I wasn't quite sure whether to post this in another thread, or create a new one. In the end, it turned into quite a long post, so I decided to start a new thread as I touch on a number of different subjects related to the AVP.
A little background - I now live in Thailand, where I suspect there will be quite some wait before the AVP is launched - and have extensive experience of the "VR space" over a period of more than a decade, having been the driving force behind creating what was when it launched back in January 2015 - and still remains to this day - by far the largest high quality 360 degree photo and video city tour in the world.
I am no longer with the company responsible for that tour, and unfortunately it has not had any serious investment in it for the last 5 years (long, boring story). Just to highlight the extent of it, there are over 2,000 separate pieces of content involved, ranging from tours made up from 250MP panoramas showing off hotel suites, gigapixel aerial panoramas, a 45 gigapixel panorama from the pinnacle of the Burj Khalifa, and 24 hour timelapses at some key locations in the city. In fact, the very first 8K 360 video ever uploaded to YouTube was one of ours - a 24 hour timelapse taken from the top of the control tower at Dubai International Airport. We also produced and broadcast a live 360 degree video stream of the New Year fireworks show in Dubai way back in 2015. Oh, and we had a 15 meter diameter full spherical projection dome built as a temporary exhibit in Dubai Mall to show off the content in a physical enviroment.
View attachment 2351563
I originally tried to buy an AVP when pre-orders first went live. I thought I'd secured one, but a few hours after my order having been accepted, Apple rejected it on the basis of it being sent to a freight forwarding company. I was very disappointed, since at the time - based on reports of how many units Apple were going to be able to make in the first year - I was pretty convinced that shortly after launch, pretty much the entire first year allocation would be sold.
As we now know, that's not the case, and even today, it looks like the wait time for delivery is just a week or two, with regular drops to the retail stores. By chance, an opportunity to visit New York turned up, and I booked my flights to arrive on the afternoon of Feburary 20th. I've been monitoring availability ever since, and was hopeful that I would be able to pick one up. You can probably imagine my disappointment when on Monday evening Thai time when I set off from Koh Samui, no store in the US had any availability.
And then, checking the Apple Store app whilst transiting through Dubai on Tuesday morning, it looked like there was availability everywhere. I could barely contain my excitement.
My timing ended up being perfect. Plane landed at JFK on Tuesday at 2:30pm local time, got to my hotel by 4:30pm (seriously impressed with how quick it was through immigration and customs), and was at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue by 5:45pm.
I had a demo originally scheduled for 11am today (Wednesday), but spoke to one of the staff members explaining that I wanted to buy right away. She said "I can fit you in at 7pm", but I replied with "I've come straight here from a 22 hour flight and really don't want to have to hang around for an hour - please see what you can do for me".
10 minutes later and the thing is on my head.
All the way back in 2016 I was helping out Dubai Tourism at trade events to demonstrate to people in the travel industry the content that my team had created. Back then, we were simply using Google Cardboards. We had people lining up waiting up to 30 minutes for a demo all day long - for pretty much every single person who held the Cardboard their eyes, it was their first ever experience of "VR", and they were blown away.
For me though, whilst I thought it was cool (well, I would - wouldnt I!), the quality - especially in the video content - left a lot to be desired, because I knew just how much better it could be, if only there was a way to present it in higher resolution. It's kinda disappointing to be demonstrating a 24 hour timelapse video on a phone with a 1080p screen when the original source content is 12K.
Fast forward a few years, and the Oculus Quest is released. I buy one, try it out - yeah, it's cool, but there is no way I am going to be watching content on this thing. Let alone "working" in it. Same problem that we had back in 2016 - the resolution just isn't high enough. Played around with it for a couple of weeks, and it goes back in its box and sits on the shelf.
Although I'm not really involved in any professional capacity in VR stuff by this stage, I keep a watch on market developments, and things seem to be moving in the right direction. Apple announce the Vision Pro. 4K per eye? Ok - now we're talking. Quest 3 is released - I ignore it purely based on the PPD figure. I know it won't cut it. The price differential is irrelevant. I'll wait.
And yesterday, that decade long wait - for a headset to come out that might finally be able to do justice to the quality of content we had been producing as early as 2013 - finally came to an end.
I cannot stress how fantastic the service was from the staff at the Apple Store. A special shout-out to Caesar who went above and beyond to help me out. One of the things I was wary of having read countless threads here was the fit. The scan said I was a 21W, and that was bumped to a 25W because I need the optical inserts. Caesar got all W's from 21 to 25 for me, and the fitting session began.
