5 ms·

I felt like I was committing heresy when I told my friends that the vision pro was unlikely to succeed or at least succeed culturally. I'm sure it will pick up

by cglan 2y ago

I felt like I was committing heresy when I told my friends that the vision pro was unlikely to succeed or at least succeed culturally. I'm sure it will pick up some niches just like the meta headset. The reality is, this is a covid product and covid is over. Regardless of price (outside being extremely cheap) I don't see people even dropping $1500 on this thing. I don't have a single person in my life that has used a VR headset for anything more than beatsaber and the occasional movie. They're sweaty, heavy, and they're just isolating to wear for long periods of time, along with various other edge cases like glasses and eye strain. There's already a pretty big movement to limit screen time and cut down on technology, and focus on fitness. I think that's why the apple watch is doing so well. I could see something like the ray ban meta glasses taking off, especially with an enhanced siri and some AR. But the vision pro and VR in general feels like a form of nerd sniping that the general public literally doesn't care about other than randomly using it at parties.

ceejayoz 2y ago
The Vision Pro was essentially a devkit to send the message that Apple wants devs to think about VR apps.
- dwallin 2y ago
  One major problem with the Vision Pro as a devkit is it's extremely locked down. The only significant AR experiences you can create are those already anticipated by Apple and compatible with their privacy expectations. IMO this was a huge mistake. This is a completely new form factor, not an established market. You need people doing significant experimentation, and to be able to create compelling new experiences that your in-house staff haven't even dreamed of. It's fine if you have a user-friendly default, but there should be some way to opt into a professional mode that opens up more possibilities for novel experiences.
  - j45 2y ago
    Google Glass was pretty locked down too iirc. Still was a neat device.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Google Glasses were significantly lighter and cheaper since they had the same form factor as regular glasses people wear, not some heavy Robocop headset tethered to a brick in your pocket. How Apple imagined that clunky form factor would be appealing to general consumers outside the most avid afluent fans is beyond me. If they wanted it to be a devkit they should have just market it and sold it at a masive discount directly to app developers unlocked with no strictions so they can experiment in finding that "killer app". Unfortunately Apple's way too corporate, proud and stuck up to think liberally like that. Google didn't hide the fat that Glasses was mostly a devkit for tinkerers and pretend it was a ready-to-market product, and it served that purpose for that niche.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      Google Glass was pretty locked down too iirc And it's gone, too. Gee, I wonder if there's a pattern here.
      - verdverm 2y ago
        Hololens 2 was the best experience of all of them, also shut down The issue is a hardware miniaturization one, I used think whoever creates the first real smart glasses is in an advantageous position, but the likes of Apple and Google can likely roll their own quickly once that time draws near. They already own the software stacks, which is really what you want to own. AR glasses will have dozens of comparable vendors when they break the wall down
    - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
      Regardless of locked-down-ness, I think Google Glass—and if it had seen continued development, real spectacles with some sort of miniaturised electronics and a HUD on the lenses—would've been so much more useful than any giant, heavy VR headset.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    It's locked down as it's the only device with the features it provides. So if you want to use those features, your designing for the one device.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      OpenXR says hi.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        Um, okay. I have never heard of this, so for others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenXR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenXR After that, again, if only a single device has features that no other device has, what's this "open" going to do for you?
        ffsm8 2y ago
        Uh, all established VR headsets support it? I mean the support is technically in the browser, not the VR headset - but still...
        dylan604 2y ago
        If they don't have the sensors.... I'm not talking about VisionPro supporting OpenXR. I'm talking about OpenXR having the support for the sensors. If it has it, that's impressive since no other headset has the same sensors to the level of the VisionPro
        murkantilism 2y ago
        OpenXR supports cameras, IR, LiDAR, and LED sensors - everything that the VisionPro has. Whether or not it supports the specific sensors Apple chose is entirely up to Apple.
        dylan604 2y ago
  - throwAGIway 2y ago
    They just announced full WebXR support
- rchaud 2y ago
  In that case they should send some free dev kits to developers, because most are not going to be interested in spending $3500 on top of their paid Apple developer license for the privilege of feathering Apple's gilded moat. AVP is not a general purpose device in the way the iPhone was. The viability of apps for this market is nowhere near proven.
- bradgranath 2y ago
  A Dev kit for what? What has anyone dev'd with it? I haven't seen or heard of a single demo.
- Fricken 2y ago
  Apple had 10 years to conjure up a killer app for the vision pro. They've got nothing.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
