I don't think about them at all to be honest. Total disinterest.
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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They’re a $4000 dev kit that the public can also buy.
A really, really cool solution for problem nobody has.
Meh.
It's not designed for or good for VR gaming. As an AR device, I find it a bit silly since I can just look at a real screen. It would be a novelty at $100, but at the price Apple wants I kind of think of it like a joke.
For an everyday user I think it’s very far away. The device is very much geared towards developers and establishing Apple’s footing in the AR/VR space (despite Apple’s marketing efforts).
But have you tried using it? The resolution and crispness of the video content designed for it (there isn’t much of it available right now of course) is jaw-dropping. You legitimately feel like you are transported into a different world. The quality of visuals produced by this headset are so far beyond any VR device I’ve tried (and I’ve tried them all).
If it gets to the point where you can watch live sporting events with this and there’s more immersive video content created for it on a regular basis, it will be highly compelling.
I understand the knee-jerk reaction to say “Meh”. It’s still a VR headset. It’s uncomfortable to wear, etc. But I’d suggest holding back those feelings until you try it on
I think they are ridiculous... They may bring $500 worth of enhancement or productivity for people under special circumstances...
Very definitely not worth the ridiculous price tag
I think they are too expensive for us poors
We would all die because our cars don’t drive themselves.
I have yet to try it myself, but in principle I think it's a bit of a solution in search of a problem.
The tech is impressive, but I can't shake the feeling that they focussed too hard on the wrong things. It's not as good for VR gaming as other headsets, and imo an AR/MR device needs to be extremely lightweight, so you can wear it comfortably for at least a few hours. That leaves maybe movies I guess, but even for those some cheaper headsets are usually more than good enough.
So what exactly is the selling point for this thing? Who and what is it for?! Seems to me like it's more of a research device than anything else, to get the ball rolling for more in the future.
The only scenario that I could see using one is as a computer on a long flight, particularly if you don’t want people looking over your shoulders or need a “huge” screen. If I commuted a lot and had to work on the road, I’d consider it.
They identify people in public that should probably be robbed. So they're useful for that I suppose.
Wouldn't wear those publicly without having skis on, but with all that latency that ain't safe.
I’d really love to have one, but that $3500 is going to have a bigger impact on my life if it stays in my bank account. I might eventually get a quest 3 to live the fantasy a little, though, if they borrow some of Apple’s tricks in a future OS update.
The coolest piece of tech I've ever experienced by a large margin. The potential is endless.
But the people actually wearing it in public are crazy.
What would you use it for? Honest question.
I can't see using it for work. Writing a long email with an onscreen keyboard is not realistic.
It doesn't really play games.
So it's for watching YouTube on your face? I have a TV and couch that do that, and a phone in my pocket 24/7 that will do that. I honestly can't figure out the use case.
Today? Building stuff. The app ecosystem isn't there for casual audiences yet, because devs need their hands on it to do most stuff that utilizes what it can do. You can't build much more than the basics using a phone to test.
You don't have to use an on screen keyboard. It supports Bluetooth mouse and keyboard perfectly fine. The bigger restriction is the number of windows to me, but there are ways to make that work.
Interacting with and laying out information in 3D space is just different from doing it on a 2D display. Our brain understands 3D space intuitively in a pretty deep way. There would be some level of "OK, I turned my MacBook display in bed into a 500 foot screen next to a waterfall", and stuff like the demo 3D videos of animals were super immersive. I did feel like I could reach out and touch them.
But I want to build out the books in my personal collection into a 3D library with shelves to browse. I want to see stuff I'm modeling in actual 3D instead of one 2D angle at a time I have to manipulate to get different perspectives on. I want to plan out a room layout by standing in the middle of the room and virtually dragging things around. I'm just spitballing a couple of the first things that come to mind, but AR Kit is powerful and capable of all of that with relative ease. I can think of countless other "small" things that change the experience compared to doing stuff on a monitor pretty significantly. I don't think it's that different to people saying "you can do whatever on a computer" when iPhones or iPads came out. Sure, but as it gets into more hands and more people are able to build apps for it, people will come up with all kinds of uses that fundamentally feel different even if the same core thing can be done on existing hardware.
Ok cool, if I may take a swing at summarizing what you said?
What you are really talking about are the potential applications of AR (Augmented Reality), which I will totally agree with, that is a future state that is coming, unfortunately those apps mostly don't exist for the consumer space yet, but they will.
The apple headset being the first commercially available headset that does AR well.
Pretty much. AR has amazing potential and Apple waited to enter the space until they could provide something that can actually do AR without the massive compromises other headsets people pretend can do AR have to make.
I haven't bought one yet because it's a lot of money. But I did get to do the in store demo and it crosses a bunch of minimum thresholds nothing else does. They've been building to this for a long time.
The other benefit is that, as much as they control distribution, Apple's set of libraries/etc for software development make it extremely possible to make actual money developing reasonably high quality apps for iPhone/iPad as a solo developer. ARKit on iPhone already has led to solo developers being able to do real AR phone apps (with limited scope because you're looking through a phone obviously). It's definitely the first and most accessible way to build AR functionality compared to the limited access enterprise headsets (with their own limitations) with whatever tooling they had. When they announce the next, more affordable version, they'll have a huge head start on an ecosystem because this is out there.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and detailed replies, it is much appreciated. This headset finally makes some kind of sense for what it is.
