The rollout of the VisionOS inspired Glass UI on iOS feels a little reminiscent of the much derided tablet UI in Windows 8 being put on everything.
On a smaller scale of course but these tech companies love unifying everything around a paradigm that hadn’t even proved itself in the market yet.
ryanwhitney · 22h ago
I think it comes down to the actual interface design vs visual consistency. Windows 8 UI suffered because of bad information density, constantly changing tiles, and lack of consistency throughout the OS. You’re mostly in windows, but you occasionally get a big low-density tablet UI to try and parse.
I see the Vision-inspired bits coming through as mostly visual design with a bit of fluidity in menu styling. All of the core menus are still basically the same and tailored to their platform.
That said, a lot of that visual design made more sense in VisionOS where transparency helps you see and understand the real world around you.
I haven't used them and I’m not sure I like them—especially transparency on a desktop—but I do think there’s a difference in strategy.
ddoolin · 23h ago
On the other hand, it seems like commenters on HN love unifying around deriding a paradigm that hasn't been proven to be hated by the vast majority of iOS users (most of which of course are not here and certainly will not care).
rurp · 23h ago
My experience is exactly the opposite, most non-techie users hate pointless UI changes. They couldn't care less about some new design paradigm but they care a great deal that some action they've been using for years has now been changed out from under them. For most people a computer is a tool and they care far more about what they can do with the tool than seeing the tool make itself the center of attention for a time.
Redesigns are often self-indulgent. Designers like that they get to do something new, employees who stare at the same software every day get to change things up, and managers get a highly visible change they can point to as evidence of their "impact". What's best for the users is often not a top concern.
heipei · 23h ago
In my experience this affects techie users just as much. Especially when there is a UI that has been crafted and slowly perfected over the years, and where any remaining idiosyncrasy has long been learned by the user, changing that UI has profound negative impact on the productivity of anyone using the platform.
I have rarely seen UI changes where users were genuinely excited to have a new UI with the understanding that they'd have to learn new paradigms. Most web apps should still be Bootstrap apps, but of course then you can't put that on a giant dashboard wall at a conference ;)
nartho · 23h ago
Most people who are working in tech or who are tech literate want a UI that's readable and easy to use, with minimal fluff because they use it extensively
Most people who don't really care about tech that much don't like UI changes like you said because it means relearning what they know
The ones who love flashy new UIs are the tech enthusiast, the ones who love tech but use them on a surface level only, they are also the ones who will buy new, unproven tech and care little about privacy issues or open source. My guess is it makes a lot of sense for big tech groups to target them instead of the grey beards who won't be convinced anyway, right as they may be.
nemomarx · 23h ago
I think with a product launch you want a better prognosis than "not been proven to be hated"
like I would hope the users love it, to justify the work of a new design?
andsoitis · 23h ago
Surely Apple believes users will love it?
No comments yet
afavour · 23h ago
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want large changes like this to have self-evident benefits.
It’s going to be an uphill climb for users to adjust to a new UI. Broadly speaking, that’s fine. If the payoff is worth it. What’s the payoff?
eviks · 23h ago
Indeed, how dare people form their own opinion and criticize poorly readable text independently of everyone else!
GeekyBear · 21h ago
Even the first developer beta allows you reduce the transparency of the UI in the Accessibility settings.
GeekyBear · 22h ago
It's not like Windows 11 where everything was rearranged yet again AND looks different.
The UI still works the same way, it just looks different.
jasonthorsness · 23h ago
There's so much potential with the Vision Pro held back by one of two things:
1) being just as good as multi-monitor setup for real work
2) cost not being insanely high
I would dearly love to try one but the cost to me means investment, not toy.
