I feel like whenever the topic of AR glasses come up, these large companies focus too much on cameras. When really, I'd be happy with just a persistent display that can be in my field of vision. A clock, notifications, maybe a map if I'm walking. I've been using the Viture One glasses as an external monitor and they've been great for privacy in public places. You definitely can't walk around with them since the internal prism messes with your sense of balance. But they are a nice step in the right direction.
These Viture One Pro glasses seem good, I might interested in one of these. I wear glasses, don't like wearing contacts, so I wonder how they would work for me. The video (at 1:18) shows that the Pro version has 2 dials to set focus. But the product page says that's to fix "blurry edges". Is this something I could use without my glasses? or will I need to wear contacts?
| You can easily adjust each VITURE One XR Glasses lens to your prescription (0 to -5.00D) with convenient knobs located on the top of the frames.
| If your prescription doesn't fall into this range, no worries – to make sure everyone has access to a clear VITURE One experience, we’ve also developed a prescription frame that you can have your own lenses fitted into. This frame attaches to VITURE One XR Glasses magnetically for easy on and off.
The camera is one of the most important features for me. I had (and returned) a pair of INMO Air2's primarily because of the poor camera quality. Waiting to see how the TCL RayNeo X2 performs (was supposed to ship in December, still waiting) but may just cancel those and wait for the next generation to release, which was just announced at CES.
I love the notifications and the other stuff as well (mapping, translations... Even streaming YouTube through them while I exercise) but my primary driver for these was to have a rapidly accessible camera. I found great success with the Humane AI Pin primarily for this feature.
FYI there are some other options available today for glasses without cameras (Vuzix has some, as well as some announced at CES) and/or with simpler screens... As well as some with screens in the frame (like Halliday) if the rainbow effect gets to you.
I’ve purchased and evaluated a number of AR glasses and have come to the conclusion that the Vuzix Z100s are the most practical and functional, I actually wear them pretty often just for the convenience of notifications in my vision, because even watch glancing is distracting in comparison.
other I have are Viture’s, Frame, Everysight, and ActiveLook. All of those have downsides to wearing as glasses over Vuzix’s Z100. People just find you a big big frame geeky and don’t necessarily notice them as smart glasses unless they are particularly observant type.
Everysight Maverick are runner ups and work for summer outdoors situations as they are basically sunglasses.
Most of them seem to be correct. Apple Car was basically an open secret for years before it was cancelled, same with AirPower and even Apple Vision Pro had it's price estimate leaked before it was announced.
It feels like Apple thinks they're really good at hiding stuff, but forget that their employees love to talk. Nobody will forget the prototype iPhone left just sitting there unattended at a bar.
AirPower was actually announced. The problem with the others is it’s hard to know which are intended to be products or research. Particularly items that are far from any sort of release.
For example, I’m skeptical that Apple ever intended to release a car.
I started my career as a dev working in VR apss. At the time there was consensus in the industry that apple was about to release something huge that would push the whole industry to the mainstream - and indeed you couldn't rely on any new VR/AR product or software without it being silently acquired in months and their website redirecting to apple.
Fast forward one decade, nothing's happened yet. I moved to web dev long ago, but people seem to be still waiting.
Apple is centered around the iPhone, it's hard for them to make anything that isn't a peripheral of it. The best idea they've had in the last ten years is the Apple Watch, but I'm using Garmin because I don't have an iPhone.
The Mac benefited from all the work Apple has done on the iPhone CPU, but the software scene on the Mac has been deteriorating because developers are using the same tools and the same toolkits to develop desktop applications that are motivated by mobile. The article mentioned here
claims to be about the deterioration of desktop interface but it's by someone who's so steeped in the Apple culture that they don't get it is really about the deterioration of Mac interfaces.
Apple doesn't care if you buy a Mac, in fact they'd feel most comfortable if the Mac became a peripheral of the iPhone. It's hard for them to picture developing a new peripheral for the Mac, even something straightforward like the Magic Mouse. A peripheral for the Mac that's groundbreaking? It doesn't fit into their world view.
Macs obviously have an outsized mindshare and market share in Silicon Valley but globally make up like 5% of PC sales. In Apple’s own books the entire Mac division accounts for 8% of revenues. Apple is serious about the line, sure, but it doesn’t have anywhere close to the importance of iPhone for the company.
I got one, a shell you can put your phone in, so you can slide your phone around your desk AS your mouse. It can provide vibration feedback, alerts, sounds, etc. It can use the macro lens and the IMU for tracking its location across the desk. Would also serve as biometric auth for websites.