No problem. This is tech I've been waiting for for a long time. I understand why it's hard to imagine the benefits without seeing some applications actually built out, and would not encourage anyone to buy it at this point unless they do have that clear vision for what they want from it. For the tech in it, though, when you compare it to the alternative VR only headsets, the price is pretty aggressive.
If you're interested and near an Apple Store with demos, I highly encourage you to try it out. It doesn't really showcase any AR, but the level of clarity and depth you get on 3D photos and videos is really impressive, and worth checking out for the sake of it. At least at my store, I was super open about "I definitely can't buy this in the immediate future" and they were still perfectly happy/friendly about doing the demo.
Whatever app starts to be compelling, may even be your house.
Imagine all your ebooks on a shelf like a library, your music on a cd rack, and you can browse them almost like physically. Imagine working outside with a view of the ocean you don’t have. Imagine porn being going into a virtual room with specific lighting and music. Heck, imagine sitting on the toilet and have your tiny, moldy, outdated bathroom appear to be a vast Roman bathhouse, or that outhouse on the edge of a cliff
The virtual environments you can switch to are pretty cool, and the fidelity is really good.
Unfortunately they told me you can't capture your own (at least not currently) for the background, which is too bad. I would absolutely make a spot in my camera bag to bring it on hikes to do video captures of cool spots anyways, though.
You da MVP! Thanks for sharing your experience.
I can think a couple of uses like working on my motorcycle with the service manual floating above it, and getting reference pictures or line art to trace while drawing. In the future maybe having AR features to learn playing guitar or drums. All niche cases, and certainly not worth 3500 for it.
If you’re doing any writing on it that’s beyond a quick text or search, you’d either use dictation or a connected MacBook’s keyboard, or a connected wireless keyboard. The pass-through is so clear and lag free that you can just look at the physical keyboard if you need to / can’t touch type.
How big is your TV? Smaller than 1200 inches I’m guessing? How portable is it? Good luck carrying a building sized TV in your backpack.
Vision Pro is too expensive for me but I totally get the attraction for TV alone. Some people spend a lot more on a worse viewing experience.
More compelling content and software use cases will follow. As good as a movie theatre is - it’s still not 3D. Even if you wear glasses the fact they send the same image no matter where you are in the room or where your head is turned makes it basically 2.5D.
Cheaper/better hardware will come too.
I'm not at all a soccer fan, but the soccer demo was fucking impressive. If they had that coverage of the NFL (and the pricing of that service wasn't also obscene), I would find it even harder to resist.
The people wearing it in public are mostly attention seekers and YouTubers. There is no use case for walking down the street with it on because it doesn’t work that way. You need to be stationary.
Are you commenting on 3d headsets in general or specifically Apple's? Have you used other ones before?
Yes, I've used many others.
None of them are remotely comparable to the Vision Pro. Everything else with passthrough is terrible with very noticeable lag and awful quality. And the difference in resolution completely changes the utility. Text on other headsets is brutal.
For gaming any headset is super cool. A full world like Skyrim in VR is mind blowing. But passthrough and real resolution change what you can do.
The immersive media experience is the killer feature right now. The whole browsing websites and pinning work stuff up in space is a novelty that will wear off. Predict everyone will go back to using their physical multi-monitor setups.
3D videos, apps, and games that take advantage of immersion will push the envelope.
I’d love to have one - after a few more years’s worth of releases and refinements.
I was interested in VR for a very long time. Recently, I got to actually try it out.
I primarily view Apple Vision Pro as a proof of concept type of device. Sales being limited both in quantity and territorially indicate that. It has brought 3 major improvements to the table, compared to other headsets:
- Quality of passthrough
- User interface
- Display quality
When you think about it, however, it's not that much to make it an obvious choice over other devices.
Passthough is needed for navigating through space. It does not help with productivity as your vision would be focused on the interface and not the environment. Remember warping on Quest 3? Much less noticeable than on videos for the exact same reason.
There is no buts with the user interface and display. They are simply great, best that there is.
Now, for the part that makes Vision Pro from a great productivity device on paper into a "dev kit available to masses" (I like that description, it does feel that way a lot, ty Ghostalmedia)
Eye strain is a major issue. It is very difficult to use the device for more than a couple of hours without getting tired. This goes for all of the VR headsets out there. I guess you can get used to it over time, though.
Limited usability. Quest 2/3, Pico 4, Valve Index, they all do things you wish Vision Pro could. Primarily usage of physical controllers. Imagine sculpturing without controllers because I can't. Hand tracking is just not up to par.
Battery solution is another issue. Not being able to swap what is otherwise a Power Bank without disabling the device and being unable to use any other battery than Apple's own is at the very least annoying. Not exactly an issue if you're too tired by the time it runs out.