I am hoping they keep investing in VisionOS and when it meets one of those criteria the software will be _really good_.
postexitus · 23h ago
3) not having to wear a gargantuan helmet on your head covering your eyes.
as long as this is a giant piece of kit that you need to wear on top of your head, it's not going to be adopted by the masses.
jasonthorsness · 23h ago
I would wear it for work if it meant I could walk around while working and the screens had resolution good enough for small text. I would learn a new input method to make this work because it would be healthier than sitting and walking is good for thinking.
rchaud · 38m ago
Plenty of people use a walking pad underneath their standing desk while working. I think you may be overestimating your ability to balance both these activities, especially as you see yourself navigating the outside world while looking at screens.
afavour · 23h ago
> it would be healthier than sitting and walking is good for thinking.
But what about attention? Your attention is going to be split between two tasks, your work and walking. Your eyes are going to be split too. You’re going to end up walking into walls.
Why not just stand up from your desk and take a walk to clear you head? I find that enormously beneficial. I don’t need to have an omnipresent screen strapped to my face for that.
freeone3000 · 22h ago
The tech produces a view similar to the hololens. You’re not any more distracted walking than you are… walking. You can read signs, look at streets, see walls. You can have additional HUDs but it’s significantly less distracting than you’re positing.
afavour · 22h ago
> I would wear it for work if it meant I could walk around while working
The key point here is "while working". That is the distraction, not the mere presence of things in your eyeline. If I strapped a laptop to my chest and walked down the street while reading through a codebase I'd be distracted. Having that in helmet form instead doesn't seem like it would make a dramatic difference?
dialup_sounds · 21h ago
People already walk down the street focused on screens in their hands. If anything, positioning a screen where you have the most spacial awareness seems like it would cause fewer problems.
But really, it's going to depend on how the user configures their workspace and what work they're doing more than what device they're using.
nkrisc · 22h ago
You’re just going to end up standing still or sitting anyway when something demands your full attention.
Or tripping and falling while wearing your expensive headset.
dnpls · 22h ago
I believe the folks at Bigscreen got that one right. Their headset seems to be small and light enough, and good enough image quality. Their Beyond 2 is 107g!
ziml77 · 15h ago
Can't walk around with it though. Not just because of the tether but because they don't care about supporting AR.
I actually cancelled my order of the BSB2 because I decided that I like having a camera to temporarily see around me when I'm moving out of the safe area. They responded to that by basically saying 'yeah a camera would add some amount of extra weight and we're trying to cut as much as we can'.
But it seems like a super awesome device if you're not moving around or you know you have tons of space.
msgodel · 22h ago
China already makes VR glasses that do this for 1/20th the cost (and it's almost certainly going to get cheaper) with zero vendor lock in (they're plug and play on Linux devices with USB-C display port.)
Apple instead has you strap an entire Macintosh to your face and then refuses to even give you a shell on it. It's a complete failure of imagination in my opinion.
Onavo · 22h ago
Links to some of the Chinese ones?
jayd16 · 20h ago
The XReal sets work like this but its not the same kind of display. I don't think you can really get the same hardware experience yet.
singularity2001 · 23h ago
4) not wearing a full computer on your head (instead of wearing it in your pocket and connecting it via cable/wifi)
hackeraccount · 22h ago
If they could get something lighter that does pass through to a linux desktop at a reasonable cost but still has the screen quality.
Not quite there yet but I'm intrigued - I'm enjoying reading about it and appreciate the people taking the hit to help Apple figure out exactly what the real product is.
terhechte · 19h ago
I find the multi monitor solution really good. I use it a lot. You can have an ultra wide screen display which is like having multiple separate monitors.
leshokunin · 20h ago
I have one. I was very skeptical until I tried it in store.
This thing just needs to be lighter and cheaper.
The screens are top tier, the one handed navigation is intuitive, the windows that stay in place are useful, the Mac OS mirroring is easy and convenient.
For all the memes and naysaying, it’s a solid glimpse at what taking apps into every day spaces will look like in five years.
