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Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer (apple.com)
2544 points by samwillis 1 day ago | hide | past | favorite | 2785 comments

dang 1 day ago | next [–]

All: there are over 2700 comments in this thread - to get to them all, you need to click More at the bottom of each page, or a link like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593&p=2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593&p=3

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593&p=4

There are also a bunch of other threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Sorry that our server has been creaking today. Perf improvements are on the way (fingers crossed), but alas not today.

llm_nerd 1 day ago | prev | next [–]

It's interesting that HN is completely overloaded right now...with people coming to announce how unimpressed they are and how it isn't for them.
The displays in this device are crazy. I honestly didn't think they'd be able to put together a value proposition, but I think they legitimately did. It's super expensive, and some of the cost of the device seems kind of silly (if I heard correctly, the display on the front is 3d and gives different perspectives based upon the viewers), so obviously they're going to have a lot of room to improve value in subsequent generations.

But it's going to be a hit. HN is going to be swamped with "How I used Vision Pro to..." posts when it comes out.

One element that didn't get a lot of play (if any...though I was distracted with work) -- did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac? I'd love to use a real keyboard mouse interacting with flexible Mac displays.

chpmrc 1 day ago | parent | next [–]

It's interesting that HN is completely overloaded right now...with people coming to announce how unimpressed they are and how it isn't for them.
Agreed, polarization is a good sign that this is going to make an impact. Ironically "unimpressed" is communicated by a lack of response, not by a negative one (which more likely indicates people's beliefs are being challenged). The only way this would be a flop is if they shipped something really buggy and worse than the competition (which at the time will be the Meta Quest 3). Otherwise...

it's going to be a hit. HN is going to be swamped with "How I used Vision Pro to..." posts when it comes out.

100%!

did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac? I'd love to use a real keyboard mouse interacting with flexible Mac displays.

Looks like it's going to be a standalone device that you can pair with a magic keyboard and trackpad. Considering it ships with an M2 I expect iPad/Air level performance (assuming the spatial stuff is solely handled by R1). I can totally see myself using it as "the one device" (pun intended) and get rid of my Macbook, assuming there's an easy way to share content with someone who's next to me, e.g. on my iPhone.

I can't wait for it to be publicly available.

ryanbrunner 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Agreed, polarization is a good sign that this is going to make an impact.
Virtually every new Apple product is going to generate this sort of response, and while many Apple products have had a large impact, just as many haven't, I don't know how much predictive strength "this new Apple product generated a lot of conversation on HN" has.

lolinder 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Exactly. Especially in this case, where we knew this was coming for months. It's generating a response because people have been waiting to talk about it since the rumors started.
For myself, my "unimpressed" reaction is because the experience they're selling is the same as what Meta has been trying and failing to sell for years now. It's definitely typical Apple—wait for the tech to mature and execute better than anyone else—but I'm unconvinced there's an actual need being filled here.

The iPhone took a market that had already taken off in business—PDAs—and blew the roof of of it by revolutionizing the tech. The VR-for-productivity market is practically non-existent, and even in gaming it's still very niche. Neither are anywhere near where PDAs and Blackberries were when the iPhone made it big.

I'm just not convinced the "execute better" strategy will work when there is no proven market.

pests 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The YouTube stream I watched mentioned it can detect when you are looking at your Mac and offer the screen up in the googles with full sizing and layout control. Your Mac appears just as another app and you can multitask as ususal.
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chpmrc 7 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah I had missed that. It's such a neat feature!
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Andrew_nenakhov 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I don't think it can simulate any app. Likely, it is a feature akin Continuity, and you have to have corresponding app installed on your Vision Pro to pick it up from Mac and continue working on a headset.
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sib301 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I’m fairly certain that you can just create a virtual monitor in the vision pro that just mirrors the MacBook like any other display would.
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warning26 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yup -- I was a bit disappointed that it can only simulate a single monitor, but I guess since it's working wirelessly there's bandwidth limitations.
Ideally I'd love it if I could simulate a 3 monitor workstation. Maybe for the next iteration.

sircastor 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

If you can put up all the windows from your 3 display workstation, why would you want to simulate displays?
There’s a similar approach available for the Meta quest 2 (and I’m sure the quest pro and quest 3) but it takes a little reorienting to stop thinking in terms of “screens”

Corrado 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Wow, this makes me think of the fabled zooming interface[0]. Why limit yourself to a "monitor" or a set of windows when the sky's (literally) the limit? With a ZUI you could have the entire world at your fingertips. Browser history (or git commits) could just be further away from you in the Z direction. Or maybe it's behind you and you just have to turn around to see it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface

WorldMaker 7 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

An old, ancient term for it is "Spatial UI". The window you need is right where you left it in the other room; navigating between your apps becomes like navigating around your house. Your coding apps are in your office and your social media apps in your bedroom and now you won't get the two confused and "accidentally" scroll social media while working.
In some ways this is particularly great, because humans involved to have a lot of spatial memory in this way.

(It's an interesting footnote here that the early pre-OS X Mac OS Finder was sometimes much beloved [or hated, depending on your OCD predilection and/or personality type] because it was a Spatial UI. Files and folders would "stay" where you placed them and you could have and build all sorts of interesting muscle memory of where on your desktop a file was or even a deep tree of folder navigations, with scenic landmarks along the way. Apple discarded that a long time ago now, but there was something delightful in that old Spatial UI.)

aaroninsf 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

oh hell yash
The way I mentally organize projects would make this both deeply compelling and useful,

and a total disaster lol

warning26 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

From what they showed, you can’t break the windows out of the screen mirror rectangle.
You’re right though, if they allowed windows to freely float, it would also solve the issue.

mch82 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Check out the “Platform State of the Union” video stream for more detail on that. They discuss windows, volumes, shared space, spaces. https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/102
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sircastor 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I assume they would be apps running on the device, rather than on a remote machine.
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warning26 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Ah yes, but those apps appear to be just some kind of iOS type thing, so at least for me I couldn’t really use them for productivity. (The lack of coding tools on iOS also really kills any possible productive uses of my iPad in this way, unfortunately)
(That’s why I was focusing more on the mirror-your-Mac functionality)

zeven7 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

We might be at a point where that could change. This device seems like it could be close to providing the performance needed to start running productivity apps, and it also provides the screen real estate. Those types of apps have to be coming to iOS in the next few years.
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kaba0 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Ipads could do that for years and yet nothing. Hopefully with the EU laws it will change though.
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warning26 8 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Exactly -- my iPad has the same SOC as my laptop, and my laptop is amazingly useful while my iPad is useful for...watching movies and Safari.
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andromeduck 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That doesn't make sense though. You don't need to render/composite what isn't visible.
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ozten 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Maybe. They told an easy to understand story in 10 seconds. Apple is amazing at educating the customer.
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Amorymeltzer 13 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Agreed, polarization is a good sign that this is going to make an impact. Ironically "unimpressed" is communicated by a lack of response, not by a negative one (which more likely indicates people's beliefs are being challenged).
To quote Elie Wiesel: "The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference." It's an extremely good barometer.

andrepd 9 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I don't get this. There is no live demo so far, only a pre-rendered ad. So you have no idea what the actual experience will be like (in an industry famed for over-promising and under-delivering; remember Magic Leap?). The use-cases are also dubious: you can... watch TV alone? Scroll through photos alone? Take pictures? Only the virtual desktop thing was something that I thought "that's useful".
I'm unimpressed so far, maybe that will change maybe it won't. But right now I don't see anything worth being impressed by.

chpmrc 7 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

They gave 30 min demos to WWDC attendees the following day.
I'm excited mainly for two reasons: fantastic eye and hand tracking (according to reviewers such as MKBHD) and replicating my office/entertainment setup wherever I am (except for shared experiences, that is).

I think Apple tried to nail the seamlessness of the experience, rather than give you some amazing use case nobody ever thought of. That will be a good challenge for developers.

paxys 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It's interesting that every single top HN thread is mostly unanimous praise for this device (which presumably no one has yet seen or used), while also painting themselves as the minority opinion.
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tempnow987 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Techcrunch concluded "The price reveal turned any ‘would buy’ in the room into a ‘definitely not’ without hesitation."
Anyways, bookmark the threads of folks calling an Apple product dead on arrival for a revisit in a few years.

The ipod, the iphone, the watch, the airpods... they've had a pretty good record and almost all these have had harsh criticism out the gate (while then going on to absolutely PRINT money for apple).

Apple is sitting on lots of cash and investment with operating cash flow of something like another $100B a year? Why aren't they allowed to take some risks on products like this. Facebook certainly has burnt billions in a similar space.

hn_throwaway_99 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I remember hardly any significant negative criticism of the iphone, watch, or airpods.
Someone below brought up "when the iphone first came out it was 2G, was only on AT&T" - well, yeah, and those were very valid initial shortcomings that Apple pretty quickly rectified.

With the Vision Pro, I see very few comments putting down the actual technological achievements here. Comments seem to be pretty universal in thinking this is the best VR device there is. But the valid question is people are still having a difficult time imagining real, extended use cases where it doesn't feel like a novelty.

Personally, I think it's great Apple took a swing at this. I wouldn't be willing to bet one way or the other on its success, I think there are lots of unknowns, but I don't really have anything but high praise for the folks that built this.

fomine3 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Watch was criticized for its poor battery life and lack of usage other than health/training management. Now battery life is improved a bit and more health features added, but I think the OG criticize point is still valid. Why is it sold well is that it seems that many people care about health device than we expected.
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kalleboo 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Also the watch launched with a bunch of expensive ultra-luxury options that were mocked. Ive tried to lean heavily into fashion which was quickly dropped in later revisions.
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peyton 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah it wasn’t as clear where wearables were headed.
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ryanbrunner 15 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple Watch also isn't really the game changer that something like the iPod or iPhone (or various Macs throughout the years) was. Sure I see people wearing them, but not a tremendous amount, and not completely out of line with something like a FitBit or a Garmin.
Apple created a very competitive product in an established market with the Watch, they didn't change the game.

Which is where I could see the Apple Vision Pro ending up, but I'm sure that's well short of Apple's expectations.

perfopt 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The iPhone wowed everyone but its price was heavily criticized. Apple later got into the exclusive AT&T deal which "subsidized" the price. People just ended up paying more over time.
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elzbardico 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

IPhone didn't have a pen. It didn't run symbian as it's OS. This is what I remember people complaining about.
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websap 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Let's not forget Steve Balmer laughingly mention that no serious business user would ever use a phone without a physical keyboard. People here are negative for the sake of it.
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Capricorn2481 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

He was negative for the shareholders
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crimsontech 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I bought one after using a blackberry and I was instantly sold on it because you could browse websites as if it was a computer, zooming in to the text section with a double tap. I remember my daughter wouldn't entertain the idea because it didn't run blackberry messenger which was the killer app for kids at the time.
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peyton 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It didn’t have a keyboard. Serious smartphones have keyboards.
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npunt 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

AirPods were called 'q-tips in your ears' from people who thought they looked stupid but that faded pretty quickly once the utility became clear
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cobbzilla 1 hour ago | root | parent | next [–]

well there was that time [0] Rudy Giuliani wore them like a space-alien, that was kind of funny.
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rudy+guiliani+air+pods&ia=images&i...

nzeribe 6 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Criticism of the iPhone on it's debut was absolutely vicious.
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sgjohnson 3 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Criticism of the iPad was even worse.
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deviation 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I just want to point out: At the time of the iPhone launch, AT&T's business model (and every other telecom up until this tipping point) was to sell "minutes" which was essentially micro-charges for consumers who want to make calls or send texts.
This was mostly an infrastructure problem that Apple innovated on and helped AT&T solve- carriers would no longer need to sell "minutes" but could instead sell Data, which was a much better value proposition. There's a quote in the movie Blackberry along the lines of "the problem with selling minutes is that there's only 60 of them in a minute to sell".

I can only assume this attributed to the global adoption of the "data sale" model (and the iPhone with it) since the profit ceiling was exponentially higher for every carrier.

hn_throwaway_99 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

This is 100% wrong. The original iPhone plan from AT&T included unlimited data but was still capped on minutes: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/06/26AT-T-and-Apple-Anno...
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seanmcdirmid 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Data plans existed before the iPhone. And Europe was much more hardcore with minutes than the states at that time (I remember that ATT standard plans were not unlimited talk at that point, something that was unheard of in Switzerland where I was living in 2007). In fact, I think the innovation was something like unlimited data?
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chpmrc 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I've never spent more than $400 for a smartphone, always bought second hand Android phones. My income went up in the last couple of years and a few months ago my phone broke. I bought a $900 iPhone.
If it's good people will buy it. I will buy it. No doubt about that.

cjohnson318 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I've tried $100 phones from the Walmarts, and I've tried the top of the line Pixel phone a few years ago. Nothing comes close to a iOS or iPhones.
I just wish they made a printer. I'd buy an Apply printer in a heartbeat, I don't care what it costs.

Corrado 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Hear Hear! A printer and a WiFi AP!
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piva00 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Apple's used to have the AirPorts (Express and Extreme) as WiFi APs. They were pretty good.
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lowbloodsugar 8 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Good old days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter
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cjohnson318 5 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Oh wow. Dammit.
Your link helped me find the Snow White Design Language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_design_language

dayvid 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

People paid $550 for a pair of headphones. They'll buy this if it's good
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permo-w 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

to be fair, $550 for a pair of headphones is a lot, but it's not even close to top of the range
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nunez 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It was definitely in the upper range of prices for over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones, not like this even matters, because people just did not pay $500+ for headphones before the Maxes dropped.
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permo-w 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

people just did not pay $500+ for headphones before the Maxes dropped
are you sure? why do you think this?

thih9 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I think they’re saying that apple is selling $500 headphones to people who would otherwise not buy $500 headphones
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virgildotcodes 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Just wanted to piggyback on this. I was just commenting today to my coworker on the number of people I see walking around Manhattan/Brooklyn with AirPods Maxes on. I swear I see at least a pair or two every other minute while walking down the street.
Most of these people, like you said, we’re likely not blowing $500+ on headphones before Apple made that concept mainstream.

x0x0 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Sure they were, or at least close.
Beats: $400 out the door. Bose Quiet Comfort, whichever is the most recent: similar. Sony also sells ~$350-ish noise cancelling headphones.

Going from $350 to $550 is roughly the normal apple premium.

This is $3k.

virgildotcodes 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Honestly, nah. I don’t think the majority of these people were blowing 400 or 350 or whatever on alternatives beforehand.
Granted, this is 100% anecdotal, but I’m seeing way more people rocking AirPods Max around the city every day than I remember ever seeing rocking over the ear headphones, let alone expensive ones.

kaba0 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I see airpods more often, but sure, apple did discover a huge market here (and not so kindly pushed people towards it by the removal of jack ports). But I don’t fault them, the airpod pros are really cool and the comfort of noise cancellation especially on public transport is a godsend and it makes sense that many people actually cough together the price for that.
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cornel_io 17 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

They're also selling much worse headphones than what an audiophile would buy for $500+, but trendier.
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ztrww 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

some people obviously did pay $500+ for headphones. We don’t know how many sets has Apple actually sold…
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bradlys 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

$550 for a pair of headphones is a lot, but it's not even close to top of the range
It's top of the range for typical consumers. The people who wear Apple's $550 headphones aren't people who are buying Sennheiser HD800s'. Before, people would've spent $200 or up to $300 on the Bose ones. Apple got them to spend an extra $200-250.

I'm surprised by how often I see these headphones. They were basically nonexistent in the Bay Area but I see them often enough in NYC.

ztrww 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

People were paying similar amounts for high-end headphones for years.
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brailsafe 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Not the same people though
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prng2021 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Except no one bought those headphones.
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wilg 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Not true, I bought them and really dislike them.
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theshrike79 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I owned two Boses (QC35II and 700) and two of the best that Sony has to offer (XM4 & XM5).
The AirPods Max blow both out of the water in comfort, usability and ANC.

crimsontech 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I did the same quest and I'm happy with the AirPods Max. I remember reading Apple originally wanted to make them better but they would have been more expensive so they didn't, I wish they had.
I have more expensive headphones than the AirPods Max but these are what I use the most.

dervjd 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You'd be surprised how popular they are. Certainly they're overpriced, but the noise cancellation/sound/build quality/etc is very good. They've also apparently become something of a celebrity "it" item: https://www.vogue.com/article/are-the-airpods-max-the-latest...
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blurri 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I see these people in the gym with all the time with them. I think your “no one’s buying them” might be rooted in a personal bias.
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gleenn 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I personally love those headphones even despite their price.
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ph 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I love mine and would rebuy them without blinking.
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matt-attack 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Wow fascinating. How much better than AirPod Pros are they? I tend like the minimalism of the AirPod line. Super discreet, can easily stash in your pocket, can be listening to music anywhere and no one even really notices, etc. Oh and they work just as good on the treadmill or while running.
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kaba0 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I read reviews that actually say that the 2nd gen pros have better ANC than the Maxs.
So depending on what’s important for you they may be the better choice.

ph 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You would just have to try out the AirPods Max to find out :)
Personally, I cannot say as I have never owned nor used any of the other AirPods. If you are looking for mobile usage, the Max aren't the best choice. They are large and heavy and there is nothing discreet about them. Also, I wouldn't even consider running with them.

I use them at work or at home where all of this is no issue and I just want to enjoy the best music experience.

cezart 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

If this is you use case some Audio-Technica ATHM50XBT would probably have way better sound at a 3rd of the price. For over a decade it's the most used headphone set in professional studios for a reason.
P.S. not saying there aren't better headphones, just that the price ratio is great with these ones and the sound to my ear is better than on airpods pro. No noise cancellation though.

ryanwaggoner 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

No noise cancellation though.
Then it's a completely different product...

budoso 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Have you been outside recently?
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prng2021 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yes. What percentage of people in the world who use headphones would you say is using them?
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parasubvert 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Here's what I know: Apple's wearable business (Airpods, Apple Watch, Airtags) is $41 billion annually, most of which is Airpods.
I see Airpods Max everywhere: on the street, in the office, on zoom calls, and on airplanes. they're recognizable and common. I see other headphones also, and white airpods/airpods pros the most.

sib 5 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

How dare you bring actual... data... to an HN debate?
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meragrin_ 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I see Airpods Max everywhere
Cool story. I have yet to see a pair.

usea 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Of people I see sitting at a computer, few are using them.
For everyone else, airpods far outnumber all other kinds of headphones combined. Whether it's the grocery store or an airport.

I can only speak to my experience. This is a subjective, bias-loaded anecdote. For example it could just be that they're newish, so I notice the novelty more. Or the design is easier to see. Etc etc.

wilg 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I believe OP is talking about AirPods Max, not AirPods in general.
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usea 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Thanks, I appreciate the clarification.
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d3nj4l 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

A far higher percentage than "no one"
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gary_0 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Whether or not it's the right device, it's definitely being introduced to the wrong economy.
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sbuk 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

iPhone 3G was released in summer 2008, right in the middle of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Arguably, this was the beginning of iPhone's rise in popularity. The original iPhone was released in 2007, and the cracks in the economy were beginning to show then...
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gary_0 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

But it cost $500 ($700 in today's dollars) and the day-to-day utility of cellphones/blackberries had already been established for a decade. Your example doesn't seem that comparable.
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terafo 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

All those phones did cost 200-300 IIRC. 500 was outrageously expensive. For this device it's 3500, will be much cheaper for non pro version plus production of critical components will scale up significantly. Sony can produce less than a million displays for that thing per year, it is understandable why they are expensive.
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zerbinxx 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Sure, but again… it’s like 10x the price of a competing piece of equipment which is still regarded as pretty niche. In the case of an iPhone, 2x the price for 1000x the functionality was a clear “buy”. There’s a reason that among basically everyone I know (mid class millenials) scoffs at watches and iPads but is a complete iPhone addict - the value proposition is just that good. For all the talk of these ancillary/luxury devices, the fact remains that the iPhone (or Android knockoffs) is still the absolute Crown Jewel of tech that cuts across demographics in a way that their other products do not.
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kaba0 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

And to be honest, a handheld magic cube that fits in your pocket and can display anything and be interacted in any way really is as magical as it sounds. Plus it is a quite good camera as well.
I really think that smartphone design is close to the optimal sci-fi tech for humans, exactly due to it being handheld. We rely on vision and touch the most and I think it combines those well. I am almost sure that VR would even in theory get as popular as smartphones, all else being equal.

fshr 13 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Another data point for you, the Quest Pro was $1500 on launch and is now $1000.
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basisword 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The people that can afford this aren’t impacted by the economy. It’s a professional tool and the expense can be justified. It’s not a product for ordinary consumers yet. On top of that it’s not out until next year - who knows what the economy will be like then.
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gary_0 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It’s a professional tool
That you use to look at family photos, use iPhone apps in a giant window, watch movies, and play with VR Mickey Mouse? The presentation seemed to lean more towards the consumer than industry applications.

basisword 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

They did but that mostly seemed silly to me. Multiple monitors was the main thing that jumped out as an actual good use case. They need to market all aspects of it but they’ve named it “pro” for a reason and I feel like there was a lot of focus out on productivity uses (conference calls, browsing, multiple displays, 3D Models).
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fomine3 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Apple's "Pro" naming is somewhat a random. Here's my ranking of Pro-ness.
Mac Pro >= Pro Display XDR >= ProRes >= Logic Pro > FinalCut Pro > Vision Pro >= MacBook Pro >= iPad Pro > iPhone Pro >>> AirPods Pro

skellera 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Marketed to the general public but will be used by pros.
The goal is excitement and investment in the app ecosystem so, when they figure out the form factor, the cheaper/lighter/more useful future device is a bigger hit.

ralusek 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It acts as an infinite screen extension of your computer...
Many professionals would be thrilled to have a portable multimonitor setup that they can use from the couch, bed, airplane, train, Uber...

spookie 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yes, I feel a lot of people are too tied down to their biases and social bubbles. I'm working in the area and you see great use of these devices from medical, to architecture, and mechanical engineering.
I understand the skepticism, but sometimes our perception of the world is quite narrow. Given that most of us are developers, even more so.

I don't mean to be condescending, I just feel that way a lot with both myself and my colleagues when exposed to fields and constraints that we haven't seen before.

rvz 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It is the first version of the Vision Pro and I would expect it to fail due to its price.
The second or third version maybe something worthy of the consumer having a look at. This is directly competing against the Quest Pro, and the Vision Pro is still at prices like the HoloLens.

Apple will probably announce a 'Lite' version which will directly compete against Meta's cheaper Quest VR headsets.

Facebook certainly has burnt billions in a similar space.

And their Quest VR headsets already outsold Xbox Series X/S. [0]

[0] https://www.thevirtualreport.biz/data-and-research/65297/que...

summerlight 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The ipod, the iphone, the watch, the airpods... they've had a pretty good record and almost all these have had harsh criticism out the gate (while then going on to absolutely PRINT money for apple).
Looks like you and me have a completely different memory on this? iPod, iPhone were almost unanimously praised at the moment of announcement, thanks to Steve's magic. AirPod also received generally positive reactions. Apple Watch had a genuine issue on its product positioning and its success came after fixing that issue.

tpmoney 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The reaction to the iPod that everyone remembers was "No wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame", never mind the criticism of an apple only device, or the cost (honestly, the mac mini and maybe the m1 airs are the only two devices I can think of apple has released that people didn't complain about the price).
The iPhone in addition to pricing was also widely panned for being 2G only, for being AT&T only, for requiring a data plan, for not having a physical keyboard, for not having a stylus and for being something no one needed because our phones and ipods already do all of that.

The iPhone did get a better reception than the iPod, but that's probably owed to the success of the iPod in proving Apple might just have an idea or two about how to make a new piece of cool tech, but it had plenty of poo-pooing by the tech class too.

FabHK 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

never mind the criticism of an apple only device
The first iPod was predicated on FireWire and iTunes, which were basically only available on Macs at the time.

(iTunes - Jan 2001, iPod - Oct 2001, iTunes Store - Apr 2003, iTunes for Windows - Oct 2003.)

matt-attack 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

iPad was definitely mocked.
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llm_nerd 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not claiming it's a minority opinion, but early on there were multiple submissions that were dominated by people rushing to proclaim that it was DoA. One claimed it was the end of Apple. There is a huge disparity between people who click an arrow and people who comment.
And you are absolutely correct that the enthused haven't used this device, or even heard from a non-Apple employee that tried a beta. I am hugely concerned about long term comfort, particularly in the eye fatigue realm, for instance, and will be watching to see what the sentiment around that is.

