charlesn

StrangeDays said:

The pre-order prep process in app was very nice. Once it was time it took a few minutes for it to bring me in, then it was a snap. 

Only thing that irks me is Apple Card monthly installments are artificially limited to the big carriers for no logical reason. If you want unlocked (for Mint Mobile) you need to buy at full-price. 

The big carrier phones, when ordered from Apple, will come with that carrier's esim pre-loaded, but they are also unlocked, with the exception of AT&T, which is locked for the first 60 dsys. 

This is confusing Maybe someone in the comments below can clarify. 

On the one hand, this comparison strongly suggests that the A18 and A18 Pro are literally the same chip, except the Pro version has an extra GPU core, which might be accounted for by the regular 18 being a binned version of the Pro with one less core making it through QC. So far, so good--this much seems clear. But then you go on to say that the 18 Pro chip also has all these other advantages:

• Larger caches 
• Next-generation machine learning accelerators 
• Improved memory bandwidth 
• Better performance in demanding tasks and games
• An Advanced Media component, which enables Pro-exclusive features. This includes the ProMotion display with a variable refresh rate, Always-on display functionality, USB 3 speeds, and ProRes video recording. 

Well... how could the regular and Pro A18 possibly be the same chip with all these differences? I don't see how the extra GPU core on the Pro chip could possibly account for all of that. It seems the only reasonable explanation is that these are similar but different chips and the regular version isn't simply a binned version of the Pro. 

With its M-series chips that can easily boot into iPadOS or MacOS, there's no reason to try to ham-fist "touch" into an OS that was never designed for it when Apple could (but never will) release a tablet capable of booting into either OS, selectable by the user at startup. Boot into iPadOS and the tablet behaves like a regular iPad. Boot into MacOS and the tablet turns off touch screen capability and you essentially have a Macbook when the tablet is paired with a Magic Keyboard. 

The only reason we will never get such a device is because Apple wants to continue selling us two devices, not one. 

9secondkox2 said:

No need to follow after something that isn’t quite working in the market. 

The killer app for headsets is entertainment - gaming and media. 

In that sense, meta even has the better product. 

Apple has the far superior hardware, software, and ecosystem. 

But all the hardware and OS polish in the world isn’t going to save a product that the market has rejected time and again - save for a niche subset of gamers. 

The quest is lighter, doesn’t require a tethered battery, and plays decent games. 

While there are some compelling engineering/medical use cases, it’s not a mass market thing. 

Most people just don’t want to be encumbered by a device for their daily needs. 

When it’s indoor/outdoor sunglasses, that may possibly change. 

But headsets just suck. 

One of the best decisions Meta ever made is saying “no” to this. Kinda like Apple used to do.  

Hilarious. While you're singing the praises of Meta's focus on the supposed "killer app" of entertainment and Quest's "better product" for that use, you're clearly blissfully unaware of how your "killer app" and Meta hardware have been doing in the marketplace. Suggest you read a Meta quarterly report, where you'll learn that Reality Labs is and has been losing A BILLION DOLLARS PER MONTH. And this doesn't even count however many countless billions Zuckerberg burned through in pursuing his vision of "the Metaverse." Remember when that was "the next big thing?" Fact is, Zuck has been wrong at every turn when it comes to VR (or whatever you want to call it) and Meta investors have had it with this black hole for money. 

As for Vision Pro not being "a mass market thing" -- of course it isn't. The $3500 price tag makes that clear. Being a mass market thing was never a goal for v1 of this device, but this is classic straw man criticism of Apple: criticizing it for not meeting a goal that Apple has never set for itself. And in this case has made clear is NOT a goal VP 1.0, both in terms of its price tag and the production constraints due to manufacturing complexity. 

Try this: the first 42" flat screen TV from Sony/Sharp cost $15,000... that's more than $29,000 in 2024 dollars. Should they have killed the flat screen because it wasn't "mass market?" Heck, it wasn't even "pro market" at that price -- it was only for niche use where price absolutely did not matter. But today you can buy a 40" flat screen TV at Best Buy for $158 and its performance will be superior to the original. That's $29,000 down to $158. 

What's clear to me is that v1.0 of Vision Pro--and very possibly the next couple of versions to follow--are mainly a development lab for VisionOS and apps. That the hardware will get smaller/lighter/cheaper and become "mass market" is as inevitable as what happened with flat screen television and many other technologies. That part is not in doubt. But the success of VP will still be determined by its OS and app ecosystem. The goal of VP right now is to make sure those are fully ready for a more mass market transition when it comes. You and the rest of the VP peanut gallery are out there shouting that neither are fully ready now. No kidding. And so what? The only way to achieve that was to start somewhere and get several hundred thousand units of what is already an extraordinary v1.0 product considering its complexity out there in the wild and get people, especially developers, using it. In case you're unaware, Apple is sitting on a mountain of cash to easily support this kind of endeavor. I can't think of a better use for it. 

jbirdiikun said:

Nice. But, and I know this will be ‘heresy’ to many, I worry how having a case on will affect all Capture Button functions. I’m one of those rare few (i.e., clumsy) that need a case on my phone 

Not heresy at all. It's actually kind of rare (relatively speaking) to see a caseless iPhone in the wild. I go through spurts of using a case and not, and when I'm caseless, friends look at me like I'm crazy. At any rate, cases have always had cut outs for buttons and this will require just another cut out. Since the Capture button appears to sit flush with the metal trip, case makers--especially on thicker cases--will likely need to bevel the edges around the opening of the cut out to give your finger better access. But I have to think case makers already have a solution. What it does mean, for sure, is that cases from the 15 series will not be usable. Case makers have to like that part.