The Apple Vision Pro

This article addresses the MacOS vs visionOS thing, but doesn&#x27;t go hard enough. It is incredibly frustrating that Apple seems determined to serve this up as kid gloves experience vs a general purpose computing device with direct access to a real file system and ultimately a shell prompt. I am not in love with how Meta has locked down the Quest but at least there is a thriving sideload app ecosystem.<p>That is, at least there is a way to load up the media player of your choice and watch porn.<p>Look, I get that corporate America is strangled by puritan values from the payment processing networks on up, but it is arrogant and willful ignorance to pretend that adult content consumption is not a major part of the VR&#x2F;MR story.<p>You want to know what the people who actually use VR the most do with their headsets most of the time? VRChat and SexLikeReal, which is the PornHub of VR if you don&#x27;t know.<p>Steve Jobs was a dude who loved to talk about doing LSD but in his later years, he became awkwardly fixated on preventing people from using Apple devices for the stuff most real people do.<p>He&#x27;s been gone a long time. It&#x27;ll be a shame if their vision for spatial blah blah is sanitized and safe for work, even after dark.

Many articles don&#x27;t address visionOS limitations for 3rd party app developers. Everyone want to have a killer app but many ideas are simply not possible because:<p>1) there is no access to video&#x2F;depthmap stream like in iPhone ARKit so it&#x27;s not possible to roll your down Object Detection or ML Model or even simple QRCode scanner<p>2) Latency for Image Tracking seems to be around 1-2fps comparing to iPhone ARKit<p>3) in some WWDC videos hand tracking seems to be not as precise and also having latency<p>4) You cannot implement something similar like Mac Expose because iOS&#x2F;iPadOS&#x2F;visionOS is much more limited than MacOS<p>5) At least on iOS&#x2F;iPad depthmap from lidar is much worse than those provided from TrueDepth (and even those got significantly worse from iPhone 14+)<p>Overall for productivity I find some future iteration of XReal glasses more compelling and better direction:<p>- much cheaper<p>- very lightweight<p>- work with connected to desktop or mobile phone<p>- can have lower latency since connected directly with usb-c cable<p>- can possibly have less software limitation if connected to desktop<p>Ideally I would like to have some combination of google glasses &#x2F; meta ray-ban &#x2F; xreal so that you can wear it outdoor for simple HUD and AI voice control but can be connected to smartphone or laptop to provide AR experience similar like in xreal but just with better resolution.

He started off talking about how Vision Pro is not an open platform like MacOS and then he focused on how his productivity use case couldn&#x27;t be realised because of lack of multiple screens. But he failed to draw the link between these.<p>Ultimately the upside of an open platform is that you can know with certainty that <i>eventually</i> literally any common need or deficiency it has will be addressed by the open market - if you are desperate enough you can pay and do it yourself. For example, when people didn&#x27;t like Microsoft&#x27;s desktop updates they created an entire alternative desktop shells. And there are now something like a dozen of these, some of which are &#x2F; were commercial products. In an open platform, anything not addressed by the platform owner simply becomes a market opportunity for a third party developer. Of course, there are lots of downsides, but this is the upside.<p>But Apple&#x27;s choice here to ship VisionOS as a fork of iOS and more importantly as a completely locked down system means that his ultimate conclusion is &quot;maybe Apple will fix this&quot; and alludes to hints of rumours they might do it. But this is what we are reduced to - disempowered, we simply hope that our overlords will have mercy on us, their interests coincidentally aligning with ours long enough that they do what we want. Or you buy into a competitor, but this just gives you a choice of tyrannies, not actual freedom.<p>None of this matters if you think Vision OS is a niche or a dead end. But if you actually buy into the idea that down the track this is the ultimate future of all computing, then it should be very concerning to be completely disempowered over it. I actually love the idea of a truly &quot;spatially&quot; aware operating system and I think eventually this is indeed where computing will go. So that is why I&#x27;m both excited by and very concerned about the direction Apple has taken.

