positioning this thing, and it's without a doubt not enthusiast or early adopters.) Are you sucking up to Apple here because you like Apple or because you like VR, or is there some other reason?
whartung 3y ago
I'm curious how much that will impact the device. I mean, will a lot of people do this? Transforming a $3500 device into a $2500 refurb over night? I wonder if they will get a lot of these. Of course, my problem is I can not test it. I need eye glass lenses to test it (apparently), so I don't even think I can go into the store and give it a 30s look. The barrier to entry is quite high for me.
- Aqua_Geek 3y ago
  I imagine a not-insignificant number of those who preordered will return it. Anecdotally, everyone I know who bought one plans on doing just that. Sales numbers have been higher than expected, but I do wonder where they net out after returns.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- patall 3y ago
  Not sure about your specific condition, but contact lenses should work. So ~20 bucks for cheap dailies?
  - pleb_nz 3y ago
    So adding to global pollution and consumption for use of and production of items that will end rubbish is ok then when it's not really essential.
    - patall 3y ago
      ??? I was writing about it being a hurdle to even try this out. How did you get it being about the returning part and not about trying it out in the store.
- hightrix 3y ago
  I bet Apple will sell refurbs for much higher than $2500. My guess is more around the GameStop used game pricing structure of 10% off, maybe round up to 3250.
mrcwinn 3y ago
On Day 2. It's genuinely amazing. It's really a fantastic product all around and surprisingly useful. Watching Gravity last night in the "theater room" was a truly special, immersive experience. I just threw it on to see what it would be like and ended up watching the whole thing. What surprised me the most, though, is that when you put it on — the pass-through is certainly nothing convincing. I had the impression that reality would look like reality, but the truth is it looks like a sort of lower-fidelity, grainier, hazier dream world version of reality. In practice, this doesn't matter much. Once you start doing work VisionOS windows are sharp and look great and that "dream world" is more in your peripheral. It's not distracting, but it was surprising. I'm not entirely sure it matters but it is perhaps noteworthy. Is it a must-have product, money aside? No, I don't think so. It can be tiring on the eyes and it's certainly not replacing my Mac anytime soon, but I absolutely buy into the notion that this is in some form the future of computing.
- partiallypro 3y ago
  The movie experience is available on MUCH cheaper headsets though. Sure, it's cool...but what feature really makes it worth so much aside from it having been made by Apple?
  - Kluggy 3y ago
    The picture quality is absolutely amazing. Between the Quest 2 and the Vision pro, the difference is similar to SD to HD tv (480p to 1080p). It's a huge leap forward, and for spatial videos, it's an entirely different feeling.
  - nilkn 3y ago
    Is it, though? On the AVP it looks better than an actual theater and almost as good as a $5k 80+ inch OLED TV at home. The fidelity is incredible and well beyond anything I’ve seen before from a VR headset.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    A movie experience is available not the same movie experience. No cheaper headset has these movies available in 4K HDR 3D with optional HFR. That has simply not existed for the home market till now. No cheaper headset has the same native streaming apps capable of delivering 4k streams. No cheaper headset has the color accuracy and resolution. You might as well make the same argument about someone upgrading from a 720p TV to a 4k one. Remember, implementation is often more important than just a feature on paper. The iPhone killed off cheaper devices that did everything it did because it did the core things better. The same goes for the iPod and the iPad. Anyone who compares features without an eye for implementation is missing the forest for the trees.
drewcoo 3y ago
Why is the title changed from "though" to "when," changing the meaning? [edit to add] Also, a comma was added, so this resulted in a net loss of one character while also changing the meaning.
KaiserPro 3y ago
I think: "I get headaches from using it, and there isn't enough reason to be in VR" is probably the same reason oculus didn't really penetrate the Apple/tech/trendies. The target the author sets for them trying it again is basically meta's roadmap. the _hilarious_ thing is that meta cannot coherently deliver/demostrate baby steps to those targets, or explain through the medium of snootynosed PR/marketing hyperbole the potential of the oculus platform. Put it this way, the reason the iPhone succeeded is because a lot of people gave apple the benefit of the doubt. It had two things: music and well engineered smooth scrolling. _Everything_ else was sub par. No 3g, terrible batterylife, no GPS, no apps, no sideloading and no flash. Fucking slow proc (but the interface was always given priority.) If VR is going to succeed with apple, it will be because people gave them the benefit of the doubt for v1/v2. Most of the reviews are a lot of "It will be" "when x is delivered" and "when x makes content in y". Meta doesn't have that good will to draw on, they have to deliver first time They can't because the head of VR/AR is someone who ships features not releases coherent products. You know the best fucking part? the quest pro could have been a 95% AVP. If they managed to ship the depth sensor, then passthrough would have worked. If they had planned their shell properly, not wasted many many people-years fucking porting react to VR, then they might have had time to design a coherent UX. But thats the problem with most competitors, they shitout features, rather than release coherent experiences. Apple: I want a VR headset that anyone can use, requires no hand controllers, and doesn't block out the world Meta: Lets ship eyetracking and hand based controllers, but only release 4 pages of documentation on all of it. something something metaverse, something something playing poker in a room together.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Something else that’s hurting Meta is how compared to Apple, it doesn’t have as robust of a platform (SDK, UI paradigms, etc). Quests run plain old Android in 3D with some AR bits bolted on, which is fine for games but not as compelling for other types of apps. Devs could probably look past that if apps developed for the Quest had a possibility of running on competing headsets, with Meta offering to license their flavor of Android to other manufacturers and establishing Quest OS the “Windows” of AR/VR. They’re not doing that though, they’re instead going for a more Apple-like strategy, but without the platform chops to back it up. Eventually, there will be a company that builds a “Windows” of AR that they license out and becomes dominant, but I wouldn’t bet on it being Meta. Maybe it’ll instead be Valve, given their recent work on SteamOS.
ajross 3y ago
The thing I find weird is how many of these reviews and experiences are coming from people who (1) genuinely believe Apple has an innovative product and market positioning, yet (2) seem never once to have purchased or used an Oculus or Meta product in the same space. I mean, so many people are like "OMG Amazing Apple Demo" (or "This is the future" in the linked tweet) not realizing that the Rift was doing the same thing a decade ago. Is the Vision Pro better? I guess it must be given the price. But realistic 3D headsets are a long-solved problem.
