I’m just slightly creeped out on a conceptual level about this whole thing

[krspkbl]

That advert Apple made for the headset is one of the creepiest and scariest things I've seen. If i didn't know it was an Apple ad I'd have thought it was for the upcoming season of Black Mirror.

The most unsettling parts are the 3d render of your face for FaceTime calls, the render of your eyes on the front of the headset and then the screen going blurry when you're doing something, and that scene where the dad is recording the birthday party.

If this headset takes off then humanity is going to be in even more trouble. It's bad enough everyone staring at their phones but strapping a device to your face? People will become more addicted to technology and even more isolated from reality. Instead of experiencing a moment in reality we'll record it in 4K 3D. We already have to whip our phones out to take pictures and videos. I don't know but that dad scene just feels wrong. It's going too far.

For those who don't know what Black Mirror is I recommend you watch it on Netflix. It's a show with dystopian sci-fi stories. You can watch them in any order. For episodes that could be related to AR/VR I recommend episodes

The Entire History of You (S1 E1)
Fifteen Million Merits (S1 E2)
Play Test (S3 E2)
San Junipero (S3 E4)
USS Callister (S4 E1)
Striking Vipers (S5 E1)

The name Black Mirror is from the look of our devices when turned off. Your phone is a black mirror, your iPad is a black mirror, your TV is a black mirror, your Apple Watch can be a black mirror.

 

[AL2TEACH]

It’s like: “just forget about the real world dear consumer. Just relax, and pay for our services.

Lol, do you feel that way when you go to a grocery store, turn on the faucet to get water or do anything else?

 

[Jensend]

It's great that it's there and they are fun to have around and play with, but they won't hit mainstream because of the point above: it's something optional/extra that we can choose to not get, and that it's something we can live without.

I think part of that just comes down to VR headsets released so far not being usable as general purpose personal computers. People look at a lot of text on screens. Most VR headsets have been poor devices for reading text, and haven't really had good operating systems with a wide variety of apps with good UI. The Vision Pro looks to make great strides in those areas. Many people have been able to replace their desktop/laptop computers with iPads or even iPhones. An AR/VR headset could have similar portability to an iPad, but with advantages of a desktop PC—lots of screen area.

Once VR/AR headsets are good at doing most of the things we currently do with computers of other form factors, in combination with things that are uniquely available to VR devices, they at least have the potential to become very popular.

 

[George Dawes]

Reality is overrated

I can’t wait tbh 😂

 

[AL2TEACH]

Geez, people please calm down. Some are going off in directions that show you really like Sci-fi, lol. Sounds like a mixture of Minority Report and Ready Player One. Whew, really hope some of you are just joking

 

[matrix07]

Don’t get me wrong the tech is amazing. But I dunno.. the whole ‘look at this fake lake while the real world is falling apart‘ aspect of the presentation gave me a bad vibe. Also the part with having it on while your kid is interacting with you.

Just sitting in your house producing and consuming content with this thing on your face.. it’s the perfect metaphor. ‘Just be happy and don’t think about it’

Am I alone in this, or is anyone else feeling this?

Just put your Screen Time for Vision Pro to an hour a day. Problem solved. 😄

 

[Sami13496]

You said it perfectly. I know exactly how you feel. I felt same when I watched the presentation.

Some people will defend this thing and some of their reasoning might sound convincing but don’t fall for that, you are 100% right.

”You have to understand. Most people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured and so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

 

[redheeler]

Since reality now looks like this:

I for one welcome our new VR overlords.

 

[Rradcircless]

I know the image is real. But it’s fighting the symptoms and not the cause. It’s like: “just forget about the real world dear consumer. Just relax, and pay for our services. Let them entertain you while we literally cover your eyes to hide reality“

You’ve described Meta's dystopian vision. They’ve built a fake world to play in, Apple are expanding the world you inhabit.

I don’t know what form future iterations of Vision Pro will possess but they’ll surely increase user visibility.

 

[Rainshadow]

Don’t get me wrong the tech is amazing. But I dunno.. the whole ‘look at this fake lake while the real world is falling apart‘ aspect of the presentation gave me a bad vibe. Also the part with having it on while your kid is interacting with you.