Because I don't have a US prescription, and am aware that there is no way I will get the prescription inserts delivered before I leave (I am going to get a prescription later in the week, and will just have them delivered to a friend who will forward them onto me), I had a plan B in place, and bought contact lenses before I left so that I can at least use the thing in the meantime with the readers (I am both short and long sighted).
Plan A though of course was to have my regular glasses scanned at the store so that I could try the thing out with the correct prescription lenses, which is how I intend to use the device over the long term. Interestingly, when they scan your glasses and pick out the correct demo inserts, they do not have any visibility of what your prescription actually is. This both surprised and concerned me, because of course I know my prescription, and wasn't sure just how good the glasses scan would be, nor how closely the best demo set of inserts would match my prescription.
We start with the 25W as recommended by the scan (my default light seal is the 21W, but it gets bumped to the 25W once you account for the inserts), and after going through the set-up process there are two things that are obvious to me. Firstly, oh my god - the displays on this thing are astonishing. Secondly - uh oh. There's a serious problem with the optics.
I immediately noticed that at the periphery of my vision, the text in menus was blurry. I played around with the fit, and in doing this I noticed that if I compressed the headset to my face a little - thus bringing the lenses closer to my eyes - text even at the corner of the field of view snapped into perfect focus.
So, off with the 25W, and on with the 23W. It's better, but the same problem is still there. Let's skip the 22 and go straight to the 21W, and with the thinner cushion as well.
I make sure the headset is on tight (so easy to forget to tighten it up with the adjustment dial in the first few goes), and go back to the content I was using to check (just the default menu in Apple TV), and BOOM! There it is. Absolutely perfect clarity across the entire field of view. Yes, I had the warning about the distance to the eyes being too close, but just dismissed that. I have eyelashes - they are there to let me know if something is physically too close to my eyes, and I trust them way more than Apple's guidance that will undoubtedly be erring on the side of caution.
Let the demo commence.
Well, I say "let the demo commence", but Caesar was extremely accommodating with the things I wanted to check out, and basically let me take the lead, with me pausing every now and then to check if there was something he wanted to show me. I won't bore everyone with the details of what is covered in the scripted demo because you've no doubt read about it many times already. There were quite a few things I wanted to check out specifically for myself, and I basically got to "play around" with whatever I wanted to.
I hope nobody was filming me during the demo because there were times when the only way I can describe my reaction to what I was experiencing was sheer unbridled joy - I was literally laughing out loud at the audacity of just how incredible this thing is.
Yes - I know it's not perfect. Yes - I know there are almost no decent apps available for it (jeez people - the thing hasn't even been out 2 weeks and you're complaining? Really?).
And yes - I know it's expensive. At $3,500 (well, for me, $4,352.83 all in - I got the 1TB version) 8x what a Quest 3 costs. But you know what? It's a completely irrelevant comparison. For me, the Quest 3 - even at just $500 - is more expensive than the VP. Why? Because if I had bought one, it would just sit on the shelf next to the Oculus gathering dust. And there is nothing more expensive than something you buy, but don't ever use.
The one thing I simply cannot get my head around though is Apple's insistence in promoting this thing as "Spatial Computing". Fine guys - by all means that may be what you have spent countless billions on developing, and of course VisionOS has the fundamentals in place to be a superb "Spatial computing operating system", but that's not what you've actually ended up delivering.
Apple have built the greatest content consumption device the world has ever known. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the ability of the VP to create and show "spatial videos" was a completely unintentional by-product that wasn't even envisaged at the outset. "Hey guys, you know how we've got these cameras positioned close to the eyes so that we can represent the real world virtually? Well, we could also use them to..."
forums.macrumors.com
That is ultimately what will sell hundreds of millions of these things. Sure, not version 1 at $3,500 a pop. But I'm in no doubt that there is a way to get the price down to $2k for a "consumer" version within 18 months or so. Or perhaps offer them for $1K with a $50 a month subscription to Apple TV Vision+ that includes a pick and mix selection of live and archived Spatial Video streams to your favourite sports teams, live theaters, concert venues, comedy clubs, podcasts, nature spots (OMG those baby rhinos...), etc etc. The potential is limitless.
I've been waiting a decade for the future to arrive.
It's finally here.
And boy is it going to be one heck of a fun journey to be on.