- dangus 3y ago
  I think of this as “what does the launch product look like compared to five years from now?” The Quest (2019) compared to Quest 3 basically gives you speed bumps, a pass-through camera, but the overall experience of what you’re doing in there is very similar. Valve didn’t even make a new headset because the experience is still good enough (and they probably don’t see much of a future in it, to be honest). Microsoft gave up despite having one of the more viable commercial solutions. This amazing AR experience that Apple is pretending to deliver is just an incremental improvement to VR. It compares well to going from the launch iPhone to the iPhone 5. What this means is that the VR/AR product market is likely already close to its technological end point. This is as far as we can go: we can strap displays to our heads. We can pass through a camera feed. We can remove the external trackers (though not without introducing blind spots, which will never be a solved problem). That’s about it. How do I know we are at the end already? Because look at the iPhone 10 compared to the 5, or look at the 15 compared to the 10. What is different about it? The screen is a little bigger? You can unlock it in a fancy way? It’s got a nicer camera and faster processor? It’s the same device that does all the same things. Every year the increments get smaller. VR has already gone through its fastest era of development. It all slows down from here. It’s decent tech that can be fun or even productive but I just don’t think it’s for everyone, and for the people who it’s for it’s not really something you are going to want to use for 4+ hours a day like most smartphone and computer users. And we aren’t getting this tech in a pair of glasses or a projected hologram in front of our face or anything unobtrusive like that. It’s physically impossible within any foreseeable period of time.
- asdff 3y ago
crtified 3y ago
The pros and cons of the early adopter. Factors like weight and comfort often arise. Perhaps a future strategy in this space will be to minimise the headset componentry by shifting as much as possible externally, similar to how Apple has approached the battery issue with the Vision Pro. (imagination running with that idea : future iphones and Macs will be the processing units for more-compact future Vision Pros)
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  Modular Google Glass essentially? That could be pretty cool, and make the headset lighter too.
- mshaler 3y ago
  Maybe AVP aspirationally (once in sunglass form factor) seeks to replace iPad, then Mac, then iPhone?
- vonwoodson 3y ago
  Like, it's super weird to have an external battery but not the rest of the non-visual hardware, right?
- asadotzler 3y ago
  There's no fixing the fact that people think highly of their faces (especially those who spend time on hair and makeup) are not going to put a big dorkbox on their faces. This whole approach is an evolutionary dead end. If users have to strap anything to press against their faces all around their eyes, forehead and cheeks, adoption's going to be limited to a small group of male gamers, think 10 million MAU in 5-10 years ("Quest" got 6M in 10 years) not 100 million and certainly not a billion. This product is a flop that should have stayed in R&D for 10 to 20 more years until the tech was ready to build something that didn't make your face look silly. Jobs would never have released this. This is the DynaTAK, not even the StarTAK, and certainly not the iPhone 1. Apple didn't rush to build a mobile phone in the late '90s when the StarTAK was showing that cell phones could fit in your shirt pocket and work pretty well. They waited another decade until they could build something truly good, not just good enough like the StarTAK. But Tim Cook shipped this DynaTAK+ headset that dorks your face. That's just the kind of good solid work a fashion tech brand like Apple needs /s
dangus 3y ago
It’s interesting that the author does still think it’s the future despite returning it for a bunch of dealbreaking flaws that have no chance of being addressed. I don’t recall a lot of people out there with a similar sentiment when they bought their first generation iPhones and Apple Watches. They saw a future that was imminent, a future that their current device could actually possibly be a part of, at least partially. Their original iPhone eventually got things like an App Store and Microsoft Exchange support, becoming a very useful device. The vision was essentially executed on the first try, and the only things that needed to be improved were very incremental details like network speed, screen size/quality, battery life, processor power. Despite that, the device was the right size, shape, and general combination of functionality. Sure, those first generation devices stopped being updated fairly quickly, but at the end of the day they hit their stride within a couple years of updates, many through software. I think it’s “the future” only if the tech can move a lot faster than it has thus far. It is a major problem that after so many years of active development with industry giants sinking billions into VR/AR, this space still doesn’t seem anywhere close to the sort of cyberpunk-esque human computer that is the eventual vision of AR, the only way it will gain mass adoption. Not only did Apple not deliver an AR headset (it’s a VR headset with video passthrough that you can’t wear without messing up your hair), even if they delivered AR glasses or whatever…that is still arguably not a good enough experience. Wearing glasses isn’t great when you don’t normally wear them. That’s much more of a commitment than putting a phone on your pocket or a watch on your wrist. Step one is convincing you to do that. But that isn’t even really the issue here because not only did Apple not deliver something like a pair of glasses, what they delivered is so far away from that where the very idea of a Vision Pro shrinking down into a pair of Ray Bans seems physically impossible. Apple gave us one of the heaviest headsets out there despite having an external battery to keep the weight down. When the iPhone came out you could see the device becoming extremely powerful and performant within 5 years. That path was obvious. If you look at an iPhone 5, that is a phone that really isn’t that far off from modern, mature products. It had LTE, and there isn’t really a technical reason why you couldn’t use it just like any other modern phone besides the lack of updates. The product category essentially achieved its ultimate vision within a short period of time. But when you look at the AR market, all the major VR/AR products were coming out around 5 years ago (or longer) and we’ve barely got a better experience. The difference between the Quest 3 and the original Quest (2019) is basically just some pass through cameras and a speed bump. Incremental changes like we got with the iPhone. We’re still just playing beat saber and superhot. The Valve Index is a similar age and still represents one of the better HMDs that you can buy. Apple’s device has worse FOV even though it’s $3500 and 5 years newer. There is not going to be this cool AR future because the products are already in their final form. They are screens attached to your head. That’s all they’ll ever be. We have seen this because they’ve only made incremental changes in their first 5 years like an iPhone or Apple Watch, no fundamental form factor changes. The Vision Pro 5 is going to be the same device as the original, without the external battery, and with a better display. It’s going to still mess up your hair and make you wear dumb looking shit on your head. Even the educational and enterprise features that the author imagines, while cool, don’t seem to be going anywhere. Microsoft gave up on those despite having very capable first-mover technology and a web page full of enterprise client success stories. I personally guess that it’s just very hard to make useful AR experiences. They’re difficult to develop compared to making a web page, a CRUD app, training video, etc. Hell, they might not even be as cost effective as hands-on apprentice-style training. Between buying the hardware and developing a fully immersive 3D app…the applications for that level of effort are limited, IMO.
