The prescription glass thing is a real problem if you start thinking about any sort of business case where you have to put headsets on various amounts of random people at scale!
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Apple Surveys Vision Pro Users About Competing Headsets and Smart Glasses
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As long as you only watch movies alone.
I usually wear glasses, but when I use my DSLR, I just adjust the diopter with a dial—quick and simple. Apple could’ve done something similar or made the Vision Pro auto-adjust. Cut the weight in half, bring the price under $1000, and give it at least 4 hours of battery life. Also, I don’t need my eyes mirrored on an external display. If I ever buy one, it’ll be just for watching videos and editing photos while relaxing in my recliner.
I actually don't think the application matters. Considering we're talking about Apple, who operate at such a massive scale in the consumer and prosumer markets, I don't think fighter pilots or people who wear glasses but don't really like wearing glasses make up any significant portion of the relevant population.
Glasses are a thing most people already wear in some form, be it prescription eye glasses, sunglasses, protective glasses in a work context, etc. They're a known quantity, they're not socially stigmatised the way bulky VR headsets are, they don't isolate the user form the world around them, and they frankly just look better.
I'm not saying 100% of people will adopt this tech, the same way 100% of people haven't adopted the smartwatch or even the smartphone, but for face-worn wearables to gain a meaningful (Apple-wise) marketshare, I don't see any other form factor standing a chance. These won't be suitable for every need, but nothing ever is. VR headsets will probably continue to exist as niche enthusiast devices, but it's not a form factor that's going to take off (as evidenced by the past decade plus of it going nowhere).
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…The whole concept of prosumer devices such as the Vision Pro is that they don’t chase profits and are great, specialized products for their target demographics because they don’t compromise for mainstream appeal. 🤦🏽♀️🤦🏽♂️Correctomundo!
Manufacturers such as Apple and Nvidia towards their record profit and segmentation appeal is that they are able to accommodate mainstream, prosumer, enterprise and above markets simultaneously by not overly being focused on mainstream products.
That enables hard/impossible to copy dividends compared to manufacturers and other entities that have to focus/prioritize mainstream making compromises that causes their products to fall short of them such as AMD and Meta.
Supply chain strategy and premium business model strategy 101.
…Not really when prosumer monitors are at and above such a price including Apple’s entry one; OLED 5K2K ultrawides without even Dolby Vision HDR such as LG that I own are $2000 minimum and don’t have a laptop class APU.
Portable 24” 4K OLED monitors such as the one from the Asus ProArt series are $3000 minimum for five years now…
Glasses-free 3D monitors as mainstream as Samsung's are $2000 minimum and actual googles-free Xr monitors from Breylon cost much more than that ($5000-$8000).
AR glasses not even close to comparable in compute, spatial computing capabilities (not AR) and lesser picture quality and HDR will be $1500 and above.
They actually have to be more expensive than the Vision Pro when they do become on par unless you want to wait almost a decade.
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I think if Apple could combine something like the Metas with a HUD like Google Glass had, they’d sell millions. I’d love to have turn by turn directions and notifications appear in the top corner of my vision and not have to check my watch.
The pros are super pro and the cons are super con. The video quality, and hand gestures are no competitors, but it's too heavy and too expensive, and the outside screen is also very lame. I hope apple to release a plastic model with lighter finish and remove the outside screen, without compromising the video quality. Also an AR glass would be great too.
the vision pro is a VR headset that can double as a very bulky but high quality AR device.
smart glasses currently suck at both of these applications.
prescription glasses are an absolutely horrible challenge for the smart glass "market".
It’s a semi-AR device, since you’re just looking at a video feed on a display rather than object overlaid on the real world.
Smart glasses barely exist. Headsets have been around for a decade and barely made an impact.
Not sure I understand how you’re making this determination since we don’t really have a clear tech path laid out for how to achieve these. For example, using something like retinal projection would remove the need to worry about the prescription entirely.
To be clear, I understand I’m talking about a product that does not currently exist in a satisfactory form but, as I said originally, it’s the only version of face worn device that I can see having a mass market future.
In my opinion, we’ve had headsets for long enough to prove that almost no one wants them.
…Note the passthrough video is NOT the core display used for mirroring and app use.
The Vision Pro core display outside the video output of the cameras for merely passthrough AR is superior compared to today’s large 5K2K OLED monitors that have terrible PPI like LG’s 45” and don’t even have Dolby Vision HDR or anywhere close to its peak brightness.
Also note I have 34”, and 40” non-OLED 5K2K monitors as well; it only becomes maybe debatable with LG’s 34” 5K2K non-OLED as expected as far as sharpness—that’s it.
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Regarding Vision Pro’s AR approach
…The Vision Pro is an XR device whose cameras enable passthrough AR (AR through intermediary means via video output from cameras) that VR headsets don’t even have typically being more functional and versatile using around the “real world” accordingly.
This was a necessary trade off for the PPI of the headset to be as high as it is—as well as the 5000 peak brightness and Dolby Vision + HLG HDR support—without being compromised for AR functionality direct from the lenses.