A little background - I now live in Thailand, where I suspect there will be quite some wait before the AVP is launched - and have extensive experience of the "VR space" over a period of more than a decade, having been the driving force behind creating what was when it launched back in January 2015 - and still remains to this day - by far the largest high quality 360 degree photo and video city tour in the world.
I am no longer with the company responsible for that tour, and unfortunately it has not had any serious investment in it for the last 5 years (long, boring story). Just to highlight the extent of it, there are over 2,000 separate pieces of content involved, ranging from tours made up from 250MP panoramas showing off hotel suites, gigapixel aerial panoramas, a 45 gigapixel panorama from the pinnacle of the Burj Khalifa, and 24 hour timelapses at some key locations in the city. In fact, the very first 8K 360 video ever uploaded to YouTube was one of ours - a 24 hour timelapse taken from the top of the control tower at Dubai International Airport. We also produced and broadcast a live 360 degree video stream of the New Year fireworks show in Dubai way back in 2015. Oh, and we had a 15 meter diameter full spherical projection dome built as a temporary exhibit in Dubai Mall to show off the content in a physical enviroment.
View attachment 2351563
I originally tried to buy an AVP when pre-orders first went live. I thought I'd secured one, but a few hours after my order having been accepted, Apple rejected it on the basis of it being sent to a freight forwarding company. I was very disappointed, since at the time - based on reports of how many units Apple were going to be able to make in the first year - I was pretty convinced that shortly after launch, pretty much the entire first year allocation would be sold.
As we now know, that's not the case, and even today, it looks like the wait time for delivery is just a week or two, with regular drops to the retail stores. By chance, an opportunity to visit New York turned up, and I booked my flights to arrive on the afternoon of Feburary 20th. I've been monitoring availability ever since, and was hopeful that I would be able to pick one up. You can probably imagine my disappointment when on Monday evening Thai time when I set off from Koh Samui, no store in the US had any availability.
And then, checking the Apple Store app whilst transiting through Dubai on Tuesday morning, it looked like there was availability everywhere. I could barely contain my excitement.
My timing ended up being perfect. Plane landed at JFK on Tuesday at 2:30pm local time, got to my hotel by 4:30pm (seriously impressed with how quick it was through immigration and customs), and was at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue by 5:45pm.
I had a demo originally scheduled for 11am today (Wednesday), but spoke to one of the staff members explaining that I wanted to buy right away. She said "I can fit you in at 7pm", but I replied with "I've come straight here from a 22 hour flight and really don't want to have to hang around for an hour - please see what you can do for me".
10 minutes later and the thing is on my head.
All the way back in 2016 I was helping out Dubai Tourism at trade events to demonstrate to people in the travel industry the content that my team had created. Back then, we were simply using Google Cardboards. We had people lining up waiting up to 30 minutes for a demo all day long - for pretty much every single person who held the Cardboard their eyes, it was their first ever experience of "VR", and they were blown away.
For me though, whilst I thought it was cool (well, I would - wouldnt I!), the quality - especially in the video content - left a lot to be desired, because I knew just how much better it could be, if only there was a way to present it in higher resolution. It's kinda disappointing to be demonstrating a 24 hour timelapse video on a phone with a 1080p screen when the original source content is 12K.
Fast forward a few years, and the Oculus Quest is released. I buy one, try it out - yeah, it's cool, but there is no way I am going to be watching content on this thing. Let alone "working" in it. Same problem that we had back in 2016 - the resolution just isn't high enough. Played around with it for a couple of weeks, and it goes back in its box and sits on the shelf.
Although I'm not really involved in any professional capacity in VR stuff by this stage, I keep a watch on market developments, and things seem to be moving in the right direction. Apple announce the Vision Pro. 4K per eye? Ok - now we're talking. Quest 3 is released - I ignore it purely based on the PPD figure. I know it won't cut it. The price differential is irrelevant. I'll wait.
And yesterday, that decade long wait - for a headset to come out that might finally be able to do justice to the quality of content we had been producing as early as 2013 - finally came to an end.
I cannot stress how fantastic the service was from the staff at the Apple Store. A special shout-out to Caesar who went above and beyond to help me out. One of the things I was wary of having read countless threads here was the fit. The scan said I was a 21W, and that was bumped to a 25W because I need the optical inserts. Caesar got all W's from 21 to 25 for me, and the fitting session began.