tatrajim 3y ago
I would encourage my fellow oldsters (you know who you are!) to strongly consider trying out the AVP. After several days of use, I'll be keeping mine. A few rambling thoughts. First, and foremost, I like the feeling of mental tiredness after using it for an hour or so, reminding me of how fatigued I felt years ago, living in a remote Peace Corps location and wrestling daily with a difficult new language. One can almost feel new mental connections being forged as utterly new visages appear floating in space and novel configurations of information present themselves. And, as a consequence, one can sense dreaded dementia receding a decade or so into the murky future. Second, the meditation app is truly awesome, and allows a length of quiet sitting I've never before been able to attain, and lower blood pressure. Third, the near-term prospect of virtual attendance at performing arts and sports events around the planet, without needing to leave home, is enticing. Fourth, in the mid-future, tele-medicine will surely take account of the possibilities of AVP, tied likely to various monitors the Apple watch will have, opening new vistas of quality care at a distance. And fifth, and best of all, the sheer pleasure of personal spatial videos is not to be denied. It was delightful to hear my own spouse gasp in amazement to see herself in 3D twirling gracefully during a recent outing. All in all, a winner for nearly every senior.
- tiahura 3y ago
  Why did contacts vs custom lenses matter?
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    I suspect you posted this on the wrong thread.
- foogazi 3y ago
  > It was delightful to hear my own spouse gasp in amazement to see herself in 3D twirling gracefully during a recent outing. Did you get two ?
  - fragmede 3y ago
    iphone 15 pro takes spacial videos
vonwoodson 3y ago
Here's my complaints, while we're complaining: + Apple appears to have worked *VERY* hard to make sure that there is no VR capability in it's VR headset. Most obvious is that it cannot play SBS video, as far as I can tell, at all. Though I'm sure that content providers will make an AVP app that will play them, in short order, what a weird thing to have left out. WebXR VR video does not play either. You may be in the know, but for the sake of stating it clearly: I will not play adult content from any of the websites you'd expect it to. Beyond that there are absolutely zero immersive experiences to be had with those fantastic 4k-per-eye OLED displays... so high-rez windows on a blurry re-displayed image of my crappy office. + The controls suck. "suck" meaning "fails to meet expectations". Seriously, eye/tap-controls (combined with the buttons on the headset itself) are identical to the amount of control the Oculus Go controller had, with less precision. The eye-tracking rarely looks exactly where you want it to, and the taps often don't register or release correctly. This is absolutely infuriating when you're trying to do anything. Furthermore, it's a 3DOF control scheme on a machine that is supposed to be "spatial". Watching my wife try to operate the thing, she is waiving her hands and trying to grab things... NOPE! only look-and-tap controls for everything. Want to position that window on the wall? You've got to physically stand up in front of where you want it and 3DOF control it into place, then go sit back down at your desk. In fact... + The whole thing really feels like you're supposed to be sitting at a desk the whole time you're using it. Everything is a floating window, and is expected to stay that way. When you walk around, all your windows stay where you placed them in space, but in front of the "pass through" at all times. And, if you try to layer your windows on top or "too close" to each other, then you get a "gradient of passthrough" in all of your surrounding windows that are not in focus. So, you can't read the news on the built-in Safari and work on your 80-inch virtual laptop screen next to each other without one-or-the-other half-disappearing (unless you put them far enough apart that you'd have to swivel in your office chair to look from one to the other. Walk a few feet and all your windows are back where you left them. Still, you'd think that the multiple windows would be great for multitasking but... + Not a multi-tasking device. It's very difficult to switch between active windows. If you grab the bar to move the window (easiest way to focus a window, and most obvious) it'll move that window away from where you put it. Also, because your eyes move faster than your hand, you'll often look somewhere before you tap... often the little "close window" circle. Anyway, then you're back up and moving your windows back where you want them. So, I want my 300-inch TV on that wall over there... and my laptop screen on my desk... and my chess board floating off to the right... and my YouTube music playing... but, The virtual desktop hijacks almost all of my input and all of my Siri commands, the Apple TV stops playing if my music website is playing music and vice versa, but the chessboard's background music plays just fine without interruption somehow. + AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 2 or GFYS. The Max's don't fit right and don't seal well enough for noise canceling, and the AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 1 don't have the low latency Bluetooth. Great, that's $700 of equipment that "Just [kinda] works." + Ok, there's the weight, but what *REALLY* sucks, is that there's no overhead strap. The included over-the-head strap still attaches at the back of the device. Fully resting the entire weight of the AVP on your cheekbones and nose. I eagerly await a 3rd party solution to this problem, but, where are they going to attach it? I suppose a halo-strap is ideal, but it'll need to put something onto that sleek design. I'm about ready to glue a strap over the worthless and invisible EyeSight display so I can get this thing off my nose already. + Oh, yeah, and this morning I tried to snooze my alarm clock by looking at it and tapping my fingers together... so it's also breaking my mind. I'm not going to be returning my headset. I bought a first-gen product and I knew that things wouldn't be great. But, I remember getting that Virtual Boy/Google Cardboard/Oculus Go/Quest1&2 and being blown away by them each a bit more than the one before it. The AVP did not even remotely impress me.
powerapple 3y ago
All I need is a water proof Vision Pro I can wear in swimming pool. Swimming is very good exercise but very boring, and it is also a free environment for VR. Imaging having Vision Pro when swimming, that will be the best experience ever.