I recommend reflecting on this sooner rather than later.
paxys · 23h ago
Maybe get the present right first..
daft_pink · 23h ago
I think most people would really love this device, but cannot justify the price.
const_cast · 18h ago
I disagree, I think the device at a conceptual level is bad.
The thing is that VR headsets don't offer very much new in exchange for what they lose, which is a lot. When smartphones came around there were a few tradeoffs. You couldn't type as fast and applications had to be severely dumbed down to work on a such a small device. But the upside is you could carry a mostly capable computer with you everywhere you go.
VR headsets, like the smartphone, have a really bad human communication problem. Using voice command or little pinching isn't a very good method to communicate with computers. It's cumbersome, takes 10x as much time as typing and clicking, and makes 10x as many errors. But on top of this, VR doesn't offer a new way to engage with applications. At least, not in a way that matters.
Sure, we can now watch a movie on the vision pro instead of a monitor or TV. But does that matter? Is the experience better? Same thing with facetime. How is this an improvement over using your phone or computer?
When I think back to the whole Metaverse idea, I can't help but feel it's all novelty and no substance. Yes, we can have a meeting in VR in a fake conference room. Now what? Why isn't this over Zoom? Because Zoom does the same thing, but better. I can share my screen, I can see real faces (not avatars), and I don't really care about seeing people's fake bodies. So what am I actually gaining here? It's a strictly worse experience.
Or Walmart's VR shopping experience thing. Why would I push around a fake cart and look at fake shelves? I can already go online and scroll, see products, and put them in my cart. That's faster, that's easier, I get a much better look at the product. I can see reviews, I can read the nutrition label, and I can hop back over to Google to cross-reference. So what does the VR add? Nothing. It only takes away, and that's all it can ever do.
jayd16 · 22h ago
It's still _very_ heavy and quite niche outside of just a screen alternative. A real screen is still better in every category but portability. Software is still not compelling. Despite the raw specs, the Quest 3 is a better headset.
We have an AVP in the office but it's just collecting dust. Just not enough reason to strap it on.
AR has a lot of potential but Apple is still very far away from that. They introduced 3d widgets but then showed....a clock.
abejfehr · 18h ago
I know the screen is an arbitrary size, but in general if you need more screens you could be walking around with an iPad to use with your laptop instead of a Vision Pro
anon7000 · 23h ago
It’s true. I think AVP is still a valuable product just because they need to continue R&D. Stuff like this hasn’t broken into the consumer space very much beyond video games, so I think these platforms probably need a lot of experimenting to see what sticks and what doesn’t work. Plus, continued innovation to drive down cost, make it smaller, and make the visual experience seamless. I’m glad Apple is using some of their coffers to experiment with futuristic technology. I think it’s fair to expect it to take some time to stick (and for the price to come down)
paxys · 22h ago
I think it's something I would be blown away by for a few days, then keep it away in a drawer and rarely take it out.
GeekyBear · 21h ago
Adam Savage's Tested YouTube channel has posted their thoughts on the new developer beta:
So it does bunch of cool stuff, but there's still no content for it. Got it.
silverlight · 23h ago
Anyone using one as your daily driver for coding? Or tried and it didn’t keep?
bryancoxwell · 23h ago
Tried it. It was okay, felt very futuristic. But ultimately there weren’t really any benefits over just using a multi monitor setup that could justify the cost. I thought it’d be nice to have something I could also use for watching movies, but when I watch movies I almost always watch them with my wife, and much prefer that.
FL410 · 23h ago
Daily driver no, but after the somewhat recent ultrawide monitor update, it is absolutely viable for travel. It's nice not to be constrained by a 14" monitor while on the road, and it's perfectly usable for a couple hours of work (especially if you take the surround seal off and use one of the head strap mounts that take all the pressure off your face).
jlund-molfese · 22h ago
I tried it, and it works alright. But it's not very comfortable to keep it on while eating/drinking, and you can't wear the thing in public without looking ridiculous.
