I own an Apple Vision Pro and I think it's one of the most impressive pieces of technology that I almost never use, for two reasons:
1. Too much startup friction. I share the Apple Vision Pro with someone else who like me also loves it and uses it all the time. But since we both wear glasses, there's a 2x ~10 minute process for recalibrating the eyesight each time we switch. It's an expensive device at $3500 which I'm happy to pay for quality, but to pay that twice, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Apple goes too far with the greed here not letting us set up separate profiles. Netflix wouldn't get away with that. You not only have to repeat the setup process when switching, you have to share access to your apple user account too.
2. My main interest in a vision headset is I want a new virtual workstation where I can watch movies on a gigantic screen beneath a gigantic translucent terminal where I can do my daily work. There's a nice app called La Terminal that does just that. Sadly it has some serious keyboard latency issues since I don't think they've put as much focus into their support for this platform. I won't tolerate anything less than optimal latency in my work tools. So until I get around to building a terminal app for Vision Pro on my own, there's not a whole lot I'm interested in doing with it aside from watching the occasional movie on the moon. I would also really like for Vision Pro to have an ethernet port because I don't know how to run a wifi network without jitter.
If you haven't tried one of these things, then you really should. I didn't realize when I first put one on that it was a fully synthetic display until I tried reading the 10pt text on my computer monitor. It's really a stunning thing to witness. This Vision Pro is probably the best glimpse we can get today of what the singularity is going to be like in the future. So definitely give it a try at least once.
It's invasive, heavy and more anti social than smartphones. Battery life is too short. Low volumes make software development for it unattractive. Companies keep pouring into ar/vr billions and no sigle killer use case to show.
Apple has, somewhere deep in its DNA, an almost pathological aversion to become the Amiga -- a ridiculously capable computer for its time that is mostly known today for games. They've always low-prioritized games and its really shaped the company.
Isn't that the kind of description of the first iteration of many innovative products? The iPad was mocked just as much if not more, it was a big iphone without the phone, with no possibility of multitasking and a plethora of other limitations and yet now tablets are ubiquitous.
It's not hard to see how this product could continue to be streamlined and made more accessible in the future.
Apple showing up to the party is usually a pretty good indicator of a technology having crossed a maturity threshold: smartphones, tablets, smart watches, wireless earbuds, TV streaming devices, ARM laptops, etc.
Even their “misses” have just been devices that were too niche or bad value propositions for the average consumer, rather than being technically immature (thinking of HomePod here). It’s rare for Apple to launch a device that’s just far too early to be useful even to its target audience.
It's not really the first iteration though, the modern VR era started about 8 years ago with the first consumer Oculus Rift and in that time it's been iterated on numerous times by numerous players and none of them have stuck.
"The iPad was mocked" is irrelevant. Many or most products are mocked by some people, even iPhone. Regardless of mocking, iPad was an immediate success. Vision Pro is not. I fully admit that the price of Vision Pro is the biggest problem. But you can't pretend that the first iteration of Vision Pro is just like the first iteration of iPad.
My point is that they are two very different products with substantially different target audiences.
Now, sure, you can say the Vision Pro was not as big a success as the iPad even if you account for that difference in markets, scale, price ranges, etc. But that doesn't mean it's a total failure either, or that there is no future for the product.
Most people who have a Vision Pro, seem to like it. It's unsurprising that it's not flying off the shelves because at the moment it's little else than an expensive toy, and once the novelty wears off it's not like there is that much to do with it at the moment, it's also seemingly uncomfortable to wear for prolonged periods of time. But like I said, it's not hard to see how it could be getting better with future iterations.
So even if there is no perfect correlation between the shortcomings of the first iPad and the larger shortcomings of the first Vision Pro, there is a correlation.
tablets are everywhere, can be shared, and do not make people look ridiculous. hell, even my cats have apps made just for them. haven't seen any viral videos of pets wearing a headset.
not being able to see how this is different is very disingenuous. when the ipad was released, nobody had a device like that. apple's headset was not the first. even those the came before did not gain a lot of traction. so apple is not blazing new trails here that people just don't understand yet. this is an accepted as niche product line for certain personalities.
They are now, and that's exactly the point. And people don't look ridiculous now because they became adopted, but even the first versions of mobile phones made people look ridiculous.
Have some perspective, try to think beyond a lapse of more than two years back and forwards.