21 points by wslh 3y ago

mkrishnan 3y ago

[dead]

irrational 3y ago

> We just need mass adoption of the device. Not holding my breath.

kurthr 3y ago
If they want to improve and gain wider adoption, they should try eating their dogfood. Give Apple developers the VP treatment and see what they do with it, fix the problems, enable the features, and make the real use models work. Just having the right few thousand people use it a couple of hours a day a few days a week could have a big impact (or kill it and move on to something that will). Or save a few million and let it languish for years, draining billions.
- mminer237 3y ago
  If they want mass adoption, they need to drop the price by a factor of 4.
  - 999900000999 3y ago
    Personally I'd be down if it got to 1700$ or so.
  - kurthr 3y ago
    Why, they'd just sell out since they can't manufacture more than a few million? Seriously, you drop the price once you're past first adopters, which you do after you know what your features are, who your target customers are, and how to make enough of them. Maybe software is different. Total VR sales are only 15-20million a year. They're not looking to take more than 10% of that with a first product.
    - mminer237 3y ago
      I'm saying for mass adoption. I don't think it's going to happen either way, but if Mr. Patel is wanting specially-crafted AR advertising "experiences", I don't think it will be common for companies to invest in that to target even just 10% of the population.
- asdff 3y ago
  People aren't even widely adopting the $899 macbook air, this thing is totally doomed at $3500. You'd be developing for probably a few tens of thousands of active users worldwide.
  - kurthr 3y ago
    If thousands of those are internal developers, then they'll either find a use case or kill it.
  - textadventure 3y ago
    How is it doomed? It's selling, and most people are liking it more than they are disliking it. And with like any new category of product (all based on existing tech, but there is no alternative to the Vision Pro, that does the same things), there is people that are going to make wild predictions of its failure, like they did with the iPad. So yeah, VR/AR headsets aren't going to replace smartphones anytime soon. But they don't NEED to. And it costs $3500 NOW, first generation product, but there is a reason why the put "Pro" in the name, the implication being that they fully intend to do a more affordable version. So as usual, it's not going to be any of the extreme predictions. It's neither going to be a total failure that Apple will stop manufacturing them, nor is it going to be such an overnight success that the average joe will stop paying their mortgage and instead get a gadget.
    - asdff 3y ago
      It has no market. Sales will peter out to nothing after the hype because there just aren't a lot of customers out there who can drop that kind of dosh on a computer at all, let alone something that isn't nearly as capable as a computer like a headset. When you look at the sales of apples higher price SKU computers they are terrible. Mac studio sales for example are 1% of their mac sales (1). There just aren't many fish in the sea biting at these prices. https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apples-most-popular-mac/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apples-most-popular-mac/
      - textadventure 3y ago

iriiririwe 3y ago

Yeah. I genuinely considered buying one, playing with it for a few days, and then returning it. I can't imagine actually using it on a regular basis and even if it were useful it wouldn't be three times as useful as the $1200 macbook I already have.

