When reading about headset experiences, I'd de-weigh any insights that are within 3 months of the first headset purchase. The first few dozen sessions are novel, you get a kick (and social media views) about sharing how completely your life has changed to fit the headset.
More often than not, it's collecting dust on the shelf within a few months. Sort of like an expensive blender you were so excited to get, you imagined making super fruit smoothies every morning. Let's see how AVP fares in this regard.
I love this comment, I think you're completely right.
What I love most about this comment is how it caused me to reflect on what I use daily and get some amount of joy from.
When it comes to Apple products in particular I use an Apple Studio display at home, I use it for 10hours per day, every day, and honestly I have no complaints, it's probably one of the best bits of technology I use daily.
However, it's completely unsexy and has (at least on paper) extremely stiff competition. Not only that it was maligned by the tech media upon release.
Yet, it just subtlely benefits my life because the speakers are excellent, the webcam is servicable (the novelty of the fact it tracks you never truly wears off) and the size/pixel density is great.
It's weird that I'm waxing poetic like this about such a boring device, but that's kinda my point, your comment made me reflect about all the little tech around me that I use every day that just sort of shifted into the background. Quietly doing its job excellently.
Yeah, I agree. I rolled my eyes when I bought the Studio Display because of the price (I got the VESA option so I also had to factor in $200 for an Ergotron LX just so I could use it the way I’d want) and I’m annoyed by its lack of power button, its garbage web camera, and the really that it has no better picture quality than the v2 LG UltraFine 5K it was replacing, despite costing $300 more, but if it broke tomorrow I’d buy another one without a second thought (also the VESA option — also just say no to the Nano Texture option). In fact, I might even get a second one this year because I have 3 Macs (2 M-series laptops and a 2020 5K iMac) and it would be nice to have one dedicated to the laptops instead of having to swap the cable for the TB4 dock.
Until/unless Apple does fractional scaling in a way that doesn’t really need pixel doubling to work, I will insist on a 5K display for a 27” monitor and the ASD really is the best game in town.
So what's the benefit of the ASD if it has no better picture quality than the LG?
It's always crazy reading those kinda comments. He keeps maligning the product that he had to pay a premium for, comparing it to equivalent products that are cheaper and perform the same, yet he's still going to make his next purchase another, by his own admission, overpriced Apple product.
It's mind blowing, I don't wanna reach for the low-hanging quips here but it really is like an Apple iCult type of vibe
Why “he”?
Because "he" is grammatically correct when the gender is unknown.
But I was noticing that the username was “filmgirl”.
Fair enough!
Is it really? Also when the username contains „girl“ it may give a hint.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_languag....
Well The Times They Are A-Changin'
My friend sold boats for over 10 years. He said women love going on boats, but he never saw a woman buy a boat in his life.
Women love apple products, but if you look at who is splurging on multiple high end apple computers with multiple monitors it's gotta be 95% male.
But I was noticing that the username was “filmgirl”.
singular they is preferred on Reddit but not here, learned hard way
Here is the model here:
- Apple's software (particularly macOS) is extremely high quality. Best game in town.
- Their hardware is also high quality, but it is often overpriced.
- You must use their hardware to get the best experience using their software.
- Therefore, people might end up buying, say, the Apple XR display or AirPods Max even though they are overpriced compared to other monitors/headphones, because it gives you a better experience using macOS.
I am a pretty huge Apple fan but I think this is pretty unfortunate, not gonna lie -- it kills me a little that macOS doesn't look sharp on my 4K monitor. But it isn't an iCult, it's just that the cheaper thing doesn't work as well with macOS.
Reading the comment, the impression I got was that while the image quality is similar between LG 5K & ASD, overall ASD is still worth the small premium.
The 27" 5K Studio Display is in a weird category, where they actually have zero competitors. On paper, there's the LG Ultrafine, but I have yet to see one available for purchase in EU (I've seen "in stock", but not actually available), not to even mention seeing one in person. So basically you don't really have a choice.
The Apple Studio Display looks nicer. I would prefer that items that I own in my apartment look nice. Aluminum looks and feels nicer than plastic. Yes, I will pay a premium for that.
You forget Apple is selling trust as well as technology. I have far more trust in an Apple product than an LG one.
I don't have an ASD, but back in 2020 I bought the LG UltraFine 5K from Apple's website together with a laptop and the LG monitor's colors all had a yellowish hue to them. Some Internet searches and possibly their support forums claimed that this is normal, it's just how the monitor works, or something like that (yes I did try various color temperature and config settings - all yellow).
Luckily this "wasn't my first monitor", so I quickly returned it and went back to Dell that's always been OK enough so I don't ever have to pay attention to which monitor or display setting I'm using.
