I was thinking of that Black Mirror episode where the helicopter mom gets her daughter implanted wuth a device that automatically censors distressing material and records everything that the kid sees (among other functions)
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Hey don’t pick on him. He’s just admiring his waifu on the way to work
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While picking out new frames for my prescription eyeglasses awhile back, I noticed a pair of very unusual frames being featured in a ‘special’ spot in the frames display case: exaggerated dimensions and detailed for a sort of steak-punk techno-look. I asked the optician’s salesperson who would purchase something like this and actually wear it in public. The answer: “Probably Johnny Depp.”
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:: aaaaachooo(douchebag!)ooo ::
Given that the device relies on displaying camera feed on the internal displays to call itself “AR” while only being optically capable of VR, along with tracking the user’s hands, it’s particularly far down that road: the cameras are rolling; you just don’t know whether or not the footage is being dumped to persistent storage at any given time.
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Even though this is VR pretending to be AR, and future iterations of these devices will be less obvious and intrusive, I think that video was still a good illustration of just how isolating using augmented reality is. As the dude said, he was sitting there in Time Square, surrounded by the world and real people, but his brain easily ignored all that stuff and accepted what he (and only he) was seeing as real. He was in his own little world and that would have been just as true if this device was miniaturized to the size of a pair of ordinary-looking glasses.
Despite Tim Cook’s repeated past statements about VR being an isolating experience and AR being a more social experience, I think that when you’ve mentally checked out to the people and world around you it doesn’t especially matter whether or not you can still see them standing next to the virtual screens hanging in the air. The same phenomenon happens if a bunch of friends are having dinner together but everyone is checking their phones instead of socializing.
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Please explain to me why I would want these and not a pair of xreals, which have the advantage of not looking like a diving mask?
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Maybe so, but they have also had plenty of massive failures. It seems like many of their failures are when they invent a solution in search of a problem. This definitely feels like that. When you think of their huge smash hits it’s from putting out the right product at the right time and making it accessible. This just feels too niche to me.
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HUMANITY IS SAVED!!! Hurrah!!! /s
but…but… apple… apps… /s
anyway… I still don’t know why VR in general is meant to be so amazing… just seems like yet another way to distract from the real in order for the elite class to continue to exploit us… Maybe there is some worthwhile application, but thus far it seems like it’s just people seeking to recreate cyber-punk dystopias from the 80s… 
Am I missing some use that could help people, say maybe folks with disabilities, in some way that maybe I haven’t considered?
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How about another chance to screw over artists?
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Or even streaming it live on their Me Channel. (Someone will do it.)
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Yeah, I don’t understand the idea of being opposed to VR and AR in general. I very much understand being against it as implemented by Zuckerberg or Apple.
Unfortunately, these days we can’t have nice things without them being bundled with tech company awfulness, though.
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We made fun of people walking round with Google glasses back in the day, we called them glass holes, and well we were right. That people here are caping hard for Apple auggests there might be enough stans out there to get this past the inherently ridiculous look of these things.
I don’t think the cost is a problem, Apple has a proven track record in getting people to part with way more money than other rivals’ products to maintain their huge profit margin.
Google glass style AR still seems useful to me as a head up display. I know they are available with fitness wearables I’m just surprised they aren’t hugely popular.
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I don’t think AR is really going to catch on until the headset is indistinguishable from a regular set of glasses and connects wirelessly to your smartphone… But I think the Vision Pro is going to be a big deal anyway.
Honestly, as someone who dabbles in 3D modeling, animation, and 3D printing, and has an interest in CAD/CAM, I can think of at least a dozen insanely useful and practical things I could do with a pair of these right now- And I’m not even a gamer. If I actually made my living from building 3D models (for hobby OR industrial use), I would have ordered one the day they were announced.
The reason the vision pro will be successful in a way that other VR headsets weren’t has very little to do with Apple, and everything to do with Blender, Unreal, Zbrush, Maya, Unity, Fusion 360, SolidWorks, Cinema 4D, Houdini, and the growing number of people who are making their living off virtual assets.
Before maybe 2020(ish?) the only real use for VR was playing games. Today, there are thousands of people selling 3D printable models to hobby printers, creating third party skins and mods for popular games ($50Billion is an actual number here), and making indie film and animation for fun and profit- And ALL of that stuff is created in a virtual 3D space that could be dramatically improved with the right VR set.
And again, we’re not even talking about engineering and machining. That might be an even bigger market. I learned architectural drafting with pencils and rulers- 30 years later, everything is, again, created in 3D virtual space that’s still being simulated on 2D screens.