Personally I found my existing dual-monitor setup to be more ergonomic.
meindnoch · 23h ago
Across the globe more than a dozen Vision Pro owners rejoiced!
runjake · 23h ago
According to the best estimates, a little more than 500,000 Vision Pro units have been sold. Pretty good for what is tantamount to a prototype.
It was mentioned somewhere during WWDC that "hundreds of companies" are using Vision Pro, so that's at least 200 companies, as well.
andsoitis · 23h ago
> Pretty good for what is tantamount to a prototype.
I think it’s fairly widely understood at this point that the product Apple wants to ship is more like glasses than a helmet. But the tech to achieve this isn’t there yet, and the current product is a necessary iteration to get to that future.
Apple will of course heavily market/sell the current iteration of the product in the short term - but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to view this as a prototype given what we know about their longer term ambitions and the limitations of the current hardware.
andsoitis · 20h ago
> wants to ship is more like glasses than a helmet. But the tech to achieve this isn’t there yet, and the current product is a necessary iteration to get to that future.
Why is that step necessary? How does it help on the path to glasses?
Why not develop glasses that can block out peripheral light, have all the sensors, need little power etc. before selling a helmet? Those seem like intractable problems to solve in a glasses or contact lens form factor so my prediction is it stays at the helmet design OR we jump to direct neural solution.
But all of this begs the question if use case still, which even at $500 or $1000 doesn’t seem compelling (with other VR and AR as proof points).
haswell · 19h ago
> Why is that step necessary? How does it help on the path to glasses?
Almost every modern device has such a history. It’s necessary for the same reason room sized punch card computers were necessary, or 3-inch thick laptops were necessary, etc. Most modern tech is built on a long history of small (sometimes large) iterations.
Aside from that, building a helmet now allows them to build, iterate and perfect the software, and to introduce people to their vision of what a spatial OS could be like. Will they ever manage to make these into glasses? Hard to say. But given the obvious hurdles to get there, not starting from somewhere is a guarantee they’ll never get there.
> Why not develop glasses that can block out peripheral light, have all the sensors, need little power etc. before selling a helmet?
There are accounts from insiders who say this is exactly what they wanted to do, and releasing the helmet was internally controversial.
The flip side of this is that they’d invested 10s of billions into R&D, and needed something to show for it.
> Those seem like intractable problems to solve in a glasses or contact lens form factor so my prediction is it stays at the helmet design
They may very well end up being intractable problems. If that turns out to be the case, that leaves Apple in the position of having arguably the most advanced AR/VR helmet on the market instead of with nothing. Such a device is also useful when determining whether or not to even continue trying.
> But all of this begs the question if use case still, which even at $500 or $1000 doesn’t seem compelling
I strongly disagree. If Apple could ship something like the current AVP for $500 or even $1,000, I think it would sell very well. I’d personally buy one instead of replacing my aging 65” OLED TV that needs to be replaced due to burn-in. Watching movies in the AVP is a spectacular experience.
jorvi · 22h ago
Pretty much what happened with the MacBook Air. The MacBook Air was preceded by the MacBook 2011 (yes, horrible model name to search). It had no keyboard backlight, an 11" crappy screen, short battery life and it overheated. But compared to contemporary laptops it was futuristic. What do you mean, a laptop you can slide into an envelope?
But then it was followed up swiftly by a secondary model and then the MacBook Air. With the MacBook Air it really started to become a nice device.
Another device that comes to mind is the iPod Touch 1, which didn't even have volume buttons.
zapzupnz · 3h ago
This timeline isn’t right. The MacBook Air preceded that particular MacBook, but they were different categories (Air didn’t have a Retina display, for example).
