Xed

eightzero said:

There's really no way to predict that this product will do or be. Some of the most astute reviewers seem to all agree that the AVP they now have is first and foremost an entertainment device, and it excels at that. I have a hard time envisioning (!) how something without a light enclosure on the user's face keeps that experience. So...the idea this will eventually look like an ordinary pair of spectacles seems impossible. Sure - the battery life and weight will be dealt with, but it will seemingly always look like a mask on your face. Not that this is somehow disqualifying as a useful product, but the idea it will ever be AirPods-esque in ubiquity is a tad premature.

1) Traditional looking glasses or even just AR glasses are impossible with this design and primary usage. Perhaps that will be the non-Pro Vision, but I doubt that. That seems more like a different product category altogether.

2a) It also excels at interactive education. It's a bit limited right now — it is just 9 days on the market — but the two astronomy apps I've tried and the human heart app are  amazing. I think there's a microbiology and engineering one I can try. And just wait until we get more environments from 3rd-parties and video shot with the latest (and newer) iPhones. There will be a lot more immersive education tools that will be made possible soon enough. 

2b) I can see this being used to help people with specific trauma and phobias, as well as a way to help people who can't easily interact with the world in ways most of us can.

mikethemartian said:

I thought one of Apple’s principles was that, unlike other companies, they didn’t release products before they could do them right and now they are saying that won’t happen until probably Gen 4.

Let me see if I understand what you're saying, you thought one of Apple's principles was that it doesn't release a product in a product category until that product is perfect? As in, there's no further benefit that can ever be made to that product because it's already perfect? If so, then you've grossly misunderstood why Apple released the original iPod, iPad, iPhone, various Macs, Watch, Apple TV, and Vision Pro as they did. These all encountered many changes in HW and SW that made them better, but they all started off as being great foundations. For example, we're almost a decade into having the Apple watch and you can still use your original Watch band with a new Watch and vice versa. That isn't to say this won't ever change, but it's a testament to trial and error in a lab and making your focal point to a design that will last, over simply throwing anything at a wall and hoping something sticks so you can turn a quick profit to shore up your quarterly earnings so the CEO can be headhunted by another company looking to give him a larger paycheck.

charlesn said:

Pema said:

But I would suggest that widespread adoption of the VP depends largely on an affordable price point to merit the benefit. 

Kind of obvious, no? One of Apple's greatest successes, the Macbook Air, started out as a rich person's toy. The release price of $1799 in 2008 would be about $2600 in today's dollars. Ars Technica did extensive testing of it at the time and found that the "real world" battery life was about 2.5 hours. Plus it was slow and had very limited storage, memory and connectivity options. One could rightfully ask at the time, "Who the hell is this for?" Sure, it was cool, but also a very expensive laptop with poor performance that needed to be tethered to an outlet often. And yet, over time, the Macbook Air went on to become the biggest mass market hit in laptop history. 

 The essential point is: this took some time. Years. And the Air wasn't even trying to introduce an entirely new platform of computing. It didn't come with a whole new OS and way of interacting with a computer. The Air was just trying to be a lighter, more compact Mac laptop. So if it took a few years to become a mass market success just trying to be THAT, what's the timeline for a revolutionary product like Vision Pro?

The MBA is an excellent comparative example. I wonder if I can find articles from AI of the MBA debut because I bet the arguments or price v reward will be similar… and that was even a platform that had existed for decades with a mature OS and apps to go with it. 
It boggles my mind that people expect so much from Apple that they’d never expect from other companies.

edit: Here's a 399 comment article from the MBA on AI and AnandTech's review of the custom chip from Intel.

• https://www.anandtech.com/show/2420
• https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/15/apples_new_macbook_air_dubbed_worlds_thinnest_notebook
  

And here's a bonus article from when the TSA were confused by the lack of a spinning drive and no ports on the back.

• https://www.engadget.com/2008-03-10-tsa-cant-believe-macbook-air-is-a-real-laptop-causes-owner-to.html

surgefilter said:

How can AppleInsider compare a Rolls-Royce to a Toyota?

Vision Pro and MQ3 are completely separate segments.

That's not entirely accurate. Their price points are disparate, but they do serve the consumer market with a great deal of overlap. I expect we'll see Meta come out with a much higher speced Quest at a higher price than their $1500 option to better compete with Vision Pro, and I expect Apple to bring the cost down over time, especially when the finally release the non-Pro Vision.

It's the $3500+ MS HoloLens that are mostly a different market over the $500 Meta Quest 3, and yet I've done a spec comparison to see how they compare since they both do have some of the same technologies in them.

CheeseFreeze said:

Xed said:

CheeseFreeze said:

They’re positioned differently completely, so the specs are, up to a point, irrelevant.

I have the Quest 3 and it has a lot of great games and social apps which I love, also on the educational front. Many games for good value, specifically designed around what VR does well (avoiding what it doesn’t do well).

The Quest has a mature VR ecosystem, Apple does not. Apple basically replicated a spatial iPad. I have not seen anything on the Vision Pro that has any added value vs their existing products. 

They yet have to prove it’s a viable platform.

Say all what you want about Meta, they’ve done a great job offering a good experience for $499 that truly has added value next to a mobile phone and computer. 

