Is anyone else worried about the apple vision pro?
i wouldn't normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail... but it's apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with "tech reviewers" and rich folk who can afford it.
what's really concerning is that it's not marketed as a new VR headset, it's marketed by apple and these "tech reviewers" as the new iphone, something you take with you everywhere and do your daily tasks in, consume content in etc...
and it's dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can't look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can't mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
this is why i think all these tech giants (google meta apple etc) were/are interested in the "metaverse". it holds both your vision and your hearing hostage, you cannot do anything else when using it but to just use the thing. a 100% efficiency attention machine, completely blocking you from the outside world.
i'm not concerned about this iteration as much as people are not hyped about this iteration. just like how people are hyped about the next apple vision, i'm more worried about the next iterations with somewhat lower price tag and better software availability. i hope it flops and i know it probably won't achieve any sort of mainstream adoption even if it's deemed a success because it probably can't get less bulky and look less dorky, but the possibility is still worrying. what are your thoughts?
Google glass never actually “launched” in any meaningful sense of the word, and was a rough-as-fuck user experience.
Ironically what did it in was the ability to record video. People were so panicked about being filmed that they started reacting violently to glass users (called glassholes). From that point on it sort of became a laughing stock. Not cool. A tainted product.
Apple seems to have mitigated the obvious pitfalls, let’s see how it shakes out.
It's funny that you don't know what you don't know. Google glass definitely launched, and is used by certain businesses. They went B2B instead of B2C and apparently did well enough.
You are right! There were enterprise editions that apparently were for sale until 2023.
Yeah, they had a surprisingly long life time, given they were created by Google.
In terms of privacy in public, the Vision Pro isn’t much different from Google Glass. Both have video recording capabilities, and both displayed some form of indication when recording.
The only real difference is that the Vision Pro is easier to spot in public due to the bulkier design.
It will be interesting to see if there will be similar “Glasshole” reaction to the Vision Pro once they are seen in public enough.
Not like vision peo aint also recording everything :p
And if not for the environment travking then for their passthrough and tracking.
And probably a shitload of telemetry.
That's a bingo!
Some people call VR dystopian, but it's got great potential too.
During COVID while I was living alone and we were under lockdown...
I used a Quest to watch movies in a virtual theater with a bunch of people from around the world. I remember being in a theater watching an absolutely ridiculous Nicolas Cage movie laughing my ass off with a bunch of dudes from Australia. Another time I watched a cricket game with some people who explained the rules to me and kinda gave me some play by play on what was happening.
I've also attended a few support group meetings in VR for coping with loss that had quite a lot of attendants. The meeting was run by a licensed group therapist and we took turns sharing and then reflecting on each others stories. It was frankly amazing.
I also played mini golf with friends of mine as well as had a couple meetings over a round of mini golf with the other guy on my design team during lockdown. Honestly the best virtual meetings I ever had.
All of the above were very social and very positive experience. I didn't feel far away from people, I felt connected to them.
Same way a smartphone can be a useful tool that enhances your life or a screen you stare at for hours consuming bullshit TikTok videos. You're in control of what you make of it. You can also stick to a dumb phone and not participate at all.
Not to take away from your experience because I'm sure it was genuinely wonderful, but all I can picture for that support group is a bunch of absurd VRchat avatars sitting in a circle for a therapy session.
There were no insane avatars, everyone looked pretty normal. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I’ve never used those. How does it work, you see a picture of the people or is it real video of them?
This was in Altspace VR which unfortunately got axed by Microsoft IIRC, but on there you kinda looked like a less shitty version of one of those Nintendo avatars customized however you wanted.
The craziest anybody looked on there would be to have like rainbow or blue hair or something along those lines. It was pretty tame compared to like the furry anime cat sex doll looking things some people run around in VR Chat with. It also wasn't overrun with screaming children which I think is VR Chat's biggest overall problem.
Anyway, that support group thing I think has since moved to another platform, I forget which.
There is nothing wrong with 10 Ugandan Knuckles who just need to find closure
How many of them have fursonas?
People will rip off the headsets if the ads are too intrusive and annoying. Which is why they’ll either be dead subtle, or they’ll offer you paid ways to avoid them.
I don’t think there’ll be mass adoption of this either way, mainly because it’s an expensive gadget coming at a time when folks on median incomes are feeling the pinch.
Apple are masters of subtle corporate propaganda. They've indoctrinated a generation of people to believe Android is their enemy by making their messages show up in a less readable colour in the messaging app.
I think that's mainly in the US, though. For the rest of the world the price tag is too high and the iPhone is the mark of the pretentious or the hipster. Or the iOS developer 😄
The rest of us are happy with our Android phones.