You use the dial to make yourself be able to see the real word in real time as much as you want distinct from the VR experiences it renders—which is FAAAR sharper than with better color and HDR performance than an overwhelming majority of headsets today.
Technically the Vision Pro does have an opinionated resolve image algo that prioritize rendering in a way with trade-offs Quest differs from to be better in some very specific contexts to be objective from a HCI computer science perspective.
Before the Vision Pro there have been yet to be headsets designed to actually be on par, rival, or even exceed the image quality of most traditional computing devices to be a viable option for most.
AR through near-field lenses and etc for AR without passthrough tech are not close to the Vision Pro’a quality at a comparable price yet towards why Meta glasses prototype turned out to be $10,0000 attempting to be similar but still inferior to the Vision Pro’s image quality.
This isn’t surprising being very hard to do towards the pricing of spatial computing by necessity having to be more expensive than traditional computing devices.
As far as the market for headsets and spatial computing
It’s way too soon, and there haven’t been serious fair options to traditional computing devices that HAVE to be more expensive as spatial computing has to be more expensive than traditional computing equivalents.
Gaming headsets aren’t even close to being on par and better than current gen consoles—so no serious real option for AAA gamers that would or want to buy a headset.
Headsets are supposed to be more convenient, superior, and natural successors to several traditional computing contexts than traditional computing devices.
Same thing with glasses compared to watches, iPads, portable displays, and laptops.
Such options have yet to be viable in abundance. On top of that computing progress of traditional computing has stagnated and newer advances much more expensive prohibiting accessibility of such progress compounding the problem.
Spatial computing hardware like high PPI monitors and foldable phones necessitate far more expensive display components—as well as far more powerful complimentary components like GPUs that are also more expensive.
Accordingly while no doubt the future necessitates being fundamentally the most expensive step forward in computing for the general public and will always continually be more expensive than traditional computing equivalents no different than home
In economic markets with the average person being tech illiterate and their buying power diminished if they haven’t bought into or have adapted well to the drastically changed job market, the spatial computing market will depend more from early adapters, prosumers, and enterprise more with its early proliferation compared to other computing advances in recent years with its growth towards mass market adoption besides what’s expected for quantum computing.
All that said, many people today take for granted today how long it took traditional computing platforms to be mainstream from purely enterprise and military use and then use by high-end consumers.
Spatial computing is a modern rendition of that progress as semiconductor, battery, and compute (including AI) advances aggressively and surely advance for such products to no doubt become mainstay products for people to use for sure succeeding things like secondary monitors as they continue to advance.
Yes and no. It does make sense because the magic has worn off already for those users and they are best suited to report on persistent issues (such as the weight, the lack of apps, etc)
This isn’t the ‘thing’ either of you are discussing, and maybe I misunderstand either, or you both, but I was under the impression AR could be any live-ish video feed with augmented content added that is remotely relevant to what the live-video feed is. So an iPhone has AR for the same reason AVP has AR, right?
The Vision Pro and iPhone AR etc are a halfway point. They overlay objects on a video feed of the real world. Proper AR would be overlaying things on your direct view of the world.
It’s obviously a lot harder to achieve this level of AR, but that shouldn’t mean that we promote the halfway point to full AR just to say we have it.
AVP is only at 4K for each eye, your entire field of vision is limited at 4K. Yet the 5K display is only a little bit of your field of vision and it's 5K. Another perspective is that AVP peak brightness is 100 nits, top mini-LED can do 3000 nits with dolby vision. Brightness and contrast are the core specs of HDR
…The Vision Pro’s technical peak brightness is 5,000 nits and is much higher than 100nits in any case—it needs to in order to comply with Dolby Cinema HDR spec.
Using OLED (on silicon at that or Micro-OLED/OLEDoS) on top of that, it has dramatic advantages over MicroLED panels.
Including your framing of a 5K2K (4K 21:9) as a “5K display”, a lot of nuance is often lost and not pointed out well when comparing comparing a monitor and spatial computing devices specs.
The Vision Pro’s 3,386PPI and 34PPD complimented by vector UI in any case offers better picture quality than large OLED 5K2K (again a 4K 21:9 display) ultrawide monitors in any case. Their PPI is more akin to 1440p when they’re 40” and above.
Note that this is because 24” is the max panel size before 4K can resolve to high PPI before its ability to output sharp images on larger panels is greatly diminished.
Note many 27” QDOLEDs are really 24.5” panels because of this to be close enough.
4K on 32” and above monitors are subpar in which the Vision Pro rivals and beats their sharpness and other aspects of image quality thanks to its Dolby Vision + HLG support in addition to its use of vectorized UI/assets.
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There’s a wide variety of means to do AR with varying trade-offs; we agree that more ideal forms of AR exist and are emerging being viable for future spatial computing hardware.
Sending out to paying customers yields valuable information, while sending out to those who may never buy and may only complain about everything gets them nothing.
…You absolutely need to as I actually have and develop on the device. I use the device practically daily to maximize my use of tech.