Comment by kllrnohj
3 years ago
What's different about it compared to Occulus or Samsung Gear or any other existing attempts at this?
Virtual movie theaters and virtual monitors haven't really been compelling use cases for putting an ugly sweat box on your face so far. What about slapping an Apple logo on it and pricing it even further out of reach changes that in your mind?
My take would be that it would be Apples track record of making software work well with the hardware, more seamlessly than either Samsung or Meta.
Just look at the virtual avatar they demoed compared with Meta’s. Apple went with a more professional looking avatar instead of a cartoony one.
Another app that was shown was a Birds Eye view of a basketball game. I’d love to be able to watch a sporting event live from that perspective (if I could stomach the entry fee for the experience).
I was on the fence about this product, thinking that there wouldn’t be many good use cases, but their presentation gave some activities that I’d want to try on the hardware. Whereas Meta’s presentation didn’t show anything I was interested in.
Apple is giving developers 6+ months to make even more interesting apps. I think there’s a good chance that this could be a successful product. But I should hold my judgement until I’ve seen the caveats of this device (ie comfort, battery life, display quality, etc). I’m sure we’ll see more in-depth looks in the coming months. We can judge it more fairly when these reviews come out.
>Another app that was shown was a Birds Eye view of a basketball game.
That was Disney’s presentation not Apples. Am I the only one who thought that part was Magic Leap level total fantasy BS?
I missed that it was part of the Disney presentation. In that case it may be just vaporware. Truthfully it would require a lot of infrastructure at the arena/stadium before it could even be realized. I’m not sure the sports team owners would be willing to pay for this expenditure without knowing the potential revenue it could generate. It’d also cannibalise some ticket sales, so it’s not necessarily a profitable move for pro sports.
If players position is already tracked adding avatars to it in real time onto a 3d visualization doesn´t seem that far fetched.
Some stadiums have cameras that fly over all the stadium but no idea if it was BS or not
1 reply →
> Another app that was shown was a Birds Eye view of a basketball game
Is there anything specific to the Vision Pro in that feature? Couldn’t they just offer that as something that you could choose to watch on TV?
> Is there anything specific to the Vision Pro in that feature? Couldn’t they just offer that as something that you could choose to watch on TV?
A TV wouldn’t be apt at creating a 3D-ish AR viewing experience. It also doesn’t have the controls to navigate such a scene easily. What I’m looking for is like a holographic 3D display of the game on my table top.
When you watch live TV, you watch what one person decides you should be watching.
With eye and head tracking in the headset, you can watch what you want to watch during live events and eventually in interactive motion pictures/motion environments.
2 replies →
Yes.
I have an Oculus2 and a PSVR2, and the Apple headset seems like an entirely different thing. It's meant to replace your mac computer and your tv.
Yes with the headsets I have, you can surf the web and technically try to write code, but it's not a good experience. And those displays basically still suck. You can see the pixels, and the lenses create weird effects. If Apple has solved this, and the presence of the screen and lenses is just "forgotten", it's going to be a huge step forward. It'll be a device to actually be productive on, let alone watch movies and play games, IMO.
IMHO this really is what's gonna make or break this product. Will the screens have good enough fidelity and not strain my eyes in such a way that I will want to wear the headset for my entire work day.
People always drag out this line but how much time in VR do you actually have?
I have hundreds of hours in VR, doing fiddly simulator things, and it's not an enjoyable experience, but rather something you put up with to get to experience something you wouldn't otherwise get to experience, like flying a real as it gets plane.
A couple really nice monitors are $500. A laptop with a really nice built in screen is $2000, even if you want the apple logo on it.
Having infinite floating windows in VR is actually pretty useless. Either they are all tiny and unreadable because you need INSANE resolution to get 1080p quality at normal viewing distance, or you have one giant screen pressed against your face and your eyes find that very uncomfortable. VR is tiring on your eyes, worse than looking at a screen all day.
I wish rich kids would stop trying to attain a minority report style dream of computation and focus on making actual, usable, good UIs that are enjoyable, easy, and productive to work with. This is none of those.
1 reply →
I think the:
- existing apple ecosystem;
- the fact that this looks far more AR focused than the VR focused stuff I've currently seen;
- the public's perception of the Apple brand and its build quality (questionable if real, but an undeniable public perception nonetheless) could get around the "ugly sweat box" vibe you've described;
- the willingness for app-makers to build for the ecosystem;
- the 4k and (apparent) visual quality;
...could make this successful, or at least iPad-like in terms of dominating a market.
Hard to know for sure though until we get some actual reviews and footage of people wearing it.
People are going to reply to you and say "what made the iPod different from the Nomad"... inarguably the iPod was hugely successful where the Nomad wasn't.
I don't think it's a great comparison. The MP3 players in the pre-iPod era were all made by tiny players no-one had heard of. The Oculus in particular has absolutely massive backing and still hasn't amounted to a lot.
I suspect the differentiator will be software, not hardware. In particular the willingness of third parties to create software. Apple has a good record there at least.
Oculus is accessible by targeting itself as a fun gadget. You buy it to play immersive games when you're at home alone, bored. It's also affordable and that is extremely important. You won't feel nearly as bad dropping a wad of cash on this if it turns out to be a dud.
Apple's product, on the other hand, is extremely wonky. Who is this thing actually for? Based on the demos, it just looks like a second screen for my phone. It's also outrageously expensive. So Apple is asking me to seriously buy into the ecosystem and have confidence that this will be an important device in my collection.
I don't know, to me this isn't like any previous Apple take on a well defined market. In fact, this is Apple's take on a very undefined market with an unknown trajectory. It kind of feels more like when Apple went off the beaten path and added a touch bar to the MacBook Pro. It was an interesting idea and a lot of very long man hours went into making it work, but at what cost? In the end, it turns out, people just wanted simple tactile keys.
>Apple's product, on the other hand, is extremely wonky. Who is this thing actually for? Based on the demos, it just looks like a second screen for my phone. It's also outrageously expensive. So Apple is asking me to seriously buy into the ecosystem and have confidence that this will be an important device in my collection.
that's actually the playbook for new product launches for Apple. That was the same issue with Apple watch - they had no idea who it was for when they launched the first generation. It was just a watch with a screen that told time and gave you notifications. Then, they realized people loved using it for tracking health, and each generation they keep coming up with more and more ways to use it as an all-around health tracker. Now, Apple watch is as ubiquitous on people's wrists as iPhones are in people's hands
1 reply →
I hate the touch bar. I want my function keys back.
Tiny companies nobody has heard of like Sony? Cmon.
At the time early media players were relevant, and to the community they were relevant (people very into music tech), Sony was known as "that company that installs rootkits on your computer if you buy their CD"
1 reply →
IIRC Sony were an absolute mess at the time. Didn't want to cannibalise their Minidisc sales, had weird DRM... even in the geeky crowds I ran in (where Nomads definitely were seen) Sony MP3 players were a rarity.
1 reply →
My recollection is that Sony's Memory Stick based products of this era all had weird DRM requirements that were a big hassle.
cmdrtaco is wrongly mocked for his reaction to the original ipod. The original ipod flopped hard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#/media/File:Ipod_sales_pe...
It didn't catch on until several years and hardware iterations later.
It didn’t flop. It just didn’t sell as much as later versions. Apple made the market for its own product. It’s like saying the Apple II flopped because it sold way less than the current Macintoshes. Of course it did: the market was way smaller.
The sweat box is actively cooled this time. I'm concerned about the price as well though, even if it is fantastic beyond all expectations of what was presented that's a really hard price for most to justify for the feature set shown. Showing things like true and proper Disney+ integration day 1 gives hope for big name support vs just special one off demos for headsets of the past though. At the same time, they are going to need a lot more properly integrated apps for it to reach success status.
No controllers, no waving your arms about. Eye tracking and hand gestures for navigation. Screen on the front that shows your face to make it feel less isolating. I don't know that it'll be a success but it's a lot more than just putting an Apple logo on it.
> ... bring the powerful capabilities of their Mac into Vision Pro wirelessly, creating an enormous, private, and portable 4K display with incredibly crisp text.
If this "incredibly crisp text" is true, then I want it. Nobody has done this yet.
With a resolution of slightly over 4k resolution per eye for the entire view, on top of lenses and warping when rendering it into the space, I just can't see how this is actually possible. It may be better than many previous solutions but they were all so far off in text clarity that's not saying much. Of course, they could just set the zoom way up on Safari/the UI and say "look, it's so clear!" and be technically correct.
Usually Apple comes along and builds it so well that people will actually start using it. Oculus and the others are still a pretty niche thing.
> Usually Apple comes along and builds it so well that people will actually start using it
Agreed, but Apple have put themselves in a weird spot with the $3500 USD price tag.
Not that weird of a spot. That's what it costs for the most premium experience they can launch with. They'd rather it be good than something everyone buys on day one. They can get costs down in future models as they scale and progress pushes down some of the costs. As iPhones become even more performant in the future they can also eventually offer a version that offloads more compute to that and bring costs down even more. Their goal is to show this is a new type of product that works at the level people expect for a completely new Apple product. They can probably afford to wait for a much lower priced mass consumer product.