The blue message shit is just peak Apple bullshit. Signal's messages are blue to, hopefully they continue to be more popular. Its so much better in every dimension and it actually preserves one's privacy much better
No one cares about the color the care about the fact that if the color is green that means sending videos will be garbage quality and they can’t reduce texts over data and can’t FaceTime or get replies in line. Which is fair because androids somehow still use sms and they finally started getting rcs with encryption and now google already started using the data for their ai
Have you visited a website without an ad blocker recently? Because typical web advertising has become as intrusive and annoying as technically possible, and millions of people willingly accept that.
VR/AR/Spatial Whatever has the potential to be just as bad, if not far worse.
Do you mean without an ad-blocker?
i mean it's easily circumventable, "and now you don't have to worry about losing progress on your favorite game or losing battery, because when you are not using the headset it goes to sleep mode" or whatever, but you are right if the ads are too annoying people are probably not going to use it, or will they? this is the thing i already think the way ads currently are is very intrusive but there's a large segment of people who are fine with it. and subtle ads are way worse imagine if they constantly put ads in your peripheral vision. it's cartoonishly evil which is why it probably won't happen but even giving that power to them is dangerous.
I'm not american and i can't imagine a world where someone with these weird ass ski goggles don't get laughed at.
Not everyone cares if strangers are laughing at them. Especially the rich.
People used to think someone who used a cell phone in public was a weirdo too. I remember at my high school grocery store job coworkers judging someone walking down the aisle on their phone.
Wow your country sounds horrible and toxic, I hope things get better and it evolves to the point where people can live their own lives without needless bullying and abuse for trivial things.
Could you imagine not having the social freedom to wear whatever the fuck you want without having someone else loudly judge you and tell you how to act?
/u/BruceTwarzen I hope you move to a better country from that shit hole you currently reside in and heal.
Maybe that user is still in secondary/high school and deals with that. I’m being charitable by this guess.
The last time I thought about what I might be perceived as when in public was when I was in school… I’m old now and free to go out in public with my partner in bad dragon hoodies.
Yesterday or a few days ago I've read that people already jailbreaked the vision. So if you must have one, you will still be able to tinker with it.
Someone found a way to crash the kernel, which may or may not lead to an exploit, which would be just the first step in a long process of developing a jailbreak. I wouldn't get too excited yet. Even if one does get released, Apple can just patch the exploit, and it could easily be years before a new jailbreakable exploit is found.
It's really easy to avoid if you don't use them.
Airpods are probably one of the ugliest pieces of tech ove seen in the last decade and yet somehow it doesn't seem to matter. Never overestimate apple's customer base.
I don’t think they’re any uglier than other wireless earbuds. I think it’s kinda cute that they stuck with the iPod earbud look without the wires.
Not that I have AirPods. I’m a Jabra man myself.
They're pretty much the only company on the planet that can push the "because your friends have one" aspect in their marketing and succeed. Apple users think they're all part of this exclusive club and really don't care that they're straight up being robbed by the cost.
I love spaceship games (think Elite: Dangerous and the like), and motorsport games. Anything where you're set in a cockpit is a perfect candidate for VR. All I wanted was a headset that would act analagous to a dumb monitor - simply provide vision and audio and head tracking (with "simply" being a relative term - the challenges overcome and technology produced to date is, admittedly, amazing).
But no. What we have are a bunch of privacy-invading face huggers. I shouldn't need to sign in to anything to use a piece of hardware that should require zero internet access (which is why anything Razer is also on my do not buy list).
So am I concerned about the Apple Vision Pro? Couldn't give a shit to be honest. I'm not their customer.
Doesn’t valve provide login-free setup and use of SteamVR for the index and the like? Granted, you’ll need a beefy PC for it, and probably some kind of storefront for most games. But at least no Facebook login strapped to your head.
It does! It can be played fully offline, doesn’t require an account, and works great with my pirated copy of elite dangerous. The index is the shit! Apple vision pro can’t do shit for me that the index has done for years now.
OK @max, @thorbot, I didn't know about this. I'd written off all VR in protest against corporate overreach. Time to do some more investigation...
The index is the GOAT, I highly recommend it if you have a powerful gaming PC to run it and are concerned about privacy
Please let me know if you ever find one. Best I have seen are the ones without head tracking or laggy tracking.
At the risk of facts getting in the way:
Adguard home for built in encrypted DNS. Better UI (imo) and uses the same lists.
Never knew about it, thank you for teaching me something new)
I think about the Vision like I think about a new Gucci bag or a new set of Air Jordans. There's a small, but very visible, community that is super into that product, probably for reasons not related to its actual functionality. The difference is that there's a lot of overlap between Apple fans and broader technology enthusiast groups, where we're more isolated from the Gucci and Jordan communities. There are lots of brand-based fan groups who will happily accept branded merch or content, but not interpret that as 'advertising.'
