The last time Apple introduced a new general purpose computing device was the iPad, 14 years ago.
This one just doesn’t feel as big. When the iPad was introduced, everyone was shocked by the very low price and the sleek form factor compared to previous Windows tablet devices.
Those are exactly the weak points of the Vision Pro: it’s very expensive and very heavy, according to reports.
The hands-on sessions that Apple gave to journalists earlier this week seemed a bit underwhelming. The reporter for the Verge wrote that it feels like the Quest, but with higher resolution.
That’s a worrying sign! Imagine if the first hands-on of the iPhone had been “it’s like a BlackBerry but with better DPI screen.”
Of course Apple is usually very good at consistently evolving their platforms. Maybe the non-Pro model will be something else.
> Since the iPad's initial introduction back in January, many of us still wonder why we should drop hundreds of dollars for what is termed as a large iPod.
There were also a significant number of jokes about the name, relating it to a feminine hygiene product.
I bought one day 1 and pretty much everyone thought I was nuts and just an Apple zealot. However, as I took it places and used it, people saw it and became much more interested and took it more seriously as a product.
"iPad? Why did they name it after a tampon hahahaha never getting one of those. Similarly priced laptops are more powerful and have a keyboard." TBF the early models weren't as good and didn't have the keyboard and Apple Pencil of today.
To a first approximation, that's what it still is all these years later. The software might be called iPadOS now but it's not fooling anyone that it's much different to iOS.
> ‘I recall lots of people dismissing the iPad as "just a big iPod Touch".’
The interesting point here is that Apple’s competitors at the time didn’t even have a product that could come close to the iPod touch, and yet Apple was already taking the product into a completely new direction.
The iPod touch doesn’t exist anymore. Turns out the paper-like size combined with the simple UI made all the difference. And nobody scaling down from $2k Windows tablets could have figured that out. That’s how Apple created a beautifully designed tablet for only $499 and everybody else was left scrambling.
With the Vision Pro, Apple doesn’t seem to have that kind of advantage. But I’d be very happy if it exceeds my expectations and is also successful in the market. I’ve been waiting for VR all my life. The Quest has come tantalizingly close but still misses the applications that would make it a part of my daily routine.
There were tear downs showing this tiny little iPod shaped SoC shoved into the case and connected to a massive battery. The SoC was underpowered considering it was running a 1024x768 screen and support was dropped almost immediately.
The iPad 2 teardown showed an SoC which seemed a lot more custom designed for the iPad, and the "big iPod" criticism died around that point.
this is exactly as I remember it as well... it was quite mem'ed on that dimension alone, as to why would you need a giant one of the thing they already had.
They did, but before it was released it was predicted to cost over $1000, often confidently assumed to be well over a kilobuck. Instead it was $499. It was also much thinner and with better battery life than the experts had predicted.
It was more of a shock than the M1 was in recent times.
Not defending Apple here: I do believe the Vision Pro will be a resounding "meh".
> When the iPad was introduced, everyone was shocked by the very low price and the sleek form factor compared to previous Windows tablet devices.
What I remember is everyone making fun of it, including the name¹, for being “just a big iPod Touch”.
Similarly, the iPhone wasn’t taken all that seriously² on launch. The App Store wasn’t even an idea yet, let alone a reality.
That is to say this always happens: people discount a new thing and use as contrast something else which was also discounted at the time but framed as if it had always been perceived by the current lens.
I have no idea if the Vision Pro will “succeed” (however we define that), but we can be reasonably sure that the current version is the worse it will ever be. In other words, it will get better and it’s too soon to judge its impact.
It's not like the criticisms for the iPhone were wrong. The iPhone launched at what would in today's prices be about $2000. ($700 is $1000 today, plus you had to sign a contract that would otherwise have given you a "free" phone worth a similar amount). Plus it didn't have an app store. Both of those would have prevented the iPhone's success, but both were very quickly corrected.
The 2007 iPhone was a limited niche product. The 2008 iPhone was not.