The UX itself is an iPhone-vs-Blackberry style leap compared to every other AR or VR device out there. It's just a fundamentally better paradigm for basic tasks and for mixing a headset (or future iGlasses) with non-VR activities.
So, what exactly is the point of this line of argument? That some niche forms of touchless interfacing existed already? And thus the interfacing of the Vision Pro is not innovative?
This so much. Can wear the AVP for hours uninterrupted, but lasted 10 mins in Occulus 3 before getting queasy. Have given AVP demos to dozens of people, offering varying degrees of guidance and everyone just "gets it" after a couple minutes regardless. Eye and hand tracking UI is phenomenal and awesome.
The Vision Pro feels more like a spatial tablet than a spatial computer. A computer should be capable of handling productive work tasks such as developing software. Vision Pro's only relevant capabilities seem to be mirroring your computer's screen and acting as a device to run your test apps, just like a tablet.
My experience receiving a Vision Pro demo at an Apple store also involved a poor Apple rep having to keep a straight face showing me basic iPad games when I asked about gaming. This thing has some of the most advanced VR headset hardware and their best gaming demo was some iPad games where you tap and hold to jump over mountains.
Whoever releases a pair of non-clunky glasses with eight hour battery that can do sufficient AR for under a thousand bucks will have the iphone moment and own the world. Looks like a race between Meta and Apple. Unless Microsoft has something sneaky in the works.
Didn't they have a really small number of screens they even ordered in the first place? Did they change their minds from demand, or have they just finally run out of the first production run?
From what I heard, they will ultimately halt production, assuming no major changes in sales, at around 500,000 - 600,000 produced. Based on my understanding of the sales, they will have a considerable number of units still available even if the production stops.
This seems to be specifically a change in the assembly volume. I imagine they have most of the specialist components, such as the screens, already delivered and stored.
Is it Newton bad? Wonder what the morale is for the team working on a clearly not successful product? Do the other device team members duck their head as they pass them by like it's someone you know but they don't that their significant other is cheating? Do they serve up platitudes like "keep your head up"?
I’m guessing they all knew it wasn’t ready to ship, and would likely fail, and fail hard with that price.
Now Meta is out here demoing very impressive glasses - which was the goal Apple had but couldn’t make work - so I’m curious if Meta is likely the more exciting place to work for this tech.
Having used both AVP and occulus 3, the AVP is just way better user experience already, no need for them to copy an inferior product. Would expect usability delta to persist, (as well as the price delta.)
Killer for me is how klunky it is for multiple users. Had they supported swapping users seamlessly, I’d have bought two: it would get more use than the PS5 (or TV, for that matter).
That said, almost everything Apple does is personal computing. Maybe AR is just a bad fit until it can fit into the form factor of sunglasses. (And not be shit.)
One place you don't see the Vision Pro suspended is on Tim Cook's face. There is weak demand for a Vision so dim and weak. The visionary pros at Apple couldn't see a clear provision for Tim Cook's half-baked Vision Pro. Apple shall proceed without Vision.
Anyone who got a Vision Pro: are you still using it?
I remember there was a lot of initial excitement on HN about the possibilities of using it as virtual monitors for work or as a more immersive way to watch movies. Is it good for these applications long term, after the novelty wears off?
Bought it at launch and use it a couple dozen times a week.
For me, the killer function has been doing display mirroring with my Mac and leveraging the environments like Mt Hood or the Moon as a way to get into a focused flow. I love the idea of windowing in a virtual space, but the there is the same feeling of limitation that I get with this device as I get with my iPad. I've used it to capture some VR photos and videos of family, survey the house to identify the source of a water leak, used it for a couple workouts, to play some Xbox games in bed without waking my wife.
Weight only seems to be an issue for me at the 3h mark or so, but at that point I am taking a break. My eyes don't seem to be effected so far and the only visual quality issues have been either due to pancake lense physics or fogging up when the device is cold. App quality has been okish for the most part. I periodically check the app store for something new, but so far nothing that feels incredible. I'll probably buy a MetaQuest Pro after this just to see what that is like
I'm ultimately waiting for the ultrawide enhancement they teased earlier this year and hoping they add a few more environments.
It's the best display I've ever had in terms of screen "size" and quality balanced against each other, and it's the default I gravitate towards for movie watching, game streaming, etc, as well as occasional hobbyist things like writing (the environment knob is remarkably good for helping with focus, at least for my ADHD brain). Once there's a version of Virtual Desktop (a local wifi VR streaming app) available for it I'm sure it will also be the best VR headset I've ever used, at least for short sessions.
