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Vision Pro Review: Apple's First Headset Lacks Polish and Purpose

39 points by PKop 3y ago

system2 3y ago
People will look at this article in 20 years and laugh at the NY Times for being ridiculously wrong.
- robg 3y ago
  What does the version in 2040 look like? We’re 17 years on from the first iPhone, and it’s still the same basic device. Incrementally better every year hasn’t meant any radical changes.
  - frozenport 3y ago
    It runs a desktop os and you can use your regular apps, along with a keyboard and mouse.
  - novok 3y ago
    That is like saying doom and cyberpunk 2077 are fundamentally the same thing.
    - elliotec 3y ago
      It’s not like saying that, but saying that doesn’t seem too absurd anyway.
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      as a game developer: they really are. the finer details are different, but the primary mode of interaction is pretty much the same. you bob and weave around rapidly while shooting at enemies who shoot back at you and a lot of the locations you fight your way through are pretty similar structurally to classic doom levels. they even have somewhat similar music styles. it's not bad for them to have the same fundamentals! it's important to recognize our roots and know the difference between something truly and fundamentally different vs something that is just extremely refined and iterated.
  - kingds 3y ago
    it’s insane to argue that the iPhone 15 isn’t radically different from the iPhone 1. since 2007 smartphones have become capable of replacing so many of the separate gadgets people used to have. cameras and mp3 players (and phones!!) are basically a thing of the past thanks to the iPhone. i’m bearish on Apple Vision but if Apple can improve it at the same rate as the iPhone it will be here to stay imo
    - robg 3y ago
      Smartphones can do more, but are they radically different? Same look and feel, modestly better battery life. From v1 the camera is the biggest addition to what Jobs said - iPod, phone, browser. If AVP has the same incremental improvements, it will still be a bulky media device at best and I’ll still want to take it off for phone calls, work, and even taking photographs. Still cool, but not spatial computing.
    - ryanbrunner 3y ago
      > cameras and mp3 players (and phones!!) are basically a thing of the past thanks to the iPhone This was all true with the first iPhone though. That's the point. I'm sure that the Vision pro will be refined, but what will be necessary to make this a mass market device seems more fundamental than just a lot of refinements. When the iPhone came out, I remember thinking it was too expensive and not for me, but I definitely wanted one and was jealous of the few people I knew who had one. I just don't have that feeling with the Vision Pro - to the point where I feel if I was given one for free I still couldn't see myself using it much. That's sort of rare for Apple devices - even if I think some things are ridiculously overpriced I would always be happy with a free one and make good use of it.
      - jc_dc 3y ago
        It’s because you probably had a phone before the iPhone. If you’re not already a vr user then it’s hard to imagine how this will fit in your life. For me, if I happen to get an opportunity to strap a vr device to my face be interested to play around, but not motivated enough to go out of my way for it. As a developer, I already spend a fortune on devices and simply can’t see any of our products benefiting from vr…this was true with oculus, and is still true with vision pro.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Same as the iPhone: thinner, 4x resolution, much bigger screen (means much larger FOV for the AVP). A budget SE version. I think it's going to become very normalized for consuming movies, TV, and console gaming (2D). Super popular on planes, trains, even car trips for kids.
    - robg 3y ago
      Agreed all around, just isn’t the future of spatial computing we’re being sold on. As an entertainment only device I’m sold if I were traveling more.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  Where are they wrong? This is a review of the device as it stands and not what its future looks like. They're charging $3500 for this device and not for the promise of future devices
- bdcravens 3y ago
  The criticisms of the original iPhone weren't inaccurate. Buying that iPhone didn't give you a free upgrade to subsequent models either.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  People also said the iPad would replace laptops and it hasn't except for the 0.1% that have complement adapted to its limitations. Doesn't mean the iPad is bad, but it's inherently much better at being a content consumption device. I think this is how we should view the vision pro. It's not "the new laptop", it's something entirely new that has its own pro and cons that are not necessarilya complete match with existing products.
  - bottlepalm 3y ago
