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Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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The review was great, and the fact that Apple went it's way to try and do something to be seen as an innovator is awesome, for one reason only: they failed horribly.
Granted, this is the best VR handset that could be done with today's tech, and even then it's bad. There's no use outside niche applications, and too much constraints and trade offs for it to be reliable. We need a huge advance in tech for AR be feasible and socially acceptable.
And you can't even play proper games with this thing.
It's not even that it's not feasible. The entire idea is stupid. VR makes a lot of sense in entertainment and AR will one day be really great for small things like showing map directions and notifications but the concept of a virtual computer controlled by waving your hands around is just silly. It will never make sense.
The main use case I think right now, really is the expanded monitors view. For people that travel a lot it might be a real use case
To carry the whole VisionPro bag, keyboard and mouse instead of simply taking your laptop? The review makes it clear it's not usable without peripherals, you will still need some desk. It's solving a problem that doesn't exist.
I work on 3 monitors during the day, with multiple virtual desktops. It solves for that, and that alone. That being said, I wouldn't pay $3500 for the privilege, especially when it ONLY operates in the Apple ecosystem, which I don't care for. Other VR desktops exist, but they're all kinda "meh". I'll invest when a device can be used neutrally as just a VR monitor tool.
The stuff I've seen is saying it can only do one extra display from a mac. Is there another way? The high resolution capabilities also suggest one full quality display would max out wireless bandwidth.
Spatial window arrangements essentially makes an entire 360 space of a room the monitor. You don't need many views at that point.
So you're talking about placing app windows everywhere? Then you're limited to placing apple's available apps for the device everywhere around you aren't you? Which doesn't sound like what you want. I'm taking your 3 monitors comment to mean you're not running 3 monitors worth of mobile apps (because that would be wild if you were!). The 360 degree desktop setup here is going to be more like 360 degrees of ipad apps seems like. Maybe a windows remote desktop sort of app with multiple instances/windows all around you? Multiple safari instances all connected to some sort of web based remote desktop? I too want "spatial computing" to be more platform agnostic and want to be able to just paste applications or desktops on blank walls or floating in space.
Yeah, that's sort of its purpose. Take away all the dumb Apple notifications and useless info about the world it can detect, because (surprise) it's not portable, and it's a $3500 virtual desktop you don't need navigate with a mouse. It's useful in some cases, sure, but not a general consumer device at this price point or particular case of use. The bull of purchases were probably made by large scale content creation firms to do things like video editing. Sadly, Microsoft's AR glasses were somehow just a stupid, but more useful than Apple's.
Oh no, I meant Vision Pro and laptop to get an extra large screen
What kind of people that travel a lot you think may benefit? Genuinely curious. All the guys who do travel can mostly do everything with their phone because they have other guys working for them in the office doing the actual multiple screens stuff. Or maybe these are the only ones I saw in my life on the road )
Software engineers that work remotely? My uncle has to spend at least 8 hours travelling a month often by plane to attend meetings he still has to do despite being most of the time at home
I'm a systems engineer who spends most of my time coding, and I have a quest 2. Unless apple has somehow fixed the big issue of VR headsets having no peripheral vision (you have to move your head to see things not in the cone in front of you, can't just shift your eyes) and relatively shit resolution, using a VR headset as a large screen/screens for text content would still be headache inducing.
The amount you'd have to zoom the text in order to be readable for long periods of time would make it unreasonable to try and code in.
I would love for VR to actually work as the movie idea of an infinite desktop, but in my experience it really falls short in that use case. I'll admit, a quest 2 is a real budget headset, so maybe higher end ones work better for it, but the one high end headset I've used had the same limitations.
Hm, not sure if I can agree here. There may be a handful of people like that - but that is not the market worth developing as far as I can see. You would normally either travel, or spend your time in front of 3 screens full of text. Also, having anything on your head for a long time (if you are coding, for example) is tiring. Even simple sunglasses are, not talking about a bulky headset. And, as someone also mentioned, there really must be an excellent screen for your eyes not to bleed after a long session of reading. Never tried this headset, but have serious doubts. Watching a movie is different, but at this price point you are likely getting a royally good home set up, so yet again, travel only. Again, a niche thing.
Then there is some CAD stuff, but cannot comment there. How many people in the world need that, anyway?
This leaves games as a real (though still relatively niche) market, yet to see what Apple has to offer there.
So, as I can see, if Apple wants a new big thing, we are still waiting for a killer app. And a breakthrough in tech, of course.