Everyone I’ve talked to that has used a Vision Pro has said it’s an incredible piece of magical technology, but it’s utterly useless.
It’s literally just Apple flexing.
but it’s utterly useless.
That imo has been the issue with VR/AR for a while now. The Hardware as you said is pretty good by now and looking at something like the quest even afforable. What’s lacking is content and use cases.
Smartphones had an easier time being adopted, since it was just moving from a larger to a smaller screen. But VR/AR actually needs a new type of content to make use of it’s capabilities. And there you run into a chicken/egg problem, where no one is putting in the effort (and vr content is harder to produce) without a large user base.
Just games and some office stuff (that you can do just as well on a regular pc) aren’t cutting it. You’d need stuff like every major sport event being broadcast with unique content, e.g. formula one with the ability to put yourself into the driver seat of any car.
When the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift first came out, the rift didn’t yet have full-room support. You had to sit facing the base station and use a video game controller. Meanwhile, on Vive, you could stand up, walk around, and manipulate the world with two tracked remotes.
One pro-con comparison I read at the time actually listed needing to walk around the room as a con against HTC. That is the whole point of VR.
I think the core issue is that every piece of new technology so far has helped us get lazier. People used to walk around an office, then they sat at a computer, now they carry their computer with them and do things from the couch.
Nobody wants to get up to do things if they can avoid it, and that’s the only real benefit VR/AR provides.
Meanwhile, on Vive, you could stand up, walk around, and manipulate the world with two tracked remotes.
Issue is that if I remember correctly the vive was an outside-in concept that required base stations to be setup. So you lose the cable, but are still bound by location. And importantly also needs a pc aswell. So still far away from standalone.
I think the core issue is that every piece of new technology so far has helped us get lazier. People used to walk around an office, then they sat at a computer, now they carry their computer with them and do things from the couch.
Nobody wants to get up to do things if they can avoid it, and that’s the only real benefit VR/AR provides
But I think VR/AR could make us lazier:
For VR the promise is immersion. You get to experience a concert, sport event, unique experience or exotic place from your own living room. And for many of that it is just fine to sit on a couch and still have a benefit from the technology.
For AR i think it’s a bit more productivity focused. For example less need to train personel, if you can project every instruction into their field of view.
You’ve nailed it. Ordinarily, Apple is good at throwing its weight (money) around to make things like this happen, but it seems like there weren’t many takers this go-round, so we just got an overpriced, beautiful and fascinating paperweight.
That’s why the biggest use case for VR has been gaming and metaverses. It’s a ready-to-go thing that adapts well, but it’s certainly not for everyone. For my part, I’m saving up for a PS VR2, because it’s adding PC support soon and I already own a PS5 as well. Far, far cheaper than Apple’s device, and likely quite good still.
Ordinarily, Apple is good at throwing its weight (money) around to make things like this happen, but it seems like there weren’t many takers this go-round, so we just got an overpriced, beautiful and fascinating paperweight.
Yeah normally Apple is maybe the only company that has the scale and control over their ecosystem to force rapid adoption. But this was clearly not a consumer product aimed at capturing the masses, but more or less a dev kit sold to anyone willing to shell out the price.
The PS VR2 sounds nice, but feels like it is only aimed at the gaming market and even there sony only captures a fraction.
The Quest as a standalone device imo really would have the best shot at mass market adoption, but Facebook rightfully has an image problem. And despite spending so much on development doesn’t seem to create any content or incentivize others to do so.
Edit: actually kind of forgot “bigscreenVR”. I am somewhat surprised that the default is to cram all hardware into the headset making it much bulkier instead of a seperate piece on a belt, back, or maybe strap on your upper arm.
“Hey look what we could do at six times the price point” isn’t a flex, it’s stupidity.
Like why not just release Apple brand Skis, or team up with Nike and make some shoes, or Jewelry if you want to do high priced stuff rich idiots pay for.
It’s a flex because the vision pro has the best optics and display technology ever made. It’s stupid because it has no use. It’s not a flex because it’s expensive, it’s expensive because it’s a flex, if that makes sense.
To do:
Cheaper headset
Actual controllers
Make it work with PCs
I still don’t understand how Windows got the PC name. A Mac is also a personal computer…
Also, apple isn’t going to make it work with other OSs any more than they have their other products, not sure why you’d even list that.
In case you are wanting the history. IBM actually coined the term PC with their IBM Personal Computers
At the time most computing platforms were incompatible. Software written for a commodore computer wouldn’t work with an apple computer wouldn’t work with an IBM PC.
The IBM PC was popular enough though that people started building “pc compatible” machines. A very popular configuration for this was intel chips with Microsoft DOS. While these machines started out as “pc compatible” after a while the IBM PC wasn’t a big deal anymore so saying “we are compatible with a machine released in 1981” just slowly morphed into “it’s a PC” as shorthand for “intel chipset with Microsoft OS”
Now why didn’t apple get the pc moniker? At the time when the IBM PC launched apple was actively building and selling their own computers and weren’t interested in making them IBM PC clones so they never went out and marketed themselves as “pc compatible” because for the most part they were not.
Thanks for attending my Ted talk
Thanks for the history, very interesting! I still hate how the term is used today and refuse to use it.
Apple has suspended work on the second-generation Vision Pro headset to singularly focus on a cheaper model
That seems very reasonable and like what they probably should’ve been doing all along.
I still don’t understand who the pro was actually for. Everyone who had one said exactly the same thing about it which was they couldn’t understand how to use it productively for anything.
I’m not sure why they tried this.
‘We made a VR games headset, but replaced the games with office related programs, like calenders and notepads’
Did any of them ever use an Oculus Quest? Like, why did they try this? Is this Apple’s Google Glass moment? Did they really think that if you pay enough youtubers to wear it in public, normal people would magically go into car-level debt to emulate them?
In fact, I’ll go as far as to say this campaign and price point was a bigger mistake, and a louder failure than Google Glasses.
Companies have been pushing VR so long now. I’ll say that I think the tech is cool and the idea is cool, but I will literally never use them.
I can’t wear them while working as I am in meetings 99% of the time.
I would not wear them in my free time, as I do not want to disassociate from my wife and cats.
