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Apple Vision Pro Testers Share Impressions: 'By Far the Best Headset'
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Apple is a fundamentally different company than the one Jobs left when he gave the reins to Tim Cook. They were already transforming into a fundamentally different company while he was still there... because the nature of what a computer is has veered away from the one Apple helped define.
The thing to understand about Jobs, for those who have read Hertzfeld's Folklore.org blog, is that Jobs didn't like an idea unless you could plant it in his head and convince him it was his to begin with. So there's no pleasing the beast. He would have hated some features simply on the basis that they weren't his ideas, and then perhaps later capitulated (as he did on Sony's 3.5" disk) out of a sheepish realization that he was in fact wrong. Then he'd market it as though it was his idea all along, and that's the point at which the idea would hit our eyes and ears.
Jobs' biggest transformation was in learning patience and how to play the long game. Apple Vision Pro really has its beginnings, if you think about it, in Dynabook, in Doug Engelbart's ideas about the potential for networked computing as a platform for collaboration and not merely distributed content.
What he would have agreed with most is not in the feature set of the Vision Pro, but the ethos. Meta's biggest failure was in trying to bring everyone to the Metaverse, and not the other way around. Jobs knew that, hence his reticence to introduce a product class before its time, before the chess pieces were in place to stand up the ecosystem that would make it thrive.
Disney partnering with them is not an accident. This thing isn't just a movie theater killer. It's a movie theater killer at a time when movie theaters are vulnerable.
The coup Apple pulled yesterday is not that they released a product, but that they shifted the playing field from VR/AR to Mixed Reality, where there are many more use cases beyond the $260 billion gaming market. I'll give you a quick hint at what I'm driving at: Retail is a global $26 trillion market, and it is extremely vulnerable to disruption with Amazon becoming too centralized, too large, and too unwieldy and it's going to crack under its own weight unless something unclutters, untangles and simplifies that experience into a process as simple as snapping your fingers.
It's kind of hilarious to read all the comments from people who desperately need you to know how opposed to Vision Pro they are. It's the usual suspects of comments too, recycled straight from when the iPad was first introduced.
See you all in a few years
See you all in a few years
Thanks for that link, that was actually a more useful impression than most of what I had seen so far.
Also funny, at the 4-minute mark:
Robin: “Do you think this is something the average person will be able to afford?”
Tim: “I don’t know.”
Is it that it doesn’t solve a problem, or is it that you can’t see the problem it’s aiming to solve?
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Having spent time reading most the comments....
Someone said this is the Newton (too ambitious for current tech so a dud) or an iPhone - perfect moment of tech making something new possible. This sounds correct. It may be this tech will never really work until its as unobtrusive as eye glasses for AR and who needs a 3500$ VR headset? It will be interesting to see.
The price appears to be in line (or cheaper) than other high end devices but looks better, does more, and has more computing power to make an ecosystem possible.
It lacks haptics, which I think only PSVR2 currently has and haptics on your face...weird. Gloves with haptics....could be cool but not there yet. PSVR2 controllers have haptics and hopefully you can use them on Apple Vision.
Someone said this is the Newton (too ambitious for current tech so a dud) or an iPhone - perfect moment of tech making something new possible. This sounds correct. It may be this tech will never really work until its as unobtrusive as eye glasses for AR and who needs a 3500$ VR headset? It will be interesting to see.
The price appears to be in line (or cheaper) than other high end devices but looks better, does more, and has more computing power to make an ecosystem possible.
It lacks haptics, which I think only PSVR2 currently has and haptics on your face...weird. Gloves with haptics....could be cool but not there yet. PSVR2 controllers have haptics and hopefully you can use them on Apple Vision.
I can tell you right now there is very little of my job I could easily do (or would want to do) on the iPad version of Microsoft products. And the way security is set up other than using Outlook and Teams there’s not much that can be done on a non-work computer. And I work for a very large company. This might be great for people who use Macs for their primary work computers. I still think it’s a lot of money to spend (plus having to wear bulky goggles on your face) to get more screen real estate.
as a therapist, if my clients had one, and I had one, it would be *almost* like being in the same room. This isn't there as far as affordability, but I can see a future now where this is doable and a great tool.
See you maybe when they have a product that is the size/weight of the prescription glasses I currently wear.It's kind of hilarious to read all the comments from people who desperately need you to know how opposed to Vision Pro they are. It's the usual suspects of comments too, recycled straight from when the iPad was first introduced.
See you all in a few years
I feel like I already made this very clear, but THIS headset is a means to an end. It is not the product they’re trying to get into everyone’s hands. You speak like you don’t think Apple hasn’t considered how much it is compared to their other products? Do you THINK they EXPECT this to sell millions? The obvious answer is no. there have been reports about eventual AR glasses for years in tandem with a Gen1 headset.
Yes, this will drive component costs down because they’re CUSTOM DESIGNED COMPONENTS. As in, didn’t exist until “now”. Nothing like that is cheap on first run.