    They never opened up iPad for general purpose computing. iPad and iPhones for that matter could easily power laptop and desktop devices if Apple wanted them to.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Well if you ask Apple they did. It's basically what the iPad Pro is. Apple certainly views the iPad as a general computing device. Apple doesn't give you full access to your device, but they are also adding a lot of strings attached on Macs, with their notarisation, immutable OS partitions etc. Sure, you can still turn it off on Mac but it's basically an all-or-nothing, so you have to turn of all protections just to change one little thing. And you lose functionality, like the ability to run iOS apps: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/if-you-disable-sip-all-you-ios-apps-will-stop-working-on-your-m1.2269661/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/if-you-disable-sip-all-... Unfortunately the vendor deciding what you can and cannot do on your computing device is basically the "new model" which they managed to sneak onto us because there was very little opposition to it when iOS was introduced. It also enabled the app store rent seeking of course which was the main point.
      - bottlepalm 3y ago
        Can I install VS Code, Apache, PHP, SQL, use a terminal, VMs, etc.. on an iPad Pro? No? It’s not general purpose computer. Vendors deciding what we run never took off for general purpose computing. Apple getting away with worse business practices than Microsoft in the 90s is ironic.
robg 3y ago
As a media consumption device it seems really cool, but I don’t see how the 10th or 20th generation version is relevant for daily life or work. Magic Leap spent over $4 Billion on the physics of high definition light onto the retina. There just doesn’t seem to be any way around the reality of the limitations in the AR approach. In 20 years it will still be a bulky headset with battery life limitations preventing the all-purpose computing device. Still seems really interesting for media consumption and even short duration, high value healthcare applications.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  I agree. AR is dead in the water until we invent magic displays that may be decades away. VR has some nice gaming and fitness applications and I think like handheld gaming as a niche, VR gaming will never take over completely but will always be its own little corner of gaming.
  - robg 3y ago
    Healthcare applications are also really interesting to me because those tend to be high value for 30-60 minutes. The Department of Veteran Affairs, for instance, is the largest health system in the U.S. and has a nationwide network of clinicians already using AR/VR applications. https://www.innovation.va.gov/hil/views/immersive/immersive.html https://www.innovation.va.gov/hil/views/immersive/immersive....
  - bottlepalm 3y ago
    There is an entire generation of kids growing up with VR now, much like the NES a long time ago. Many of them spend more of their free time in VR than real life.
    - ryanbrunner 3y ago
      My kid has a VR headset, along with a few of his friends. He certainly uses it but it's a huge exagerration to say that he spends more of his free time in VR than real life. Minecraft / Roblox / Fortnite you could make an argument for maybe (depending on age).
robg 3y ago
https://archive.is/UZQ9G https://archive.is/UZQ9G
LarsDu88 3y ago
Just take a look at this teardown video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVJPAYwY8Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVJPAYwY8Us There are like 50 captive screws and a gajillion ribbon cables in that thing There's vast room for improvement and slimming down, and I'm not just referring to the silicon and battery! Maybe an alternative using passthrough lightfield displays will come along eventually, but that's not going to happen for a while. Shrinking this technology is all it will take for similar devices to make workstation monitors and gaming consoles completely obsolete.
- dmix 3y ago
  Improvement for whom? It's obviously not designed to be taken apart. They are packing a ton of stuff in a very small space, which is why the layers of screws and seals are also packed in tight. And it's not designed to take a beating because it's really just something you use in your house, not an rugged outdoor phone case type thing. I'm sure if the lenses get simpler and the chips get smaller they'll be able to simplify construction, but they were probably under immense pressure to keep it as thin as possible.
  - LarsDu88 3y ago
    Its pretty obvious from all the ribbon cables, there's quite a bit of orgitecture in addition to architecture going on here. I imagine each cable represents a different team at Apple working on a different chunk of the device. The whole is greater than the sum its parts for sure, but it definitely could've been reduced to fewer PCBs. I'm sure Steve Jobs would've thrown V1 into a fish tank and yelled at a few managers until the thing was 200 grams lighter.
- johnfernow 3y ago
  > Shrinking this technology is all it will take for similar devices to make workstation monitors and gaming consoles completely obsolete. Do people want that? I love playing games in my Quest 2 for an hour or two, or the PSVR2 at my friend's house, but I dread the thought of spending 8+ hours a day in it while I work. No, not just because of the weight, but because I like the feeling of fresh air on my face and sunlight reaching my eyes. For that reason, despite being able to play non-VR games in cinematic mode on those headsets, I never do that. Sure, it's closer to my face, and it is larger, but if I'm putting a VR headset on, there better be a compelling reason to block out air and light to my eyes. And a bigger screen isn't a compelling enough reason for me. Technically I can also use my Quest to have dozens of virtual displays, but why? There's almost never a situation where I need more than two things visible at once. I can look back and forth between two things pretty quickly and easily (my code and the library's documentation; the PhotoShop/Illustrator mockup vs. how it actually currently looks in browser; etc.) but I can't easily look at 3 or more things at once, so I feel it'd be more of a distraction that a productivity booster. I mean I could buy a 3rd monitor if I really wanted to but I haven't found a reason to do so. I don't need to see Spotify or Slack 24/7, I can just alt-tab to them as needed. I love video games, I often enjoying coding, but I really think having a screen right up in my face for most of my waking hours is a bit much, even if they were more like regular glasses instead of goggles. When I'm outside or walk someplace I almost never look at my phone unless I need directions or am responding to plans, because I like a break from staring at screens. Even when I'm working, I try to stand up and look away from the screen when I have no reason to be looking at it, whether it's code compiling, waiting for something to upload to a server, or any other time when there's no point to be looking at my screen.
Apocryphon 3y ago
Derek Guy, menswear writer: "Aesthetically, this is basically how you have to dress to make things like the Vision Pro and Cybertruck look cool. These things mainly look bad in public bc there's no congruity between the business casual gear most ppl wear and these futuristic designs" https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1755425085580869834 https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1755425085580869834
- dmix 3y ago
  Vision isn't really designed for urban outdoor use, which is obvious from the more detailed videos of people trying it (ie, moving backgrounds turning off windows, the motion stuff walking etc). Influencers were just doing it for attention or randoms with friends as a joke. But everyone seems to be treating it like it's supposed to be Google Glass 2.0 because they saw some viral photos,
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    I'm just surprised we haven't seen more people rocking it while in a Cybertruck. Also, if these items really spontaneously mainstream cyberpunk fashion, pizza effect style, all of this extravagance and impracticality will have been worth it.
    - dmix 3y ago
      There will always be people who take a small subset of functionality of your product and push them to the limit to create new use cases. So there will definitely be the nerdy types trying to see how far they can push it outdoors and IRL. Even if it's off label use. I believe that video of the cybertruck + vision thing turned out to be a skit by a youtuber though.
novok 3y ago
This is the first vision pro review I've seen that has mentioned nausea. I know it is a possibility with any kind of VR headset, but in my usage of it I was surprised how good it was at avoiding nausea. Are there any other major outlet reviews that also mention nausea?
- wkat4242 3y ago
  It's good at it not only because frame rate but because it avoids the scenario where the user walks around in a virtual world without physically moving. That disconnect is the #1 reason. The vision pro has no thumbsticks to move inside a game, you always move in the real world. Of course that doesn't really work for most immersive games because movement is restricted to whatever physical space you have. One of the reasons gaming is not a priority for this headset I think.
- kj99 3y ago
  No because the review is a dishonest hit piece. I’m super sensitive to nausea in VR to the point that I’ve had to drop out of an interview process to work in the space in the past. Not one other reviewer has mentioned nausea, and I’ve been using AVP since Friday and not experienced it once. I was very concerned I’d have to return it and might never be able to use such a device. I don’t know what’s going on with this piece but them reviewer has gone out of his way to exaggerate or even manufacture negatives and fill the piece with them.
  - zone411 3y ago
    He probably watched one of Apple's immersive videos (I think it was "Highlining") where for some idiotic reason there is some panning.
    - kj99 3y ago
      Maybe - although I watched that one and was ok.
- jc_dc 3y ago
  The verge very briefly mentioned it in the “magic till not” video.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
karim79 3y ago
A single Thunderbolt (or HDMI) output. Then it could double as a Mac Mini on a desk. That would help justify about 1k of the total spend. I know it sounds a bit ridiculous, but I think it's less ridiculous than a 3,5k (minimum) face computer that, for most people, will not be getting nearly as much facetime (pun intended) as a normal desktop. One wired output, just one, for the love of God.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  Can I get one of those for my iPhone as well? It has more than enough power for general purpose computing.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    If you're not bound to iOS: yes. Samsung DeX is just that. I can plug it into the Lenovo dock at work and have a personal pc on the go. Id imagine this kind of thing is way too geeky for Apple to make though.
    - bottlepalm 3y ago
      Microsoft could have given the Windows phone some significant value with this kind of functionality. We’d be living in a different world.
    - jc_dc 3y ago
      Have you actually used it for general computing tasks? If so, how was it?
