When reading about headset experiences, I'd de-weigh any insights that are within 3 months of the first headset purchase. The first few dozen sessions are novel, you get a kick (and social media views) about sharing how completely your life has changed to fit the headset.
More often than not, it's collecting dust on the shelf within a few months. Sort of like an expensive blender you were so excited to get, you imagined making super fruit smoothies every morning. Let's see how AVP fares in this regard.
I love this comment, I think you're completely right.
What I love most about this comment is how it caused me to reflect on what I use daily and get some amount of joy from.
When it comes to Apple products in particular I use an Apple Studio display at home, I use it for 10hours per day, every day, and honestly I have no complaints, it's probably one of the best bits of technology I use daily.
However, it's completely unsexy and has (at least on paper) extremely stiff competition. Not only that it was maligned by the tech media upon release.
Yet, it just subtlely benefits my life because the speakers are excellent, the webcam is servicable (the novelty of the fact it tracks you never truly wears off) and the size/pixel density is great.
It's weird that I'm waxing poetic like this about such a boring device, but that's kinda my point, your comment made me reflect about all the little tech around me that I use every day that just sort of shifted into the background. Quietly doing its job excellently.
Interesting. I have a Studio Display and it just feels like a huge compromise.
There are only two 5K displays on the market that can render macOS at Retina resolution on a 27" panel: this one and the LG Ultrafine, which isn't that much cheaper. My last monitor was a 27" LG QD-OLED 144Hz 4K display. I LOVED that display, but text wasn't sharp because of the Retina resolution problem.
I also have a semi-professional webcam setup and external speakers, so those being built-in does nothing for me.
I just want macOS to support variable scaling like Windows has for, what, 15 years at least?
BetterDisplay lets you set fractional resolutions for any displays on Mac. While this seems like a compromise, it lets you scale the ui to you preferred size independently of the native resolution. I use my 5k display at 85% which is a bit easier on my eyes than native 100%.
I've tried a few apps including better display to find a better resolution for my portable 16 inch monitor. It does allow you to set the resolution you want, but it's a bit blurry.
No way to really fix it, it's just another Mac shortcoming. Using resolution to scale the UI is not a compromise, it's a mediocre workaround.
I'd call that a shortcoming of all hardware that isn't retina resolution, but I know how that sounds to anyone who isn't bought into the ecosystem.
To be clear, I criticize the hell out of the company on things that I think are truly bad. Their app store policies are a disaster. I get that gamers want framerates over resolution. I'm not a gamer and want the other thing.
It's a shortcoming of the software. Apple could claim it's a third-party issue if they didn't support arbitrary external monitors, but they do. As such it's entirely reasonable to expect a fallback solution for third-party displays that Just Works.
For my money, Windows is a terrible operating system but it embarrasses Mac and Linux thoroughly in this regard.
mac users love to repeat this but it's just nonsense. if you can plug another non-mac computer into the same display and get crystal clear, correctly scaled UI then the screen isn't the problem, the computer is.
> I just want macOS to support variable scaling like Windows has for, what, 15 years at least?
I’ve tried to adopt MacBooks twice over the last three years and both times this has been the dealbreaker for me. I was flabbergasted that MacOS didn’t have better support for it.
There are no longer just two 5k 27" displays. Per a thread on macrumors[1], the display panels that make up these displays are now available from the factories, so some chinese manufacturers have begun making monitors at much lower prices ($400, if you can get an RV100).
macOS does support more than one “virtual” resolution, which I’d consider variable scaling. It’s admittedly less granular than Windows, but it works well enough for me. I have a 27” Acer Predator 4k120 display on my shop Mac, with the virtual resolution set to 2560x1440.
There’s only two scaling factors macOS can display at: 1x or 2x.
Anything in-between is rendering at a larger resolution and scaling it back down for the display, resulting in a non-pixel-perfect image.
Your shop Mac is rendering the UI at 5120 × 2880, then squishing that down for the Acer display. Which, apart from being more graphically demanding, ends up blurry and aliased.
What Windows does is actually just changing the pixel dimensions of the UI elements (in steps of 10% I think?), which Apple has never done.
I love it. It is exactly the right size to have two windows side by side. 27“ used to work but nowadays half a 27 is no longer enough for many web applications
Agree, i think 32 inch is perfect size. However what bugs me is that waking up from sleep it often only wakes up left side, and the right is all green. i have to restart the monitor. I wish it was glossy too, but i can live with the matte.
Every few years I buy Dell QHD displays 24’’ second hands on local ads websites, I have 4 of them (not all installed at the same place), for an average of ~150€ per display. They are definitely not sexy but work perfectly as monitors and hubs.
I feel the same way about the utility of my AirPods. It is simple, boring, works every time I need it to, without any fuss or connection issues or pesky cables.
Although, I have a strict policy of not sharing my AirPods, or let it connect to anything other than my iPhone to make sure I don’t get into the mess of “figure out which device it auto connects to” etc.
And not once have I ever had to worry about it being connected to the wrong device, it seems to just keep track of all the devices around and everything "just works"
Yeah, I agree. I rolled my eyes when I bought the Studio Display because of the price (I got the VESA option so I also had to factor in $200 for an Ergotron LX just so I could use it the way I’d want) and I’m annoyed by its lack of power button, its garbage web camera, and the really that it has no better picture quality than the v2 LG UltraFine 5K it was replacing, despite costing $300 more, but if it broke tomorrow I’d buy another one without a second thought (also the VESA option — also just say no to the Nano Texture option). In fact, I might even get a second one this year because I have 3 Macs (2 M-series laptops and a 2020 5K iMac) and it would be nice to have one dedicated to the laptops instead of having to swap the cable for the TB4 dock.
Until/unless Apple does fractional scaling in a way that doesn’t really need pixel doubling to work, I will insist on a 5K display for a 27” monitor and the ASD really is the best game in town.
It's always crazy reading those kinda comments. He keeps maligning the product that he had to pay a premium for, comparing it to equivalent products that are cheaper and perform the same, yet he's still going to make his next purchase another, by his own admission, overpriced Apple product.
It's mind blowing, I don't wanna reach for the low-hanging quips here but it really is like an Apple iCult type of vibe
- Apple's software (particularly macOS) is extremely high quality. Best game in town.
- Their hardware is also high quality, but it is often overpriced.
- You must use their hardware to get the best experience using their software.
- Therefore, people might end up buying, say, the Apple XR display or AirPods Max even though they are overpriced compared to other monitors/headphones, because it gives you a better experience using macOS.
I am a pretty huge Apple fan but I think this is pretty unfortunate, not gonna lie -- it kills me a little that macOS doesn't look sharp on my 4K monitor. But it isn't an iCult, it's just that the cheaper thing doesn't work as well with macOS.
Reading the comment, the impression I got was that while the image quality is similar between LG 5K & ASD, overall ASD is still worth the small premium.
The 27" 5K Studio Display is in a weird category, where they actually have zero competitors. On paper, there's the LG Ultrafine, but I have yet to see one available for purchase in EU (I've seen "in stock", but not actually available), not to even mention seeing one in person. So basically you don't really have a choice.
The Apple Studio Display looks nicer. I would prefer that items that I own in my apartment look nice. Aluminum looks and feels nicer than plastic. Yes, I will pay a premium for that.
Slightly brighter, much better build quality, much better audio and much better camera.
But at the same time, I see the LG is down to $999 (I suspect it’ll be discontinued soon if it isn’t already) and it’s debatable that the studio display is $600 better. It’s definitely $300 better though.
That said, it is increasingly more difficult to buy the LG. So it’s become less of a choice.
I don't have an ASD, but back in 2020 I bought the LG UltraFine 5K from Apple's website together with a laptop and the LG monitor's colors all had a yellowish hue to them. Some Internet searches and possibly their support forums claimed that this is normal, it's just how the monitor works, or something like that (yes I did try various color temperature and config settings - all yellow).
Luckily this "wasn't my first monitor", so I quickly returned it and went back to Dell that's always been OK enough so I don't ever have to pay attention to which monitor or display setting I'm using.
I guess most people just like their UI elements much smaller than me, I work all day on a 42” 4k display running 1080p@2x 120hz and I wouldn’t want to shrink the UI elements any further. I sit ~4 feet from the display.
My husband uses an iMac (27” 5k display running @2x) and I struggle to do anything at that resolution.
I bought an AVP on day one to be used -exclusively- as a monitor extender for coding.
It's untenable.
The only way I could avoid significant neck/back pain from the weight was to sit in a reclining chair. That wouldn't be a bad coding setup, but my eye strain was pretty significant, too.
I ended up returning mine.
This is a necessary 1.0 to build out the app ecosystem, etc. but it's absolutely not ready for full-time use.
I almost returned mine for that exact reason until I used it in bed before going to sleep. I have never fallen asleep faster. I know it sounds really strange that a computer strapped to my face helps me sleep but I guess something about the whole immersive environment really helps. I also don’t feel the pressure on my head when I’m lying down.
Usually I wake up at some point in the middle of the night, I am a very light sleeper. At that point I just take it off and fall back asleep. I usually don’t even remember doing that by the morning.
The irony here is that the unusual weight of the headset was completely avoidable. The headset has a heavy aluminium frame, which is a terrible idea that serves no practical purpose except of an aesthetic one. No other headset does this. For comparison, the Quest 3 is significantly lighter despite including a battery.
Aluminium is a better thermal conductor than plastic? Might help move some of the heat away from the face and take some of the thermal load off the fans?
A lot of Apples decision seems to make more sense when considering how incredibly powerful (and thus hot) it is. The external battery pack (which is a 3 cell 13V pack btw) is definitely a consequence of that, they supposedly have some of the power electronics in there which helps move a bit of the heat generating stuff away from the face.
Imagine if you wanted to make a powerful headset without a fan. How would you even do that in plastic? You’d definitely want to transport the heat out to the perimeter or front, and plastic would just not be the most suitable for that.
So maybe that’s the path they’re looking towards? They might eventually be able to get rid of the fan with better chip technology, without compromising on compute, but then they need some metal to shed the heat from.
Perhaps the development they’re doing with titanium on iPhone is also a step in that direction. Letting them use metal without as much of a weight penalty.
The iPad Pro, a normal tablet, has an M2 without even having a fan, unlike the AVP, so the chip gets certainly not "incredibly" hot. The idea that a metal frame would contribute significantly to heat dissipation is implausible. It's just a frame. Apple uses metal all the time in other products for aesthetic reason where it isn't at all necessary. The Quest 3 doesn't use metal without requiring a large fan. Let alone a metal frame.
They use a ton of exotic materials in it to lighten it up. The obvious lightener for me is the front screen. the whole "eyesight" thing is extremely gimmicky and could have gone without on the 1.0.
Maybe... for the stuff that is actually made of aluminum.
But I have a plastic VR headset and I'm pretty sure an impact bad enough to damage the plastic care is also bad enough to damage the electronics, which are going to be way more costly to repair.
I'd take a plastic headset personally assuming it was lighter. Anything to save weight in this product category.
Only if resistance to significant mechanical stress is required. Which isn't at all necessary for VR headsets, as others use plastic and have no mechanical issues with it.
My father has some plastic camping dinnerware that has been heavily used since the 60's. It's been wildly abused around the world, up mountains, on beaches, by generations of family, kids and bitey babies.
It's not even scratched. I have no idea what it's made out of but it's super impressive. I try not to think about because of whatever the biosafety standards were back then... but the lack of visible damage gives me hope not much of it has been ingested at least.
Sounds like a fit issue. I code all day. Recliner, couch, standing. Mac link at 5k emulation. Apple assigned me 21w, but I found it unusable. 36w put weight on outer cheekbones and was finally wearable. Removing the light seal and using some pads as spacers is how I use it now. Larger FOV. A bit weight and less cantilever
Immersed VR, connected to my MacBook over the network. Used a bluetooth keyboard (with a crappy integrated trackpad) on my MacBook for mouse. I have an IR floodlight, that just barely works in the dark, for the tracking.
> More often than not, it's collecting dust on the shelf within a few months.
I can't speak for the Apple Vision Pro, I'd love to try one, to be honest. But I can agree with your comment.
Such has been my experience with the two headsets I own - the Meta Quest 2, which I think is really great and serves many purposes, and the PSVR 2 headset, which is phenomenal for gaming, but pretty much useless for anything else.
Both headsets have had a short-lived "wow" factor to them, without a doubt, but sadly, the novelty tends to wear off within weeks. I haven't used my Quest 2 since early 2023 (I think) and the PSVR 2's last use was for a game called Pavlov, which is simply mind-blowing, despite which, I think the hassle of headsets is problematic. For real gaming I go back to couch gaming with the Xbox or PS5, and for computer things I use computers.
Funny thing is, I keep meaning to do more with the PSVR 2 but now it's actually so dusty that it puts me off, it needs a full cleaning at this stage :).
For me, VR comes down to content. Because the market is too small, there is none. There's few high end titles. HL:Alyx, Horizon: Call of the Mountain? Sometimes you get a port but then it wasn't originally designed for VR and it usually shows.
There's zero on the Quest 2/3 because it's a mobile device and it's not up to it and at least in my experience the link is not up to it either.
I'm not saying there are not some good experiences there. Several rhythm games are fun, a couple of games designed for low-power mobile devices. But the fully immersive high quality graphics games are so few an far between. If there were more I'd keep playing.
It shouldn't be surprising that an AR workstation isn't as good as the real thing. If you're at home or at work, the AVP is going to sit on the shelf while you sit at your workstation. While an AR set can, in theory, surround you with code, you can only really focus on one window at a time. Old-fashioned monitors have had a long time to get good at providing that experience.
Still, it would be pretty darned cool to be able to take something even half as good on the road in a package that will easily fit in a backpack!
I am entirely done with Apple and will not be buying any more of their products, but I look forward to the competition that AVP will foster.
> I am entirely done with Apple and will not be buying any more of their products, but I look forward to the competition that AVP will foster.
What is your reason? I am genuinely curious. I used to think that using open devices (Linux, GrapheneOS) gives me the convenience of being able to do everything I want. But over time I came to realize that Apple optimizes their devices for one happy path they envision, and if you don’t stray off that happy path (e.g. on iPhone you cannot sideload, can’t have background jobs), the convenience can be even greater than the possibilities an open design offers (native terminal, root access in Android). It is a local maxima. Thus I own an iPhone. On the computer side I own a PC, but that’s because Linux isn’t yet fully supported on Macs. What is your reasoning?
> Old-fashioned monitors have had a long time to get good at providing that experience.
That's part of the problem framing the AVP as a system for 2D floating screens. 2D screens are good at what they do. 360 degree 3D with Six Degrees of Freedom is a completely different surface area and we are still at the Horseless Carriage stage of development of that affordance space. There are a few experiments in what's possible [1] but, for the most part, if all you throw at these devices is a floating screen then the novelty wears off and we have the conversations we are having in this thread instead of thinking about what more is possible.
The problem is it's not a horseless carriage... it's more like a hang-glider or something.
For the some niche things, fantastic, it's unique. Feeling inside a 3d scene, two handed manipulations of 3d objects... it's the hang-glider jumping off a mountain which no horse can do. If you currently render something in 3d on a monitor, VR might help and some new things like training for physical tasks might be cool too.
The hang-glider just isn't useful for commuters getting from A to B which in this case, is office work. It's text, it's numbers, it's organisation, it's communication. Throwing things around in 3d is just a gimmick that will likely slow you down. Moving your head or waving your hands around are not better ergonomically than a good monitor, keyboard and seating. Using a keystroke to flip the app/tabs in your field of view is more comfortable than turning to look at your wall.
> VR Immersive IDE
This is like every 3d scifi UX you could see in compsci department since the 90s. I get it, everyone wants to create that cool looking scene from Prometheus but sadly no-one wants 4 lines of code exploded into a huge visual call-graph with dozens of nodes, interconnections everywhere and translucent text. VR won't change that. No-one really wants to drive around a city to find their files in a Gibson either.
For VR, you don't want to look at text that's far away, you don't want to look at text at weird angles... so what is a 3d environment adding? The ideal is to bring perfectly sized legible text at a comfortable focal distance into your gaze, that's what an automobile will need to do.
i took a different opinion after the article — i was of the same opinion before it but the article gave me some ideas i’d actually like.
i’m very much so a bit easily distractable and i do tend to wander and move locations while i work at home. i actually has thought the vision pro was tethered completely and 100% dependent on another apple
device but i guess not entirely? that would be appealing for me to have very light work space that moves
with me for similarly light work (chats, emails, etc)
looks a bit too goofy for me for public use but i’m just shy) but the article did help me see a vision for using the vision pro. better than apples ads
The way I see it, by the time AVP is available in Europe, there will probably be sufficient data from US users to give me an idea as to if it’s worthwhile.
So far hearing vastly mixed reviews about its “balance” on the users head - when I wear night vision goggles or similar devices I have to use a counter mass at the back of the helmet to make it comfortable. It seems the AVP doesn’t have such a balancing weight?
I was thinking that it might be possible to mount the battery to the back of the headset, like you see on various other headsets, which might counterbalance it. But because so many keep talking about how heavy the headset already is, I think this might introduce new issues, especially if you turn your head quickly.
Yeah, I really like the Macbook and the iPhone, but basically everything else apple produces is pretty shit these days, even the airpods are just alright (I mean, the audio quality, design, and form factor are amazing, but they are super buggy and there are better wireless earbuds for the price).
It would be a great shame if a secure, well designed, easy to use computer loaded with a custom-built, well supported unix-like distro gets trashed because the company that makes it is always trying to "innovate." I don't know if there's much left to innovate in the computer world, there is only so much you can do with ones and zeros. It would be better if they just focused on what works, reliable and secure consumer electronics, instead of trying to be what they were under Steve Jobs.
Jobs is dead, he will never come back, and Apple will never be Apple under Jobs again. They should just try to be like the IBM of their space...just there, doing what they do best. An institution, a monolith, but not a "disruptor," as if there are any of those left.
I just did a 10 hour flight from Tokyo to Sydney and I wore my Bose QC2 buds for the whole flight. I watched some pre downloaded YouTube videos, and then fell asleep for about 6 hours of actually restful sleep. I cannot express how amazing the noise cancellation is on those things. I was in a 787, seat 29A, window seat, just behind the wing and I could barely hear the sound of the plane. I'm never flying without them again.
Then you didn't care to look for them. Sennheiser, B&W and other traditional companies have buds that sound light years better than greatest tech Apple can currently produce, and do cost more correspondingly.
On top of things like much longer lasting battery, much better support for advanced HD bluetooth codecs (I can plug them into anything like some cheap TVs anywhere). But to me overall sound quality is still #1 reason to invest into premium quality.
Of course then somebody from A team comes with 'but they integrates greatly with my iphone' argument, which is probably true but not that relevant to above. My Senns integrate effortlessly with my Samsung phone/tv/laptops too, thats kind of baseline in 2024.
To be fair, when I bought them it was only because I thought they looked cool and I already had other apple devices I knew they would work with; I was willing to pay the premium for the brand, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing and I never factored in competitor value. The funny thing about the Vision Pro was that as soon as I saw it I thought it, and anyone who used it, was really dumb, and I didn't want to be caught dead wearing it--not so for the airpods.
This is likely because you bought a pair of AirPods when they were already very popular and everyone thought they were stylish.
I bought my first pair of AirPods very close to their initial release and everyone looked at me like I was an idiot for wearing such an ugly and expensive device that couldn’t really do anything better than a $20 pair of earbuds. Do you remember everyone making fun of them at the announcement? It wasn’t until around 2 years later that AirPods were widely worn and accepted.
I’m not sure Vision Pro will go through the same adoption curve, but I am not confident that it won’t happen by late v2 or v3.
If V2/3 doesn't make you look like an idiot and actually works for work and leisure, then perhaps, but its hard to develop an VR/AR headset that would do that, since it inherently cuts you off from the social world in which the esteem of the product would be evaluated.
What do we think of people who sit around with a VR headset on all day? We think, usually, that they are anti-social, that they are afraid of going outside, that they want to trap themselves in a world that generates and serves their fantasies. How does a company which makes so much of their money off of people associating their products with high social status break into a market that appears to be solely for those who stand on the other end of the continuum?
The rational is contradictory: technology (according to the Silicon Valley playbook) profits by transforming the world into a place of further alienated and isolated individuals whose entire lives are shaped by and for tech companies which only exist to exploit them; and yet, such a world, in its total form, could never appear, since people could not work and live in that world unless they participated in it collectively, at some level. Phenomenologically, we can't view this move as anything more than an extreme error of judgement, a move from a post-jobs apple that doesn't seem to understand the magic of great design, the element of the sublime that technology can create--but it would always have to be this way, since the philosophy would never overcome the profit-motive.
Its why I said that computers can only go so far. We're at the end of the rope of the transformational power of technology, and everybody knows it. The world will not change on the whim of the market, the market will just constrict and eventually kill us all.
>. It would be better if they just focused on what works, reliable and secure consumer electronics, instead of trying to be what they were under Steve Jobs.
Man, the amount of history rewriting that happens in tech world is actually insane.
Louis Rossman literally made his career out of showcasing how shit apple laptops have been through the years. The evidence is all there. I dunno if people are just willfully ignorant or are actually just lying.
Why does anyone like wireless headphones? 3 different pieces to track, have to constantly be on charge, and pricey at that. I ended up finally buying some iems
If I’m on a call on my computer I can get up and make coffee without leaving the call. If my phone rings I don’t need to switch headphones, they switch devices automatically.
I have high quality headphones and IEMs, the headphones I use if I’m _really_ listening to music, maybe a couple of times a week. The IEMs have been in drawer for months without use. The wireless headphones I use every day all day. It’s convenience.
That’s wildly different from my experience. Never lost the pieces or had to “track” them and the charge lasts for longer than I can comfortably listen to something without a short break.
Being tethered to a phone or computer with a wire that pulls, catches, and makes rubbing noise through your ears is truly an awful relic of the past.
As a train commuter, wireless headphones are a massive improvement over wired for my semi-daily commute. I used to have the headphone wires constantly getting caught on my bag, other people's jackets, getting twisted and knotted in my bag, etc.
> collecting dust on the shelf within a few months
Not even that, apparently many customers are already returning them[1]. Most of the hype, as usual, is tech reviewers who want to stay relevant.
Early adopters will naturally chase any and every opportunity to make use of them, but in the coming months as novelty wears off, more issues arise, you get the (The ecosystem is just not ready yet)™ and most will be listed on the secondhand market.
This has been my reply to most people asking me if I’m going to buy a Vision Pro. It seems like after a week or two I’m going to want to do something, and a TV, laptop, or phone is good enough… I won’t want to go through the ceremony of putting on the headset and entering that environment to do some basic stuff, especially not if there is a remote chance I’ll be multitasking with stuff in the real world.
That said, I tried one on at the Apple Store the other day and the immersive stuff was really cool and I’d like to see more of it. But I think it makes sense to wait for the amount of content to increase and the price to come down.
To be honest, I'm kind of at that point. At first I was using it every day because it was new and I was curious, then I was using it every day because I wanted to give it a good try, then I was still using it but increasingly thinking "can I find any way in which this is better than just using a computer/iPad?". As of this morning, I'm writing this comment on my laptop, because going into the other room and strapping on googles feels like a chore, not a desirable activity.
I don't regret the purchase; I did not expect it to change my life, and I've actually had my skepticism about spatial computing turned around. I hope there is a future where we can do the same things in a less physically cumbersome way.
With ADHD, it doesn't even take 3 months. Give me one day and I'll never touch something again. Hell, some of the things I buy, I don't even use a first time, because having stuff doesn't actually help with motivation
It’s also a first generation device, often a good idea to just wait a bit, if it is such a revolutionary tool you won’t miss much by skipping the first version (other than feeling cool that you were in the first users).
FWIW I still use my blender almost every day. It's a great start of the day, so I can eat like a sinner the rest for the day. Didn't lose a gram of weight but I don't feel guilty about it anymore!
There will be an inflection point with devices like Vision Pro, where you'd rather do things you do right now with a laptop, tablet or TV in the Vision Pro instead of with those other devices. Then the other devices will be the ones gathering dust.
The hard part is being able to know when that inflection point comes. But I think there's a very good chance that 10 years from now, it's already behind us.
There might be an inflection point like what you describe. It's also entirely possible that this is an evolutionary dead end like the voice interfaces that were the Next Big Thing a few years ago.
We've grown so accustomed to viewing technology as a steady progression of improvements that it seems natural that the thing that Apple is pushing today will be universal in 10 years, but there's no guarantee of that, and there are reasons to be skeptical that we'll look back at this as the next big leap.
For myself, I'm keeping my eye out for technology that is less intrusive into the rest of my life, not more immersive.
My thoughts exactly. There are almost no things I do on a daily basis where I want to go through a cognitively expensive process of changing modes into an immersive experience. Even getting my laptop out and opening it and logging in feels like too much for a lot of things, and I’m glad that I can use my phone to tap out a short email while half paying attention to my lunch, commuting, etc sometimes.
Maybe when they can shoot photons directly into my cornea without an intrusive set of goggles that take me out of the real world.
I keep hoping for an expanse experience. Where computing is truly connected (standards and fast wireless transfers). Apple ecosystem is moving towards this but they are so closed it feels more like autobus than bicycle for the mind. Linux is still not an option on the phone form factor. And the hardware are still very opaque.
There will be an inflection point where you’ll want all of your media to be 3D. Things you watch today in 2D you’ll want in 3D and then your old 2D television will seem like a relic of the past. The entire industry is onboard, the shift is inevitable.
That would be reasonable if there past inflections similar to that were we wanted all our media to move to the higher "dimension".
For instance we've seen the arrival of movies and tv, books became moving visual content, games expanded from boards to immersive experiences etc. But the lower dimension media never disappeared nor significantly got irrelevant. We're effectively reading more words per day than any of the previous generation, podcasts are booming, web comics etc. are thriving.
TV and movies were just an addition to the media landscape, I see AR and VR in the same light.
The production costs of creating 3D content that is actually making use of the extra dimension will be cost prohibitive for lots of types of content where 2d is used today. I really wouldn't care much for lots of YouTube content I watch being provided in 3d, half of it I already just listen to. As an example, look at how much more detail needs to be added to a room in a VR game versus a standard 3D game - since you have more freedom to poke around and look at things from more angles, stick your head in things, the expected level of detail is much higher. Just adding VR to existing games can make for a good experience, but VR native content will be more expensive to produce.
Why's that? They can get the weight down to barely more than glasses, and with good pass through video and battery improvements... You'll be pretty unencumbered. Certainly not more encumbered than being glued to your laptop on a desk.
Well it's hard to debate fantasy products given the circularity: "if they create a product that avoids all these problems, then it won't be a problem!".
I've not used a laptop (or computer) at a desk for decades, I prefer lying down, which works really well.
I do wish there was something between a laptop and a phone though. Interfaces need to improve or innovate, but I don't think VR headsets are the answer. I haven't even touched on the nausea.
I don't think it's a circular argument. Bigscreen VR is already 127 grams. This is doable in the next decade I think. The question is if there's a better form factor than something you wear on your face.
Bigscreen VR appears to be an accessory that relies on an external device for compute and head tracking and power. As far as I can see it's basically just a tiny OLED display you strap to your face.
With AVP, Apple is taking a bet that the accessory nature of previous attempts is why this product category failed and so they're trying to embed the compute and make it wireless.
Unfortunately for utopian visions of VR goggles, we're running up against the limit on how small computers can be, so the idea of a standalone headset as light as Bigscreen VR is essentially science fiction at this point. Not to say it won't happen, but if that's what it'll take for this product category to take off then your optimism is misplaced.
Fair enough, but form factor is indeed the issue, even light devices have to seal off your face, and the inner ear issues surely have a lot to do with that isolation.
Perhaps something along the lines of zapping the back of the eyeballs with lasers is the answer.
I think we're socially primed for it right now - at-least here in the US. Unlike other cultures where you're living with a large family or extended family or your parents, etc, life in the US is getting to be more and more solitary (IRL, people are still forming social connections online) for young people. That makes it very easy to adopt this type of tech. In other cultures wearing it around the house will just make you look like a weirdo.
Here's my prediction for this: you need to have input with the same fidelity and ease of use as a mouse and keyboard. The mouse input analogy is probably pretty close with eye tracking, but text input? I can't even imagine what it will look like to make that work as nicely as real touch typing.
I got an acrylic tray [0] that holds a keyboard and trackpad and can comfortably sit on my lap to use with the Vision Pro. It’s truly marvelous and makes the VP feel like an actual laptop replacement, with the only real problem being that visionOS has too much iPadOS heritage and not enough MacOS.
Sure, but one of the big upsides of vr is the ability to move around a space. If you're just sitting at a desk (or on a couch) anyway then you might as well just have a couple of huge monitors. In the case of the vision pro it would even be cheaper to use several large monitors instead.
The ability to move around while I’m actively wearing it is not particularly compelling or relevant to me. I didn’t get it for room-scale VR games, and I tend to take it off when I get up anyway. I find it really amazing that I can set up a huge workspace on-the-fly pretty much wherever I want, including the couch. I have a very slick dedicated home office I could be in right now but I actually enjoy using the VP from the living room more for anything other than serious 9-5 work for my employer.
It will probably look like a keyboard. Keyboards are so lindy at this point they didn’t even adjust the layout (from that path-dependent mess we are dealing with), let alone the form factor
I'd generally agree, but it definitely depends on how the device is being used.
My VR headsets don't see much usage outside of simracing which I'd consider a hobby more than just gaming. So my point is that, "working" might present that same routine which demos/gaming/facehugger yt with low return on novelty.
You're pointing to a task that is basically the platonic ideal of a work task that would benefit from VR and then saying that programmers are the ones who are unusual?
The vast majority of normal people's compute tasks for work could be done on an iPad with a keyboard. The vast majority of their compute tasks for play just require a smartphone. 3D modeling is already a huge exception to the norm in that it needs serious compute power and in that people already often use specialized equipment for it, and to top it off it's a task that is actually hampered by using a 2D projection on a flat screen.
Most tasks are more like coding than they are like 3D modeling.
My partner works as a medical research assistant. They had filled data into a huge spreadsheet in a software I think was called IBM SSES or something along those lines. Basically an excel spreadsheet, with hundreds of columns and tens of thousands of rows.
One of the analyses they wanted to run wasn't working correctly so she was tasked with filling in 0s in place of empty cells. She was expecting to spend 2-3 weeks doing this. She mentioned it to me, I've never seen this software before in my life but it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to do three weeks of manual work instantly. Just googled it and followed some instructions.
Being able to understand software is a useful skill. We should find ways to bring the average person up to speed, help them understand what computers can do so they too can see a task like that and be like "there's no way the software doesn't have an easier way to do that" instead of wasting time doing pointless busywork.
This is one way that you can design your software - follow existing conventions so that people's existing knowledge is useful for understanding your software.
The alternative can be summarized as "not doing that" and personally I don't see that solving any problems. It just means people have to learn it from scratch instead. And it's not like anyone actually reads manuals and such.
Nintendo, for example, regularly hires game designers with no game design experience.
Famously, there was a shoe designer who was hired on the BOTW team. The fresh perspective keeps Nintendo games from falling into idiosyncrasies, which is part of the reason children and adults can just walk up and play most Nintendo games and have immediate without needing prior gaming experience.
I think it’s valuable to have non technical designers and QAs for that reason.
Sure the fresh perspective fades after a while, but it’s still valuable AND gives us in tech a reason to hire those not in tech.
Also, de-weigh anything Apple branded significantly.
You can easily code on Quest 3 if you really wanted to do AR/VR, and could do it on Quest Pro as well a year ago. While its true that Vision does offer better resolution, lets not pretend that people who are trying the Vision Pro have significant experience with AR/VR headsets, chasing the ability to work anywhere. Its brand fanboyishness at its core: "Apple made therefore its good and usefull".
I tried to use the Vision Pro for work, and I'm not sure if it was just my eyes or what, but looking at code inside of that thing was just...exhausting. When I took it off, I looked at my regular monitors with a newfound love.
I'd love for this thing to reach it's full potential as this 'work from a mountaintop, but really your garage' device, but I feel like until the resolution gets to the same as existing monitors (no small task, I know) it's just...not as good for the vast majority of use cases.
I returned mine today after attempting to use it for work for a few hours at a time over the last week. I felt the same eye strain with my Mac as a mirrored display.
Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously.
After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.
> Zoom calls were cool, but nobody could take the Persona seriously.
This is going to be another of their socially awkward gimmicks like Memojis they will double down until they inevitably fail.
I really feel like Apple actually just doesn’t feel it and every time they’re pushing their weird geeky ideas onto their users they loose a bit of coolness factor. And if kids decide Apple got too cringe, while someone else manages to use that to spin their momentum (think e.g. Nokia respawning riding the 90s sentiment wave), they may actually start to seriously struggle.
> This is going to be another of their socially awkward gimmicks like Memojis they will double down until they inevitably fail.
I don't necessarily agree. Some have talked about how the weirdness starts to fade after getting into a conversation and focusing on the discussion or collaboration at hand. It seems that once the brain has adjusted a bit, it can start to fill in for the badness somewhat.
The feature clearly has a long way to go before it's good, but I think it's premature to dismiss it. Future iterations will only improve, so if some people are finding some success with it now, that will only grow.
No, I absolutely get that. I still remember how talking to yourself wearing wired headset on the street was weird.
But it’s been over 5 years since Apple started pushing Memojis, they still continued as recently as last year and they have little adoption still, as far as I am aware.
Those who watched WWDC remember how cringey those Memoji bits were, I specifically refer to that aspect of their being increasingly out of touch.
I dunno. I know people who use their Memojis regularly and seem to enjoy it. I personally do not, but I think I’m not their target user. Not sure what the broader adoption looks like.
But I think these are different enough capabilities that the success or failure of one is not necessarily predictive of the other.
As a method of estimating adoption, that seems fairly suspect. It doesn't exactly seem like a capability that would generate much news.
Google Trends seems more likely to be instructive, and as a topic, it has shown fairly steady (if low) interest over time after peaking on release with some periodic spikes most likely correlated with major updates.
But as a feature, I wouldn't expect even Google trends to be very instructive (for understanding adoption), since people who know how to use them aren't likely to be out there searching. More use = more familiarity = less searching. Who knows; maybe they're barely used, but there isn't good data to back up that claim, and there are a number of other ways to interpret the data that does exist.
With all of that said, I'll maintain that I don't see any real connection between them and Personas, or any predictive value in comparing them.
Uh, of the 100 or so acquaintances I have who use iphones, way more than half of them use their memoji for their public-facing visual representation. Nobody writes news articles about that for the same reason they no longer write news articles about the ability to use your voice to dictate messages, or charge your phone without plugging in a cable.
I’ve wondered the same. Apple has been a “given” for 20 years because they somehow keep shipping great stuff and avoid the Microsoft trap of looking like total dorks by existing in an echo chamber.
Even if they made a small misstep or had an awkward moment in a launch announcement, it was seen as endearing and forgivable.
But there seem to be an increase in moments where Apple comes across as behind the curve, or not as aware of where the public is at relative to them, compared to then.
>avoid the Microsoft trap of looking like total dorks by existing in an echo chamber.
Lolwhut?? Microsoft wishes it had a fraction of the echo chamber Apple fans create. It's what Apple is known for.
>Even if they made a small misstep or had an awkward moment in a launch announcement, it was seen as endearing and forgivable.
Uhhhh... "You're holding it wrong" was an absolute unmitigated PR disaster for Apple. It was one of the worst kinks ever in the "reality distortion field". People were rightly pissed. It was smug and stupid, not endearing.
I believe the premise is that Microsoft--the employees and management or whatever: the entity, not the ecosystem or the users--exists in an echo chamber... as in, they keep thinking their users want stuff but their users actually don't.
Don't worry, most people on Hacker News have no real idea how normal everyday people use tech products. This person thinks Memojis are unused, but they just lack perspective.
Apple hasn't been cool for a long, long time. Everyone has an iPhone so it's no longer special. It's just a waste of money when you can get basically the same android phone for half the price
> After a few days the eye strain seemed to get worse and worse, until yesterday it give me such a bad headache I decided that was enough.
Curious if you've ever gotten your vision tested?
I don't need glasses in everyday life, but I did go to an optometrist and got a pair anyways after I got annoyed one night that a friend could read a faraway sign and I couldn't quite. They make things a little bit sharper but not that it ever makes a difference for anything I actually need.
But then I discovered that if I wear them, zero eye strain in VR. Without them my eyes hurt after 20 minutes. With them, I can use VR for hours, zero problem.
No idea why. And I can't seem to find much information on it, but I asked my optometrist and they said it's a whole thing -- people who wear glasses sometimes not to see better, but to reduce eye strain and headaches.
Other vision issues can be relevant too. I have a very slight lazy eye - I can still see 3D video but my stereo vision is worse than average. I suspect it affects the eye tracking because for me it feels a little tedious and imperfect, but others don’t seem to feel that way.
Interesting. I'm also nearsighted, so I've always assumed that I don't need glasses when wearing VR headsets. It's easier to just take them off before putting on the headset (MQ3) and I've not noticed a difference in clarity — but I do experience eye strain and visual exhaustion if I wear the headset for too long, so it might be worth comparing longer sessions with and without glasses.
Could be the motion blur. Vision Pro is in this really weird cross section of insanely good visuals but really bad motion blur. Generally a little motion blur is OK, but the better your visuals get, the worse and more apparent motion blur can be.
Personally I found AVP to be most draining if I'm moving my head around a lot and experiencing this motion blur. If I'm just looking at the screen in front of me, I get fatigued less
I’m not extremely productive, but I have 2 use-cases I’m excited about.
1. Having more screen real estate in my small home office. I often dive into spaghetti code, and seeing more of it helps me maintain context.
2. Working in my RV. I can’t take my extra screens with me (it’s a multi-use family RV, so I’m not mounting anything. Plus, there isn’t room.), and I’m so, so excited about having more screen real estate in there. We lived/worked in it for 3 months last summer, and it was really nice coming home to more screens at the end of the trip.
Similarly, I'm intrigued by the possibility of using it for coding whilst aboard a sailboat, where having multiple large physical screens isn't a possibility due to limited space and lack of suitable mounting surfaces.
Very curious to see how tolerable the UX is in an environment that's almost always experiencing some degree of motion independent of the user.
> Similarly, I'm intrigued by the possibility of using it for coding whilst aboard a sailboat, where having multiple large physical screens isn't a possibility due to limited space and lack of suitable mounting surfaces.
It’s amazing to me what people will do to avoid being present in the moment. You’re on a sailboat, enjoy it, smell the ocean, feel the water on your face, breathe deeply and take it all in. If you’re just going to strap goggles on your face to blind you to the beauty around you, then why did you even get a sailboat to begin with?
I don’t have unlimited PTO, but it sure is nice to shut my laptop at 5 and be somewhere beautiful. I don’t have that luxury at home and it’s a huge perk with my current job.
When I’m on PTO, my laptop doesn’t go with me. I absolutely use all my PTO every year.
As permanently mobile as a wife and young kid allow. We spent 3 months on the road 2 summers ago and had a great time!
I expect our radius to get smaller as our child gets older and goes to school, but we are very passionate about being outdoors as much as possible.
For example - I helped build a mutually accessible structure in a national forest, and my favorite work days are out there. We installed solar last summer, so it’s workable year round now.
In this model, the work pays for the cruising. There's plenty of time to enjoy the elements, local sights, boat maintenance, what have you, after taking care of business.
Besides the ocean and elements, there's also a certain beauty in using the latest technology to operate a SAAS company from almost anywhere on the planet.
Same. I returned it the other night because I finally just gave up on trying to make it comfortable. My body was just rejecting it. I could make it 20-30 minutes.
It's a bunch of factors. Heavy, lots of pressure on a few specific points, the dangling cable to a slippery battery which I had to leave plugged in all day, the grainy passthrough... But most of all it's just too heavy. And connection would sometimes get janky between Mac and Vision Pro.
I've got high hopes for generation 2 and 3 but it needs time to cook.
When I don't wear contacts for a while(just normal glasses), wearing them throughout the day also makes me a bit "tired". Even though the "resolution" is basically the same. But after wearing them consecutively for a few days, it becomes like the same as glasses.
I wonder if there's something similar here going on. Since we rely so heavily on vision for everything(Especially balance). Any difference to our normal perception will cause "exhaustion" of sorts. But maybe wearing it continuously for days can cause our body to adapt to it?(Which, obviously is impossible for AVPs)
That might have to do with the eye "enlarging" a little to make space for the lenses, or maybe more likely with you learning to "lubricate" the lenses with tearing
(pure conjecture, I last used lenses fifteen twenty years ago)
I haven't tried them, but I imagine that despite the high resolution, text that is badly aligned (and probably constantly imperceptibly wobbling) strains the eyes.
The software should probably force text to be aligned on whole real pixels, even if that detracts a little from the realism.
And the best would probably be to keep virtual screens completely fixed until you move by a certain, largish degree (as an option).
Then again, maybe this has nothing to do with the straining.
I've watched a few reviews where the claim is "multiple 4k monitors", and even on Apple's site it says "More pixels than a 4K TV. For each eye.". But any virtual monitor is going to be scaled down, and with "spatial computing" being the desired interaction, it's not going to be projected at a fixed point on the embedded screens. Sure, when you have a 4k monitor across the room, it's smaller because it's further away, but the full resolution is there (reality is much higher fidelity than "retina display" ever was and even the Vision Pro is). When a virtual display is projected into a space further away, it's going to take up fewer pixels and be down-sampled. It's kind of annoying that the term "4k" is being used to refer to "physical space the display takes up" or "size reported to the operating system" rather than the physical pixel density.
While the resolution is high, the PPD is very low (pixels per degree of vision). It's lower density than a classic monitor, and nowhere close to a modern high density 4k or retina display.
Also your eyes can't really focus the same, anything within about 12 ft causes you to struggle to focus leading to eye strain. This is an unfortunate reality of the lenses
High DPI monitor text effectively can't be misaligned, especially since Apple's text rendering always dilated characters instead of trying to fit them onto pixel grids.
That's an interesting point. You potentially also have alignment issues with the window being placed spatially, i.e., rendering text that is not perpendicular to the plane of the screens. When moving my head in the AVP I'm moving the screens, unlike when I move my head to look at a different part of a monitor.
Text in natively rendered apps is perspective corrected before rendering and incredibly sharp as a result. It’s been mentioned in a few interviews in passing.
Text in streamed displays from a Mac may suffer from pixel misalignment.
Well ok, but is it a problem to have the text aligned on both screens, if the user is fine with some "stuttering" when moving or with keeping the virtual screen fixed?
I couldn’t stand the constant glare when looking at code. Everything just felt hazy combined with the awful pass through was a downgrade. Was more productive at first since I could block the world out. Didn’t last.
VR headsets’ resolution are still a couple orders of magnitude away from being indecipherable from normal vision, and that doesn’t even include motion.
Eye stain has been a huge issue for me with earlier VR goggles.
Some people seem to be suggesting the higher quality of the Vision Pro overcomes this, but I'm starting to really wonder. Would even more resolution actually solve it? Or maybe there's really no way around the discomfort for some of us.
When you move your head around in Vision Pro, do the windows stay where you put them, or do they follow your head? If they stay where put, is this perfect, or do they jig a little bit?
My NReal Air are nice glasses, but the fact that I can’t look away from the huge ass screen is annoying af. Eye movements can only get you so far, and the intuitive head movement does not work. Argh!
Not you you responded to but I tried both. I mean I never seriously thought the passthrough would be good enough, and it wasn't, but it was just barely legible and useful when I was trying to pair my AVP to my MBP. But I really tried to like MVD and I just couldn't do it. It wasn't clear enough and felt like an added "tax" on my mind, also I felt very limited compared to when using my external monitors.
Is the virtual display feature as it's presented now likely to be a stopgap or fallback? A bit like emulation or Rosetta apps when Apple silicon was new, or running iPhone apps on an iPad. Those were things that seemed core when each was first introduced and then quickly disappeared for most people in most cases.
I wonder if it could largely be replaced by native AVP apps or a better way for them to send out data from the Mac to the headset once there is broader software support?
Many people work on remote desktop all day long, and I spend my fair share of time in SSH sessions as well. It's not like it improves the experience compared to working locally, but for me it works fine so long as you're within a few hundred kilometers without much jitter. On the VR, the screen should move as you move your head because that position isn't what's being passed through, so that can't be the difference either. I don't understand (without having a device myself) how/whether this is worse than normal video streaming over LAN?
If i'm not mistaken, judge2020 meant that what's not suitable is looking through your AVP at your real monitor. The virtual display (glorified VNC or whatever) that you're saying is OK, I think the agree is also OK.
And I'd assume that yes, it would be torture to try to view a monitor through the AVP just due to the resolution loss. It would be like poorly downscaling the 4k/5k resolution of your 27" monitor to like 1366x768 but much worse since the pixels are not even staying lined up on a level grid but resampled at slightly diagonal angles as your head moves even a couple of degrees. I am pretty sure setting up 2 more big $1000 monitors left and right would be better than "center monitor + AVP with virtual apps left and right" (and it would save about $2000 lol).
I agree with you completely myself -- I bought a 4k 27" HP Envy monitor in the $400ish range about 5 years ago, and that plus the 16" laptop on a double arm setup is a great setup for me. But I definitely 2.5x'd the numbers in case of the people I've heard of (certain deeply-observant Apple devotees) who wax poetic about how using anything but a perfect multiple pixel ratio is painful to their eyes (they believe a 27" has to be 5k and don't believe in using a scaled screen resolution). Although tbh, I should have said "$1600 monitors" in that case, as there is nearly zero competition in that resolution+size combo, so Apple's hilarious one is the only option.
You misunderstood, the video passthrough of your surroundings is not good enough. Using the macOS virtual display is fine, there is some noticeable streaming latency, maybe 30ms (that would be solved if it could just take DP over USB-C or Thunderbolt in) but it's suitable for long term use.
Not just giving a display port of some sort seems like such a mistake given that there's already the battery cord/pack and that the virtual display latency is so bad.
“Active noise cancellation for your eyes” is a great way to put. I also have found myself using the mount hood environment set to daytime as the setting for macOS + visionOS multi-window set up.
I took it off yesterday before some friends came over for dinner and I was kind of shocked that it had gotten dark outside because my mind felt like it was still day time since the sun was out in mount hood. I had actually been sitting on my office in darkness for a least an hour.
This is my goal and hope, but I'll temper OP's points with how things stand today.
Background: I got my AVP on Monday 5th (having gotten up before dawn to place my order when it first became available). I am a programmer with a multi-screen setup to maximize my usable workspace, which consists of editor, terminal, and browser windows. My hope is for the AVP to replace a set of fixed screens, and have in effect infinite screen space.
The AVP has worse Angular Resolution than a monitor, at average 34 Pixels-Per-Degree (PPD) vs a monitor's 64 PPD (more details in iFixit's writeup [1]).
This is an inevitable consequence of placing a screen so close to your eyes. The AVP's exceptional screen technology mitigates this (and for me completely eliminates the "screen door" effect that plagued earlier VR sets), but it can't beat Physics.
So for one thing, you cannot have the legible text density of, say, 2 27" monitors an arm's length away. In other words, the equivalent amount of text will take more space in your vision on the AVP.
This is understandable. But where the AVP really has a problem, but I really hope they improve, is window management.
Someone quipped that, from an app/window management perspective, the AVP is like sticking an iPad on your face, and I agree.
As someone who's used to moving and resizing windows around with Tiling window managers on Linux and SizeUp or Moom on macOS, the window management of the AVP is really awkward. Say you put your editor large front-and-center, but now want to switch to a terminal, or resize the editor to put a reference on the side? The hand control may feel magical, but you're going to be doing a lot of it to move and resize your windows.
But these are software UX problems, and I'm gambling on Apple fixing them over time.
its been 14 years on the iPad and even longer on MacOS and neither of them have good window management, I really don't think Apple will come up with a good solution on the vision pro
MacOS has had features like expose and Mission Control for many years. Even something like that would be a big step forward for window management in visionOS.
I wonder if using something like stage manager on Vision Pro would cause a lot of people to get motion sickness… I can imagine large windows flying around in virtual space three or 4 feet from you is going to cause a lot of disorientation for many people.
OPfftopic: the text preview bar following your wireless mac keyboard around is the standout AR feature for me. If that sounds unimpressive, I agree; I have yet to experience truly impressive AR on the AVP. But it's still early, so I'm hopeful.
I participated in a couple Vision Pro demos at Apple HQ prior to launch day. One with a security focus, one with a health applications focus. The security profile, btw, is super boring: on the network, it looks like an iPad.
Health applications: pretty cool for education, maybe other things, eventually.
What I think would be compelling, for me, is the ability to use it on travel. To be on a plane and not have to worry about breaking a laptop screen when the person in front of me tips their seat back, not have to worry about someone shoulder surfing me. In yet another boring hotel room? Let's escape!
Now, the problem is that, in many meetings, a laptop is barely acceptable as it is (in some cases, not at all acceptable). So, I still have to bring a laptop. So, my backback is now ... heavier? I'm already carrying multiple devices required by various security policies.
Is this juice worth the squeeze? I can't bring myself to spend my own money on this. And I helped develop an AR device. I'd be happy to use it if the company bought it. But you're in for almost $5k after applecare, accessories, etc.
If a meeting is simplistic enough not to need planning and action items, you don't need a meeting. Make a conference call.
If action items are simplistic enough that you don't need to consider calendars for the future, don't need the ability to show the status of existing concerning items, and any reliable information is conveyed via paper, you've got multiple problems.
Mostly you have a culture problem, to put it simply.
I'd probably make the opposite argument. If I'm messing with my computer during a meeting then the meeting probably didn't require me to be physically present. At that point it could've been either remote or async facilitated by software.
This is unless I'm running the meeting and my laptop is plugged into the big screen.
> If I'm messing with my computer during a meeting then the meeting probably didn't require me to be physically present.
I was making the assumption that presentations were excluded (and confusing the issue). A meeting is dynamic between individuals. Relying solely on what you can recall is less efficient than using a device to assist, plain and simple.
If there is any value, at all, in a face to face meeting, then a device can only enhance it. If there is no value, then that consideration has no place in the discussion about how to have the most productive face to face.
It's summer here in New Zealand, and I have been using my AVP to code outside in the sunshine. There's no monitor glare and I'm not stuck inside. It's great.
Running late, took a webex call from the back of my minivan on my MacBook Pro. Except I had enough screen real estate with the virtual monitor to do work during the boring parts. The best part was going full immersion and hearing the rain falling on a high mountain lake in between people speaking.
I also usually wake up overnight and want to work, but can’t because my office is located in the master bedroom. Now I can sit on my couch and not have to hunch over.
Finally, I took my dog to the dog park and worked with no screen glare and big virtual display
Of course the irony is that being "outside" is actually watching a live video recording of it from outer cameras on a screen in front of your face.
I'm not necessarily criticizing that - more thinking that we're likely approaching a fidelity threshold where you no longer care it's a screen (I still don't think we're quite there yet and suspect this is just one gen before the device that will survive the few months in VR great filter).
At first I thought it would be weird, but after a few minutes it all felt very natural and a deep work focus was achieved without me really realising it. I tried to grasp some of the awe I experienced in this blog post.
How is the resolution? I never tried a Vision Pro yet, but that was my main gripe with my Rift. Indeed, IME, the ‶real world″ size of the windows is nothing, it's their angular resolution that is a make or break.
It ranges from okay to not that bad. It’s not as good as the “retina” screens in Apple’s other products.
I can definitely see pixels on the device if I’m wearing contacts unlike what most of the early reviewers claimed.
But it’s not so bad as to be unusable and you don’t really notice them in most contexts - the main place I notice pixels is using it as a screen for macOS. VisionOS apps are rendered very large by default so the resolution deficiencies aren’t as apparent.
Overall it is very impressive but there’s also much room for improvement in resolution.
I don't know, if I need to use my macOS laptop, it sounds a lot easier to just use my laptop, instead of using a helmet and then doing the connection dance to get a single ok-ish screen anyway
A single screen that is much larger than a MacBook screen, that is the advantage. And the connection dance is really just...tapping the connect button?
But with the same "resolution" such that you can't fit any more content on it and with much worse density.
Why would I actually want that? You've been able to do this for decades by hooking a TV up to your laptop and while that certainly has space challenges that limit the number of people that'll try it, it's not like tech bloggers were flocking to hook up 65" TVs to their macs and lovingly wax poetic about the productivity gains, either.
The virtual resolution is adjustable and you can fit a lot more contents on the screen than you can with a real monitor. It basically allows one more setting past the maximum “more space” mode you normally get from macOS. It does render a little bit blurry, though, if you crank up the virtual resolution to the max.
For non-text content, I think it's pretty good, actually. Watching content in Disney+ or Max's theater modes is really satisfying despite those virtual screens being sub-4k.
I don't think it is possible to see the pixels, they are the size of a red blood cell. But maybe you can see antialiasing or noise from the cameras.
Personally I can't see any pixelation. It's even better than reality. That being said passthrough cameras' resolution do suck but it's not what it's important and probably the easiest problem to solve.
sure, they're small, but some of them are closer to your eye lense than your retina. The pixels per degree are lower than any Apple product in the past 10 years
I have been using contacts and just got the zeiss lenses today. So far it's roughly equivalent. I think there is a touch more distortion (chromatic aberration along the edges) with the inserts. But my contacts are progressives and kinda sucked for this, single vision would probably be great.
It's better than anything else I've tried by a long shot, which admittedly is only the Quest 2, but still not good enough to work in all day. It wasn't the weight/comfort for me, just it was too blurry. I fully expect to be using one eventually as an external monitor replacement but it's got a little ways to go. Probably needs another generation or 2 of screen/camera improvements. It's _good_ but not worth keeping unless you already use mostly iPad apps for work.
I love high dpi displays as I like text (and other details) to be crisp and clear.
Vision Pro is approaching a quality that I feel is acceptable, somewhere between "flawless reality" and a decent screen. The virtual environments are crisper than the camera passthrough mixed environments.
There is definitely room for improvement on screen quality, but in general I am impressed.
The original Oculus Rift had 1080x1200, VisionPro has 3660x3200, field of view is similar. In virtual monitor terms that means a Rift can display a 640x480 monitor and the VisionPro a 1920x1080 one. Still quite far away from Retina, but should be pretty usable, especially since it allows making the virtual screens bigger than a real monitor can be.
You have a great humorist writing style. I enjoyed the read and it just makes me want one even more.
I just went to an Apple Store to demo the Vision Pro and walked out feeling like I had a religious experience. I was overcame with emotion over that immersion demo, those baby rhinos completely blew my mind. I'm booking another appointment soon to get another taste. I really hope the price becomes manageable for consumers like me; I love the tech and want the future but can't afford it.
It's not a perfect product by any means. The question is, has Apple backed itself into any corners? Can the battery life or field of view be improved? The resolution? The weight? I think in all cases, Apple has a technical path forward.
Despite its imperfections, wow is it fantastic. I'm writing now from a Mac virtual display (which, yes, is a bit blurry). But how could I return this thing? It's the most impressive product Apple's ever made and it's genuinely useful. It's not an expensive novelty by any means. What an achievement.
Funnily enough, your Mac laptop in the real world has better pixels per degree of vision. If you just take the headset off it’s more clear.
The Vision Pro wants to be a VR headset that throws away the existing VR ecosystem. No VR controllers, no beat saber, no Oculus Link, no PC VR.
At the same time, it wants to be a productivity machine that can’t compile its own code and has the same software limitations as iPadOS.
Mobile airplane computer? It fits in a backpack worse than a regular laptop and gets 1/10 the battery life. You could buy an economy plus subscription from United Airlines for 7 years for the same price and just use your laptop on the plane.
I agree that Apple has paths forward to fix all of this, but I disagree that they will go down those paths. I see Apple products like the iPad stagnating because Apple refuses to take them beyond a constrained vision. Apple will never let you install applications outside of their walled garden and they’ll never let you compile code on the Vision Pro.
That’s fine for an entertainment device like a $500 Quest 3 but a $3,500 “spatial computer?”
But, I think you should consider a pair of AR glasses from xreal or rokid. They cost a fraction of the price, have less latency, and you don't need to worry about battery life.
They're also much much more portable. I think using AVP primarily as an external display is a huge huge waste.
I'm so glad that some people are able to use it in this way and I'm jealous. I found the code too blurry [0] and I disliked being limited to 1 blurry screen with 3 clear monitors available to me. I ended up returning mine but I can't wait till I can work inside one of those without feeling limited. It's easy to imagine a future where the AVP beats my monitors and I can't wait.
I've been working a lot in Apple Vision Pro, using Xcode and also spatial visionOS windows for various things like messaging, browsing, etc.
Personally, with my ZEISS inserts for my prescription, the text is incredibly sharp. I often will forget it's a virtual display in front of me, and not my actual monitor. This seems to vary for people, but since I didn't have my ZEISS prescription on day one, and I got to experience the before and after – I REALLY wonder how many people have worse eyesight than they realize, or are thinking that using the thing without their glasses is not making a difference. It absolutely makes a huge difference.
In terms of comfort, it took a little while since I didn't go to the Apple Store, but it finally 'clicked' and I have a feel for how to wear it comfortably. Also, it's less forgiving of bad posture. So, you need to allow yourself time to experiment with how to wear it because it's worth it. It feels comfortable to me now – I spent hours in it yesterday.
Same here, 3 2K screens were better than it. Also, re: using your phone, that was a huge issue for me. I would get notifications for things I couldn't do on the AVP (at least not well, worst of all was text input) or just notifications only on my phone that I wanted to read but couldn't though the AVP passthrough. I hope they do an on-demand "Mac Virtual Display" for your phone in a future version so it looks clear.
I don’t think I would call it “the same” as the Pro Display XDR, pretty sure it’s not the same panel?
I have the XDR and got it as I live in an apartment which gets a ton of natural sunlight and the XDR goes to 1000 nits sustained brightness (1600 peak for hdr). The specs of the Dell panel indicate max brightness of 450 nits, so not at all comparable.
Have the kinks with the U3224KB been worked out? I had one for a while but ended up returning it and replacing it with a Studio Display due to a bunch of papercuts (blog post with details in my profile, if interested) mostly concerning its functionality with macOS (though there were a couple of issues with the monitor itself too, mainly the AG coating).
One thing that immediately jumps out to me is that he had to increase font size a lot compared to what you'd use on a normal screen.
I wager the guess that this is due to the "low" resolution that HMDs have. The last HMD I used was a HTC Vive Pro and there I could still see individual pixels. I have "high resolution eyes" (150-160% vision), but still I would assume that the resolution is still too low to render sharp text at a distance.
There's some math there. The ppi equivalent is rather low despite the rather high resolution and ridiculous density of the displays themselves, after blowing it up to 100 degrees of FOV it ends up being much lower "density" than anything else you're used to looking at
Completely different from my reality; the selective blurring when connected to a laptop hurts my eyes and forces me to refocus them constantly. The limited field of vision stops where I can place my windows and displays without moving my head. The resolution noticeably worse (as expected) than my 2 year old 5K monitor.
> You can choose to let the real outer world in or filter it out,
Yeah I do that by putting my monitor near a window, and using my special ability to move my ocular organs to decide what I get to see. It saves me 3k dollars and having to wear some awkward device on my head.
I only did the 30 minute demo in the Apple store, but I found the brief minutes of looking at text in safari to be pretty bad with regards to eye strain.
Watching videos was fine because I felt I could just let my eyes relax, but trying to focus on text was anything but fun.
I have contacts and am not convinced that the fit/focus I had was correct, but it was not a good first impression from a "productivity device" perspective.
Apple is going to have a problem with how finicky VR headsets are.
I find the comparison to "headphones" for your eyes really interesting because it might provide a long-term view as to the Vision Pro's place on the computer market. Desktop speakers and Hi-Fi home stereo equipment are obviously still a thing today, and, in a few generation (and with the advent of more competition), the case of bigger desktops (and possibly laptops/tablets) might be analogous to today's headphone-loudspeaker duality.
I don't know if it's intentional, but it's a reference to a Steve Jobs quote from 2005:
"Headphones are a miraculous thing. You put on a pair of headphones and you get the same experience you get with a great pair of speakers, right? There’s no such thing as headphones for video. There’s not something I can carry with me, that I can put on and it gives me the same experience I get when I’m watching my 50-inch plasma display at home. Until someone invents that, you’re gonna have these opposing constraints."
Walt Mossberg then mentions goggles, and Jobs says "but they're lousy!" (And Walt adds, "you never get a date if you wear them.")
I rented a Quest 2 a couple of years ago to try out programming in it. I’d read a post someone made about his spending 8 hours a day in it.
For me it wasn’t quite enough. The fresnel lenses make “God rays” at the edges and the text was readable, but not pleasant to read.
I’m planning sometime to try the Quest 3. The Vision Pro seems like it might be the best option because it’s purpose built for that. Also I’m a Mac user and imagine the experience to be whole.
I have the Quest 2 and the text isn't legible enough for me to write code for any length of time.
I work with someone who has said "if the Quest 2 was a 0 on the usability scale, the Quest 3 is an easy 8 - it's that much better." I've not tried it myself, but I don't think my coworker is exaggerating.
> I have the Quest 2 and the text isn't legible enough for me to write code for any length of time.
The comment above about "god rays" is correct in my experience, as well as the lenses being blurry towards the edges due to how they're made.
However, I realized that I need prescription lenses for VR, because while I have -0.75 in one eye, that's still enough to throw the overall experience off a lot (and the glasses that I have are too wide for the headset).
Aside from that, what helped me immensely is the Immersed app: https://immersed.com/ where the actual environment is rendered on the Quest, whereas the actual monitors are streamed over from the PC which helps immensely with how legible things are. SteamVR and the Oculus Link apps are both trash in comparison, there's aliasing, shimmering, or everything ends up being way too blurry. I tried using the Horizon Workrooms app, but it wouldn't work because I have 4 monitors and it only supports up to 3. There's also the Virtual Desktop app which might be good, but I didn't feel like paying for it at the moment.
So yeah, Quest 2 starts out at a disadvantage compared to other options (aside from cost, I guess), but there are factors that can absolutely ruin it, such as using the wrong method of displaying things. Also Quest 2 is just a little bit on the heavy side, or at least feels that way after prolonged usage, with the default face interface, even with a custom head strap.
> the Virtual Desktop app which might be good, but I didn't feel like paying for it at the moment.
Virtual Desktop has a ton of features, but only permits one virtual display.
For me, the unlimited virtual displays with unconstrained resolution offered by the free SteamVR overlay Desktop+ is the best way to work. Seems plenty sharp to me, and not limited to 1080p resolution like Meta Remote Desktop. I can pop browser tabs into their own floating windows separate from my main virtual displays, and set up a floating portrait window for discord or slack.
Immersed is a non-starter for me bc of their subscription requirement to have anything approaching a decent monitor setup. Their sales tactics and YouTube spam are also a turnoff. It’s also nowhere near as customizable as what I was describing above, which has been fantastic.
It's actually the option I tried because SteamVR itself was too blurry to be readable, however I ended up with a weird issue where the mouse cursor wasn't visible, no matter what I tried.
That said, the Immersed marketing feels very... I'm not sure, brand heavy, as opposed to just "here's a cool tool, hope it serves you with great utility", even if it mostly fits the other category in my mind?
In my case it works out nicely even without virtual screens because I have 4 1080p monitors, but honestly, I already pay for JetBrains IDEs and the likes of MobaXTerm, so I could imagine throwing some money their way, even if their coworking/social aspects do rub me slightly the wrong way.
But hey, I'm just happy to find anything that gives me passable visual quality, though I wonder if getting a better GPU or overriding the bitrate limits might improve things, or maybe supersampling.
I have worked for hours in Immersed in both the quest 2 and 3. The 3 is considerably more comfortable on the head and eyes. I constantly had to take the quest 2 off for a breather
I have done about a year of coding on the quest 2 fulltime daily in Immersed and it was fine; now I skipped to the xreal which I like better. I don’t have a Vision Pro or quest 3 yet but I like the portability of the xreal so much now…
Another thing that fascinates me about the Vision Pro: its looks. It’s at once futuristic - 3D knits, curved glass encased by aluminum - and yet also reminds me of something out of the 80s. Actually, it looks to me like a Mac. Aspects like the solo band’s dial, maybe. Or maybe it’s something you’d see in Back to the Future Part 2. Post modern yet nostalgic. I can’t quite wrap my head around it, no pun intended.
I recently had a kid and lost my office :), I've been struggling to have a set space for work when he's asleep, but would absolutely love it if I could just put on a headset. Is it workable for that?
I used to try to code in the quest3 but the resolution felt like I might as well be coding on my phone. I'll go buy one today if this would be an office replacement for me.
from experience — yes, absolutely. It's not as good as a dedicated, already-optimized work space, but it comes pretty darn close.
I have a great workspace well-tailored for me with a massive desk, ultrawide monitor, nice speakers, etc., but I still pop into my vision pro and screen mirror my laptop to get work done. If I'm having trouble focusing, the environments and white noise generation are really helpful. I've also noticed that it really boosts my productivity when I would otherwise be disturbed by a cluttered environment.
Go get a demo at an Apple Store. They won't show you Mac Virtual Display and the clarity of the AVP/iPad apps is good, pictures/experiences are breathtaking. MVD is not that clear, full stop. Also, try to resize an app with text down to the size you would use for a window on your computer. You can't. I constantly found myself wishing to make apps smaller but you can't and so you get limited quickly on what you can fit in front of you/in your field of vision. I even wish there was a way to switch to the iPhone app instead then so I could see more. I wonder if part of that limitation is that the text won't be as legible if it's smaller.
One day it will get there, today is not that day. That said, you should go try it at an Apple Store, it's free to do.
Alright I can definitely say Apple in store support has gone downhill since years ago when Jobs was around and they were more luxury feel, not to date myself too much.
Signed up for a demo, booked a week in advance, got there and waited the entire length of the demo (30 min) to even have the one person doing demos get to me. Then, no way for them to show the only thing I care about for this, which is viewing a display to see if working is possible. Not only that, but unlike Quest demos I’ve done, there seemed to
Be a very strict demo flow. Might as well have just watched a video.
Welp, going to just cost them money instead since they have a 14 day return policy so planning on “demoing” myself. I’ll keep it if it can actually do this but 80% sure they’ll be processing a return from me in two weeks.
Weird way to try to sell an expensive device. Also seeing returns are like 50% which aligns with them not actually letting people demo beyond a set path to find if they want it or not.
The difference between the quest 3 and your phone is the monitor sizes. I have 4 monitors in immersed and while not high res, this is far more convenient than a phone (and for me than actual monitors; I hate stationary monitors workspaces). But I guess it might depend on what you actually do.
This feels like one of those activities that's so drastically different that there may be serious health concerns about it. Wearing a VR headset to play a few hours of games a week still lets your eyes mostly exist in a natural light setting. When you're wearing a VR display the light is right up against your eyes with no possibility for them to look away to relax. When we're normally working we can glance out at a horizon (hopefully - sometimes you don't have a window) or at least let your eyes wander off to the ceiling and defocus. It seems like giving your eyes a chance to relax (i.e. having narrow glasses where part of your view field is out of focus) can be beneficial at delaying the onset of Myopia. The idea of wearing one of these for eight hours a day feels much worse than even staring at a phone in your hand when it comes to eye health.
That's entirely a consequence of the made-for-marketing headstrap instead of the headset itself. Check out companies like BOBOVR that make more ergonomic headstraps (not for AVP yet, but they've hinted at working on it).
Not for nothing, I'm a fan of my early gen xReal air, though mostly for an on-the-go coding use case.
I link it up to my phone, wire up a 60% keyboard and fire up a VPN/ssh. The Galaxy DeX environment is pretty usable for other apps, and a BT mouse can alleviate the goofiness of the "phone as a touchpad" control scheme.
I've used it with an HDMI/usb-c cable from my desktop and it works just as well, though attempting to switch between virtual and real displays through the glasses is headache-inducing at best.
I'd say you accomplish 60% of the effect of the AVP, conservatively.
I don’t know how it compares to the avp but as an old guy, the xreal looks like normal sunglasses. Most people just come sit next to me and talk (even though there IS a massive keyboard in front of me) as though I am just having a coffee in the sun. I like it because it is light, small, very long (my phone) battery life. I am afraid I will like avp better though.
Any idea how the author was able to have multiple desktop screens? What app is he using for this? I thought it only allowed you to mirror one screen per Mac and from my experience it is quite laggy.
This is the problem(with Apple); this device, like iOS devices, is fenced off, so you cannot run vscode etc if you don’t connect a MacBook. For this device it’s actually worse than an iPad to disallow that: it’s 4x as expensive as a MacBook Air here but I cannot run most apps I want on it while that would make me buy one today. I don’t want another iPad (which I bought because it’s nice and small and great battery, but if I cannot code on it normally, what’s the point).
No, the only reason you can't run vscode is that no one has put in the effort to port it. It's a problem of financial incentives and not a problem of "fences."
"fences" is definitely not the best analogy. "spikes and minefields" would be more appropriate as Apple has explicit rules against apps that compile and run code, third party extensions would also probably be prohibited, and the terminal would have little use.
At the end of the day what's possible under the current rules aren't that different from just running it in Safari, so why bother ?