Just sitting in your house producing and consuming content with this thing on your face.. it’s the perfect metaphor. ‘Just be happy and don’t think about it’

Am I alone in this, or is anyone else feeling this?

No. I don’t feel this. How is this any different from television or going to a theater?

All this news and these reviews about how this alienates you from the “real world”.
meanwhile…. that is NO DIFFERENT than all other forms of media we consume from our phones to our televisions.

does no one else understand that this is “an enhancement of” what we have instead of “in addition to”? In fact, 2 hour battery life when not plugged in may even force you to stop watching Gilmore girls or whatever.

No. This isn’t some dystopia. It’s a better way, arguably, to do what we already do.

 

[4389842]

I think eventually “augmented reality” will just superimpose a more pleasant “reality” over the real one. If you step outside your house with your AR glasses on and you see homeless encampments on the sidewalk, the glasses will replace them with an image of beautiful flower gardens. It sounds like a joke, but I could totally see it happening.

Nothing to see here! Drink your Soylent Green and move along!

 

[4389842]

No. I don’t feel this. How is this any different from television or going to a theater?

This is vastly different from the theater or TV: with any of those, people in your vicinity can experience what you experience by merely being there. With any VR or even AR headset, they will not, unless _maybe_ they don one too and _maybe_ they have access to a shared experience.

The same with that ‘father recording the birthday’: if you use a regular iPhone to snap photos or video of some event or a trip, you already risk not really being in the moment but at least you are still ‘there’ with others being able to see you. Not so much with that thing on your head.

If not executed right, tech like this has the ability to make us even more disconnected from reality than many of us already are (if you hadn’t noticed, things aren’t going all that well with the warming, the forest fires, the Amazon in near irreversible decline, …). Add to that the ever declining level of education across the Western world and well…

At least Apple are still trying to maintain connection between the wearer and others via the transparency features or the exterior ‘eye projection’ screen and I hope they focus on some productivity focused apps.

The Metaverse set of commercials are much more disturbing in my view…

In any case:

 

[H_D]

While I liked the device itself and how it could improve media consumption and – in time – content production, there is a very clear SF-dystopian-vibe that weaved through the presentation. The too-slick-models, alone in their work- and living spaces that felt like overrendered mock-up-backgrounds, there slow movements, the hyper-polished flair is something we know from many movies/series as hallmark of the upper class in SF-movies. There also was a feeling of watching a strange episode of The Black Mirror (which is more satire than SF, which made the connotation even weirder), and the idea of what all this will mean, ten years down the road, for real life, is in a nutshell frightening. We have experienced how the smartphone has taken over life, how social media / chat-tools rather isolate than connect, how artists at a concert practically beg the audience to let their phones stay in the pocket and enjoy an actual live-experience. Last year, when in Dublin, I was baffled to see how young people standing in groups never ever took their headphones/ear-pods off/out, even when talking to each other, which made their interaction look totally off. I have had employees who wanted to have their headphones on all day or want to work 100% at home. I can only guess at the level of further isolation that a device that grabs an experience that is much more impressive than smartphones and headphones offer, will have on people once it has reached a mass audience. The fakefacb-projection will replace TransparencyMode on headphones and thus you can wear the AppleVison all day. We're in for even strange(r) days....

 

[subjonas]

This is vastly different from the theater or TV: with any of those, people in your vicinity can experience what you experience by merely being there. With any VR or even AR headset, they will not, unless _maybe_ they don one too and _maybe_ they have access to a shared experience.

The same with that ‘father recording the birthday’: if you use a regular iPhone to snap photos or video of some event or a trip, you already risk not really being in the moment but at least you are still ‘there’ with others being able to see you. Not so much with that thing on your head.

If not executed right, tech like this has the ability to make us even more disconnected from reality than many of us already are (if you hadn’t noticed, things aren’t going all that well with the warming, the forest fires, the Amazon in near irreversible decline, …). Add to that the ever declining level of education across the Western world and well…

At least Apple are still trying to maintain connection between the wearer and others via the transparency features or the exterior ‘eye projection’ screen and I hope they focus on some productivity focused apps.