The iMac wasn’t the first compact desktop, the iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, AirPods weren’t the first wireless earbuds. Hell, the iPhone wasn’t even really the first smartphone- I had a web browser, email, and could watch video on my RAZR- But Apple has a really solid track record of putting out the simplest, most attractive version of an emerging technology and making it the gold standard.
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It will be interesting to see how things go between Apple and the various “pro” 3d modelling and CAD tools.
Particularly for a company that has such a solid following in things like video and audio work; Apple is notoriously high-handed when it comes to deprecating things; and the really expensive CAD jockey stuff(my experience is concentrated in Solidworks; because that’s what the users I support use; but their competitors have at least somewhat similar styles) is something of the opposite: they think nothing of expecting you to be using ISV certified workstations; or having the picky requirements about OpenGL that help Nvidia differentiate between the drivers for consumer GPUs and the drivers for ‘workstation’ GPUs, even among parts low-end enough that the workstation ones aren’t any faster, higher memory, or more featureful.
If the delta between Apple and everyone else is great enough I assume that they’ll suck it up(or, at least, smaller and hungrier 3rd parties will introduce tools that can at least ingest the output of Solidworks and similar for view/review purposes; even if Dassault Systemes has no interest in porting to iOS and metal; but (while they appear to offer an attractively superior VR experience at present) it’s not going to be an amicable relationship between the relatively conservative ISVs and Apple’s “You don’t need ‘roadmaps’ when it’s always our way or the highway” approach.
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I think the analogy to phones is apt(where phones are vastly less ‘totalizing’ than full computers in terms of how much attention they seem to demand; but the fact that you can immediately pick them up for just a taste when you get the buzz of a notification seems to have been massively habit-forming for a wide range of people; while spending 18 hours a day at the computer is highly visible but mostly for a small slice of hyper-nerds and problem gamers); but it makes me wonder whether the “Our approach is less isolating!” pitch is a cynical enticement from someone whose “Services” revenue depends on constant ‘engagement’ or whether Cook himself believes it.
Regardless of whether he’s sincere or not; I think that what you’ve identified is the basis of what rubs me the wrong way about Apple’s messaging in terms of their ideal customer(obviously, they will and do sell relatively ordinary laptops and desktops for standard PC use cases; but that’s not what they are advertising with their “What’s a computer?” ipad kid; or their “It’s not antisocial VR; look at these people doing family things in AR!” stuff): they are selling a sort of somewhat watered down(compared to the full sit-down-with-big-monitor(s) PC experience) but hugely insidious computing experience; which is the opposite of what I want; and I suspect actually worse for most people’s ability to keep their habit under control:
I, admittedly, hit the computer pretty hard, both for work and recreationally; but I prefer it as a highly discrete experience: when I’m at the computer I want multiple screens, no glare, no interruptions unless it’s critical. It’s not really intended to be compatible with doing something else.
When I’m off the computer, though, I Do Not want it trying to nose its way back into the tent: no smartwatch glances, no notification vibrations; no pulling my phone out for just a quick hit; to the degree possible(not always possible if I’m on call); computer gets either zero or 100% attention.
What Apple seems to be selling is precisely the 10-90% range that I personally dislike and am more than a bit fearful of: the constant barrage of notifications you get in mobile hell; the instant-on-and-facial-unlock experience that lets you take a quick hit anywhere, any time, without formally switching your attention from what you are ostensibly doing back to the computer.
I don’t think that Cook is strictly lying in the sense that yes “VR with hiqh quality passthrough cameras is incrementally less isolating than VR that’s purely about the virtual environment”; but people aren’t going to use those in the same way(as we’ve already started to see): VR is something that you do intensively for however long; then take off and walk away from because you can’t even safely walk around while wearing the googles. “AR” is something that demands almost as much attention; but lets you see just enough of the outside world that you don’t necessarily take it off to do other things; since it’s not strictly necessary anymore; so the amount of time during which the outside world gets zero percent attention goes down; but the amount of time when it gets maybe 30% goes up.
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Too early to predict how this is going to pan out.
It may be a Google Glass and disappear into oblivion.
It may be a Segway, useful in some specific situations and a bit of joke everywhere else.
Or it may be door to a useful version 2 (or version 3).
Apple have been pretty sucessful at bringing products to mass market so I am not going to write them off at this stage - even if I see no reason to use it myself.
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I’m not quite sure how this Apple product will appeal to this market in a different way than existing products for said market, such as the Meta Quest Pro, HTC Vive Pro or the Varjo XR series
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