I think they’ll be fine with first adopters, businesses, the rich.
For people making 10x what we make, these are on the level of $300.
And Apple gets to iterate and present v2 in a year or so, at 1/2 the price.
Apple is probably going to have supply constraints for the first generation product so pricing it high makes sense.
Considering what I paid for my Apple XDR display, $3500 is a bargain.
3 replies →
What compelling use cases did the average consumer see for carrying around a computer in their pocket before Apple released the iPhone? There were a bunch of devices on the market all kinda doing what iPhone did, but Apple made it make sense for the average consumer.
> What's different about it compared to Occulus or Samsung Gear or any other existing attempts at this?
It's sexy. Also, it's Apple, which means–given the price tag–it's unlikely to be shit, and if it is, I'll have some semblance of support.
The difference is the AR, which will eventually make it wearable in everyday life. When setting the perimeter, the Oculus already shows the surrounding using it's integrated cameras. This will be the future. I don't think the first version of Apple's AR mask will be a huge success, because it still looks too dorky. But in a few years you will see many people wearing sunglasses that double as phone screens all the time.
> The difference is the AR, which will eventually make it wearable in everyday life
In Apple's 10 minute video about this device the "AR" part came up exactly twice:
1) When the lady was interrupted by a friend to talk about sushi or something. This is literally Occulus' passthrough mode. It was a temporary "see around me" mode switch in practical usage.
2) The dad filming his kids. This was just depressing.
All the other examples had the room around them, so the "AR" part, as a glorifed skybox. The person was isolated & alone.
Like maybe Apple will figure out something that Microsoft's Hololens didn't. That's certainly possible. But they also didn't showcase any such examples, either.
Ok, I had the impression that those things are translucent, because the eyes were visible. I did not fully watch it, but I just found out that Apple is using a lentricular and OLED screen on the outside to display a 3D image of your face to make it look like the mask is transparent. This is some dystopian stuff.
I don’t think the dorky mask look will change any time soon. There’s just too much electronics to fit into the system for it to shrink down to a pair of regular glasses.
When the Apple Watch was introduced, I thought that the form factor would change after a few years. It’s almost been ten years and it doesn’t seem like Apple will be making any big form factor changes to the product.
Apple will just have to make it fashionable to wear dorky scuba masks everywhere. Maybe the price tag will be sufficient…
You may be right. Remember when they used someone with extra large hands for presenting the first iPhone in order to make it look small? Now you can get the iPhone 14 is large and very large. We may get used to this if the product is sufficiently useful.
I mean, nice ski goggles don't look uncool on the mountain, I don't see how it's impossible for people to get used to Vision goggles on people's faces.
1 reply →
> What about slapping an Apple logo on it and pricing it even further out of reach changes that in your mind?
Probably the fact that Apple has an excellent track record of entering nascent consumer electronics markets late (e.g. iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch) at high price points, nailing the execution, and eventually dominating said markets with arguably superior products.
It's the same story again and again. If you've already decided Apple is charging $3000 for "slapping an Apple logo on it" and nothing else, you may as well have been one of the people back in ~2001 who swore up and down that the iPod was just an overpriced late entry in a market full of mature, attractive offerings like the Archos Jukebox line. In retrospect, to be clear, you would have looked quite silly.
I'm not saying this thing is absolutely going to be a success, but the problem with previous attempts at virtual displays has been that the execution is always shit, and Apple's greatest strength is nailing the execution. I don't think betting against them here is a good bet.
Thr fact that the battery is separate should be a huge improvement for comfort because one of the biggest problems with most existing devices is their weight. Another thing to check is how much heat the device transfers to the user. Or in general the comfort. Also the fact that you can easily see you surroundings should help.
Most VR so far has been designed to isolate you from your surrounding environment, and is the opposite. Also the ability to use it without controllers makes the whole thing feel less intrusive/burdensome to use.
Probably the fact that this uses microOLED at a much higher resolution than anything before.
And that it's very light weight and more comfortable fitting and probably wont be a sweatbox.
Gaming could be much be better on a VR/AR device, and a reason to put on a "ugly sweat box" initially. Apple did not go deep into that, only a brief segment about the Unity collab. Maybe gaming is not their forte right now.
Apple Vision v3 will not be a sweat box. And even right now, Occulus interface has to evolve to match this. Controller has to be optional. It has to be AR.
I've said this before, but Apple's attention to detail might finally bridge the uncanny valley to actually good AR. I can elaborate a bit more when I get on my computer.
Less space than a nomad, too
Lame?
For those downvoting, see the parent comment and also this: https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
"Lame" was a historic comment and parent commenter should have included it :)