With that said, I haven't used it for non-hobbyist productive things because the weight and (more importantly) the really bad head strap design makes it awful for use in a sitting-up position for long. I feel like that comfort factor what drags it down most. The passthrough quality and UX stability is 100% there already to be fine wearing it for several hours at a time, including while doing unrelated tasks, if only it was actually comfortable enough for that.
For constrast, see the designs that companies like BOBOVR make for other headsets like the Quest 3 - https://www.bobovr.com/products/bobovr-m3-pro - which look bulky and silly but are perfectly comfortable for long high-activity VR sessions because of the fundamentally better design, even though they add extra battery weight to the headset itself.
Using it as a virtual monitor is tiring. It’s too damned heavy. The FOV is too small. The resolution isn’t terrible but it’s not great either (compared with a physical screen.) I get exhausted after an hour of using it, an 8 hour work day is just too much.
I used to use it to watch YouTube or movies but at some point it just becomes a chore to go get it and put it on when the TV is already there and doesn’t cause fatigue after 20 minutes.
spouse works night shift 3 days a week and ill develop on it and/or watch something.
our work has a cloud based ide for web stuff and ill commonly use AVP and virtual display on my personal mac for that and its better than my 2 monitor setup.
its for big nerds for sure and i am that. really is the best value for the best possible screen. i got it to have fun developing for novel xr hardware and watch great movies on the best screen. my advice is not to get one unless youre in that intersection of interests.
personally find it exciting i might be developing on discontinued hardware. always read and heard about hardware thats come and gos but dorks keep building stuff for it. i assumed everything is too well planned and managed these days for me to take part in something like that.
I still use mine for the things I watch by myself (with TV filling its usual role for social watches). I want to try it for other purposes but keep forgetting to.
The PPD is good, but a 46 degree FoV is pretty narrow for a virtual screen, and it's fixed in place in relation to your head. One of the big convenience differences of a true headset (even a cheaper one like the Quest line) is that you can move your head around and still have the "screen" fixed in place, so it doesn't get in the way as you look for your popcorn or whatever.
> People are going to only read the headline and interpret it as “discontinue”. Like the article says, it just means they have enough inventory until they replace it with something cheaper.
This is such an odd take. Like trying to defend Apple from an accusation that was not made - The headline is a good representation of the news; production was suspended because they are sitting on too much unsold stock. Typically in-demand products with limited availability go out of stock fast and don't sit unsold.
This is why it always frustrating to read any negative news on companies like Apple or Tesla. They have some annoyingly sycophantic fanbase that always wants to downplay and misdirect any bad news.
If Microsoft made some AR glasses that sat unsold and they suspended production, no one would show up to say "actually, it is not being discontinued, nothing to see here". Nor should they.
So does Microsoft. Or Google. Or Toyota. Or any other sufficiently large company. They are put under proper scrutiny.
But those are not white-knighted by a fanbase that always feel like they need to protect the multi-billion dollar company from negativity.
Using myself as an example, there are companies I like. I happen to like Nintendo for example. I still call a failed product a failure (e.g.: Wii U), and sometimes I even dislike their successful products (I always hated N64 for that retarded controller).
Why Apple "fanbase" abandon all critical thinking is baffling.
Funny thing is, Apple probably thought the iPod would be a niche product that would only appeal to existing Apple customers when they developed it. If they did not take the risk, they probably wouldn't exist today.
While I don't think the Vision Pro is a good fit for Apple (most of their products are portable, while the Vision Pro is unlikely to have much uptake outside of the home and office), it is hard to gauge whether it would be adopted without actually bringing it to the market.
How about have a pair of glasses (iGlasses) with some kind of ability to connect to your iPhone and transfer information via small discrete camera/voice command via airpods. All the processing is done on the iPhone and displayed on the inside of the lens, sort of like a heads up display. Offer prescription services or clear lens and sleek style frames. News, txt, email, video, maps, health info, search, access to Apple AI, etc, etc. I don't need VR, just Terminator style information.
Personally, it seems obvious to me that this is the desired end state of AVP-related development, but somewhere along the line they decided that pure AR tech just wasn't good enough yet for the display quality and UX stability they wanted, and so they ended up with the headset as a clunky hardware compromise built around an OS mostly designed for the glasses use case.
