charlesn

Wow! I didn't realize Mark Gurman was now writing sponsored content for Mark Zuckerberg! Because there's no other explanation for his hit piece on Vision Pro while he praises Meta throughout the article for its "hit" products. WHAT hit products??!! Meta's Reality Labs has posted $50 BILLION in LOSSES over the last four years alone and it continues to lose an average of $1 billion PER MONTH. The Reality Labs "business model" was and continues to be selling products for a huge loss per unit sold. Hey, I've got an idea! Let's mark Vision Pro down to $499, sell a ton of them, post huge losses, and then Vision Pro will be a hit product, too! The LAST company that any other company should want to emulate in the headset space is Meta because it has never been able to sell anything it makes for a profit. It doesn't have hit products, it only has loss leaders. Of course, Zuck doesn't have to worry about these losses and can keep throwing billions down a rat hole because he makes so much money ignoring your privacy to monetize your data any way he can get away with. 

Here's what especially hilarious about the way the press covers Vision Pro: Meta has been at the headset game since it acquired Oculus TEN YEARS ago and has never made a penny of profit since, posting billions upon billions of dollars in losses without a single truly successful product to show for this massive, decade-long investment. It's just one failed product after another, with failure defined as a product you can only sell for a net loss. The first Vision Pro only delivered 32 WEEKS ago, with reportedly half its annual production capacity selling out in the US alone the first weekend it went on sale and yet the press reports nothing but what a failure it is...HUH? You think Apple expected an immediate hit product that sells in volume with a $3500 headset that runs an entirely new computing platform and an entirely new way of interacting with a computer? And what would the press be saying if this was 10 years after Vision Pro launched and Apple was still losing $1 billion per month on it? Would they be calling it a hit product or is that only reserved for money-losing products from Meta? 

Hey, if you've got the desire and disposable income for a Hermes edition Apple Watch, I say go for it! But PLEASE: if you're dropping big money to essentially get a watch band from a company whose reputation is largely based on its leather goods, don't spend it on this god-awful looking piece of knitted nylon that looks like some home-crafted crap you bought for $20 on Etsy. It's not even Hermes orange! Spend the extra bucks and get a proper Hermes leather band. 

By the way: thanks Apple Insider for posting this. It was a fun read. Like 99.9% of the Apple Watch crowd, I'll never be buying the Hermes edition. but I was Hermes-curious about what you get for that much extra money. Gotta admit that I like that Lucky Horse watchface. But not worth $1299 to get it. 

SxyGayjust said:

charlesn said:

• So... the bad is pretty bad. At least I think so. Using Camera Control for shutter release isn't a haptic press, it's actually pressing down on the physical button which requires more force than you would expect. Definitely more force than using the volume button for shutter release. The problem is that phone cameras are very light weight, so when I pressed with enough force to release the shutter, I inevitably pushed the right side of the phone down a bit, too, which causes camera shake and your image to be slightly askew. I had to really focus my concentration on not allowing the phone to move, which isn't where I want my concentration to be when capturing an image. You can adjust the force for haptic presses, but not for the physical button that releases the shutter. My workaround was to use my left thumb, which was positioned under the phone and resting on the volume button anyway--as mentioned, shutter release with the volume button is a light press that doesn't move the camera. The other workaround is to just use the screen. But as it stands, I find Camera Control unusable for shutter release. 

 You've got to be doing something wrong if the phone is actually moving when pressing the Camera Control button. I have a SupCase on mine which covers the Camera Control, and even with that, it does not take must effort to depress activate the shutter or start a video, certainly not enough to cause camera shake.

After decades in photography, I know my way around a shutter button. PetaPixel did an in-depth, 25 minute review of the 16 Pro/Pro Max camera system from a camera professional's perspective and had the same critique of excessive pressure needed for shutter release, causing the same issues. But hey, if it works for you, have at it. 

Some quick thoughts after experimenting with Camera Control for a couple of hours this morning:

The Good:

• Very intuitive: just plunging in with no guide, it took me all of 2 minutes to figure out how to access, scroll through and select the various functions. 
• Not fussy or fidgety! This was a surprise after reading reports to the contrary. YMMV, of course, but using the default pressure setting, I had no problem with the single or double light presses, or the slider at the top of the button. 
• Love having a screen cleared of the usual control icons so I can focus on just the image I'm trying to capture.
• Good to have another way to immediately access the camera app. 
• Fantastic that third party camera apps like Halide and ProCamera are already supporting Camera Control. New interfaces like this from Apple have often died out from a dearth of third party support. (I'm looking at you 3D Touch and Touch Bar.) Seems like this one will be different. 

The Not-So-Good

• Why can't I decide which camera functions get assigned to Camera Control? I often toggle between 4:3 and 1:1 Aspect Ratios, so I'd love to have that at my fingertip for switching, but no-can-do. At least for now, you're stuck with the ones Apple has assigned to it, and there are a couple I will never use, so a partial waste of this feature for me. Likewise, why can't Apple give us three app choices to be called up by the Action Button, based on whether it's a single, double or triple press? I know I can use Short Cuts, but this functionality belongs in the Action Button settings and shouldn't be a kludge using Short Cuts. 

The Bad

• So... the bad is pretty bad. At least I think so. Using Camera Control for shutter release isn't a haptic press, it's actually pressing down on the physical button which requires more force than you would expect. Definitely more force than using the volume button for shutter release. The problem is that phone cameras are very light weight, so when I pressed with enough force to release the shutter, I inevitably pushed the right side of the phone down a bit, too, which causes camera shake and your image to be slightly askew. I had to really focus my concentration on not allowing the phone to move, which isn't where I want my concentration to be when capturing an image. You can adjust the force for haptic presses, but not for the physical button that releases the shutter. My workaround was to use my left thumb, which was positioned under the phone and resting on the volume button anyway--as mentioned, shutter release with the volume button is a light press that doesn't move the camera. The other workaround is to just use the screen. But as it stands, I find Camera Control unusable for shutter release. 

masteric said:

Surprising since my son and I both have Apple Watches from the Apple Store. We have Visible (owned by Verizon) and zero issue activating our Apple Watches on Visible. Just added my son's Apple Watch 10 to his Visible account on Saturday. Zero issues. 

Although owned by Verizon, Visible is run as a separate company, and it seems clear to me so far that the Visible exec team did their homework in looking at what Verizon does wrong--in particular, pricing and customer service--and has addressed those issues. There is also a wealth of information and functionality on the Visible app and website that I find far superior to Verizon's offering.