karim79 3y ago
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. If it had a Thunderbolt out, or HDMI or something, that it could sit on a desk and double as a Mac Mini, for example, I think it'd be more 'keepable'. Most of my friends work in the tech space, and a lot of them have at least one VR headset, most of which have been sitting in 'the drawer of stuff I'll come back to at some point' or have been given or lent to friends/family.
mcphage 3y ago
> I genuinely considered buying one, playing with it for a few days, and then returning it. Just make sure you write a twitter thread (or social network of your choice) to maximize those engagement dollars. Standing bravely against the tide is a good look (when the tide is low), or maybe try a different angle.

claytongulick 3y ago

Didn't realize it doesn't have chrome - bit of a deal killer right there for work purposes. Also, the inability to have more than one mac desktop is very strange. And the weird limitation on not having audio from your mac go through the headphones. I'm waiting to see if Immersed Visor [1] ever becomes real and lives up to the marketing. [1] https://www.visor.com/ https://www.visor.com/

pfannkuchen 3y ago
You can separately pair headphones to the Mac. Not ideal but works fine so far.
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
> Also, the inability to have more than one mac desktop is very strange. is it. sounds like typical apple to me.

jwells89 3y ago

I’m still experimenting but thus far I’ve found it to be nice for lounging usage (couch, bed, etc) because it lets me keep my head up and eyes focused several feet away instead of down and a few inches away. It does need more apps but those are coming along at a decent pace, and if necessary I can write what I need.

whartung 3y ago
But is it $3500 nice? I mean, there was a picture of a pair of guys wearing them out in public, eating food or something. And, you know, that's almost $8000 (with tax) of equipment there in that cafe stuck on those heads. Make no mistake, its not a criticism at all, I hope you enjoy your purchase. Maybe those guys eating were watching Iron Man or something.
- jwells89 3y ago
  The cost is more or less the standard price of admission for early adopter stuff. Not worth it for everybody clearly, but worth considering for those who like riding the wave as a platform matures from the start. I don’t think I’d take it out in public, except maybe on a plane or in an airport lounge.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    Not really. Quest is early adopter stuff and it's $300-500, about a tenth of the price. Steamdeck, Raspberry Pi, these are early adopter hardware and they're all sub-$500. I've been buying enthusiast hardware since the '80s and, no, $3500 is not the price of admission. I can't think of a single piece of enthusiast gear I've ever run across in computers or electronic music, that was that expensive unless it was a collectors item, one of a kind, or some other factor which absolutely does not apply to the Vision Pro which Apple markets as having mainstream appeal (see the commercials if you want to know how Apple is positioning this thing, and it's without a doubt not enthusiast or early adopters.) Are you sucking up to Apple here because you like Apple or because you like VR, or is there some other reason?

whartung 3y ago

I'm curious how much that will impact the device. I mean, will a lot of people do this? Transforming a $3500 device into a $2500 refurb over night? I wonder if they will get a lot of these. Of course, my problem is I can not test it. I need eye glass lenses to test it (apparently), so I don't even think I can go into the store and give it a 30s look. The barrier to entry is quite high for me.

Aqua_Geek 3y ago
I imagine a not-insignificant number of those who preordered will return it. Anecdotally, everyone I know who bought one plans on doing just that. Sales numbers have been higher than expected, but I do wonder where they net out after returns.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
patall 3y ago
Not sure about your specific condition, but contact lenses should work. So ~20 bucks for cheap dailies?
- pleb_nz 3y ago
  So adding to global pollution and consumption for use of and production of items that will end rubbish is ok then when it's not really essential.
  - patall 3y ago
    ??? I was writing about it being a hurdle to even try this out. How did you get it being about the returning part and not about trying it out in the store.
hightrix 3y ago
I bet Apple will sell refurbs for much higher than $2500. My guess is more around the GameStop used game pricing structure of 10% off, maybe round up to 3250.

mrcwinn 3y ago

On Day 2. It's genuinely amazing. It's really a fantastic product all around and surprisingly useful. Watching Gravity last night in the "theater room" was a truly special, immersive experience. I just threw it on to see what it would be like and ended up watching the whole thing. What surprised me the most, though, is that when you put it on — the pass-through is certainly nothing convincing. I had the impression that reality would look like reality, but the truth is it looks like a sort of lower-fidelity, grainier, hazier dream world version of reality. In practice, this doesn't matter much. Once you start doing work VisionOS windows are sharp and look great and that "dream world" is more in your peripheral. It's not distracting, but it was surprising. I'm not entirely sure it matters but it is perhaps noteworthy. Is it a must-have product, money aside? No, I don't think so. It can be tiring on the eyes and it's certainly not replacing my Mac anytime soon, but I absolutely buy into the notion that this is in some form the future of computing.

