from the words-are-but-wind dept
I went and did the Apple demo. I was there for something else at the time, and they had an opening, so I jumped on it. I highly recommend doing the demo, it’s honestly really freaking impressive. I’m not positive what the killer app is for it yet, or if this is just a step in long term AR/MR, but what they’ve done is really impressive. Yes, it’s expensive as hell, and my suspicion is that long term the displays will be replaced with a waveguide (Stanford’s looks pretty good at this point), so it won’t need the external-facing display, but they’ve got the head and hand-tracking in a good spot, as well as the gestures needed for it.
Maybe, the killer app will be the overlay itself, where it uses a camera/location/audio to see what’s going on and present more context. Looking at a menu? Okay, I’ve had this and this and liked it, but their X I’m not a fan of. I need Y from the grocery store, where is it on the shelves… more than anything, I think that they saw what Google glass could become capable of, and thought that the phone as it is now (screen, etc) was going to become obsolete at some point, and they were terrified of losing that race.
I’m sure it is extremely impressive. That means nothing when you’re paying $3500 for a device that has no practical use. It doesn’t even support any VR games, which is the only realistic usecase. Maybe they could rent them out for a few weeks because after that time you get bored of it immediately.
I think it’s pretty clear their intended use was “spatial computing” which is apple marketing speak for a computer with floating displays. But they were fools to think that anyone wanted to walk around with this thing strapped to their face, much less that they would pay such a wild amount of money for it. Or that they would use that floating keyboard on a daily basis.
For the specs of what it is and what else is out there, it’s actually a really good price.
People like to compare it to the cheapest headsets out there, but it has specs that beat the highest end headsets out there and it’s cheaper than those.
When the Apple Vision pro came out, the closest device sporting similar specs would be the Varjo XR-3 which was only available to Enterprise users. It cost $7k plus a $1500 yearly subscription, plus you needed a powerful computer to run it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REo1ugX5GSI
Basically, hardware wise, it’s good, but for it’s actual uses it’s not worth the $3500.
It’s got good hardware, but there’s nothing being done with that hardware. The pricepoint kept there from being any broad dev support, so its basically a gimmicky paperweight that costs $3500. At least Microsoft will directly work with industry partners for Hololens development, but there’s nothing like that with Apple to help pave over the notoriously rough super-early adoption era.
Yeah, I’ve seen where doctors are using it for surgery and I see all sorts of parallels to the portable computing movement of the 90s, which were about having tablets instead of a ton of manuals, and some of the AR/MR where it shows them where everything goes while looking at the part in question.
I’ve seen where doctors are using it for surgery
The article I’ve seen is one instance in Brazil (article in Brazilian Portuguese) for laparoscopic surgery, which makes a lot of sense. I don’t know how it compare to other displays, however, or if using a VR set rather than a monitor offers advantages, or if the Vision Pro did anything new or better. The same article mentions that doctors had done the same thing with a HoloLens VR headset some years before.
Several others, though a couple seem to be about a POC.
- https://www.adventhealth.com/business/adventhealth-central-florida-media-resources/news/surgical-team-adventhealth-performs-worlds-first-its-kind-procedure-using-apple-vision-pro-mixed
- https://time.com/7093536/surgeons-apple-vision-pro/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39140319/
- https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/05/09/more-doctors-are-embracing-apple-vision-pro-for-precision-keyhole-surgeries/amp/
What’s a waveguide?
Here’s a good article about this specific waveguide: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/9/24153092/stanford-ai-holographic-ar-glasses-3d-imaging-research
TLDR - they need special materials to allow small/thin glasses for XR goggles. This looks like it could be huge.
It appears to be related to fiber optics, here’s the best resource I found:
Yes, it’s expensive as hell, and my suspicion is that long term the displays will be replaced with a waveguide (Stanford’s looks pretty good at this point), so it won’t need the external-facing display
Interesting; any more information on this? I tried a search but didn’t turn much up.
I think that they saw what Google glass could become capable of, and thought that the phone as it is now (screen, etc) was going to become obsolete at some point, and they were terrified of losing that race.
That’s very fair… I definitely think the only viable future here is lightweight AR glasses.
waveguide here’s a good article on it: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/9/24153092/stanford-ai-holographic-ar-glasses-3d-imaging-research
They were mostly concerned with preventing you from escaping their walled garden so they crippled it. Great job Apple
Meh. TechDirt is great for privacy stuff, but market analysis isn’t their wheelhouse.