The MacBook Air eventually took on the general unibody design of the 11” MacBook, then improved upon it in most ways.
const_cast · 18h ago
> But the tech to achieve this isn’t there yet
It is, there's other competitors releasing glasses-like VR and they have been for a while. The Bigscreen Beyond and Beyond 2 gets there. And, they're not gimmicks - they're really good glasses, and out-compete a lot of big VR glasses on image quality.
haswell · 17h ago
This is an apples/oranges comparison for a number of reasons:
1. The Bigscreen Beyond 2 is still a tethered device and can't do anything without a beefy computer. It wouldn't be so small if it contained a computer capable of driving the screens at 90hz.
2. The AVP displays are 3660x3200 pixels per eye at 90-100hz vs the Beyond 2's 2560x2560 per eye at 75hz (can only reach 90hz by upscaling 1920×1920 per eye).
3. The Beyond devices don't have video passthrough which is a core use case of the AVP and its OS and adds to the computing needs and resulting form factor.
Presumably Apple could have made a smaller device if they had limited themselves to the specifications of something like the BB2. The existence of the BB2 is not evidence that the tech existed to miniaturize the AVP since the BB2 is simply not able to achieve the same outcomes as the AVP. They're just fundamentally different devices.
runjake · 23h ago
Tantamount (adjective): Equivalent in meaning or effect.
Apple did the same with Apple Watch when sales were low and returns were high. Because they believed in the product.
Apple believes in Apple Vision Pro, as well.
Hell, I believe in the Apple Vision Pro, too. I think it's a significant part of the future. The price is just far too high for me.
GeekyBear · 22h ago
> According to the best estimates, a little more than 500,000 Vision Pro units have been sold.
It's also worth remembering that Sony was only projected to be able to produce enough micro-OLED displays to make ~500,000 units in the first year.
cptcobalt · 22h ago
Prototype is not a charitable interpretation of the product. If you've been part of hardware, firmware, and software development processes, you'd really truly understand what prototypes are.
justinrubek · 22h ago
They're on version 26 already? Definitely doesn't appear as polished or featured as I'd expect.
jayd16 · 20h ago
They moved to "model year" style versioning.
Does this versioning style work at all? It always feels extremely gimmicky and quickly abandoned as software is going to slip sometimes.
pavlov · 22h ago
It’s actually version 2. Apple switched to using car maker style year numbers for their entire OS lineup, so everything is “26”.
zapzupnz · 3h ago
It’s version 3. 2 was last year; 2.5 just released
micromacrofoot · 23h ago
I've been trying to keep an open mind about this stuff for a few years now... but at this point it's wearing on me. I'm at the point of no. Just no. This is not something I want.
I do not want to wear this on my face. I do not want to talk to uncanny personas. This is not something I want to be between me an interacting with another person. I do not want widgets on my walls.
At best for the next 10 years these will be the size of ski goggles (and we're not even there yet).
This isn't the next iPhone, it's not the next iPad, it's not even the next Apple Watch. It's an expensive toy for rich people who are desperately trying to look at anything except what's actually in front of them.
runjake · 23h ago
It might be best to think of it as a publicly-available, very expensive prototype where Apple is throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
If that's not for you, don't buy one. It's certainly not for me at this time -- not for a price over ~$1,799 or so, and I'd mostly use it to watch movies and as virtual displays for my Mac.
This is largely how Apple did the Apple Watch when it was first released (except it didn't cost $3,499). It didn't really have a purpose. Return rates were very high. And then they discovered a hook: fitness. Now everyone has an Apple Watch.
It seems clear that, over time, Apple will address stuff like the price and weight while developing a hook to attract more consumers.
micromacrofoot · 22h ago
Maybe! but I feel like they're really trying to push this on us by extending the visual language of the Vision Pro across all of their devices... this delusion of AR is leaking into other product areas that I thought were for me, but now I'm going to have to turn on accessibility features so I can read text on buttons (and this isn't hyperbole, I'm updating apps for the developer beta and actually using it).
dialup_sounds · 22h ago
> I've been trying to keep an open mind about this stuff for a few years now.