Part of it was that the whole “tablet” idea hadn’t taken off and had been tried a number of times, so the general consensus was “it’s a good value for a nice version of a thing nobody seems to want.”
The iPad and the iPhone were heavily criticized when they came out. While both were pushing some good tech, they were also going against the general wisdom of what made a product in each category.
The things that the iPhone was criticised for - no 3G was the biggest one - were easily fixed in the next iteration.
The problems with the vision pro seem more fundamental, primarily cost. Apple really needs to sell it with zero margin or as a loss leader to build marketshare because $3000 is absurd and will really damage its branding "weird face hugger for rich people"
Yes, same goes for any "first gen" Apple product in a category: The Apple I, 128k Macintosh, iPod, Apple Watch.
The thing all these first-generation products have in common (including the Apple Vision Pro) is that they are eminently skippable and usually followed by more popular, better-spec'd lower-cost models within a year or two.
People were very skeptical about the lack of a keyboard on iPhone, and it was missing a few basic features like copy/paste, but it was incomprehensibly small in person and other phones couldn’t touch the capabilities.
Yea. Remember all the memes of the iPad being 4 iPhones taped together? It was widely criticized and considered to be a flop by some. A pointless device even.
What, the iPhone too? The iPad was called a big iPhone (especially when they showcased on stage that you can run iPhone apps with 2x magnification), but I remember there being a lot of hype for the iPhone.
If memory serves right, after first few versions of iPod Touch was out everyone was wondering why Apple is not cramming in the phone functionality as well.
iPhone maybe was criticized by the likes of Ballmer and Nokia/Blackberry execs from business strategy perspective, but I'm not sure that sentiment was universally shared by consumers.
EDIT:
OK my memory has failed tragically. Will leave this comment here nevertheless.
I wonder how much of that is due to the specific nature of this type of product, and how it compares to those past launches.
With iPhone & iPad, you had products that people could very easily imagine using. The iPhone was the combination of three technologies people were already familiar with, the iPad was the iPhone, but bigger.
It is really difficult to imagine using a VR headset if you haven't used one before -- there simply isn't a frame of reference. And even if you have used an Oculus or a SteamVR headset, an interface built around eye & tracking is still completely novel.
I think a lack of mass-market appeal is something that is inherent to a product like this, which makes it a very different product from a marketing perspective than iPhone or iPad.
It makes sense to me that, rather than trying to copy-paste the iPhone or iPad launch, Apple would instead put out an exclusive halo product early, allow a few years for the public to build familiarity with it and settle on the core use-cases, all while they observe and iterate behind the scenes on a more accessible version for a wider audience.
> The hands-on sessions that Apple gave to journalists earlier this week seemed a bit underwhelming. The reporter for the Verge wrote that it feels like the Quest, but with higher resolution.
That's my #1 issue with the Quest and productivity/work is what I most want out of a VR/AR device at this point in time. Gaming on the quest was fun but it wore off (really shined playing with friends online but people are busy). Being able to work in a virtual space is very exciting for me and I can't wait to try it out.
The Quest 2's resolution was almost there for me--I could even spend a few hours at a time working on code in Immersed before I started to feel the eye strain. The Quest 3 has made it good enough that I could go all day if I wanted to. The only real sticking point now is the discomfort of wearing it on my face for that long.
Lol when the iPhone came out, literally everyone was criticizing it for how expensive it was.
Also, looking at the functionality it had when it first came out, it wouldn't have really been very useful for me (no app store, basically just an iPod + shitty browser + phone).
Anyway, does anyone actually think that VR isn't going to revolutionize computing over the next 10 years?
Remember, the first iPhone shipped with no ability to copy and paste stuff, sort glued hardware inside the case, and no ability to add a microSD card like those of the Nokia phones of the time. If the first iPhone pre-order was posted on HN, it would have received a similar comment… :-)
It is a first gen device. It is not for everybody, and it is going to be severely lacking in feature set. The key is what they are trying to genuinely bring to the table rather than what is missing(or that it is heavier or needs a battery hanging on the side - these are fixable things in the next iterations).