The rest of the world tolerates spyware and especially ads if they feel like the product is worth the intrusion. There's a reason Meta doesn't have a logo watermark foating in the corner of Quest view field. There's a reason VR is still very niche, almost entirely limited to gaming.
Maybe Vision's AR experience will change that. Maybe viewing your entire life through a video camera with overlaid graphics has real-world value beyond privacy in co-working spaces. I doubt that value is $3000 and think Vision is more like Apple's Newton than Apple's iPhone.
It's probably more like the Apple II than the Newton or iPhone. It cost $1300 at the time, which is about $6300 today. For early adopters, it was a revolutionary glimpse of the future. It took another 10 years for it to become widespread.
I mean, you can just take it off?
Also, regarding the adoption of the headset, I think it’s absolutely crazy to say that it probably won’t get less bulky. Tech is constantly getting smaller and that will be the number one priority with the headset.
If they can make the price and comfort level right, then I do think it becomes a mainstream product. Not saying people wear it 24/7, but that most households would have one, and it would become somewhat important for WFH and remote meetings.
I’m not a fanboy for Apple, but personally I just think it is the tech of the (relatively) near future.
it won't get less bulky compared to phones. the headset will still need lenses, a display which itself needs to be a certain distance away from your eyes, a board for processing, a separate battery pack, audio, wifi, straps, space for some airflow so it doesn't overheat and damage the display etc etc. small form factors have come a long way and it can probably get thinner, but i don't think apple vision pro is that far off from the physical limit of how much smaller it can get.
Hmm, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. They can 100% decrease the size of the processing bits and reduce weight.
I just think it’s very shortsighted to look at such an early version of the product and say “it won’t change much”. Especially when however many years ago you could have said that what we’ve got right now isn’t possible.
Never seen pancake lenses, huh?
Oh, tech will just stop evolving after this point? Okay, I guess now is the time it stops. Right now.
I'd love to be able to set up a laptop and have much more screen real estate by putting on a headset. The ability to watch something like game of thrones on an airplane without the 6 year old behind me seeing shit would also be nice.
The biggest downside of the apple headset is that it's apple and their stupid ecosystem.
I mentioned this in another Apple Vision thread, but that was one of the proposed use cases for Steve Mann's original EyeTap device.
I have some sympathy for the slippery slope argument. Used to be you didn't need a smart phone, but both my current and last job wanted you to use a two factor authentication app, which required either apple or android. Probably some way around that requirement, but then now you're the difficult weirdo in the office.
Many password managers like 1Password and Last Pass and KeePass and all the big ones can store MFA details nowadays.
Sure, but if it's generating a code in real time, and you're trying to sign into your work laptop, you essentially need to have another computer on hand, right? Or I know back in the day they would give you a little physical device that generates the codes.
No.
someone should make a de-facebooked custom rom for the meta quest
I think tech reviewers are really naive for thinking that Apple Vision Pro is the future of computing just because it was made by Apple. Nobody wants to use their computer or watch movies in VR, except for in niche situations. My prediction is that users will quickly realize that they don't actually have any use for the Apple Vision Pro, and the product line will be discontinued.
Let’s bookmark your prediction and come back in 5 years when Apple has used the data they gathered from this headset to make a proper pair of AR glasses. Absolute shit take right along side all the people who said iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch would fail.
I heard simular things about the Apple Watch.
I think augmented reality will be the future. Once someone gets it, they will dominate the market.
I mean you're worried about something you don't even use yet showing you ads... Your android/iPhone has a front facing camera and doesn't force you to watch the advert via eye tracking. No ones does, because you would just buy something else
Apple will never do the ad eye tracking thing. And if they do? there’s this cool thing called taking the headset off. It’s not glued to your fucking face
If they are pushing ads that much, they will probably pause the ad until you put the device back on or close the application.
The person accepting the return can finish watching it, then. I am already not buying this thing at those prices.
So don’t put it back on. It’s not magnetized to your face. How is this hard to understand?
Calm down gummy worm, I was just discussing a potential process that ad servers will probably take.
So Apple is good because… you can stop using it?
Nobody said Apple was good, they're just noting that nobody is going to force you to use an Apple Vision product. You can go your whole life without putting one on if you like.
I think what the tech implies these big tech giants want for the world is more worrisome than the specific tech itself.
They may fail with this iteration or the next, but why do you think they're trying so hard insisting this is the next big thing? To survive, capitalism needs to create new problems to be solved. The smart phone didn't solve any problems we had, it created a desire, which then became a fear (FOMO), then it became a need, which then finally became a problem if you didn't have one.
If you're homeless today and want to get out of it, one of the first things you need is an address, then an internet connection, and a smart phone. Why? Because most jobs require it to get a hold of you and in many cases to facilitate the software used on the job.