I think Vision Pro pretty much accomplished what Apple wanted from it.
Tech press kept comparing it to “the iPhone moment”, but that’s ridiculous. It’s a dev kit.
A dev kit with the best hardware, at a lower price than the second-best, and a more mature OS than anything else out there.
We’ll have to see how it evolves from here, but it’s a perfectly fine first step. Not everything is for you.
nah, this is just copium. Apple don’t release dev-kits to the general public. It was a real product, and it was a dud
It’s super neat tech, but if I had $3,500 burning a hole in my pocket I’d be more concerned with things like rent and food.
Usually if money is burning a hole in your pocket then it means it’s extra money and bills are paid. At least, that is how I’ve always used it and heard it used.
That’s probably because this is indeed the correct way to use that phrase.
Yeah, I have a lot of priorities before that headset…
I would start to stock pile food myself if I had that much money free and buy a new GPU. That’s like also a months rent here as well plus some utilities and a car payment.
It’s an ugly dud just like every VR headset because the technology for displays, processing, and batteries make them look like gigantic, heavy ski goggles.
Plus there’s no applications. Games are cool, socializing is cool (I guess), and porn is porn, but what can I do with it? It’s like releasing the first Macintosh without MacWrite or MacPaint.
wheres the first party stuff at LEAST? like garage band couldve been amazing… or logic or reason, or maps… wheres the tilt brush and 3d modelers? rollercoaster tycoon would shred in this.
Yeah it feels like even Apple is half-heartedly invested in it. Lots of the first-party Apple apps are basically just iPad apps, a year after launch. And there’s no real video content, just a bunch of short 7-minute teasers.
Apple should be subsidizing the shit out of developers to get some killer apps on there to prove what it can do. They seem to have assumed if they built it, they would come. But nobody showed up to the party. Developers who DID build apps, that even got featured by Apple, say their sales basically paid for the developer adapter, not even the headset itself.
It’s fine if you don’t want one, but my VR headset get used daily and was a great investment. Once you get used to good VR games, the rest of the video games in 2D just begin to pale in comparison. One example is Assetto Corsa (racing sim) which I could not win any races in in 2D standard mode, but when I played in VR my 3D sense of distance allowed me to actually race competitively enough to win for a change. Also it’s just pretty rad to drive racecars in full 3D view, getting the full experience of moving at high speed.
And it’s absolutely not true that there’s “no applications” for VR. You just don’t know about them because you’re against it. In my household the primary applications are gaming and exercise. There are a number of VR games that require the player to physically move a lot, enough to break a sweat on every session.
IMO the only thing wrong with Apple’s Vision Pro is the high price. I spent $1000 on my VR system and that was a lot. So when you get into the triple-thousand dollar ballpark, your market is just too tiny to grow into anything soon.
There’s the butthurt VR bro who shows up every time I point out the tech for VR isn’t ready yet. There’s always one of you.
And it’s obvious you didn’t read my whole comment because I said that it’s got games. But that just means it’s a game console. What I want is an application that does something useful and productive.
For example, these VR devices have the software and hardware to map 3D spaces. How about an app that lets me map my house and then see what it would be like to knock out a wall or add a window or something? Heck, realtors could use it to do virtual walk throughs of homes.
There’s the douchebag who shows up every time to shit on good technology because it’s not catering to their whims perfectly.
If you want that software, get to fucking work on it then. Make some kind of contribution beyond shitting on things.
If you think “The technology isn’t ready yet” is shitting on it then you need a thicker skin
And saying “Just go back to college, get a masters in software engineering, and build the useful app yourself” is a perfect example of why it’s not ready yet.
It’s really weird how you keep making this discussion about me as if I am the VR. It doesn’t matter to ME that you are choosing to miss out on something great, so my skin is not part of the equation at all. I’m just here to let people know that you’re wrong and that people can have a cool experience with that technology.
I’m not disputing that VR is cool. I’ve tried it and it’s fun to walk with dinosaurs and visit the space station and sculpt in 3D. I’m saying it’s not useful. For a game console it’s great but it’s not a computing platform.