partiallypro 3y ago
The movie experience is available on MUCH cheaper headsets though. Sure, it's cool...but what feature really makes it worth so much aside from it having been made by Apple?
- Kluggy 3y ago
  The picture quality is absolutely amazing. Between the Quest 2 and the Vision pro, the difference is similar to SD to HD tv (480p to 1080p). It's a huge leap forward, and for spatial videos, it's an entirely different feeling.
- nilkn 3y ago
  Is it, though? On the AVP it looks better than an actual theater and almost as good as a $5k 80+ inch OLED TV at home. The fidelity is incredible and well beyond anything I’ve seen before from a VR headset.
- dagmx 3y ago
  A movie experience is available not the same movie experience. No cheaper headset has these movies available in 4K HDR 3D with optional HFR. That has simply not existed for the home market till now. No cheaper headset has the same native streaming apps capable of delivering 4k streams. No cheaper headset has the color accuracy and resolution. You might as well make the same argument about someone upgrading from a 720p TV to a 4k one. Remember, implementation is often more important than just a feature on paper. The iPhone killed off cheaper devices that did everything it did because it did the core things better. The same goes for the iPod and the iPad. Anyone who compares features without an eye for implementation is missing the forest for the trees.

drewcoo 3y ago

Why is the title changed from "though" to "when," changing the meaning? [edit to add] Also, a comma was added, so this resulted in a net loss of one character while also changing the meaning.

KaiserPro 3y ago

I think: "I get headaches from using it, and there isn't enough reason to be in VR" is probably the same reason oculus didn't really penetrate the Apple/tech/trendies. The target the author sets for them trying it again is basically meta's roadmap. the _hilarious_ thing is that meta cannot coherently deliver/demostrate baby steps to those targets, or explain through the medium of snootynosed PR/marketing hyperbole the potential of the oculus platform. Put it this way, the reason the iPhone succeeded is because a lot of people gave apple the benefit of the doubt. It had two things: music and well engineered smooth scrolling. _Everything_ else was sub par. No 3g, terrible batterylife, no GPS, no apps, no sideloading and no flash. Fucking slow proc (but the interface was always given priority.) If VR is going to succeed with apple, it will be because people gave them the benefit of the doubt for v1/v2. Most of the reviews are a lot of "It will be" "when x is delivered" and "when x makes content in y". Meta doesn't have that good will to draw on, they have to deliver first time They can't because the head of VR/AR is someone who ships features not releases coherent products. You know the best fucking part? the quest pro could have been a 95% AVP. If they managed to ship the depth sensor, then passthrough would have worked. If they had planned their shell properly, not wasted many many people-years fucking porting react to VR, then they might have had time to design a coherent UX. But thats the problem with most competitors, they shitout features, rather than release coherent experiences. Apple: I want a VR headset that anyone can use, requires no hand controllers, and doesn't block out the world Meta: Lets ship eyetracking and hand based controllers, but only release 4 pages of documentation on all of it. something something metaverse, something something playing poker in a room together.

jwells89 3y ago
Something else that’s hurting Meta is how compared to Apple, it doesn’t have as robust of a platform (SDK, UI paradigms, etc). Quests run plain old Android in 3D with some AR bits bolted on, which is fine for games but not as compelling for other types of apps. Devs could probably look past that if apps developed for the Quest had a possibility of running on competing headsets, with Meta offering to license their flavor of Android to other manufacturers and establishing Quest OS the “Windows” of AR/VR. They’re not doing that though, they’re instead going for a more Apple-like strategy, but without the platform chops to back it up. Eventually, there will be a company that builds a “Windows” of AR that they license out and becomes dominant, but I wouldn’t bet on it being Meta. Maybe it’ll instead be Valve, given their recent work on SteamOS.

ajross 3y ago

The thing I find weird is how many of these reviews and experiences are coming from people who (1) genuinely believe Apple has an innovative product and market positioning, yet (2) seem never once to have purchased or used an Oculus or Meta product in the same space. I mean, so many people are like "OMG Amazing Apple Demo" (or "This is the future" in the linked tweet) not realizing that the Rift was doing the same thing a decade ago. Is the Vision Pro better? I guess it must be given the price. But realistic 3D headsets are a long-solved problem.

dangus 3y ago
I think of this as “what does the launch product look like compared to five years from now?” The Quest (2019) compared to Quest 3 basically gives you speed bumps, a pass-through camera, but the overall experience of what you’re doing in there is very similar. Valve didn’t even make a new headset because the experience is still good enough (and they probably don’t see much of a future in it, to be honest). Microsoft gave up despite having one of the more viable commercial solutions. This amazing AR experience that Apple is pretending to deliver is just an incremental improvement to VR. It compares well to going from the launch iPhone to the iPhone 5. What this means is that the VR/AR product market is likely already close to its technological end point. This is as far as we can go: we can strap displays to our heads. We can pass through a camera feed. We can remove the external trackers (though not without introducing blind spots, which will never be a solved problem). That’s about it. How do I know we are at the end already? Because look at the iPhone 10 compared to the 5, or look at the 15 compared to the 10. What is different about it? The screen is a little bigger? You can unlock it in a fancy way? It’s got a nicer camera and faster processor? It’s the same device that does all the same things. Every year the increments get smaller. VR has already gone through its fastest era of development. It all slows down from here. It’s decent tech that can be fun or even productive but I just don’t think it’s for everyone, and for the people who it’s for it’s not really something you are going to want to use for 4+ hours a day like most smartphone and computer users. And we aren’t getting this tech in a pair of glasses or a projected hologram in front of our face or anything unobtrusive like that. It’s physically impossible within any foreseeable period of time.
asdff 3y ago

crtified 3y ago

The pros and cons of the early adopter. Factors like weight and comfort often arise. Perhaps a future strategy in this space will be to minimise the headset componentry by shifting as much as possible externally, similar to how Apple has approached the battery issue with the Vision Pro. (imagination running with that idea : future iphones and Macs will be the processing units for more-compact future Vision Pros)