> I felt like I was committing heresy when I told my friends that the vision pro was unlikely to succeed or at least succeed culturally. I'm an Apple-hater but I'd like VR to become a thing. I work remotely and could imagine being sent a keyboard, mouse, and company VR headset that transports me to the office.
- verdverm 2y ago
  Immersed + Visor will get pretty close to that Their focus has been on VR for screen replacement and their app has shared rooms
georgespencer 2y ago
It's unclear whether you are misusing Vision Pro to mean the entire category of AR/VR headsets, or the specific model Apple launched this year. > unlikely to succeed or at least succeed culturally I think by success you mean "be a $10bn business" (a quarter as big as Apple's wearables business today), and for Apple, success might mean something very different. > The reality is, this is a covid product and covid is over. What do you mean by this? Certainly you can't mean that Apple mistakenly designed this product for the COVID era, given its history? Apple acquired Peter Meier's AR company in 2015, and recruited Mike Rockwell from Dolby in the same year to lead the group working on the headset.[^1] In 2017 they recruited the head of AR from NASA's Jet Propulsion lab.[^2] Apple in fact appears to have delayed the project in 2019[^3] because Jony Ive pushed Rockwell and his team to build a standalone device, not one with compute offloaded to an external processing unit. This product had been under active development for nearly three years by the time COVID hit (Fletcher Rothkopf appears to have started on the project in January 2016 according to his LinkedIn), so what functionality do you think is linked to COVID? Literally everything shipping in VisionOS is standard ecosystem stuff for Apple. > Regardless of price (outside being extremely cheap) I don't see people even dropping $1500 on this thing. You mean this specific device? Or the category in general? > I don't have a single person in my life that has used a VR headset for anything more than beatsaber and the occasional movie. Laaaadiesssss annddddd gentleeeeeemennnnnnnn In the red corner, doing what they do best… Apple Inc.! Hits selected from their homepage's top-level navigation… Macintosh ($bn business)! iPad ($bn business)! iPhone ($bn business)! Watch ($bn business)! AirPods ($bn business)! TV & Home ($bn business)! And in the blue corner, enabling a hasty generalization about the future of a product category based on usage of present day technology … "everyone cglan knows!" Track record of predicting $bn businesses through word or deed… [TBD]! > They're sweaty, heavy, and they're just isolating to wear for long periods of time, along with various other edge cases like glasses and eye strain. Literally none of this is grounds to dismiss an entire product category (especially given that Apple has largely solved the "glasses" edge case). > There's already a pretty big movement to limit screen time and cut down on technology I must not have noticed that trend in the quarterly results of any consumer electronics company I track. (I did, however, notice the screenless Humane Pin thing self-destruct.) Do you believe that this trend you have noticed is a) likely to constrain the sales of a $3,500 "Pro" device, b) likely to overall dampen enthusiasm for the category over the course of the next decade, and finally c) any more worthwhile to talk about than the inane claptrap about your friends and family being oracles of a new market? > I could see something like the ray ban meta glasses taking off, especially with an enhanced siri and some AR. Wait so you are dismissing the entire category based on your friends not using AR/VR? Christ. Good thing Apple, Meta, Sony, and the other manufacturers shipping millions of a nascent product category can just copy your winning combination of "something like the ray ban meta glasses" with "an enhanced siri" (?) and "some AR" (???). Coming right up! > But the vision pro and VR in general feels like a form of nerd sniping that the general public literally doesn't care about other than randomly using it at parties. I have used a lot of AR and VR devices, including Vision Pro. I do not use any devices regularly (more than once per month), but it is completely self-evident that such devices have the potential to be UX breakthroughs of similar ilk to modern smartphone / tablets. I would be betting on Apple, Meta, and all the other hardware manufacturers here – not your friends. [^1]: https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/dolby-vp-mike-rockwell-jumps-ship-for-apple https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/dolby-vp-mike-rockwe... [^2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-24/apple-hires-nasa-ar-guru-to-help-run-its-own-efforts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-24/apple-hir... [^3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230509141145/https://www.theinformation.com/articles/behind-the-apple-design-decisions-that-bogged-down-its-mixed-reality-headset https://web.archive.org/web/20230509141145/https://www.thein...
rchaud 2y ago
Agree on the price, they won't be able to hit $1500. That's less than what foldable phones cost, and the BOM on AVP must be a lot higher.
pjerem 2y ago
Idk. I own a Meta Quest 3 and this thing is one of the most impressive tech I saw in the last decade. AR on this $500 headset is incredible. While I’m amazed by the hardware, the thing is totally limited by the software. I mean, the OS is technically pretty good, you are really tricked into thinking the windows are floating in your room and interacting with it is really natural. But you just can’t do shit with it because Meta decided it. I’m really waiting for something more with the already existing technology, because before I tried it, I didn’t knew it was that advanced and I can see myself be pretty productive with it.

