Vision Pro Creator Mike Rockwell Has Considered Leaving Apple

[Haiku_Oezu]

Also... I would love to explore the 20,000 year old cave paintings in Lascaux from walking around in my living room.

Yeah, totally
I know “content consumption” is used as a punchline around these parts but honestly if you ever tried VR you know how cool it is to slip on a headset and experience a 3D environment

It’s the reason I’m looking forward to the Steam Frame, I have a PsVR2 but I think
I’ll get rid of it because it’s got such a tight grip on my head that it’s just plain uncomfortable to use

 

[Jason2000]

I think anyone who's been intimately involved with, and/or responsible for, two of the larger "dud" areas in Apple of late (Vision Pro & Siri are right at the top of that list) definitely should consider a change.

He was brought on to fix Siri after the other guys could not figure it out so he is not responsible for Siri. And the VP may not have been a success in the normal sense but in no way is it a dud.

 

[TMRJIJ]

Disagree. You want this guy creeping around your birthday party?

View attachment 2624017

Does he come with the Vision Pro?

Not much different from the people using their phone cameras like they’re prescription glasses, instead of living in the moment.

 

[MrWayne]

I think the best use cases for Vision Pro have been in the medical field. Medical devices are already expensive so Vision Pro is cheap by comparison. That said, even a person with the money to spend on Vision Pro is not likely to wear that thing on their head when friends come over.

When a friend pulled out the original iPhone and showed it off you got that "gotta have it" feeling just watching them use it. Vision Pro is too big and heavy to carry around so you never just see somebody using it. Even if you were at somebody's home and they started using Vision Pro you (A) would not see whatever cool thing they were seeing and (B) you would feel like that person was just isolated from everybody else and looked awkward. There are no opportunities to create a "gotta have it" feeling and even if there were, you wouldn't get that feeling.

Even if your friend let you try out their Vision Pro, half the time it may not work for them because of the customization that was done for each user for fit and eyesight when they visited Apple Store and bought their Vision Pro. Strong chance one person's Vision Pro won't work for another person.

I have seen Apple executives using iPhones, Apple Watches, iPads and MacBooks. I have never seen an Apple executive wearing a Vision Pro -- not even on stage during product announcement -- it was demonstrated using videos.

Apple should have simply made it a limited-release product targeting specific industries like Health Care.

It seems like you have never experienced it first. You should.

 

[klasma]

Future versions of the Vision Pro or its descendants will be lighter and cheaper, the way tech normally evolves.

The iPhone must be abnormal then. 😉

 

[turbineseaplane]

He was brought on to fix Siri after the other guys could not figure it out so he is not responsible for Siri. And the VP may not have been a success in the normal sense but in no way is it a dud.

Since it's not a success in a "normal sense"
In what "sense" is the Vision Pro a success?

 

[ThatGuyInLa]

I don't undertstand why the glasses are not just wireless. Mostly all battery. Just enough tech to blackout the lenses when needed, and connect wirelessly. Thus keeping all the computational stuff in the super computer you are already carrying around in your pocket. Your phone.

 

[mlayer]

I don't undertstand why the glasses are not just wireless. Mostly all battery. Just enough tech to blackout the lenses when needed, and connect wirelessly. Thus keeping all the computational stuff in the super computer you are already carrying around in your pocket. Your phone.

Probably because to pump that much data wirelessly using the user has to deal with a significant amount of lag. Even HD or 4K over AirPlay has some lag.

 

[Kriss_De_Valnor]

I will be laughing if he goes to MS 😅

 

[reden]

Vision Pro is Tim Cooks legacy. What legacy is that is up for debate. So if Tim Cook is leaving, he's Cooked if all he had as protection was Tim.

 

[CarAnalogy]

That's because Craig Federighi keeps remaining in charge. The guy who has presided over Siri this whole time, the guy who says every year he's fixed the keyboard when he hasn't, the guy who calls basic overdue features "an age of wonders."

 

[Kriss_De_Valnor]

Developers aren't going to build apps for a product that few people use and might have no future.

Yep, it what happened to Windows Mobile/Windows Phone.

 

[klasma]

I don't undertstand why the glasses are not just wireless. Mostly all battery. Just enough tech to blackout the lenses when needed, and connect wirelessly. Thus keeping all the computational stuff in the super computer you are already carrying around in your pocket. Your phone.

Latency and bandwidth. The AR pass-through requires processing the external view and superimposing the interactive UI at 90 fps, for ~8K pixels. (As well as the spatial audio that needs to be in sync with head-tracking.) Doing that reliably wirelessly would be very difficult, maybe impossible. If the connection breaks down, someone walking around with the headset would risk hurting themselves when they suddenly can’t see their surroundings anymore. Think about how often connection troubles are being reported with HomePods, which have much lower requirements.