This has been on the market for less than a year and a half. That's still very early if you're comparing to the historical trajectory of Apple's other product lines.
micromacrofoot · 21h ago
I'm talking about glasses-based AR in general, which goes back even further. Even for Apple they're blowing a lot of smoke here. Hopefully someone will laugh at my old comment in the future.
tropicalfruit · 22h ago
apple wants to wrap itself tightly around your skull. clamping itself onto your eyes.
while renting you a whimsical and delightfully DRM filtered reality (with a 30% cut)
jrm4 · 23h ago
I really hope OP posted this to make fun of it.
This is absolute cope. Apple hasn't innovated much in years and there is nothing special in this whole Vision whatever.
GavinMcG · 23h ago
What makes you think things need to be special in order to be pushing toward the future? A lot of the work of building something better is incremental and not especially innovative.
zapzupnz · 3h ago
People don’t pay attention to how true innovation comes through iteration. We didn’t just magically have the devices we have today from nothing; they are the result of years of subtle improvements over time.
That anybody on HN doesn’t realise this blows my mind, but perhaps they’re only young and think the world has always been full of amazing devices like this since the get go.
On a smaller scale of course but these tech companies love unifying everything around a paradigm that hadn’t even proved itself in the market yet.
I see the Vision-inspired bits coming through as mostly visual design with a bit of fluidity in menu styling. All of the core menus are still basically the same and tailored to their platform.
That said, a lot of that visual design made more sense in VisionOS where transparency helps you see and understand the real world around you.
I haven't used them and I’m not sure I like them—especially transparency on a desktop—but I do think there’s a difference in strategy.
Redesigns are often self-indulgent. Designers like that they get to do something new, employees who stare at the same software every day get to change things up, and managers get a highly visible change they can point to as evidence of their "impact". What's best for the users is often not a top concern.
I have rarely seen UI changes where users were genuinely excited to have a new UI with the understanding that they'd have to learn new paradigms. Most web apps should still be Bootstrap apps, but of course then you can't put that on a giant dashboard wall at a conference ;)
Most people who don't really care about tech that much don't like UI changes like you said because it means relearning what they know
The ones who love flashy new UIs are the tech enthusiast, the ones who love tech but use them on a surface level only, they are also the ones who will buy new, unproven tech and care little about privacy issues or open source. My guess is it makes a lot of sense for big tech groups to target them instead of the grey beards who won't be convinced anyway, right as they may be.
like I would hope the users love it, to justify the work of a new design?
No comments yet
It’s going to be an uphill climb for users to adjust to a new UI. Broadly speaking, that’s fine. If the payoff is worth it. What’s the payoff?
The UI still works the same way, it just looks different.
1) being just as good as multi-monitor setup for real work
2) cost not being insanely high
I would dearly love to try one but the cost to me means investment, not toy.
I am hoping they keep investing in VisionOS and when it meets one of those criteria the software will be _really good_.
as long as this is a giant piece of kit that you need to wear on top of your head, it's not going to be adopted by the masses.
But what about attention? Your attention is going to be split between two tasks, your work and walking. Your eyes are going to be split too. You’re going to end up walking into walls.
Why not just stand up from your desk and take a walk to clear you head? I find that enormously beneficial. I don’t need to have an omnipresent screen strapped to my face for that.
The key point here is "while working". That is the distraction, not the mere presence of things in your eyeline. If I strapped a laptop to my chest and walked down the street while reading through a codebase I'd be distracted. Having that in helmet form instead doesn't seem like it would make a dramatic difference?
But really, it's going to depend on how the user configures their workspace and what work they're doing more than what device they're using.
Or tripping and falling while wearing your expensive headset.
I actually cancelled my order of the BSB2 because I decided that I like having a camera to temporarily see around me when I'm moving out of the safe area. They responded to that by basically saying 'yeah a camera would add some amount of extra weight and we're trying to cut as much as we can'.
But it seems like a super awesome device if you're not moving around or you know you have tons of space.