The Metaverse set of commercials are much more disturbing in my view…

In any case:

Those big screens will still exist for social viewing. The headset doesn’t replace those. A dad (eg.) who gets this headset isn’t going to throw away the TV so his family has nothing to watch. And he’s not going to go off into a room by himself to watch a movies on his own unless he was already doing so. This headset is an enhancement of what we already do. It’s a replacement of our personal screens, namely our phones and laptops—not social screens. Families and friends are still going to watch movies together as often or rarely as they did before, this headset will not change that.

And just because someone is wearing something on their head does not automatically mean they are not present in the moment. If someone was wearing a Zorro mask, are they not fully present? Of course they are present because you can see their eyes and hear them and they can see and hear you. The key to presence is access to eyes and ears (and face and everything else but I mean eyes and ears are what devices usually block that isolates us), which the headset makes sure to keep as open and accessible as you choose. And the headset is even better than a Zorro mask because it shows all of the area surrounding the eyes, so you can fully read facial expressions. It doesn’t hide the face (again, unless you choose to). The headset keeps the ball completely in the user’s court as to how connected or disconnected they want to be.
Sure, it looks different and the concept is new and strange, but that’s a temporary issue until we get used to it like we get used to all new things. The important thing is that all the information we need for real life in-person social interaction is there.

 

[MindYourMind]

An important thing to realize as far as I’m concerned is that there’s no difference between spatial experiences through tech and direct experiences of everyday life through our senses - both experiences happen only as thoughts in our heads.

Our eyes don’t see, they only receive light rays that transform in our minds as the thoughts of the images that make up our everyday lives, or augmented lives.

For us to be able to see something, light rays from the surrounding need to correspond with light rays as thoughts in memory in our minds first - only then we’ll recognize something optically. Hence, we think what we see, not see what we see.

The evolution of tech is basically the evolution of the known in the mind, which in turn is a spectacularly intelligent illusory manifestation of the singular movement of light and sound that life is.

I very much enjoy the evolution of tech, but whatever the experiences are that it’ll give me and no matter how I’ll enjoy them, they won’t delude me into believing I need tech to experience the extraordinary, because the extraordinary is what everyday life already is to me.

 

[tny]

Don’t get me wrong the tech is amazing. But I dunno.. the whole ‘look at this fake lake while the real world is falling apart‘ aspect of the presentation gave me a bad vibe. Also the part with having it on while your kid is interacting with you.

Just sitting in your house producing and consuming content with this thing on your face.. it’s the perfect metaphor. ‘Just be happy and don’t think about it’

Am I alone in this, or is anyone else feeling this?

Stanislaw Lem's *The Futurological Congress* comes to mind, though in that the hallucinated utopia overlaying a toxic dump reality is the product of medication, not VR glasses.

 

[bollman]

 

[itunexify]

I agree with your thoughts. But this is the wrong forum: people here would defend every Apple decision at any cost, and they’re ready to leave reality to enter the Apple universe. For context, if the Vision Pro had been a Meta product, nobody here would have appreciated it. Lack of critical thinking is depressing and the supporting reasons they presented are fallacious and partial.

 

[aibloop]

Don’t get me wrong the tech is amazing. But I dunno.. the whole ‘look at this fake lake while the real world is falling apart‘ aspect of the presentation gave me a bad vibe. Also the part with having it on while your kid is interacting with you.

Just sitting in your house producing and consuming content with this thing on your face.. it’s the perfect metaphor. ‘Just be happy and don’t think about it’

Am I alone in this, or is anyone else feeling this?

Any tool and technology can be used in a dystopian way... Including the ones you are using right now.


The reality today is that your digital footprint is siphoned up and analyzed to determine the best way to sell you or something to you.

Currently most other big tech companies are trying to sell the idea that artificial brains are needed to help you do work... Without disclosing if the information learned about YOU and from you is an asset...


At-least on the face of it, Apple is saying they will not sell you out. Considering how litigation happy people are... Saying this is the biggest guarantee you can have today.