Honestly, the killer application is really simple, but this headset wasn’t quite designed for it (nor is MacOS in general), and that is simply as external monitors.
You know what’s annoying? Trying to use your computer outside, trying to use it on an airplane, or while travelling. Or being in an open plan office with a million visual distractions.
If you’re working in a professional setting where your company is already buying you a giant ultra wide display or multiple professional 27" screens then you’re approaching the territory of a thousand or two dollars spent on each employee, and suddenly a VR headset is starting to look more reasonable as a monitor replacement.
If this was closer to the size of the size of the Big Screen Beyond and just worked as an external display that could let you place as many windows / monitors around you as you wanted, they might actually have a compelling product.
Or if it was cheaper it could be used for gaming.
Or if it had transparent AR displays it could be used for industrial applications like Hololens.
But yeah, as is, it feels like it had a neat idea or two, some really fancy tech, and fell right in the middle of not being that useful for anyone.
I agree that using it as an unlimited display would be a great application. The only problem is that the device itself is too heavy for long-term usage, which goes back to the technology not being ready yet.
Maybe if all that you put on your face was a screen, and the rendering and power were offloaded to a desktop it could be made light enough to wear for hours at a time.
ETA: I haven’t had trouble with external monitors on Mac, and I’ve been running dual screens since 2002 when I grabbed an old 20" CRT from the garbage outside my dorm.
I tried one in the store. It’s an amazing experience, the augmented reality is done very well.
The problem is I don’t think there’s any content for it. If it could play 3D movies or games or something, that might be a reason to buy it. But for right now as far as I can tell the main reason to have one is to view 3D photos from an iPhone in actual 3D. And I’m sorry but that’s just not worth $3,500.The other issue is the competition. Quest 3 is very close in terms of technology, not quite as good but close, and it’s 7x cheaper with a hell of a lot more content available.
Make it $1500 and release enough content that there’s a reason to buy it, and it’ll sell.
Apple treats developers like hot garbage, why would anyone bother to develop content for them just to be immediately kicked to the curb?
They wouldn’t obviously. Especially since VR content is significantly more expensive to develop. But that is an Apple problem to solve. If you want people to buy your $3,500 toy, you have to give them a reason to buy it. Personally if I was going to attract developers I would give them a real sweetheart deal, like for the first two years of the platform the developers keep 95% of the revenue. Yeah that means for 2 years I make no money on software but it also means at the end of two years there will be software to make money on. And make the whole thing bring dead easy to develop on. Have a whole bunch of tools to import existing 3D content or write games or whatever.
They said this about iPads and Apple Watches too. Eventually this will be a big deal. It’s still pretty early though.
“No wifi. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” - Slashdot reacting to the first iPod
Blackberry went hard against the iPhones’ lack of physical keyboard when it was announced too.
Until Apple makes a device that’s as capable as the Vision but as unobtrusive as a pair of glasses, it’s going to remain a niche item. The Apple Watch, as you mentioned, has the benefit of being the same general form factor as a watch. iPads are just fancy notebooks.
As much as he wishes it was true, Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs or Jony Ive.
(For reference, both devices you mentioned, as well as all of Apple’s successful devices since the first iPod, were products of their marketing genius.)
I mean I want one but the only reason I don’t have one is because I’m not paying $3500 for one. And even if I could get one used for under $1000, I’m still not because a majority of customers feel the same way, so this was DOA for that reason alone. No developer is developing anything fun for this en masse with no customer base.
I think a majority of people are in this boat. People flock to anything with the apple logo on it, but this was just too damn expensive.
That headset is more expensive than most MacBooks, just for reference.
And because of that lack of dev support, it can do less than a MacBook
No support for VR or controllers. What a complete failure of design.
Seems psvr2 controller compatibility is in the works https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/8/24316130/apple-vision-pro-sony-psvr2-controller-support-gaming
Soon
I would drop apple stock. Everything they work on is a flop recently.
5g modem , apple car, lightning, VR, apple tv is not profitable etc.
Would have been fine if it didn’t cost a kidney and they’d invested in app development more.
Too closed off. Too expensive.
The tech companies seem more interested in what will bouy up their share prices than actually producing products that people want.
That and also they’ve lost understanding that you need an actual set of use cases 100% operational. The niche their product will fill.