Yes, this will get them real user data to see how it’s being used, what isn’t working, etc. before they create AR glasses. We’ll get V2, V3 of a headset before glasses - each iteration cheaper and more capable with less and less material.
Do I think apple invested billions in R&D to sell 100k headsets (walk) so they can sell millions of glasses in 5 years (run), yes… I do.
“Get real”, though
I think the idea of comparing this to an iPhone is misguided. Apple is not trying to create a new device that is akin to an iPhone. This is a new CLASS of device, and if you're going to compare it to anything, you should compare it to a MacBook Pro. That is its closest competitor in terms of functionality and power. And it's priced appropriately given that - look at MacBook Pro prices. Yes, MBPs have less powerful processors, but the Vision Pro also has the R1 coprocessor, two almost-5k displays the size of postage stamps, 12 cameras, a dozen other sensors, and some of the most amazing technology on the market.
There will be a Apple Vision Air or something similar eventually, just like how there's a MacBook Air that's dramatically cheaper than the MacBook Pro. And it will still be awesome, just like the MacBook Air is.
There will be a Apple Vision Air or something similar eventually, just like how there's a MacBook Air that's dramatically cheaper than the MacBook Pro. And it will still be awesome, just like the MacBook Air is.
Aaaaaand this is it right here.
This is the money.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
After all the hating the past few years, just like iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, the Apple-saving iMac: as people use these devices they are going to realize that apple made and released a well designed product that eclipses the competition.
This product is going to be great, and people are going to see that as they use it.
This is the dawn of not only a new product category, but a new era. 5 years from now and a few revisions in, the M6 powered headsets of both Pro and non-pro variety (read: way less than $3500) are going to be flying off the shelves like iPhone releases for the first several years. And this sector is going to grow immensely.
I’m already seeing how almost all the things that I do could shift over to this.
And we are at v1. The VERY beginning.
Exciting times ahead.
This is the money.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
After all the hating the past few years, just like iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, the Apple-saving iMac: as people use these devices they are going to realize that apple made and released a well designed product that eclipses the competition.
This product is going to be great, and people are going to see that as they use it.
This is the dawn of not only a new product category, but a new era. 5 years from now and a few revisions in, the M6 powered headsets of both Pro and non-pro variety (read: way less than $3500) are going to be flying off the shelves like iPhone releases for the first several years. And this sector is going to grow immensely.
I’m already seeing how almost all the things that I do could shift over to this.
And we are at v1. The VERY beginning.
Exciting times ahead.
Okay. I could do all my work on a iPad if I had more screen real estate. Products don't have to be for everyone. Especially a high-priced gen1.
It certainly is (a lot of money to spend) for average consumers. For a high end professional, it may be worth it. I think Apple is definitely targeting the latter for this initial release based on the name and price.
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Why wouldn’t they go away? I have had visions of these glasses for a very long time. Nobody believed that CDs/DVDs would go away.
No way. Lore was way less artificial than whatever that thing is, and had a personality.
I did. I wrote my senior thesis in college about it... in 1996.
I also believe TVs are going away. Take from that what you will.
I don't believe the price is a problem at all. It has far bigger problems than the price.
Like the fact that no one wants to wear a headset like this to begin with.
Like the fact that it runs baby iPad apps instead of Mac apps, effectively cutting out the entire work/developer/productivity angle that some people theorized this gen 1 product must be hitting.
Like the fact that despite Apple's best efforts, it still makes people nauseous.
Like the fact that its selling isolation as a feature, despite their claims to the contrary.
What is with myopic people constantly saying this line. “It does not solve a problem”. Not all technical advancement revolves around infomercial level crap of “i have this huge problem and without this product I’m literally going to die”.
so 20 years from now we are still gonna be using MacBooks huh? 50 years from now? 100 years from now? If 100 years from now our computing paradigm is still a keyboard and a basic screen, we haven’t advanced at all. People need to have vision for where this is going to go. We’ve seen sci-fi movies for decades showing the possibilities and yet when a breakthrough product like this comes out, as always we have the naysayers saying well it’s not solving problems so we shouldn’t advance. Stone Age thinking right there.
MKBHD sold the experience really well. The feeling of controlling a computer by eye movement and pinching your fingers sounds so cool. It's very much a preview still, but overall sounds impressive.
That's utter nonsense. Everyone in the technology world new CDs/DVDs would be replaced by digital media, all it required was big enough storage drives, and the devices to play them. Hell, CD's were only mainstream for 13 years before their replacement started shipping.
In those use cases someone would be at home so frankly why are you concerned about how you look to complete strangers?
I thought the same thing -- but supposedly, there's some feature that let's you create something that looks like your face, so the person you're Facetiming will see your pseudo-face; still, that's not the same as seeing your actual face, the very reason we use Facetime (as you pointed out).