Apple instead has you strap an entire Macintosh to your face and then refuses to even give you a shell on it. It's a complete failure of imagination in my opinion.
Not quite there yet but I'm intrigued - I'm enjoying reading about it and appreciate the people taking the hit to help Apple figure out exactly what the real product is.
This thing just needs to be lighter and cheaper.
The screens are top tier, the one handed navigation is intuitive, the windows that stay in place are useful, the Mac OS mirroring is easy and convenient.
For all the memes and naysaying, it’s a solid glimpse at what taking apps into every day spaces will look like in five years.
I recommend reflecting on this sooner rather than later.
The thing is that VR headsets don't offer very much new in exchange for what they lose, which is a lot. When smartphones came around there were a few tradeoffs. You couldn't type as fast and applications had to be severely dumbed down to work on a such a small device. But the upside is you could carry a mostly capable computer with you everywhere you go.
VR headsets, like the smartphone, have a really bad human communication problem. Using voice command or little pinching isn't a very good method to communicate with computers. It's cumbersome, takes 10x as much time as typing and clicking, and makes 10x as many errors. But on top of this, VR doesn't offer a new way to engage with applications. At least, not in a way that matters.
Sure, we can now watch a movie on the vision pro instead of a monitor or TV. But does that matter? Is the experience better? Same thing with facetime. How is this an improvement over using your phone or computer?
When I think back to the whole Metaverse idea, I can't help but feel it's all novelty and no substance. Yes, we can have a meeting in VR in a fake conference room. Now what? Why isn't this over Zoom? Because Zoom does the same thing, but better. I can share my screen, I can see real faces (not avatars), and I don't really care about seeing people's fake bodies. So what am I actually gaining here? It's a strictly worse experience.
Or Walmart's VR shopping experience thing. Why would I push around a fake cart and look at fake shelves? I can already go online and scroll, see products, and put them in my cart. That's faster, that's easier, I get a much better look at the product. I can see reviews, I can read the nutrition label, and I can hop back over to Google to cross-reference. So what does the VR add? Nothing. It only takes away, and that's all it can ever do.
We have an AVP in the office but it's just collecting dust. Just not enough reason to strap it on.
AR has a lot of potential but Apple is still very far away from that. They introduced 3d widgets but then showed....a clock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6SbkEC1Xb8
In addition, they have previously posted their one year review of the Apple Vision Pro.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsoy1E0PoqA
Personally I found my existing dual-monitor setup to be more ergonomic.
It was mentioned somewhere during WWDC that "hundreds of companies" are using Vision Pro, so that's at least 200 companies, as well.
Prototype? I do not get that impression from Apple's very prominent product placement: https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/
Apple will of course heavily market/sell the current iteration of the product in the short term - but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to view this as a prototype given what we know about their longer term ambitions and the limitations of the current hardware.
Why is that step necessary? How does it help on the path to glasses?
Why not develop glasses that can block out peripheral light, have all the sensors, need little power etc. before selling a helmet? Those seem like intractable problems to solve in a glasses or contact lens form factor so my prediction is it stays at the helmet design OR we jump to direct neural solution.
But all of this begs the question if use case still, which even at $500 or $1000 doesn’t seem compelling (with other VR and AR as proof points).
Almost every modern device has such a history. It’s necessary for the same reason room sized punch card computers were necessary, or 3-inch thick laptops were necessary, etc. Most modern tech is built on a long history of small (sometimes large) iterations.
Aside from that, building a helmet now allows them to build, iterate and perfect the software, and to introduce people to their vision of what a spatial OS could be like. Will they ever manage to make these into glasses? Hard to say. But given the obvious hurdles to get there, not starting from somewhere is a guarantee they’ll never get there.
> Why not develop glasses that can block out peripheral light, have all the sensors, need little power etc. before selling a helmet?