Prior Art for
G06F 3/0338 - Computer mice, trackballs or similar devices for computer control
G06F 3/041 - Digitisers using touch-sensing
G06F 21/32 - Biometric authentication
I think this is a niche technology that people keep trying to make go mainstream, but most people just don't want it. For most people (including myself) trying VR a little is a novelty, but it's not something I want every day, and AR seems like it'd be useless or annoying unless I were using it in e.g. some industrial context like a heads up display.
It's like NFTs in gaming, NFTs in general, AI shoehorned into places it doesn't make much sense, wifi connected can openers, Soylent, ...
Startup founders are always told that there must be market pull, and many startups fail because they try to push an idea nobody wants, but it's not just startups. Big companies and VCs do this too.
FWIW, with today's social media environment...I'm ACTIVELY managing the ways I'm interrupted. Having that in front of my field of view is a non starter.
I'm an early adopter, but even at that, I don't use VR a whole lot over the course of a month. It's a tech that people (nerds) really want to take off and it just hasn't. I'm not sure it will...it could be replaced with other equivalent technologies that aren't strapped to your face.
I think it's a tech advancement issue, just like touch screens wasn't a thing for a very long time while it they were resistive. Then the iPhone came with capacitive touch screen and now they're everywhere. When (if ever) XR won't suck, which could take a decade or two, it will be adopted massively.
Every company in the space realizes that it's the next computer pillar, after desktop PCs and smartphones. Even more so: these devices see everything their users see (and more), hear everything they hear (and more), and can provide significant insight into their mental and emotional states. The prospect of controlling the platform all of this takes place on? No one - especially incumbents that know their history - wants to get left behind. Everyone knows Apple's modus operandi: wait for others to experiment, then define the standard and run away with the market. So, Facebook bought Oculus (and slow-walked its R&D), Google shelved Project Tango, and everyone resolved to wait for Apple to make their move. Apple knew this, and kept pushing back their own reveal. The arrival and demise of upstart Magic Leap (and smaller failures from Vuzix and Snap, among others) confirmed to everyone that there was no point in trying anything until Apple had shown their hand.
So, we've been in a stalemate for more than 10 years. The AVP finally had to come out - antsy investors - and turned out to be the overengineered product of Apple trying to outmaneuver everyone else's outmaneuver, with the entire field understanding that whoever wins this owns the next 20 years.
However, it's a bit of a Chinese finger trap. Consumers and users want actual value out of this technology, and developers want to provide fantastically innovative uses, and both are at odds with the platform owners' lust for unilateral control. The platform that wins will be more like a PC than a Silicon Graphics workstation (which is what Apple et al seem hellbent on forcing down people's throats). Get something with basic functionality that just works out of the box, and that is open and ready for experimentation, into as many hands as possible. It will bulldoze the field. (This is why the Quest line has gotten so close. Shame about the owner.)
I agree with your sentiments on an open platform ultimately prevailing. The hardware is still not there yet for good AR glasses (IMO). The processing power, connectivity, power, displays, etc.... just can't be crammed into an almost invisible pair of glasses. You basically need to squeeze the equivalent of the latest apple watch into a form factor about the size of a stick of gum (cut in half length wise)....
The Vision Pro, and despite being pretty good they were kind of a flop. Like I said elsewhere I think VR and AR are niche products tech companies and investors keep trying to make go mainstream because they showed up in a lot of sci-fi. I don't think many people want them.
The "something huge that would push the whole industry to the mainstream" seems to be the missing piece here.
I'm sure the Vision Pro will get some follow up, but as someone who wears glasses I don't see the glasses/headset version of AR/XR ever catching on in the mainstream.
Fast forward to the year 2025. We have ultra-wide monitors that cover our entire field of view for less than $800, don't need to wear bulky headset, and can perfectly maintain our situational awareness without the need for 1 TFLOP of compute and 8 tracking cameras.
The lesson here is that simply wanting something to be true doesn't make it possible or practical. We also tend to get carried away with sci-fi becoming reality.
You see this constantly where people desperately hope for some form of FTL. They want it to be true and cling to fringe theories because of that.
Companies have been trying to make VR happen for decades. It's not going to happen. Not only do people not want to strap something to their head, there are fundamental technical limitations around latency, true blacks, depth-of-field and what input feels "natural".
People just take Snow Crash and Ready Player One too seriously.
AR is kind of the between of that but it has fundamentaly technical problems and constraints like processing power, energy, true blacks and lag. A true AR experience would have to constantly repaint the overlay as you move your head at incredibly low response time to feel "natural".
