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Apple CEO Tim Cook on Using Vision Pro: 'It's an Aha Moment'
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Agreed. Even though one could argue that building Apple's insane financial success and security is his legacy, Apple is a product company and "spatial computing" (I find this term exceedingly stupid) will be his legacy.
I agree, but even if costs can be brought down significantly, I still have serious doubts about whether people even want this. Too much screen time has made kids kill themselves in record numbers. The public seems pretty miserable these days, stuck on their phones, constantly comparing themselves to others, constantly feeling like they are missing out on something yet unable/unwilling to connect with their fellow human beings...because that would mean, gasp!, putting the phone down.
How does strapping a screen to one's face make any of this better? How is being more immersed in technology going to benefit society? It won't. I work in a restaurant and I'm shocked by how often we have entire tables (almost always Bay Area people) who don't say a word to each other and just stare into their phones the entire meal. I'm going to make sure we ban Vision Pro inside the restaurant once it launches. I can only imagine whole tables of socially awkward people with these helmets on.
Given the increased awareness around all of the mental health issues Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. have created in society and the pushback against excessive screen time, I am hopefully that Vision Pro is a bridge too far for most people and that it will fail. I do think it's an incredible bit of technology, but I also think it will only deepen the problems mobile computing and social media have created.
They could turn apple TV into quite a potent games console if they wanted… the apple silicon, even A series is powerful enough for a decent console that is also energy effiecient.
Isn't spatial views using VisionOS just a different way to make up for the lack of windows and application depth within iOS/iPadOS apps and its GUI? The question for Apple would be how receptive is consumers to this compared to iPhones/IPads/Macs?
What Is Spatial Computing? A Basic Explainer
Apple is launching a spatial-computing-based Vision Pro headset on Feb. 2. Here's what that means and what the technology could do for you in the coming years.
I see the iPhone as more problematic than the Vision Pro. I don't see how it's worse for people to use their VR headset while they are home than it is for them to use their phone constantly while at a restaurant with friends/family.
But I view VR as more of a potential PC replacement than a smartphone replacement.
Yeah, the having to pay a fee (of who knows how much) just because I have a prescription is so annoying. I'm sure it will also be non refundable. And when your vision changes (as it does when you get older) you'll need brand new inserts. I'll be hoping they do this via software in Goggles 2.0.
Look I appreciate the entire spatial computing perspective, but I am still having a hard time seeing how this will become mainstream like smartphones were back in the day.
I for one do not wish to have a bulky pair of goggles on my face. Maybe, its because I am getting older and are not hip anymore?
I for one do not wish to have a bulky pair of goggles on my face. Maybe, its because I am getting older and are not hip anymore?
You are likely correct in your assessment - how can the tech become less invasive.
The challenge, in my view (but I suspect I am the minority), is that by its very nature, 'Vision Air' would be invasive. I don't want what I deem 'crap' popping up in my life. I already have all notifications off on phone, ipad, and Mac. I leave all three on do not disturb all the time. The only alerts I get come via my Garmin watch, and they are minimal (things like storm alerts).
So I wonder about this idea of less invasive tech that is more invasive. All I really want is a pair of glasses with HUD for giving me training info. For now, I stick with audio prompts from the watch via a headset, sometimes. I still find it better to just know what my workout is, but maybe all this invasive tech isn't for people like me anyways.
It's mostly semantics these days. VR devices were already moving toward increasing quality of passthrough.
Certain kinds of apps may be more comfortable to use with passthrough, because you don't lose awareness of your surroundings, but they aren't fundamentally different kinds of apps.
I've spent a couple hundred hours using a VR sculpting app. It would be neat to be able to see the room I'm in while sculpting, but it wouldn't fundamentally change how I use the app.
I'm only discussing real headsets, not speculating about unannounced products.
The important distinction presently is between see-through and pass-through.
I don’t see this as a mainstream personal device (unless we all turn into Wall-E humans). But I do see this as a mainstream workspace tool that companies deploy to get work done. Like a laptop had a bulky baby with a cubicle.
I am personally very excited by this device, but I also understand people’s skepticism. It’s pricey, but not worse than a spec-bumped MBP; and I’ll probably buy one. Everything will hinge on the software experience and the apps that devs bring to it.
I am personally very excited by this device, but I also understand people’s skepticism. It’s pricey, but not worse than a spec-bumped MBP; and I’ll probably buy one. Everything will hinge on the software experience and the apps that devs bring to it.