If it were many other companies I would honestly be much more skeptical about it, but I mean Apple has a pretty good track record of actually delivering products that meet or exceed their promises. And they really promised the moon with this reveal.

comment_ran 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I completely agree with you about the tiredness of the eye or fatigueness of the eye. It's really hard to imagine someone wearing this kind of device for a very long time without feeling any pain. I'm not sure exactly the reason why this pain came from. But I think the question we face is going to be maybe the next big thing for humans, which is going to directly connect all those sensors directly connected to our central brain without using the eye. But that's kind of a science fiction thing. I'm not sure I'm going to have a chance to experience those things.
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joahua 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Ditto. I can’t see this being used portably so do wonder if the 2 hour battery life is a clue on how fatiguing the experience might be.
2 hours I guess covers a commute, but it’s hardly handheld form factor - how much bigger would it need to be to get “all day wear” battery life? It doesn’t feel like a real spatial constraint, so can only presume >2hrs is not required in actual use.

comment_ran 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I see the pattern is that C is complained by most of people. And there is another type of programming that is that, which people never talk about. So just by talking about, regardless it's positive or negative, there is a tension in there and it's expectation, it's our will to kind of devices or this technology came into being. So eventually it will become part of our life and I hope that day comes sooner and this company will not disappoint us.
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madrox 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

There's a famous macrumors forum post of people raging against the iPod, saying it will be a massive failure. We've seen the same reaction from every Apple hardware announcement since.
The original post in 2001 is still live. Read it for a laugh: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...

makeitdouble 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

TBF, there's an equal amount of "I haven't touched the product, nor even read reviews of people handling it in their hands, but I'm totally gonna buy this only based on the marketing material"
I kinda loved how Accidental Tech Podcast's host joke about not having even heard of the product yet but they'll probably buy it for personal use either way.

The pendulum has fully swinged the other way for the a sizeable chunk of people I think.

ztrww 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple also released https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
Which was a great idea and a very innovative product literally ahead of it’s time by 15 years.

fnordpiglet 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I bought a used newton from the lead engineer on the newton. I loved the device and used it regularly until my then girlfriend stepped on it and broke the display. Needless to say that relationship wasn’t long after that ;-)
I later had a palm. It was garbage compared to the newton even if it was 1/8 the size. I’m glad to see the newton essentially return as the iPhone/iPad.

redbell 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Read it for a laugh
Steve Ballmer also laughed so much of the iPhone being without a keyboard :) , It turned out to be one of the most innovative products in history.

crashingintoyou 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'll admit to being quite skeptical of the iPad and was wrong about that.
That said, despite owning a Quest 2 and eagerly awaiting the Quest 3 release, nothing in this headset particularly appeals to me. (Am mainly into rhythm games and am guessing those wouldn't be nearly as fun without the haptics in into other headsets' controllers which this seems to lack).

brailsafe 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That was actually quite funny thank you. Reminds me of my friend in highschool who was a Zune fanboy.
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audiodude 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

NO!
Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! Where's the Newton?!

0xr0kk3r 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Personalities have not changed.
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B1FF_PSUVM 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

There's a famous macrumors forum post of people raging against the iPod,
Back in the day, it was the Slashdot take: "No wifi. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

yumraj 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

But it's going to be a hit. HN is going to be swamped with "How I used Vision Pro to..." posts when it comes out.
I'm not going to predict whether or not this is going to be a hit, I just don't know.

However, remember when Google Glass came out there were tons of these "how I use" posts and I remember people even changing their LinkedIn profile pictures to be with Google Glass. And, we all know how that turned out.

So, early posts by self-styled influencers or wannabe's are in no way predictor of success, or failure, of a product.

shwaj 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I wonder how intentional Apple was about picking a name that can’t be turned into a schoolyard insult like “Glasshole”?
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true_religion 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

If you ignore the “vision”, you can just call them A(pple) Hole Pros.
You can pretty easily make fun of apple products. We just don’t do that because their products are good.

The moment a bad iPhone comes out someone will start calling it an iSore.

Apocryphon 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Pission
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m3kw9 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Most Google hardware products turn out similarly bad
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mithr 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The displays in this device are crazy.
I'm actually curious about this, and how the displays will actually feel. The ads/keynote all talked about how they're "more than 4k for each eye", which sounds like a lot when you're talking about TVs or monitors, but... stops sounding quite as impressive when you realize you're talking about IMAX-sized screens (which is the main "wow" draw for watching movies in VR), or when talking about augmenting reality.

Analemma_ 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah, 4K per eye stops being impressive when it's five inches from your retina and you're trying to read fine text. Pimax has had a 4K/eye device for years already: it's nice but still nowhere near good enough to do things like replace your computer monitor. They're planning to ship a 6K/eye device next year, which will probably still not be enough. The real world has a very high pixel density!
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febusravenga 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

They have eye focus tracking for sure in this, so maybe they can render in adaptive resolution mode je only highest rest in center of vision? Who knows?
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duskwuff 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Adaptive resolution rendering doesn't add more pixels to the display -- if you want high resolution for the spot the user is currently looking at, you need that resolution across the entire display.
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drdaeman 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Theoretically, you don't really need it across the entire display - this is achievable with eye tracking paired with fancy actuated curved micro-mirrors (so-called DMDs) that can dynamically make part of the matrix concentrated in a smaller focus area (viewed through a curved mirror) at cost of peripheral picture quality. But it's extremely complex tech and I'm not aware if it's available in any consumer-grade devices. The alternative is liquid lenses, but I think micro-mirrors are more researched topic (I'm no expert in either, it's been ages since I last studied physics and I wasn't good at it even then).
It is remotely related but different from "classical" foveated rendering (which is just a way to get better framerates), as it's an actual optical system. With DMDs you also need foveated rendering (and fancy transformations, as displays are no longer projected uniformly over time), but foveated rendering alone is not sufficient.

esclerofilo 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

They already listed foveated rendering in the features (which I believe is what you're describing). It use the graphics performance budget efficiently, but it can't physically add more pixels.
It's really cool technology anyway, and according to PSVR2 reviews, it seems to work well.

theonlybutlet 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Hopefully focal adjustment tracking too. I've got a feeling it's just for the selection UI.
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xu_ituairo 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I think resolution will be important the smaller (or further away) the movie you’re watching is. And for things like text in apps.
If you’re watching an IMAX-size screen in AR, the resolution of the content will be the main factor, I think, rather than the density of the goggle displays.

theonlybutlet 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Each pixel is 7.5 microns. Assuming RGB, that's 22.5 microns. Thats at the maximum limits of detail an eye can see.
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gpm 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I have 2 4k screens in front of me right now. I can close one eye, and without moving my head make out the entirety of both screens. They cover most of the non-peripheral horizontal field of view, but you could easily fit in another 4k screen on top of each vertically. I can make out individual pixels (when there is a gradient, like with a small font) on the screens. Higher resolution screens of the same size at the same distance would let me read slightly smaller fonts.
That is, at a resolution in which pixels are still perceptible, I can make out more than 33,177,600 pixels (4 4k screens, equivalently 1 8k screen) per eye. This device has less than that. Less than half that per eye. It's not "at the maximum limits of detail an eye can see" even assuming they just have no wasted pixels in your peripheral vision.

7.5 microns means nothing without knowing what lenses it goes through.

That said, I think it might be enough pixels to be useful for reading text. Unlike the index I own, where that is just unpleasant.

wilg 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That's not enough information. It's behind a lens that spreads it across your entire field of view.
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theonlybutlet 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Assuming they're square. Roughly calculating (23 million pixels between the two with no space between 7.5 microns,) that's 25.432mm^2. they've said they're the size of postage stamps. This ties in.
I think it's near safe to assume there's no real gap between pixels and thus indiscernible. The lag might be a thing.

yathern 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Once again, the absolute size is irrelevant - postage stamp or otherwise. It's optically scaled to fit your field of view - essentially under a microscope. There are VR devices with 4k screens already, and it's still not enough to be indiscernible to the eye - especially for things like text.
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thfuran 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not having visible gaps between pixels is a necessary but woefully insufficient condition for high visual fidelity.
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amrangaye 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Every. Single. Apple product launch post. “Meh”, “I can’t see the use case for this”, “it’s all already been done before”. Like clockwork. Then they’ll sell a million of these, and by v3 it’ll be much smaller / better / cheaper, and gain mass adoption. It’s like people have an “apple event reaction” algorithm going, and it never changes.
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ctvo 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

This is an over confident audience very sure that their experiences and perspective is representative of the mainstream. See the rsync vs. Dropbox meme.
The execution is all that matters here not any speculative flaws. If it’s a delightful, polished, responsive experience for the stock applications, other use cases will come. I don’t want to bet against Apple achieving that bar. They’ve done it over and over again before.

bee_rider 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I’m still amazed Dropbox is making money. Doesn’t windows come with a Dropbox clone built in?
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ztrww 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

If it’s a delightful, polished, responsive experience for the stock applications
IMHO this is a perfect description for the Apple TV.

karmelapple 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It sure can be used as a display for a Mac. Just stand in front of a Mac, and the screen will go dark and the windows will be moved to your Vision Pro.
Here's the point in the Keynote showing it: https://www.youtube.com/live/GYkq9Rgoj8E?feature=share&t=552...

matt-attack 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I'm wondering if a similar trick will be used with iPhones and Apple Watches that are within view. Will they bother with the camera reading the screen and then rendering to the visor, or will they just seamlessly talk to the phone and watch to get the screen imagery. I'm assuming that would improve the quality.
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j2bax 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

There was one moment in the presentation when a guy at the office opened his Macbook Pro and the screen popped up above it much larger.
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solarmist 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

He also used a keyboard and trackpad.
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theonlybutlet 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I agree 4k in each eye sounds insane. But eye strain that's going to be the big determinant. I initially thought it was transparent OLED at the start but to my disappointment it's just screens. Perhaps they've got the focal adjustment thing Magic Leap was trying to do right.
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tmalsburg2 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

4K is not much if you consider that these pixels have to cover the entire field of view, not just a relatively small screen.
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coffeebeqn 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It’s certainly a generational jump from the Quest series at least. Of course the price is completely ridiculous
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theonlybutlet 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The best an eye can discern is roughly 20 microns, but generally far higher at 100 microns. They said 7.5 microns per pixel (X3 for RGB is 22.5 so roughly there without space).
Assuming they're square. Roughly calculating (23 million pixels between the two with no space between 7.5 microns,) that's 25.432mm^2. they've said they're the size of postage stamps. This ties in.

I think it's near safe to assume there's no real gap between pixels and thus indiscernible. The lag might be a thing and focus, but this might actually not be a problem.

xdennis 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The best an eye can discern is roughly 20 microns
The size of an object doesn't matter. What matters is how it gets projected onto the back of your eyes.

There are 120 million rods (black and white) and 6 million cones (color) in a single eye. You would need at least as many pixels. But photoreceptors are not evenly distributed, so to account for moving your eyes across the screen, you would have to have even more pixels.

pzo 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

What if the would move the screens? E.g. Similar like they have in camera optical stabilization they slightly move the sensor array. They could make screen with not uniform pixel density but more dense in center and then do eye tracking and shift those screen mechanically depending where eye will be focused. Probably not easy to pull off as camera optical stabilization (need bigger movements and screens more heavy than weight of camera sensor) but maybe not completely impossible? Oled screens are very tiny and flexible just probsbly hard to make it non fragile.
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tmalsburg2 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The pixels may be 7.5 microns but you’re forgetting that they are viewed through a lens. The point stands: 4K pixels for the full field of view, which is a lower density than 4K for a small screen.
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theonlybutlet 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The lens can be directional focusing your vision onto a certain point, also your peripheral vision cannot discern as much detail. They've stated it is on a chip the size of a postage stamp. So we'll have to see how the lens directs it, when it's released.
Edit:sort of a Magic Leap type thing. The further out you look from the centre of the lense, the more the lense curves back to the focus your eye on the centre. With the eye tracking changing the image to compensate for your eye movement.

ben-schaaf 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Unless they're magically changing the shape of the lens in response to eye movement that doesn't seem physically possible.
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pzo 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

What if they shift screens mechanically in response to eye movement? Similar like apple camera optical stabilization works by shifting slightly camera sensor array? And if the screen pixel density is not uniform but more dense in the center? Hard to pull off but I guess not impossible.
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tmalsburg2 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Even if that where possible, I doubt that the accuracy of the eye-tracker is sufficiently high for this approach to work.
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thfuran 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The best an eye can discern is roughly 20 microns
That's not how it works. You need an angular resolution.

iddan 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

There’s Sightful’s $2000 device you can buy right now https://www.sightful.com/ I’ve used an early demo of this and was very impressed. After the demo I had the strong feeling Apple is going to build something similar and I was right
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blktiger 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

4 Million Pixels is so terrible for an AR/VR headset. 23 million pixels will be indistinguishable from reality for all intents and purposes.
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JackGreyhat 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The human eye has an approximate pixel resolution of 120 million pixels per eye. On top of that, our brain constantly processes and integrates the output of our eyes. This creates an even higher perceived pixel resolution of about 480 million pixels per eye. Some estimates are even higher.
I'm not saying Apple created a bad product...but I wouldn't expect a mere 23 million pixels to be indistinguishable from reality.

llm_nerd 14 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The human eye actually has terrible resolution. We only see in high resolution in the fovea in the very center of our eye -- basically the single point of primary focus. Resolution beyond that drops off dramatically (1/7th and much worse).
I've seen people claiming on sites like Reddit that people who watch with CC on simply read it in their peripheral vision while focused on the action, and that just isn't possible in most situations for the reason I mentioned. You actually only see high resolution in the middle 1 degree of angular view.

So to come up with such a number someone took the entire FOV of the human eye and assumed that you focus your fovea on each and every angular degree of it.

That's neither here nor there are your point is as valid -- where you're focused on will have a pixel density below "reality" for your fovea, however it presents lots of optimization potentials in software (e.g. no need for fine rendering outside of the focus) and in hardware. There are already devices which use tiny mirrors and optics to basically concentrate the pixels wherever you're looking and render a distorted view to match.

kaba0 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It will definitely not be indistinguishable from reality, but might be good enough to fool us after a short getting used to, similarly to how even 24fps is enough for continuous motion. Of course you will see 60fps as more “fluid”, but only in comparison. And afterwards the differences quickly plateau and not many people can see any difference between 120 and higher.
It is probably similar with this as well, the question is where apple stands on this scale.

fnordpiglet 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I think it’ll be 5 generations before it’s a real product. I’d note the first iPhone was kinda garbage as was the first iPod. For the iPhone the App Store was empty and the apps that existed for years were pretty rudimentary. It couldn’t hold a phone call open. It was clunky and comparatively terrible hardware. Apple has the ability to invest and innovate on an idea for decades incorporating advances, fostering investment, and building an ecosystem.
The jaded take to my ears sounds a lot like the LLM / generative AI take - looking at the first real generation and claiming it’s an evolutionary dead end of hype monsterism. I feel sad that people that likely got into this field as a dreamer of what can be are stuck seeing what simply is.

Will this usher in rainbows end within the next 20 years? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m always happy to see there are still nerds that can dream of what can be, even if they’re often drowned out by the chorus of what today isn’t.

comment_ran 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I do see your point and it is true that every product is going to be more mature, more complete for the later publication. But things of a first generation product like this is going to be a huge risk for a lot of people. But the things I want to talk to myself is probably if I can pick up one thing or maybe one or two things that this device can solve that probably doesn't have a good solution in the market, then just go for it. And if it is affordable, then go definitely do it. The upside of doing this is you cannot change your workflow in the early stages. So if you consider the time you put into that product in this new workflow, the things or the productivity you gain from this early experiment is going to be more productive. But gain, it's a risk.
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fnordpiglet 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah I think first generations of apple products are for the curious, the rich, and the engineer seeking to build the next generation of apps on their new platform. I never look at them as “a good deal,” or a mature product. I think that’s foolish for any 1.0 of anything. Generally 3.0 is where maturity begins, and 5.0 is where incrementalism starts.
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jeffhwang 17 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Wow a reference to Rainbow’s End! IIRC that novel was set around 2026. I don’t think we’ll have Vinge-style AR/VR contact lenses for many years to come. Certainly not by RE’s fictional timetable… :(
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fnordpiglet 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

It’s ok. Error bands on SF are wide and shifted right. Mostly because jaded skeptics that cling to the constraints of the present kill the dreams until someone has the wherewithal to ride out the skeptics. Say what you will about Musk, apple, etc - they set absurd goals and fail half way, but that half way is the stuff of science fiction.
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H12 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The fact this thing has an M2 makes me surprised Apple didn't try to sell it as a Mac.
I feel like at the price point, this device makes much more sense as the kind of thing that could replace a laptop/desktop than as a companion to it.

If you can check connect a magic keyboard/mouse to it, this thing could conceivably be a MBA and badass multi-monitor setup rolled into one. And to me, that's really the only way this form factor makes sense.

debacle 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The cost is prohibitive, but I can't think of anyone who I trust more to introduce a cutting edge consumer device.
I wont be a user, but I hope they succeed.

two_handfuls 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Yes, the presentation shows it used as a display for a Mac. Incidentally, you can also do this with the cheaper Quest Pro headset (or any headset in the Quest line, so $300-$1000 price range - but you don't get as many pixels). There are a few options for the software, VRDesktop (https://www.vrdesktop.net) being one.
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TexanFeller 3 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

the presentation shows it used as a display for a Mac. Incidentally, you can also do this with the cheaper Quest Pro headset
You may be technically be able to do it on Quest, but it's mostly useless because text at non-massive sizes is completely illegible on current headsets.

ignoramous 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

But it's going to be a hit.
Well, if nothing else, the influencer / celeb culture will make it so. Apple, unlike other tech companies, almost has a monopolistic grip over it.

I mean, they sold AirPods for the most ridiculous price and yet they beat sales numbers of just about everyone in the audio industry.

jen729w 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

This, still?
Do people like you think that people like me buy AirPods because influencers do?

Might it just be that they’re astonishingly good wireless headphones? I mean is that possible in your mind?

ignoramous 14 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The product may be good, but I am talking about its price, and how it sold like hot cakes anyway. Consumer goods don't sell as much without marketing, which influencers / celebs provide for free to Apple.
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slaymaker1907 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm predicting right now that it's going to have performance problems with that display. While they haven't released exact resolution numbers per eye, 23M would give it a slightly higher resolution than the HTC Vive Pro 2, a headset which requires a GPU. While mobile chips have really impressive CPU performance, I don't think they're nearly as competitive in the graphics space.
Knowing Apple, they're also not going to support anything else besides Apple Hardware so you won't be able to hook it up to an actual gaming rig like you can with the Meta Quest 2. While this isn't a big deal for a lot of people, Apple is taking a huge risk releasing a very premium product like this without supporting the largest established VR market (gamers).

stouset 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Apple is taking a huge risk releasing a very premium product like this without supporting the largest established VR market (gamers).
This reads like "Apple is taking a huge risk releasing a new smartphone without supporting the largest established market (BlackBerry device users).

The VR gaming market is microscopic compared to what Apple is likely aiming for here. They do not give a single flying fuck about this "established market", nor have they for any other market they've entered. The entire Apple ethos is to completely change the narrative for whatever product category they enter. They did this for phones, for bluetooth audio, for watches, and—whether or not they're ultimately successful—you can bet your ass this is their intent for wearable headsets.

What's the eventual end goal for these devices? I'm not sure yet, but I'm certain it will become clearer in the coming years. My expectation is they anticipate this will come to replace fixed displays for a huge number of office workers. Maybe not with this first revision, but by gen 3 that's my bet for the market of this device. If you assume it get lighter and comfortable, higher res, and better battery life over the next few iterations it's clearly something that could just be your work machine with a paired bluetooth keyboard.

hparadiz 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

VR headsets are very personal from a cleanliness perspective. I would never share one. There's a reason why the padding around the visor is removable and washable.
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nerdbert 5 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I keep wondering how the demo units at Apple Stores are going to be kept non-vile.
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bbor 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Most people don't share monitors either. And very very few office workers share laptops, which is what they're suggesting
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JP44 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

To chime in on the last part, I imagine that it could be beneficial for Apple’s offices alone; every employee is able to create their preferred workspace while using less physical space; only really needing a desk, keyboard, mouse, power & internet source and a seat
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theshrike79 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The only reason I sit in a fancy ergonomic chair is to be able to view my monitor(s) properly.
If the monitors could be virtual using an AR headset, I could just sit in a la-z-boy with a cupholder and a massaging seat :D

jayd16 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

nor have they for any other market they've entered
They don't care about iOS games? Apple Arcade?

ztrww 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The VR gaming market is microscopic compared to what Apple is likely aiming for here. They do not give a single flying fuck about this "established market", nor have they for any other market they've entered. The entire Apple ethos is to completely change the narrative for whatever product category they enter. They did this for phones, for bluetooth audio, for watches, and—whether or not they're ultimately successful—you can bet your ass this is their intent for wearable headsets.
Apple is also the company which released https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton back in the day… They turned out to be right at the end but still had to renter the market entirely from scratch after 10 years. So far Apple has been great in “perfecting” products that already exist by doing the right thing at the right time.

They weren’t the first or the second to release a smartphone, smart watch, tablet, BT earphones etc. all of those had established markets and somewhat clear use cases Apple “just” streamlined and turned them into something that normal people would actually want to use. It’s seems a bit to early to do that for VR yet. So in a certain way they are in somewhat uncharted territory.

stouset 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Whether or not they're successful is irrelevant to the question of what their intent is. But I find it telling that your initial reaction is to reach for a device that failed thirty years ago as if it has any relationship to modern Apple.
They didn't "just" streamline the smartphone. They destroyed virtually overnight the existing dominant players in the smartphone market and within a few years essentially ended the existence of non-smartphones as a market category entirely. They didn't "just" streamline the watch. Again, within five years of entering the market they overtook (in units) shipments of the entire traditional watch industry. Both of these examples are significantly larger and more entrenched than the existing VR gaming market.

Of course not every product of theirs is successful in doing this. But without question, this is their aim a majority of the time.

ztrww 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

find it telling that your initial reaction
Telling what? My point was that Newton was a brilliant idea yet the hardware wasn’t there yet and it didn’t have clear use cases. Both concerns apply for Vision Pro so at this point it’s still closer to the Newton than the iPad

They didn't "just" streamline the smartphone

They did exactly that which is why it was so brilliant. You could do everything you could with an iPhone with other devices before it came out. It’s just that the experience was quite poor and all other devices were underdeveloped and had serious flaws in comparison (to be fair the first gen iPhone was a pretty lackluster device too).

You could browse the web, watch video content, send messages/emails, listens to music, play games, make video calls. Did Apple invent any of that? The iPhone was a just a device which could do it all with much nicer UX than anything on the market.

VR is very different in that regard.

zmmmmm 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple is taking a huge risk
Let's contextualise this ... they have so much money in the bank there is literally no way to spend it. This could completely flunk and have zero impact on them. There's no risk here for Apple. Perhaps the question is why they aren't being more adventurous, or pushing this harder by subsidising the gen 1 device to get it off the ground.

bushbaba 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The risk is brand dilution. Apple has a reputation for not launching products that flop
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kalleboo 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yeah it's clear their focus isn't games. There's no way the GPU can push those pixels with the graphical fidelity expected by gamers. But I'm sure it will have no problem pushing the raw pixels as long as you stick to mostly graphical compositing-level graphics like all the productivity/lifestyle stuff they were showing in the demo.
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jayd16 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

First off, mobile chips are actually quite good at high resolutions (but usually lack bandwidth). But this is an M2. That's not a mobile chip.
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RandallBrown 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Performance wise, in the Platform State of the Union, they mentioned that they will use eye tracking to choose which parts of the "screen" to render at high resolution. That should help a bit.
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czhiddy 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Roughly double the amount of pixels = "slightly higher resolution"?
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crubier 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Sqrt(2) = 1.4 so there are 40% more pixels per inch. It’s not a different order of magnitude.
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anthonymckay 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The Vive Pro 2 has ~12M pixels. This has 23M. That's nearly double. We don't know the FoV so we have no idea was the pixel per degree density is.
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crubier 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Double pixels still means only 41% better pixels per inch, per mm or per degree.
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hajile 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

100 games at launch isn’t aiming for gamers? That’s at least decent compared to the quest.
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yurishimo 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

100 games on Apple Arcade*
How many of these will be windowed iOS apps? I assume most of them.

SkyPuncher 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It doesn't matter what games it has if it doesn't have my games.
That's really what sets casual gaming devices (Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, etc) apart from actual gaming devices.

ChicagoBoy11 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Yeah, although the part about it just had someone use it to extend the native monitor.. I'd be curious how deep that integration went... more than a large virtual monitor, to have you able to spawn multiple/infinite windows of any of the mac apps on it, that'd be killer!
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solarmist 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Probably a v2 feature that isn’t ready yet. But I’d be surprised if they weren’t working on it after the widget stuff on Mac desktop.
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Diesel555 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac?
Yes, in the keynote at 1:32:02. It discusses how looking at your computer then turns the Vision Pro into a display.

https://www.youtube.com/live/GYkq9Rgoj8E?feature=share

peyton 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac
Yeah, you look at the screen through the headset and then pinch to move it around and grow/shrink it.

mihaaly 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Early to tell. No point predicting who will say what, when people will say everything on the scale eventually.
People have different needs, and use cases and are affected by the way things become implemented. The details of usability, impossible to tell just now.