The Vision Pro also contains a specially developed R1 chip for fast AR processing, and the upgrade from M2 to M5 was a noticeable improvement in UI fluidity. The “super computer” in an iPhone probably wouldn’t quite cut it, also considering that it needs to do the regular iPhone background processing in parallel, not to mention that AVP users occasionally want to use both at the same time.

 

[MrWayne]

Yep, it what happened to Windows Mobile/Windows Phone.

BIG LIES!!!!!!

 

[Kriss_De_Valnor]

All these bad comments are paid by Meta to promote their ultra light phoenix headset.

Well It looks like Meta is paying a good money because I got one 😅

 

[mlayer]

I will be laughing if he goes to MS 😅

Why would that happen? Since Nadella took over MS has chosen to back away from desktop/mobile/gaming/hardware to focus on the cloud. Not sure how Rockwell would help with that.

Most of the comments in this thread have basically dumped on Rockwell for being the head guy for Vision Pro, and then Siri when Cook and Federighi threw him into the trenches to salvage it. In both cases it's thankless work because of the disparate timelines involved. It would be a shame if Rockwell left because, patents and IP aside, he really believes in a different form of computing and the underlying technology behind it. If he goes, that's real brain drain that could be leveraged on future projects. And for all the talk of the Cook-Ternus transition being gradual and frictionless, Rockwell appears at times to be different kind of voice (and ego) to challenge the status quo, which Apple needs now as much as anything.

 

[Kriss_De_Valnor]

Vision Pro is Tim Cooks legacy. What legacy is that is up for debate. So if Tim Cook is leaving, he's Cooked if all he had as protection was Tim.

Tim Cook is not leaving.

 

[Kriss_De_Valnor]

Why would that happen? Since Nadella took over MS has chosen to back away from desktop/mobile/gaming/hardware to focus on the cloud. Not sure how Rockwell would help with that.

He could easily join MS Copilot team. Anyway we shall se what is going to happen.

 

[MrWayne]

He could easily join MS Copilot team. Anyway we shall se what is going to happen.

There was a Microsoft dude working on HoloLens who hurt women at the office and got fired. So Microsoft basically cancelled the project.

 

[maxoakland]

Wow. Someone would rather leave Apple than rebuild Siri? Is that project just cursed?

 

[maxoakland]

AVP today = View attachment 2624004

AVP in 10 years = View attachment 2624005

Notice Apple never released the top one as a product. They waited til they could release the bottom one

 

[alfonsog]

Vision Pro sold 200-300,000 units the first 100 days but then plateaued to ~400,000 the first year; half of expectations.
Not really a mass market device. Original Macintosh cost $7,500 in today’s dollars and it couldn’t do much at all but it still sold nearly as many its first year as Vision Pro.

 

[egdiroh]

The AVP technology works really well. That part, is mature. It is too battery hungry, weighs too much, and is too expensive to be a consumer device. I am glad that this technology is live getting used and iterated on.

Just the improvements in the two major releases we've had since launch have greatly improved it. I don't think AirPods or Apple Watch hit the ground running. Just this was hyped to be the future. And some of that was external. I think now that the headset fury has died down we might see some good progress.

That being said, I was somewhat bummed that they didn't through all the m5 improvements towards battery life and instead also increased rendering. I think the product builds on a lot of pieces that are already important in their ecosystem. So I am hopeful that this category will progress. Hopefully Apple won't lose their position.

 

[MrWayne]

The AVP technology works really well. That part, is mature. It is too battery hungry, weighs too much, and is too expensive to be a consumer device. I am glad that this technology is live getting used and iterated on.

Just the improvements in the two major releases we've had since launch have greatly improved it. I don't think AirPods or Apple Watch hit the ground running. Just this was hyped to be the future. And some of that was external. I think now that the headset fury has died down we might see some good progress.

That being said, I was somewhat bummed that they didn't through all the m5 improvements towards battery life and instead also increased rendering. I think the product builds on a lot of pieces that are already important in their ecosystem. So I am hopeful that this category will progress. Hopefully Apple won't lose their position.

I don’t understand why AVP is a failure. Have you ever tried a Quest 3?

 

[mlayer]

He could easily join MS Copilot team. Anyway we shall se what is going to happen.

Why would Rockwell jump from one fire into another more raging one? At least at Apple users aren't leaving in droves because of Siri, they're just asking to fix it.