It needs very high-res video streams which basically no internet provider/CDN can offer at scale. 40Mbps+ HEVC just isn't scalable. So the only content is whatever can be downloaded to the device itself. A few games? A cool screensaver experience? It's all cool, but mostly novelty tech.
The resolution of the screens is not the resolution of the media you play on it.
You can stream even a 1080p movie to it and it will look fine, because it is playing in "physical" space, not filling your view completely. It is like watching a floating television or movie screen.
I own an Apple Vision Pro and I think it's one of the most impressive pieces of technology that I almost never use, for two reasons:
1. Too much startup friction. I share the Apple Vision Pro with someone else who like me also loves it and uses it all the time. But since we both wear glasses, there's a 2x ~10 minute process for recalibrating the eyesight each time we switch. It's an expensive device at $3500 which I'm happy to pay for quality, but to pay that twice, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Apple goes too far with the greed here not letting us set up separate profiles. Netflix wouldn't get away with that. You not only have to repeat the setup process when switching, you have to share access to your apple user account too.
2. My main interest in a vision headset is I want a new virtual workstation where I can watch movies on a gigantic screen beneath a gigantic translucent terminal where I can do my daily work. There's a nice app called La Terminal that does just that. Sadly it has some serious keyboard latency issues since I don't think they've put as much focus into their support for this platform. I won't tolerate anything less than optimal latency in my work tools. So until I get around to building a terminal app for Vision Pro on my own, there's not a whole lot I'm interested in doing with it aside from watching the occasional movie on the moon. I would also really like for Vision Pro to have an ethernet port because I don't know how to run a wifi network without jitter.
If you haven't tried one of these things, then you really should. I didn't realize when I first put one on that it was a fully synthetic display until I tried reading the 10pt text on my computer monitor. It's really a stunning thing to witness. This Vision Pro is probably the best glimpse we can get today of what the singularity is going to be like in the future. So definitely give it a try at least once.
It's invasive, heavy and more anti social than smartphones. Battery life is too short. Low volumes make software development for it unattractive. Companies keep pouring into ar/vr billions and no sigle killer use case to show.
> Companies keep pouring into ar/vr billions and no single killer use case to show.
Beat Saber did pretty well but then Apple made a headset that can't even play Beat Saber.
Apple has, somewhere deep in its DNA, an almost pathological aversion to become the Amiga -- a ridiculously capable computer for its time that is mostly known today for games. They've always low-prioritized games and its really shaped the company.
Isn't that the kind of description of the first iteration of many innovative products? The iPad was mocked just as much if not more, it was a big iphone without the phone, with no possibility of multitasking and a plethora of other limitations and yet now tablets are ubiquitous.
It's not hard to see how this product could continue to be streamlined and made more accessible in the future.
edit: typos, clarity
Apple showing up to the party is usually a pretty good indicator of a technology having crossed a maturity threshold: smartphones, tablets, smart watches, wireless earbuds, TV streaming devices, ARM laptops, etc.
Even their “misses” have just been devices that were too niche or bad value propositions for the average consumer, rather than being technically immature (thinking of HomePod here). It’s rare for Apple to launch a device that’s just far too early to be useful even to its target audience.
It's not really the first iteration though, the modern VR era started about 8 years ago with the first consumer Oculus Rift and in that time it's been iterated on numerous times by numerous players and none of them have stuck.
iPad sold 300k units on the first day: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2010/04/05Apple-Sells-Over-30...
The iPad was $500 when it launched, vs $3500 for the Apple Vision Pro.
Yes, but what's your point?
"The iPad was mocked" is irrelevant. Many or most products are mocked by some people, even iPhone. Regardless of mocking, iPad was an immediate success. Vision Pro is not. I fully admit that the price of Vision Pro is the biggest problem. But you can't pretend that the first iteration of Vision Pro is just like the first iteration of iPad.
My point is that they are two very different products with substantially different target audiences.
Now, sure, you can say the Vision Pro was not as big a success as the iPad even if you account for that difference in markets, scale, price ranges, etc. But that doesn't mean it's a total failure either, or that there is no future for the product.
Most people who have a Vision Pro, seem to like it. It's unsurprising that it's not flying off the shelves because at the moment it's little else than an expensive toy, and once the novelty wears off it's not like there is that much to do with it at the moment, it's also seemingly uncomfortable to wear for prolonged periods of time. But like I said, it's not hard to see how it could be getting better with future iterations.
