Oh, wow. OK. Apple really is making a $3.5K VR ski-mask. Dev tools are now out for it Apple's Vision Pro goggles won't be available until next year, though registered developers can now explore the iGiant's tools for making apps for the virtual-reality headset. On Wednesday, the tech titan released Xcode 15 beta 2, which includes the visionOS software development kit (SDK), a 3D content design tool called …
I've nevertheless found Karl Guttag* to be quite persuasive on the topic of the likely issues with Apple's product: they didn't demonstrate any new applications or interaction breakthroughs, reproducing reality on a screen in front of your eyes — no matter how low the latency — still doesn't look or feel like reality due to vergence-focus differences, the pixel counts still aren't where they'd need to be for things like virtual screens to look as good as real screens.
I don't think I'm just parroting the first thing I found that confirms my prejudices, I guess time will tell.
* designer of the TMS9918, the TI/ColecoVision/SG1000/MSX/etc video chip that was first to sprites and tiles, of various other chips in the interim, involved in the first synchronous DRAMs, doing AR and VR for at least the last decade or so, semi-recently very early to the Magic-Leap-is-obviously-investor-baiting-fluff train. Even though the formatting of the blog makes it look like spam and/or whatever your uncle last wrote on Facebook about politics.
I'm waiting for VR/AR goggles that offer me any utility whatsoever. None of the proposed use cases look at all interesting to me.
I thought the VR demo at SIGGRAPH '89 was uninspiring. The needle hasn't moved.
on Ars that does a proper job of explaining what these glasses things are for.
As for the price? Like the Mac Pro they are not really aimed at consumers are they?
And the article? Clickbait shite which I, of course, suckered for. hence this comment. They say "as you get older, you get wiser". I think I am living proof that it is not always true.
Anyway, fuck this bollocks, it's nearly Friday. Happy happy day!
>Like the Mac Pro they are not really aimed at consumers are they?
Like Apple's first laser printer, or first color screen. These are for specialist use and flash bastards early adopters, but if people think of a use for them then there will be future versions that are cheaper for a wider audience
There is an article on Ars that does a proper job of explaining what these glasses things are for.
Separating gadget fans from their money?
(And no, I'm not going to wander around Ars Technica looking for some fabled article. If you want people to look at your sources, provide links or at least decent citations.)
...and were wrong about every last one of them.
Yes, this product is expensive. That said, in a very, very unusual move for Tim Cook it does not seem overpriced - show me who else is offering 23 megapixels of OLED display at that kind of density along with all the optics needed to view it. In fact you barely get a couple of normal sized lowest-end 4K HDR OLED TVs for that kind of money, and they're only providing around 16 megapixels in total. So, if anything, I was surprised it was so cheap when you also factor in the M2 SOC, the brand new real-time sensor chip, the sensors themselves and the RTOS layer that the developers had to write on top of the Mach kernel to service it all. The resulting 12ms from-input-to-display latency is very low. Oh - and I almost forgot another very expensive part - there's even that crazy, entirely bespoke, one-of-a-kind lenticular front OLED display that's providing true no-glasses perspective/3D effects to anyone looking at a person wearing the headset.
Yes, this product is also boring. All these people going on about "just a bunch of everyday applications" are just like 3D TV evangelists from years gone by - just hawking tedious, lame tech demos, flashy nonsense with no real-world use. Whereas a general purpose computing device that is *also* equivalent to a huge 4K HDR true stereoscopic OLED TV, a laptop screen mirror and all the other bells and whistles to make a spacial model actually work? That is the point - being boring is exactly the point. This isn't some stupid pie-in-the-sky junkware with no serious applications and/or only very niche use cases, it's an attempt to provide a third general purpose computing model (after mobile/touch and WIMP) that people can actually use routinely.
Finally, yes, this headset is quite big and heavy (and it makes a huge amount of sense to have an external battery pack given the limitations of even the best battery and miniaturisation technology available in 2023). But - obviously - it'll get smaller and lighter over time. The cameras will get better from iteration to iteration, dealing with low lights and highlights better; the displays will get better, with similar results; latency will drop; sensor accuracy will improve and so-on. This is a generation 1 product, and in many ways could be considered a proof-of-concept; nobody's expecting mass-market appeal.