Because I don't have a US prescription, and am aware that there is no way I will get the prescription inserts delivered before I leave (I am going to get a prescription later in the week, and will just have them delivered to a friend who will forward them onto me), I had a plan B in place, and bought contact lenses before I left so that I can at least use the thing in the meantime with the readers (I am both short and long sighted).
Plan A though of course was to have my regular glasses scanned at the store so that I could try the thing out with the correct prescription lenses, which is how I intend to use the device over the long term. Interestingly, when they scan your glasses and pick out the correct demo inserts, they do not have any visibility of what your prescription actually is. This both surprised and concerned me, because of course I know my prescription, and wasn't sure just how good the glasses scan would be, nor how closely the best demo set of inserts would match my prescription.
We start with the 25W as recommended by the scan (my default light seal is the 21W, but it gets bumped to the 25W once you account for the inserts), and after going through the set-up process there are two things that are obvious to me. Firstly, oh my god - the displays on this thing are astonishing. Secondly - uh oh. There's a serious problem with the optics.
I immediately noticed that at the periphery of my vision, the text in menus was blurry. I played around with the fit, and in doing this I noticed that if I compressed the headset to my face a little - thus bringing the lenses closer to my eyes - text even at the corner of the field of view snapped into perfect focus.
So, off with the 25W, and on with the 23W. It's better, but the same problem is still there. Let's skip the 22 and go straight to the 21W, and with the thinner cushion as well.
I make sure the headset is on tight (so easy to forget to tighten it up with the adjustment dial in the first few goes), and go back to the content I was using to check (just the default menu in Apple TV), and BOOM! There it is. Absolutely perfect clarity across the entire field of view. Yes, I had the warning about the distance to the eyes being too close, but just dismissed that. I have eyelashes - they are there to let me know if something is physically too close to my eyes, and I trust them way more than Apple's guidance that will undoubtedly be erring on the side of caution.
Let the demo commence.
Well, I say "let the demo commence", but Caesar was extremely accommodating with the things I wanted to check out, and basically let me take the lead, with me pausing every now and then to check if there was something he wanted to show me. I won't bore everyone with the details of what is covered in the scripted demo because you've no doubt read about it many times already. There were quite a few things I wanted to check out specifically for myself, and I basically got to "play around" with whatever I wanted to.
I hope nobody was filming me during the demo because there were times when the only way I can describe my reaction to what I was experiencing was sheer unbridled joy - I was literally laughing out loud at the audacity of just how incredible this thing is.
Yes - I know it's not perfect. Yes - I know there are almost no decent apps available for it (jeez people - the thing hasn't even been out 2 weeks and you're complaining? Really?).
And yes - I know it's expensive. At $3,500 (well, for me, $4,352.83 all in - I got the 1TB version) 8x what a Quest 3 costs. But you know what? It's a completely irrelevant comparison. For me, the Quest 3 - even at just $500 - is more expensive than the VP. Why? Because if I had bought one, it would just sit on the shelf next to the Oculus gathering dust. And there is nothing more expensive than something you buy, but don't ever use.
The one thing I simply cannot get my head around though is Apple's insistence in promoting this thing as "Spatial Computing". Fine guys - by all means that may be what you have spent countless billions on developing, and of course VisionOS has the fundamentals in place to be a superb "Spatial computing operating system", but that's not what you've actually ended up delivering.
Apple have built the greatest content consumption device the world has ever known. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the ability of the VP to create and show "spatial videos" was a completely unintentional by-product that wasn't even envisaged at the outset. "Hey guys, you know how we've got these cameras positioned close to the eyes so that we can represent the real world virtually? Well, we could also use them to..."
Apple Has Sold Approximately 200,000 Vision Pro Headsets
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Live virtual presence is going to be the killer app/use case for the AVP. It is going to be absolutely massive. /edit 15 minutes before the reviews go live How cool would it be if, as a thank you to the early adopters, Apple streamed the Super Bowl...
forums.macrumors.com
That is ultimately what will sell hundreds of millions of these things. Sure, not version 1 at $3,500 a pop. But I'm in no doubt that there is a way to get the price down to $2k for a "consumer" version within 18 months or so. Or perhaps offer them for $1K with a $50 a month subscription to Apple TV Vision+ that includes a pick and mix selection of live and archived Spatial Video streams to your favourite sports teams, live theaters, concert venues, comedy clubs, podcasts, nature spots (OMG those baby rhinos...), etc etc. The potential is limitless.
I've been waiting a decade for the future to arrive.
It's finally here.
And boy is it going to be one heck of a fun journey to be on.
Last edited:
