Comment by derefr

It's yet another way for executives to torture themselves. Don't envy them.

Yeah that comment is desperately out of touch with reality. I presume the person never actually met/dealt with these folks, for them it would be humiliating to wear it and to be seen wearing it, Apple badge or not doesn't matter. For those levels, carrying >100k watches and having plastic ski goggles on your head? Forget it, anywhere where others can see them. Maybe this mindset changes in decade or two, but not earlier.

Generally on the topic, its rather underwhelming release of device that is searching for its market (while usual Apple echo chamber here on HN sees it as second coming of Jesus). No wonder they scrapped the release few times in the past, it must have been properly underwhelming when compared to competition. And pathetic 2h battery life at best? That makes it useless for any longer flight (I am sure you can plug powerbank and continue but it will look pretty bad and annoying as hell).

I am sure Apple will tune software to perfection, but I can't see it being enough, market is tiny considering the investment, well saturated and from what I heard rather shrinking. But I hope they will push the market in some good direction long term with their creative approach, so we all can benefit eventually.

My dude, that's what they have when they actually arrive at their destination. We're talking about what they do on the plane, or in their hotel room.

Or, perhaps easier to picture, when they're on vacation on a beach in Tahiti. They could be chauffered 20 minutes back into town to a "secure workspace" in order to have a five-minute call where someone back at their HQ [where it's the middle of the night] briefs them on a screen... or they could go into their cabana, strap this thing on, have the five minute meeting right then and there, and then go back to sipping Mai-Tais.

Executives already make this choice, this way, right now. This choice is the reason that the iPad Pro has traditionally had better "stuff" for teleconferencing than the MBP does: the iPad Pro is — or was — the thing Apple most clearly marketed to executives. Right now, executives take out the iPad Pro to take that quick cabana video-call.

For this use-case, the Apple Vision is just a one-up to everything the iPad Pro is already allowing them to do. It's more secure (nobody can watch the presentation over their shoulder); it gives the presenter back at HQ more visual field to work with to make their point; it's more discreet in how it presents them in video calls (i.e. if they're calling in while laying naked on a massage table, that won't be reflected in their 3D-model recreation); etc.

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More realistically, though, ignore the F500 CEOs. I have a feeling that I know exactly who this was built for — and it's not them. Apple engineers aren't any more in love with the idea of serving the needs of executives than anyone else is. They throw them a bone now and then, but they have other things in mind when building the core of each product.

Now picture this: you're an Apple hardware engineer who wants to work remotely, but you were forced to work-from-office due to not just the secrecy around the Apple Vision project you're on, but also the collaboration benefits. (It's currently basically impossible to review 3D models for "feel" on a laptop; you need either a big bulky 3D TV, or some other company's big bulky HMD setup. Neither of which travels well.) But your dream? Your dream is that you can figure out a way to do everything you're currently "doing better" by being in the office — reviewing and collaborating on 3D models of the new hardware, for one important thing — while on vacation in Thailand, sitting in your rented condo, on the couch. No need to also be paying for time at a coworking space (or to even be in a town large enough to have those); the HMD is the coworking space. As long as you have wi-fi, you can do everything the engineers back at Apple HQ can do.

>This sounds a lot like the use cases stated for the office metaverse thing FB was pushing that failed to materialize.

Apple might be a company that is better at implementing hardware and platforms than other companies, especially Facebook.

I mean if every single one of them buy only one of them, that's only $175 million dollars right there. Totally not worth it for Apple to bother even trying

US$ 3.5k per executive is less than what is spent on their secretaries per month, it's absolutely doable even more as it becomes tax-deductible opex.

US$ 350.000 is nothing if your company has 100+ executives, let's be realistic.

They will sell much, much more than this. All the wannabe startups and bigwig CEOs will line up to buy this, even if they can't afford it. All that matters is the image.

39 here too, and not turning my neck all the time to look at multiple monitors anymore has helped save me a lot of pain.

I'm a fan of two monitors, my main horizontal (though I got one with much more vertical resolution than most 4:3), and one in portrait somewhat to the side.

So many big wins. I can do a zoom screen share on my main window and have notes, private stuff on the side window, I can read documents that often are vertically formatted on the side window.

I do a fair bit of comparing type work where I need a reference index doc on the side, then I got through the individual docs for tieback on the main.

It's game changing to have multiple monitors and particularly have one portrait and one vertical.

Maybe your eyes are better than mine, but I have a real hard time working on a 13" screen. Trying to do Excel work on a tiny screen drives me up the wall. Either I'm sitting too close squinting at tiny text, or have to enlarge everything and fall into scrolling hell. With my 27" monitor I can enlarge the text and still have lots of screen real estate to do my work.

Exactly. Seeing people talk about "unlimited number of monitors in VR" is kind of frustrating. Monitors are containers for apps, portals into your digital desktop. You don't need monitors in VR. The monitor is a skeuomorphism! Just put app windows wherever, unbounded by monitors.

You watch a TV from quite far ahead. Even a huge TV might not be much bigger than a normal laptop in your lap, let alone a single big monitor.

Plenty of software and workflows chew up a lot of screen real estate. 13" isn't enough for how a lot of people like to work.

I make it a point to do all my work on a laptop like this. That way, I’m 100% productive anywhere like in a hotel for example. I never miss giant external monitors because I don’t have any.

Thank you. I was hoping for some testimonial on this use case, since the price and features are pretty attractive for the air.

I will now wait for a future revision.

That's a bummer. I'd really like to not be dependent on additional displays or bending my neck all the time.

I don't know any world where spending that much in gadgets isn't for the wealthy. Yes, there are richer people out there. That is still a lot of money.

Don't underestimate the unwieldy shape of these headsets, they aren't very bag-friendly. The Apple design seems to do some compromises to decrease bulk but it still won't nicely slip between other stuff. Portable displays on the other hand, they are wildly underappreciated because so many still haven't the slightest idea that product category exists. They offer a very favorable bulk/utility trade-off and allow day on day scaling between the extremes of the smallest laptop you can find and what could be considered a mobile workstation.