Probably one thing is easy to tell, is that chatting with a helmet on while moving around in the room is not going to work. : ) That's just stupid marketing crap.

I am looking forward its feasibility for external virtual screens of a Mac - or even a PC! -, with physical keyboard and mouse, that sounds attractive. But with patience, let's see how it works first in long run for the masses. And if it gets to a more realistic price tag sometime.

AmericanOP 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It is a viable first entry as an AR computer. Does it need to be anything more than that?
In 10 years with GenAI video creation and GenAI NPCs it could be bonkers cool.

michaelt 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It is a viable first entry as an AR computer. Does it need to be anything more than that?
It needs to do what HoloLens and Google Glass didn't.

Sell well enough to attract developers and improve manufacturing economies of scale.

For what it's worth, I think Apple has a chance here - there were smartphones before the iphone, but apple made the first one good enough to take off. Perhaps this will be the same?

spaceman_2020 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Don't think we'll take 10 years. GenAI NPCs are like 1-2 years. GenAI video is about 3-5 years max.
A little scary bringing a kid into this world. I've seen how my nephews and nieces get completely absorbed by screens.

zerbinxx 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I too have trouble thinking this is truly “cool” - it’s basically a self-contained Plato’s Cave. I feel like the “cool” of the next decade will be distinctly luddite-inflected, but who knows.
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juve1996 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Until all of the cool stuff is hidden behind paywalls.
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fio_ini 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

you can (over simplified, tech people yell at me or whatever, but) display your macbook screen inside Apple Vision as a screen/monitor/window, whatever it's called same way you would an app.
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mdavidn 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

if I heard correctly, the display on the front is 3d and gives different perspectives based upon the viewers
This effect probably relies on a lenticular lens overlaid on an OLED screen. This was similar to the method used by the Nintendo 3DS to create a stereoscopic image without glasses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_printing

FabHK 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Any word on how many interlocutors standing opposite you this can support?
I'm reminded of the Hallway Projection Scene in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, which works beautifully until more than one person looks at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtA0JS1lBaY

rpozarickij 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac?
Actually the did:

bring the powerful capabilities of their Mac into Vision Pro wirelessly, creating an enormous, private, and portable 4K display with incredibly crisp text

I wonder what the latency would be like though.

selectodude 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The guy on the commercial was using a real keyboard so I imagine this can be used relatively standalone, with the caveat that it uses iPad apps.
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parentheses 23 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

They did share that it can be used as a display for your mac. It sounded like you're limited to 1 screen (i'm guessing because of bandwidth limitations; also guessing that upgraded macbooks may have the necessary hardware to stream more pixels)
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comment_ran 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Taking a positive sign because now the consumers expectations are high and if they not deliver what they promised here then they're gonna have a huge trouble so as a consumer it would be nice if the consumer can provide some our expectations to say how to show our interest and kind of motivate them to build a better product.
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soneca 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Yes, they showcased that you just have to take a look at a Mac screen and the glasses become the display.
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pests 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

They mentioned the device can detect when you are using your Mac and show the desktop as an app in your headset. So yes that will be possible as well as just using normal bluetooth mice and keyboards.
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ph 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

They explicitly said in the keynote, that you can bring up the screen of your Mac as a virtual display. So it looks like you can use this to work with your Mac.
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hartator 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

23M for both eyes doesn't seem that far off from Meta Quest 2 Pro at 9.3M (2,160 x 2,160 x 2).
And Meta Quest 2 Pro is one year old at $999.

zimpenfish 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

23M for both eyes doesn't seem that far off from [...] 9.3M
It's almost 2.5x the pixels [edit: was ~~resolution~~ which is incorrect]. How is that "not far off"? It's more pixels per eye than the MQ2P has for both!

hartator 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

MQ2P has super blurry texts though. It's hard to take think 50-60% bump up the resolution will be enough.
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makomk 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

2.5x the pixels is more like 1.5x the resolution in terms of the smallest features that can be seen - remmber that displays are two-dimensional and in order to halve the width of the smallest discernable detail like say a line you need to double the pixels in both directions for a total of four times as many pixels. On the other hand, it is going to be close to 2.5x the rendering cost.
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zimpenfish 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Ta, edited my post to correct it to pixels instead of resolution.
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miiiiiike 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It looks neat.
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pjerem 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

did they talk about using it as a display for a Mac?
Yes ! In 4k

Pxtl 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The device seems amazing, it's just... not really Apple, that's all.
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dev_tty01 8 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Hmmm, I don't get that. Apple builds personal computers. That has been there mission from day one. This is easily the most personal computer they have ever created. I don't see how it could be more Apple.
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the_watcher 1 day ago | prev | next [–]

It would very obviously be useful for work if you can actually get high res, effectively unlimited monitor space. Maybe not for everyone, but people already spend $3500+ on monitor setups somewhat regularly (and employers definitely do this). Apple themselves sell a single monitor that costs $2300 when fully spec'd out (5k, but the point is that they know what people spend on monitors). I can't figure out why that wasn't the highlight of the demo, since that's just very clearly the easiest way to sell a $3500 device with this specific set of features.
The recording video of a kid's birthday was one of the most ridiculous thing's I've ever seen. I'd maybe record my kid with something like this every once in a while, but I certainly wouldn't be wearing ski goggles while he blows out candles.

coryfklein 1 day ago | parent | next [–]

This "unlimited monitor space" is a complete non-selling point for me.
Being a wealthy software engineer, my monitor space is not bottlenecked by my budget or desk space, but by my literal neck. Constantly rotating my head back and forth from one monitor to another is, quite literally, a pain.

For me the sweet spot is a single curved monitor right in front of me. If I need more "desktop space" I add another Space with Mission Control. And with keyboard shortcuts I can move between Spaces nearly as fast as I can rotate my head around.

So what am I going to do with a VR headset if I ever got one? Put the active app straight in front of me just like I do with my normal monitor. I'm not going to put my terminal at some odd angle 25° above my head and crane my head back when I want to run a command in it. I won't put the Weather app 90° to my right, obscuring what is currently a nice picture window looking out on my yard.

For me, VR needs that "killer app" to justify the high pricing and inconvenience of use, and I just don't see one yet. I don't expect one any time soon either; if VR was going to get a killer app, it would have shown up by now.

derefr 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

You sound like someone who has a very stable and spacious office. Have you considered that "having more desk space than there is space in the room" is the killer app for many (wealthy!) people who either 1. travel a lot, or 2. live in countries like Hong Kong where space is at a premium?
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btown 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The travel point is a legitimate one. This is less a device to look at code, and more a device to look at people and presentations. Practically every Fortune 500 executive will have one of these because they'll be able to immerse themselves while jetting around the world - neither limited to a laptop screen, nor to a cartoon environment where people don't have legs, but in a truly effective war room that interleaves live video conversations, presentations, dashboards/visualizations, and their physical travel companions.
Or, at least, they'll want the ability to brag to their peers that they can do these things! It's the Apple playbook, and it will create a tremendous amount of envy. If it's at a price that's profitable, it can sustainably anchor their reputation even if it never goes mainstream.

maybelsyrup 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Fortune 500 executive
they'll be able to immerse themselves while jetting around the world

a truly effective war room that interleaves live video conversations, presentations, dashboards/visualizations, and their physical travel companions

This is the world we make, and it's for them!

eru 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

It's yet another way for executives to torture themselves. Don't envy them.
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toyg 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

F500 executives tend to have people who will show these presentations on big screens, in rooms they can just stroll into (and out of). And they don't want to strap anything to their face, particularly something that might (horror!) upset their carefully-placed hair.
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saiya-jin 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah that comment is desperately out of touch with reality. I presume the person never actually met/dealt with these folks, for them it would be humiliating to wear it and to be seen wearing it, Apple badge or not doesn't matter. For those levels, carrying >100k watches and having plastic ski goggles on your head? Forget it, anywhere where others can see them. Maybe this mindset changes in decade or two, but not earlier.
Generally on the topic, its rather underwhelming release of device that is searching for its market (while usual Apple echo chamber here on HN sees it as second coming of Jesus). No wonder they scrapped the release few times in the past, it must have been properly underwhelming when compared to competition. And pathetic 2h battery life at best? That makes it useless for any longer flight (I am sure you can plug powerbank and continue but it will look pretty bad and annoying as hell).

I am sure Apple will tune software to perfection, but I can't see it being enough, market is tiny considering the investment, well saturated and from what I heard rather shrinking. But I hope they will push the market in some good direction long term with their creative approach, so we all can benefit eventually.

dfjklseldklk 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

You could have described BlackBerry in similar terms pre 2008
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ethbr0 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The difference is that Blackberry let you do something you couldn't before.
Which is this entire thread -- what can you do with AR that you couldn't before?

heatmiser 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

what can you do with AR that you couldn't before?
Its my belief we are about to find out in the next 3-5 years.

ethbr0 1 hour ago | root | parent | next [–]

The only compelling answer I can think of is "everything we already do now, only untethered by physical location."
Which is less about polish and more about deployment volume and/or standards interoperability.

derefr 11 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

My dude, that's what they have when they actually arrive at their destination. We're talking about what they do on the plane, or in their hotel room.
Or, perhaps easier to picture, when they're on vacation on a beach in Tahiti. They could be chauffered 20 minutes back into town to a "secure workspace" in order to have a five-minute call where someone back at their HQ [where it's the middle of the night] briefs them on a screen... or they could go into their cabana, strap this thing on, have the five minute meeting right then and there, and then go back to sipping Mai-Tais.

Executives already make this choice, this way, right now. This choice is the reason that the iPad Pro has traditionally had better "stuff" for teleconferencing than the MBP does: the iPad Pro is — or was — the thing Apple most clearly marketed to executives. Right now, executives take out the iPad Pro to take that quick cabana video-call.

For this use-case, the Apple Vision is just a one-up to everything the iPad Pro is already allowing them to do. It's more secure (nobody can watch the presentation over their shoulder); it gives the presenter back at HQ more visual field to work with to make their point; it's more discreet in how it presents them in video calls (i.e. if they're calling in while laying naked on a massage table, that won't be reflected in their 3D-model recreation); etc.

More realistically, though, ignore the F500 CEOs. I have a feeling that I know exactly who this was built for — and it's not them. Apple engineers aren't any more in love with the idea of serving the needs of executives than anyone else is. They throw them a bone now and then, but they have other things in mind when building the core of each product.

Now picture this: you're an Apple hardware engineer who wants to work remotely, but you were forced to work-from-office due to not just the secrecy around the Apple Vision project you're on, but also the collaboration benefits. (It's currently basically impossible to review 3D models for "feel" on a laptop; you need either a big bulky 3D TV, or some other company's big bulky HMD setup. Neither of which travels well.) But your dream? Your dream is that you can figure out a way to do everything you're currently "doing better" by being in the office — reviewing and collaborating on 3D models of the new hardware, for one important thing — while on vacation in Thailand, sitting in your rented condo, on the couch. No need to also be paying for time at a coworking space (or to even be in a town large enough to have those); the HMD is the coworking space. As long as you have wi-fi, you can do everything the engineers back at Apple HQ can do.

rchaud 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

This sounds a lot like the use cases stated for the office metaverse thing FB was pushing that failed to materialize.
The last thing executives want is a "more immersive" PowerPoint or Zoom call. It's either Zoom or in-person with all the trimmings, e.g. nice dinner, round of golf.

bryanrasmussen 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

This sounds a lot like the use cases stated for the office metaverse thing FB was pushing that failed to materialize.
Apple might be a company that is better at implementing hardware and platforms than other companies, especially Facebook.

kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The problem is a lack of real use case and input methods. I see none of those solved by apple.
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l33tman 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The "look at the search bar and speak" was pretty cool even if it's simple. Eyetracking is not available on most other VR headsets yet
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aarkling 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Practically every Fortune 500 executive will have one of these
Even if that's true, that's only like ~50k people lol.

fragmede 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I mean if every single one of them buy only one of them, that's only $175 million dollars right there. Totally not worth it for Apple to bother even trying
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IOT_Apprentice 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Apple's first year sales of their watch was a failure with 10 million units sold instead of the projected 40 million. Apple now has 34% of global market share. Now remember Steve Ballmer laughing at it.
It is not the 1st generation of most of their products, but the follow ons.

I'll wait to see what the first months of hands on reviews and perhaps a personal demo. How heavy is that headset and how long is the battery life (I thought I saw 2 hours)?

Time will tell.

lynx23 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Good example. When the 1st gen watch came out, I knew I wanted to have one, but I also kind of knew I wouldn't want the first generation. Lucky me, because I had quite some GAS at that time, the 1st and 2nd gen watches were never really easily available where I am located. Then, I conveniently forgot about the desire to own one. For years. I now have my first watch, 7th gen, and love it. Well, it is more like with a cute pet. You love it, and you learn to love its quirks. So even after 7 generations, the software is still not flawless, nor are the sensors. This is the first thing I would be worried about, if I had any inclination to use a headset: How distracting are the bugs they definitely will have? Since I totally stopped to install anything below iOS #.2 I wonder how "fun" it is going to be to use this product once it comes out :-) I have no trust left in their QA, shipment date is more important then user experience... :-(
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jval43 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Apple only truly started competing against Garmin recently. Improved running metrics, low power mode, better battery (Ultra) etc only showed up recently while Garmin and others had them for years. Even GPS wasn't on the first iteration.
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iamacyborg 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I’m still unsure that they’re any sort of competition for Garmin and co yet.
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saiya-jin 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

They are not (yet), but target group doesn't care about raw stats, or price/performance ratios. But I love them, because they will push Garmin making even better watches, so everybody wins.
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iamacyborg 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah it's a win/win for users I think. I just upgraded to the Fenix 7 Pro range and it's very nice.
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cogogo 15 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not sure how you can say they are not competing. Anecdata but I considered a garmin vs apple watch. Biggest driver was cellular to call either my wife or 911 when kitesurfing alone (yeah I know I just shouldn’t do it) so chose the apple watch 3 when it came out. Now have an ultra and that’s really starting to catch up with some of the other features I wanted. Seen several people in the kiting community pick apple vs garmin and vice versa for a myriad of reasons.
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Apocryphon 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The Apple Watch has truly succeeded in the smartwatch space, but is the smartwatch space even worth a damn yet? Or is it perpetually waiting for the opportunity to monetize users’ health data and other tracked biometrics, for it to really be profitable.
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2muchcoffeeman 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Maybe this “space” thinking is wrong. Don’t worry about the “smart watch space”. Worry about making a product that will make a bucket load of cash. Does it matter if the sector is worth much overall when you rake it a butt load of money for yourself?
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Apocryphon 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

That’s what I’m getting at. Is the smartwatch market in general really worth all that much money?
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bryanrasmussen 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-health/digital-...
Revenue in the Smartwatches segment is projected to reach US$44.91bn in 2023.

Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 8.26%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$61.69bn by 2027.

usrusr 17 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

By that measure, the iPhone is a total failure, together with the smartphone market it created. It pales to insignificance compared to the market for food! And don't even think of looking at the market for shelter, then it's hardly even a joke, why bother. Or maybe that that's not really a meaningful angle of looking at markets?
What exactly is the "all that money" you talk about anyways? If Apple's watch division was a separate entity on the stock market and they had inexplicably high valuation I might enthusiastically agree with you, but it's not.

NavinF 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Anecdotally, the Apple Watch is very popular in the bay area. I'd be very suspicious of any claim that Apple didn't make boatloads of money selling it
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pfannkuchen 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Neither butts nor boats are all that large though. Even if Apple has made both boat loads and butt loads of money, we would need to be talking about gigabutts or kiloboats to get anywhere meaningful.
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swexbe 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Maybe it's a butt full of prepaid debit cards?
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agentgumshoe 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It is while people still have too much money to spend.
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kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

But the watch has a real use case and is in the price category that people can actually afford it.
But you are right, time will tell.

kamaal 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

All of these depend on the individual. I've never had a wrist watch since I finished college(used for timekeeping in exams). Mostly because never needed it. Mobile phones were out by then, and you had a watch and much more in it. Its just that use case for me died out. I'm also into swimming, and other exercises(kettlebell), but the fitness features don't seem to be attractive to me either.
I didn't find the steps tracker etc wearables attractive either. It felt most people wearing them were interested in measuring and reporting things, than doing the actual workout.

But I just looked up now and the Wikipedia page for Apple watch says they sold more than 100 million units so far. And now have a fairly large portion of market for watches world wide.

Different people have different use cases, likes and dislikes. And there's also the additional public mood factor which is very hard to measure and understand. Based on that this product could be a huge success.

kaba0 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Of course all of this depends on an individual. But apple is a for profit company that spent a tremendous amount of money on the R&D of this device, and I don’t see a good return of investment here, as not many people need it, let alone can afford it.
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saiya-jin 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Agree 100%, most folks I know have Apple watches to appear sportive, because its such a cool crowd to be in currently. The guys actually doing some proper trainings almost never have them, including me. There is also category of pros/semi-pros/hardcore amateurs where it actually makes sense to use some form of it(but I never saw pros training ie in Chamonix to wear Apple brand for that, and those folks all have chest straps), by measuring any small deviations, progress etc.
For me, it actually distracts me from workouts and activities. I used my wife's Fenix 6 pro twice for running to get the idea how long my usual trail run in the forest is, and how much elevation I gain/lose. What I estimated from my feeling was anyway 95% correct (although I don't think watches measure small variations of natural terrain very precisely). But it was distracting, looking at heartbeat you subconsciously want to push/keep yourself in some perf bracket (ie just below or above anaerobic threshold for me). Vibration after each km (probably can be turned off though).

After that measurement, running again without them was so liberating, and had this nice feeling of extra freedom in the nature, just me and the trail. I feel very well when I cross anaerobic threshold, perform above it or being close to it, don't need gizmo to tell me so.

DrBenCarson 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Have you considered this is a beta product for the cheaper mass market versions coming in 1-2 years?
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noam_compsci 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I don’t think F500 execs spend as much time looking at monitors and slides as you may think. Also people travel to see them, so face to face is unlikely to be a benefit to them.
Also, it’s a huge expensive gadget in a time of austerity. If your 100+ execs get one of these, it won’t look good to shareholders IMO.

piva00 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

US$ 3.5k per executive is less than what is spent on their secretaries per month, it's absolutely doable even more as it becomes tax-deductible opex.
US$ 350.000 is nothing if your company has 100+ executives, let's be realistic.

shubb 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

How well do that work on planes? People who tested quest on planes found that the motion of the plane interfered and made it unusable.
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zeroonetwothree 13 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I guess then sales of 5,000 of these are guaranteed. Somehow that’s a bit lower than I would guess apple hopes for.
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kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

So.. a whopping low 1000s devices will sold as per this business plan?
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deafpolygon 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

They will sell much, much more than this. All the wannabe startups and bigwig CEOs will line up to buy this, even if they can't afford it. All that matters is the image.
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l33tman 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

But I'm genuinely curious, why would the bigwig CEOs buy this if they didn't buy the Quest 2 or other previous headsets that could do the same things? You could do the cinema and virtual desktop and zoom calls with the Quest. Why is the market much larger for the Apple headset compared to the others? Except for the initial hype of "I need this new apple device" I mean.
The other headset manufacturers have been searching for the killer apps for years, both in gaming and pro usages, both with AR and VR. I didn't see anything in the Apple presentation that was new. It seemed contrived, like this woman who accidentally had the big headset on her head while she was packing a bag and therefore could take a call that hovers in the air. I just don't buy that (and neither does the various YT influencers I've seen reviewing the Vision Pro).

JCharante 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Existing VR headsets are too low res to work on text based content. This new product is a 4k screen in each eye
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RugnirViking 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Existing VR headsets have 4k in each eye? It's considered the minimum iirc
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cultofmetatron 5 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

what? I have a occulus quest. it definitly does NOT have 4k per eye. I've actually tried to use it for a multi monitor VR and the resolution was too slow and latency too high to be workable.
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yurisalazar 13 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

More than 4k actually if you square 23m pixels is 4795x4795
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MikusR 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Less than 4k actually. You need to divide that 23m with 2.
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bzzzt 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

why would the bigwig CEOs buy this Because the Apple device looks like a desirable item instead of just a functional toy. It's the wealth signalling and image that count.
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briandear 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Because Quest 2 doesn’t “do the same things.” You’re acting like Vision Pro is just another version of Quest. It’s not even in the same time zone. It’s like saying “why does anyone need iPhone when a Palm Pilot is perfectly fine?”
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ytpete 6 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

What are the things Vision Pro can do that Quest cannot though? Genuinely curious as I don't know much about the Quest - and others above are saying it already supports floating virtual desktops/windows and video conferencing.
Quest doesn't broadcast your eyeballs onto a front screen obviously, but is that the only major feature difference? If not what other things are new capabilities?

TexanFeller 3 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

What are the things Vision Pro can do that Quest cannot though?
Quest's resolution and optics are not good enough to make text legible unless it's blown up to billboard(Ok maybe just poster) sizes. The iGlasses may be the first headset with adequate resolution to make text comfortable to read, making it possible to use for work.

nasmorn 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Any business that has a CEO can afford this.
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kaba0 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Which would still make it a huge loss for apple.
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deafpolygon 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

And all the diehard mac fans, YouTubers and such that will be talking it up for the next 2-3 years, building up the hype train, until Apple drops a $400 version for consumers.
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agentgumshoe 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Nah, it'll mess up their hair.
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jamesrcole 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

This is less a device to look at code
why though?

atchoo 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Like the OP, I found I was more efficient/comfortable on a single screen compared to the 3 or 4 I have had at one point. Now in my 40s, I find myself more comfortable on a 13" laptop compared to a 34" screen. It's just easier to concentrate.
IMHO ideal computer use is to move things in front of your eyes instead of moving your eyes/head. Your area of focus is quite small with almost no value to filling your peripheral vision.

samplatt 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

39 here, but I really cannot imagine ever leaving my triple-screen tie-fighter-style setup, unless it was for an unlimited number of unlimited-resolution screens.
If I could have one screen per application and surround myself in a galaxy of windows, I definitely would.

Would I look at them all on a regular basis? Of course not. 80% of them I would only look at once every hour or so.

daveFNbuck 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

39 here too, and not turning my neck all the time to look at multiple monitors anymore has helped save me a lot of pain.
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tempnow987 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm a fan of two monitors, my main horizontal (though I got one with much more vertical resolution than most 4:3), and one in portrait somewhat to the side.
So many big wins. I can do a zoom screen share on my main window and have notes, private stuff on the side window, I can read documents that often are vertically formatted on the side window.

I do a fair bit of comparing type work where I need a reference index doc on the side, then I got through the individual docs for tieback on the main.

It's game changing to have multiple monitors and particularly have one portrait and one vertical.

cjohnson318 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I hear you, I'm 38. I've been using a 14-in screen for the last ten years. Clients will ask why I don't use more monitors, but I can really only focus on one thing at a time, and my field of vision isn't that big. If I need to look at another screen, I just three-finger swipe.
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shard 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Maybe your eyes are better than mine, but I have a real hard time working on a 13" screen. Trying to do Excel work on a tiny screen drives me up the wall. Either I'm sitting too close squinting at tiny text, or have to enlarge everything and fall into scrolling hell. With my 27" monitor I can enlarge the text and still have lots of screen real estate to do my work.
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cjohnson318 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Well, it works for me right now... but that will surely change. I'll just make smaller and smaller functions until I need to get a bigger screen, haha.
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jimmySixDOF 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Random insert point, but all this 1:1 comparison to the existing extra monitor concept of operation is emblematic of resistance to XR in general. I see it as trying to shoe horn today's use cases as a template for something that is literally a phase change of capability -- much like how the first automobiles were framed by the lense of horseless carriages.
3D in 3D is different. And when you put 2D screens into a 3D digital space viewed as embodied in 3D XR you still get affordances you didn't have before. Sure you need to reimagine and rewrite from the ground up these long established and stable 2D apps, but there are places where real gains are there to harvest.

moron4hire 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Exactly. Seeing people talk about "unlimited number of monitors in VR" is kind of frustrating. Monitors are containers for apps, portals into your digital desktop. You don't need monitors in VR. The monitor is a skeuomorphism! Just put app windows wherever, unbounded by monitors.
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_trampeltier 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The problem is wide monitors. Nobody need really wider monitors for work. Mostly you want to have more vertical space.On work I have a 32" monitor, at home even a 43" monitor. The cool thing is the vertical space. 16:9 is bs for work. A large 4:3 would be much better choice today.
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timwaagh 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That's so different from here. I'm 35 and when we finally got a large size TV last year I never went back to the small screen. Well except when I have to.
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kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

You watch a TV from quite far ahead. Even a huge TV might not be much bigger than a normal laptop in your lap, let alone a single big monitor.
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scarface_74 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

My wife and I literally live out of 4 suitcases. We “nomad” 7 months out of the year and when we are “home” for five months, we still can’t accumulate anything that we can’t take with us since our condotel [1] unit that we own gets rented out when we aren’t there.
But I still have plenty of screen real estate that I can set out at my desk at home or in a hotel room between my 16 inch MacBook, my 17 inch USB powered/USB video portable external display and my iPad as a third monitor.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condo_hotel

NBJack 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The resolution might be sufficient, but all of my attempts across quite a few VR headsets has been sad when it comes to text. The crispness you really need is possible on static glasses (i.e. Nreal Air), but all of the anti aliasing on projected textures has often made long term work in VR hard for me.
But the displays are pretty high res. Guess we'll see.

swiftcoder 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Crisp text is also Apple's bread-and-butter. They've been typography nerds since the 80s, I've long assumed that their headset is this late to the game because they needed display technology to catch up to text rendering in VR
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bored_itworker 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

If you can afford a USD$3500 headset and live in HK, you are already wealthy and have a large apartment. Avg income here is around $2000/mo.
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tragicfootball 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Hongkonger here. Lot of people can spend USD$3500 for a watch, gadget, or computer, AND still live in 200-300sqft apartments in HK. Doesn't make them "wealthy".
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taeric 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don't know any world where spending that much in gadgets isn't for the wealthy. Yes, there are richer people out there. That is still a lot of money.
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Rufbdbskrufb473 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

It's really not. Growing up, I had plenty of classmates who spent more than that on superficial car modifications while working a minimum wage job and whose family was on food stamps.
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taeric 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

In one shot? That feels wrong. And is a poverty trap. :(
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throwaway049 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Lots of people on modest incomes buy gadgets on credit.
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taeric 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Having a 3k+ credit limit isn't that common, is it? And I don't know any consideration of the topic that doesn't treat credit cards as a problem/bad idea. Especially at that level.
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Al-Khwarizmi 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Maybe cultural difference issue, but your logic sounds odd to me.
Surely with $2000/mo income (which you describe as average for HK) one can afford an occassional one-time purchase of $3500, after some saving (or, although I wouldn't personally do this, with a loan).