 

[MindYourMind]

In Apple’s movie we’re told that “Experiences on Vision Pro can also expand in three dimensions, filling the entirety of your space. Like in de mindfulness app, where you can create a moment of calm.”

I’ve no doubt this app on Vision Pro can give us amazing calmness and tranquility. Don’t think at all something’s wrong with such an experience following visualizations and accompanying serene music. But the point to understand I think is that this calmness isn’t by itself, it’s dependent, which is not the calmness within that is by itself and not dependent. Now, what is this dependent calmness or what could it be? It’s nothing but hypnosis which appears as calmness. Again, it’s fine, I mean, have that dependent experience as much as you want, but know fully well it’s happening only a thought in the mind and is, like any other experience, based on duality. You couldn’t experience calmness if it wasn’t happening with agitation together in the same moment. Dependent calmness is calmness and agitation together, or vice versa. The experience of one of them is half an experience. Such is the illusory nature of any experience. But besides the illusory calmness of the mind, there’s also the self-existing calmness of your true self in life. Enjoy dependent experiences but don’t led them fool you into thinking they’re real.

 

[sevoneone]

Everyone’s reaction continues to be around the POV of the person in the headset vs. POV of the people around them. That is what bothers me the most. Sure it is great that the person in the headset gets to control how much reality they let in or out, or that they can choose to show their face. But what is the impact for the people on the other side of that interaction?

That is where the marketing as presented becomes a bit uncanny and, I would say, even self centered. It goes all out selling the the idea the person using the device is going to have a great experience and still be able to interact with the real world. But meanwhile, everyone in the real world has to deal with talking to you through a machine?

And no, even though people have their face in their phones too much, this is on a whole other level and you can’t compare it. You see, with the phone, when you decide to engage the device comes down and the technology layer goes away. Maybe that is what so many of us find disturbing in all the promo material for the vision: We never see anyone take the thing off, even if it is a room full of people.

IMHO that incidental user experience is more critical toward gaining acceptance of consumers than anything else. All we’re seeing so far are some pretty awkward feeling examples.

 

[Longplays]

Everyone’s reaction continues to be around the POV of the person in the headset vs. POV of the people around them. That is what bothers me the most. Sure it is great that the person in the headset gets to control how much reality they let in or out, or that they can choose to show their face. But what is the impact for the people on the other side of that interaction?

That is where the marketing as presented becomes a bit uncanny and, I would say, even self centered. It goes all out selling the the idea the person using the device is going to have a great experience and still be able to interact with the real world. But meanwhile, everyone in the real world has to deal with talking to you through a machine?

And no, even though people have their face in their phones too much, this is on a whole other level and you can’t compare it. You see, with the phone, when you decide to engage the device comes down and the technology layer goes away. Maybe that is what so many of us find disturbing in all the promo material for the vision: We never see anyone take the thing off, even if it is a room full of people.

IMHO that incidental user experience is more critical toward gaining acceptance of consumers than anything else. All we’re seeing so far are some pretty awkward feeling examples.

Think of how people interact with others wearing eyeglasses, sunglasses, goggles, face masks, face shields, helmets and other object obstructing the face.

If you are well mannered you redirect your attention to the person you are talking to or at least facing.

I think Gen Z will be better adapt to this than anyone older than me.

 

[Longplays]

How dreadful for ad-supported AR headsets for users who can only afford cheaper than Apple products.

Check the user experience of Android smartphones below the $429 iPhone SE price point. It is thematically similar to that user experience.

Google and Meta are salivating over this.

 

[JM]

Secondly, this is not being looked at as a replacement for real human interaction. It may enhance it, in some scenarios.

“Enhance” it?

Please do share how it would “enhance” it.

I mean, I can maybe think of one particular example how it might “enhance” a particular kind of human interaction… but other than that, what are you imagining?

 

[JM]

How dreadful for ad-supported AR headsets for users who can only afford cheaper than Apple products.

Check the user experience of Android smartphones below the $429 iPhone SE price point. It is thematically similar to that user experience.

Google and Meta are salivating over this.

Man I love that YouTube video ❤️