So even if there is no perfect correlation between the shortcomings of the first iPad and the larger shortcomings of the first Vision Pro, there is a correlation.
> there is a correlation.
I don't see it.
tablets are everywhere, can be shared, and do not make people look ridiculous. hell, even my cats have apps made just for them. haven't seen any viral videos of pets wearing a headset.
not being able to see how this is different is very disingenuous. when the ipad was released, nobody had a device like that. apple's headset was not the first. even those the came before did not gain a lot of traction. so apple is not blazing new trails here that people just don't understand yet. this is an accepted as niche product line for certain personalities.
> tablets are everywhere
They are now, and that's exactly the point. And people don't look ridiculous now because they became adopted, but even the first versions of mobile phones made people look ridiculous.
Have some perspective, try to think beyond a lapse of more than two years back and forwards.
How is it innovative?
The UX itself is an iPhone-vs-Blackberry style leap compared to every other AR or VR device out there. It's just a fundamentally better paradigm for basic tasks and for mixing a headset (or future iGlasses) with non-VR activities.
Well, for one thing being able to interface with it by simply gesturing with your hands, seems pretty unique.
You know perfectly well that you can't use any computer without touching a controller of some kind.
That seems improbable and a challenge for many here.
eg: Theremoose - the Theremin Controlled Computer Mouse https://www.instructables.com/Theremoose-the-Theremin-Contro...
In the disability domain voice operations have a history.
It's clear that we are talking about consumer products, typical use cases, etc.
* Who's "we"?
* Was it?
* Remember when the mouse was a niche invention at PARC?
So, what exactly is the point of this line of argument? That some niche forms of touchless interfacing existed already? And thus the interfacing of the Vision Pro is not innovative?
No argument. Just facts.
Statement: "You know perfectly well that you can't use any computer without touching a controller of some kind."
Fact: touchless controls exist.
Speculation: They may become commonplace.
The connection to the real world from inside is incredible. You can forget you’re not looking through heavy googles but rather at a screen.
No. The iPad was mocked by tech bros who saw "Worse computer."
Pretty much anyone who had used an iPhone or iPod touch was like, "Oh hell yeah, big iPhone."
Pointing out that the device sucks to actually use in important physical and social ways is the opposite.
Agree. The Quest 3 and Quest 3S are so much better and so much cheaper and can run games. Why would anyone buy a Vision Pro
The Quest 3 OS and UX is much jankier than VisionOS.
Which is a huge downside for something that users are literally forced to stare at.
This so much. Can wear the AVP for hours uninterrupted, but lasted 10 mins in Occulus 3 before getting queasy. Have given AVP demos to dozens of people, offering varying degrees of guidance and everyone just "gets it" after a couple minutes regardless. Eye and hand tracking UI is phenomenal and awesome.
The Vision Pro feels more like a spatial tablet than a spatial computer. A computer should be capable of handling productive work tasks such as developing software. Vision Pro's only relevant capabilities seem to be mirroring your computer's screen and acting as a device to run your test apps, just like a tablet.
My experience receiving a Vision Pro demo at an Apple store also involved a poor Apple rep having to keep a straight face showing me basic iPad games when I asked about gaming. This thing has some of the most advanced VR headset hardware and their best gaming demo was some iPad games where you tap and hold to jump over mountains.
Whoever releases a pair of non-clunky glasses with eight hour battery that can do sufficient AR for under a thousand bucks will have the iphone moment and own the world. Looks like a race between Meta and Apple. Unless Microsoft has something sneaky in the works.
Didn't they have a really small number of screens they even ordered in the first place? Did they change their minds from demand, or have they just finally run out of the first production run?
From what I heard, they will ultimately halt production, assuming no major changes in sales, at around 500,000 - 600,000 produced. Based on my understanding of the sales, they will have a considerable number of units still available even if the production stops.
This seems to be specifically a change in the assembly volume. I imagine they have most of the specialist components, such as the screens, already delivered and stored.
Discussion (79 points, 10 hours ago, 114 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41925006
[dupe]
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41925006
Is it Newton bad? Wonder what the morale is for the team working on a clearly not successful product? Do the other device team members duck their head as they pass them by like it's someone you know but they don't that their significant other is cheating? Do they serve up platitudes like "keep your head up"?