Or even more than that: my country has a similar average income, and average people spend 20K on a car without a second thought. And no, it's not that the car is needed as opposed to the headset, because the need of going from A to B can be satisfied by a 5K second-hand car, no one actually needs a new one.

dullcrisp 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It’s likely the price of one of these will drop faster than land in Hong Kong though.
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worldsayshi 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yeah, getting a more flexible work environment seems like the only non-gimmicky selling point here. But there are much cheaper and lighter devices for that. Like NReal Air. (Haven't tried it but reviewers seem fairly happy)
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matt-attack 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I feel like an 13" MacBook Air is the ultimate in flexible work environments. Incredibly light, powerful, goes anywhere, long lasting battery. Perhaps I'm just a philistine and haven't yet gotten a taste of the new world yet...
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wmil 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Plenty of software and workflows chew up a lot of screen real estate. 13" isn't enough for how a lot of people like to work.
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chasd00 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I make it a point to do all my work on a laptop like this. That way, I’m 100% productive anywhere like in a hotel for example. I never miss giant external monitors because I don’t have any.
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eklitzke 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Alternatively, you're 50% productive everywhere.
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WildGreenLeave 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I have a 13" Macbook Air, try to travel as much as possible. At home I have a single 27" 4k screen. Both at home and remote I work with just one screen so I'm able to keep my workflow exactly the same. Honestly, I think my productivity on my 13" does drop somewhat, but nowhere near the 50%. I would say I lose 10% of my productivity. For me that 10% is totally worth it to be able to work remotely and travel more.
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ddingus 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Might not.
I have gone both ways several times.

Being able to group apps and then being them to focus on the single display works fantastic!

I took the time to get seriously productive in either case. The difference was not a big deal.

Chances are the OP rocks it as hard as they can. I was able to.

And being mobile these days, being able to work on an Air is a real plus!

fomine3 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Nreal Air is good for resolution but bad for view angle. It's not for monitor alternative use.
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RajT88 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Thank you. I was hoping for some testimonial on this use case, since the price and features are pretty attractive for the air.
I will now wait for a future revision.

chadrs 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

For working, it's not as good as an actual monitor but much easier to travel with. Really shines for games/movies though.
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dangwhy 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That seems like such a narrow subset.
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Retric 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

How about everyone taking a long flight or just staying at a hotel etc?
That IMO is where VR glasses are actually a pretty good fit. Carry lightweight laptop through the airport and still get to use a 32” monitor on the go. Granted the current hardware not exactly ideal, but it’s close enough to be a reasonable option.

usrusr 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Don't underestimate the unwieldy shape of these headsets, they aren't very bag-friendly. The Apple design seems to do some compromises to decrease bulk but it still won't nicely slip between other stuff. Portable displays on the other hand, they are wildly underappreciated because so many still haven't the slightest idea that product category exists. They offer a very favorable bulk/utility trade-off and allow day on day scaling between the extremes of the smallest laptop you can find and what could be considered a mobile workstation.
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Retric 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

These devices are currently bulky, but you can easily but them and a a bunch of other stuff into an under seat airline bag. The weight and volume is annoying but not a dealbreaker.
Also, I think we can all agree the form factor is likely to improve over time. Portable displays meanwhile have inherent limitations in use ie an airline seat.

qup 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not only swiveling your head around, but doing it with a couple pounds strapped to it. People's necks are going to be swole.
That being said, I've always wanted a wearable monitor so I can lay in bed (or stand, or lay in my hammock, or just have some variety). The chair is bad, and I've spent way too many years (literally) in it. I need options.

I'm a terminal nerd, though, so I don't care too much about all the 4k etc.

pclmulqdq 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The ops folks at a company I used to work for tried a VR workspace to put all of their graphs and terminals in a big sphere around you. With 2k screens, the text got too pixelated to read very quickly. 4k should improve that somewhat, but I'm not sure it will be enough for a great text-based workflow.
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giobox 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Even at 4k per eye, if you imagine a screen at a typical viewing distance, the "dot pitch" of the display is going to just be massively less than a good quality high end monitor sitting on your desk.
We've been waiting like 10 years for that to change since Oculus Dev kit days, and its still not solved today. Advances in pixel density in this space have been incredibly slow.

I think it could be a very long time before a headset can simulate a really great display well enough for me, but other's mileage may vary.

Even with "foveated rendering" the peak dotpitch (the highest pixel density it can acomplish) simply isn't going to be good enough for me - it can't be any sharper than the dot pitch of the panel in front of the eye.

A 5k iMac has 14.7 million pixels - the pixel density needed to do this as well as a "real" display in VR could be pretty massive.

trogdor 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I agree completely. A few months ago, I purchased a Meta Quest Pro. Relative to the Quest 2, the Pro’s resolution blew me away. And it’s still not even close to usable for real work on virtual monitors.
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alanwreath 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

This, totally. I’m interested to see how this compares with the Varjo offerings wrt foveated rendering.
Reading text in VR is generally a horrible experience, and “4K per eye” does not equal even a single 4K screen.

That said I would be happy with 8 1080p screens.

mkozlows 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

It's not 4K, though. They're not giving a lot of information, but "23M pixels" for two eyes is 11.5M pixels per eye. 4K is 8.2M, so this is 40% more pixels than 4K.
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giobox 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

11.5m per eye is still far short of what would be needed to approximate pixel pitch of many of Apple's "retina displays" at typical desk viewing distance display well, FWIW. This a really hard problem with tech we have today.
Whether its 8m or 11m or even 15m pixels isn't the point with regards to using it to replace desktop monitors - the point is the necessary density to compete with excellent real life physical displays is really high.

Your VR monitor only ever really uses a subset of the total pixel count - it still has to spend many of those pixels to render the room around the display(s) too.

IOT_Apprentice 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The display system boasts an impressive resolution, with 23 million pixels spread across two panels, surpassing the pixel count of a typical 4K TV for each eye.
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giobox 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Thats still enormously less than the dot pitch of a good 4/5/6k monitor in meatspace/real life today - remember, a virtual monitor only ever uses a subset of the total pixels in a VR headset, which is why the pixel count has to be sky high to compete with real life.
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pclmulqdq 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yeah, with VR headsets you generally only get to count the pixels for each eye since parallax vision means that you only have that many degrees of freedom to produce a color.
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derefr 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Was this before the advent of VR headsets that do eye-tracking + foveated rendering? With the tech as it is these days, you're not looking at a rectangle of equally spaced little dots; almost all of "the pixels" are right in front of your pupil, showing you in detail whatever your pupil is trying to focus on.
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pclmulqdq 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

For what it's worth, this was with an HTC Vive of some kind. However, the screen pixel densities don't change when you do foveated rendering, it's more of a performance trick - the GPU focuses most of its compute power on what you are looking at.
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derefr 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

the screen pixel densities don't change when you do foveated rendering
That's the limited kind of foveated rendering, yes.

Apple has a system of lenses on a gimbal inside this thing. Which is precisely what's required to do the (so-far hypothetical) "full" kind of foveated rendering — where you bend the light coming in from a regular-grid-of-pixels panel, to "pull in" 90% of the panel's pixels to where your pupil is, while "stretching out" the last 10% to fill your peripheral vision. Which gives you, perceptually, an irregular grid of pixels, where pixels close to the edge of the screen are very large, while pixels in the center of the screen are very small.

The downside to this technique is that, given the mechanical nature of "lenses on a gimbal", they would take a moment to respond to eye-tracking, so you wouldn't be able to immediately resolve full textual detail right away after quickly moving your eyes. Everything would first re-paint just with "virtual" foveated rendering from the eye-tracking update; then gradually re-paint a few hundred more frames in the time it takes the gimbal to get the center of the lens to where your pupil now is.

(Alternately, given that they mentioned that the pixels here are 1/8th the size in each dimension, they could have actually created a panel that is dense with tiny pixels in the center, and then sparse with fatter pixels around the edges. They did mention that the panel is "custom Apple silicon", after all. If they did this, they wouldn't have to move the lens, nor even the panel; they could just use a DLP mirror-array to re-orient the light of the chip to your eye, where the system-of-lenses exists to correct for the spherical aberration due to the reflected rays not coming in parallel to one-another.)

I'm not sure whether Apple have actually done this, mind you. I'm guessing they actually haven't, since if they had, they'd totally have bragged about it.

pclmulqdq 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I'm guessing from this comment that you may not know much about optics or building hardware. Both of the solutions you have proposed here are incredibly bulky today, and would not fit in that form-factor.

The custom micro‑OLED display system features 23 million pixels, delivering stunning resolution and colors. And a specially designed three‑element lens creates the feeling of a display that’s everywhere you look

They have advertised that there are 3 lenses per eye, which is about enough to magnify the screens and make them have a circular profile while correcting most distortion. That's it - no mention of gimbals or anything optically crazy.

trevyn 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple has a system of lenses on a gimbal inside this thing.
Do you have a source for this?

gorbypark 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I'm thinking there is confusion with the system used to set the PD (distance between eyes). Of course there are not many details, but it does look like there's a motorized system to move the optics and screens outwards to match the PD of the user.
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elif 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I think the key to that would be a design of interface which is a step beyond "a sphere of virtual monitors" where zooming was not just magnifying but rather a nuanced and responsive reallocation of both visual space and contextual information relevant to the specific domain.
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ehnto 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Therein lies another problem with workspace VR, you still need a keyboard if you are doing any meaningful typing. So you still need a desk, or some kind of ergonomic platform for a lounge chair.
It is a great alternative for gaming in that sense however. Being able to game and be standing up and moving is great.

gpm 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

With screens detached from the input device, it should be perfectly possible to make a good keyboard + trackpad combo for use on your lap, on just about any chair/bed/beach.
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jnwatson 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

4k is awesome for a terminal nerd.
The first time I used a 50 inch 4K screen in full screen tmux/vim, I realized this is the correct way to program.

kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

With such a big terminal screen you might even recreate what an 720p screen can, with 256 colors!
I never really understood why we like to hack character arrays into pixels, when.. we can just manipulate the pixels themselves? I mean, I like and actually prefer the cli interface of many programs, but can’t ever imagine replacing a good IDE with vim.

qup 6 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

vim is a good IDE, so I'm not sure what you mean.
I'm not mad about your IDE or anything. I've used some that I could like okay, with vim keystrokes. But vim lives where I live, in the terminal. I can't run your IDE in my environment. I can run vim anywhere.

ehnto 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I use a 32" QHD for a more limited but similar effect. 32" 4k and the text was too small and thus the extra resolution just complicated everything but 32"QHD and a tiling window manager is awesome, I don't use a second monitor anymore after years of doing so.
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aarkling 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

That's only cause UI scaling sucks on Windows and linux. On MacOS, a 4k monitor works great.
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denysonique 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Wayland implements the exact same supersampling based scaling that macOS has, Wayland scaling is even better performing than macOS'
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ehnto 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I am probably an edge case as I use a tiling WM on linux, there is little UI to be scaled. The only metric I am worried about is max text at my personally readable size. I could change the font sizes on a 4k monitor, but websites are the only non-text UI I interact with and they don't care about your OS settings. Zooming is hit or miss on if it breaks the layout or not. I don't doubt MacOS would be better in general, but for me a QHD 32" is plug and play, most websites work well and no settings faff or zooming.
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karolist 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

it doesn't work great, elements are comically too big on 32" 4K or just too big on 27" 4K, you need to scale it to 1080p but then it's too small. MacOS is made for 5K 27" monitors for high DPI (Retina) resolutions or non-high DPI 27" 2560x1440. The only high-DPI 4K screen that works great OOB is the 21.5" 4K Apple display.

denysonique 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

on macOS there is SwitchResX and BetterDisplay where you can choose custom scaling options.
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olyjohn 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Too bad MacOS looks like dog shit on a lot of regular-ass monitors.
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imbnwa 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

So many apps on Windows, you might get the latest font rendering stack, you might get the old one, even in Windows' own settings UI
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jbc1 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not sure what I'd do at 32" but with a 27" 4K I run it scaled as 1080. Everything is sized how I would expect but text is just much crisper.
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seanp2k2 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

32" 4K feels like the sweet spot now, 32" 8K would be a good future upgrade, but we need DisplayPort and HDMI to catch up. 120hz is very nice for desktop usage, as is HDR. Now that my main rig is a 55" 4K 120hz HDR OLED, most other monitors look bad. 14" is still the best size MBP, as sitting closer with the high PPI screen works well to have text take up about the same amount of my FOV. 27" feels small, esp at 16:9. 16:10 was awesome and I'm glad that it and 4:3 are coming back. 16:9 was made for watching movies. 16:10 allows 16:19 content to fit with a menu bar + browser top bar + bottom bar, or just gives extra vertical space. Those ultrawide monitors, especially the curved ones, are just gimmicky. Just give me a gigantic 16:10 or 4:3 rectangle, tyvm.
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zmmmmm 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Aren't you a case in point then?

the sweet spot is a single curved monitor right in front of me

So you can have that. Exactly the right monitor size, curvature, location - in every room of the house, on the train, at work, in the cafe etc. People with ergonomic challenges are, I would have thought, a perfect market for this.

spurgu 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yup, this is the reason why I bought an Oculus Quest 2, to use Immersed[0]. The idea to have a huge multi-monitor setup that I could use on the go - carrying it in my backpack - felt really appealing[1].
With the pandemic I didn't really end up needing it that much, plus I had some lag issues which I never bothered solving (by buying a separate wifi dongle) so my usage never really took off, but the idea was solid.

The Oculus headset is a bit heavy/sweaty. Not a dealbreaker per se but with something lighter I could definitely see myself giving it another go.

[0] https://immersed.com/

[1] I work on a single 13" laptop, for portability. I like the setup but I do see the benefit of having large screens. It's just that I can't really move them from one place to another so I'd feel crippled on the road.

zmmmmm 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yes I use Immersed regularly, commonly for a couple of hours each day with a Quest Pro. It's pretty good and quite usable. Definitely resolution is one area where improvement would be huge. It's ok currently but I need the monitors very large which creates its own issues (you get to the point where you need to turn your head to read across the screen and realise it's an ergonomic nightmare).
I enjoy it for an hour or two as a nice change, but I couldn't work there all day.

wtetzner 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I think the problem is that the headset still seems too inconvenient to use in all of those locations.
I think this stuff will make more sense when these are the same form factor as a normal pair of glasses.

zmmmmm 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

yeah, the friction is key. This is a step forward, I'm sure it'll be amazing that you can just literally put it on and look at your laptop and it pops up as a big screen in front of you. But I think the strap is a barrier. Like you say, glasses form factor is so much better than "strapping" it onto your face. It's rumored Apple has that in its sights for a future model.
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dumbfounder 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

No one will create the killer app because they won't have enough people to buy it. They aren't going to sell 100 million of these things. They will sell 1 million to prosumers. But you can't make a killer high-end game on a completely new system with completely new features with such a limited market, they would need to sell it everyone to make money. That's the real problem with AR/VR. You need critical mass in the number of users to justify people building mass-market appeal games and apps. The goggles need to not have a cord, be 1/3 as heavy, and 1/4 the price, and then we will get mass adoption. My gut says we are 3 generations away. But it will happen.
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terafo 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yes, they are going to sell 1 million. In this generation. Next generation will have non pro model. You can sell ten millions of that. It is not going to kill phones, but it will absolutely slaughter laptops. This generation is basically just devkits.
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SkyPuncher 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don't think it's hit people (including me) that this is not just a headset. It's a full-blown computer.
You can take just the device and a keyboard with you to work anywhere.

bushbaba 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yep. This is huge for those who travel. It’s huge for those who do cad work. And the power available in such a small form factor really opens the door to previously impossible tasks
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olyjohn 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It seems awfully convenient that the laptop folds down nice and flat. It takes up very little space. Headset like this is still kinda big to carry around with you... Maybe just a preference on my part, but I quit carrying my big can headphones around with me because they were too bulky. I'd never carry around a headset like this. Plus you look like a dick wearing one.
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kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Which is much bigger than a macbook air in a bag, and can do 2 hours at most.
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svnt 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You won’t need a keyboard.
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kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

You do. I’m 100% sure that flickering your fingers in the air simple (besides looking like an absolute moron) doesn’t have enough information to accurately type. Also, your arms will fatigue immediately.
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svnt 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

If you can position things in AR, you can put keyboard keys down on wood grain and the device can tell where your fingers land.
If you can escape the skeuomorphic trap, many things are possible. A mechanical keyboard is certainly not the universally optimal means of character entry.

Maybe not in this rev, probably not at launch based on the video, but keyboards as we know them are due for an overhaul.

kaba0 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

A mechanical keyboard is certainly not the universally optimal means of character entry.
Funnily enough, I think that this is basically the ultimate limit of touch based systems — humans rely very much on touch, and touch screens’ smooth surface removes every physical hint from the system. Just remember back to how we could compose a whole message blindly in our pockets with feature phones, yet I can’t write a sentence correctly nowadays without constantly looking at the screen.

Now you would even take away that? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the keyboard layout or anything is the optimum, but it is sure as hell closer to it than randomly hitting the table. The mechanical part is funnily being the key part.

dbmnt 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Eventually, maybe. In the keynote, there was a vague outline of a virtual keyboard, but (unless I missed it) we never saw that virtual keyboard in use. Instead, the demo pivoted to using a paired Magic Keyboard.
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tsimionescu 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

How exactly would you replace a keyboard with anything even slightly as productive?
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pzo 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Just lay down in bed and put physical keyboard with touchpad on your legs. Many times I work from airbnb or hotel that doesn't have proper chairs or workdesk or from coworking hotdesk when travelling.
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dumbfounder 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

If we agree then why are we arguing? I said it would take 3 more generations to hit 100 million, and I said it would happen. My point is that it won’t attract big time developers until then because it will be not be economical for them. But I think apple can grind it out, make it just good enough to attract just enough value to grow just enough hit big numbers in 5-7ish years.
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MacsHeadroom 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It will attract "big time developers" in version 1 because being first to market on a new platform is an enormous advantage, even if that platform won't have significant market penetration for years.
Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, etc. were not particularly revolutionary apps and would never top the charts if invented today. But because they were some of the first games on iOS they became multi-billion dollar franchises.

tsimionescu 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

No one bought an iPhone to play Fruit Ninja, though. They bought it to get access to the internet on the go. Essentially the browser was the killer for a phone.
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datpiff 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Those games were also like 3$
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kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

To be honest, I see much more financial constraints ahead in 5-7 years for the average (even Wester-only) people to think about spending anywhere close to this amount on a luxury device and with the amount of hardware needed even with generational advancement I don’t see it changing.
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wangii 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

killer app sells systems, not the other way around.
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dumbfounder 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

That’s exactly what I said in a different way. No one will make the killer app because it isn’t economical to do so.
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nprateem 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

If there was one to make, Apple would make or subsidise it, guaranteed.
Even after reading loads of comments no one can really think of one.

shmoe 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yet.
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chaostheory 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple isn’t the only one with an XR device. Devs can still hone their ideas now that they have UX direction. The Apple AR SDK has been out for years now too.
The first iPhone also only had 1.4 million in sales. I’m not even sure the App Store was even out until the 2nd Gen.

ppsreejith 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The original iPhone sold some 6 million units from what I can google.
Steve Jobs himself said 200 days after the launch of the first iPhone that they sold 4 million units.

Source: https://www.macworld.com/article/188823/liveupdate-17.html

chaostheory 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

You’re right.
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jsight 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I just think you are thinking of the monitors in an overly literal way.
Imagine a calendar on the wall, but with your meetings and everything dynamic instead of just a static calendar. And it adjusts to show your next meeting extra large as it approaches. No you see useful information in your periphery.

Or perhaps you have application monitoring dashboards on another wall. You don't look at them all the time, but a dedicated space wouldn't be a bad thing.

I see a lot of potential here in the future.

wilsonnb3 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

A digital calendar on the wall and a dedicated screen for monitoring are both possible with tech from 10 years ago.
The problem isn’t “we couldn’t do this before AR and now we can”, it’s “my computer already does calendars and monitoring well enough”.

alasdair_ 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

My windows phone could already do everything an iPhone could do at launch, and in 3g no-less. But there is something to be said about putting it all together well and having it all just work seamlessly.
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IOT_Apprentice 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Until it is superseded. Ask Blackberry.
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pempem 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Maybe but every single photo is a person, alone, in a room.
While this is the case for a period of life, its certainly not the case for most of it or an end goal.

derefr 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

This is first-and-foremost a tool for doing work. They show people using it in their living rooms, but I get the impression that the key use-case is to use it in a home office (where you'd already be intentionally isolating yourself to get work done) — or in some other room (e.g. a bedroom) to turn it into a home-office-alike space.
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kaba0 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That niche is killed by their own watches.
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2muchcoffeeman 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Real estate costs more than this head set. I am a VR skeptic. But if someone truly solves the problems, a virtual desktop has obvious advantages even for the rich. I could literally clear out one room and shrink the remaining desk to fit a closed laptop, keyboard and coffee mug. And now my entire workstation is portable and exactly the way I want it where ever I go.
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tempnow987 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

My immediate thought was working on a flight. This guy is like he's got some big curved monitor on his flight. No he doesn't, he's hunched over a laptop screen.
If I could work on a flight on a big screen I'd be thrilled. I really don't like the ergonomics of hunching over a laptop screen.

86J8oyZv 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Also being a wealthy software engineer, there still isn’t a better multi-monitor mobile solution than this at any price point. If you’re only working from home sure, but I like to cowork with friends in a variety of places.
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veidr 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I use 4 monitors arranged on arms to form a shape roughly like a curved 15360x 4320 display.
I also don't see how VR will come close to replicating the productivity I have in my home office, on any foreseeable timeline.

But when I go somewhere and just use my laptop screen, it's almost laughable how inefficient and annoying it is. The screen is tiny, I am constantly switching apps / virtual desktops, and there is no way to even see my debugger, documentation, and my app running at the same time.

To me, that's what I want VR to fix. The portable workspace. For us spoiled rich engineers sitting in our spacious home offices, the constraints that make VR (theoretically) appealing just don't exist.

(I'm skeptical there are enough people who want this badly enough to pay $3500 for it to fund an entire product category, though... I expected them to come out talking about fitness and health.)

thelittleone 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

But its very handy if you're a wealthy nomadic software engineer. I don't want to take monitors with me and I'd like to travel more while working. I'd like to do that with my 12" Macbook air.
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cultofmetatron 6 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm a digital nomad. I miss having a spacious multimonitor setup. tried making it work with an occulus quest and immersed VR but the results were disappointing. If they can make it seamless and match the resolution so my eyes don't hurt after a minuite of actually reading code, Its going to be an immediate shutup and take my money moment.
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mrinterweb 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Agreed about the non-selling point. I've only ever been able to get my eyes to focus on one thing at a time. So I prefer one monitor. CMD/Alt+tab works for me. If I need to have things side-by-side for some reason I use a window manager and some key combos to quickly rearrange windows. There are very few times that I wish I had another monitor.
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abujazar 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The first question that pops into my head is why you’d work on a curved monitor (of which there still doesn’t exist a high resolution model) as a software engineer. Do you find the workspace on a single curved display sufficient?
My primary concern with the Apple headset is the relatively low resolution of 23M pixels. Our eyes can perceive so much more detail, and I’m afraid the low resolution will reintroduce pixellation as is commonly seen on low end and curved displays.

wesnerm2 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

If it is 23M pixels per lens, that is still more resolution than a smartphone's screen. Each lens is smaller than a smartphone's screen and the resolution is per eye. I wouldn't be surprised if this actually exceeds the eye's ability to perceive pixels.
The difference between a monitor and the lens of a headset. If you look at a 4K monitor up closely within a region of the screen of two inches in radius, you are not seeing 4K in that region. 4K of pixel applies to the whole monitor not to the eye's field of view as it does to a headset.

