I'll bite — I’m not a hater, but a skeptic and put off by it and the hype surrounding it. I'll give ten reasons, but just hope that the OP and others aren't simply looking for a reason to pile on and trash any “naysayers”!
1. It looks dorky. People wearing them look dorkier.
Looking at your phone looks dorky. In 2009 I saw a guy watching video on his phone at a restaurant and thought it was the saddest, lamest thing ever. Now that guy would probably seem social, he talked to the waitstaff even!
2. We spend too much of our time with screens already. This is that on steroids.
Doesn't change screen time unless you let it. Just makes the time you do spend better. Better fidelity. Higher resolution. Less contorting or squinting at little screens
3. Our lives should be — and are — far more than tech.
No one said otherwise. I persinally think wearing glasses (which I wear everyday) that could become my laptop/ipad/iphone/watch/mac when needed means less devotion to tech than carrying around all those items all the time. Even in a "perfect" implemntation I don't want AR all the time, I just would rather give a quick finger or eye flick to check the time or sports scores rather than look at my phone or watch.
4. The product doesn't work, out of the box, for the millions of us who wear glasses. We're not going to buy Zeus’s insert lenses that may be missing key features or not fit prescriptions (such as progressive lenses, prisms, adjustable tinted lenses, etc.).
It does work though. Once the lenses are installed it just works. No more cumbersome than swapping between indoor and sun glasses is today really. Which is to say it's a major pain, but to have the same pain for more gain isn't really an added bue
It'd be like selling a car to people, but requiring anyone wearing glasses to buy an expensive windshield add-on!
Those inserts can be lost and it would be awkward taking a visor on and off to use eyeglasses. It's akin to people who have to juggle hearing aids, glasses, and masks. Major nuisance.
Besides, prescriptions change frequently as one ages and who really wants to now spend nearly double every year or two (regular eyeglasses and Zeiss inserts). Now, if the visor itself could have adjustable prescriptions, that would help solve this.
5. The product is far too expensive. Yes, it will, eventually come down. And, yes, one could inflation-adjust the price of the original Mac (although the proper basis of the original conversion would be tricky), and argue that it's $2499 would be far more than $3499 in today's dollars! (It's insulting that Apple, like most corporations, keeps believing that dropping a dollar from the price fools customers.)
6. We can do everything we want to already with what we have.
Speak for yourself. I find all the existing 2d screen form factors frustrating and limiting, always have.
7. Projection of eyes onto the front of the visor? Ridiculous. Face Time simulations? Weirder.
Agreed. Biggest hurdle to mass adoption is solving the FaceTime problem. Until I can see real, convincing, full body video (not simulations!) of my family sitting down to thanskgiving dinner together, even the ones who can't be with us, using VisionOS for FaceTime is a step backwards over current FaceTime.
8. Serious concerns about EM fields and the brain, for everyone, but especially for kids and teens with developing brains, adults with epilepsy or neurological issues, or with many brain disorders, hallucinatory or otherwise, etc.
If we're going to be screwed by EM, we're already screwed.
9. The social, psychological, and societal dangers of people losing themselves in Visor World™.
There is no Visior world. That's not the point of AR/MR at all. Or really even the point of VR. The goal is to make tasks we already do easier, or to make hobbies we already do more fun. A "Mechanic" app that superimposes proper torque specs over bolt-heads and links to your electronic ratchet or even determines force applied through fancy tricks? Sweet, useful, and not at all a "visor world" where you're cut off from others
10. Look, I love the idea of projecting a giant spreadsheet, book, movie, art canvas, collaborative project in front of one — and the idea of a new GUI — love the science fiction, Star Trek, etc. feel of it all.
But consider an alternative, one that could have most or nearly all the advantages and few of the disadvantages.
Imagine a small paperweight-sized device that fits into a pocket, can be placed on a surface near your and projects all that the Geordi La Forge Visor™ does. Displays appear in front of you. With the Vision interface or choice of others.
Not sure what you're proposing at all. But it does seem clear you're still thinking in 2D. Having 3D display and the ability to manipulate real and virtual objects in the same space is kinda a big deal in many activities/fields. Not sure how some projector device can project in 3D. The only way we currently have to project in 3d is a combination of stereoscopic screens and complex math, lots of input data, and visual tricks. If you have a solution for handheld, room scale volumetric projectors that can accurately track eyes and hands no matter where the user is in the room, go for it! But I don't think you or anyone else has the foggiest idea how to pull that off
No messing with head bands, no wearing a silly clown device, remaining in direct experiential contact with life and family, and getting all the benefits, whatever they are, that this thing provides.
It's not any more silly than a laptop, tablet, TV or phone. Hell, even the home radio or music player. Every one of these devices had luddites claiming they would destroy people's ability to connect with each other and be dorky to use. The all started our as tools of nerds or power users, and trickled down when the benefits became obvious and the costs reasonable.
The Mac, the Palm, TiVo, and the iPad were magical devices. They were compelling, accessible, engaging, familiar even in their novelty, and had captivating interfaces that were paradigm breakthroughs for *existing* devices, form factors, and applications. They were instantly recognized as both useful and fun. And, came at a reasonable cost — well, the Mac eventually!
Of that list, only the Mac was transformative at all. PDAs were DOA and just helped with lessons for "what not to do" when smartphones became possible. TiVo was a slightly better VCR and died off in a couple years when streaming took over. The iPad was and remains just a fat iPhone. better for watching video or reading, but worse in every other way.
Their downsides were marginal. No one had to look like a dork to use it. One could demonstrate the product to others and be an evangelist just by showing how much better they were than what had come before — things that were already widely in use. And, didn’t have to look like one was going to a sci-if costume party!
The visor has some of the magic, but is missing most of it! It also has major glaring downsides, as listed above.
That’d why this is and will remain a niche product for years…
It'll be niche for the first 3-5 years. Like the multi-touch smartphone was. The most popular worldwide "smartphone" OS even through most of 2010 was Symbian (I don't even remember what that was, but it can't have been very good). By 2012, iOS and Andriod were selling orders of magnitude more smartphones than any other OS ever had before. They were even outselling PCs and other computing devices. It took from 2007 until somewhere between late 2010 and early 2012 for the smartphone to go from "kinda cool, if you're a rich nerd" to "if I had only one computing device in the world, this would be it." Same trajectory here. By the late 2020s VisionOS will run on slightly bulky glasses that you can look straight out of when the screens are off. The battery will last a full day of usage. And most people will be wondering why they ever bothered hunching over a laptop, propping up a tablet, or squinting at a phone.
