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Review: Two Weeks With the Apple Vision Pro
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Eh. Maybe. Maybe not. We don’t know how shared experiences might work in the future with updates and with technology advancing. If you’re saying just the very nature of having something on your head is dystopian, ok. But if two people go into a house with no tv, sit down on the couch and put on their headsets and watch a movie together, is that the most horrible thing we can envision? Not really.
How much worse is it to wear a headset vs me and my wife chilling and watching tik tok separately on our phones? We send tik toks back and forth and laugh a lot. What if in a headset, we could just slide our windows over and show them? Same for gaming. Or other visual experiences.
This is just going to happen. We aren’t going to stop developing technology because it might be weird at first. We’re gonna learn to live with it. Misinformation is far more destructive than people wearing a headset to watch a movie.
A dude wearing a headset to capture a memory of his child isn’t even remotely dystopian to me. Why should it be? He can be involved. He can see them and talk to them and even pick up his children without holding a phone out in front. I think it’s just new and feels like a weird sci-fi episode so we get creeped out and want to look for the negative. But really. It’s just integrating technology into our lives
I don't think they are really. I should be common sense that looking at screens that close to your eyes probably isn't the best long term.
I very much doubt that Google lens would recognize the model of my boots.
Apple Use to have scruples.
They wouldn't put a product HALF BAKED out until it was ready and it would be better than the competition at a reasonable price.
No Longer...
They wouldn't put a product HALF BAKED out until it was ready and it would be better than the competition at a reasonable price.
No Longer...
I'm not thinking 5-6 months down the road. I'm thinking 10-20 years down the road.
The problem with a phone is you have to pull it out and navigate through menus to get to some third party app like Google Lens.
iPhone has its roots in Alan Kay's Dynabook... nobody woke up one morning and said "It's been my life's desire to carry around a 25lb thing that has a huge case with a full keyboard". This is more of a problem the kind of which Apple is good at solving: Redefining what computing is and where it fits into our lives.
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Yes, that is horrible, full-stop.
Instead of interacting with each other, they have $7000 + tax worth of glass, chemicals, plastics, and semiconductors wrapped around their heads.
They aren't looking at each other, forming real human connections. If they have conversations, they completely lack being able to read facial expressions and body language.
If it's a man and a woman, they can't kiss!
Please, snap out of your Apple Technology Devotion Cult. This reminds me of William Shatner doing that "Star Trek Convention" skit on SNL...
Now, setting aside the COGS and SG&A expense associated with these specific products... Let's consider the difference in terms of VR gaming's maturity (it's a market more than 10 years old now) vs. the nonexistent PC market in 1977. Let's focus on time and place for a minute.
Apple started down the personal computing path when they had three employees and $250,000 in investment capital. Also, Mac was largely a failure for a number of years until OS 8 was killed and they effectively made it into a completely different machine under OpenSTEP architecture. Apple made a number of blunders during this time, the biggest of which was probably not knowing what to do with Hypercard.
AirPods were introduced in 2016... when Apple already had the largest hardware and software ecosystem in the world for them. Also, the headphone space, which has been around for decades, is still growing at a CAGR between 12-20%, projected to reach $130 billion within the next decade. VR gaming is a segment that's been around a decade and has so far only captured 1.3% of the total gaming market. So there's a core competency combined with double digit annualized growth and a product ecosystem that Apple already dominates... i.e. absolutely the diametric opposite of going after the VR gaming segment.
If Apple does nothing, they'll make more money in headphones by 2030 than they will trying to crack VR gaming in 100 years (17% of a $130bn market vs. 15% of VR gaming's $3.64 billion share (1.3%) of the gaming market). Even if Apple had 100% of the VR gaming market, it would (excluding GTM costs) amount to $7 billion a year less than Apple's share of the headphone/earphone market in 2030.
HomePod, see above.
Lastly, these aren't the analogy to chasing after a 1.3% market segment within gaming. The analogy would be saying they're going to build HomePods and Earpods that can only play jazz fusion albums.
Prioritizing gaming may be in the interest of some company that's just beginning to get a foothold in VR the way Apple was beginning to get a foothold in PCs nearly half a century ago. It doesn't make sense for where Apple is at right now as a $3 trillion consumer electronics behemoth.
A colleague of mine was in the room when Jobs pulled all the product managers into a 30 minute meeting shortly after his return to Apple in the 90s. By the end of that meeting, 90% of their projects were killed. It took a major restructuring by CFO Bob Anderson to rescue the company from being 90 days away from bankruptcy... and the path they put them on, the entire reason we are here talking about Apple at all, has nothing to do with AirPods or HomePods or Macs. It has to do with Apple quietly licensing one-click purchasing from Amazon in 2001 and pairing it with Casady & Greene's Soundjam Music Player.