I see this as in the same category as 3D TV. Unless they're really into air combat simulations or use it professionally for some kind of visualisations, I can't see people wanting to sit on their couch with a big headset on. I would be interested to try it, but will wait for a rich friend to buy it first.
3D TV didn't even add much to purchase price. I needed a TV for a new room and bought one with 3D but it wasn't appreciably more expensive than an otherwise equivalent screen.There was never a lot of 3D content though. I bought the handful of discs of the good 3D movies and that was about it.
I'd try it as well but if the addressable market is the gamers who hang on each NVIDIA GPU release I couldn't count on this being very interesting. Even console gaming generally is something of a niche market in the scheme of things.
The DPI is pretty critical here though. A big part of their pitch is that you can use this to work. You can open huge windows all around you full of readable text. Seems like it'd be great for coding. Especially since it has the AR too, so you're not totally isolated while you're doing that.
Main problem could be too much weight for long sessions. But it's 600 grams, fairly close to the face with a very wide headband, and custom-fitted. Seems like it might be reasonably comfortable.
The iPad was arguably rather a pre-1.0 version when it came out.
And I must say I rarely use mine around the house. I'm admittedly not a kid that writes papers on an iPhone and doesn't even want a laptop but it's just much easier to use a laptop for searching/writing/etc.
Doing much less travel than pre-COVID, I'm not even sure I'll replace my iPad when it goes out of support. A MacBook Air and Kindle combo does most things as well or better and weighs only marginally more.
I think I use my devices in pretty much exactly the way Apple planned for their use. My laptop gets used for work. My iPad gets used for reading, email, and light web browsing. My phone is what I take with me when I leave the house. The iPad also doubles for travel for me. I use all 3 nearly an equal amount of time and use Handoff and all that stuff regularly between the 3.
The iPhone was widely mocked for costing $500 with a 2-year contract with AT&T at release. It also didn't have native apps and only worked with AT&T. The big jump for Apple was the next release of the iPhone 3G that brought the price down toe $200 (with contract) and also opened up the platform for native apps.
The iPhone was $600 at launch, and when features were compared to other (much cheaper) phones, it didn’t stack up. It didn’t take videos, had a bad camera, slow internet speeds, etc, etc, etc.
The iPhone didn’t win because it had the most features, it won because it made the features it had much easier to use… so people actually used them. Other phones could technically do stuff, but it was so annoying to do, no one did it. Not long before the iPhone launched I had a friend get a Moto Q. She was determined to get the most out of it and learn how to use everything. She was carrying a massive manual with her in her purse. The iPhone did those things without the need to study a manual for weeks or months.
It is also the distortion field. You never heard people say the Nokia N95 (even though it was a very successful device) or the BlackBerry or the Macbook. So regardless, there is no 'the iPhone'. There was an original iPhone which IIRC didn't even have 3G. It couldn't do MMS. It couldn't do copy/paste. It was a crippled device, but it did a couple of things very well. It shows that in order to be successful the first iteration of a new product line doesn't have to be perfect.
The argument falls apart when you remember that more than one person outside of RIM owned a BlackBerry. Who has a Quest? Also? Who had a BlackBerry? Just the people who had a reason to own a BlackBerry. Everyone else just waited for the iPhone to exist.
This isn’t the iPad release, it’s the Apple Watch release. It’s a flag-planting, limited capability, system for early adopters that’s meant to be a ramp to a more practical v2.
I don’t think most people will have a use for the Vision Pro, but, for the people that do, it’s in a different league from what’s currently available.
The mass market iPad/iPod Touch version of the Vision will be out in a few years.
There is no reason this first iteration would not sell out. There are enough people with more money than sense or wishing to have an additional status symbol to sell it regardless of its qualities and defaults.
The question is will it have enough appeal for the technology to trickle down to more affordable devices that the general population is willing to actually buy? And will it happen before we can implant chips directly into our brain? So far VR has occupied nothing less but a niche market.