After working on it for several days, I can&#x27;t really disagree with anything in here. Strictly speaking, it&#x27;s not better or more productive than my large double 4k monitors.<p>But I am enjoying using it for work in a way I haven&#x27;t heard reflected yet, that touches on some people&#x27;s complaints about window management. Rather than surrounding myself with a &quot;sphere of screens&quot;, I find it more pleasing to align windows with the walls of the room I&#x27;m actually in. Notes, todo lists, calendars, email, all open at the same time up against the walls of my physical room. I stand at my standing desk as usual, with my macbook display in front of me, and then I walk around to look at different things.<p>It may not be better but it&#x27;s a different, pleasant experience.<p>Also, art is <i>great</i> on the VP. I put the album art of the currently playing music full size on one wall and it&#x27;s actually given me a new appreciation for that.

&gt; One of the realities of the iPad is that, for most customers, it is a personal video player; for that particular use case the Apple Vision is superior in nearly every way.<p>Pretty hard for me to imagine parents handing their young kids AVP instead of an ipad to watch videos, or an adult putting on AVP as they go to sleep instead of the pad on the side of the bed. Some people will prefer AVP on a plane over an ipad perhaps, but not all. Maybe teens will prefer it for casual watching, but many people will prefer something where it is less awkward to get up and pee or get a snack or interact with someone else in your house.

This is the key part:<p><pre><code> I wrote in the productivity section of yesterday’s Article, “To put it even more strongly, the Vision Pro is, I suspect, the future of the Mac.” I’m kind of irritated at myself for not making one critical observation: the Vision Pro is the future of the Mac if Apple makes software choices that allow it to be. I’m mostly referring to the Mac’s dramatically larger degree of openness relative to other platforms like iPadOS: so many of the capabilities of a Mac are not because of its input method, but because applications and users have far fewer constraints on what they can do, and it will be difficult to replace the Mac if the same constraints that exist in iPadOS exist in visionOS. Frankly, I’m dubious Apple will allow that freedom, and I should have tempered my statement because of that. I do think that visionOS is much more compelling for productivity than the iPad is, thanks to the infinite canvas it enables, but if you have to jump through the same sort of hoops to get stuff done that you do with the iPad, well, that ability to project a Mac screen into the Vision Pro is going to be essential. </code></pre> If Apple <i>seriously</i> wants to make this the general purpose computing device of the future, it needs to be 100% as open as the Mac and other PC platforms.<p>Locking this things down like iOS&#x2F;iPad OS is going to <i>severely</i> limit the potential, and that makes me very sad.<p>Of course this is Apple, and like any publicly traded company they see $$$ above all else, and they know they can make the most money by locking the device down, forcing people to use approved apps purchased only via the approved app store, and doing everything they can to prevent people from <i>truly</i> owning the device they bought.

I wasn&#x27;t sure about the Vision Pro until I saw how negative HackerNews was about it. I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;ll be a massive success now.

The <i>&quot;mea culpa, I have been part of over-egging a pre-launch product based on being blessed with privileged access to an extremely limited guided walkthrough and I lost all objectivity&quot;</i> shuffle.<p>And that bit about a VR headset being better than an iPad for a personal video player is some seriously optimistic, overextended thinking.<p>Is wearing half a kilo of electronics with a two hour battery life on your head really superior to a smaller screen with all-day battery life that you can put away at a moment&#x27;s notice?<p>(Even <i>ignoring</i> that video content often has more than two hours of runtime.)

I have the disposable income but I already feel so alienated from the world as a software engineer. Especially post-covid. My mind is nudging me to go out and socialize or go on an adventure. I might purchase this as a tech geek, but I know I would benefit more from investing the small fortune in something that maximized my social growth (i&#x27;ve no idea what that would be..) All in all, I guess if it was cheaper, I wouldn&#x27;t evaluate this on such an intellectual&#x2F;philosophical level..

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;disconnect.blog&#x2F;apples-vision-pro-headset-deserves&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;disconnect.blog&#x2F;apples-vision-pro-headset-deserves&#x2F;</a><p>&gt; During the pandemic, we got a very clear picture of the incentives of the tech industry. Once many of us were isolated in our homes to avoid contracting or spreading a contagious virus, tech companies saw their revenues and profits soar as we spent much more time in front of our screens engaging with their services. Companies that were already massive with almost unimaginable valuations and earnings took it to a new level because we were so isolated from one another, and it showed just how much they’re incentivized to get us to spend more time looking at our screens.<p>...<p>&gt; I see the Vision Pro and these attempts to have us work in the metaverse or go through our lives with headsets on our faces through a similar lens. The goal of these companies is to isolate us so more of our interactions occur through the products and services they offer, instead of just living our lives and actually interacting with people throughout the course of our days instead of apps and chatbots.