Edit: Desktop software can be ported to other operating systems. Just because an operating system can't run a different, desktop operating system's software that doesn't mean it can't run desktop software. The CPU is used in iPads too. It is used between 3 different form factors.
Only the ‘shell’; not all the rest that make it practical. There are a lot of blog posts (a yearly one here) of people trying to code on iPads; they all end badly because Apple allows nothing. It’s fenched off. Nothing to do with lack of incentive to port Xcode; there are plenty of code apps on iPad, they just cannot run real envs (docker, anything other than toy interpreters etc) without rooting.
It is a new operating system with a different api and security model. Binaries on one operating system with the same processor does not necessarily run if you run it on another operating system using the same hardware.
I like the comparison: like a good pair of earphones for your eyes. That’s a nice succinct summary and gets to when and how the device operates best - when detaching from your surroundings helps you in some way. That marginal value every day isn’t for me but I can see how it could be for many, especially as the price drops over time.
Don’t get it. So many reviewers have the tiniest of ide windows up, like on a 11” laptop. When I code in Vision Pro, I can set 5k resolution to the Mac link since my studio is hooked to a studio display. I’ll get over 100 readable lines, similar to a vertical 4k monitor.
Frustratingly the author didn’t discuss get actual coding experience in any detail. How’s the resolution of the terminal and code editor. What was better/worse? What about weight, how long could he sit. Etc etc
My biggest problem is that it is sometimes difficult to read the keys on my keyboard. I really wish that it could do object recognition on my keyboard and re-render the keycaps. This would be especially useful in "environments", which make the keyboard disappear entirely.
I was surprised Apple didn't have this. My Meta Quest 2 had a super crappy version I tried for all of 2 minutes. The AVP passthrough and rendering content behind your hand (cut out?) both leave some to be desired. The little indicator that floats over your keyboard is cool, touch bar coming back from the grave. But I felt like I couldn't dial in the environment past the point where I could still see my keyboard/hands because of the "keyboard disappearing" issue.
I found setting the environment immersion to around 50% lets me see enough of my keyboard so I’m not groping around for it.
I’d also like to see app re-render your iPhone, Apple Watch and ipad screens which are pretty blurry in pass through. Also some sort of workaround for Face ID on iPhone when you’re wearing Vision Pro. Seems like things Apple is uniquely positioned to do.
> I’d also like to see app re-render your iPhone, Apple Watch and ipad screens which are pretty blurry in pass through.
Totally agree, I just made the same comment elsewhere in this thread. And yes, if I've authenticated with IrisID or whatever it's called then when I raise my phone do the same thing that allows my mac to unlock from my watch. Throw a little notification in the headset (some sound/animation) so if it's not me picking up the phone then it alerts me that someone else is and/or force me to do the IrisID to unlock the phone. After years of FaceID I just expect it to work 99% of the time and it was annoying to enter in my code to use my phone, felt very anti-Apple. A very Apple thing was the Universal Control when using Mac Virtual Display which lets you control/type in other AVP apps, that felt like magic.
I can touch type just fine, it’s finding the home row to put my fingers in the start positions that is the problem. Blacking out my keyboard wouldn’t accomplish anything.
This. I'm a touch-typist but I still find myself fumbling around trying to find where to put my hands when I first start typing while in an environment. I don't do that when I can see my keyboard in my peripheral vision though, so I think the keyboard object recognition would help.
Seeing alot of online reviews that the AVP is too heavy. The front loaded weights but pressure on your cheeks and the straps put pressure on your temple.
I like the idea of multiple monitors at high resolution, but not worth the pain on the face.
Is anyone else using blink and vsCode for this? Seems like really good tool, but I am not sure how to turn off the smart quotes “”. Is this AVP that’s enabling, this or a vsCode/blink setting I need to resolve
It sounds like it might be pretty hard to exceed 3.3K PPI and yet it's not nearly enough. Would it be possible to pull the headset a little further off the face and just counter balance it to get better PPD?
I thinking about using it for coding 2h at my balcony to get some sun exposure. When using macbook I am annoyed due to reflections. Does anyone know how pass through works in sunlight?
Off topic, but when you click a photo in this blog, that's a proper nightmare. There's no way to get back to the article, and the back button exits the whole page.
As a first take: this is incredible, magical. Even if subtle problems make this iteration impractical for sustained use, it is clearly a bellwether for things to come.
I was somewhat intrigued by why people would recreate the same kind of setup in AR with monitor screens. Ok you get more of them, but at some point more screens is just distracting.
What if instead this was the occasion for a true AR experience. Like instead of popping up a monitor, you can open a textbook. As in a physical text book sitting on your desk, each page would be covered in qr codes or whatever uniquely identifying that page. Then the vision pro could fill in the page with a computer generated UI: buttons, text inputs and so on.
And then you could spread all these pages around your desk and actually touch them, and carry them around. Imagine your code being on a sheet of paper instead of in one window.
Imagine your trello board being actual postit notes stuck on your wall that you can unstick and edit.
Imagine your wall full of papers, each of them showing some monitoring aspect of your system.
Like all your browser tabs are displayed on the wall.
I wouldn't want to deal with losing papers, ripping them, etc. why not have the AR create them for you? Seems like you want some extra realism surrounding your screen space. So have a life-like book where individual pages (easy to turn hopefully) are different browser tabs.
Sounds like something you can have or enjoy in real life, and without having an expensive 600-650g weight on your head. (I do like the idea of virtual postits, mind you).
I can't think of any version of dystopia that would be defined by "working your comfortable office job from your multi-story family home while experimenting with a multi thousand dollar piece of high tech equipment which can provide virtual experiences the likes of which was mere science fiction just two decades earlier purchased with your own money the month it was released to the public" Certainly no more dystopic than the very idea of remote work in general.
Still less dystopian than forcing people to commute for an hour to sit in noisy open offices to teleconference with other people not at the office. Dystopian status quos breed dystopian solutions, sadly.
Sure! Thank you. There's a few good definitions out there, some more absolute than others, but none of which quite capture the generally subjective nature of it. Personally tend to align more towards the "corrupted utopia", esp. where acceptance is controversial or blurred
... think the matrix or fahrenheit 451.
But the scene I pictured when I read that line, rightly or wrongly, was straight out of pearl jam's do the evolution. It's evolution baby.
Meh, it's not like everyone has been working from the beach or lakeside up until now. I'd wager it's less dystopian than your current setup staring at the wall of your home or office, maybe with a window to a view of nothing in an office you're forced to drive to.
Let's face it, the AVP is absolutely necessary for any dev who is truly serious about creating quality apps for the AVP.
Those apps might not take off just now, but in a generation or five, the pioneering app creators might be laughing at the rest of us. Or at least until Apple decides to take down their apps due to sudden ToC changes. Just think of the plethora of reasons AVP apps could be taken down for 'failing to comply with safety standards' and the like.
It doesn't beat 3 2K monitors let alone 5K. I know, I have 3 2Ks and the Apple Vision Pro didn't come close to competing. It will one day and I can't wait but I returned mine for now.
If that's the alternative you're considering, get the monitors. If you're like me and have been dying to be a bit less tethered to one location for a while, or you want to get a lot out of a little space, this device has finally crossed the threshold of usability (and being a joy to use). But if your baseline is three 5K monitors in one spot, you're gonna be disappointed.
Get a 43'' center monitor with two LG DualUP 16:18 ratio monitors on the sides. Cheaper and much much better than Vision Pro. You will need a large desk though.
> Get a 43'' center monitor with two LG DualUP 16:18 ratio monitors on the sides.
Sounds nice for the office, but find myself conflicted with the notional operating value prop of continuously juicing north of 200W less graphics compute (?!) just putting idle pixels on screen on a home workstation that seldom gets shutdown.
Curious if you've realized meaningful productivity gains since switching to that setup, and what graphics card(s) are you using to drive them?
LG 24" 4k monitors are like $350 - might be worth a try. I have two with my M3 Pro and they look fantastic - sharp text, good color and viewing angles.
Love to see this! We’re the developers of Inspect Browser [0], the browser with dev tools you see in the screenshots. Our goal is to make tools to help web developers work on iPads, iPhones, and now Vision Pro- thrilled to see it in action!
My imagination ran a bit wild and I thought of a sort of "respirator" one could wear for enhanced immersion, featuring artificial odors. Maybe even a small straw to sip your preferred beverage from, like one of those water pouches hikers carry.
using multiple virtual monitors and vim is exactly what i expected from this post, which it delivered well. having chatgpt integration in riced vim would've been icing on the cake.
I sense some irony in spending extra time on commute only to put a headset that hides all the surroundings of the open office from you and immerses you in a virtual environment.
He has a little daughter around and he's staying with that concoction around his face, so that said kid won't be able to see her dad's eyes but instead she'll get to see that electronic thingie. Very bleak.
Fair point, I am certainly not using Vision Pro all day while I am with my kid - but the point I tried to make is that the rooms can contain items (e.g. toys, etc) that I haven't placed there... the warning of Vision Pro gives for me bumping into stuff is nice.
This is just not going to work. Whatever the experience may be, in this universe, it is not good for the eyes to be focused at a screen a few cm away for hours on end.
Until I can drop into a terminal with bash and full access to unix command line tools and an editor of my choice, the AVP just isn't useful for the type of work I do. Right now the only thing would be as a virtual display for my mac. But given the M2 chip inside the AVP there's no reason it can't do everything my mac can do (and more).
Hopefully one day apple will come to their senses and let this thing be open for real development work, but I'm not holding my breath.
Interesting perspective, but not enough for me to be sold. I never understood how one can be at work and expect to be enjoying lovely scenery at the same time. Those are mutually exclusive for me, especially when coding or hacking. My mind can only be one place at a time. If only we could set aside the computer and truly be in nature... Oh, wait, we can...
Yes, I am exaggerating a little bit, but frankly coding like this is kinda silly, you don't need this headset to fancy manipulate text presentation when the really important thing, the abstractions, are in your brain.
More often than not, it's collecting dust on the shelf within a few months. Sort of like an expensive blender you were so excited to get, you imagined making super fruit smoothies every morning. Let's see how AVP fares in this regard.