Looking forward to buying the first spatial computer!
This is a great opportunity of iOS devs to port their apps and get a bit of free exposure when it launches. V1 may not have high sales, but the native apps are sure to get promoted and reviewed. Users may pick the app with Vision Pro support to be more future proof.
This is a great opportunity of iOS devs to port their apps and get a bit of free exposure when it launches. V1 may not have high sales, but the native apps are sure to get promoted and reviewed. Users may pick the app with Vision Pro support to be more future proof.
$3,500 is quite a lot for a video game or to watch a movie but $3,500 is "pocket change" if the device is used for some kind of professional application. Think about a radiologist looking at cat-scan data or even a mechanical engineer running simulations of car bodies deforming in a crash. There are hundreds of use cases where $3,500 is not a barrier at all.
I think I paid $3,500 in 1982 for a 16-bit IBM PC with a monochrome screen, megabytes of RAM, and no hard drive. People bought them long before anyone ever thought to use computers for entertainment or online shopping. There were many professional use cases that justified the price (even in the 1980s when $3,500 was a lot of money.)
My distance prescription has stayed consistent for a long time, but I am losing some ability to focus up close. But that's irrelevant for today's VR/AR headsets, because they are all fixed-focus. So it a way, they may be more visually comfortable than the real world for many older users.
We'll eventually get to lenses that dynamically adjust focus. Meta has already shown prototypes with many different methods of accommodating a range of focus distances.
Those pro users would be better served by a headset that plugs into a PC to provide an order of magnitude more GPU power.
Remember Apple used to market the iPad as a computer without calling it a computer. Can we call the Vision Pro a computer in the same sense?
Indeed, this is something I've gone back and forth with for a while. You are not in the minority at all I think. Actually I suspect most decision makers at Apple are on your side: their design goal with the AR glasses platform will be to get you actively "using" the device as little as possible, unlike your iPhone.
On the one hand I absolutely agree that always on AR can very easily be a lot more invasive than passive but it will come down to the minutiae of implementation. For example in macOS Sonoma I like having a widget on my desktop that shows me the air quality in my house. It works great because it's always passively available to me in the same way looking at the time in the top right is. On iPhone the same widget is only accessible once I unlock the phone (or if I place it on the lockscreen widget section). The act of picking up my phone and taking a look at the lockscreen already commits me (somewhat) into using my phone and engaging with iOS, a big part of this is seeing all of my notifications because I can't help but read them.
Focus modes will be key to this, in particular I might go as far as saying notifications shouldn't appear in the AR glasses at all. I think Apple have introduced these two features (widgets and focus modes) in preparation for how they want people to use the AR glasses, not as a replacement for iPhone that demands your attention with constant notification pings, but as a means of complementing the function of a clock on your wall: glanceable information that tells you something without necessarily demanding your attention and bringing you out of the real world.
If the AR glasses are in a sense invisible to you then they've accomplished their goal.
Max RAM was 640kB and that required a card as well as what RAM came on the motherboard. And famously, the 8088 used an external bus 8-bit wide instead of the 16 bit original 8086. Overall, it was a thing pushed by IBM for a strange mix of reasons and I think part of the beginning of the end of the old IBM. Office mate had one while I continued to use a terminal to our VAX systems. The courageous in our org bought Macintosh when they came out, though the management hierarchy mostly were stuck with the PCs for years.
And, fundamentally and related to the topic of this thread, the IBM PC was designed to work with monitors which themselves were designed to work as NTSC compatible devices. Which means an earlier 20th century American standard for television affected the design of the IBM PC.
So that the AVP is a computer designed around human eyesight is sort of like history repeating itself.
So… spatial padding instead of spatial computing?Remember Apple used to market the iPad as a computer without calling it a computer. Can we call the Vision Pro a computer in the same sense?
Has anyone who has IOLs (intraocular lens implants) commented on how the AVP works for them? With implants one loses the ability to focus, and I wonder how that will work with the AVP.
That’s not an issue of too much screen time, but rather of ‘social’ media. I personally like the idea of using VR to watch a movie on a (perceived) huge screen, like sitting in a cinema, but in the comfort of your own home. Not much of a difference to watching it on a TV, except potentially better and, depending on the TV you own, not that much more expensive…