They don't need to convince consumers to adopt the new tech per se. They just need to convince businesses that without the new technological progress, their competitors will leave them behind. Then it won't matter if you like the tech or not, you'll NEED it to have a job and survive. Just like the smart phone is today.
They're directing us, telling us how the future will look like based off of THEIR vision, not OURS.
That's what worries me. Not this AR headset, but rather the reasons they have for insisting this is the future we are all heading towards.
This is anecdotal, but I see all of these VR rooms or stores at malls or on outlet areas where you can play with VR heat and have fun. They are almost always empty. I VERY rarely ever see people in them.
There another entertainment venue near me that has bowing and games and stuff. They also have a VR area that I have never seen open. Don’t know if it’s just constantly broken or if nobody is actually interested in it.
Went to one of these with my co-workers. We were the only ones and nobody was there before we arrived and when we left there wasn't anybody else coming in either.
They probably have to constantly update the HW to actually get customers and then it has to be expensive enough that the few that come, make them a profit.
Eh, you're talking what, $1500 for a headset and rig? Even if you have 4 setups at one of those kiosks the cost to have someone running it is going to quickly outpace the cost of the hardware.
it's a toy for hype-susceptible tech-impaired rich snobs. what's to be worried about?
I will continue not using it. I was interested in Oculus until they sold to FB and then I nope'd right out of that. I really did think VR was neat, but various things kept me from pulling the trigger. If it becomes the only way to use chunks of the internet, I just won't use them; I grew up still in the analog world (though we did have BBS and very early dial-up in the '80s), and I could go back to it. I'd honestly miss educational content more than anything else, but I can get books. In my lifetime, that strategy would probably still work fine.
If the Apple Vision Pro is going to replace smartphones in the way Smartphones replaced flip phones, we wouldn’t have flip phones anymore.
Spoiler alert: we still have flip phones.
Lots of them, actually, albeit not “dumb” ones anymore… they all run either Android or KaiOS, and come with all the commensurate risks of having all your usage stats beamed up to the mothership for third-party sales and monetization.
Hell, we now have a rotary cell phone - the rotary un-smartphone - which is enjoying decent popularity and mental rent-free status among lots of techy people, despite being nothing more than a 1970s rotary dialler with an ePaper display for incoming text messages. And a few buttons for hard-set quick-dial options. I would love one myself if it wasn’t so expensive compared to a smartphone.
People were complaining when newspapers were new that itd take everyones attention and make people distant. I think its great that more VR stuff is happening because the tech can be used for so much and lets people experience things they might not have otherwise.
If you were hospitalized for a long period would you rather watch the ceiling/small TV or would you want to travel the world via VR?
All new tech can be used for good or bad but we shouldnt stop progressing
Just like how the iPod was the invention of the mp3 player.
The truth is society is really really malleable and stupid. That's just human nature. And of course it's going to be manipulated by people for power and wealth.
It'll go the same way as cable TV, and phones. It's the same exact path. We live within systems specifically created to market unneeded "wants". Just go outside and mingle with people... Some people literally seem like they have little humanity left in them, the just live for consumption. It's like addicts. It essentially is addiction for dopamine. Any product or nation/society that allows basically lawless marketing function will be the same.
So you're thoughts imo are accurate. BUT there's also another side of life. Once you stop falling for marketed bullshit and pop culture/media you can tune out all the bullshit. They will always prey on the weak. While I said all that keep in mind technology is like our civilizations pyramids or creation of democracy. Personally I have some hope in transhumanism, but you know pop news and marketing shit is going to make it all a divisive argument. Lol I'm probably doing that now. They do this partially as publicity and a advertising.
It's not about this or that it's about allowing growth of all things?
Idk... Just some rambling.
Isn't it interesting that it's taught as supply and demand, and not demand and supply?
Looking away in a headset doesn't make sense, no. But you can always close your eyes. Why wouldn't you be able to mute though? That would be insane, even by Apple in my opinion.
I'm not too worried. Only rich fools [meant to type "folks" but I'll let it stand] can afford it, and they can let themselves be brainwashed, I'm not too bothered.
For what it’s worth, Apple has had an attention API ( for checking if the user is interacting / viewing ) since the debut of their facial tracking sensors on the iPhone X. Although, Apple makes its very clear it’s not to be used for ads and the such. If it helps I don’t know of any developers / Apple abusing that API.
What is it used for then? Face recognition?
Edit: honest question before I come off as agressive :)
Thanks for the question, it actually made me look for the api. Looks like I misremembered it, and there aren’t actually any exposed APIs for developers regarding attention. Internally it’s used by iOS for checking when you’re looking at the screen for faceID and keeping the screen lit when you’re reading.
There are APIs for developers that expose the position of the users head, but apparently it excludes eye information. Looks like it’s also pretty resource intensive, and mainly for AR applications.
The faceID / touchID api essentially only returns “authenticated”, “authenticating”, and “unautheticated”. The prompts / UI are stock iOS and cannot be altered, save showing a reason.
Thanks for the answer!
Spacial Audio is another one. When watching a movie with headphones the sound always seems like is coming from the device. If you turn your head to the left, your right earbud becomes slightly louder, creating the illusion that the sound is coming from the screen. It’s pretty neat actually.
I have so much to say about this, I hardly know where to start. A few brief points:
Yes, this product direction is problematic in many many ways. There is a reason why science fiction has been speculating about these types of devices for decades and nearly always portraying the technology as an escape mechanism for a horrifying dystopian reality.
We’ve experienced several really big technology revolutions in just a few decades (pc, internet, social, mobile). All have brought wonderful improvements to life, but all have had profound, and unanticipated side effects. In all instances, we would have benefited as a society by interrogating consequences more completely at the beginning, rather than just letting market forces alone to drive them into mass adoption.
The good news is that none of this is really new. This appears to be a pretty good implementation of a UI model that consumers have been largely rejecting for over 30 years. There are absolutely very useful, very good uses for these UIs, but these are niche markets overall all.
In many ways, XR (a catch all term for both VR and AR) is a retro futuristic idea. This is a vision of the future as seen 40 years ago. Really innovative human computer interfacing doesn’t look like this anymore. Actually useful innovation involves things like agents, voice ui’s and so on (think Jarvis from the MCU).
The question is, can Apple’s marketing prowess and effectively infinite budget push a largely unpleasant, unneeded, and expensive product into mass adoption? I am hopeful that they can’t. I am hopeful that reality isn’t sci-fi dystopian enough to create a wide market for this. If they can, it may say more about how dystopian our real reality has become. That’s the really worrisome part to me.
Excuse me but 'voice UI' is a hell of a lot more retro futuristic than XR. That shit has been around in sci-fi for 60+ years easy and in real life for decades at this point and is still absolutely horrible to use for just about anything more complex than setting a timer and adding things to a list.
Let me clarify. My complaint about the retro-futuristic nature of XR is not the age of the idea. The problem is that this approach has been speculated about and productized in various ways for decades. Through all of that, it has never amounted to more than niche applications, has been rejected by wider markets repeatedly, and failed to inspire much more imagined usefulness beyond being an escape vehicle from some kind of real-world hellscape. Despite all of that, entities like apple insist on trying again, and again, and again. I am convinced that Tim Cook sees this as the future because of the residue of his childhood musing about the future. I know for a fact that Zuckerberg is motivated by exactly that.
Now let’s compare that to audio UIs. These have also been around for a long time. In that time, they have only become more pervasive, useful and inspirational (see again my reference to Jarvis). Additionally, I’m not just talking about the audio part of that interface. I’m talking about the agents that can act independently, and spontaneously to help humans do what the want to do. We are making tremendous progress on that front, but Apple is (in terms of this product line) mired in the past.
"pervasive, useful and inspirational"
Please provide some examples because I've obviously missed a lot of actually good Voice / Audio based UIs. All I've seen are incessant attempts to market something as the future that in reality at best is mildly helpful, normally annoying and forces you to resort to other interfaces, like your phone, and at worst are glaring privacy and security issues.
Every friend I have that buy into stuff like the Google "smart" speakers, Amazon Alexa etc are initially wowed and then it's relegated to playing music and some small task, nothing like they revolution they envisioned and in general just plain worse than a normal GUI.
What's even worse is that I feel it's regressing. Google Assistant in particular is worse now than 2 years ago, I blame this on too many features being added and they make it hard for the assistant to make a good guess of which tool/feature to use. I guess that is why they cleaned some out recently.
And if you think I'm just some one shitting on stuff that I personally don't enjoy then please know I've tinkered with this stuff extensively. I built my own personal voice based assistant that I integrated with Home Assistant to control lights, lock the door and check the humidity in the lizard terrarium. It's a tricky problem and in the end I came to the realization that even if I got it "perfect" for me it still wouldn't ever be all that useful. One thing I did that very few do is build a more conversational usage model. Typical interaction:
Me: Snips? Snips: Yes? Me: Can you turn the lights to 50% Snips: Absolutely, all lights or just one room? Me: Just the livingroom Snips: Done, anything else?
Thing is that it will always work poorly in a situation with multiple people around talking. It will always be a bit awkward talking to something incorporeal. And it will always be a computer there in the other end. Conversation and the medium of voice was built and designed for human interaction and a computer can't provide that. A conversation is so extremely based on context and it becomes hard and forced to always be mindful to provide the full context. And while you can add tech to help, like say presence sensors to note that you are in the living room and thus ask "just in the living room, all lights or some other room?" Or just assume, its still not going to give us a speaking partner like Jarvis for a very, very long time. And even then I wonder what the point would be? By the time we have AI at that level, being able to do proper inference to deduce context and intent, we're going to have neural interfaces and that is VASTLY more efficient and interesting. To have access to information directly in your thoughts and to control and interact with your environment in a completely seemless manner. I just don't see Voice UI as more than a stepping stone with very little intrinsic value outside academia and challenging conventions in the UI space.
If it succeeds, apple will pave the way, and then other options will emerge much like has happened with smartphones. There will be some FOSS version perfectly capable of blocking ads.
I mean, you can already use Monado on Linux for fully FOSS VR. I don't think a standalone headset with AR running Linux would be unthinkable at all, Valve already made 2 VR headsets and a handheld gaming device running Linux. They just need to combine those 2 things. There's also already a VR Linux desktop.
I'm waiting for a better index. So damn excited for that.
Eye tracking would probably be the only thing that would get me to upgrade from my Index tho
People are going to use these things irresponsibly like when they're driving.
I think for me this thing is a symbol of where we are and where we're heading in terms of not being able to look away from ads
The attention economy already has people hostage and blocked off from the outside world. No goggles required.
To play devil's advocate: If we're gonna have a tech-centric society, I can see where being able to make eye contact with people nearby and keep your hands free could make for a more wholesome experience than staring down at your phone for 80% of your waking life. And for people who are remote, being able to feel like you're occupying the same space and breathing and laughing together could be a solution for our extreme isolation.
But on the other hand, these are all problems that capitalism and big tech created in the first place, so...
I just don't understand how Apple, a company known for their sleek, elegant design aesthetics above all else, put their name on something that looks so dorky
I think how the headset looks only somewhat matters...
Apple has generated an image of being "the innovator" in technology. There was "no smartphone" until the iPhone came around (even though that statement is not completely accurate). Their computers are "superior" (even though that statement isn't necessarily accurate either). Still, the point is that the masses feel that Apple is a technologically innovative company and they still want to own some Apple technology rather than dealing with anything else.
In some realms, this is arguably working. The newer generations (today's school children) see iPhones as far superior than Android (statement accuracy not relevant) and that anyone not having an iPhone as something being too poor to own the superior phone. Apple wants to keep that brand identity - of being superior technology.
Things like VR put a bit of a damper on that vision. If VR is the "latest and greatest thing" then why does "the owners of Facebook" have their own VR technology while Apple has nothing similar? There is a feeling that Apple introduces products when they are finally ready for the masses... but there is also a growing feeling that Apple is just falling behind and can no longer be innovative. The lack of innovation feelings is something that needs to be removed.
So we have the Apple VR headset. Does it look good? Well, it looks innovative in advertising. Is it for you? No. They would prefer that you don't use the headset but instead that you "have feelings of technology superiority" when thinking of Apple products. Actually using the headset could harm those feelings. So they make sure to actually release something VR that only people with a ton of money could actually use so that those people can brag about having the latest innovative thing (while also not mentioning any issues with the device). Those people help deliver the actual product...
The actual product is the "innovative feelings". So, to conclude the point, I feel that something that looks "so dorky" is sort of the point here.
I think they tried to do everything they could to make it look not dorky, but the technology just isn't there yet
100%. There's a reason there aren't other standalone sets this good or better. It's very, very hard. The tech just isn't there to do a lot better than this without the price being even more insane. I'm really curious to see how the tech progresses. Some of the hurdles are incredibly complex.
This is one of the crazier teardown videos I've ever seen for any device. It's just jam packed with stuff. The engineering involved is ridiculous, regardless of what you think about the device's validity or of Apple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVJPAYwY8Us
The difference between Meta and Apple are really well illustrated by this. Meta's motto has been "move fast and break things" so they brought the Quest to market without legs and then iterated and iterated.
Apple sat in highly secretive development for years to make sure they got as much right as they could. I can only imagine how many less dorky designs their skunkworks came up with that were just unworkable.
Yeah Meta is taking the very different angle of wanting to get their stuff in as many houses as possible, right away. I believe various Quests have basically been sold at a loss for at least part of their retail life. They're targeting about as low of a price point as they can.
And when they did go for a more premium high pricepoint product (The Quest Pro), it seems to have been a disappointment and an overall flop. I've seen a number of people say the Quest 3 is about as the Pro good for average use. Its main differentiator seems to be face tracking.
All this said, I won't be buying this iteration of the AVP. I think it's really cool tech, but I'll stick with the Quest 2 for now. The AVP is basically a dev kit as far as I'm concerned. And it's way more money than I can justify.