I_Am_Nous 3y ago
Modular Google Glass essentially? That could be pretty cool, and make the headset lighter too.
mshaler 3y ago
Maybe AVP aspirationally (once in sunglass form factor) seeks to replace iPad, then Mac, then iPhone?
vonwoodson 3y ago
Like, it's super weird to have an external battery but not the rest of the non-visual hardware, right?
asadotzler 3y ago
There's no fixing the fact that people think highly of their faces (especially those who spend time on hair and makeup) are not going to put a big dorkbox on their faces. This whole approach is an evolutionary dead end. If users have to strap anything to press against their faces all around their eyes, forehead and cheeks, adoption's going to be limited to a small group of male gamers, think 10 million MAU in 5-10 years ("Quest" got 6M in 10 years) not 100 million and certainly not a billion. This product is a flop that should have stayed in R&D for 10 to 20 more years until the tech was ready to build something that didn't make your face look silly. Jobs would never have released this. This is the DynaTAK, not even the StarTAK, and certainly not the iPhone 1. Apple didn't rush to build a mobile phone in the late '90s when the StarTAK was showing that cell phones could fit in your shirt pocket and work pretty well. They waited another decade until they could build something truly good, not just good enough like the StarTAK. But Tim Cook shipped this DynaTAK+ headset that dorks your face. That's just the kind of good solid work a fashion tech brand like Apple needs /s

dangus 3y ago

It’s interesting that the author does still think it’s the future despite returning it for a bunch of dealbreaking flaws that have no chance of being addressed. I don’t recall a lot of people out there with a similar sentiment when they bought their first generation iPhones and Apple Watches. They saw a future that was imminent, a future that their current device could actually possibly be a part of, at least partially. Their original iPhone eventually got things like an App Store and Microsoft Exchange support, becoming a very useful device. The vision was essentially executed on the first try, and the only things that needed to be improved were very incremental details like network speed, screen size/quality, battery life, processor power. Despite that, the device was the right size, shape, and general combination of functionality. Sure, those first generation devices stopped being updated fairly quickly, but at the end of the day they hit their stride within a couple years of updates, many through software. I think it’s “the future” only if the tech can move a lot faster than it has thus far. It is a major problem that after so many years of active development with industry giants sinking billions into VR/AR, this space still doesn’t seem anywhere close to the sort of cyberpunk-esque human computer that is the eventual vision of AR, the only way it will gain mass adoption. Not only did Apple not deliver an AR headset (it’s a VR headset with video passthrough that you can’t wear without messing up your hair), even if they delivered AR glasses or whatever…that is still arguably not a good enough experience. Wearing glasses isn’t great when you don’t normally wear them. That’s much more of a commitment than putting a phone on your pocket or a watch on your wrist. Step one is convincing you to do that. But that isn’t even really the issue here because not only did Apple not deliver something like a pair of glasses, what they delivered is so far away from that where the very idea of a Vision Pro shrinking down into a pair of Ray Bans seems physically impossible. Apple gave us one of the heaviest headsets out there despite having an external battery to keep the weight down. When the iPhone came out you could see the device becoming extremely powerful and performant within 5 years. That path was obvious. If you look at an iPhone 5, that is a phone that really isn’t that far off from modern, mature products. It had LTE, and there isn’t really a technical reason why you couldn’t use it just like any other modern phone besides the lack of updates. The product category essentially achieved its ultimate vision within a short period of time. But when you look at the AR market, all the major VR/AR products were coming out around 5 years ago (or longer) and we’ve barely got a better experience. The difference between the Quest 3 and the original Quest (2019) is basically just some pass through cameras and a speed bump. Incremental changes like we got with the iPhone. We’re still just playing beat saber and superhot. The Valve Index is a similar age and still represents one of the better HMDs that you can buy. Apple’s device has worse FOV even though it’s $3500 and 5 years newer. There is not going to be this cool AR future because the products are already in their final form. They are screens attached to your head. That’s all they’ll ever be. We have seen this because they’ve only made incremental changes in their first 5 years like an iPhone or Apple Watch, no fundamental form factor changes. The Vision Pro 5 is going to be the same device as the original, without the external battery, and with a better display. It’s going to still mess up your hair and make you wear dumb looking shit on your head. Even the educational and enterprise features that the author imagines, while cool, don’t seem to be going anywhere. Microsoft gave up on those despite having very capable first-mover technology and a web page full of enterprise client success stories. I personally guess that it’s just very hard to make useful AR experiences. They’re difficult to develop compared to making a web page, a CRUD app, training video, etc. Hell, they might not even be as cost effective as hands-on apprentice-style training. Between buying the hardware and developing a fully immersive 3D app…the applications for that level of effort are limited, IMO.