You can't drive two LG 5k screens with a single cable, due to it lacking DSC support.
Slightly brighter, much better build quality, much better audio and much better camera.
But at the same time, I see the LG is down to $999 (I suspect it’ll be discontinued soon if it isn’t already) and it’s debatable that the studio display is $600 better. It’s definitely $300 better though.
That said, it is increasingly more difficult to buy the LG. So it’s become less of a choice.
Why no nano-texture?
It causes fringing around letters and stops things looking as sharp, which sort of defeats the point of having a 5k display for a lot of people.
I guess most people just like their UI elements much smaller than me, I work all day on a 42” 4k display running 1080p@2x 120hz and I wouldn’t want to shrink the UI elements any further. I sit ~4 feet from the display.
My husband uses an iMac (27” 5k display running @2x) and I struggle to do anything at that resolution.
Why say no to the the nano texture? Looking at a studio display these days and trying to understand the option
Interesting. I have a Studio Display and it just feels like a huge compromise.
There are only two 5K displays on the market that can render macOS at Retina resolution on a 27" panel: this one and the LG Ultrafine, which isn't that much cheaper. My last monitor was a 27" LG QD-OLED 144Hz 4K display. I LOVED that display, but text wasn't sharp because of the Retina resolution problem.
I also have a semi-professional webcam setup and external speakers, so those being built-in does nothing for me.
I just want macOS to support variable scaling like Windows has for, what, 15 years at least?
BetterDisplay lets you set fractional resolutions for any displays on Mac. While this seems like a compromise, it lets you scale the ui to you preferred size independently of the native resolution. I use my 5k display at 85% which is a bit easier on my eyes than native 100%.
I've tried a few apps including better display to find a better resolution for my portable 16 inch monitor. It does allow you to set the resolution you want, but it's a bit blurry.
No way to really fix it, it's just another Mac shortcoming. Using resolution to scale the UI is not a compromise, it's a mediocre workaround.
I'd call that a shortcoming of all hardware that isn't retina resolution, but I know how that sounds to anyone who isn't bought into the ecosystem.
To be clear, I criticize the hell out of the company on things that I think are truly bad. Their app store policies are a disaster. I get that gamers want framerates over resolution. I'm not a gamer and want the other thing.
mac users love to repeat this but it's just nonsense. if you can plug another non-mac computer into the same display and get crystal clear, correctly scaled UI then the screen isn't the problem, the computer is.
It's a shortcoming of the software. Apple could claim it's a third-party issue if they didn't support arbitrary external monitors, but they do. As such it's entirely reasonable to expect a fallback solution for third-party displays that Just Works.
For my money, Windows is a terrible operating system but it embarrasses Mac and Linux thoroughly in this regard.
Oh my goodness. This might be what I was looking for all along. I'm going to try getting that LG panel again and giving this a shot. Thank you!
Dells 6k is quite alright at reasonable price. Has some quirks though
I love it. It is exactly the right size to have two windows side by side. 27“ used to work but nowadays half a 27 is no longer enough for many web applications
Agree, i think 32 inch is perfect size. However what bugs me is that waking up from sleep it often only wakes up left side, and the right is all green. i have to restart the monitor. I wish it was glossy too, but i can live with the matte.
Are you referring to the U3224KB? It's $2500, which seems a bit steep.
2400 in some places, and i bought it in thailand closer to 2000. It's comparable to ASD27 either way. Thus it's still much cheaper than Pro Display.
macOS does support more than one “virtual” resolution, which I’d consider variable scaling. It’s admittedly less granular than Windows, but it works well enough for me. I have a 27” Acer Predator 4k120 display on my shop Mac, with the virtual resolution set to 2560x1440.
There’s only two scaling factors macOS can display at: 1x or 2x.
Anything in-between is rendering at a larger resolution and scaling it back down for the display, resulting in a non-pixel-perfect image.
Your shop Mac is rendering the UI at 5120 × 2880, then squishing that down for the Acer display. Which, apart from being more graphically demanding, ends up blurry and aliased.
What Windows does is actually just changing the pixel dimensions of the UI elements (in steps of 10% I think?), which Apple has never done.
The XDR Pro Display is the Mac monitor without technical compromise.
Incredible for coding.
32" is too big for me.
There are no longer just two 5k 27" displays. Per a thread on macrumors[1], the display panels that make up these displays are now available from the factories, so some chinese manufacturers have begun making monitors at much lower prices ($400, if you can get an RV100).
[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-complete-list-of-27...
There’s also the Samsung S9 now.
I’ve tried to adopt MacBooks twice over the last three years and both times this has been the dealbreaker for me. I was flabbergasted that MacOS didn’t have better support for it.
Every few years I buy Dell QHD displays 24’’ second hands on local ads websites, I have 4 of them (not all installed at the same place), for an average of ~150€ per display. They are definitely not sexy but work perfectly as monitors and hubs.
Why do you replace them every few years?
I do not replace them, I buy additional ones
I feel the same way about the utility of my AirPods. It is simple, boring, works every time I need it to, without any fuss or connection issues or pesky cables.
Although, I have a strict policy of not sharing my AirPods, or let it connect to anything other than my iPhone to make sure I don’t get into the mess of “figure out which device it auto connects to” etc.
What it's worth, I currently use my AirPods on:
- my personal iPhone
- my work iPhone
- my personal MacBook
- my work MacBook
And not once have I ever had to worry about it being connected to the wrong device, it seems to just keep track of all the devices around and everything "just works"
In mind these are AirPod pro 2s
I just have a bog standard cheapest 4K display, and I have more or less the same experience.
There will be an inflection point with devices like Vision Pro, where you'd rather do things you do right now with a laptop, tablet or TV in the Vision Pro instead of with those other devices. Then the other devices will be the ones gathering dust.
The hard part is being able to know when that inflection point comes. But I think there's a very good chance that 10 years from now, it's already behind us.
Having something strapped to your face, that you have to put on and take off, is never going to be a substitute for working in open space unhindered.
Why's that? They can get the weight down to barely more than glasses, and with good pass through video and battery improvements... You'll be pretty unencumbered. Certainly not more encumbered than being glued to your laptop on a desk.
Well it's hard to debate fantasy products given the circularity: "if they create a product that avoids all these problems, then it won't be a problem!".
I've not used a laptop (or computer) at a desk for decades, I prefer lying down, which works really well.
I do wish there was something between a laptop and a phone though. Interfaces need to improve or innovate, but I don't think VR headsets are the answer. I haven't even touched on the nausea.
I don't think it's a circular argument. Bigscreen VR is already 127 grams. This is doable in the next decade I think. The question is if there's a better form factor than something you wear on your face.
Bigscreen VR appears to be an accessory that relies on an external device for compute and head tracking and power. As far as I can see it's basically just a tiny OLED display you strap to your face.
With AVP, Apple is taking a bet that the accessory nature of previous attempts is why this product category failed and so they're trying to embed the compute and make it wireless.
Unfortunately for utopian visions of VR goggles, we're running up against the limit on how small computers can be, so the idea of a standalone headset as light as Bigscreen VR is essentially science fiction at this point. Not to say it won't happen, but if that's what it'll take for this product category to take off then your optimism is misplaced.
Fair enough, but form factor is indeed the issue, even light devices have to seal off your face, and the inner ear issues surely have a lot to do with that isolation.
Perhaps something along the lines of zapping the back of the eyeballs with lasers is the answer.
Even after 36 years of wearing glasses (current ones weight barely 20 gram), they still bother me, and I fiddle with them constantly.
Here's my prediction for this: you need to have input with the same fidelity and ease of use as a mouse and keyboard. The mouse input analogy is probably pretty close with eye tracking, but text input? I can't even imagine what it will look like to make that work as nicely as real touch typing.
I got an acrylic tray [0] that holds a keyboard and trackpad and can comfortably sit on my lap to use with the Vision Pro. It’s truly marvelous and makes the VP feel like an actual laptop replacement, with the only real problem being that visionOS has too much iPadOS heritage and not enough MacOS.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCS71K6P?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_...
Sure, but one of the big upsides of vr is the ability to move around a space. If you're just sitting at a desk (or on a couch) anyway then you might as well just have a couple of huge monitors. In the case of the vision pro it would even be cheaper to use several large monitors instead.
The ability to move around while I’m actively wearing it is not particularly compelling or relevant to me. I didn’t get it for room-scale VR games, and I tend to take it off when I get up anyway. I find it really amazing that I can set up a huge workspace on-the-fly pretty much wherever I want, including the couch. I have a very slick dedicated home office I could be in right now but I actually enjoy using the VP from the living room more for anything other than serious 9-5 work for my employer.
You can use a macbook keyboard and trackpad seamlessly with the headset
It will probably look like a keyboard. Keyboards are so lindy at this point they didn’t even adjust the layout (from that path-dependent mess we are dealing with), let alone the form factor
There will be an inflection point where you’ll want all of your media to be 3D. Things you watch today in 2D you’ll want in 3D and then your old 2D television will seem like a relic of the past. The entire industry is onboard, the shift is inevitable.
That would be reasonable if there past inflections similar to that were we wanted all our media to move to the higher "dimension".
For instance we've seen the arrival of movies and tv, books became moving visual content, games expanded from boards to immersive experiences etc. But the lower dimension media never disappeared nor significantly got irrelevant. We're effectively reading more words per day than any of the previous generation, podcasts are booming, web comics etc. are thriving.
TV and movies were just an addition to the media landscape, I see AR and VR in the same light.
The production costs of creating 3D content that is actually making use of the extra dimension will be cost prohibitive for lots of types of content where 2d is used today. I really wouldn't care much for lots of YouTube content I watch being provided in 3d, half of it I already just listen to. As an example, look at how much more detail needs to be added to a room in a VR game versus a standard 3D game - since you have more freedom to poke around and look at things from more angles, stick your head in things, the expected level of detail is much higher. Just adding VR to existing games can make for a good experience, but VR native content will be more expensive to produce.
if putting on the Vision Pro is as fast and seamless as grabbing a tablet or opening up your laptop I guess.
when it's a pair of sunglasses with the Facial Studio Code already opened to your project, in other words.
Too bad "Visual" is already taken.. maybe Vision Studio Code.
There might be an inflection point like what you describe. It's also entirely possible that this is an evolutionary dead end like the voice interfaces that were the Next Big Thing a few years ago.
We've grown so accustomed to viewing technology as a steady progression of improvements that it seems natural that the thing that Apple is pushing today will be universal in 10 years, but there's no guarantee of that, and there are reasons to be skeptical that we'll look back at this as the next big leap.
For myself, I'm keeping my eye out for technology that is less intrusive into the rest of my life, not more immersive.
My thoughts exactly. There are almost no things I do on a daily basis where I want to go through a cognitively expensive process of changing modes into an immersive experience. Even getting my laptop out and opening it and logging in feels like too much for a lot of things, and I’m glad that I can use my phone to tap out a short email while half paying attention to my lunch, commuting, etc sometimes.
Maybe when they can shoot photons directly into my cornea without an intrusive set of goggles that take me out of the real world.
I keep hoping for an expanse experience. Where computing is truly connected (standards and fast wireless transfers). Apple ecosystem is moving towards this but they are so closed it feels more like autobus than bicycle for the mind. Linux is still not an option on the phone form factor. And the hardware are still very opaque.
I think we're socially primed for it right now - at-least here in the US. Unlike other cultures where you're living with a large family or extended family or your parents, etc, life in the US is getting to be more and more solitary (IRL, people are still forming social connections online) for young people. That makes it very easy to adopt this type of tech. In other cultures wearing it around the house will just make you look like a weirdo.
Couldn't agree more.
I bought an AVP on day one to be used -exclusively- as a monitor extender for coding.
It's untenable.
The only way I could avoid significant neck/back pain from the weight was to sit in a reclining chair. That wouldn't be a bad coding setup, but my eye strain was pretty significant, too.
I ended up returning mine.
This is a necessary 1.0 to build out the app ecosystem, etc. but it's absolutely not ready for full-time use.
The irony here is that the unusual weight of the headset was completely avoidable. The headset has a heavy aluminium frame, which is a terrible idea that serves no practical purpose except of an aesthetic one. No other headset does this. For comparison, the Quest 3 is significantly lighter despite including a battery.
Isn't aluminium better for longevity/reliability?
Only if resistance to significant mechanical stress is required. Which isn't at all necessary for VR headsets, as others use plastic and have no mechanical issues with it.
My father has some plastic camping dinnerware that has been heavily used since the 60's. It's been wildly abused around the world, up mountains, on beaches, by generations of family, kids and bitey babies.
It's not even scratched. I have no idea what it's made out of but it's super impressive. I try not to think about because of whatever the biosafety standards were back then... but the lack of visible damage gives me hope not much of it has been ingested at least.
Seems a poor compromise for a 1.0 product that will certainly be obsolete in the next 5 years
Maybe... for the stuff that is actually made of aluminum.
But I have a plastic VR headset and I'm pretty sure an impact bad enough to damage the plastic care is also bad enough to damage the electronics, which are going to be way more costly to repair.
I'd take a plastic headset personally assuming it was lighter. Anything to save weight in this product category.
aluminum is not an especially heavy material
It is, compared to plastic that is usually used in headsets.
Aluminium is a better thermal conductor than plastic? Might help move some of the heat away from the face and take some of the thermal load off the fans?
A lot of Apples decision seems to make more sense when considering how incredibly powerful (and thus hot) it is. The external battery pack (which is a 3 cell 13V pack btw) is definitely a consequence of that, they supposedly have some of the power electronics in there which helps move a bit of the heat generating stuff away from the face.
Imagine if you wanted to make a powerful headset without a fan. How would you even do that in plastic? You’d definitely want to transport the heat out to the perimeter or front, and plastic would just not be the most suitable for that.
So maybe that’s the path they’re looking towards? They might eventually be able to get rid of the fan with better chip technology, without compromising on compute, but then they need some metal to shed the heat from.
Perhaps the development they’re doing with titanium on iPhone is also a step in that direction. Letting them use metal without as much of a weight penalty.
The iPad Pro, a normal tablet, has an M2 without even having a fan, unlike the AVP, so the chip gets certainly not "incredibly" hot. The idea that a metal frame would contribute significantly to heat dissipation is implausible. It's just a frame. Apple uses metal all the time in other products for aesthetic reason where it isn't at all necessary. The Quest 3 doesn't use metal without requiring a large fan. Let alone a metal frame.
They use a ton of exotic materials in it to lighten it up. The obvious lightener for me is the front screen. the whole "eyesight" thing is extremely gimmicky and could have gone without on the 1.0.
I almost returned mine for that exact reason until I used it in bed before going to sleep. I have never fallen asleep faster. I know it sounds really strange that a computer strapped to my face helps me sleep but I guess something about the whole immersive environment really helps. I also don’t feel the pressure on my head when I’m lying down.
They sell those without the computer at a considerable discount: https://www.amazon.com/Manta-Sleep-Mask-Adjustable-Deepest-P...
You're very smug but it's obviously not the same experience.
Will you notice the difference when you're asleep?
Are you able to stay completely still with your face pointing up while sleeping the whole night??
It hurts (and wake me up) in just a few minutes if I happen to fall sleep with my regular glasses on.
Makes sense to me! There are so many useful edge cases that justify its use. Watching high def content alone is a pretty strong justification.
Lying on a bed would also do the trick.
I've had some great coding sessions on my ceiling, with my quest 3.
Interesting! What software did you use for that? And how did you set your keyboard up?
doing some pushups also helps
Sounds like a fit issue. I code all day. Recliner, couch, standing. Mac link at 5k emulation. Apple assigned me 21w, but I found it unusable. 36w put weight on outer cheekbones and was finally wearable. Removing the light seal and using some pads as spacers is how I use it now. Larger FOV. A bit weight and less cantilever
Yeah, I really like the Macbook and the iPhone, but basically everything else apple produces is pretty shit these days, even the airpods are just alright (I mean, the audio quality, design, and form factor are amazing, but they are super buggy and there are better wireless earbuds for the price).
It would be a great shame if a secure, well designed, easy to use computer loaded with a custom-built, well supported unix-like distro gets trashed because the company that makes it is always trying to "innovate." I don't know if there's much left to innovate in the computer world, there is only so much you can do with ones and zeros. It would be better if they just focused on what works, reliable and secure consumer electronics, instead of trying to be what they were under Steve Jobs.
Jobs is dead, he will never come back, and Apple will never be Apple under Jobs again. They should just try to be like the IBM of their space...just there, doing what they do best. An institution, a monolith, but not a "disruptor," as if there are any of those left.
Why does anyone like wireless headphones? 3 different pieces to track, have to constantly be on charge, and pricey at that. I ended up finally buying some iems
As a train commuter, wireless headphones are a massive improvement over wired for my semi-daily commute. I used to have the headphone wires constantly getting caught on my bag, other people's jackets, getting twisted and knotted in my bag, etc.
I just run the cable underneath my shirt. Don’t have to worry about them getting lost, and don’t have to worry about charge
That’s wildly different from my experience. Never lost the pieces or had to “track” them and the charge lasts for longer than I can comfortably listen to something without a short break.
Being tethered to a phone or computer with a wire that pulls, catches, and makes rubbing noise through your ears is truly an awful relic of the past.
Never had that problem. I run the cables underneath my shirt and hand the earbuds on my shirt when I’m not using them. Super convenient for me
and Letshuoer S12 Pro's absolutely blow everything else away in that space and they only cost about $100. Best value in ear phones, easy.
If I’m on a call on my computer I can get up and make coffee without leaving the call. If my phone rings I don’t need to switch headphones, they switch devices automatically.
I have high quality headphones and IEMs, the headphones I use if I’m _really_ listening to music, maybe a couple of times a week. The IEMs have been in drawer for months without use. The wireless headphones I use every day all day. It’s convenience.
A lot of younger people never take them out
Not that I’ve found. Maybe on individual features, but not as a whole product.
Same here. Bose ear buds noise canceling and bass are incredible. No comparison to the air pods. But god are they big and ugly.
Can you drop a link to your model of Bose please?
I just did a 10 hour flight from Tokyo to Sydney and I wore my Bose QC2 buds for the whole flight. I watched some pre downloaded YouTube videos, and then fell asleep for about 6 hours of actually restful sleep. I cannot express how amazing the noise cancellation is on those things. I was in a 787, seat 29A, window seat, just behind the wing and I could barely hear the sound of the plane. I'm never flying without them again.
To be fair, when I bought them it was only because I thought they looked cool and I already had other apple devices I knew they would work with; I was willing to pay the premium for the brand, it was a spur of the moment kind of thing and I never factored in competitor value. The funny thing about the Vision Pro was that as soon as I saw it I thought it, and anyone who used it, was really dumb, and I didn't want to be caught dead wearing it--not so for the airpods.
This is likely because you bought a pair of AirPods when they were already very popular and everyone thought they were stylish.
I bought my first pair of AirPods very close to their initial release and everyone looked at me like I was an idiot for wearing such an ugly and expensive device that couldn’t really do anything better than a $20 pair of earbuds. Do you remember everyone making fun of them at the announcement? It wasn’t until around 2 years later that AirPods were widely worn and accepted.
I’m not sure Vision Pro will go through the same adoption curve, but I am not confident that it won’t happen by late v2 or v3.
If V2/3 doesn't make you look like an idiot and actually works for work and leisure, then perhaps, but its hard to develop an VR/AR headset that would do that, since it inherently cuts you off from the social world in which the esteem of the product would be evaluated.
What do we think of people who sit around with a VR headset on all day? We think, usually, that they are anti-social, that they are afraid of going outside, that they want to trap themselves in a world that generates and serves their fantasies. How does a company which makes so much of their money off of people associating their products with high social status break into a market that appears to be solely for those who stand on the other end of the continuum?
The rational is contradictory: technology (according to the Silicon Valley playbook) profits by transforming the world into a place of further alienated and isolated individuals whose entire lives are shaped by and for tech companies which only exist to exploit them; and yet, such a world, in its total form, could never appear, since people could not work and live in that world unless they participated in it collectively, at some level. Phenomenologically, we can't view this move as anything more than an extreme error of judgement, a move from a post-jobs apple that doesn't seem to understand the magic of great design, the element of the sublime that technology can create--but it would always have to be this way, since the philosophy would never overcome the profit-motive.
Its why I said that computers can only go so far. We're at the end of the rope of the transformational power of technology, and everybody knows it. The world will not change on the whim of the market, the market will just constrict and eventually kill us all.
Then you didn't care to look for them. Sennheiser, B&W and other traditional companies have buds that sound light years better than greatest tech Apple can currently produce, and do cost more correspondingly.
On top of things like much longer lasting battery, much better support for advanced HD bluetooth codecs (I can plug them into anything like some cheap TVs anywhere). But to me overall sound quality is still #1 reason to invest into premium quality.
Of course then somebody from A team comes with 'but they integrates greatly with my iphone' argument, which is probably true but not that relevant to above. My Senns integrate effortlessly with my Samsung phone/tv/laptops too, thats kind of baseline in 2024.
Man, the amount of history rewriting that happens in tech world is actually insane.
Louis Rossman literally made his career out of showcasing how shit apple laptops have been through the years. The evidence is all there. I dunno if people are just willfully ignorant or are actually just lying.
For me, my Valve Index has completely changed how I do 3D modelling, I suppose this would do the same for many people.
We programmers are quite the outsiders, and sometimes its hard for us to understand how others see computers.
It's better to be patient before jumping to conclusions, this goes for first impressions or what we think it's gonna happen.
Most programmers are anything but outsiders. It's not a niche profession anymore
Being a programmer necessarily changes how you approach and interact with computers.
After a while (and not a long one) you develop a serious usability bias since you can intuit what a program is doing and how best to interact with it.
The longer you work in software, the harder it is to accurately imagine how a non programmer uses a computer.
That’s why the classic “only users could cause this error” jokes exist.
The way i see it, that's just a huge advantage.
My partner works as a medical research assistant. They had filled data into a huge spreadsheet in a software I think was called IBM SSES or something along those lines. Basically an excel spreadsheet, with hundreds of columns and tens of thousands of rows.
One of the analyses they wanted to run wasn't working correctly so she was tasked with filling in 0s in place of empty cells. She was expecting to spend 2-3 weeks doing this. She mentioned it to me, I've never seen this software before in my life but it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to do three weeks of manual work instantly. Just googled it and followed some instructions.
Being able to understand software is a useful skill. We should find ways to bring the average person up to speed, help them understand what computers can do so they too can see a task like that and be like "there's no way the software doesn't have an easier way to do that" instead of wasting time doing pointless busywork.
It’s a useful skill when using a machine, but not when anticipating how people out in non-tech land will use that same machine.
You say that as if there is another solution.
This is one way that you can design your software - follow existing conventions so that people's existing knowledge is useful for understanding your software.
The alternative can be summarized as "not doing that" and personally I don't see that solving any problems. It just means people have to learn it from scratch instead. And it's not like anyone actually reads manuals and such.
You're pointing to a task that is basically the platonic ideal of a work task that would benefit from VR and then saying that programmers are the ones who are unusual?
The vast majority of normal people's compute tasks for work could be done on an iPad with a keyboard. The vast majority of their compute tasks for play just require a smartphone. 3D modeling is already a huge exception to the norm in that it needs serious compute power and in that people already often use specialized equipment for it, and to top it off it's a task that is actually hampered by using a 2D projection on a flat screen.
Most tasks are more like coding than they are like 3D modeling.
It shouldn't be surprising that an AR workstation isn't as good as the real thing. If you're at home or at work, the AVP is going to sit on the shelf while you sit at your workstation. While an AR set can, in theory, surround you with code, you can only really focus on one window at a time. Old-fashioned monitors have had a long time to get good at providing that experience.
Still, it would be pretty darned cool to be able to take something even half as good on the road in a package that will easily fit in a backpack!
I am entirely done with Apple and will not be buying any more of their products, but I look forward to the competition that AVP will foster.
That's part of the problem framing the AVP as a system for 2D floating screens. 2D screens are good at what they do. 360 degree 3D with Six Degrees of Freedom is a completely different surface area and we are still at the Horseless Carriage stage of development of that affordance space. There are a few experiments in what's possible [1] but, for the most part, if all you throw at these devices is a floating screen then the novelty wears off and we have the conversations we are having in this thread instead of thinking about what more is possible.
[1] VR Immersive IDE: https://primitive.io/
The problem is it's not a horseless carriage... it's more like a hang-glider or something.
For the some niche things, fantastic, it's unique. Feeling inside a 3d scene, two handed manipulations of 3d objects... it's the hang-glider jumping off a mountain which no horse can do. If you currently render something in 3d on a monitor, VR might help and some new things like training for physical tasks might be cool too.
The hang-glider just isn't useful for commuters getting from A to B which in this case, is office work. It's text, it's numbers, it's organisation, it's communication. Throwing things around in 3d is just a gimmick that will likely slow you down. Moving your head or waving your hands around are not better ergonomically than a good monitor, keyboard and seating. Using a keystroke to flip the app/tabs in your field of view is more comfortable than turning to look at your wall.
This is like every 3d scifi UX you could see in compsci department since the 90s. I get it, everyone wants to create that cool looking scene from Prometheus but sadly no-one wants 4 lines of code exploded into a huge visual call-graph with dozens of nodes, interconnections everywhere and translucent text. VR won't change that. No-one really wants to drive around a city to find their files in a Gibson either.
For VR, you don't want to look at text that's far away, you don't want to look at text at weird angles... so what is a 3d environment adding? The ideal is to bring perfectly sized legible text at a comfortable focal distance into your gaze, that's what an automobile will need to do.
i took a different opinion after the article — i was of the same opinion before it but the article gave me some ideas i’d actually like.
i’m very much so a bit easily distractable and i do tend to wander and move locations while i work at home. i actually has thought the vision pro was tethered completely and 100% dependent on another apple device but i guess not entirely? that would be appealing for me to have very light work space that moves with me for similarly light work (chats, emails, etc)
looks a bit too goofy for me for public use but i’m just shy) but the article did help me see a vision for using the vision pro. better than apples ads
What is your reason? I am genuinely curious. I used to think that using open devices (Linux, GrapheneOS) gives me the convenience of being able to do everything I want. But over time I came to realize that Apple optimizes their devices for one happy path they envision, and if you don’t stray off that happy path (e.g. on iPhone you cannot sideload, can’t have background jobs), the convenience can be even greater than the possibilities an open design offers (native terminal, root access in Android). It is a local maxima. Thus I own an iPhone. On the computer side I own a PC, but that’s because Linux isn’t yet fully supported on Macs. What is your reasoning?
I can't speak for the Apple Vision Pro, I'd love to try one, to be honest. But I can agree with your comment.
Such has been my experience with the two headsets I own - the Meta Quest 2, which I think is really great and serves many purposes, and the PSVR 2 headset, which is phenomenal for gaming, but pretty much useless for anything else.
Both headsets have had a short-lived "wow" factor to them, without a doubt, but sadly, the novelty tends to wear off within weeks. I haven't used my Quest 2 since early 2023 (I think) and the PSVR 2's last use was for a game called Pavlov, which is simply mind-blowing, despite which, I think the hassle of headsets is problematic. For real gaming I go back to couch gaming with the Xbox or PS5, and for computer things I use computers.
Funny thing is, I keep meaning to do more with the PSVR 2 but now it's actually so dusty that it puts me off, it needs a full cleaning at this stage :).
Edit: Meta Quest -> Meta Quest 2
For me, VR comes down to content. Because the market is too small, there is none. There's few high end titles. HL:Alyx, Horizon: Call of the Mountain? Sometimes you get a port but then it wasn't originally designed for VR and it usually shows.
There's zero on the Quest 2/3 because it's a mobile device and it's not up to it and at least in my experience the link is not up to it either.
I'm not saying there are not some good experiences there. Several rhythm games are fun, a couple of games designed for low-power mobile devices. But the fully immersive high quality graphics games are so few an far between. If there were more I'd keep playing.
The way I see it, by the time AVP is available in Europe, there will probably be sufficient data from US users to give me an idea as to if it’s worthwhile.
So far hearing vastly mixed reviews about its “balance” on the users head - when I wear night vision goggles or similar devices I have to use a counter mass at the back of the helmet to make it comfortable. It seems the AVP doesn’t have such a balancing weight?
I was thinking that it might be possible to mount the battery to the back of the headset, like you see on various other headsets, which might counterbalance it. But because so many keep talking about how heavy the headset already is, I think this might introduce new issues, especially if you turn your head quickly.
I ditched my laptop for the xreal well over two years ago. I will never go back. This looks a 1000 times better but too expensive for now.
It’s better in terms of visuals, but worse in terms of weight, bulkiness, and your faces/eyes being enclosed.
This has been my reply to most people asking me if I’m going to buy a Vision Pro. It seems like after a week or two I’m going to want to do something, and a TV, laptop, or phone is good enough… I won’t want to go through the ceremony of putting on the headset and entering that environment to do some basic stuff, especially not if there is a remote chance I’ll be multitasking with stuff in the real world.
That said, I tried one on at the Apple Store the other day and the immersive stuff was really cool and I’d like to see more of it. But I think it makes sense to wait for the amount of content to increase and the price to come down.
To be honest, I'm kind of at that point. At first I was using it every day because it was new and I was curious, then I was using it every day because I wanted to give it a good try, then I was still using it but increasingly thinking "can I find any way in which this is better than just using a computer/iPad?". As of this morning, I'm writing this comment on my laptop, because going into the other room and strapping on googles feels like a chore, not a desirable activity.
I don't regret the purchase; I did not expect it to change my life, and I've actually had my skepticism about spatial computing turned around. I hope there is a future where we can do the same things in a less physically cumbersome way.
I still love making smoothies, it just turned out that they are way too many calories :(
Oy sounds like you wrote the fate of my DK2.
Not even that, apparently many customers are already returning them[1]. Most of the hype, as usual, is tech reviewers who want to stay relevant.
Early adopters will naturally chase any and every opportunity to make use of them, but in the coming months as novelty wears off, more issues arise, you get the (The ecosystem is just not ready yet)™ and most will be listed on the secondhand market.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/14/24072792/apple-vision-pro...
I'd generally agree, but it definitely depends on how the device is being used.
My VR headsets don't see much usage outside of simracing which I'd consider a hobby more than just gaming. So my point is that, "working" might present that same routine which demos/gaming/facehugger yt with low return on novelty.
It’s also a first generation device, often a good idea to just wait a bit, if it is such a revolutionary tool you won’t miss much by skipping the first version (other than feeling cool that you were in the first users).
FWIW I still use my blender almost every day. It's a great start of the day, so I can eat like a sinner the rest for the day. Didn't lose a gram of weight but I don't feel guilty about it anymore!
This comment does not address anything in the article or say anything of substance.
Everything is more exciting when it’s novel. That’s part of the fun of consumer electronics, games, movies, etc.
Speaking of Blender, does anyone know some good tutorials?
With ADHD, it doesn't even take 3 months. Give me one day and I'll never touch something again. Hell, some of the things I buy, I don't even use a first time, because having stuff doesn't actually help with motivation
Also, de-weigh anything Apple branded significantly.
You can easily code on Quest 3 if you really wanted to do AR/VR, and could do it on Quest Pro as well a year ago. While its true that Vision does offer better resolution, lets not pretend that people who are trying the Vision Pro have significant experience with AR/VR headsets, chasing the ability to work anywhere. Its brand fanboyishness at its core: "Apple made therefore its good and usefull".