That was a fine review and telling of his experiences. I am fairly wealthy and my wife encourages me to buy any toys I want (advantages of 40+ years of marriage!), but I found it easy to resist the purchase. Do I think that in a few years Vision Pro version 2 or 3 will be a must buy? Yes, indeed!<p>I just didn’t want to go through early product hassles.<p>I have bought Go, Oculus 1, and Oculus 2 products. The Oculus 2 hits a sweet spot: I always use it once or twice a day now for 5 to 15 minutes to run around playing ping pong, watching live concerts for 1 or 2 minutes just to see what performers are like, etc. I should have bought an Oculus 3, probably, but for quick fun the older model is just fine.<p>I hate to bet against Apple but Meta may win the escapist just having fun market. Two Apple products have however totally changed my life style: the Apple Watch lets me comfortably function in the world while having no other digital device with me: perfect for quick calls, messaging, checking calendar, etc. while I am out of my home. Much less intrusive to being a human being than carrying around an iPhone. The other product is the iPad, which does a little of everything, and is such a great form factor. I have an Apple Pro Display XDR monitor that pairs perfectly with a modern iPad Pro.<p>I look forward to something like the Vision Pro in the future that revolutionizes my life like the Apple Watch and the iPad.<p>EDIT: it is true that a good iPad Pro and an Apple Pro Display XDR together cost about $9000 and as spectacular as watching movies on this combination is, apparently the Vision Pro for $3500 is better, the iPad Pro and Pro Display XDR also have other excellent functionality.

It&#x27;s interesting seeing so many of these takes on AVP. So many people imagined how they&#x27;d use it when it came out. Now that it&#x27;s out, they&#x27;re realizing that reality doesn&#x27;t meet their imagination. Not that AVP is bad or that it doesn&#x27;t work correctly, it just doesn&#x27;t do some of the things people expected it to or it has more limitations than they expected.<p>Which, to me is odd why they would think this because this is an Apple product. You will only ever be able to use it the way Apple wants you to use it. If it doesn&#x27;t fit your imagined use case, Apple expects you to adapt.

OK, all the upbeat Vision Pro articles have one theme in common: &quot;Like the original iPod or iPhone, you will first ridicule it, then realize you can&#x27;t compete with it, then put one [in your pocket].&quot;<p>Which... is reasonable, I guess? But it does ignore two quite significant elephants in the room:<p>1. No, I will not put that on my face, nor accept anyone in my proximity to do so without [social] repercussions (see: Google Glass)<p>2. No, it does not do <i>anything</i> I actually <i>want</i>. My 4K, soon 5K, soon 8K monitor displays my movies, code, or whatever, just fine, and the fact that I can get custom overlays or whatever, while making me nauseous, just isn&#x27;t that appealing? (see: anything Oculus&#x2F;Meta, Microsoft, HTC, etc. have achieved so far: some subset of fans will lap their product up, but broad marketplace acceptance is... <i>nowhere to be found</i>?)<p>It&#x27;s quite possible that VR&#x2F;AR will take over the world at some point, but right now, it more seems like 3D TV&#x2F;cinema: a supply-side fad that lacks consumer acceptance.

It&#x27;s a solution in search of a problem. Everyone says &quot;this is first gen, and it will only get better.&quot; I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s right. &quot;this is first gen, and it will only get cheaper.&quot; is more like it. Walking around without peripheral vision in order to be able to watch YouTube in the train station is not worth any amount of money.

Finally, a review that talks about that it is basically impossible to <i>share</i> this 3499$ device with others. This is such a glaring miss on Apple&#x27;s part, I can&#x27;t believe all the other reviewers simply ignored this fact.