I remember the exact opposite. People were saying it’s just a bigger iPod touch, didn’t have a full fledged OS etc. Most online discussion said it would be a complete failure.
uh yeah, i remember it quite differently. everyone was dismissive of the ipad...i remember even thinking how phones were getting bigger and what was the point.
> Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.
A lot of people in the comments here complaining about the price, but honestly it makes a ton of sense to me. Apple isn't positioning this as a peripheral or secondary computing device.
They are staking the claim (via price and otherwise) that this is a whole computer that you should use for Very Serious Productivity. Whereas the iPad (for example) was always kind of assumed to be a secondary/casual computing device, this is very much not. The price, the "Pro" moniker, and fact that it has specs more in line with Apple's line of laptops than its iOS devices all support this framing.
There are clearly people who will happily drop $4k on an Apple laptop if they think it'll be a good tool. That is who this is being marketed to, not people who might otherwise have bought a Oculus or whatever.
Whether the device lives up to the marketing is a different question and one we really can't answer until we spend some time with it. I'll let you know when mine arrives. So very much depends on the "feel" of the finger sensors and eye tracking.
But I do think it's priced correctly for what they're claiming it is.
The commment said serious productivity, though. Many people don’t need general purpose serious computation in order to be seriously productive—they need certain tools and a certain environment.
I mostly agree. I think it's a bit much for a first-get device that hasn't proved itself out yet but I have enough experience with first-gen Apple products that I know this will easily lead to being a jumping off point for me to make a decent amount using this as a tool. If it breaks even for me, it'll be worth it for the head start I'll have over others who will just be getting into the ecosystem with later, cheaper versions.
Nah, I don't see that. Apple delivers the same spiel about the iPad Pro and its AR-capable cameras. Not one person uses the iPad Pro for that, they just want the bigger screen.
Isn’t this a bit of a narcissistic take? Tons of creatives use it. It’s a mainstay in a lot of media and entertainment use cases, from on set work to visualization etc just as an example of things I’ve worked on.
Must admit, as this got closer I contemplated getting it more and more. Especially as I find myself using my laptop a lot on the couch and bed.
Just the ability to have a larger screen without worrying about my physical Mac screen is a fairly large selling point, plus any other features. I assume there has not been anything about the ability to have multiple virtual Mac screens has there? That would likely make this an instant purchase for me.
Early reports are that the Vision feels quite heavy to wear. That’s almost certainly going to make it a bad choice for virtual screens for more than an hour or so.
There is a variable there in that there's an optional over-the-top strap included in the retail package, but many of the people who previewed it either chose not to use it or weren't offered it. MKBHD for example emphasized how heavy it feels, but he wasn't using the top strap.
From what I can tell it is about the same weight as the Valve Index which I have been able to wear for a fairly extended period of time while doing physical activities.
If I can wear that while being physical I can probably handle the Vision Pro for extended periods.
I’ve done countless long trips on motorcycles and have never been bothered by the weight of the helmet. I’m curious if a little bit of exercise will counter any discomfort with this. Seems other headsets have had similar complaints, too.
XReal Air are pretty good for that purpose. I can just plug them into my laptop or any phone that supports DisplayPort over USB-C and mirror my full screen.
The clarity is good enough for dev work, but my eyes feel a little strained after a few hours of use. I'm curious whether Apple's product will be more comfortable for longer use.
I coded on one of them. It was ok for a short period. The blurriness and ghosting, especially on the corners and edges made it pretty tiring after a while.
They're great for watching videos, movies, TV, etc. though!
I was considering those. Is there some sort of accelerometer in there so the screen moves in your field of vision as you turn your head, or does it just kinda float there? I haven't been able to understand that from their product pages.
I think the virtual mac screen is limited to 4K resolution, which means you can “zoom” it as much as you want, but you won’t be able to fit “more content” on it. That is to say, there’s a difference between having a huge screen with a matching huge resolution (which can fit more windows with the same text/content size), and what the Vision Pro is going to emulate, which is more like taking your existing 4K monitor and blowing it up (making each window/text/etc correspondingly bigger, and potentially looking blurry if it’s too big.)
You can probably work around this by adjusting the compositor into a “more space” mode in preferences which makes all the content smaller, but it’s not the same as having arbitrary resolution to match the arbitrary virtual size.
Personally, I don’t want a virtual screen at all, I want all the individual windows on my Mac to hover around me in virtual space (like they do for native visionOS apps), but that’s not supported. It’s a real shame IMO.
Same reason I don't just have an ultra widescreen monitor on my desk and I have 3 monitors instead.
Separate monitors allows for better organization of different app windows than a single monitor, especially with different spaces on different monitors. I can keep my main screen on whatever it is I am working on while switching to a different space on another monitor to check email or teams for example.
Or just being able to have multiple full screen apps which is what I often do.
I was thinking about that, and that is true when one of the monitors is generally Safari.
The question will be can I easily copy something from Safari on the Vision Pro to my Mac for example? Or move the mouse from my Mac Display (which will likely just be the trackpad of my laptop on my lap) to that Safari and use it that way.
It would need to operate as an extension of my Mac for it to be useful in this scenario.
Yeah that is all we saw in the marketing, and I figure if it was possible they would have shown it since that would be a killer feature.
I am guessing there may be some wireless bandwidth issue with transmitting more than one screen but idk. Guess we will see if it just happens to not have been shown
It seems like it’s also a dev device. Reports are that Apple is working on cheaper versions so the Vision pro provides an early adopter market and high spec device for developers. In a few years when they go for a mainstream launch there will already be an app and game ecosystem.
Different from a watch, some kind of mixed reality wearable will eventually replace phones and laptops, I am sure. It might still be several decades till the technology fits in a pairs of eyeglasses.
Consider this your 2050 preview, like the Apple Newton to your iPhone.
So true. The same is valid for many other (almost ridiculous) expensive items: watches, bags, shoes, cars, wines, perfumes… There are many rich people out there that need to differentiate themselves from us plebeians :-)
I recently watched a video that speculated that middle class people mostly bought those designer brands to appear rich. Rich people generally don't need/want Gucci and whatnot plastered all over their person. I'd buy that argument.
I’ve said this to anyone I speak to about Vision Pro, which is that the current iteration appears to me to be most similar to the gold Apple Watches that were released with the first version. These were mocked in the media but nevertheless made buzz about the Apple Watch and brought about general awareness of the product. The first Apple Watches were overall pretty incomplete products, especially in comparison to modern ones. If the Vision Pro follows the same trajectory, it will likely do reasonably well as future iterations get better community support, first party features, better form factor, and cheaper price point. Besides smart phones, Apple usually isn’t the first to do something, but when they do it, they do it well. I’m excited for roughly the 3rd gen of the Vision Pro, but will be interestedly following news of it.
This has been a reliable pattern, and why most people typically say wait for version 2 of any Apple product (and feature if we’re being honest).
I will say though, as much as it doesn’t make financial sense, I have been a part of some really rewarding experiences that were only possible while having new Apple products day 1.
So I just ordered a maxed out one. I wrote the firmware/OS for the prototype when it was a lot less polished and being demo’s to EVPs, so it’s going to be cool to see how far it’s come :)
I wonder how the reactions to this headset will play out. It's obviously going to be relatively clunky compared to expectations given that it's the first version. The marketing material doesn't really show the hassle of using a cable / separate battery. The battery only lasts 2 hours. There will not be many apps or they will be low quality. It'll probably be a bit front-heavy from all that glass.
Anyway, I got one for myself because I'm really excited about developing for it, and also seeing how productive one can be working with the headset on (I was already pretty impressed with using virtual screens for my MacBook with keyboard passthrough in the Quest).
Quest 3, the DPI looks somewhat similar to a non-retina Apple display.
It felt really futuristic to log into my office computer from a synthesized apartment via Virtual Desktop. The latency was fine for typing. Even YouTube video/audio was bearable. But the device itself is still too heavy. The fixed lens system can't be good for your eyes.
Apple Vision Pro is even heavier. Even as a hardcore VR fan I cannot imagine the current generation hardware to be useful in productivity tasks.
I attempted with the Quest 2 and it was far from doing the job well. Resolution is too low, optics too poor, headset too heavy and uncomfortable, battery too small. I’ve heard Quest 3 is better, but I am still very skeptical that the Vision Pro could be an all day device and replacement for a multi monitor setup. Possibly in a few years there will be a dedicated device for just virtual monitors designed for all day working. Xreal’s product is close but still very early adopter.
Readit News
This one just doesn’t feel as big. When the iPad was introduced, everyone was shocked by the very low price and the sleek form factor compared to previous Windows tablet devices.
Those are exactly the weak points of the Vision Pro: it’s very expensive and very heavy, according to reports.
The hands-on sessions that Apple gave to journalists earlier this week seemed a bit underwhelming. The reporter for the Verge wrote that it feels like the Quest, but with higher resolution.
That’s a worrying sign! Imagine if the first hands-on of the iPhone had been “it’s like a BlackBerry but with better DPI screen.”
Of course Apple is usually very good at consistently evolving their platforms. Maybe the non-Pro model will be something else.
I remember history a bit differently.
I recall lots of people dismissing the iPad as "just a big iPod Touch".
> Since the iPad's initial introduction back in January, many of us still wonder why we should drop hundreds of dollars for what is termed as a large iPod.
I bought one day 1 and pretty much everyone thought I was nuts and just an Apple zealot. However, as I took it places and used it, people saw it and became much more interested and took it more seriously as a product.
The interesting point here is that Apple’s competitors at the time didn’t even have a product that could come close to the iPod touch, and yet Apple was already taking the product into a completely new direction.
The iPod touch doesn’t exist anymore. Turns out the paper-like size combined with the simple UI made all the difference. And nobody scaling down from $2k Windows tablets could have figured that out. That’s how Apple created a beautifully designed tablet for only $499 and everybody else was left scrambling.
With the Vision Pro, Apple doesn’t seem to have that kind of advantage. But I’d be very happy if it exceeds my expectations and is also successful in the market. I’ve been waiting for VR all my life. The Quest has come tantalizingly close but still misses the applications that would make it a part of my daily routine.
The iPad 2 teardown showed an SoC which seemed a lot more custom designed for the iPad, and the "big iPod" criticism died around that point.
It was more of a shock than the M1 was in recent times.
Not defending Apple here: I do believe the Vision Pro will be a resounding "meh".
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What I remember is everyone making fun of it, including the name¹, for being “just a big iPod Touch”.
Similarly, the iPhone wasn’t taken all that seriously² on launch. The App Store wasn’t even an idea yet, let alone a reality.
That is to say this always happens: people discount a new thing and use as contrast something else which was also discounted at the time but framed as if it had always been perceived by the current lens.
I have no idea if the Vision Pro will “succeed” (however we define that), but we can be reasonably sure that the current version is the worse it will ever be. In other words, it will get better and it’s too soon to judge its impact.
¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTzhXMbOWHE
² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
The 2007 iPhone was a limited niche product. The 2008 iPhone was not.
Part of it was that the whole “tablet” idea hadn’t taken off and had been tried a number of times, so the general consensus was “it’s a good value for a nice version of a thing nobody seems to want.”
The problems with the vision pro seem more fundamental, primarily cost. Apple really needs to sell it with zero margin or as a loss leader to build marketshare because $3000 is absurd and will really damage its branding "weird face hugger for rich people"
The thing all these first-generation products have in common (including the Apple Vision Pro) is that they are eminently skippable and usually followed by more popular, better-spec'd lower-cost models within a year or two.
If memory serves right, after first few versions of iPod Touch was out everyone was wondering why Apple is not cramming in the phone functionality as well.
iPhone maybe was criticized by the likes of Ballmer and Nokia/Blackberry execs from business strategy perspective, but I'm not sure that sentiment was universally shared by consumers.
EDIT:
OK my memory has failed tragically. Will leave this comment here nevertheless.
With iPhone & iPad, you had products that people could very easily imagine using. The iPhone was the combination of three technologies people were already familiar with, the iPad was the iPhone, but bigger.
It is really difficult to imagine using a VR headset if you haven't used one before -- there simply isn't a frame of reference. And even if you have used an Oculus or a SteamVR headset, an interface built around eye & tracking is still completely novel.
I think a lack of mass-market appeal is something that is inherent to a product like this, which makes it a very different product from a marketing perspective than iPhone or iPad.
It makes sense to me that, rather than trying to copy-paste the iPhone or iPad launch, Apple would instead put out an exclusive halo product early, allow a few years for the public to build familiarity with it and settle on the core use-cases, all while they observe and iterate behind the scenes on a more accessible version for a wider audience.
That's my #1 issue with the Quest and productivity/work is what I most want out of a VR/AR device at this point in time. Gaming on the quest was fun but it wore off (really shined playing with friends online but people are busy). Being able to work in a virtual space is very exciting for me and I can't wait to try it out.
Giant, better than 4k monitor for my macbook pro while still being able to see and interact with people in the room, yes please.
Also, looking at the functionality it had when it first came out, it wouldn't have really been very useful for me (no app store, basically just an iPod + shitty browser + phone).
Anyway, does anyone actually think that VR isn't going to revolutionize computing over the next 10 years?
Remember, the first iPhone shipped with no ability to copy and paste stuff, sort glued hardware inside the case, and no ability to add a microSD card like those of the Nokia phones of the time. If the first iPhone pre-order was posted on HN, it would have received a similar comment… :-)
It is a first gen device. It is not for everybody, and it is going to be severely lacking in feature set. The key is what they are trying to genuinely bring to the table rather than what is missing(or that it is heavier or needs a battery hanging on the side - these are fixable things in the next iterations).
I'd try it as well but if the addressable market is the gamers who hang on each NVIDIA GPU release I couldn't count on this being very interesting. Even console gaming generally is something of a niche market in the scheme of things.
Main problem could be too much weight for long sessions. But it's 600 grams, fairly close to the face with a very wide headband, and custom-fitted. Seems like it might be reasonably comfortable.
The iPad is closer to a "consumption device" than general computing, I'd say.
And I must say I rarely use mine around the house. I'm admittedly not a kid that writes papers on an iPhone and doesn't even want a laptop but it's just much easier to use a laptop for searching/writing/etc.
Doing much less travel than pre-COVID, I'm not even sure I'll replace my iPad when it goes out of support. A MacBook Air and Kindle combo does most things as well or better and weighs only marginally more.
And even going further back - the iPod - “no wireless, less space then the Nomad, Lame”
And for the youngsters who don’t get the reference
https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026
The iPhone didn’t win because it had the most features, it won because it made the features it had much easier to use… so people actually used them. Other phones could technically do stuff, but it was so annoying to do, no one did it. Not long before the iPhone launched I had a friend get a Moto Q. She was determined to get the most out of it and learn how to use everything. She was carrying a massive manual with her in her purse. The iPhone did those things without the need to study a manual for weeks or months.
This isn’t the iPad release, it’s the Apple Watch release. It’s a flag-planting, limited capability, system for early adopters that’s meant to be a ramp to a more practical v2.
I don’t think most people will have a use for the Vision Pro, but, for the people that do, it’s in a different league from what’s currently available.
The mass market iPad/iPod Touch version of the Vision will be out in a few years.
Now just how to figure out how to pay for it (and wait for the UK release)
The question is will it have enough appeal for the technology to trickle down to more affordable devices that the general population is willing to actually buy? And will it happen before we can implant chips directly into our brain? So far VR has occupied nothing less but a niche market.
Honestly no. It just looked like a giant iPhone
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Historically, reviews of Apple products based on their specs have aged poorly.
https://512pixels.net/2009/01/early-macintosh-reviews-show-d...
John Dvorak
> Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.
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They are staking the claim (via price and otherwise) that this is a whole computer that you should use for Very Serious Productivity. Whereas the iPad (for example) was always kind of assumed to be a secondary/casual computing device, this is very much not. The price, the "Pro" moniker, and fact that it has specs more in line with Apple's line of laptops than its iOS devices all support this framing.
There are clearly people who will happily drop $4k on an Apple laptop if they think it'll be a good tool. That is who this is being marketed to, not people who might otherwise have bought a Oculus or whatever.
Whether the device lives up to the marketing is a different question and one we really can't answer until we spend some time with it. I'll let you know when mine arrives. So very much depends on the "feel" of the finger sensors and eye tracking.
But I do think it's priced correctly for what they're claiming it is.
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Just the ability to have a larger screen without worrying about my physical Mac screen is a fairly large selling point, plus any other features. I assume there has not been anything about the ability to have multiple virtual Mac screens has there? That would likely make this an instant purchase for me.
https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1747367564093624348
If I can wear that while being physical I can probably handle the Vision Pro for extended periods.
The clarity is good enough for dev work, but my eyes feel a little strained after a few hours of use. I'm curious whether Apple's product will be more comfortable for longer use.
They're great for watching videos, movies, TV, etc. though!
You can probably work around this by adjusting the compositor into a “more space” mode in preferences which makes all the content smaller, but it’s not the same as having arbitrary resolution to match the arbitrary virtual size.
Personally, I don’t want a virtual screen at all, I want all the individual windows on my Mac to hover around me in virtual space (like they do for native visionOS apps), but that’s not supported. It’s a real shame IMO.
Separate monitors allows for better organization of different app windows than a single monitor, especially with different spaces on different monitors. I can keep my main screen on whatever it is I am working on while switching to a different space on another monitor to check email or teams for example.
Or just being able to have multiple full screen apps which is what I often do.
The question will be can I easily copy something from Safari on the Vision Pro to my Mac for example? Or move the mouse from my Mac Display (which will likely just be the trackpad of my laptop on my lap) to that Safari and use it that way.
It would need to operate as an extension of my Mac for it to be useful in this scenario.
I am guessing there may be some wireless bandwidth issue with transmitting more than one screen but idk. Guess we will see if it just happens to not have been shown
I also thought the Apple Watch was a gimmick, but apparently they have been selling tons of those.
This Vision Pro thing is different from the watch but also might not be that different, just "up scale".
Compare it to the Playstation 1 dev kit. In 1994 dollars it cost $15,000 for a full devkit.
[1] https://www.retroreversing.com/official-playStation-devkit
Different from a watch, some kind of mixed reality wearable will eventually replace phones and laptops, I am sure. It might still be several decades till the technology fits in a pairs of eyeglasses.
Consider this your 2050 preview, like the Apple Newton to your iPhone.
I will say though, as much as it doesn’t make financial sense, I have been a part of some really rewarding experiences that were only possible while having new Apple products day 1.
Looking forward to testing development on the Vision Pro, building some Vision Pro apps, and also playing Baldur’s Gate 3 in bed via screen mirroring.
Anyway, I got one for myself because I'm really excited about developing for it, and also seeing how productive one can be working with the headset on (I was already pretty impressed with using virtual screens for my MacBook with keyboard passthrough in the Quest).
It felt really futuristic to log into my office computer from a synthesized apartment via Virtual Desktop. The latency was fine for typing. Even YouTube video/audio was bearable. But the device itself is still too heavy. The fixed lens system can't be good for your eyes.
Apple Vision Pro is even heavier. Even as a hardcore VR fan I cannot imagine the current generation hardware to be useful in productivity tasks.
I've done it with a Valve Index and an HTC Vive Pro. I configured a virtual room with huge screens on the walls.
It worked OK. I wished the DPI was higher, but huge screens farther away from my head worked well enough to use Visual Studio, etc.
The issue I had was eye strain and headaches. This was with snap-in vision correcting lenses for the Vive Pro.
I could do a full 8 hour day, but had a low-key headache and dry eyes the rest of the day.