If you were using the headset as a monitor, you could zoom in on text and the text can effectively have infinite resolution as it scales up into view.

ParetoOptimal 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

if it is 23M pixels per lens, that is still more resolution than a smartphone's screen.
But you don't use your smartphone 1-2" from your eye.

numpad0 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

To me, curved monitor makes complete sense. Edges just become too far with flat displays up close.
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montag 5 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

It's not just that the edges of the screen are too far, it's that they're at an oblique viewing angle instead of perpendicular to the eye.
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ehnto 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

of which there still doesn’t exist a high resolution model
QHD 32" works great, it's not quite two monitors but if you are using a tiling window manager or spend all your time in editor windows it's perfectly practical.

abujazar 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

But the pixels are visible, and text on those displays is so much less legible than on a 200+ ppi display. I simply don’t get how some developers find those monitors to be acceptable and at the same time disregard the Apple headset. Perhaps it’s just lack of vision.
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ehnto 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Maybe you have really great eyesight, or sit a bit too close? I can't see them. I have used retina displays as well and while it's clear there is a difference, it's not a practical difference for me. Retina feels nicer but it's the same amount of UI and text on a screen.
4k in VR is very different though, it's 4k per eye not 4k in dots per inch. 4k in VR will feel like a massive downgrade if you enjoy high DPI screens, but I think it should be usable. The state of the art is 12k I think and for people who like working in VR I see 8k on the pimax as the most common recommendation for good text rendering.

Grieverheart 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

This. I used to be a multi monitor type of person but when desktop switching became good (I first experienced this in Linux) I started using a single larger monitor and never looked back.
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delecti 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Even beyond my neck, the limitation for me is my ability to keep track of the spatial location of that many things, and need to have them all displayed simultaneously. I've really just found the sweet spot to be two displays (with the cost sweet spot for me currently being 1440p, but I imagine 2x4k would be an improvement). Even a third monitor really doesn't improve my ability to do things, so I can't imagine "infinite" impressing either.
For me, the main appeal of VR is its potential for gaming, with a distant second place being more broadly "interacting with things in 3d" (such as 3d sculpting/modeling, or something like VR chat).

intelVISA 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

don't forget 3d reverse engineering too
being able to spatially interact with disasm code inside IDA pro is going to be a game changer for those who like to take a more topological approach to the art

semi-extrinsic 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

You can already spatially interact with 3D content on a regular screen. Thousands of CAD people do it all day for a living, they even have specialised peripherals for 3D navigation like the 3DConnexion stuff.
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kaba0 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I honestly don’t really see that working. Especially that apple didn’t innovate on the input-space and that is fundamentally 2D.
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rubicon33 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Turning your head causes you pain? You need to go to the gym, get in shape, or figure out what the hell is causing a natural motion to induce pain and discomfort.
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kaba0 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Sitting is a natural motion and hundreds of millions of people have spine problems from that alone.
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achenet 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

sitting is natural.
Sitting on a chair, at a desk, staring at a screen, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and then sitting in your car, and then sitting on your couch and never actually walking anywhere, isn't.

mruniverse 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I can see it being nice if it's like Minority Report, where you can swipe small screens away, etc. Talk and it types. Glance to the left to see how the builds are going, etc. It could also be a nice virtual whiteboard. Usually it's hard to know how nice hardware can be without the apps. And you don't have to be in your office.
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dclowd9901 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The killer app imo is AR instruction. That is:

you’re looking at some kind of physical thing in the real world you’re “working on” (whatever it may be) - your goggles are pointing out important aspects, telling you what to do next, etc etc.

I always thought something like this for auto repair would be really cool. Of course we need the software to catch up in this regard, since it would have to recognize and overlay fairly complex visual spaces.

ako 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Sports referees could also benefit, instant replay. Once there’s a cheaper, lighter versions you’ll see mums and dads running on the soccer/hockey fields with these.
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sspiff 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

As someone who used to have a cheap-ish 3x27" monitor setup, I can confirm neck strain on big triple monitor setups is most definitely a thing. Imagine combining this with carrying the weight a pair of technogoggles like these,and I think it could get tiresome really quickly.
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threeseed 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Most developers don't have mobility issues. They have 2 / 3 large monitors (or laptop + monitor).
And so in this case they have the ability to access them anywhere, anytime.

madeofpalk 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Not wanting to turn your head 90 degrees to see your 13th monitor is not a "mobility issue".
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threeseed 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Or you could not be ridiculous and just use 2 or 3 monitors like everyone does today.
At least you have the option to put monitors above and below as well.

And completely swap configurations for different use cases e.g. coding versus gaming.

zippergz 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

"Everyone" does not use 2 or 3 monitors. Certainly among the software engineers I interact with regularly (at top US tech companies), having multiple monitors is the minority, not the majority.
I agree with the parent that any setup that requires me to turn my head to see all of my screen space is a downgrade, not an upgrade. Even a monitor that's too big (above 30 inches or so at normal desk viewing distance) is bad.

If you like it, go for it, but don't act like it's the only or even most common way to work, even for developers.

threeseed 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I've worked at two out of the FAANG companies and many others. Never seen a workspace in the last decade that didn't either have a laptop and external monitor or multiple monitors.
And there has been quite a bit of research [1] on them with 98% of users preferring dual monitors.

[1] https://www.ie-uk.com/blog/how-multiple-monitors-affects-pro...

derefr 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Never seen a workspace in the last decade that didn't either have a laptop and external monitor or multiple monitors.
I've never seen anyone using "a laptop and an external monitor" who actually uses the laptop screen. (Where by "use" I mean "looks at it." They might have it on, but it's usually just idle at the desktop.)

Personally, I plug my laptop into a monitor and then put it, closed, onto a little stand for ventilation. (One of these things: https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/product/HP9X2ZM/A/twelve-south...).

nl 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Really? I found this so shocking I just got up and checked and around here 7 out of 11 people have their laptop screen in use.
I use it as a screen for my slack/discord/email and have my two main screens above it. It's true I use my two main screens more, but if I didn't have my laptop I'd want a small third screen to replace it.

derefr 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Have you considered the ergonomics of doing this? I do know a few people who put their laptop up on a pedestal mount so it's in line with their external monitors, which is fine. (These people generally got the largest display-size laptop they could afford, so it makes sense for them.)
But if you have your laptop sitting directly on the desk — presumably because you use its keyboard to type? — then any time you look at its screen, you're straining your neck. There's a reason monitors are on stands that hold them up 8+ inches above the desk — it's so it doesn't hurt to stare at them all day.

cjlacz 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm with derefr, once I connect up to an external monitor, or two, or three, I close my laptop and put it in a stand. I never use it an extra monitor either.
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kiwijamo 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm not a software engineer or anything like that and I still have three screens including a laptop screen at my desk. Almost everyone at the small NPO I work for have at least 2 monitors including the likes of finance, customer service officers, etc. When I visit other offices it's not unusual to see 2 or even 3 monitor setups. This is common even at government agencies. This may be specific to New Zealand however and not the same elsewhere in the world however I'm sure Australia is in the same boat going by what I've heard from my Australian friends. YMMV. Will be watching this Apple innovation with interest.
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mwest217 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Interesting - at the Google office I work at, the vast majority of developers use at least 2 monitors, sometimes 2 monitors + a laptop screen.
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brookst 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Why wouldn't you use gestures to move the right monitor to be directly in front if you, maintaining some concept on what's on adjacent ones from UI hints?
Really the whole concept of "monitors" feels skeumorphic here. Shouldn't it just be a sphere where you're looking at a concave part with your current app, and can rotate as needed to pull other apps into view?

hogu 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

What if the mapping between your neck angle and screen angle wasn’t 1-1?
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kaba0 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Then you would likely become dizzy and puke.
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netman21 15 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It's called Beat Saber. :-)
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jamesrcole 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

you, or someone in a situation like yours, might at times find it valuable to have like a giant whiteboard in front of you, that you can walk around in front of, and on which you could spatially arrange a bunch of details
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samstave 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

When I worked at Intel in 1997 we bought one of the first 42" plasma screens on the market to put in our game lab - and I put it on my desk and attempted to play Quake and Descent and other games on it and I couldnt handle it so close to me - it had ghosting and bad lag and poor angular visibility and it was $14,999.00
We turned it into a wall piece that rarely got used.

in 2016 I got a monitor for one of my OPs guys that was 4k and was ~34" and that was still to big to sit in front of - and my OPs guy gave it to me, I hated it and gave it to an eng, and he loved it.

Big screens are for certain people. I have a 70" screen in the living room that I never turn on, my brother uses it exclusively, and I use a 15" laptop as my personal screen.

dustingetz 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

putting it in 3D is also an opportunity to fix window management
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jalk 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

How so? There have been plenty of 3D window managers and IMO was all just gimmicks, not really contributing to any increase in workflow.
Edit:typo

bandrami 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Scale and Expose both definitely improved workflow
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diffeomorphism 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

And both are very much 2D?
3D means something like

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/task-gallery-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FjuPn7MXMs&themeRefresh=1

choppaface 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You don’t need to turn your neck tho, you can turn the environment. And nothing goes off screen, just out of foveal focus.
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FpUser 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

"Constantly rotating my head back and forth from one monitor to another is, quite literally, a pain."
60+yo fart here. Same problem as well. After dicking with 3 32" 4K monitor setup a good while ago I am now down to a single monitor. It is still 32" 4K at 100% scale and feels comfy enough.

specialist 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Perhaps someone will invent a way to virtually move around within a virtual space. Seems far fetched, I know. But we can still dream.
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thworp 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Decoupling virtual from physical movement is the fastest way to get people puking and giving them headaches.
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specialist 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

True. Scrolling windows triggers my nausea.
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foobiekr 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Most VR goggles eventually cause pretty significant eyestrain due to vergence-accommodation conflict [1] and other issues all of which get significantly worse the closer to the user the virtual objects are.
Apple's display is, I guess, in best-of-class, but they have no special sauce at all on this, and no physical IPD adjustment at all, and so this device as previewed is basically only useful for media consumption and maybe something like a telepresence meeting, albeit not long duration. Without controllers it's unlikely to even work well for most games.

Basically this is the best of a huge crowd of not very good VR helmets with probably industry-leading AR camera-based passthrough.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergence-accommodation_conflic...

MacsHeadroom 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The Vision Pro demo clearly showed physical IPD adjustment multiple times.
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scheeseman486 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

IPD isn't that, they're talking about focus. All current VR headsets are focused at a fixed distance, typically around 2 meters away though earlier headsets focused to infinity. Anything outside of the 2m distance can look incorrect and it causes visual weirdness like depth of focus blur to instead look uncannily sharp.
Not fixable without varifocal lenses which adjust focus depending on what your eyes are looking at.

MacsHeadroom 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

No I'm talking about IPD. Maybe someone else is talking about focus?
In the demo they showed a break out of the device which showed adjustable IPD width, with the displays sliding on little rods similar to many other HMDs.

scheeseman486 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

My mistake, missed their reference to IPD.
I think it's automated? I guess with the eye tracking there's data for it to be able to center them.

foobiekr 8 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Where? The lenses are clearly in a fixed location in all of the photos shown.
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baby 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You mean like screens already cause issues to our eyes?
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heavyset_go 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

We don't have screens strapped two inches away from our eyes.
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deergomoo 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It would very obviously be useful for work if you can actually get high res
Is it even that high res for detailed monitor work? 4K per eye yes, but for your entire field of view. Does that meet Apple’s definition of a “retina display”?

I currently sit a few feet away from a 5K display, that’s way more pixels per degree of FoV.

Same goes for movie and TV watching. I sit maybe 8 feet away from a 4K 55” TV and I can absolutely tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. Surely the equivalent “projected” display on this thing is gonna be 1080 or lower?

Of course, as one of those 30% of people with myopia they referenced earlier in the video, I dread to think how much extra it would cost to be able to see anything at all through this thing.

TimTheTinker 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Keep in mind that the display processor utilizes a foveated rendering pipeline, which appears to concentrate the highest resolution rendering where your eyes are focusing.
That doesn't speak to the overall resolution of the per-eye screens, however.

ehnto 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

This doesn't increase pixel density at the point it is rendering, since that id a limit of physical pixels. Instead it decreases the rendering resolution of peripheral vision, but even that still has the same physical pixel density.
I am pretty certain 4k per eye still isn't enough for monitor like text rendering but it is pretty good.

automatic6131 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

4K per eye yes
I think what's missed here, in the absence of any better specs, is that they're saying "better than 4K per eye!" without mentioning that 4k refers to 3840x2160, and that it's the vertical dimension that they've exceeded. So > 2160x2160 per eye. Pretty good but not even close to good enough for a floating screen of text

wrasee 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

They actually said 23 million pixels over both panels. So if taking that as 11.5 million each then at an equivalent aspect ratio that would be something like 4550 * 2560 per eye. Right?
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automatic6131 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

ahh yes, you're quite right
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yowzadave 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The tech on this thing is so cool and so useless! People will buy them, try them out, and then a month later realize they didn't actually use it at all and return them to the store.
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keymon-o 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Most people buy products because they are usable, not useful. There is crazy amount of tech available today, and people strive to own most of them. The decision to purchase is usually based on wheter we can afford it and wether we will find some use for it.
The mere fact that goggles will enable users to communicate and consume media just as they can with devices they already own, will be the key argument to purchase this expensive headset.

But this incremental improvement we get after purchase of each-time-more-polished device finacnces future inventions and innovations, and then after some number iteration we get something that is truly useful. At least that's the trend I noticed regarding every tech breakthrough and hype in this century.

jen729w 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

2007: ‘There’s no way I’d watch my kid’s entire school play through a 4” screen just so that I could get a recording of it.’
2023: ‘I certainly wouldn't be wearing ski goggles while he blows out candles.’

We — perhaps not you, but humans — have shown a remarkable preference for watching the live event through a tiny screen so that we can have a recording of it for later.

ric2b 7 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

When I record something that I also want live I don't watch it through the screen, I just glance at the screen occasionally to make sure it's still pointed correctly.
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bufferoverflow 22 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

but people already spend $3500+ on monitor setups somewhat regularly
I don't know a single person who has such an expensive monitor (or a set of monitors). And none of my employers, current or past, would ever agree to spend that much on a monitor setup.

You can buy a 4K OLED monitor for a fraction of that.

alexalx666 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Pro Display XDR costs around 7000 euros in Germany
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bufferoverflow 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

And how many people do you know that own it?
This is a very niche device for photo or video editing.

bredren 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I am OP on the XDR Pro Display owner’s thread over in the Macrumors Forums.
Last week I asked XDR owners about their thoughts for possibly replacing their high end XDR monitor(s) with virtual displays in the Apple Vision Pro (I called it Apple Reality)

The question and replies cover some of the considerations around this replacement and there are ongoing replies now that some of the specs are known:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pro-display-xdr-owners-...

sizzle 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Yeah the kids playing scene felt like a clip from Black Mirror. I would never want to relive memories like that when I can just go hug my kid, and if they weren’t alive it would destroy my mental health to see them in that high fidelity without being able to hug them.
What a strange demo.

cjbprime 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It felt like strong "I am recently divorced, and also a parent of young children" vibes throughout. There was the value comparison to a large TV and surround sound system, which is only valid if both your home theater and AR device have the same audience size (to divide the cost by) of one person.
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sooheon 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The vast majority of families are multi-city, and many are multinational. I don't see anything wrong with trying to improve on FaceTime, since millions of people already use that every day.
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Apocryphon 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Then they should focus their marketing on that, not make boneheaded choices like this:
https://twitter.com/jenskstyve/status/1666027793971396608

sizzle 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I love this! Thanks for putting my words into image.
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Andrew_nenakhov 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The catch is, they might have an impressive display of unlimited size, but it is still likely to be tied to locked down iOS (or whatever they call it on Vision devices), so the selection of productivity apps and their capabilities will probably be very limited.
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mihaaly 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Except when they find a way mirroring the Mac's desktop in this environment on a nice way. Straight up 'external display' mode (more like external 3D space), but with less constraints on how to position the windows and the taskbar ... and consequently more trouble on navigating among those. Desktop icons might be a burden too, also wonder what to do with fullscreen mode.
Anyway, if one app was used on its OS for mirroring the Mac environment on a nice way, that could be enough for me.

Andrew_nenakhov 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I feel that this feature looks more like Continuity than real desktop/app mirroring. You'll likely have to have a corresponding app installed on the device to run it this way.
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ramblenode 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It would very obviously be useful for work if you can actually get high res, effectively unlimited monitor space.
Very big "if".

I already notice visual artifacting in REPLs on 1080p displays at 60FPS. That's nothing compared to the aliasing issues facing stereoscopic virtual displays. I can't imagine wanting to do hours of focused work staring at objects in an aliased virtual world.

Could still be a useful for travel.

crossroadsguy 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I am not a fan of even the look of this thing but I am not sure why people are just talking about room and work. I think people will just buy it and watch films when lying down on their beds or sideways, when on the commode, or when commuting on a bus seat (assuming power delivery is sorted - and yeah if everything needed for it is portable enough).
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rchaud 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

They'll do it on a $400 tablet, not something that costs 2 months' rent.
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dwhitney 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Yeah that was silly, but aren't all of the new iPhone cameras 3D cameras? People take photos/videos all of the time. Now you can immerse yourself in them. I think it's pretty cool
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bredren 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Presumably the current and next iPhone Pros can capture 3D video.
I don’t know why this wouldn’t have been ridiculous, because it really is ridiculous to suggest this would be worn by a parent during a young child’s happy birthday singing and blowing out the candles.

This idea seemed like way too much of a stretch for this intro. They had to know this, so I am very curious what the reasoning was for why they included it.

derefr 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don’t know why this wouldn’t have been ridiculous, because it really is ridiculous to suggest this would be worn by a parent during a young child’s happy birthday singing and blowing out the candles.
Do you not remember the 1970s-1980s, when "filming home movies" meant resting a 50lbs camcorder on your shoulder and looking through the eyepiece in a way that blocks anyone from seeing 75% of your head?

mch82 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

This was also my thought. My grandparents had a Panasonic VHS camcorder in the 80s. Everyone in the family took turns sharing it. I can see people using Vision Pro in a similar way to film short segments of family events in 3D.
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heavyset_go 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That was literally the only way to capture video back then. Everyone has infinitely better cameras in their pocket, notice how few people buy and use video cameras outside of professional or hobbyist creators.
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partiallypro 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Too bad we now live in the 2020s where no one wants to do that or look stupid doing that. A camera strapped to your face and you having to move your own face/body to zoom into something is way more ridiculous than the camcorders of those eras.
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derefr 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

People generally didn't want to look stupid back then, either.
But dads finding ways to combine "being excited about their kids" with "nerding out about new technology" have eternally been the exception to the "people don't want to look stupid" rule.

Apocryphon 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

They can do that already with a GoPro if they wanted to strap a camera to their head.
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FanaHOVA 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

because it really is ridiculous to suggest this would be worn by a parent during a young child’s happy birthday singing and blowing out the candles.
I see people keep repeating this, but why is that? Most people take videos / photos on their phone, and because of that their eyes don't actually see the event happening, they are just looking at it through the screen. With this you'd actually be able to record while also not focusing on your screen but looking at them.

bredren 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don’t mean to make this personal, but have you raised a kid?
If someone is holding up an iPhone taking a video, especially up close it is a distraction.

Depending on how much they are aware of it and the person’s self consciousness, it can really take away from or alter a moment to have it so obviously recorded.

Kids can be extremely perceptive and sensitive.

Our kid is not even two and there is a subtle change when a phone is obviously out, pointed at them and capturing them.

I know it’s always better to interact without a phone in sight.

I still capture a lot of great stuff but sometimes something is so special I can’t bring myself to disrupt it by trying to record. My wife and I will look at each other and know something truly amazing is happening and both just live the moment.

Looking at the Apple Vision, as it is at launch—-it looks disruptive to both the subject and the wearer in the circumstances I’ve described above.

Perhaps in time they will become so ubiquitous a headset like this will be noticed as little as a smartphone.

But at the start, especially with the price and production volume expected this is very likely be an unusual thing to see around in the world.

Yet in the example Apple showed it appeared to be taken very, very close to the action.

I’d guess if someone tries to do this it will cause all the other kids to be looking at you, not your kid during their special moment.

xp84 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Current iPhone Pros? How would they? Their cameras are super close together and different focal lengths (or whatever the correct term is for "they're 1x, 3x and 0.5x").
I share your immediate skepticism that wearing one of these during any moments you'd like to relive later seems preposterous. May as well just be DVRing the "moments" with your goggles and be watching a movie on the inside, because that's how present you would seem. Unless the entire family all had their goggles on ("Apple Vision Pro Family, starting at $9,999!") and you are all actually experiencing a remote moment virtually!

jkestner 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

iPhones Pro also have a LiDAR scanner on the back.
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bigthymer 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I can see how that would be a popular application. I imagine a software engineer that was forcefully returned back to the office would love the ability to have unlimited computer screens hidden from the prying eyes of busybodies around the office.
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ray__ 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Yes, I agree with this. I'll only be buying one of these if it means I can replace my work displays with it–I'd happily pay the exorbitant price if it meant being able to have the equivalent of an unlimited high-res display anywhere, at any time. The lack of sub-pixel rendering on macOS means that I'm already forced to buy an expensive 5K display for every place that I plan to do work; a headset like this is a bargain in comparison. Obviously this means that the headset will have to be comfortable enough to use for long periods of time and have high enough resolution to compete with a hiDPI display. I doubt that this device will be able to deliver on both of those fronts.
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agumonkey 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I feel the same, like glass, it has some real work (or peculiar situations) value, where augmenting the information at hand for important tasks would be a massive leverage. Electrical work, repair, medicine..
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eterevsky 23 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

That would be a valid use case, but it's hard to imagine that this headset is miles ahead of all existing ones in resolution and clarity. In all present-day headset even simple tasks involving text are a challenge. They just can't legibly render more than ~10 lines of text in your field of view. To compete with monitors for day-to-day tasks, the perceived resolution has to improve by an order of magnitude.
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antigirl 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

4k monitor at 27 inches costs less than 400 dollars. Unless its 10 bit with 1ms response time for gaming. Who is spending $3500 on monitor setups besides gamers?
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reaperducer 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The same people who spend $50,000 on home theater gear, or buy a house based on the size of the "man cave."
I've met sports gamblers who have a dozen or more flat screens on a wall so they can fully indulge in their addiction^w hobby.

mnky9800n 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

the second I want to show any of my colleagues what I'm working on to get a question answered I need a headset for each of them. That kind of kills the whole idea of VR goggles in general.
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pelorat 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

My 27" $500 monitor smokes anything Apple has ever produced in the monitor space.
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Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | page 2	login

Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer (apple.com)
2544 points by samwillis 1 day ago | hide | past | favorite | 2785 comments

d3nj4l 1 day ago | next [–]

The weird price fixation and doomerism here is weird. People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it. $3500 is high but considering it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled into I'm pretty sure there's a more than sustainable market for it.
That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price.

zamadatix 1 day ago | parent | next [–]

I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory of "it costs more than many can afford to buy on a whim" instead of "it costs more than it should" of things like AirPods. Where the Pro Display XDR gets away with that is, at the end of the day, it's just a display for content the same as any other. Where the Vision Pro will need to do some fighting is traditional content is a much harder sell for a AR/VR device. I think Apple is trying their best to tackle that software problem head on trying to improve integrations and offer day 1 native options, which is what they always aim for, but it's still clearly going to have some penetration difficulty due to price and small target audience at first. Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.
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mountainofdeath 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I agree that it isn't in the "everyone and their grandmother will have it" pricing territory. It will definitely sell well at least within a niche but won't have the deep penetration other products have.
If you recall, for many years, an iPhone was a luxury status symbol; the equivalent of a mid-range hand bag or a low-end luxury automobile. Expensive, but still within the reach of the an average person with at least some disposable income. It's why everyone seems to have an iPhone and EarPods.

The pro display, like many VR headsets before it, is really a niche product that will be limited to a standard deviation of what I would call "enthusiasts" or "power users".

(1). Even pre-iPhone, having an iPod, especially a premium one, was a status symbol. (2). Non-iPhone devices are generally scoffed at in many circles, green text message bubbles being associated with budget Android devices and not the expensive Android flagships.

heatmiser 9 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

My guess is that Apple will push A/VR into the mainstream and establish social norms with the category. Facebook and others will sell to the middle-to-bottom end of the market.
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zamadatix 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

n.b. "Pro Display" is a monitor, "Vision Pro" is the VR/AR headset.
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GeekyBear 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I think this is more in the "Pro Display XDR" overpriced territory
It's the same price as Microsoft's Hololens 2, but the tech looks much more impressive, and Microsoft seems to have laid off most of the Hololens development team.

ehsankia 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

And how many people have Hololens? Vs How many people have a Meta Quest 2?
Again, the other things named above were just "Apple tax" expensive, i.e an extra 50% more. This is almost an order of magnitude more expensive. Doesn't Meta Quest go for around 400$, 350$ on sale? Literally a tenth of the price.

I'm not saying they're the same product, it's hard to convince something to pay 10x for a product.

GeekyBear 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

How many times did Microsoft iterate on and improve the hardware before laying off the Hololens team and giving up? Once. The answer is once.
Apple is a company that releases a new platform and keeps iterating on it for year after year.

This version of Apple's hardware isn't intended to be the cheaper mass market consumer version of the tech. That will come later in what has been referred to as Apple Glass.

spaceman_2020 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Someone in my coworking space bought a Pro Display XDR. He's a movie maker who is shopping around a documentary to some major OTT players in my country. He said his work pretty much demands a really good screen and Pro Display XDR is the best he can buy as an independent filmmaker - his previous employer, a large studio, had screens that were slightly better but cost $20k+
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2OEH8eoCRo0 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple also provides a credit card with no interest on Apple products. They could "hide" the price as cellphone providers hide the price, by rolling it into a monthly payment.
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fastball 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Wow thanks, wasn't gonna buy one of these but I forgot about my Apple Card and now I'm tempted...
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908B64B197 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Pro Display XDR is also in a market segment where it's the last step before getting a calibrated display that's 10x the price. When looking at the specs it's actually a great display at a good price point.

Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.

Like every other platform products, the V1's audience is... developers. Once there are a few killer apps, Apple will commoditize and unleash a much cheaper version.

lopkeny12ko 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

There's a ton of hidden bias in this assessment. Have you considered that you either live in a wealthy area or are surrounded by people who are more prone to seeing having iDevices as a status symbol? Because

People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries.

Is absolutely not true in my experience.

People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know.

And how many of those laptops are corporate assets that were provided by their employer? How many of those professionals actually use Macs anywhere outside of work?

ethanbond 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

What’s the hidden bias? It’s a premium/borderline luxury brand and GP is saying “yes people do pay for premium/luxury goods.”
Another great proof point is their annual revenue approaching $400B, selling devices that apparently no one can afford.

michaelt 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The measure "I see it all the time" depends on both where you're looking, and whether you're paying attention.
1% of people have a PhD - but if you work at a university, you'll see people with a PhD all the time.

d3nj4l 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yes, but that also means that a statement like "nobody gets a PhD" is absolutely untrue.
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zakki 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

But 1% wrong is still better than “I see PhD everywhere”
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cubefox 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Approximately nobody gets a PhD. It's like saying: men are taller than women.
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zoltan 17 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

enough with this bias talk already
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m3kw9 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

AirPods are not a status product for most, the quality and the way it works is why it’s selling like hot cakes. It does show people you know about quality stuff by wearing one. The AirPod Max I would agree it is in the show off territory
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sebzim4500 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

There's a ton of hidden bias in this assessment. Have you considered that you either live in a wealthy area or are surrounded by people who are more prone to seeing having iDevices as a status symbol?
Obviously those people are going to be the ones buying this product, like all Apple products.

benhurmarcel 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Right, the few times I see some Airpods Max in the street I can safely assume it's a Chinese fake.
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stocknoob 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple makes money by not targeting products to people without money. I’d say it’s worked out pretty well for them.
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paxys 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

AirPods are popular, sure, but I have quite literally never seen AirPods Max in the wild. People in the market for premium noise cancelling headsets are all buying Sony or Bose.
And it isn't just about price. There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper, and they still haven't found product market fit. The problem isn't that they need more polish.

With Meta winding down its reality investments Vision Pro is pretty much the last shot this entire sector has. If this device fails then we have no choice but to accept that VR/AR is at best a niche hobby, not the world-changing technology that we so desperately want it to be.

drewbeck 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Definitely going to be anecdotal here – around my neighborhood (brooklyn NY) I'm floored by how many Airpod Max's I see. It's by far the most common over-head wireless earphones I see.
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Apocryphon 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yes, but based on anecdata from that same sampling, you can also conclude everyone’s profession is podcast host and primary mode of transportation is by fixie bike.
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drewbeck 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Fixies haven’t been hot out here in 10 years (or more) but I get your point. However I was providing anecdata as a corrective to the parent comment, in order to suggest that such observations aren’t sufficient to build an argument on.
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throw74775 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

There are plenty of AR/VR headsets out there that have the same feature set and are far cheaper
Can you list some of these far cheaper products that have the same feature set?

onepointsixC 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Meta Quest Pro has much of what the Apple device offers while providing controllers for a significantly better gaming experience for $2500 cheaper. Considering the strongest consistent use case of VR thus far has been gaming, Apple has a huge miss IMO.
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theshrike79 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

But not all of us want to use VR for gaming. I want to use it to replace the monitors on my desk.
No device yet has been able to do it. Vision Pro is the closest so far, but we'll know in 9 months for real.

bee_rider 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple will never own the type of old-school, enthusiast gaming that VR gaming has roots in (of course they do quite well in mobile gamin, but that’s something you do with a device you already own; you don’t buy a device for it). If the former type of gaming is the only application, they didn’t really have a shot to miss with. So, they are adding a bunch of extra functionality that isn’t directly related to gaming. Of course their device will not provide the best bang-for-the-buck in gaming.
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throw74775 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Vision Pro supports game controllers. It was in the demo.

Meta Quest Pro has much of what the Apple device offers

No it doesn’t. Parent said there were ‘plenty’. Perhaps there is another on your the list that does?

bwv848 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Dualshock 5 is very differnt from VR controllers.
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throw74775 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

It’s standard for gaming.
If you are going to claim that Apple’s VR system needs to use meta’s style if controller in order to be successful at gaming, I think that’s short sighted.

bagels 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Where did you get the idea that Meta is "winding down its reality investments"?
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woah 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Lol what if they had to change their name again. Maybe something about having to come to terms with their revenue and expenses... face their books... Facebook?
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kerbs 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Airpods Max are 100% everywhere. And not in affluent areas either.
I probably see people wear them on public transit most often—and when I visited NY the subway was by far the most common place to see them.

meragrin_ 13 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Airpods Max are 100% everywhere.
Yea, no. I've never seen a pair. I have little doubt someone around here has a pair. They just are not as common as some seem to believe.

JCharante 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I see Airpod Maxes in the wild every day in Vietnam. They don’t even have apple stores here!
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AdamN 17 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Where do you live? I see them quite a bit in Berlin.
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mikenew 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm wondering that too, but from the presentation it looked a lot more "iPhone" than "mac". The only thing they demo'd that looked like a real desktop was an actual mac being mirrored in the display. Everything else seemed like an app you had to install through a new app store.
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LegitShady 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

in the "technology" section of the presentation where they talk about the operating system, the graphic explicitly shows ios not mac.
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asimpletune 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I think this is where the unification of Mac/iPhone/iPad has all been leading.
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paddim8 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Most people didn't say the M1 was overpriced. Most people said it was a good value for once. That's partly why it got so much attention. In this case, most people are saying this device is overpriced.
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CivBase 14 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah, I read/watched many M1 reviews when it first launched and the general sentiment was that M1 devices were an amazing value proposition for its market segment. Even the most staunch Apple critics admitted it was not just competitive; it blew the competition out of the water.
The response to AirPods was more in line with OP's description, but I don't think the AVP is comparable. Everyone had a need for earbuds, there was relatively little competition in the wireless buds space at the time, $159 was within the realm of possibility for most consumers, and Apple's removal of the headphone jack forced many peoples' hands. The AVP doesn't have any of that going for it.

moffkalast 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I mean Apple hardly ever makes any budget price-to-performance stuff, the high end luxury overpriced market is more their thing. I'm not sure why people are surprised?
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onepointsixC 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Apple's largely been affordable luxury that 100's of millions buy. They're more akin to buying Starbucks over Dunk donuts. Their products usually would be in the price range of 1.3-1.5x more expensive than competitors but offering something which is uniquely good. This product is 3.5X more expensive than the next comparable device while missing key capabilities.
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moffkalast 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Well depends on what you compare. Smartphones and tablets tend to be on the more affordable side, but everything else not so much. Their monitor stand is about 8-12x the price of a top of the line competitor while still just being a hunk of metal.
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onepointsixC 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Relying on outliers for your argument isn't particularly compelling.
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Oddskar 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

People said the M1 Pros were overpriced
Yeah but most people aren't paying for those: their employers are.

I don't think many employers are going to buy such an expensive tool.

ajkjk 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

What? Millions of people have personal laptops that are M1+ Macbooks. For people who can afford it and aren't Linux people, why would you buy anything else?
(well some people have issues with buying things from Apple and I don't blame them but Microsoft is busy making Windows as unappealing as possible so Apple wins for me)

Oddskar 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Do you really need me to spell it out for you?

Can't afford it
Don't like MacOS
Don't like the hardware
Want a repairable device
Want a upgradeable device
Etc, etc. Plenty of reasons.
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elzbardico 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Have lots of layers, accountants, execs, and a few surgeons in the extended family, especially on my wife's side. Most of them use Macs as their personal computers, and some of them have already upgraded to M1 and M2 mac pros.
Lot's rich people out there, bro. Some of them probably suffered to adapt to Mac OS after years of using Windows, but since every new version of Windows is now a different OS from the UX perspective, they all adapted themselves to Mac OS, because they wouldn't want to be seen in an airport lounge or an expensive coffee answering their emails in plastic Samsung book.

Also, most people never upgraded their laptops, this is simply not an important selling point, and even less in the premium segment. Repairability? From the user's perspective, It is repairable, they have Apple Care, and they drop their broken laptop in a counter, and sometime later they collect a functioning laptop. And why they wouldn't like the hardware? The CPU is fast, it hardly ever heats enough to spin the fans, the screen is great, the keyboard now is good enough, and the touchpad is still probably the best one on the market.

Your plenty of reasons don't seem very solid to me.

Oddskar 9 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

So you're surrounded by rich people, and thus my reasons don't seem to apply? OK.
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ajkjk 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Er. I didn't try to argue everyone buys one. Just that 'most are bought by employers', as though people won't pay for them themselves, is obviously silly .
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theshrike79 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

When do you think we'll get the first repairable and upgradable VR headset?
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the_mar 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Who doesn’t like macos? Like it is objectively better than windows, and is able to actually work decently without set up pain (like linux)
Who doesn’t like the hardware? Now that the butterfly keyboard and dongles are gone, what is there to hate?

What is unrepairable about macbooks? It’s not an iphone, i ve replaced hard drives, fans and other components on a macbook countless times.

Who really wants an upgradable laptop? I’d give you desktop perhaps, but with laptops i struggle to see the usecase

The things you don’t actually mention, that certain software doesn’t run on mac (ironically used by mechies and industrial designers).

Oddskar 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I like Apple. I'm find this new release quite cool. But you fanboys are a bit much. Sigh.. guess I'm going to do this.

Who doesn’t like macos? Like it is objectively better than windows, and is able to actually work decently without set up pain (like linux)

Not really objectively better any more, no. With WSL2 developing on Windows is actually pretty darn great. It's the best of both worlds: first party support of most applications and devices that I care about, and a really good OS for development.

Who doesn’t like the hardware?

Overall Macbooks are almost unbeatable with e.g. the screens or sound for instance. But I still find the port selection to be baffling. It's been many, many years since the release of USB-C and I still need USB-A ports.

I also really do not like the sharp edges on the new Macbooks. They're visually appealing, sure. But if I'm on a train and they're cutting into my wrists it's not great.

What is unrepairable about macbooks? It’s not an iphone, i ve replaced hard drives, fans and other components on a macbook countless times.

Aha, please try "replacing your hard drive" in your new Macbook.

Also the attitude and track record of Apples behavior towards repair shops is abysmal.

Who really wants an upgradable laptop? I’d give you desktop perhaps, but with laptops i struggle to see the usecase

You just said you have "replaced hard drives, fans and other components on a macbook countless times" so I struggle a bit with this one.

In general it's a good idea to make devices last longer. Y'know, with the planet being almost being on fire since we're over-consuming? No?

the_mar 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I promise i am not an apple fangirl. I am trying to be objective here.
I’m not claiming that windows is somehow “unusable”. Obvs not. But I can’t think of any beef anyone can have with mac os except that some software doesn’t run on it. But I don’t think this falls under the umbrella of “don’t like the os”.

Re: hardware. Again objectively apple has the nicest hardware. That doesn’t mean “perfect” for every user scenario, but I just can’t imagine someone who objectively prefers a chromebook to a macboo because of hardware. I could imagine that during the butterfly keyboard era though.

Re: repairability. You got me there i have not replaced shit in my new laptop. But i have replaced the hard drive and the screen housing on my 2015 macbook it was no more difficult than any ikea assembly.

My 2015 macbook still works totally fine with almost daily use. I recently donated my 2009 imac and it’s probably at the point when it’s unacceptable for any kind of professional use. But in all seriousness how long do you expect a computer to last? I don’t know the answer to that tbh, but I do think that macs are better in terms of longevity than other hardware

AdamN 17 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I believe all Macs are fully recyclable with very little waste in the process. Repairability comes at a cost that most customers don't want to pay (any one of: more $$, heavier, thicker, more prone to breakage, etc...). In the end these are devices that cost about the same as a couch, last a few years, and then are meant to be recycled for raw materials that go back into a more efficient device.
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coffeemug 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I use Windows daily for work, and it's like going back in time 20 years. Just look at the quality of icons.
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matsemann 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I hate MacOS. I've used it as my daily OS for over three years, and never "grew to like it" (as everyone said, "just give it time"). I feel like a kid when using it, everything is hidden away to look fancy instead of usable.
The hardware is okay, I guess. I envy the M1 chips. But I don't like the keyboard layout (even after 3 years it feels off..), or how they've for years not have included necessary ports so it's a dongle-show. I also don't like the value per dollar of their hardware. If my employer pays it's fine, but I wouldn't pay the Apple tax myself.

I'm not here to start a flame war. Just to point out that you speak as if your preferences are a global truth, but plenty disagree.

the_mar 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I mean, yeah if you come to any os with an explanation that it works exactly the same as other os you are going to have a bad time.
I use windows for CAD work and macos for everything else and the switching is annoying for sure.

In terms of functionality (given you actually take time to learn the UI paradigms) neither windows or mac are inferior. You can do all the same things on both. So it all really comes down to familiarity such as “i hate using cmd key instead of ctrl”.

I don’t disagree with people saying “i am more used to windows” - it is true. But there is nothing about macos that is worth not liking.

andromeduck 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

What is being hidden?
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gabe 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Try opening finder and going to your home directory. Where is it? Heck if I know.
It's ridiculous that I couldn't right-click, click a folder hierarchy, search, or anything! No visible indicators, no hints, no way at all to just get to your dang home directory. I had to Google it and apparently the magic incantation is Cmd+Up. I quickly pinned it to my favorites so I don't lose my home directory again. Ridiculous.

For all of windows pain points, of which there are many, at least I can click "My Computer" and actually see the contents of my computer. Even Linux (Ubuntu) doesn't hide it from you.

andromeduck 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah but the vast majority of people don't actually use home dir directly and the people who do also know enough to enable it in finder options, search for it using help or the help search soertcut, bookmark or search for it using spotlight.
Spotlight (cmd space) also means you pretty much never have to navigate to a file/folder.

Fyi home is cmd + shift + h which you can find in the go menu or by search for home in the help menu.

BYazfVCcq 15 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Finder > View > Show Path Bar
After that navigating folder hierarchies gets way easier.

elzbardico 22 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Mac OS is a bit old, from a time when menus ruled supreme in GUI applications. You can find most of that stuff in the menu.
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gabe 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

TIL. Sometimes it's very frustrating trying to transition from Windows to Unix, and menu bars being at the top of the screen is one of those things that still doesn't quite stick with me. Hopefully it'll stick this time :)
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the_overseer 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

And yet somehow Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world. You wouldn't know that by visiting HN where everybody says that they can't "grow to like macos" etc etc. Obviously you are in the minority. People buy macbooks in droves.
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mtlmtlmtlmtl 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Obviously you are in the minority
Non-Apple laptop users are in the minority? You sure about that?

matsemann 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm sorry, but the bubbled person here is you. Outside tech hubs and where rich privileged people leave, you wont see nearly as many Apple devices.
Apple's profitability is irrelevant to my point, btw.

mewpmewp2 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Apple is successful no doubt, but the point is, that its OS doesn't appeal to everyone. I also can't stand it and get used to it. The weird docking behaviour, mouse acceleration, annoying jumping animations, weird window management etc. Can't find anything with spotlight. Spotlight results jump when I'm about to pick something. Glitchy window resizing animations. With multi display, windows keep disappearing from me when moving from one display to the other etc.
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mtlmtlmtlmtl 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I don't like Macos. Windows without games and Linux without deep customisation, variety of choice, and visibility. It's not bad, just useless to me. It only runs well on very specific, overpriced, unrepairable hardware too. Lame.
The hardware is okay, but overrated, there are far sturdier laptops, especially for protecting the display.

The only macbook I ever had had soldered on RAM. Even the PS4 has a replaceable HDD. Being able to replace the storage is not impressive, it's table stakes. I want a laptop for which every sub-board is replacable(without soldering or a heat gun) so I can repair it indefinitely. Apple also have more expensive parts. This counts as less repairability to me.

I want an upgradable laptop because I like laptops. And I like fast laptops even more. Upgrading the laptop instead of replacing it means less money spent on parts I don't need to replace, meaning I can either save money or spend more on performance.

the_mar 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I suppose what is the difference between trading in a laptop for an upgrade vs doing it yourself. The number of people willing and able to replace parts on their computers gotta be not that large.
The upgradability comes with trade offs, in reliability, price, size and weight.

I totally understand how in a perfect world i could just swap parts on my macbook, but if it makes it twice as thick and heavy, with shitty plastic panels everywhere I don’t think I want it all that much

ztrww 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Who doesn’t like macos?
It’s buggy AF and Apple is dumbing down the UX/UI every year and customization options are almost non existent.

Also compared to Windows multi-display support is thrash, no window snapping (?!) and Windows seems to be generally more stable.

the_mar 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Name me a piece of software that ain’t buggy, I’ll wait.
I work on both windows and macos. I haven’t seen the screen of death on a mac in literal years, but the windows laptop does it weekly.

I’m by no means saying that macos is perfect software. It took apple literal years to fix the airdrop for example. But i would not say it’s more buggy than windows or linux.

sensanaty 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Mac/MacOS is piping hot garbage, I have one through work and I only ever use it as a 4th screen (aka Slack and Email machine) to the left of my actual work setup, since the thing shits itself whenever you try working with more than a single extra screen connected.
When forced to use it due to being in office or whatever I just ssh into my home setup & control it through Parsec, every time I have to actually use the thing I get the urge to toss it out of a window

ewoodrich 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Windows 11 remembers my window positions. MacOS forgets my monitor configuration and also requires resetting my dock weekly for some reason to recognize my monitors.
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sureglymop 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Consider that there are also many people who won't even consider that. I'm saying having that opinion or knowing those differences about operating system and devices is already a specific somewhat invested subset of people. Many people literally only know windows and office and haven't even used a Mac.
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tesin 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yeah, I loathe it. I use Linux (of all stripes), Windows, android etc. So it's not brand loyalty. The UX is trash.
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mft_ 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

A laptop that can’t be upgraded likely also can’t be fixed by the user. I’d like a realistically user-fixable laptop - especially as I (unfortunately) bought a 2017 MB Pro which has had a screen failure, a prematurely dying battery, and the well-known butterfly keyboard issues.
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the_mar 11 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The dongle era macbooks are trash. I give you that.
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dboreham 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Raising my hand because I detest macos.
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sportslife 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I can't get over how badly MacOS works with external monitors; I have a fiddly 5ish minute Mac boot cycle process somedays because there it just refuses to output anything.
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KerrAvon 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

FWIW, that's really not the usual macOS experience with external monitors, and you should try doing standard connectivity troubleshooting like replacing the cable, etc.
I've been using multiple monitors (more than 1 simultaneously) with Macs forever; the experience has gotten smoother with the Apple Silicon Macs, but it worked OK on Intel, and PowerPC before that, and the old classic Macs before that.

dilyevsky 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Something is wrong with your monitor or your mac port or hopefully the cable. My m1 pro and air work perfectly with lg 5k display
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zebnyc 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The pace of renewal / refurbishment for work related and personal may not have the same frequency for most folks. Work laptops updated every 3 years approximately (at least in tech). Personal use may be 5-12 years. I bought a Macbook Pro in 2012 for myself. The next personal purchase I made was 2022 when I bought the mac mini. For everything else I used the computer which was given to me at work.
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swores 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Depends very much on the person and the company, I've known many people in similar situations as you, but also many people (in business, rarely roles like developers) stuck on old, slow work laptops - even managers in companies like Dell - while having shiny new personal devices they'd bought themselves (and would, if their company allowed them, use those for work where possible - ofc companies like Dell that's a no-go, but many smaller companies are happy when their employees work on their own more expensive and more productive computer).
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ris58h 17 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Millions of people have personal laptops that are M1+ Macbooks
Yeah, but we are talking about Pros, not Airs.

ajkjk 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah people buy those too. Do you think they don't?
When my current MBP dies, I'll be buying the one with the latest chip on the market (although admittedly a lower spec version than I would presumably get from work --- but that's just because I'm not doing planning on doing huge compilations or video editing on it).

lm28469 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The weird thing to me is that people forget every failed Apple product and live in a bubble in which every new Apple toy is a hit.
They had as many fails as success, we just forgot about them entierly

ign0ramus 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I realize that they have had many failures in their long history but it seems like they have been on a roll since the iPod release 22 years ago. Do you know of any product flop from Apple in the last two decades? I'm genuinely curious.
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pathartl 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

AirPower. That was straight-up cancelled. - The larger HomePod was pretty crap. - Butterfly switch failures - Apple Maps was garbage upon first release - Ping was 13 years ago, but it was one of those things that everyone knew was doomed to fail - The trashcan Mac Pro was not really made for professionals. I don't remember many selling.
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ign0ramus 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Thanks for replying! I hadn't heard of half of the items on this list which I think kind of proves GP's point.
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Apocryphon 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

How quickly we forget the debacle of the Apple Maps launch, which forestalled the CEOship of Scott Forstall.
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stirlo 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Sales flops:
iPod HiFi iPhone 5C HomePod

And engineering failures:

Trashcan Mac Pro Airpower

There's not many but there are a few.

I don't see this as one of them. The only thing thats an issue is the price. The tech looks streets ahead of everyone else. With time the price will come down and the features will grow like all Apple products.

xu_ituairo 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Have there really been many failed Apple products since Steve’s return? As many failures as wins?
There were failures during Apple’s 80s/90s struggles but not many come to mind in recent decades.

heatmiser 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

That aside, I'm curious whether it will be more like the mac or more like the iPhone. Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval? Can we use a web engine that's not WebKit? Things like that will make the difference for me, not the price.
This is where the product gives me pause. I am very happy to early-adopt this thing but if I cannot "do what I want" then I will pretty disappointed as I would not expect a comparable product to enter the market for another 5+ years as all this specialized hardware experiences commoditization.

I am very happy using my Linux desktop, slightly less happy with my Linux laptop (fingers crossed the 15" Framework changes that" and am not kidding myself by holding any expectations for what the F/OSS A/VR future will look like in the near-to-mid-term.

kmos17 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

For comparison the original Macintosh was $2500 in 1984, equivalent to $7000 today.
If this is as good as the demo was showing for pro applications it's revolutionary as a computing interface.

Since you can use it to view your mac's screen it seems there are no app restriction per say, but the built in app I imagine will be like all other Apple walled garden apps only loaded via the app store.

Tiktaalik 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

There's overpriced and then there's the next level above that of simply being unimaginably unaffordable.
With the former well, its something for enthusiasts and something for regular people to save up for.

With the latter it's dismissed as something for another class of people and out of sight and mind.

Apple may have ventured into the latter category here.

Not a great space to be if you want to build a platform and lure developers to build on it. Developers want to have a big market.

tqi 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Did people really say that the original Airpods were overpriced?[1] IIRC back in 2016 BT earbuds (that weren't connected by a band) were mostly pretty shitty, which I think was the root of most people's skepticism, not the price?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12446094

justin66 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

People said the AirPods were overpriced; half my uni has one. People said the AirPods Max were overpriced, and I see it all the time in co-work spaces and libraries. People said the M1 Pros were overpriced; they're literally everywhere, used by almost all of the professionals I know. People said the Pro Display XDR is excessively overpriced; more than a few consumers I know bought it.
The salient difference between those devices and this one is: none of those require software developers to do anything special to support them.

Granted, Apple had some success in the past telling developers considering a Mac port of their software "these are not the droids you are looking for."

shhsshs 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

In theory this does not require software developers (other than Apple's) to do anything special to support it either. visionOS has windows and kb/mouse support which means there is potentially no barrier to entry.
I'm guessing "full-screen" or similar deep integrations with visionOS will require some custom code. But it seems like most sites + apps could potentially "just work".

justin66 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don't know what, if anything, will be the killer app that makes this thing take off. I know that it needs a killer app, and I highly doubt it will be a two-day port of a regular mac app.
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pathartl 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

There's a huge difference between the lifetime of a pair of headphones and a VR/AR headset (or at least there should be). Bluetooth will be around for a while. This the second generation Vision Pro is going to absolutely kill the first generation... so why even bother getting the first if it's at such a high price?
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ztrww 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval?
I’m sure we all know the answer to this.

web engine that's not WebKit?

rofl

The AirPods, Pro Display XDR, even the iPhone were just improved and streamlined improvements of a established products with clear use cases. This is something completely different.. At this point this is just an expensive gimmick. That might change when people figure what they can do with it or it might not.

it is a phone, laptop and massive display bundled

And the iPad is a general purpose computer..

hyperbovine 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

But there were already tons of people using earbuds, headphones, laptops, and monitors. They brought a high-end product to an already mature market. Whereas here, they are introducing a very expensive device into a segment, VR goggles, that has flopped over and over again with consumers everywhere. Apple might be able to pull off their magic, who knows, but it's way more dubious than with the other things you mentioned.
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whimsicalism 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

You live in a wealthy area, I rarely see Airpods Max in San Francisco.
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parentheses 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I think you probably see more than the national average. It's a fantastic pair of headphones if you're using them a lot. It's the only pair I've seen that had consumer grade features "normal users" care about while having pretty close to audiophile audio quality.
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hn666 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I think what you're describing speaks more to Apple's marketing prowess than whether AirPods are overpriced or not.
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jocaal 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

i'm leaning more to the iphone side, theres not a chance apple is gonna allow webxr and have developers distribute products without apples cut.
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rldjbpin 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

this opinion seems more influenced by the writer's environment than not.
i will be cautious to oversell its current use case. like it has been speculated by some youtubers, this might be more of a mvp like scenario like with apple watch in the best case scenario.

although i am glad this is making quest 3 look more acceptable.

alaskamiller 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Emphasis on progressive web apps in macOS is a good hint with the first wave of apps this will have. Similar to how iPhone first didn't allow for third party apps, this will take the first year to sort out all the HCI before allowing for app store uploads.
This is very much nReal but polished, and those goggles are dim and not as immersive as this. Magic Leap went with the wrong direction it turned out.

sequoia 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Will we be able to "sideload", i.e. install things without papa apple's approval?
Snowball's chance in hell

practice9 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

phone, laptop and massive display
Including 3d video recording, which is under-appreciated in many of the threads. Two GoPro Hero cameras + rig would cost minimum $500, and you might have to edit photos and videos in post. And Apple does this automagically for you.

stirlo 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I'm not taking my $3500 headset with a massive screen on the exterior anywhere near where I'd be taking a GoPro.
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captainbland 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Probably be a little wary on just doing a casual visual inspection. There's a wide range of airpod knockoffs at this point which are much cheaper but look almost identical at least at first glance.
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joking 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

there's no doubt that with is onw appstore and os is more like the iphone and you will not be able to install anything that Apple has not approved, neither buy anything without Apple taking its cut
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orangecat 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yes, and that's really obnoxious. But the ability to use it as a display for your Mac (and presumably PC via VNC or similar) should mitigate that to some extent.
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acchow 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It also captures a new kind of content: spatial video. Upper middle class families with toddlers are going to want this. To relive the children's childhood forever.
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francisduvivier 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Since the space/weight for batteries is limited, I bet it will be more like iphone, so only WebKit and tight control to optimize battery usage.
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SalmoShalazar 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Do you honestly think the price fixation is “weird”? $3500 is insanely expensive for a consumer product - so expensive that it is flat out unobtainable for many Americans, and an extremely hard sell for many more.
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twoodfin 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Adjusted for inflation, the PC revolution happened on the back of $5,000+ devices.
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yCombLinks 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

PC's were a revolutionary device! There was absolutely no other way to do the things a PC allowed you to do at that time.
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makapuf 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

And they were almost a pro only market at that price. Personal computers were c64, atari or amiga, personal pc arrived when they were much cheaper, mid 90
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Razengan 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The Vision Pro is a standalone device.
A laptop + high-end headset would be in the same ballpark, at least maybe after deducting $500 or so for the Apple Tax.

TigeriusKirk 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It's neither a phone nor a laptop. It can provide some of their functionality in limited situations, but it's considerably less flexible or portable than either.
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atkailash 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Given you can use your mac’s screen on it, it’s almost moot depending on the app or latency involved. But knowing Apple it’ll probably be more iPhone since they’ve even been pushing App Store on Macs more too
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matsemann 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. Airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. That's what driving the sales.
No one will be wearing this in public. And if anything, the person in the office using this first will look dorky. So I can't see it having the same appeal/free advertising.

pdabbadabba 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales.
Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.)

Not sure this tells us anything much about the Vision Pro, though--except, perhaps, that some people will happily use the product even if it looks dorky, if the user experience is on point.

matt-attack 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Precisely. I prefer the AirPods Pro because they’re even smaller and are less visible. I use them because they’re mine blowingly convenient and nice. They’re one of those few products that really brings joy. I wear them constantly both on the go, and at home.
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matsemann 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

But why did so many end up on exactly that model, when there are so many other brands? Because they're vastly superior, or because we're social animals and seeing lots of other people wearing them signals that they're a safe bet and will keep you in the in-group?
My point here is that the visibility of them on others help drive the sales. "If so many wears them, they obviously can't be bad". For this headset, you will not get that same kind of influences from others.

pdabbadabba 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I agree with the point that seeing people using AirPods serves as a sort of social endorsement of the product. (Which is fairly different from your original assertion that "The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement.") Though I think the much stronger endorsement comes from talking to people you know and trust. The problem with merely "ambient" signaling (as in, you see people wearing them on public transit, etc.) is that you don't know anything about the preferences of the people you see wearing them. I see (or at least used to see) lots of people wearing Beats too, but I only ever heard bad thing about them from people I know and trust and, therefore, never considered trying a pair.
Vision Pro may not benefit from the latter (weaker) form of social endorsement, but it should be able to generate plenty of the former (stronger) kind.

uw_rob 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Do you own a pair of AirPods? My Gen2 AirPod Pros are what I consider to be the best purchase I have made in the last 10 years. The small package and ANC is fantastic. Before purchasing AirPods I would walk around with ATH M50X (Great headphones; not fashionable) and these have replaced that.
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pdabbadabba 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The AirPods you see all the time is because wearing them is a fashion statement. You're "hip" or "rich" or whatever you want it to signal. That's what driving the sales.
Exactly the opposite is true among the people I know, FWIW. People feel like dorks wearing AirPods in public, but often find themselves doing it anyway because they're convenient. (I know this, because it still comes up in conversation all the time.)

elijaht 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I don't know about that. My AirPods just work in a way that no other wireless headphones do with my iPhone. Using them is delightful. I still rock a Gen 1 pair which would no longer be "cool"
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jbverschoor 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Ok.. please you probably can "build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
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matsemann 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

How is the old dropbox dismissal relevant for my comment..?
What I'm saying is that airpods are advertising themselves by people wearing them and influencing others to buy them. This headset will not have that effect.

jbverschoor 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Well, not the same, but people like to bash anything Apple. The Apple naysayers. usually they are heavy windows/linux users (there’s not much else)
I bought the AirPods because I wanted exactly that. Sadly the batteries died in 1.5 years, so I’m boycotting the AirPods for now.

Nobody I know bought AirPods because they look cool or because they want to show off they’re rich. AirPods are very affordable.. they just work really really well. Why is that so hard to believe?

And yes, people are more aware of items which are visible.. but that’s a different story.

WRT the vision pro, sure you won’t walk around outside with them, but if they work as advertised, they don’t have to.

The M1 air didn’t sell a gazillion times because of its looks. In fact, you couldn’t tell it from the older models, so that point simply is not valid.

People talk, people ask opinions, if the majority of the opinion from experience is positive yes it will result in more sales.

emoII 1 day ago | prev | next [–]

"The kids are playing, better record a spacial moment" was one of the most dystopic things I've seen in a long time. Same with the ad at the end, with the father wearing it around his kids. I feel like the interface demands strapping something this futuristic over your head is just... wrong. Perhaps a few years of refining the tech can lead to something that feels more natural
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shippintoboston 1 day ago | parent | next [–]

Agreed for some reason I had a really repulsive reaction to seeing that as well. Feels like this is the next step in people turning more inward. A screen strapped to our face at all times.
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wtetzner 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

If they can get it into a pair of glasses, it might help a lot. Yes, the screen will be there all the time, but people won't be staring down at their phones all the time either.
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ElongatedMusket 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Oh good, they'll be staring directly at/through me from across the room instead. Can't wait!
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crack__fox 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Imagine you realise that you haven't taken off your vision for a few months. You lift them up and you're just all alone with sores on your face, in your piss-soaked chair in your isolated flat in your decaying suburb of your polluted city. think I'll just put them back on...
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lyu07282 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

You probably also don't want to take them off if everyone around you is going to wear one, not sure if AR is the right bet though for our dystopia. We don't want to augment the tent we live in the billionaire city, we want to replace the cardboard box we live in with a mansion to ease our embarrassment at not yet being a billionaire.
Future consumer electronics needs to focus on easing the transition of hundreds of millions of people in the western world into poverty.

speby 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

You mean like how crowds of people at live music events ALL have their stupid smartphones up recording the same damn recording which they should be paying attention to and absorbing the experience and living in the moment?
Forget what people should do, look at what people actually do.

zakki 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Forget what people should do, look at what people actually do.
This seems not Apple’s way. Steve Jobs once said “People don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

edmundsauto 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don’t think Steve would have liked the cable to a battery brick. I’m not sure this new device is a good example of the Apple Way.
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diegocg 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don't think Tim Cook likes the battery brick more than Steve would have, but there are engineering compromises to make here.
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pazimzadeh 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Steve wanted Jony Ive to have final say, and Jony Ive wanted the product to be fully mobile. I don't think that the wire will be present in version 4+ of the product
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fomine3 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I don't know which he like: tethered battery or heavier headset
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dvngnt_ 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

maybe if it doubled as an input device
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prawn 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I like this idea, but how or what? The power brick is obviously critical, but I'm guessing they want you to put it in your pocket or on the desk or bed/sofa and largely forget it's there?
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AnonC 19 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The demo of Vision Pro shows a virtual keyboard for a bit. That means it supports gestures (with hands and eyes) and typing on the keyboard.
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kimburgess 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

If only Apple made a device in a similar form factor...
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hjkl0 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

People don't know what they want until you show it to them
You won’t know what people want or how to build it if you don’t look at what they actually do first. There’s no other way of doing it, even Steve Jobs did it this way.

It sounds like a contradiction, but I don’t think it is. He’s talking about people’s biases about new products. Understanding people’s biases is part of watching what they do, as opposed to just considering what they say. He doesn’t say you’re supposed to come up with what people want out of thin air.

alanbernstein 8 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster phones"
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MichaelZuo 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

This is better then thousands of people in a crowd holding up their phones.
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valcron1000 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Forget what people should do, look at what people actually do
I'm going to borrow that one mate.

usrbinbash 18 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

look at what people actually do.
Will do. looks around

Yeah, not many people wearing ski masks that cost more than many people make in a month while jumping around in sweaty hot concert halls.

r0m4n0 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Yea... there were quite a few moments that felt rather cringe, dystopian, and weird at the same time. Honestly the entirety of the screen with your eyes for your viewers is a very interesting choice on Apple's part.
I do indeed want one of these and will likely buy it but I would definitely have opted for not having this outward screen functionality. I do not plan on wearing these ski goggles around my wife, kids, coworkers, etc. The fact they are trying to make it interactive for the folks around the person wearing it seems a little comical. That's like putting a screen on the backside of your phone so your kids can see your face while you are scrolling instagram. Wearing the goggles is an individual experience, why try to force everyone in the room into that experience like its going to be an accessory you will wear out and about?

Some day we will get to the point where we want the AR users to blend in a little more but we aren't at that point yet. You have a giant pair of goggles with cords hanging from it strapped to your face. Are people really going to be regularly interacting with Apple Vision users while they are in the matrix?

I guess if you are on a plane and the flight attendant asks you for your drink, they can see your eyes when you demand your coke... but come on, can't you just take it off to interact with people on the rare occasions?

I think it's just every time that you are using this feature, you should probably not be using this feature

prawn 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Interesting thoughts about EyeSight. I agree that if I were using/wearing this, I would not care about the ability for others to see my eyes and gauge my reaction. This could've been added to a subsequent version of the device.
But it could be that testing showed that removing the device in work and home settings to deal with quick interactions was enough of a deterrence to devise a solution? Also, that being able to show the eyes was a huge differentiator from competing products?

I wonder if they had a few non-negotiables and this was one. They figured it was on the roadmap, so might as well lock it in from the start.

w-m 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

They’ll just slap two cameras spaced an eye distance apart on the back of the next iPhone Pro and bam, you can record your kids with your socially acceptable handheld device. Still won’t need to play with them though.
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zild3d 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

fwiw, doesn't have to be eye distance apart just a known distance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_stereo_vision
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meghan_rain 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

100% confident this will happen, would bet my life on it
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hbn 5 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The new iPhone's design is pretty much completely leaked in CAD renders and the camera module looks pretty much the same as the past few years. So RIP to you I guess
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nerbert 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Bold
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sekai 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

"Don't blow the candles yet! I need to grab my VISION PRO"
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no_butterscotch 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

This is the new version of parents holding phones up in front of their faces to record moments.
Now generations of kids will grow up staring at their parents' eyes through a VISION PRO instead of seeing the back of a phone in front of their face. Progress?

EForEndeavour 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Which was the new version of parents fiddling with bulky camcorders as they squint through the eyepiece to record moments.
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quickthrower2 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The trick with a phone is recording while holding at chest level and keeping it still pointing at the subject while you still enjoy the moment.
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pier25 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Now generations of kids will grow up staring at their parents' eyes through a VISION PRO
Not at this price point.

Longhanks 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

To be fair, that is already the case with "I need to grab my phone", which is equally wrong, imho. But a lot of people don’t see it that way.
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rcarr 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Really, what we need is a little 360 spatial drone that records important events like birthdays and what not and then you can relive them on a device like the Vision Pro. That's the best of both worlds and I think that's where things will head eventually. I think Google or Amazon or someone has made a security camera drone that flies around your house so it can't be far off.
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bemmu 21 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Interesting, eliminate the drone part and that actually makes sense. Have a few very high resolution cameras at a distance, and you could NeRF a similar view unobtrusively.
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cloverich 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

This is where there's a notable disparity in this new product. "I need to grab my phone" behavior isn't any different than what people did with cameras for decades before that. The thing that changed is the technology became much more available, pervasive, and convenient. The use cases were immediately apparent and unlike this device, nobody was scratching their head around how they might actually use it in practice.
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spaceman_2020 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

On the contrary, it would be wrong for a parent to not pause a special moment to take a picture.
Sure, memories are great, but I have scant memories of my early years. Whatever memories I do have are tied to the rare few pictures my family took. I cherish them because they're a little time travel capsule.

When my child is 35, I'd much rather give him high quality images of his 4th birthday instead of asking him to rely on the memorization capabilities of his still-forming brain.

prawn 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Agree. My children love watching back videos of various events. The equivalent from my childhood was the occasional photo or very long-winded and boring home videos taken with a giant shoulder-mounted camera saving to VHS tape in a shoulder-slung module - maximum effort for meagre results!
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redeux 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Would it be equally wrong if they said "camera" instead?
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stingrae 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It's the equivalent of people going around and taking photos with an iPad.
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PascLeRasc 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Can't wait to see these at high school graduations
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abracadaniel 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I hope we’ll see Neal Stephenson’s term Gargoyle come into use as wearable computing becomes more common
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corysama 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Stephenson’s joke with the Gargoyles is that the Protagonist looked down on them throughout the story, but eventually became one.
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gargoyleisyou 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Every single person on HN, tapped into the to-link-compressed information feeds from every tech website currently live, literally is a gargoyle.
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4ggr0 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

damn you really created a new account just to roast the whole of HN. Not bad.
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sample2 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I think the issue for me was how "real life" and "digital life" are basically on equal footing when looking through this device. So your kids are now competing with whatever youtube video you are watching and it's harder to look away from the digital distraction. The same is true today when you are watching a video on your phone, but it's way easier to get someone to look away from their phone when it's not life-size, constantly in view, and always on
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ForrestN 22 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I've seen this sentiment repeated ad nauseam since this morning, but I can't fully understand it. The comparison isn't between Vision and full presence. Imagine watching the same video with Dad pointing his phone at everyone instead. The days of experiencing things worth remembering with full presence are already over for most people—this isn't any worse than pointing a big opaque block at the person. Either way, there's a barrier. At least this way we can see their eyes to some extent, right?
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instagraham 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

8 years ago, I recorded by graduation ceremony with a 360-degree panorama. I did the same with my first live concert at Wembley. It's something I can view with a Google Cardboard headset.
But to this day, it remains my most powerful photographic memory and I'm glad I took it.

tpmoney 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

While that was an initial reaction for me too, it's also really just a reaction to different tech. Many a "special memory" was captured by dad (or mom) behind an 8mm camera or a camcorder. The entire opening to "The Wonder Years"[1] was designed to capture that "home movie" feel, which would have been conducted by a parent holding something like this[2]. Even into the 90's and 00's it would have been done with a mini-dv camcorder (and later digital), which while smaller was still a bulky device floating around infront of the image recorder's face.
It's only with the advent of proper video recording tech in a cell phone that this technology has gotten so small that it's (mostly) unobtrusive and since everyone has one on them all the time, it's not surprising when someone pulls it out and starts recording.

And many a larger family event usually has one (or more) family members dedicated to capturing on film / camera anyway, so what difference would it make what tech they were using to do it?

If this thing caught on, it would be no different from any of those others, with the two possible exceptions of

A) actually being more present for the recorder, as opposed to looking through a view finder wobbling in their hands, it's just whatever they're looking at through this thing already attached to their head. Additionally for child events, they could still be actively involved with both hands (as opposed to one or none with other camera equipment and trying to work through a view finder.

B) Being less obtrusive to the rest of the people. Sure, people "should" just enjoy the moment, but I'd rather be at a concert with a few thousand people using these to record their moment than a few thousand people holding their cellphones up trying to record it around everyone else's hands.

Another thing to consider are cases where this is used by people who are already professionally recording stuff. Sure, your wedding photographer you probably still want using a real quality camera setup, but would anyone be salty about the photographer's assistant going around and capturing 3d video and pictures of your wedding with this thing? I doubt it.

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0bK-vUlw6M [2]:http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Minolta_Autopak-8_D6

albert_e 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Holding a gadget is slightly different than having a HMD mounted on your face. It is different for the operator, and it is different for thoe standing around and participating. Getting used to the HMD might be possible but would be harder and also sad when it does happen.
Also to capture a 3D photo you could also use just a hand held device with stereo cameras. We dont necessarily need a HMD for it unless we are going for that precise framing where a 2D preview doesnt cut it. I wish such a device was perfected for the mass market. It could be as simple as a pair of regular cameras mounted on the back of a smartphone -- separated by the inter-ocular distance.

tpmoney 4 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I agree that it would be different, but I don't agree that it would be sad to get used to. In the long run, head mounted recording means the person doing the recording can be much more involved in the goings on. With both hands free, they can be an active participant instead of off to the side holding a camera and trying to stay out of the way. I don't know if the tech is built in yet, but since it already does eye tracking, an external camera that's recording what the user is looking at, instead of what the camera is pointed at means that the user can be more engaged because they're focused on what's in front of them rather than making sure the camera is in position. The view finder goes away and literally becomes your view period.
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AndrewKemendo 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The video of the dad was almost literally shot for shot with Minority Report
https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1665868751479218176

cromka 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

To me the dystopian moment was when they revealed that an AI-generated rendition of one’s face will be presented during video conversations. We were worried already about the photographs taken with phones no longer being real, this brings the issue to a whole new level.
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ragazzina 17 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

What issue? It's like a memoji (actually worse, because the mouth movements will not follow the real mouth).
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drewbeck 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Very weird, but I can definitely see this becoming something you can capture on your phone eventually (and view on your VisionThing). If these take off then I'll bet money that capturing things for AR/VR on your phone will be a priority for Apple
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thewebcount 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It was the same thing in the 80s with camcorders. There was a stereotype of the crazy neighbor who followed his kids around with his camcorder recording every second of their lives. Then it was smart phones. Now it's this. People want to take photos and videos of stuff and it's more important to them than looking dorky for a few minutes. I don't like it very much, either, but I understand it, and it's pretty much human nature.
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CobrastanJorji 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It was an absolute flop, but I really appreciated how Google's "Clips" tried to solve this problem. Clip it on somewhere or stick it somewhere with a nice perspective, do your day and live in the moment, and afterward maybe it captured some special moments. A product that tried to let you be MORE in the moment. Fantastic idea.
Turned out to not work in practice. Shame, really.

parentheses 23 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Agreed. As a parent, that just seemed like something that'd never happen the way it was shown. It'd be more like:

dads enjoying a movie on the headset
the kids come home and are immediately rambunctious
headset comes off

asdff 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The ads I see on billboards for apple have been getting very dystopian over the years. One was just a humongous iPhone being held in hand, completely blocking the actors face, with the wrist cocked at this very uncomfortably looking angle such that the apple watch face was perfectly squared to the phone. It felt like something out of Black Mirror, like if I moved the phone there would be no face or some sick grin. A far cry from the cute dancing earpod silhouettes.
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cglong 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

This ad where she makes the real world disappear always struck me as dystopian. If I'm near a parade, I'd want to absorb that energy, not repel it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVW8-px4Ufw
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quickthrower2 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The neural implant episode of Black Mirror has a much better UX. You can help the mass and micro surveillance effort without the uncomfortable headset and be present with the kids.
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TehCorwiz 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Are you old enough to remember the big VHS video recorders? The shoulder mounted ones? This is minuscule and unobtrusive comparatively. Nothing dystopian about it.
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nipponese 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

The alternative is me sitting at my desk, with my back to the kids, while I tell them to stop bumping into my chair.
Which one seems more engaged with their kid?

nazgulsenpai 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Neither?
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makapuf 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/ae/b3/5faeb317ca198e48d6ba...
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tantalor 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Minority Report (2002)
https://youtu.be/arTIRgdEb1g?t=80

dmazin 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

i think the angle they are going for is that it’s exactly as isolating (airplane, the experience you MOST want to get away from), or un-isolating (being with kids, the experience you LEAST want to get away from), as you want. and it flubbed
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crazygringo 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm sure people said the same things when cameras were invented. "The kids are playing, better grab my camera! -- what a dystopic thing to say!"
This thing is no bulkier or harder to use than the film cameras I grew up with. They covered the photographer's face too.

adamrezich 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

we just finished conditioning everyone to cover the bottom half of their face—suggesting now that one keep the top half of their face covered, around the home, around their children, is nothing short of horrifying, both in terms of brazen anti-human dystopia, but more importantly, in terms of childhood development. if this, or something like it, takes off in the "iPhone" way that many here predict, future generations are going to be so completely fucked from the perspective of anything resembling traditional social development—which, of course, the iPhone, by way of the iPad, has already fucked up pretty significantly!
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sandoze 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I’ve read a lot of comments but yours is by far the winner. I bet you’re a blast at Thanksgiving dinners and family gatherings.
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adamrezich 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

face-detection is fundamentally important to interpersonal interaction in the baseline human experience (are you aware of the phenomenon of pareidolia?)—fuck with it at your own peril, both for children learning how to read expressions by observing adults, but also, for adults interacting with virtual "AI" simulacra, instead of real human faces! ignoring these basic observations is naïve as hell, regardless of Thanksgiving dinner conversation palatability (always a high watermark for intellectual discourse)!
thankfully, I don't see any reason to believe this will take off "iPhone-style".

Klonoar 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

we just finished conditioning everyone to cover the bottom half of their face
Nobody is conditioned to do this, it was just a necessary thing for a period of time. We've already moved on.

the_overseer 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Wrong, wrong and wrong again. This looks absolutely great I hope they make a kid size version so everyone can wear one. Anytime a grandpa complains that 'kids these days are fucked' they are demonstrated time and time again that they were wrong. Thousands of years ago people said the same things and they never came true. Have you not learned your lesson yet?
In a few years we will laugh at people not wearing these things just like today you are a weirdo if you do not have a smartphone in your pocket. Kids will be just fine. It's the grandpas screaming at the clouds who will not be fine and excluded even more.

The train is leaving the station. You either board it or remain in the darkness and cold. Forward, forward always forward. Anybody against progress will be trampled under our feet.

adamrezich 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

can't tell if this is satire or not, but assuming it's not, have you seen young children with their rubber-bumpered iPads these days? parents let them take them out in public just to shut them up, and they're always on the damn things, learning to tap and swipe to consume mindless content from well before their brains have fully formed. this is where personal computers have gone: from being useful devices that can be used (and programmed!) to produce or consume content, to being no-brain-required content pumps that you can use to turn your brain off and fill it full of inane drivel.
but I'm at least half-certain your post is satire, so...

the_overseer 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

I have. Those kids will grow up just fine. It's all in your head. Those kids will grow up to invent/innovate on levels you can't even imagine today. Like it has always been. Might as well just stop complaining about the "weird new generation" just because that "back in my day" it was better. It wasn't. It's just rose tinted glasses.
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bbor 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Just on a philosophical level: is it possible for a child to have a better or worse childhood, as measured by adulthood competence (critical thinking skills, EQ, IQ, whatever)? Like, assuming that iPads are awesome - is it necessarily true that all new technology always helps no matter what?
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adamrezich 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

how is this possible, when all of the devices the "kids these days" are using are entirely geared toward content consumption, with the only "content" "creation" they permit is that of the most vapid and useless pointing-a-camera-at-my-face variety? The Youth do not know how to use computers to create new good things, they only know how to consume what is already out there. the only creation they aspire to do is that of insipid Content, built atop the foundations of others' platforms, for others to mindlessly consume.
in decades past, one would be forgiven for supposing that, once devices that could ostensibly be considered to be Personal Computers became pocket-sized and nearly universally ubiquitous, complete with access to a global network of information, that we would've reached the culmination of the technological empowerment that the personal computer revolution promised—but instead, we got TikTok, and kids who aspire to be Famous On TikTok. that's what all of this marvelous technology has wrought: brain-numbing slop piped right into your retinas, in exquisitely high definition, practically from birth, judging by the age at which I've seen kids on tablets in public alone!

pr0zac 7 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don't disagree with you regarding the negative cultural shift caused by social media nor your concerns about stuff like kids wanting to be TikTok famous. Where I do disagree though is your suggestion that kids now are exclusively content consumers at a level higher than in the past and the idea that tech like smart phones and tablets have caused that to happen. If anything it feels like kids have access to way more ways to be creative and create new things than ever thanks to those devices.
When I was about 10 years old I wanted to make a movie (it was going to be a basketball version of The Sandlot) but my parents didn't own a camcorder and couldn't afford to buy me one so I was out of luck and never got to experiment creatively in that way. Last time I saw my brother's family his 9 year old was super excited to show me the musical she and her friends had recorded using her Amazon Fire tablet. My cousin's 12 year old has a bunch of (actually rather impressive) stop motion shorts on Youtube that he created and edited on the family's iPad.

In high school it was super time consuming and slow learning to program reading books and writing simple command line programs I could only run after being super careful installing a Linux distro from a CD in a magazine on my family's one PC cause the C book I bought was unix focused. Now my significant other's 16 year old niece is learning to program on an iPad with Swift Playgrounds, she was literally doing it sitting on the beach last time we went on vacation together. My sister's 11 year old meanwhile loves showing off the frankly ridiculous number of levels he built in Roblox just using an iPad.

Like yeah, theres definitely a lot of kids (and adults) that do not create and only consume content, and I've definitely seen all of the kids I mentioned doing the dead-eyed-stare-at-glowing-screen thing, but I don't think thats new, most kids and people in general have always been like that. And yes most devices are mostly used for consumption, but suggesting those devices limit the ability of kids to be creative just seems incorrect when I see them providing so many creative outlets that I never had access to because they didn't exist previously.

the_overseer 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

It is absolutely possible and it's exactly what will happen. Back in my day parents and grandpas were horrified with these things called video games which sucked the lives out of their kids. And how repetitive and mind numbing it all was and how humanity was doomed. Guess what? Didn't happen. It didn't happen back then it won't happen now. Chillax and go watch a few tik tok videos. Not everything there is garbage. You just need to give it time in order to see the value.
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sixstringtheory 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It also seems like more and more people are unable to start their own life until later, living with parents longer, starting work later, etc. I assume there's a correlation.
The people I know that are addicted to video games into their twenties and thirties certainly fit the bill. They're going nowhere fast.

bbor 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Hmm either their brains are melted or the entire world economy is tilted against the working class to a degree not seen in a hundred years, and it's hitting the kids the hardest. I certainly know which one I think is more likely...
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sixstringtheory 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

You say they play video games because the economy sucks. I say the economy sucks because they're playing video games. Real chicken and egg situation we have here.
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bbor 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

lol. lmao, even. The economy doesn't "suck", it's rigged.

Wage stagnation in Nine Charts: https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
Home prices are rising faster than wages: https://usafacts.org/data-projects/housing-vs-wages
World's richest people (0.001%) now own 11% of global wealth, marking the biggest leap in recent history: https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/worlds-richest-inequality-ric...
Richest 1% gained $6,500,000,000,000 in wealth last year: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/richest-one-percent-gained-t...
50 Years of shrinking union membership, in one map (from 33% to 10%): https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-y...

akaru 14 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You should be a consultant for the Fed. Quite an economic theory you have there. I’m sure you have data to prove it too. Such as less hours worked (as they were busy playing games) and not less earned per hour. Now that I think about it, those Agatha Christie novels probably caused The Great Depression.
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Chamix 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Agriculture > Manufacturing -> Service -> Content based economy, turns out youth have the head start, as always.
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jayd16 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Home movies are dystopian to you?
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motoxpro 1 day ago | prev | next [–]

As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500. To wear these on flights, in small hotel rooms, etc. is definitely a game changer. I have no use for video games so the Quest stuff with the controllers never made sense.
I think people that complain about the price are anchoring on the Quest price, same as people who anchored on MP3 player prices when the iPod came out at 10x the price. Even if the Quest was $100 or $50, I wouldn't buy it because its just not useful.

For sure I am an early adopter on this one, but as others have said, this is Gen 1. It will get cheaper, faster, smaller, better, last longer, have less bugs, etc. This is the way technology works. It makes progress.

So many unfortunate maximalist (bigger than the iPhone moment) or doomer (this is pointless and always will be) takes here. I'm glad companies still take swings in the face of the way people respond here.

EDIT: I don't see these as "metaverse" glasses or VR as much as a $3500 display which framed in that way is completely reasonable, it's $1000 cheaper than this https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/pro-display-xdr

zmmmmm 1 day ago | parent | next [–]

I agree the simple monitor replacement use case is probably one of the best in terms of real world usefulness.
But it's also the one that is most open to competition because it has no ecosystem link. There are already half a dozen alternatives at $400-$1k type range that give you virtual monitors. eg: the XReal Air [0]. It's interesting that even while they are generating some interest, it doesn't seem to me that AR glasses as monitors on their own are taking off yet in a mainstream way.

So it's going to be a question of how much more it can add to that or do better than that. Is just branding it Apple enough? Maybe. But I feel like it needs at least something else than purely being a monitor to compete with the alternatives.

[0] https://xreal.com/air/

notJim 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Resolution information is conspicuously absent from this page.
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thfuran 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Yeah, I'm not sure even this one is going to really be high res enough to make a good monitor replacement, but the other hmds I've seen certainly aren't.
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theshrike79 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

1080p per eye resolution[0], not really a proper display replacement.
Works pretty well for games and media though, these are semi-popular in the Steam Deck community.

These also have zero processing and require a device to connect to, there is no positional tracking either so the display floats wherever you move your head to.

[0] https://vr-compare.com/headset/nrealair

raylad 21 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

11.5Mpx per eye I think it said in the video.
Or almost 50% more than 4K, per eye.

jojobas 15 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

That's still not capable of producing a central "work area" the angular size of a book at the reading distance with a reasonable angular resolution figure.
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pzo 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Speculating but what if this screen pixel density is not uniform but much more dense in the center and they use eye tracking to shift those screens mechanically similar like the shift camera sensor array for image stabilization?
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jojobas 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Google saccades. No chance eye movement can be reacted and catered for fast enough.
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pzo 1 hour ago | root | parent | next [–]

From wiki:

Saccades to an unexpected stimulus normally take about 200 milliseconds (ms) to initiate, and then last from about 20–200 ms, depending on their amplitude (20–30 ms is typical in language reading).

Are you sure? Seems like plenty of time - even current iphone camera since many generations have 240fps and most android even handle 720fps mode - current iphones should handle it probsbly even in software (except their camera has quite high latency last time when tested) but they handle it in hardware R1 chip anyway. Since they using probably something like truedepth IR pattern projector, with 720fps grayscale camera should be easy to have very fast motion detector just checking only regions around dots

jojobas 1 hour ago | root | parent | next [–]

You'd have to process and mechanically move some lenses and screens at around 50hz in sync with moving imagery.
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buildbuildbuild 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

This is also now the most private display. You can work in public with no risk of leaks.
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moduspol 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

It'll probably work well until you start making the "boob honking" gesture with your hands. Then we'll be able to tell.
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ncr100 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Cough, Senator Al Franken, cough.
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motoxpro 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Totally. Meta framed any VR device as a metaverse device, which I have no desire to ever participate in. I just want to use "VR" the same way I use my laptop.
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zakki 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

With a big IF. If leak is interpreted as someone recording our screen from our back. What about someone stealing it? Are we aware with our surrounding while using it?
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Version467 18 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

The presentation talks exentsively about that. Default mode is complete passthrough and you can dynamically change how much of your surroundings you want to see.
Also, it scans your eyes for identification. Someone stealing your device probably won't bring them at all closer to your data.

sdn90 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Same use case for me.
Laptops have terrible ergonomics it’s near impossible to get proper posture while traveling.

Laptop stands help but introduce a new set of problems around the distance of the screen and keyboard height
Hard to find adjustable office chairs anywhere
If you’re in a city where you’re walking for hours a day, carrying a larger laptop gets tiring

warning26 22 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I just wish this ran something more like macOS instead of iOS.
Like the iPad, it seems I wouldn’t be able to do anything productive on the Reality Pro due to the lack of any sort of meaningful coding tools.

theshrike79 20 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

On the demo video they show it connecting to a macOS laptop wirelessly.
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warning26 8 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Sure, but that comes with two downsides:

Since it's an extended display over wireless, bandwidth limitations mean you're limited to just a single 4k resolution monitor floating in space (they mentioned that it simulates a single 4k monitor in the demo)
You also would have to bring your laptop with you

To me, one of the major value propositions for something like the Vision Pro would be that it could replace your laptop entirely. But it doesn't seem like that will be the case, at least based on what they've announced.

fastball 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Well you can have the laptop as a single screen floating in space and then other floating screens that are running off the Vision Pro, e.g. your web browser, docs, etc.
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theshrike79 7 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm about 80% sure they'll come up with an USB-C -> Vision cable you can use to plug in to your Mac.
Or the power bank is an USB-C bank and you can just detach the cable from it and plug it in directly and use the laptop's battery + get a wired connection.

hollerith 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Sounds like you know that this new product weighs less than a large laptop.
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parentheses 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

It's a logical assumption and the battery is not head mounted.
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fomine3 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Quest Pro weights 722g while MacBook Air 15 weights 1.5kg. How can you expect it's twice heavier than Quest? It's completely unacceptable for most people's head.
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thfuran 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The poor ergonomics of laptops are unrelated to their weight.
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fastball 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

The last bullet point in GC's comment was related to weight.
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thfuran 23 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Hmm, I guess you could take it that way. But things that light only really get tiring if the weight is poorly distributed. It's more about the size and sort of bag it's likely to be in.
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graypegg 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

Really? On flights? That struck me as a… weird use case I could never be confident enough to do. Strapping something to your face, noise cancelling headphones in, you’ve become basically unapproachable for anyone around you. Is someone that needs to get past you going to awkwardly tap you on the shoulder and you either creepily turn over to them with your projected eyes staring back, or watch in awkward silence as you disentangle the headset + AirPod max combo. I hope you don’t get the aisle seat!
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savef 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

This is no different to how many people behave on long haul flights anyway. Face mask on, eye mask on, ear plugs in. Isolated from everybody else as much as they can be, trying to sleep, and they manage it in isle seats.
Also, I remember TotalBiscuit talking about using an Oculus headset to watch films on a plane and it being a better experience than the screen in front for him (I don't quite remember why). So it's not a new concept and this device just makes it less cumbersome, I guess.

wingerlang 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

I don't quite remember why
Many such system (that I've used anyway) play very low resolution movies, on bad screens, using the laggiest Android tablets you can imagine. And you have all the other things in your eyesight distracting you.

prawn 16 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Not to mention that they pause constantly for in-flight announcements about duty free shopping, donating unused international currency, tray tables, dimming cabin lights, etc. That alone makes it worth bringing your own content on tablet or phone with your own headphones. If a host approaches about a meal choice, you'd see them through the headset. If there was an emergency, someone would tap you on the shoulder.
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9935c101ab17a66 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Being unapproachable on flights is a decidedly good thing IMO. Also, so many people already use noise cancelling headphones and/or sleep masks, how is this any different?
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varenc 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The audio isn't noise cancelling. The speakers are on the strap right by your ears so you'll still hear everything else around you. If anything my concern on flights would be that someone next to me can hear my audio, not that I can't hear them. (but maybe you can also use AirPods)
You can also adjust your "immersion level". As in, have the screen floating in front of you and still see the space around you, or have reality totally blanked out. Seems like at a low immersion level you'd have no problem turning to address someone trying to get your attention. The worst part might be how ridiculous you look talking to and addressing someone normally while wearing these. (though perhaps like the AirPods, the perception of it being a goofy look will fade with time)

mrfishsticks 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

They showed AirPods working with the headset on a flight during the presentation at one point.
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graypegg 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

That’s what I was referring to, the ecosystem pairing seems pretty tight so I could imagine that will be a common combo.
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varenc 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Ah that totally makes sense and seems like it's Apple's way of tacitly acknowledging that people around you can hear the built-in speakers. With the immersion level turned down it seems like the noise cancelling AirPods will be a bigger hurdle to someone getting your attention than the headset itself. (putting aside the silliness you'll feel talking to someone while casually wearing it)
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pzo 10 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

They also announced new feature to airpods something liked auto adaptive immersion that they detect what to noise cancel and what not dynamically depending on changing environment. On video they showed someone when someone start talking to you they will reduce immersion and the same when you start talking.
Similarly when when showed up close to you while you are in fill apple vision pro VR impression mode they will reduce it see this person slightly blended with your VR world

graypegg 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The immersion level is big, to be fair. Definitely good to be able to let the real world bleed in a bit.
The presentation showed AirPods in the flight scene. Presumably noise canceling on for a flight.

prawn 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

"The worst part might be how ridiculous you look talking to and addressing someone normally while wearing these."
Getting to avoid the typical in-flight entertainment would be worth that price, IMO.

erikpukinskis 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Using a laptop on a flight is very uncomfortable for me. Just being able to push the keyboard to the back of the tray table and push the screen out into the row in front of me would be worth a lot to me.
Not $3500, but a lot.

motoxpro 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I'm introverted so it's actually a nightmare when people want to have conversations with me the whole flight. I do intercontinental flights (10-15 hour) every 2-3 weeks. I'm either sleep, have my headphones on, or both.
I don't think it would feel too much worse than waking someone on the aisle up.

HDThoreaun 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

you’ve become basically unapproachable
I don't want people talking to me on planes.

graypegg 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

Hey, it’ll work! Just not a product for me.
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kylehotchkiss 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

you’ve become basically unapproachable for anyone around you
Oh! you're not the captive audience of a strangers unwanted small talk then? That's been an undesirable part of traveling solo for a lot of people. The shoulder tap will still work fine if you need to get past somebody to stand up.

graypegg 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

So I guess yeah small talk is normally bad and uninteresting, but essentially putting a blind fold on? People are that selective about who they’ll even consider socializing with?
To be fair I’m not regularly on planes/trains so maybe I’m just not annoyed enough by it.

wingerlang 19 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

but essentially putting a blind fold on?
Literal blindfolds are standard travel gadgets though

theshrike79 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not everyone wants to "socialise" with random people.
I have a set amount of hours I can be social every day, I prefer to use those towards the people I care about. Not someone who's bored on a flight and wants to chat.

npteljes 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

How is it different to someone sleeping?
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SkyPuncher 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I've done this with the NReal Airs on flights. Absolutely amazing.
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Demmme 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It's super big. Much bigger than a thin laptop.
And you need your laptop also because you can't work in it the whole day.

Gz now you have to travel with two laptops each 3k expensive and you look totally funny with it in anything public.

kllrnohj 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500. To wear these on flights, in small hotel rooms, etc. is definitely a game changer. I have no use for video games so the Quest stuff with the controllers never made sense.
Eh? Things like watching videos on a flight were tried with Samsung Gear VR or Google Day Dream. It flopped. Want a virtual office on a flight? Well fire up Virtual Desktop on an Occulus today and you've got exactly that - no controller needed.

On a flight something like Occulus' passthrough mode looks perfectly adequate - after all, the whole point in that scenario is to isolate not to socialize. So the plain/train/bus usage seems questionable, and do you really want to travel with something that bulky?

motoxpro 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

This is not the same experience https://youtu.be/74KInxQ8suI?t=208
The low res, jerkiness, having to use controllers, etc. wether or not the apple experience is worth it is up to the person.

I don't see these as "metaverse" glasses or VR/AR as much as a $3500 display.

crakhamster01 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

FWIW, that's a 4 year old video. MKBHD's video of the quest pro:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jUIE2l_9ig8

ImHereToVote 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

But but but. Tim said that “Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,”
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ncr100 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

"'Computing' is a trademarked word owned by Apple Computer Inc, Cuptertino California"
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frakkingcylons 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

GearVR was a precursor to the Oculus Go, which was quite successful. It showed that lots of people wanted a device to watch media and user retention was pretty good:
From Carmack's Oculus Connect 2018 talk:

With Oculus Go, about 80 percent of usage time has been for viewing "media" and only 20 percent for gaming.

Oculus Go and Rift are much "stickier," he says, with users that "come back... week to week and spend a lot of time in it."

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/09/carmack-oculus-quests...

parentheses 23 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

What you say is technically true but you still need the controllers for setup and that is quite annoying if you travel a lot. I read OPs level of travel as > 8 hours in air per week and > 3 nights in hotel per week.
At that level this is an easy buy.

denlekke 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

what's the virtual desktop on a plane situation you're describing ? i thought it needed airlink to a local computer or a really fast internet connection to a remote computer but maybe i'm not up to date
if the vision pro gives me a laptop-mac experience in vr without needing a separate computer with me, that's a pretty compelling use case to me

ncr100 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

You should be able to use the headset alone as a "ipad pro" experience, computing power.
And you should be able to have your separate computer, with the lid closed, and it still be running, projecting its desktop inside the headset.

(based upon today's videos)

denlekke 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

gotcha thanks, i didn't catch all of the presentation and only now getting around to reading the recaps
will be interesting to see what's possible in their os for it vs macos or ios

kllrnohj 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The Vision Pro has 2 hours of battery life. You're not exactly going to replace your laptop with it.
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denlekke 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

good point it's got a custom connector to the headset but hoping that it'll be possible to use a bigger battery pack or seat power outlets/usb will provide enough to keep it going longer than 2 hours
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rldjbpin 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

feel free to be optimistic about this and help the progress by being an early adopter.
although do not discount the skepticism made through objective observations. apple has tried ar for better part of a decade with limited success. ar/vr/mixed-reality headsets have come a long way but the realities of current technologies remain.

on the other hand, we've had established music players before ipod, people using internet-connected phones before the iphone.

in retrospect, google glasses wasn't a bad form factor all along than these ski googles!

ragazzina 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500.
On trains you can plug it in, but how can it be used for air travel when the external battery lasts up to 2 hours?

motoxpro 1 hour ago | root | parent | next [–]

Most economy long haul flights have power outlets. I do at least 20 ten hour flights a year and always sit in economy so for me, the battery power isn’t an issue.
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whatarethembits 13 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Throw in a USB C power bank in your backpack? Also, most seats (even economy) tends to have a usb outlet these days.
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Yajirobe 12 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

No power banks on plane
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whatarethembits 7 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

In which part of the world? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of powerbanks not being allowed in carry on luggage. I travel with them all the time.
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whiddershins 16 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You plug it in to the outlet in your business class seat.
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mahathu 1 day ago | parent | prev | next [–]

You're still gonna have to type on something.
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motoxpro 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

A keyboard fits on the tray a lot easier than a laptop if youve never tried it.
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varenc 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

From the video, you can turn the headset into an external display for your Mac[0]. This is critical since I'm doubtful I'd be able to get much work down in visionOS alone.
The use case I imagine is that you still use your laptop keyboard and trackpad like normal, but now you just have a mirrored display floating above it in whatever the ideal size/position is for you. For this to work of course you have to still be able to see your laptop. But if the marketing is to be believed it'll do that quite well.

([0]: Apple already supports turning an iPad into an external Mac display and amazingly it works quite well. It sets up a direct device-to-device wireless link (awdl/llw) and there's no noticeably latency. I assume the headset will take a similar approach)

rcarr 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Might want to check out the Tap XR.
https://www.tapwithus.com/product/tap-xr/

SkyPuncher 1 day ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Either bring a keyboard (like a low-profile mechanical keyboard) or fold your laptop screen down half-way and dim the screen.
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dev_tty01 22 hours ago | parent | prev | next [–]

It's a display and a computer.
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Now the user will ask you a question.

Summarize the document in recap style, go through major discussion points. Pick out 5 interesting discussion points people talked about. For each topic, summarize the general reactions and highlights, quote the exact comments from the document and the replies to those comments. Put your own commentary where necessary. Output in markdown format, each topic in a separate section.

Here is a summary of the discussion in markdown format with 5 major topics and highlights:

Price and value proposition

The $3,500 price tag was a topic of debate. Some felt it was worth it for the use cases:

As someone who travels for work, this is well worth 3500. To wear these on flights, in small hotel rooms, etc. is definitely a game changer. - motoxpro

Others felt it was too high, especially compared to existing alternatives:

Even if the Quest was $100 or $50, I wouldn't buy it because its just not useful. -motoxpro

There are already half a dozen alternatives at $400-$1k type range that give you virtual monitors. eg: the XReal Air [0]. -zmmmmm

My view is that for early adopters and certain professional use cases, the price may be justified, but to reach mainstream adoption, a lower price point will likely be needed.

Monitor replacement

A popular use case discussed was using the Vision Pro as an external monitor replacement.

I don't see these as "metaverse" glasses or VR as much as a $3500 display. -motoxpro

From the video, you can turn the headset into an external display for your Mac[0]. This is critical since I'm doubtful I'd be able to get much work down in visionOS alone. -varenc

However, the limited battery life and bulkiness were cited as downsides for this use case. The Vision Pro may work best as a secondary display rather than a full laptop replacement.

Computing power and software

There was discussion around the computing capabilities and software of the Vision Pro. Some felt it could replace their laptop:

You should be able to use the headset alone as a "ipad pro" experience, computing power. -ncr100

But others pointed out the limited battery life would make this difficult:

The Vision Pro has 2 hours of battery life. You're not exactly going to replace your laptop with it.-kllrnohj

The software and UI shown in the demo also received some skepticism regarding productivity. More details on the Vision OS are needed to fully evaluate its capabilities.

Privacy and public use

Using the Vision Pro in public and on flights brought up discussions around privacy and the reactions of others.

It'll probably work well until you start making the "boob honking" gesture with your hands. Then we'll be able to tell. -moduspol

Strapping something to your face, noise cancelling headphones in, you’ve become basically unapproachable for anyone around you. -graypegg

Passthrough mode and the ability to stay aware of your surroundings were cited as ways to address some of these concerns. Social acceptance of wearable devices may also increase over time.

Comparison to other devices

There were frequent comparisons to VR headsets like the Oculus Quest, as well as smart glasses like Google Glass.

I have no use for video games so the Quest stuff with the controllers never made sense. -motoxpro

in retrospect, google glasses wasn't a bad form factor all along than these ski googles! -rldjbpin

The Vision Pro was seen as differentiated from gaming-focused VR, but the bulky form factor invited comparisons to the ill-fated Google Glass. The technology and use cases of the Vision Pro appear more compelling, but form factor and social acceptance remain open questions.