I’m guessing they all knew it wasn’t ready to ship, and would likely fail, and fail hard with that price.
Now Meta is out here demoing very impressive glasses - which was the goal Apple had but couldn’t make work - so I’m curious if Meta is likely the more exciting place to work for this tech.
Don't worry, Apple will rip open the Facebook glasses and copy them with a slick new form factor.
Having used both AVP and occulus 3, the AVP is just way better user experience already, no need for them to copy an inferior product. Would expect usability delta to persist, (as well as the price delta.)
SPACE GREY
The Meta glasses reportedly cost $10,000.
Killer for me is how klunky it is for multiple users. Had they supported swapping users seamlessly, I’d have bought two: it would get more use than the PS5 (or TV, for that matter).
That said, almost everything Apple does is personal computing. Maybe AR is just a bad fit until it can fit into the form factor of sunglasses. (And not be shit.)
One place you don't see the Vision Pro suspended is on Tim Cook's face. There is weak demand for a Vision so dim and weak. The visionary pros at Apple couldn't see a clear provision for Tim Cook's half-baked Vision Pro. Apple shall proceed without Vision.
Anyone who got a Vision Pro: are you still using it?
I remember there was a lot of initial excitement on HN about the possibilities of using it as virtual monitors for work or as a more immersive way to watch movies. Is it good for these applications long term, after the novelty wears off?
Bought it at launch and use it a couple dozen times a week.
For me, the killer function has been doing display mirroring with my Mac and leveraging the environments like Mt Hood or the Moon as a way to get into a focused flow. I love the idea of windowing in a virtual space, but the there is the same feeling of limitation that I get with this device as I get with my iPad. I've used it to capture some VR photos and videos of family, survey the house to identify the source of a water leak, used it for a couple workouts, to play some Xbox games in bed without waking my wife.
Weight only seems to be an issue for me at the 3h mark or so, but at that point I am taking a break. My eyes don't seem to be effected so far and the only visual quality issues have been either due to pancake lense physics or fogging up when the device is cold. App quality has been okish for the most part. I periodically check the app store for something new, but so far nothing that feels incredible. I'll probably buy a MetaQuest Pro after this just to see what that is like
I'm ultimately waiting for the ultrawide enhancement they teased earlier this year and hoping they add a few more environments.
It's the best display I've ever had in terms of screen "size" and quality balanced against each other, and it's the default I gravitate towards for movie watching, game streaming, etc, as well as occasional hobbyist things like writing (the environment knob is remarkably good for helping with focus, at least for my ADHD brain). Once there's a version of Virtual Desktop (a local wifi VR streaming app) available for it I'm sure it will also be the best VR headset I've ever used, at least for short sessions.
With that said, I haven't used it for non-hobbyist productive things because the weight and (more importantly) the really bad head strap design makes it awful for use in a sitting-up position for long. I feel like that comfort factor what drags it down most. The passthrough quality and UX stability is 100% there already to be fine wearing it for several hours at a time, including while doing unrelated tasks, if only it was actually comfortable enough for that.
For constrast, see the designs that companies like BOBOVR make for other headsets like the Quest 3 - https://www.bobovr.com/products/bobovr-m3-pro - which look bulky and silly but are perfectly comfortable for long high-activity VR sessions because of the fundamentally better design, even though they add extra battery weight to the headset itself.
Have one, never use it, too lazy to sell it.
Using it as a virtual monitor is tiring. It’s too damned heavy. The FOV is too small. The resolution isn’t terrible but it’s not great either (compared with a physical screen.) I get exhausted after an hour of using it, an 8 hour work day is just too much.
I used to use it to watch YouTube or movies but at some point it just becomes a chore to go get it and put it on when the TV is already there and doesn’t cause fatigue after 20 minutes.
I’ll pay the shipping in a pre-paid package if you’d be willing to part with it.
yep.
spouse works night shift 3 days a week and ill develop on it and/or watch something.
our work has a cloud based ide for web stuff and ill commonly use AVP and virtual display on my personal mac for that and its better than my 2 monitor setup.
its for big nerds for sure and i am that. really is the best value for the best possible screen. i got it to have fun developing for novel xr hardware and watch great movies on the best screen. my advice is not to get one unless youre in that intersection of interests.
personally find it exciting i might be developing on discontinued hardware. always read and heard about hardware thats come and gos but dorks keep building stuff for it. i assumed everything is too well planned and managed these days for me to take part in something like that.