by cglan 2y ago

ceejayoz 2y ago

The Vision Pro was essentially a devkit to send the message that Apple wants devs to think about VR apps.

dwallin 2y ago
One major problem with the Vision Pro as a devkit is it's extremely locked down. The only significant AR experiences you can create are those already anticipated by Apple and compatible with their privacy expectations. IMO this was a huge mistake. This is a completely new form factor, not an established market. You need people doing significant experimentation, and to be able to create compelling new experiences that your in-house staff haven't even dreamed of. It's fine if you have a user-friendly default, but there should be some way to opt into a professional mode that opens up more possibilities for novel experiences.
- j45 2y ago
  Google Glass was pretty locked down too iirc. Still was a neat device.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Google Glasses were significantly lighter and cheaper since they had the same form factor as regular glasses people wear, not some heavy Robocop headset tethered to a brick in your pocket. How Apple imagined that clunky form factor would be appealing to general consumers outside the most avid afluent fans is beyond me. If they wanted it to be a devkit they should have just market it and sold it at a masive discount directly to app developers unlocked with no strictions so they can experiment in finding that "killer app". Unfortunately Apple's way too corporate, proud and stuck up to think liberally like that. Google didn't hide the fat that Glasses was mostly a devkit for tinkerers and pretend it was a ready-to-market product, and it served that purpose for that niche.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    Google Glass was pretty locked down too iirc And it's gone, too. Gee, I wonder if there's a pattern here.
    - verdverm 2y ago
      Hololens 2 was the best experience of all of them, also shut down The issue is a hardware miniaturization one, I used think whoever creates the first real smart glasses is in an advantageous position, but the likes of Apple and Google can likely roll their own quickly once that time draws near. They already own the software stacks, which is really what you want to own. AR glasses will have dozens of comparable vendors when they break the wall down
  - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
    Regardless of locked-down-ness, I think Google Glass—and if it had seen continued development, real spectacles with some sort of miniaturised electronics and a HUD on the lenses—would've been so much more useful than any giant, heavy VR headset.
- dylan604 2y ago
  It's locked down as it's the only device with the features it provides. So if you want to use those features, your designing for the one device.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    OpenXR says hi.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      Um, okay. I have never heard of this, so for others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenXR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenXR After that, again, if only a single device has features that no other device has, what's this "open" going to do for you?
      - ffsm8 2y ago
        Uh, all established VR headsets support it? I mean the support is technically in the browser, not the VR headset - but still...
        dylan604 2y ago
        If they don't have the sensors.... I'm not talking about VisionPro supporting OpenXR. I'm talking about OpenXR having the support for the sensors. If it has it, that's impressive since no other headset has the same sensors to the level of the VisionPro
        murkantilism 2y ago
        OpenXR supports cameras, IR, LiDAR, and LED sensors - everything that the VisionPro has. Whether or not it supports the specific sensors Apple chose is entirely up to Apple.
        dylan604 2y ago
- throwAGIway 2y ago
  They just announced full WebXR support
rchaud 2y ago
In that case they should send some free dev kits to developers, because most are not going to be interested in spending $3500 on top of their paid Apple developer license for the privilege of feathering Apple's gilded moat. AVP is not a general purpose device in the way the iPhone was. The viability of apps for this market is nowhere near proven.
bradgranath 2y ago
A Dev kit for what? What has anyone dev'd with it? I haven't seen or heard of a single demo.
Fricken 2y ago
Apple had 10 years to conjure up a killer app for the vision pro. They've got nothing.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

> I felt like I was committing heresy when I told my friends that the vision pro was unlikely to succeed or at least succeed culturally. I'm an Apple-hater but I'd like VR to become a thing. I work remotely and could imagine being sent a keyboard, mouse, and company VR headset that transports me to the office.