Without that investment in impulse purchasing convenience, iPod, which was initially met with a collective "so what", was destined to go in the same dustbin next to the Rio. Convenience is always the killer app. The problem we were grappling with in the 90s was not "How do I sell this music player (which doesn't exist yet)"... it was more abstract. It was: How do you compete with free? The answer, making the alternative easier to use than free, completely shifted the entire global music business from an 85% physical album market to a 90% digital singles and streaming market.
Go big or go home.
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OK, now maybe this is just me… but…
When I'm sat on the sofa watching a film with my husband we don't just sit there like automata.
There is actual physical interaction.
We smile at each other… roll our eyes, laugh… snuggle, steal a quick kiss… sip a glass of wine.
So, how do we do this while wearing these massive headsets strapped to our heads? All the while the only contact we have is walking through the uncanny valley seeing each others weird personas.
I dunno. I appreciate your optimism, but in real life? 🙂
👍
Exactly right.
Not just men and women ya know. 🙂
100% agree.
Excellent review! Thanks, Dan! Well done job! All pros and cons are described perfectly and making sense! Although not having it due to no need or reasons for having it, I could put myself on Dan’s shoes and could feel his experiences. His reason to keep it does makes sense and his liking and disliking it also make sense. After all, it is the public test/beta product which will evolve overtime to be perfected. His advice of not abandoning it is reasonable. Keep calm, positive thoughts on the product despite imperfections, wait for improvements to make it a better product and be happy on what the product offers now and incoming improvements😊 life is too short to be negative on unhappy on all things. 😊
Today marks the two-week anniversary of the Apple Vision Pro launch, and the last day for returns for those who purchased on release day. With plenty of stories going around from those who decided not to keep the $3,500 device, MacRumors videographer Dan Barbera thought he'd share some of the reasons why he'll be keeping his headset.
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We need to have a few Vision Pro headsets on hand to write about them here at MacRumors, so that's one of the primary reasons that Dan will be keeping his. Apple is already working on visionOS 2, and we're interested in seeing what changes and updates are in store. We're also getting new apps on a regular basis, all of which make the Vision Pro a more appealing device.
The Vision Pro is the best way to be immersed in a movie, especially 3D movies, and that's another key reason why Dan won't be bringing his back to the Apple Store. The Cinema Environment that shuts out the world is hard to beat because it's basically your own personal movie theater.
Working on the Vision Pro needs some improvement, perhaps with support for multiple Mac displays, but it's useful when traveling with a laptop. It would also be nice to be able to use a mouse, but Magic Keyboard and Trackpad input work well enough.
There are some downsides to the Vision Pro. It's hard to wear for more than about an hour, the battery life is awful, and it doesn't hold a charge at all when not in use. Touch typing with the air keyboard is a poor experience, Personas need a lot of work to be less creepy, there still aren't a whole lot of groundbreaking app experiences, and Guest Mode is awful, so it is fully understandable why we're hearing a lot of return stories.
Make sure to watch Dan's full video to get his thoughts on the Vision Pro after two weeks, and let us know if you kept or returned your Vision Pro in the comments below.
Article Link: Review: Two Weeks With the Apple Vision Pro
ah yes. Common sense. Like assumptions. You know that old saying right? I prefer data driven facts. But cool, define long term. Is there a maximum allowed In you common sense? And you do know people said the same thing about tv screens decades ago. I think there is data out there that staring at any screen for hours a day can lead to eye strain and headaches. And yet we all do. I know of no data that says the tech Apple uses is worse. But I’m capable of monitoring my own eye strain and headaches and will report back if I have any issues from actual use.
I wouldn't rely too much on common sense; it is often just prejudice, limited experience and lack of understanding. You ever heard of quantum physics? Common sense isn't going to help you out there.
Ah, the Apple Technology Devotion Cult, where "common sense" itself comes under attack...
I am not devoted to Apple technology. In fact, I am quite critical of them and AVP in particular. But my criticism doesn't rely on "common sense." And, yes, "common sense" is often quite stupid and wrong and is deserving of attack when it is.
This is utterly ridiculous. VR headsets have been around for years.
What is simply buying a rod going to do for you? I suppose you could put it on your mantle and gaze at it.
Being a user doesn't mean you have to use it out in public. Why would there be a press release about what she chooses to do at home?
Spot-on.
Especially when it involves a self-proclaimed expert arbiter of what qualifies as common sense.
You "sure" she would wear it at home
And if "curious" they will "most certainly be trying it"
Well -- Agree to disagree I guess
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We don’t live in the quantum realm. It’s all Newtonian out here.
All of this is a good perspective about how embarrassing to wear the AVP actually is however.
The people who care about how they look in public "might wear it at home when nobody can see how silly it looks"
The people who care about how they look in public "might wear it at home when nobody can see how silly it looks"
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Nobody with any actual solid sense is going to go out and drop $4K for these things.