tatrajim 3y ago

I would encourage my fellow oldsters (you know who you are!) to strongly consider trying out the AVP. After several days of use, I'll be keeping mine. A few rambling thoughts. First, and foremost, I like the feeling of mental tiredness after using it for an hour or so, reminding me of how fatigued I felt years ago, living in a remote Peace Corps location and wrestling daily with a difficult new language. One can almost feel new mental connections being forged as utterly new visages appear floating in space and novel configurations of information present themselves. And, as a consequence, one can sense dreaded dementia receding a decade or so into the murky future. Second, the meditation app is truly awesome, and allows a length of quiet sitting I've never before been able to attain, and lower blood pressure. Third, the near-term prospect of virtual attendance at performing arts and sports events around the planet, without needing to leave home, is enticing. Fourth, in the mid-future, tele-medicine will surely take account of the possibilities of AVP, tied likely to various monitors the Apple watch will have, opening new vistas of quality care at a distance. And fifth, and best of all, the sheer pleasure of personal spatial videos is not to be denied. It was delightful to hear my own spouse gasp in amazement to see herself in 3D twirling gracefully during a recent outing. All in all, a winner for nearly every senior.

tiahura 3y ago
Why did contacts vs custom lenses matter?
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  I suspect you posted this on the wrong thread.
foogazi 3y ago
> It was delightful to hear my own spouse gasp in amazement to see herself in 3D twirling gracefully during a recent outing. Did you get two ?
- fragmede 3y ago
  iphone 15 pro takes spacial videos

vonwoodson 3y ago

Here's my complaints, while we're complaining: + Apple appears to have worked *VERY* hard to make sure that there is no VR capability in it's VR headset. Most obvious is that it cannot play SBS video, as far as I can tell, at all. Though I'm sure that content providers will make an AVP app that will play them, in short order, what a weird thing to have left out. WebXR VR video does not play either. You may be in the know, but for the sake of stating it clearly: I will not play adult content from any of the websites you'd expect it to. Beyond that there are absolutely zero immersive experiences to be had with those fantastic 4k-per-eye OLED displays... so high-rez windows on a blurry re-displayed image of my crappy office. + The controls suck. "suck" meaning "fails to meet expectations". Seriously, eye/tap-controls (combined with the buttons on the headset itself) are identical to the amount of control the Oculus Go controller had, with less precision. The eye-tracking rarely looks exactly where you want it to, and the taps often don't register or release correctly. This is absolutely infuriating when you're trying to do anything. Furthermore, it's a 3DOF control scheme on a machine that is supposed to be "spatial". Watching my wife try to operate the thing, she is waiving her hands and trying to grab things... NOPE! only look-and-tap controls for everything. Want to position that window on the wall? You've got to physically stand up in front of where you want it and 3DOF control it into place, then go sit back down at your desk. In fact... + The whole thing really feels like you're supposed to be sitting at a desk the whole time you're using it. Everything is a floating window, and is expected to stay that way. When you walk around, all your windows stay where you placed them in space, but in front of the "pass through" at all times. And, if you try to layer your windows on top or "too close" to each other, then you get a "gradient of passthrough" in all of your surrounding windows that are not in focus. So, you can't read the news on the built-in Safari and work on your 80-inch virtual laptop screen next to each other without one-or-the-other half-disappearing (unless you put them far enough apart that you'd have to swivel in your office chair to look from one to the other. Walk a few feet and all your windows are back where you left them. Still, you'd think that the multiple windows would be great for multitasking but... + Not a multi-tasking device. It's very difficult to switch between active windows. If you grab the bar to move the window (easiest way to focus a window, and most obvious) it'll move that window away from where you put it. Also, because your eyes move faster than your hand, you'll often look somewhere before you tap... often the little "close window" circle. Anyway, then you're back up and moving your windows back where you want them. So, I want my 300-inch TV on that wall over there... and my laptop screen on my desk... and my chess board floating off to the right... and my YouTube music playing... but, The virtual desktop hijacks almost all of my input and all of my Siri commands, the Apple TV stops playing if my music website is playing music and vice versa, but the chessboard's background music plays just fine without interruption somehow. + AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 2 or GFYS. The Max's don't fit right and don't seal well enough for noise canceling, and the AirPod Pro Gen 2 version 1 don't have the low latency Bluetooth. Great, that's $700 of equipment that "Just [kinda] works." + Ok, there's the weight, but what *REALLY* sucks, is that there's no overhead strap. The included over-the-head strap still attaches at the back of the device. Fully resting the entire weight of the AVP on your cheekbones and nose. I eagerly await a 3rd party solution to this problem, but, where are they going to attach it? I suppose a halo-strap is ideal, but it'll need to put something onto that sleek design. I'm about ready to glue a strap over the worthless and invisible EyeSight display so I can get this thing off my nose already. + Oh, yeah, and this morning I tried to snooze my alarm clock by looking at it and tapping my fingers together... so it's also breaking my mind. I'm not going to be returning my headset. I bought a first-gen product and I knew that things wouldn't be great. But, I remember getting that Virtual Boy/Google Cardboard/Oculus Go/Quest1&2 and being blown away by them each a bit more than the one before it. The AVP did not even remotely impress me.

powerapple 3y ago

All I need is a water proof Vision Pro I can wear in swimming pool. Swimming is very good exercise but very boring, and it is also a free environment for VR. Imaging having Vision Pro when swimming, that will be the best experience ever.