FOV is determined by the distance of the screens from your eyes, which are user-specific. Lots of users have reported [0] that switching to a 21W [1] light seal, or removing the light seal altogether [2] provides a massive FOV increase.<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;VisionPro&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1aiuwm4&#x2F;change_from_33w_to_21w_wow&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;VisionPro&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1aiuwm4&#x2F;change_f...</a><p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;VisionPro&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1ai9eqc&#x2F;light_seal_meaning_of_the_numbers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;VisionPro&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1ai9eqc&#x2F;light_se...</a><p>[2] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;VisionPro&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1aiq3si&#x2F;wtf_removing_the_light_seal_and_band_turned_these&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;VisionPro&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1aiq3si&#x2F;wtf_remo...</a>

The assumption that it’s v1 and will only get better seems to miss the physics and battery limitations. Magic Leap spent billions trying to overcome the physics of seeing in high definition. How soon we forget…<p>Moreover, are the latest iPhones or iPads really that much better than the first versions, each seems like incremental improvements, not dramatic leaps forward.

Ipod was USD 399.- in 2001 (USD 686.- Today) and the Rio was USD 250.- in 1998 (USD 467.- Today). USD 3499 still seems way up there even for today.

I haven&#x27;t read <i>every</i> review of the AVP, but I&#x27;ve read a few (not skim-read) - this, the Verge, Gruber, some others - and while everyone waxes lyrical about the movie watching experience, I haven&#x27;t noticed a single comment about whether you can actually have a drink while doing so. I can&#x27;t easily drink from a glass&#x2F;can with a Quest 3 on my face. Would I be able to with an AVP?

The discussion is kind of a waste of time. It isn’t anywhere close to being an AR product. Tim basically already told us that this type of product would fail (mentioned in the article). It’s being released to put the project to bed, if you ask me. “Ship or go home” is what the Apple board is saying. They’ll be happy if it sells like hotcakes to cult members and they’ll be happy if it fails big time so they can finally kill the development hell that is the project.<p>Five more years won’t fix it. Don’t believe me? Look at the Meta Quest from 5 years ago compared to the Quest 3 or the Vision Pro for that matter. It’s barely a different experience. Useful for games and videos and that’s about it.<p>This concept can’t mess your hair and makeup up. It can’t be something that you can only use in isolation for thousands of dollars. It quite literally needs decades of technological progress that may never happen.

The only argument for owning a vision pro is that I could do _more_ of everything I&#x27;m trying to quit or reduce, hard sell, and I doubt I&#x27;m in the minority on this one

I find it somewhat interesting that a good number of the articles about this don&#x27;t seem to go into details about eye strain. I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m mistaken in thinking that even if it doesn&#x27;t seem like it your eyes are going to be focused on a screen image that is what? 2 inches in from of your eyes. Given the recommendations when reading a book (which is further away although maybe not so much to matter) how does that work with something that seems to be being sold for continuous use over a 2 hour period?<p>The FAQ from Apple does suggest breaks every 20 minutes &quot;as you become acclimated&quot;. I don&#x27;t quite know what that means for someone who, say, uses it for 2 uninterrupted hours a day to watch movies for example.

The MacOS virtual display limitations seems like a real achilles heel for no good reason.<p>The technical reason is wireless bandwidth for the virtual display.<p>But AVP isn&#x27;t wireless!! You&#x27;ve already got a wire running down from your head to the battery pack on your waist. And from there in a real productivity setting presumably you&#x27;ve got the battery pack plugged into the wall. So what&#x27;s the harm in having offered a TB4 input to allow multiple displays from your MacOS device?<p>Just feels like an aesthetic &quot;no wires &#x2F; no ports&quot; thing which is fine if not for the giant power wire!

A big problem of AR is the other people. Google Glass wasn&#x27;t so awkward looking, but it still had negative reactions from other people that could be afraid of being recorded, or information gathered from them, or apps that do something &quot;fancy&quot; with the people you see like mood detection, to mention something tame.<p>We are not anymore in the internet or technology of 2014, you can put significant intelligence over what you see, and people may be afraid even of things that technology can&#x27;t do yet or at least that Apple should forbid in some stage (you don&#x27;t have to go as far as an AR app that shows everyone around you naked, just recognizing faces and show personal data and selected social networks information is bad enough).<p>And that is beyond updates in hardware (at least, while it is visible that you are using it) or software.