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Oh yes, a lot. Our work environment is incredibly restricted so I can't easily connect to my home stuff. I have everything behind VPN which is blocked on the company network, I have no admin rights to do anything etc. I also require yubikeys (openPGP mode) to log into pretty much everything at home and the toolchain for this also can't be installed on my work stuff. SSH is also blocked, etc. So, what I do when I have something I need to mess with at home, is plug in my personal phone into the work dock. It has a completely independent 5G connection so I can do whatever I want, without needing to circumvent company protections, and without even using the company network at all. In DeX I mostly use outlook, webbrowser and Termux (which is amazing) for SSH using OpenPGP (using OKCAgent and OpenKeyChain to talk to the Yubikey). The office apps are also nice and very dex-enabled (they have a UI much more like a desktop than like a tablet in DeX mode) but I rarely use them. Same with Chrome etc, it has a full tab bar etc. Unfortunately firefox is not quite there yet, it's pretty sucky in DeX. I use element for all my chats (using matrix bridges to whatsapp etc) and that works OK in DeX. It also lacks a good "desktop-style" interface unfortunately. But overall it's pretty ok, it's definitely workable. There's a few annoying quirks but they're all pretty easy to work around. One of the issues is that the screen on the phone is often activated for no reason (leading me to worry about burn-in), but force-killing the apps in phone mode and then opening in DeX mostly fixes that. I wish Samsung would go all the way and really streamline this, but right now they're in a phase where DeX is basically neglected. Every few years they have a big marketing boost and they polish it up again but now they're in neglect mode :) Nevertheless it works ok though. PS: One major usecase I've seen people use is also to use remote desktop in fullscreen which solves a lot of its quirks obviously but it's not quite as standalone as I'd like. TL;DR: Great feature for when you need it and have a suitable dock nearby (or hotel TV and bluetooth keyboard/mouse), not something I'd use as a daily driver at this point.
deleted 3y ago
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kj99 3y ago
What a hit piece. He’s absurdly negative right from the beginning. I guess we can see why Apple declined to provide them an early review unit. The device is not perfect, but this ‘review’ borders on absolute bullshit. Harping on about ‘vision bros’ and ‘scaring children’ and the ‘games aren’t fun’. They clearly have an agenda.
- kibwen 3y ago
  > I guess we can see why Apple declined to provide them an early review unit. If Apple is so vengeful as to only provide review units to people who will give them glowing reviews, then that immediately invalidates every review from anyone who received an advance unit from Apple, because all of those reviews must have been made under the duress of knowing that anything other than a glowing review will put them on Apple's shit list. In other words, by your own logic, the only reviews that can be trusted to have any degree of truth are those from people who didn't receive review units, such as the OP. > They clearly have an agenda. If it's so clear, perhaps you could enlighten us?
  - kj99 3y ago
    Do you hear yourself? There’s nothing ‘vengeful’ about not trusting a news outlet that has lost its objectivity. As for the rest of your comment - the logic simply doesn’t follow unless you believe axiomatically that the NYT is trustworthy and everyone else is not. It’s well documented that the NYT is agenda driven and pushes its own positions over objective reporting: When the New York Times lost its way https://econ.st/4bG2Kf8 https://econ.st/4bG2Kf8
kccqzy 3y ago
> Apple declined to provide an early review unit to The New York Times I really wonder if Apple's PR department really knows the major tech reporters at various publications inside out, knows their general attitude towards Apple, and then decides whether or not to provide them with a review unit. Brian X. Chen is a long time reporter and Apple could have predicted in advance that his review would be mostly negative. Perhaps that's why they didn't provide a review unit for him. Certainly Apple is shrewd enough to pull this off.
rashidae 3y ago
I’ve used Vision Pro, as an experimentation to the future. It’s going to get there. Be patient. But I do appreciate the criticism, that creates the market. Hopefully, talented people start building things other than AI and SaaS.
- jc_dc 3y ago
  We regrettably have one app under apples scrutiny…we won’t make that mistake again. Open web is the best place for us to invest our time.
- pzo 3y ago
  > Hopefully, talented people start building things other than AI and SaaS. Only if apple open up API and at least make it in parity with iOS/iPadOS (we can probably dream about MacOS). Hopefully they will show something this summer in WWDC.
rib3ye 3y ago
It’s really hard to swallow the “lack of purpose” argument. If you work with Gen Z people, you start to notice it: • They don’t want to be on cam • When they are on cam, they either show their forehead or they have a $500+ studio setup with background LEDs, props and other new ways to show status. • They go out of their way to be hyper-courteous with regards to eating into the mic, flash bangs (bright white screens), and looking like shit on a video call. As the world goes more WFH, upcoming generations are going to find their own way to validate physical existence in the workplace. After using AVP for a weekend, I feel confident Apple gets it.