Finally, the VR space itself is unfortunately not mature enough. There's a lot of work still to be done. Even when talking games, despite some amazing titles like Half-life Alyx, the vast majority where controls wouldn't make you dizzy are all pretty much like arcade mini-games, where you either teleport from point to point or not move at all. Developers simply have yet to figure out an organic way of user navigating through virtual space. (Doesn't mean they aren't fun, though)
Overall, I believe Vision Pro isn't really a mass consumer product, but it did do a lot by bringing more attention to VR as a whole, as well as pointing out additional user-cases for the technology. Because of Vision Pro, Meta started paying more attention to details, which ultimately will benefit the consumer (in fact, it already has yeilded results).
No desire honestly. It’s cool I guess…🤷
It's the first expensive iteration of something that could become viable if costs come down as production scales up.
In fairness to Apple, it's a powerful device and is the sort of device VR manufacturers are trying to converging towards. Their's is an all in one unit, with powerful on board processing so it gives high quality VR without tethering. It also has a lot of sensors built in, both negating the need for external sensors and hand control devices.
Compare that to other high end VR, and the competition remains high end tethered devices such as the Valve Index which is an expensive headset, limited to a room with sensors, tethered to a decent gaming PC, and requiring hand controllers to interact with the world. At the other end you have cheaper all-in-one devices like the Quest 2 which try to do what the Vision Pro does to an extent but are too limited techwise due to the price point they're targetting.
A valve index is about £1k, and a decent gaming PC is about £1-2k depending on how high end you go. The Vision Pro is £2.7k ($3.5k, but pre-tax); more expensive and perhaps offering less than the PC would beyond VR but still not crazy far away numbers wise. And it is offering a paradigm shift towards how VR is likely to be in the future.
All the stuff about it being a "new" device type ("spatial computing") is marketing nonsense - this is an AR/VR headset but it is one that's ahead of it's time as an expensive gamble by Apple to take a stake in the future. Expect a Vision Pro 2 in the next year or two with similar power but a lower price, but also I'd expect other manufacturers such as Meta and Valve to be converging on the same type of device from the other direction. But I'd honestly expect it to be more like 5+ years before such devices with similar specs to the Vision Pro are mass market and "affordable". Like, £3k for a headset would be a no to me; but £1.5k for something that did that... that'd be expensive but getting into an affordable luxury for me. And is they were convincing around some of the "spatial computing" type productivity apps missing from game centred VR being a UIP, then it's more like considering a new lap top and a £1.5-2k devices starts becoming a real consideration.
And as an expensive gamble it seems to be paying off. Supposedly 200,000 sold so far at $3.5k a pop - thats $700m in revenue. Even if it's not massively profitable per device, thats a good user base for such an expensive product and hints this could be something that does well as the price comes down. This is well away from mass market appeal, but I can see a trajectory where this becomes affordable as a luxury computing device first before eventually becoming mass market.
I agree with this whole description, but this actually makes me less likely to buy in the near term.
I had been tempted to splurge a couple $100+ for a novelty device that not many people have, but now they’re getting serious. I’m not paying Apple’s current price but after reading what it can do, I’m no longer tempted for a cheap novelty headset. I’ll be following this tech much more closely, and we’ll see based on what apps are available when Apple’s second or third generation comes out
Let me amend the question: Why do people think of Apple's headset?
I would get it if it was FOSS - in fact I'm working on a FOSS AR web based OS myself. But I wouldn't voluntarily touch any Apple products with a 3m stick.
Ngl, I want one. But I don't think I'll pay for one right now haha.
I just think it's cool. But I heard it requires you to have an iPhone. So.. That rules me out.
Same problem any other consumer VR headset has. They’re solutions without a problem. Just build it and the apps will magically appear. Maybe some more will appear for Apple because they can throw some resources at it, but VR as a tool is clunky with things like wrist-mounted toolsets vs the speed of keyboard hotkeys or shortcuts for activating or switching between common functions. For consuming media and games they can be great, but it’s trapped in the limbo of not enough people have HMD to spend development money on apps and games, and there aren’t enough apps and games to attract enough people.
I will be waiting for the full dive version of VR because I don't want to look like an idiot in real life😂
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I'm very interested in the "floating giant 4K screens" part, especially paired with a tiny MacBook Air, and some other uses seem fun. Real uses of AR passthru can be amazing, tagging everything around you with information. At $3500, it's half the price of a single XDR display.
But I'm waiting for gen 2 or later, there's no way the current weight & battery life are usable for my needs. It's a dev kit right now, and while I'm an iOS dev sometimes, it's too small a market to be profitable for me.
I tried it and it had a hard time giving me the right focus with the inserts they had at the store, so wasn't quite as clear as my PSVR2 with good inserts. But the resolution and tracking are great. It's a very good proof of concept for AR, but that's about it.
For me, VR gaming is my main use case, and PSVR2 is the most cost effective way to get a high end experience there for me.
IMO AVP isn't cost effective for anything unless you really need to have 10 iPad screens open at once, and even then it's only marginally cheaper than buying 10 iPads.
I'll buy one if the Formula 1 demo with the 3D track in addition to the TV feed becomes reality. And live VR onboards maybe.