verdverm 2y ago
Immersed + Visor will get pretty close to that Their focus has been on VR for screen replacement and their app has shared rooms

georgespencer 2y ago

It's unclear whether you are misusing Vision Pro to mean the entire category of AR/VR headsets, or the specific model Apple launched this year. > unlikely to succeed or at least succeed culturally I think by success you mean "be a $10bn business" (a quarter as big as Apple's wearables business today), and for Apple, success might mean something very different. > The reality is, this is a covid product and covid is over. What do you mean by this? Certainly you can't mean that Apple mistakenly designed this product for the COVID era, given its history? Apple acquired Peter Meier's AR company in 2015, and recruited Mike Rockwell from Dolby in the same year to lead the group working on the headset.[^1] In 2017 they recruited the head of AR from NASA's Jet Propulsion lab.[^2] Apple in fact appears to have delayed the project in 2019[^3] because Jony Ive pushed Rockwell and his team to build a standalone device, not one with compute offloaded to an external processing unit. This product had been under active development for nearly three years by the time COVID hit (Fletcher Rothkopf appears to have started on the project in January 2016 according to his LinkedIn), so what functionality do you think is linked to COVID? Literally everything shipping in VisionOS is standard ecosystem stuff for Apple. > Regardless of price (outside being extremely cheap) I don't see people even dropping $1500 on this thing. You mean this specific device? Or the category in general? > I don't have a single person in my life that has used a VR headset for anything more than beatsaber and the occasional movie. Laaaadiesssss annddddd gentleeeeeemennnnnnnn In the red corner, doing what they do best… Apple Inc.! Hits selected from their homepage's top-level navigation… Macintosh ($bn business)! iPad ($bn business)! iPhone ($bn business)! Watch ($bn business)! AirPods ($bn business)! TV & Home ($bn business)! And in the blue corner, enabling a hasty generalization about the future of a product category based on usage of present day technology … "everyone cglan knows!" Track record of predicting $bn businesses through word or deed… [TBD]! > They're sweaty, heavy, and they're just isolating to wear for long periods of time, along with various other edge cases like glasses and eye strain. Literally none of this is grounds to dismiss an entire product category (especially given that Apple has largely solved the "glasses" edge case). > There's already a pretty big movement to limit screen time and cut down on technology I must not have noticed that trend in the quarterly results of any consumer electronics company I track. (I did, however, notice the screenless Humane Pin thing self-destruct.) Do you believe that this trend you have noticed is a) likely to constrain the sales of a $3,500 "Pro" device, b) likely to overall dampen enthusiasm for the category over the course of the next decade, and finally c) any more worthwhile to talk about than the inane claptrap about your friends and family being oracles of a new market? > I could see something like the ray ban meta glasses taking off, especially with an enhanced siri and some AR. Wait so you are dismissing the entire category based on your friends not using AR/VR? Christ. Good thing Apple, Meta, Sony, and the other manufacturers shipping millions of a nascent product category can just copy your winning combination of "something like the ray ban meta glasses" with "an enhanced siri" (?) and "some AR" (???). Coming right up! > But the vision pro and VR in general feels like a form of nerd sniping that the general public literally doesn't care about other than randomly using it at parties. I have used a lot of AR and VR devices, including Vision Pro. I do not use any devices regularly (more than once per month), but it is completely self-evident that such devices have the potential to be UX breakthroughs of similar ilk to modern smartphone / tablets. I would be betting on Apple, Meta, and all the other hardware manufacturers here – not your friends. [^1]: https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/dolby-vp-mike-rockwell-jumps-ship-for-apple https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/dolby-vp-mike-rockwe... [^2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-24/apple-hires-nasa-ar-guru-to-help-run-its-own-efforts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-24/apple-hir... [^3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230509141145/https://www.theinformation.com/articles/behind-the-apple-design-decisions-that-bogged-down-its-mixed-reality-headset https://web.archive.org/web/20230509141145/https://www.thein...

rchaud 2y ago

Agree on the price, they won't be able to hit $1500. That's less than what foldable phones cost, and the BOM on AVP must be a lot higher.

pjerem 2y ago

Idk. I own a Meta Quest 3 and this thing is one of the most impressive tech I saw in the last decade. AR on this $500 headset is incredible. While I’m amazed by the hardware, the thing is totally limited by the software. I mean, the OS is technically pretty good, you are really tricked into thinking the windows are floating in your room and interacting with it is really natural. But you just can’t do shit with it because Meta decided it. I’m really waiting for something more with the already existing technology, because before I tried it, I didn’t knew it was that advanced and I can see myself be pretty productive with it.