Lag will be a major factor with AI chatbots for probably some time to come. The processing loop is basically text to language to embedding into AI model and then converting that token stream to spoken language. That takes time. We're such a long way from something that feels "natural" like talking to another person.
VR has a long way to go on the technical side, but true blacks and latency are both basically solved. Vision Pros have a motion to photon latency of ~12ms, which is unnoticeable, and miniLED and OLED allow for true blacks in plenty of headsets. Depth-of-field hasn't been solved yet, but it is doable. Processing power and battery are limitations, but not critically so.
IMO, none of those things are major factors compared to how insanely clunky current VR headsets are. That's where the real fundamental issues show up-these headsets need to lose ~90% of their weight and size before they'll catch on.
My impression is that there are a lot of geeks out there who want the Star Trek holodeck, and they see VR and generative AI as a way to get there. But they ignore all the episodes that explored the ways such a technology could be harmful, socially and psychologically and physically.
Apple reshuffles internal programs and product roadmaps all the time.
Just because a program with an internal codename gets terminated doesn't mean there aren't a bunch of other initiatives in related spaces going on.
And the work on the core technologies certainly doesn't end.
There's no product until there are boxes piling up in warehouses, getting ready to be shipped.
If only we could stop giving attention to these "news", which are really just propped up narratives for investors to nudge the market in their favor, and for Mark Gurman to get a paycheck.
Yes, this report could actually mean for example that Apple is focusing on an alternative glasses product that doesn't require so much computation power.
If the path of the previous project led them to a product that would have to be connected to a Mac to work, that seems like a dead-end that wouldn't make a compelling consumer product in the near future.
You could write a similar headline about "Apple cancels iPod Phone Project" back in 2005 or whenever they made the decision to go with the Darwin/touchscreen phone instead of the iPod-based alternative.
VR/AR gets attention as despite the investment levels, adoption has been mixed. Provided a bug tech co has a “next” offering, this is fine for startups. It pays to be a risk taker on a new platform.
If big tech decides that VR/AR is not worth the investment any longer, then its tough to be a startup in this space. Hence tracking apple rumors is a way to get a read on where the market is heading.
Interesting reminder from
the article that those AR glasses are one of a family of ideas Apple is simultaneously pursuing:
> The company is still working on successors to the Vision Pro, including updated versions of the original model. It also has other concepts in the works, such as AirPods with cameras, and executives still hope to eventually create a set of standalone AR glasses someday.
In the U.S. in 2024, 32% of adult Americans reported being the target of workplace bullying[1]. Nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) reported being subjected to debilitating sexual, physical or psychological abuse by their partner[2]. This means that 1/3rd of workers do not feel safe in their workplace, and a significant number of people don't feel safe in their own homes. There is no way these people are going to put anything on their faces that obscures their vision - not a pair of glasses, and not a giant headset. Until these numbers come down, VR and AR will never, ever go mainstream.
Readit News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdc9rcrZW8I
https://youtu.be/bdc9rcrZW8I?si=j9kY7rrCaQstYoQd&t=78
https://pro.viture.com/
edit: I think this maybe answers my question: https://www.reddit.com/r/VITURE/comments/159gt36/i_wear_glas...
| You can easily adjust each VITURE One XR Glasses lens to your prescription (0 to -5.00D) with convenient knobs located on the top of the frames.
| If your prescription doesn't fall into this range, no worries – to make sure everyone has access to a clear VITURE One experience, we’ve also developed a prescription frame that you can have your own lenses fitted into. This frame attaches to VITURE One XR Glasses magnetically for easy on and off.
I love the notifications and the other stuff as well (mapping, translations... Even streaming YouTube through them while I exercise) but my primary driver for these was to have a rapidly accessible camera. I found great success with the Humane AI Pin primarily for this feature.
FYI there are some other options available today for glasses without cameras (Vuzix has some, as well as some announced at CES) and/or with simpler screens... As well as some with screens in the frame (like Halliday) if the rainbow effect gets to you.
Now...outward facing screens displaying my face? Billet Aluminum frame?
Deleted Comment
other I have are Viture’s, Frame, Everysight, and ActiveLook. All of those have downsides to wearing as glasses over Vuzix’s Z100. People just find you a big big frame geeky and don’t necessarily notice them as smart glasses unless they are particularly observant type.
Everysight Maverick are runner ups and work for summer outdoors situations as they are basically sunglasses.
It feels like Apple thinks they're really good at hiding stuff, but forget that their employees love to talk. Nobody will forget the prototype iPhone left just sitting there unattended at a bar.
For example, I’m skeptical that Apple ever intended to release a car.
