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veen  ·  346 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I have a deep and burning desire to rag on Apple's nerd helmet.

I had a similar urge, so I just posted the least bad take on the Vision Pro I've read so far:

It is fascinating the number of technological breakthroughs that Apple has made to accomplish this device. Dual 8K 90+Hz screens, on the fly predictive eye tracking to drastically reduce latency, an enormous day-one app ecosystem enabled by their aggressive merger of iOS, macOS (and visionOS), and all the little design details that have made it so that not a single reviewer reports the usual VR headaches and dizzyness.

but is it a good product?

This device: no. But this isn't a good product for the masses, this device is what the Pixelbook tried to be for Chromebooks, aka the expensive thing to kickstart a platform. The inevitable $999 Vision that will arrive in a few years though? With the pareto 80/20 features it needs to be good for most? I currently don't think it's all too far-fetched to see that as a good product, hypothetical as it may be.

That product, I think, is immersion slash flow slash escapism.

To me, the idea to have the rotating crown as an immersion-slider is one of the most interesting features of this thing, as it addresses the big elephant in the room of any VR/AR device which is that it shuts you off from the real world almost instantly almost entirely. I don't think anyone really likes that other than basement dwelling gamorz. Where previously the device itself was designed around a specific level of immersion (from 'none' in the case of Google Glass to 'as much as possible' in the case of regular VR), Apple seems to correctly realize that depending entirely on the situation, person, surroundings, and activity varying degrees of immersion are needed or desired.

I mean, the bane of VR is that you surrender your visual senses to the shitty fidelity and lag of whatever you strap on your face. You're either in the magical cave or you're out. Yeah there's some passthrough but it's not integral to the experience or device. Transitioning in and out is always jarring, nausea is always around the corner.

    Again, it doesn’t look at all like looking at screens inside a headset. It looks like reality, albeit through something like a pair of safety glasses or a large face-covering clear shield.

The way Gruber describes it the Vision Pro does such a fantastic job of relaying the world around you (the entire world, the full vision) that I can totally see this blurring the line between regular vision and VR. A line that desparately needs blurring if this is ever going to work for the masses. The unmet need of AR/VR that the Vision Pro solves is that complete control over the level of immersion. And for that gradient you need the 'no immersion' part to be flawless.

But still, just because it enables a much smoother transition and thus I think enables it to potentially reach a larger audience than any device until now, that doesn't answer the question whether people actually need this new 'spatial computing' device. Personally I think this is where flow and escapism might be the big sellers. Escapism is the easy one: consumeth content in the best possible format. I think it was MKBHD who said he'd totally pay per view to watch big sports games in 3D at courtside with the Vision Pro, because it is so convincingly immersive. I wouldn't call it comfortable just yet with how heavy it supposedly is, but a bit of completely immersive escapism could definitely be enough for people to consider this device. And yes there will probably be people buying this to escape their shitty apartment / environment, but that's what people have done for decades in all sorts of ways.

The flow-part that Gruber talks about is interesting. There are already completely deranged weirdos who spend their working days inside a Quest Pro. They wave their arms around like inflatable tube men because that kind of interface is the only one available. So the idea of opening a fucking Excel in the Vision Pro is ridiculous to me at face value. But I have a crisp, large, wonderful 1440p 144hz screen in front of me that does the task of displaying a single window or maybe two next to each other just fine. Most of the regular desktop computing apps I use from day to day do not seem to be any better in visionOS.

However... there are many apps that I don't use all the time whose UIs are, if you're really honest, a nightmare of decades of compromises that a 2D screen requires. GIS. DAWs. Blender. Illustrator. The choice to make 3D item interaction largely vision based is another thing that does set this device apart from all the other VR wavy arms bullshit, because it seems to enable (near) full control with an interaction that is not that much different than using a mouse.

Really, what I wish Apple would've shown was a demo version of Logic where you can arrange everything in 3D space and move sliders by looking at them and moving a finger or something like that. I know how impressive your audio setup is, but I also vaguely know how expensive it is, and if I can get your setup for $3500 in an interactive 3D space instead of building it out? With a UI that knocks a DAW out of the water because it does not depend on me holding some plastic gizmo?

I think I would.