I agree. It's a new computing paradigm, and Apple needs developers to come up with some killer apps for it. So they price it so high that ordinary consumers won't buy something half-baked, but devs who want to move in this direction will buy it as a business expense.
Hopefully this will lead to something more impactful than games and media consumption. Like, it would be awesome if you could walk around holding the AVP and have it generate 3D model of your house, and then go into a virtual world where you can delete walls and stuff.
I'll be honest I think their watch and AirPods both look kinda dumb, but they seem to be quite popular. And I distinctly remember that when both came out people were taking shots at how they looked, myself included.
Pretty simply, the perception that Apple has around design makes anything they develop fashionable by default.
If anything weird happens some hacker man would probably put up a tutorial on how to disable the eye tracker.
You could probably just put tape over it, but it wouldn't be great as you control the entire OS with the eye trackers.
Varjo is doing very well and offers probably the best VR sets. Prices start at around 3000€
And IIRC those are all PCVR sets and not standalone.
There are so many flaws with your take I don’t even know how to reply.
I will just say that:
$3,500 is not a price that only rich people can afford, at least in the US. Many middle class folks can afford it with ease.
It isn’t Apple’s fault that YouTube has ads. That is Google’s doing. Apple themselves are privacy focused and I never see targeted ads on any Apple app. The only places I even see ads are in the app store and in the TV app, and the TV ads are limited to promos of upcoming shows or movies.
People are constantly bashing Apple for their premium prices and walled garden while forgetting that nobody is targeting the folks who want a privacy oriented experience without ads blasting everywhere.
I switched to iOS because I got tired of Google watching my every move and I got tired of worrying if every app I download from google’s app store has malware or not.
hey no worries i'll be interested to hear what you have to say if you think about it more. my point wasn't just apple bashing i just don't think adoption of this specific product will not be good, regardless of who its custodian is.
also just a point if you can spend 3500$ on this you are either financially irresponsible or absolutely rich, both in the US context where more than 50% 60% of people are living paycheck to paycheck, and in the global context where the percentage of people that can afford this with ease is basically a rounding error.
$3,500 is definitely not something middle class people can afford with ease. Most people can't afford a $500 emergency expense, let alone dropping 7x that much on an entertainment device.
Plus, $3,500 is enough to buy a 70" TV, and all the consoles and games for the consoles and a laptop and a smartphone. Spending that just so one person can use it at a time is not a smart financial decision.
And if you're gonna use it for work, $3,500 can buy you a laptop and two widescreen monitors, which will give you way more extra screen space.
I worry about how consumerism and capitalism will kill us all but I don't give a shit about this in particular. If I saw one in the wild the first thing I would do is give the owner and endless stream of shit for buying such a stupid waste of money.
People said exactly the same thing about smart phones when they first came out.
No they didn't. Cell phones were magic in the 90s and every major iteration was met with rampant consumerism. No one, at any point, said holding an internet connected device in your hand was stupid. Find me ONE article.
i'm probably not gonna see one in the wild since income levels here does not allow discretionary spending of 3500 dollars, but don't needlessly antagonize people. just tell 'em it looks cheap and move on it will do more damage than recognizing it's an expensive gadget :)
I'll interact with the world the way I see fit, thanks.
Exact mentality of every asshole everywhere
I don't care what you think.
giant companies try stupid marketing techniques like this all the time. when they're moronic and nobody can afford them, they fail.
I don't think I've seen a single normal tech reviewer that didn't talk about serious drawbacks to the platform. the only people who are sucking apple's dick are those frou-frou amalgamated tech click harvesters that always suck the big corporations' dicks. like the Verge
I don't see any difference to an iPhone there. If they wanted to, they could already track whether you're looking at the ad (using the camera) or whether you muted it. You can turn off an iPhone, you can take off a Vision Pro. Apple hasn't exactly been known for intrusive ads either.
It's true that devices like these can gather a lot more data about you than a phone can. The amount of sensors that are always on and look at you and your environment should be a concern.
Luckily Apple isn't directly interested in ad revenue, but more into what apps you use and their biggest interest was always to provide a friction free user experience so you actually want to use their products and are happy to spend so much money on them.
I personally am not a fan of Apple, because I'm not a friend of golden cages. So I'm just waiting for the Android version of the experience. Since this first iteration will be from Google as they would need to update their OS to really accomodate AR applications, that's where my concern lies: How do we know that they are going to handle our data responsibly? Also AR does require quite some infrastructure to provide an interesting experience. Something Apple cannot do, is provide you with a shared experience with other users and to provide location specific, persistent content. There are many examples for such content, but for this discussion, let's say a location specific ad in a fixed location somewhere in the city adjusted to your preferences.
Of course the virtual ad sucks, but such content could also be amazingly awesome and very useful. You no longer need to set up real-life signs, you just update what the virtual sign says in AR. Doesn't need to be an ad, could be something interesting and useful.