When the VisionPro first went public I wondered if I should regret pre-ordering a SimulaVR[1] but it seems like for productivity at least I probably made a good choice. We&#x27;ll see when it actually arrives though.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simulavr.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simulavr.com&#x2F;</a>

Yep, pretty much the same conclusions I came to [0] in my blog posts on the AVP.<p>It’s essentially an iPad on your face (in both weight and capability). I was happy to pay its cost if it could replace my external monitors but it’s far from being able to do that. The pass through quality could be forgiven (it’s cutting edge but still not perfect) if the Mac Virtual Display was as sharp as visionOS apps but it’s not. Again, it’s better than anything else I’ve tried but it’s not anywhere close to my 3 monitors.<p>If Apple can continue to iterate on this and not lose interest then I can see myself buying a future version but as things stand today I’ll probably be returning mine.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joshstrange.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joshstrange.com</a>

Eh I think we are overthinking the &quot;strategy&quot; here. This article seems like those who &quot;trade&quot; stocks with intense technical charts and lines.<p>The real reason Apple did this was they kind of had to? There is a sense that the future is something to do with AR&#x2F;VR and Apple had not released a new product in a while.<p>But the headset still has all the issues of other headsets: poor field of view, heavy on the face and expensive.<p>I think the real signals here are that the current big tech companies have all tried and failed.<p>The field for disruptors here are open. If anyone has a real pirate spirit and can hack together a better ar glasses with a linux os, it might just be the beginnings of the next Apple.

If people DO start replacing other devices for video content like their televisions with VR experiences I&#x27;m kind of excited about the implications for interior design. Imagine the living room no longer having to be TV centric.

Its a digital headcrab, eating your attention.

Reading this article, it&#x27;s nice to see I&#x27;m not alone in my thinking about the vision pro. Ignoring the remarks on entertainment (it&#x27;s excellent!), I&#x27;ve believed for several years now that VR headsets are going to replace computer monitors, and the vision pro is a step in the right direction. But a 1:1 monitor projection from my macbook is not quite enough of a benefit to merit the drawbacks of the headset. And it turns out that all of the business software I use is highly interactive, so very little, if anything at all, can be run as a separate native vision pro app.<p>Teams? I&#x27;m not using a persona in a professional setting. Also MSFT&#x27;s implementation has really low information density. Slack? I need to be able to copy and paste, and the ipad compatibility app stinks. Outlook? Again, the ipad compatibility app is no good. Excel? Give me a break. I had tried the browser first, but it turns out that I have keyboard workflows that are very efficient, and requiring my gaze to shift is no good. To add to it, the gaze tracking highlights controls all over the app when I&#x27;m just trying to type, and if I glance at another window for reference, shifts my keyboard and mouse attention.<p>Multiple monitors projected from a real computer really would be ideal here.

Given how long this has been in development, I’m surprised that Apple didn’t buy a studio like MGM or Paramount+CBS. If AVP is best as a consumption device, creating next generation content and especially on top of events like the Grammys and Super Bowl would accelerate adoption. Folks are raving at how Avarar looks, and Cameron has another 4 or 5 in the works.

Can we try it somewhere? I feel tempted to buy one, try it and probably return it if what I read about temperature, FoV and battery life turns out to be true. Is that ok, or does anyone think that is not an ethical thing to do?

I&#x27;ve been somewhat surprised to see that early adopters unironically venture outside with these things.<p>That alone tells me that maybe Apple is on to something. It&#x27;s their biggest bet yet and they are rarely ever wrong.<p>Not for me though.

&gt; 1. locked down by apple&#x27;s walled garden&#x2F;OS (no foss, no customisation)<p>&gt; 2. way too expensive for an impulse purchase (for the average consumer. for example you could buy 7 Quest 3&#x27;s)<p>&gt; 3. battery life<p>for me, point 1 kills it. reason i would never buy it.<p>proprietary battery connector &amp; 1 monitor limit is a very typical apple move.<p>i see it as another (albeit cool) vehicle for selling apps and subscriptions. neither of which i&#x27;m interested in.<p>its really a shame that such great hardware is hobbled by apples OS.

Maybe I&#x27;m just too old for this shit but I&#x27;d much rather spend $3500 on a set of excellent displays for my computer and still have money left over to buy a huge TV for entertainment purposes. Might even have enough leftover to buy an Oculus for occasional novelty use.

Most documented flop in history