Why do people think that AVP needs a killer app?

[svnty6rs3]

I remember reading in first impression accounts from people who tried VP at the product announcement that they were able to read their iPhones while wearing the VP. I can't find those accounts now, but I remember being impressed that VP's rendering was that precise.

I came across this article that mentions being able to easily see their watch notifications.

The passthrough video camera quality of this headset is good — really, really good. Not as good as my own vision, but good enough that I could see the room well, see people in it with me, see my watch notifications easily on my wrist.

Adding another one from the verge as well.

The video passthrough was similarly impressive. It appeared with zero latency and was sharp, crisp, and clear. I happily talked to others, walked around the room, and even took notes on my phone while wearing the headset — something I would never be able to do with something like the Meta Quest Pro.

 

[Night Spring]

MacOS doesn’t have great tools to make it convenient to arrange 4+ windows neatly and proportionally across the deskstop.

I use https://folivora.ai/bettersnaptool.
I think there are other utilities that do similar things.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

having unlimited display space is a HUGE win. if I stretch out my Mac display to be HUGE... I don't necessarily need another screen. I have a huge display already... I can just shrink down the windows within the Mac. What am I missing here?

Resolution. It’s limited to 4k.

If you have a display that only shows 512x342 pixels, it doesn’t matter if it’s 9” or 99” big, it’s still resolution limited.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

In theory? Nothing.

In reality, you’ll be limited by poor support for this kind of window management in MacOS and terrible resolution that won’t be viable. You are imagining a giant MacOS virtual monitor that you’ve made 5 or 6 feet tall. Then you just put spread out multiple windows for all your MacOS apps across the desktop. They each appear as the equivalent of a full-screen app on a ~30” monitor.

MacOS doesn’t have great tools to make it convenient to arrange 4+ windows neatly and proportionally across the deskstop. It would be pretty clunky to work this way and maintain your workspace. More of an issue is that that a 4K virtual screen is really just 1080 effective (looks like) pixels at 2x retina scale. The content in each of those small windows would be tiny, where you’d be working with apps effectively using 600x480 resolution like it was 1996.

Plus those would only be simulated pixels. The Vision Pro uses the “more than 4K” resolution per eye to render the entire field of view. Any given app window is only going to use a fraction of that. What is a virtual 600 pixels might end up mapping to something wonky like 418 actual physical pixels of the Vision Pro’s micro OLED screen, leading to additional scaling artifacts

Well not really. I have an 85" display on my desk, but it shows 8k resolution. I make great use of it. It is truly wonderful. I actually have 3 additional 30" displays with it.

The problem is the max resolution the screen cast mac window inside the AVP is 4k resolution. However, you can augment many of the AVPs windows and in essence have limitless resolution outside your mac.

So you can have the AVP native Mail.app, the AVP native Messages.app, the AVP native FaceTime.app, the AVP native Calendar.app, the AVP native reminders app, etc. all out of the mac window and then the 4k resolution left inside the mac, can be used by more mac exclusive apps. It will be interesting to see how it actually works in practice.

 

[DeepStuff]

...
The problem is the max resolution the screen cast mac window inside the AVP is 4k resolution. However, you can augment many of the AVPs windows and in essence have limitless resolution outside your mac.

...

Is that official about the screen cast max being 4k? I have been trying to find the specs but cannot. If it was 8k, I was thinking you might be able to generate a very rounded wide screen something like 23040 x 1440 or something like that.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Is that official about the screen cast max being 4k? I have been trying to find the specs but cannot. If it was 8k, I was thinking you might be able to generate a very rounded wide screen something like 23040 x 1440 or something like that.

Please do not take that as "official". I *think* i recall reading soon after the official unveiling months ago. Perhaps I remember wrong, and/or perhaps the mac screen cast resolution has been changed/upgraded.

 

[kkee]

Vision Pro does not need a killer apps indeed, but it does need killer experience. It’s not really about what it can install. See, people often misunderstood that one or two apps and games will convince them to get VP. In reality, VP is a new platform, and as such it is capable of running any Apps that are designed for iOS. What make it different is the user interaction and experience with said Apps in a VR environment. A platform also does not only able to consume but create as well. VP is designed to create virtual media.

 

[pdoherty]

having unlimited display space is a HUGE win. if I stretch out my Mac display to be HUGE... I don't necessarily need another screen. I have a huge display already... I can just shrink down the windows within the Mac. What am I missing here?

Unlimited display space? I thought if you scaled the space larger on the VP it's still the same resolution. Or do you mean something else?

EDIT: I see my comment was unnecessary, as another poster already pointed this out.

 

[AVP_NEWB]

I know I'm taking some liberties with the term, but for me, the "killer app" is already here: I have 7 windows floating in space in my kitchen. I put music on the ceiling so it's out of the way, but always accessible at a glance. Notes is floating in the air to my far left, Messages is just left of center, I have a Safari window floating in front of me in the center, and then my mac virtual display floating in front of that (closer to me), because I'm using it's actual keyboard to type this. Photos is floating off to my right, and just for fun I put an enormous "AppleTV" window in the background behind that.

Oh, and I can still see the sink, the fridge, and my kiddo sitting on the couch in the background. Virtual windows floating in space? Looks pretty "killer" from here

EDIT: On a re-read, I realize this may come off as a bit over-excited, but in my defense: I really do feel like a kid-on-christmas-morning right now (and I'm in my 40s...)