39 points by PKop 3y ago

system2 3y ago

People will look at this article in 20 years and laugh at the NY Times for being ridiculously wrong.

robg 3y ago
What does the version in 2040 look like? We’re 17 years on from the first iPhone, and it’s still the same basic device. Incrementally better every year hasn’t meant any radical changes.
- frozenport 3y ago
  It runs a desktop os and you can use your regular apps, along with a keyboard and mouse.
- novok 3y ago
  That is like saying doom and cyberpunk 2077 are fundamentally the same thing.
  - elliotec 3y ago
    It’s not like saying that, but saying that doesn’t seem too absurd anyway.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    as a game developer: they really are. the finer details are different, but the primary mode of interaction is pretty much the same. you bob and weave around rapidly while shooting at enemies who shoot back at you and a lot of the locations you fight your way through are pretty similar structurally to classic doom levels. they even have somewhat similar music styles. it's not bad for them to have the same fundamentals! it's important to recognize our roots and know the difference between something truly and fundamentally different vs something that is just extremely refined and iterated.
- kingds 3y ago
  it’s insane to argue that the iPhone 15 isn’t radically different from the iPhone 1. since 2007 smartphones have become capable of replacing so many of the separate gadgets people used to have. cameras and mp3 players (and phones!!) are basically a thing of the past thanks to the iPhone. i’m bearish on Apple Vision but if Apple can improve it at the same rate as the iPhone it will be here to stay imo
  - robg 3y ago
    Smartphones can do more, but are they radically different? Same look and feel, modestly better battery life. From v1 the camera is the biggest addition to what Jobs said - iPod, phone, browser. If AVP has the same incremental improvements, it will still be a bulky media device at best and I’ll still want to take it off for phone calls, work, and even taking photographs. Still cool, but not spatial computing.
  - ryanbrunner 3y ago
    > cameras and mp3 players (and phones!!) are basically a thing of the past thanks to the iPhone This was all true with the first iPhone though. That's the point. I'm sure that the Vision pro will be refined, but what will be necessary to make this a mass market device seems more fundamental than just a lot of refinements. When the iPhone came out, I remember thinking it was too expensive and not for me, but I definitely wanted one and was jealous of the few people I knew who had one. I just don't have that feeling with the Vision Pro - to the point where I feel if I was given one for free I still couldn't see myself using it much. That's sort of rare for Apple devices - even if I think some things are ridiculously overpriced I would always be happy with a free one and make good use of it.
    - jc_dc 3y ago
      It’s because you probably had a phone before the iPhone. If you’re not already a vr user then it’s hard to imagine how this will fit in your life. For me, if I happen to get an opportunity to strap a vr device to my face be interested to play around, but not motivated enough to go out of my way for it. As a developer, I already spend a fortune on devices and simply can’t see any of our products benefiting from vr…this was true with oculus, and is still true with vision pro.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Same as the iPhone: thinner, 4x resolution, much bigger screen (means much larger FOV for the AVP). A budget SE version. I think it's going to become very normalized for consuming movies, TV, and console gaming (2D). Super popular on planes, trains, even car trips for kids.
  - robg 3y ago
    Agreed all around, just isn’t the future of spatial computing we’re being sold on. As an entertainment only device I’m sold if I were traveling more.
aniforprez 3y ago
Where are they wrong? This is a review of the device as it stands and not what its future looks like. They're charging $3500 for this device and not for the promise of future devices
bdcravens 3y ago
The criticisms of the original iPhone weren't inaccurate. Buying that iPhone didn't give you a free upgrade to subsequent models either.
wkat4242 3y ago
People also said the iPad would replace laptops and it hasn't except for the 0.1% that have complement adapted to its limitations. Doesn't mean the iPad is bad, but it's inherently much better at being a content consumption device. I think this is how we should view the vision pro. It's not "the new laptop", it's something entirely new that has its own pro and cons that are not necessarilya complete match with existing products.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  They never opened up iPad for general purpose computing. iPad and iPhones for that matter could easily power laptop and desktop devices if Apple wanted them to.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Well if you ask Apple they did. It's basically what the iPad Pro is. Apple certainly views the iPad as a general computing device. Apple doesn't give you full access to your device, but they are also adding a lot of strings attached on Macs, with their notarisation, immutable OS partitions etc. Sure, you can still turn it off on Mac but it's basically an all-or-nothing, so you have to turn of all protections just to change one little thing. And you lose functionality, like the ability to run iOS apps: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/if-you-disable-sip-all-you-ios-apps-will-stop-working-on-your-m1.2269661/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/if-you-disable-sip-all-... Unfortunately the vendor deciding what you can and cannot do on your computing device is basically the "new model" which they managed to sneak onto us because there was very little opposition to it when iOS was introduced. It also enabled the app store rent seeking of course which was the main point.
    - bottlepalm 3y ago
      Can I install VS Code, Apache, PHP, SQL, use a terminal, VMs, etc.. on an iPad Pro? No? It’s not general purpose computer. Vendors deciding what we run never took off for general purpose computing. Apple getting away with worse business practices than Microsoft in the 90s is ironic.

robg 3y ago

As a media consumption device it seems really cool, but I don’t see how the 10th or 20th generation version is relevant for daily life or work. Magic Leap spent over $4 Billion on the physics of high definition light onto the retina. There just doesn’t seem to be any way around the reality of the limitations in the AR approach. In 20 years it will still be a bulky headset with battery life limitations preventing the all-purpose computing device. Still seems really interesting for media consumption and even short duration, high value healthcare applications.

dougmwne 3y ago
I agree. AR is dead in the water until we invent magic displays that may be decades away. VR has some nice gaming and fitness applications and I think like handheld gaming as a niche, VR gaming will never take over completely but will always be its own little corner of gaming.
- robg 3y ago
  Healthcare applications are also really interesting to me because those tend to be high value for 30-60 minutes. The Department of Veteran Affairs, for instance, is the largest health system in the U.S. and has a nationwide network of clinicians already using AR/VR applications. https://www.innovation.va.gov/hil/views/immersive/immersive.html https://www.innovation.va.gov/hil/views/immersive/immersive....
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  There is an entire generation of kids growing up with VR now, much like the NES a long time ago. Many of them spend more of their free time in VR than real life.
  - ryanbrunner 3y ago
    My kid has a VR headset, along with a few of his friends. He certainly uses it but it's a huge exagerration to say that he spends more of his free time in VR than real life. Minecraft / Roblox / Fortnite you could make an argument for maybe (depending on age).

robg 3y ago

https://archive.is/UZQ9G https://archive.is/UZQ9G

LarsDu88 3y ago

Just take a look at this teardown video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVJPAYwY8Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVJPAYwY8Us There are like 50 captive screws and a gajillion ribbon cables in that thing There's vast room for improvement and slimming down, and I'm not just referring to the silicon and battery! Maybe an alternative using passthrough lightfield displays will come along eventually, but that's not going to happen for a while. Shrinking this technology is all it will take for similar devices to make workstation monitors and gaming consoles completely obsolete.

dmix 3y ago
Improvement for whom? It's obviously not designed to be taken apart. They are packing a ton of stuff in a very small space, which is why the layers of screws and seals are also packed in tight. And it's not designed to take a beating because it's really just something you use in your house, not an rugged outdoor phone case type thing. I'm sure if the lenses get simpler and the chips get smaller they'll be able to simplify construction, but they were probably under immense pressure to keep it as thin as possible.
- LarsDu88 3y ago
  Its pretty obvious from all the ribbon cables, there's quite a bit of orgitecture in addition to architecture going on here. I imagine each cable represents a different team at Apple working on a different chunk of the device. The whole is greater than the sum its parts for sure, but it definitely could've been reduced to fewer PCBs. I'm sure Steve Jobs would've thrown V1 into a fish tank and yelled at a few managers until the thing was 200 grams lighter.
johnfernow 3y ago
> Shrinking this technology is all it will take for similar devices to make workstation monitors and gaming consoles completely obsolete. Do people want that? I love playing games in my Quest 2 for an hour or two, or the PSVR2 at my friend's house, but I dread the thought of spending 8+ hours a day in it while I work. No, not just because of the weight, but because I like the feeling of fresh air on my face and sunlight reaching my eyes. For that reason, despite being able to play non-VR games in cinematic mode on those headsets, I never do that. Sure, it's closer to my face, and it is larger, but if I'm putting a VR headset on, there better be a compelling reason to block out air and light to my eyes. And a bigger screen isn't a compelling enough reason for me. Technically I can also use my Quest to have dozens of virtual displays, but why? There's almost never a situation where I need more than two things visible at once. I can look back and forth between two things pretty quickly and easily (my code and the library's documentation; the PhotoShop/Illustrator mockup vs. how it actually currently looks in browser; etc.) but I can't easily look at 3 or more things at once, so I feel it'd be more of a distraction that a productivity booster. I mean I could buy a 3rd monitor if I really wanted to but I haven't found a reason to do so. I don't need to see Spotify or Slack 24/7, I can just alt-tab to them as needed. I love video games, I often enjoying coding, but I really think having a screen right up in my face for most of my waking hours is a bit much, even if they were more like regular glasses instead of goggles. When I'm outside or walk someplace I almost never look at my phone unless I need directions or am responding to plans, because I like a break from staring at screens. Even when I'm working, I try to stand up and look away from the screen when I have no reason to be looking at it, whether it's code compiling, waiting for something to upload to a server, or any other time when there's no point to be looking at my screen.

Apocryphon 3y ago

Derek Guy, menswear writer: "Aesthetically, this is basically how you have to dress to make things like the Vision Pro and Cybertruck look cool. These things mainly look bad in public bc there's no congruity between the business casual gear most ppl wear and these futuristic designs" https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1755425085580869834 https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1755425085580869834

dmix 3y ago
Vision isn't really designed for urban outdoor use, which is obvious from the more detailed videos of people trying it (ie, moving backgrounds turning off windows, the motion stuff walking etc). Influencers were just doing it for attention or randoms with friends as a joke. But everyone seems to be treating it like it's supposed to be Google Glass 2.0 because they saw some viral photos,
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  I'm just surprised we haven't seen more people rocking it while in a Cybertruck. Also, if these items really spontaneously mainstream cyberpunk fashion, pizza effect style, all of this extravagance and impracticality will have been worth it.
  - dmix 3y ago
    There will always be people who take a small subset of functionality of your product and push them to the limit to create new use cases. So there will definitely be the nerdy types trying to see how far they can push it outdoors and IRL. Even if it's off label use. I believe that video of the cybertruck + vision thing turned out to be a skit by a youtuber though.

novok 3y ago

This is the first vision pro review I've seen that has mentioned nausea. I know it is a possibility with any kind of VR headset, but in my usage of it I was surprised how good it was at avoiding nausea. Are there any other major outlet reviews that also mention nausea?

wkat4242 3y ago
It's good at it not only because frame rate but because it avoids the scenario where the user walks around in a virtual world without physically moving. That disconnect is the #1 reason. The vision pro has no thumbsticks to move inside a game, you always move in the real world. Of course that doesn't really work for most immersive games because movement is restricted to whatever physical space you have. One of the reasons gaming is not a priority for this headset I think.
kj99 3y ago
No because the review is a dishonest hit piece. I’m super sensitive to nausea in VR to the point that I’ve had to drop out of an interview process to work in the space in the past. Not one other reviewer has mentioned nausea, and I’ve been using AVP since Friday and not experienced it once. I was very concerned I’d have to return it and might never be able to use such a device. I don’t know what’s going on with this piece but them reviewer has gone out of his way to exaggerate or even manufacture negatives and fill the piece with them.
- zone411 3y ago
  He probably watched one of Apple's immersive videos (I think it was "Highlining") where for some idiotic reason there is some panning.
  - kj99 3y ago
    Maybe - although I watched that one and was ok.
jc_dc 3y ago
The verge very briefly mentioned it in the “magic till not” video.

aaron695 3y ago

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karim79 3y ago

A single Thunderbolt (or HDMI) output. Then it could double as a Mac Mini on a desk. That would help justify about 1k of the total spend. I know it sounds a bit ridiculous, but I think it's less ridiculous than a 3,5k (minimum) face computer that, for most people, will not be getting nearly as much facetime (pun intended) as a normal desktop. One wired output, just one, for the love of God.

bottlepalm 3y ago
Can I get one of those for my iPhone as well? It has more than enough power for general purpose computing.
- deleted 3y ago
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- wkat4242 3y ago
  If you're not bound to iOS: yes. Samsung DeX is just that. I can plug it into the Lenovo dock at work and have a personal pc on the go. Id imagine this kind of thing is way too geeky for Apple to make though.
  - bottlepalm 3y ago
    Microsoft could have given the Windows phone some significant value with this kind of functionality. We’d be living in a different world.
  - jc_dc 3y ago
    Have you actually used it for general computing tasks? If so, how was it?
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Oh yes, a lot. Our work environment is incredibly restricted so I can't easily connect to my home stuff. I have everything behind VPN which is blocked on the company network, I have no admin rights to do anything etc. I also require yubikeys (openPGP mode) to log into pretty much everything at home and the toolchain for this also can't be installed on my work stuff. SSH is also blocked, etc. So, what I do when I have something I need to mess with at home, is plug in my personal phone into the work dock. It has a completely independent 5G connection so I can do whatever I want, without needing to circumvent company protections, and without even using the company network at all. In DeX I mostly use outlook, webbrowser and Termux (which is amazing) for SSH using OpenPGP (using OKCAgent and OpenKeyChain to talk to the Yubikey). The office apps are also nice and very dex-enabled (they have a UI much more like a desktop than like a tablet in DeX mode) but I rarely use them. Same with Chrome etc, it has a full tab bar etc. Unfortunately firefox is not quite there yet, it's pretty sucky in DeX. I use element for all my chats (using matrix bridges to whatsapp etc) and that works OK in DeX. It also lacks a good "desktop-style" interface unfortunately. But overall it's pretty ok, it's definitely workable. There's a few annoying quirks but they're all pretty easy to work around. One of the issues is that the screen on the phone is often activated for no reason (leading me to worry about burn-in), but force-killing the apps in phone mode and then opening in DeX mostly fixes that. I wish Samsung would go all the way and really streamline this, but right now they're in a phase where DeX is basically neglected. Every few years they have a big marketing boost and they polish it up again but now they're in neglect mode :) Nevertheless it works ok though. PS: One major usecase I've seen people use is also to use remote desktop in fullscreen which solves a lot of its quirks obviously but it's not quite as standalone as I'd like. TL;DR: Great feature for when you need it and have a suitable dock nearby (or hotel TV and bluetooth keyboard/mouse), not something I'd use as a daily driver at this point.

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kj99 3y ago

What a hit piece. He’s absurdly negative right from the beginning. I guess we can see why Apple declined to provide them an early review unit. The device is not perfect, but this ‘review’ borders on absolute bullshit. Harping on about ‘vision bros’ and ‘scaring children’ and the ‘games aren’t fun’. They clearly have an agenda.

kibwen 3y ago
> I guess we can see why Apple declined to provide them an early review unit. If Apple is so vengeful as to only provide review units to people who will give them glowing reviews, then that immediately invalidates every review from anyone who received an advance unit from Apple, because all of those reviews must have been made under the duress of knowing that anything other than a glowing review will put them on Apple's shit list. In other words, by your own logic, the only reviews that can be trusted to have any degree of truth are those from people who didn't receive review units, such as the OP. > They clearly have an agenda. If it's so clear, perhaps you could enlighten us?
- kj99 3y ago
  Do you hear yourself? There’s nothing ‘vengeful’ about not trusting a news outlet that has lost its objectivity. As for the rest of your comment - the logic simply doesn’t follow unless you believe axiomatically that the NYT is trustworthy and everyone else is not. It’s well documented that the NYT is agenda driven and pushes its own positions over objective reporting: When the New York Times lost its way https://econ.st/4bG2Kf8 https://econ.st/4bG2Kf8

kccqzy 3y ago

> Apple declined to provide an early review unit to The New York Times I really wonder if Apple's PR department really knows the major tech reporters at various publications inside out, knows their general attitude towards Apple, and then decides whether or not to provide them with a review unit. Brian X. Chen is a long time reporter and Apple could have predicted in advance that his review would be mostly negative. Perhaps that's why they didn't provide a review unit for him. Certainly Apple is shrewd enough to pull this off.

rashidae 3y ago

I’ve used Vision Pro, as an experimentation to the future. It’s going to get there. Be patient. But I do appreciate the criticism, that creates the market. Hopefully, talented people start building things other than AI and SaaS.

jc_dc 3y ago
We regrettably have one app under apples scrutiny…we won’t make that mistake again. Open web is the best place for us to invest our time.
pzo 3y ago
> Hopefully, talented people start building things other than AI and SaaS. Only if apple open up API and at least make it in parity with iOS/iPadOS (we can probably dream about MacOS). Hopefully they will show something this summer in WWDC.

rib3ye 3y ago

It’s really hard to swallow the “lack of purpose” argument. If you work with Gen Z people, you start to notice it: • They don’t want to be on cam • When they are on cam, they either show their forehead or they have a $500+ studio setup with background LEDs, props and other new ways to show status. • They go out of their way to be hyper-courteous with regards to eating into the mic, flash bangs (bright white screens), and looking like shit on a video call. As the world goes more WFH, upcoming generations are going to find their own way to validate physical existence in the workplace. After using AVP for a weekend, I feel confident Apple gets it.