The best by far example of this done right is - game consoles. With PlayStation 2 (I remember that from my childhood, lost interest to games of console kind after it) it’s absolutely clear how to use it. You buy the damn good-looking box itself, you buy a couple of damn good-looking controllers and memory cards, you buy a couple of games (all games from that time seem very cool, dunno why), you stick things where needed and put the disc where needed, and then life is cool.
With Apple’s iPod it was clear too. The small white square one, not the bullshit after it.
With PSP, other than games, you knew you could watch movies, listen to music, even browse the web and use IMs and Skype. PSP Slim, BTW, was far closer to what those “smartphones” of today pretend to be. A real usable pocket computer, except, of course, no way to easily type text. OK, I suppose initially there was no such software for it as Skype and IM clients, but the rest remains.
One can go on, it comes down to the question “what the hell will I use it for” which even Apple cultists will ask. When there’s an answer, they can’t resist, that’s why they are cultists, but when there’s none, they most likely won’t buy it.
That’s this need for growth. They feel they have to show new horizons and new lands with gold and spices being discovered, but there’s none, of those reachable by sea at least. They have grown as big as they can. Absolute majority of humans uses computers almost everywhere economically relevant. And the Web.
So now it came to doing things well instead of doing things fast and capturing new colonies first, and that’s where these companies suck. Doing things well requires rigor and rational practices of organization. Doing things well requires going back to 80s, one can say. They can’t. So everything they do is aimed at spreading money to suppress such competition that will kill them if it survives.
It’s a tech demo at this point, not a product. Tim Cook wanted something to cement his legacy so they released it even though the technology was not at all ready yet. The potential is impressive but we’re years away.
Say what you want about Steve Jobs. But his timing during his second stint at Apple was unrivaled. He knew what to bet on and when. And he wasn’t afraid to go all in and bet the company on it.
Apple’s development kit offers cutting-edge technology at a price point accessible to those who can afford it. For individuals like me, who need to prioritize essential expenses, spending $3,500 isn’t feasible. However, if circumstances were different, this would undoubtedly be an exciting gadget to explore.
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I understand your point. However, I believe Apple’s Vision Pro (at least the current iteration) was never intended as a mainstream product for the following reasons:
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It’s unrealistic to expect a $3,500 headset to become a smashing hit overnight.
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There’s limited software available to support it. Most applications merely showcase the use-case scenarios and potential of the hardware.
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The device appears aimed at demonstrating Apple’s design capabilities and their “vision” of what an advanced headset should be.
Nevertheless, some news outlets report the product’s failure based on sales falling below 500,000 units in 2024. Apple Insider specifically reported approximately 370,000 units sold in the first three quarters of 2024.
While Apple has revised their expectations and reduced production, and interest has declined after the initial buzz, it’s worth noting a parallel: When Samsung first launched its Galaxy Fold, first-year sales fell significantly below forecasts. The product line has since improved over the years, though it’s not a major success compared to other Galaxy products.
The key questions now are: Will Apple discontinue this expensive proof of concept? Will there be an Apple Vision Pro 2? The answer might lie in monitoring competitors’ performance in this market. If other companies succeed with their smart glasses, Apple may introduce a scaled-down version of the Vision Pro, priced around $1,000, for their second attempt.
But as always, crystal ball gazing is a tough game.
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Tech Press Derides Tech Press For Doing Tech Press Things.
Also, no mention of, or comparison to, AI. At least Apple created a viable product somebody wanted.
Did people get motion sickness from these. I know VR is diff, but the PS VR2 make my head hurt after 20 min or so.
No, because they weren’t for games and they pretty much had always-on video passthrough, which greatly reduces the chances of getting nausea.
No delay with the passthrough video? Still can be disorienting. Maybe it’s just me.
Right, hence I said “greatly reduces the chances”. I know some people are still affected.
I think with careful, controlled exposure, they could greatly lessen this feeling (or maybe even eliminate it), but it’d be a long road and I question how important it actually would be to them, so I don’t actually suggest it.
Personally, I love VR. I’ve always been an avid fan of 3D TV/Games and VR, and I always will be. I long for the day that AR is properly implemented.
But I also understand that others don’t share that love, for personal or even physiological reasons.
I wanna love VR but it makes me sick, which is odd because I fly drones with goggles and don’t get sick even with all the loops and flips.