But to provide location-specific, persistent content you need infrastructure. Infrastructure only Google and other tech giants have (see for instance the AR mode in Google maps that gives you directions). This is where I'm worried. It's no longer enough to just get internet via a SIM card, maybe add your personal VPN on top to be safer. You now need direct connection to Google's localization API and they'll always know where all their AR devices are and because you wear it, they always know where you are, how you are, where you look etc.. This should leave us worried.
If Google has an answer, how long will they support it? I bought a Daydream visor and controller, only for them to totally discontinue the project within 2 years.
If you look at it as an extension of Android, we're at 15 years and counting. That assumes this is not just a fad however. Apple jumping into the market, may be an indicator that it will indeed not be a fad. That said, Google has made bad experiences with Google Glass in the past, but the acceptance of cameras in public has grown in the last decade and if enough people walk around with an AVP, head-mounted always on cameras will gain acceptance too.
“I’m not a fan of Apple, I’ll wait for android version”
There’s literally no difference. Pick the company you let harvest your data. You pick the latter. What’s your point?
My Android phone is so customizable it doesn't run any Google services on it. That's the difference: open source. But like I said, it'll be quite a challenge providing an open source localization infrastructure. But there are already papers doing it with open street maps.
apple may get into the ad business after getting such a platform or something like google paying apple to enable this eye tracking "feature" for their youtube app. i think i overstated the ad part and in general the post make it seem like i'm way more concerned than i am, but the main point is ultimately it's a much more controlled environment compared to any other medium, which is controlled solely by a corporation which cares for nothing except money, whether it is alphabet or apple it doesn't matter. data collection is also another aspect of it that is worth thinking about.
i think the original description of the metaverse in science fiction is kinda in line with what you are describing. a one to one replica of the real world, and you can teleport to anywhere in the world and interact with it. a world controlled by google would be horrifying though.
I’ve not really seen any overly positive reviews. Most reviews I’ve seen talk about it like it’s this neat thing that doesn’t really have much to do in it now and are saying you’d probably only use it 1/2 hr at a time because of the hefty weight, unless you’re sitting/laying on a couch. It’s kind of a confused piece of tech because Apple is desperate to call it “spatial computing” and market it like it’s AR, but really it’s a VR headset. Yet they’re really not taking advantage of the VR aspect.
The first iPad also had shitty reviews and then it still established itself. I wouldn't judge too early just based on these initial reviews.
Having been an Apple fanboy since the 90s - v1 of an Apple product is probably not going to be good. v2 will be much better. It's been this way since they first started making computers, as the Apple I was basically a circuit board in a wooden box.
I’m actually hopeful for it and hope it does ok enough and that they release a cheaper Vision SE or something that’s at least in the realm of possibility for commoners to own. I just think Apple itself is kind of confused about what this thing should be and I think their walled garden approach could hurt them in the long run on this.
Indeed. Has all the VR features, but tries to sell as AR device with little to no AR use cases with the exception of a text field opening up over a real bluetooth keyboard. Having dozens of screens and apps floating around you isn't "AR", it's VR. And that you can see the real world has already been done by Occulus years ago. Sure this is a better quality and leverages the Apple ecosystem, but you can't sell it believably as an AR device yet. That said, the apps of the first iPhone weren't great either, so let's see how they iterate over this 600g ski goggles.
It’s not VR if you can see the real world. That’s literally the only distinction between the two and you messed it up.
All the new Quests have a see-through function. That's nothing new for VR devices. AVP got only 12ms delay and sacrificed FOV for image clarity, but that's the only innovation.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/39427e4a-918a-4a0d-bd94-15bf5cbaf7ae.jpeg
I agree with his take on the apple vr shit, but fuck nazi notch.
WUT? Apple is very focused on privacy and the idea that a user can't mute or install Adblock is… weird. Safari has good ad-blocking options as well as built-in anti-tracking features to protect users, applications can't usually prevent the system from muting content and Apple doesn't really sell ads outside of the App Store.
If you want to worry about that stuff I'd suggest focusing on the Meta VR goggles or god forbid Google starts making goggles, both of those companies survive on ad revenue and have an incentive to enshitify their experience in ways that the Apple we know today would never do. Of course companies can change over time, but the ethic at Apple is to only make products they feel comfortable with their families using.
Notch said it wasn't ready... Predicted a flop
Still might be. It's a $3500 device. Just because it's getting press doesn't mean it's going to be successful.
“The whole point of AR is that you can look away from ads”
No, it isn’t.
“Apple isn’t in the advertising business”
Yeah they most definitely are, they are just more subtle about it.
“I doubt people will walk around with this on their heads”
They already are.
I’ll stop now.