I started my career as a dev working in VR apss. At the time there was consensus in the industry that apple was about to release something huge that would push the whole industry to the mainstream - and indeed you couldn't rely on any new VR/AR product or software without it being silently acquired in months and their website redirecting to apple.
Fast forward one decade, nothing's happened yet. I moved to web dev long ago, but people seem to be still waiting.
The Mac benefited from all the work Apple has done on the iPhone CPU, but the software scene on the Mac has been deteriorating because developers are using the same tools and the same toolkits to develop desktop applications that are motivated by mobile. The article mentioned here
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42930025
claims to be about the deterioration of desktop interface but it's by someone who's so steeped in the Apple culture that they don't get it is really about the deterioration of Mac interfaces.
Apple doesn't care if you buy a Mac, in fact they'd feel most comfortable if the Mac became a peripheral of the iPhone. It's hard for them to picture developing a new peripheral for the Mac, even something straightforward like the Magic Mouse. A peripheral for the Mac that's groundbreaking? It doesn't fit into their world view.
Prior Art for
See, you can have peripherals thaIt's like NFTs in gaming, NFTs in general, AI shoehorned into places it doesn't make much sense, wifi connected can openers, Soylent, ...
Startup founders are always told that there must be market pull, and many startups fail because they try to push an idea nobody wants, but it's not just startups. Big companies and VCs do this too.
I'm an early adopter, but even at that, I don't use VR a whole lot over the course of a month. It's a tech that people (nerds) really want to take off and it just hasn't. I'm not sure it will...it could be replaced with other equivalent technologies that aren't strapped to your face.
So, we've been in a stalemate for more than 10 years. The AVP finally had to come out - antsy investors - and turned out to be the overengineered product of Apple trying to outmaneuver everyone else's outmaneuver, with the entire field understanding that whoever wins this owns the next 20 years.
However, it's a bit of a Chinese finger trap. Consumers and users want actual value out of this technology, and developers want to provide fantastically innovative uses, and both are at odds with the platform owners' lust for unilateral control. The platform that wins will be more like a PC than a Silicon Graphics workstation (which is what Apple et al seem hellbent on forcing down people's throats). Get something with basic functionality that just works out of the box, and that is open and ready for experimentation, into as many hands as possible. It will bulldoze the field. (This is why the Quest line has gotten so close. Shame about the owner.)
I'm sure the Vision Pro will get some follow up, but as someone who wears glasses I don't see the glasses/headset version of AR/XR ever catching on in the mainstream.
You see this constantly where people desperately hope for some form of FTL. They want it to be true and cling to fringe theories because of that.
Companies have been trying to make VR happen for decades. It's not going to happen. Not only do people not want to strap something to their head, there are fundamental technical limitations around latency, true blacks, depth-of-field and what input feels "natural".
People just take Snow Crash and Ready Player One too seriously.
AR is kind of the between of that but it has fundamentaly technical problems and constraints like processing power, energy, true blacks and lag. A true AR experience would have to constantly repaint the overlay as you move your head at incredibly low response time to feel "natural".
Lag will be a major factor with AI chatbots for probably some time to come. The processing loop is basically text to language to embedding into AI model and then converting that token stream to spoken language. That takes time. We're such a long way from something that feels "natural" like talking to another person.
IMO, none of those things are major factors compared to how insanely clunky current VR headsets are. That's where the real fundamental issues show up-these headsets need to lose ~90% of their weight and size before they'll catch on.
Just because a program with an internal codename gets terminated doesn't mean there aren't a bunch of other initiatives in related spaces going on.
And the work on the core technologies certainly doesn't end.
There's no product until there are boxes piling up in warehouses, getting ready to be shipped.
If only we could stop giving attention to these "news", which are really just propped up narratives for investors to nudge the market in their favor, and for Mark Gurman to get a paycheck.
If the path of the previous project led them to a product that would have to be connected to a Mac to work, that seems like a dead-end that wouldn't make a compelling consumer product in the near future.
You could write a similar headline about "Apple cancels iPod Phone Project" back in 2005 or whenever they made the decision to go with the Darwin/touchscreen phone instead of the iPod-based alternative.
If big tech decides that VR/AR is not worth the investment any longer, then its tough to be a startup in this space. Hence tracking apple rumors is a way to get a read on where the market is heading.
> The company is still working on successors to the Vision Pro, including updated versions of the original model. It also has other concepts in the works, such as AirPods with cameras, and executives still hope to eventually create a set of standalone AR glasses someday.
[1]: https://workplacebullying.org/2024-wbi-us-survey/
[2]: https://www.thehotline.org/stakeholders/domestic-violence-st...