There are accounts from insiders who say this is exactly what they wanted to do, and releasing the helmet was internally controversial.
The flip side of this is that they’d invested 10s of billions into R&D, and needed something to show for it.
> Those seem like intractable problems to solve in a glasses or contact lens form factor so my prediction is it stays at the helmet design
They may very well end up being intractable problems. If that turns out to be the case, that leaves Apple in the position of having arguably the most advanced AR/VR helmet on the market instead of with nothing. Such a device is also useful when determining whether or not to even continue trying.
> But all of this begs the question if use case still, which even at $500 or $1000 doesn’t seem compelling
I strongly disagree. If Apple could ship something like the current AVP for $500 or even $1,000, I think it would sell very well. I’d personally buy one instead of replacing my aging 65” OLED TV that needs to be replaced due to burn-in. Watching movies in the AVP is a spectacular experience.
But then it was followed up swiftly by a secondary model and then the MacBook Air. With the MacBook Air it really started to become a nice device.
Another device that comes to mind is the iPod Touch 1, which didn't even have volume buttons.
The MacBook Air eventually took on the general unibody design of the 11” MacBook, then improved upon it in most ways.
It is, there's other competitors releasing glasses-like VR and they have been for a while. The Bigscreen Beyond and Beyond 2 gets there. And, they're not gimmicks - they're really good glasses, and out-compete a lot of big VR glasses on image quality.
1. The Bigscreen Beyond 2 is still a tethered device and can't do anything without a beefy computer. It wouldn't be so small if it contained a computer capable of driving the screens at 90hz.
2. The AVP displays are 3660x3200 pixels per eye at 90-100hz vs the Beyond 2's 2560x2560 per eye at 75hz (can only reach 90hz by upscaling 1920×1920 per eye).
3. The Beyond devices don't have video passthrough which is a core use case of the AVP and its OS and adds to the computing needs and resulting form factor.
Presumably Apple could have made a smaller device if they had limited themselves to the specifications of something like the BB2. The existence of the BB2 is not evidence that the tech existed to miniaturize the AVP since the BB2 is simply not able to achieve the same outcomes as the AVP. They're just fundamentally different devices.
Apple did the same with Apple Watch when sales were low and returns were high. Because they believed in the product.
Apple believes in Apple Vision Pro, as well.
Hell, I believe in the Apple Vision Pro, too. I think it's a significant part of the future. The price is just far too high for me.
It's also worth remembering that Sony was only projected to be able to produce enough micro-OLED displays to make ~500,000 units in the first year.
Does this versioning style work at all? It always feels extremely gimmicky and quickly abandoned as software is going to slip sometimes.
I do not want to wear this on my face. I do not want to talk to uncanny personas. This is not something I want to be between me an interacting with another person. I do not want widgets on my walls.
At best for the next 10 years these will be the size of ski goggles (and we're not even there yet).
This isn't the next iPhone, it's not the next iPad, it's not even the next Apple Watch. It's an expensive toy for rich people who are desperately trying to look at anything except what's actually in front of them.
If that's not for you, don't buy one. It's certainly not for me at this time -- not for a price over ~$1,799 or so, and I'd mostly use it to watch movies and as virtual displays for my Mac.
This is largely how Apple did the Apple Watch when it was first released (except it didn't cost $3,499). It didn't really have a purpose. Return rates were very high. And then they discovered a hook: fitness. Now everyone has an Apple Watch.
It seems clear that, over time, Apple will address stuff like the price and weight while developing a hook to attract more consumers.
This has been on the market for less than a year and a half. That's still very early if you're comparing to the historical trajectory of Apple's other product lines.
while renting you a whimsical and delightfully DRM filtered reality (with a 30% cut)
This is absolute cope. Apple hasn't innovated much in years and there is nothing special in this whole Vision whatever.
That anybody on HN doesn’t realise this blows my mind, but perhaps they’re only young and think the world has always been full of amazing devices like this since the get go.