Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not::There’s a lot of pressure on the new Apple Vision Pro headset, which starts at $3,499 and marks the beginning of something called “spatial computing.” The ambition is enormous, but the Vision Pro also represents a series of really big tradeoffs.
I don’t think this is gong to be a success. I feel like the tech is a solution without a problem. I think the only sensible application is niche, enthusiast gaming, and valve is already pretty established there.
We’ll see though. Apple will probably have thought about this and identified usecases and developed software for their vr platformThe lack of proper VR controllers excludes AppleVR from any meaningful gaming anyway.
I have a Valve Index and the Vision Pro seems like a downgrade in many ways, at least for gaming. It doesn’t even have controllers, so almost all games won’t even be possible to play.
And porn
I’m a huge tech nerd, but even I’m struggling to see the genuine use-case for VR.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be overjoyed to be proven wrong, for someone to come out with a killer app and for VR to suddenly become essential, but right now it just feels like a way to get people to spend significant amounts of money paying for tech firms to do r&d. At most, I love the idea of having an enormous personal screen for movie watching, but I watch movies with my wife, so we’d have to spend a ridiculous amount of money to sit next to each other in our personal bubbles.
My partner is a big VR fan and he’s excited to get his Apple Vision Pro, but he’s already planning on returning it once he gets bored of it. This seems like something that only hardcore Apple fans would want to buy and keep. Nobody wants to watch movies or use their computer while isolated from the world while having a heavy thing strapped to their face. I don’t doubt that this is the best way to watch movies in VR, but if watching movies in VR was a non-niche thing that people actually wanted, it would have already caught on by now.
I quite like the “virtual workspace” idea (that Apple didn’t have first, but they are having a go at it).
But it’s not really there yet, is it? The apps are mostly iPad apps, some obviously updated to take advantage of “spatial computing” (how Apple calls it) in very cool ways, but it’s not like I can run a full-blown development environment on that thing. Even with a Mac you can only protect a flat screen into your “space”.
Let’s give it a few years and see where Apple takes this on a software level. I think the hardware is okay for a “gen 1” device, but it’ll likely get lighter, faster, longer battery etc.
I think the main appeal is basically a projected screen. You can face absolutely massive screens if I understand correctly vs having to buy those screens and position yourself in front of them.
I mean, that’s not revolutionary. That’s just basic VR headset functionality. Plus, it’s not nearly as useful as it’s cracked up to be.
It’s got an apple logo on though!
But the shocking thing is that Apple may have inadvertently revealed that some of these core ideas are actually dead ends — that they can’t ever be executed well enough to become mainstream.
Given Nilay has a good amount of experience with headsets, I’m surprised at how surprised they appear to be with this statement.
Back when I was in uni in the late 00s, AR and VR were a big thing, to the point that we had a module on it as part of our course. Even then it was clear that any hardware that physically closed you off (digital pass through is still a physical barrier) fundamentally stops the feeling of an argumented reality and puts you firmly in a disconnected (from physical reality) headspace. As in, you feel like you’re in a virtual reality.
Google cardboard, which Nilay references:
Apple is also making immersive versions of some of its Apple TV Plus shows, which basically means a 180ish-degree 3D video that feels like the best Google Cardboard demo of all time
Came out 9 years ago, and proved the exact same thing for 1% of the cost of a Vision Pro.
As others have pointed out since the announcement, Glass also failed even without having that physical barrier between you and reality.
Lastly,
Do you want to use a computer that is always looking at your hands?
Nope!
Nilay’s point is that the Vision Pro is by far the best implementation of this kind of device yet - possibly just about as good as is actually possible - and yet still suffers severe issues as a result. Usually Apple waits and learns until they can launch a product that is well considered and that often shows the industry how to move forward, yet in this case it’s quite possible that they’ve actually just demonstrated that this kind of computing fundamentally doesn’t work.
I understand that.
My point is that that had already been demonstrated.
And unlike any other TV in your life, the Vision Pro can literally DRM your eyes — if you’re watching a movie in the Apple TV app or Disney Plus and go to take a screen capture, the content blacks out. It’s strange to experience a reality where big companies can block you from capturing what you see, even if all you’re trying to do is show people how cool it looks in a review. You can get around DRM screenshots on an iPhone by just taking a photo of the screen, but there’s no such off-ramp for the Vision Pro.
Hey, I found the reason why I would never never never ever buy something like this. It’s going to be the Black Mirror episode that forces you to watch ads.
literally DRM your eyes
What a comically overblown description. Any platform that supports DRM can “literally DRM your eyes” the same way. Making the screens too tiny to photograph easily is just how a headset has to work, not some Orwellian scheme to control you.
Many fair criticisms of Apple can be made, but this ain’t it.
Can you imagine talking to someone in public with one of them strapped to their noggin?
They only have 2 hours of battery life so you can’t really take them out.
I don’t even like taking to people when I’m wearing sunglasses, I always feel like I should take them off.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In Apple’s photos, it looks like a big, bright screen that shows a video of your eyes to people around you so they feel comfortable talking to you while you’re wearing the headset — a feature adorably called EyeSight.
On the top edge, you’ll find what feel like larger versions of some familiar Apple Watch controls: a digital crown that adjusts both the volume and the level of virtual reality immersion on the right as you look through the headset and a button on the left that lets you take 3D photos and videos.
You can also see Apple’s incredible video processing chops right in front of your eyes: I sat around scrolling on my phone while wearing the Vision Pro, with no blown-out screens or weird frame rate issues.
A lot of work has gone into making it feel like the multitouch screen on an iPhone directly controls the phone, and when it goes sideways, like when autocorrect fails or an app doesn’t register your taps, it’s not pleasant.
I asked about this, and Apple told me that it is actively contributing to WebXR and wants to “work with the community to help deliver great spatial computing experiences via the web.” So let’s give that one a minute and see how it goes.
There’s a part of me that says the Vision Pro only exists because Apple is so incredibly capable, stocked with talent, and loaded with resources that the company simply went out and engineered the hell out of the hardest problems it could think of in order to find a challenge.
The original article contains 8,148 words, the summary contains 264 words. Saved 97%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This summary, well, isn’t. It’s just grabbing random paragraphs.
There’s literally a summary section in the article itself it could have just used!
There’s a part of me that says the Vision Pro only exists because Apple is so incredibly capable, stocked with talent, and loaded with resources that the company simply went out and engineered the hell out of the hardest problems it could think of in order to find a challenge.
theyre building a car