I still use mine for the things I watch by myself (with TV filling its usual role for social watches). I want to try it for other purposes but keep forgetting to.
When my partner wants to watch TV and I just want to work next to them; As a portable monitor that isn't socially acceptable outside living areas.
I remember few people having very positive feedback for home entertainment.
I also wonder if the same people wouldn't have the same benefits with way cheaper AR classes like from xreal[1]
[1] https://www.xreal.com/de/air/
The PPD is good, but a 46 degree FoV is pretty narrow for a virtual screen, and it's fixed in place in relation to your head. One of the big convenience differences of a true headset (even a cheaper one like the Quest line) is that you can move your head around and still have the "screen" fixed in place, so it doesn't get in the way as you look for your popcorn or whatever.
I do too, but I also wonder if the negatives (weight, isolation, heat) become apparent over time while the initial wow-factor wears off.
Edit: Or perhaps the software has improved and it's even better now that it was at launch?
> People are going to only read the headline and interpret it as “discontinue”. Like the article says, it just means they have enough inventory until they replace it with something cheaper.
This is such an odd take. Like trying to defend Apple from an accusation that was not made - The headline is a good representation of the news; production was suspended because they are sitting on too much unsold stock. Typically in-demand products with limited availability go out of stock fast and don't sit unsold.
This is why it always frustrating to read any negative news on companies like Apple or Tesla. They have some annoyingly sycophantic fanbase that always wants to downplay and misdirect any bad news.
If Microsoft made some AR glasses that sat unsold and they suspended production, no one would show up to say "actually, it is not being discontinued, nothing to see here". Nor should they.
Apple also have some weapons-grade haters out there. Who’ll take even positive news and use it to be divisive and derisive.
So does Microsoft. Or Google. Or Toyota. Or any other sufficiently large company. They are put under proper scrutiny.
But those are not white-knighted by a fanbase that always feel like they need to protect the multi-billion dollar company from negativity.
Using myself as an example, there are companies I like. I happen to like Nintendo for example. I still call a failed product a failure (e.g.: Wii U), and sometimes I even dislike their successful products (I always hated N64 for that retarded controller).
Why Apple "fanbase" abandon all critical thinking is baffling.
iPod - solved a real user need, developed in 1 year*
Vision Pro - solution looking for a problem, in development for ≈8 years.
It really makes you think how clueless Apple has become post-Jobs ...
*4 years if we acknowledge it was an existing category and Apple just improved on competition
[copy-pasted from my Mastodon]
Funny thing is, Apple probably thought the iPod would be a niche product that would only appeal to existing Apple customers when they developed it. If they did not take the risk, they probably wouldn't exist today.
While I don't think the Vision Pro is a good fit for Apple (most of their products are portable, while the Vision Pro is unlikely to have much uptake outside of the home and office), it is hard to gauge whether it would be adopted without actually bringing it to the market.
Son, I’m going to tell you one word that will change this company forever: SERVICES
How about have a pair of glasses (iGlasses) with some kind of ability to connect to your iPhone and transfer information via small discrete camera/voice command via airpods. All the processing is done on the iPhone and displayed on the inside of the lens, sort of like a heads up display. Offer prescription services or clear lens and sleek style frames. News, txt, email, video, maps, health info, search, access to Apple AI, etc, etc. I don't need VR, just Terminator style information.
I'm dreaming I know....
Personally, it seems obvious to me that this is the desired end state of AVP-related development, but somewhere along the line they decided that pure AR tech just wasn't good enough yet for the display quality and UX stability they wanted, and so they ended up with the headset as a clunky hardware compromise built around an OS mostly designed for the glasses use case.
VR tech still isn't ready yet.
It needs very high-res video streams which basically no internet provider/CDN can offer at scale. 40Mbps+ HEVC just isn't scalable. So the only content is whatever can be downloaded to the device itself. A few games? A cool screensaver experience? It's all cool, but mostly novelty tech.
The resolution of the screens is not the resolution of the media you play on it.
You can stream even a 1080p movie to it and it will look fine, because it is playing in "physical" space, not filling your view completely. It is like watching a floating television or movie screen.
For streaming in VR it has to be at least 4K per eye. So 8k in the general case, but realistically it will be higher than that.
Nobody can stream 2x 4K to my Apple VR headset. I can barely get a single 4K stream to my TV!