1) Quest is certainly mature compared to AVP, but how it could it not be. Blackberry was mature compared to the original iPhone but that didn't last long. It's kinda silly to even  comment on something as obvious as an 8 day old product category for a company not being a mature platform already.

2) It's not even close to accurate to say that it's just an iPad in VR headset or just a bunch of iPad apps floating in the air, or whatever your sentence means to you. AVP and visionOS are very much a new and unique platform.

3) When I look at both developer tools and developer profits for both Android v Apple platforms there is always a resounding shift toward Apple's tools and developer interest leaning toward Apple. Do you not think this will also extend to the AVP? Do you think that Meta will always have a leg up in that regard? Do you not think that apps you enjoy on Meta by 3rd parties won't be made available on AVP?

1) I don’t think it’s silly to comment on the current state of the ecosystem, comparing two products in the market. It’s irrelevant how long the product is in the market: it’s in the market.
What is silly is comparing it with BlackBerry and suggesting this is another “iPhone” moment, because it’s really not. It’s 2024 and the impact of technology is completely different now.

2) Tell me, how is it unique? The AVP I mean. Because it’s essentially iPadOS with translucent windows. Functionally. You are not more productive VS a laptop. Your eyes get tired after 30 minutes, if not sooner. The battery doesn’t last that long. Eye tracking can be problematic when you want to control a UI element while looking at another spot - super annoying. 

Give me one amazing, painkiller use-case or productivity innovation that cannot be solved with a Meta Quest, a laptop, a phone and a desktop.
And I don’t mean a vitamin; I mean a painkiller. Right. There are none. It is a product in search of a use-case. 

3) No, I don’t think so, as long as the price is $3499 or anything above $1000, because the AVP is positioned as a spatial computer and not a mobile VR device. Gamers will never buy the AVP, and the response on this iPad-on-your-face in the developer community has been lukewarm at most. 

The amazing specs just don’t matter. In fact it’s a major issue because of the resulting cost.
Apple is competing with their own product offering, but the AVP loses out in every category. 
It’s a status symbol and a prestige project to Apple. I think they’ve made a mistake releasing it, but with their bank accounts they can afford keeping a failing category alive for years to come. 

The enterprise world might adapt the AVP, but like Magic Leap and the other brands that tried this, gave up or are about to. 

It is very unattractive for a developer to go through all the hassle, and I can tell this from personal experience, to port a game or app to AVP knowing there’s probably 20 people buying your app or game. I’ve worked with a devkit AVP since last August hat was protected with an AirTag and other security measures.
I can’t even start to tell you the work involved. 

It makes no economic sense. We only do it for PR reasons. 

Meta made the smart move of changing the perception of content value on the headset. You pay normal prices for a game and not subscriptions or F2P nonsense that has been killing developers for years. And even though they’re the largest platform, they are struggling to grow the Quest too. 

It’s a niche and it’ll stay that way. The AVP will have little impact in the industry unless it can articulate what it is, besides pretty translucent windows in your living room. Once you actually have to do some work, you go back to your laptop. One you play a game, you pick up your iPad, PS5 or PC. 

Tell me, why should I buy this thing?

1) It is silly for reasons already stated. My comparison to the iPhone was not intended to say it's another iPhone. You added that for reasons I can't imagine. You can choose to not buy it because it's not mature, but it's foolish to assume that a product category on the market for a week should be mature is simply ridiculous.

2a) Again with this nonsense that it's just floating iPad apps. 🙄 If that's what you really think it is then discussion forums for any technology is going to be beyond your comprehension. There are many immersive aspects to Vision Pro that can't get on the iPad and I implore everyone to make an appt. for an Apple Store to get that 30 minute demo just to experience it.

2b) You're just complaining for the sake of complaining now. What's the point? It's a different platform with a different UI and I/O. It's going to be different. Yes, I did have to train myself to choose an item I'm actively looking at instead of my natural state of choosing a selection after my vision has moved on. This wasn't difficult and it didn't slow me down, it was simply a slight change in how I operate. Not a big deal and no different to any other change I've had to make with a paradigm shift. Remember when scrolling on a Mac was the opposite it was now? I do.

3a) Why are separating spatial computing and VR? Apple is choosing the former for marketing to set itself apart —and rightly so — but you should be smart enough to know they are one and the same. You should also know that it's not an Apple-coined term. So let me make this clear to you, Quest is also spatial computing.

3b) No, the amazing specs absolutely do matter. There's a reason why people will crowd around a Bugatti at a car show and not someone's 1995 Buick in the parking lot of a Dollar Tree.

4) I don't see how Meta changed any perception of VR. They bought a company that was already successful in its own right and then started pushing out cheap headsets with cheap HW and poor content. They do have a $1500 option, but it still doesn't come close to what Apple has achieved in their first iteration of the Vision product category.  Not having controllers, the way that the iPhone or iPad didn't have a shitty stylus required to use it.

5) Why would you expect me to tell you should buy one? Is that really your measure of whether a product should exist in the world: if you can't find a personal use case that makes it worth the cost then it's a piece of shit? That's fucking narcissistic, dude. I have no use for the iPad, but I can tell you that it's an amazing primary computing device for a lot of people I know and I wouldn't ever say "it's just a large iPhone," which was a common and stupid argument from people like you when it launched in 2010.  Maybe you didn't say that about the iPad back then, but your comments about AVP sound just like that.