Many of the predecessors and current in-market offerings are trying for "mass market appeal" but haven't achieved it, because they didn't grasp what people might actually want and just focused on the niche use cases (game-only headsets, or Hololens) or VR style tech dream hypefest (Meta's nonsense).
It'll take 2-4 years for it to get small, light and cheap enough, but I'm pretty confident that there's going to be a huge market for this in due course.
The iPhone was different. Remember they came out when every phone was loaded with features, but each behind a consumer-hostile telco paywall. iPhones were a revolutionary improvement to a product that many people used. The question was if telcos would allow them.
The AR goggles value is not clear. They're a revolutionary improvement to a product that almost nobody uses.
> They're a revolutionary improvement
Really? Looks to me like Apple have done their thing of taking a bunch of boring stuff, polishing them enough that the sort of people who buy number plates will get them and slapping on a huge price tag.
The iPod was an improvement on the Walkman, and lots of people used them.
The iPhone was an improvement on the Blackberry and various Windows CE and Symbian based smartphones, and a fair number of people used them.
The iPad, yes it was less obvious initially what that was, but it was basically a giant iPod Touch, and that was the key to making it a success. Previously people had tried to make tablets by ripping the keyboard off a laptop, when in fact the answer was to take a handheld computer and scale it up.
This Vision Pro thing, I'm not really sure what it is supposed to do, but I don't think it is going to be the next iPad.
I largely agree with your conclusion, but there are a few unwieldy shortcuts there:
You make it sound as if the iPod was the first music player after the Walkman. There were in fact quite a few iterations by various brands between them, from which Apple got a lot of inspiration.
As to saying that the iPhone was an improvement over the BlackBerry: I can't say I see that. They were targeting two completely different markets at the time. The BlackBerry was a very business-oriented tool, the first iPhone was for individual consumers.
Yes, of course there were other products in the evolution line between the Walkman and iPod. The iPod wasn't the first mp3 player.
But, the Walkman was the category-defining product of the 1980s and 1990s. The iPod was the category-defining product of the 2000s.
I don't think the likes of the MPMan F10 or the Diamond Rio PMP300 were category defining products even if they did bridge the gap between the Walkman and the iPod.
The iPhone replaced the Blackberry in the business market once it got Exchange ActiveSync support in the iPhone 3G. That relegated the Blackberry to the teenage girl market, and the iPhone replaced it there when it got support for things like WhatsApp and iMessage.
> Y'all
Really? I distinctly remember telling people that iPhone and iPad will become big when it was announced. So "y'all" definitely doesn't include me, or anyone else in tech I personally know for that matter.
And I am not saying the same for this thing.
Why? Simple: iPhone and iPad served killer features no other device offered. None. All the "smart" phones that came before the amalgamation of the iPod touch app capability and the communication facilities of a phone, were, tbh. crap as smart phones. At best they were PDAs. The iPad offered the same, but with a screen that made it useful to actually work with, and not just read a quick email or scan an article online.
These products provided value that no other product offered. That's why I believed in them. That's why they became successful.
Now, where is the killer feature for this thing? What value does it provide to me? All I have seen so far, is already provided easier, cheaper and better by other devices:
- Office work: I have multiple UHD screens, precision pointer devices and a desk. None of those require me to wear a big headset. None of these prevent me from eating my lunch or sipping coffee without having to worry about damaging a really expensive piece of hardware in the process. On the move I have a laptop. And btw. the change that I'm willing to wear that thing wile sitting in a train, or any public setting for that matter, is ZERO.
- Recreational: My phone is always with me and has a superb camera. It's also generally more useful and harder to damage, and holds a charge longer. And my wife and me won't snuggle with giant VR headsets on our heads when we can instead crawl under a blanket in front of our giant LCD TV screen.
- Gaming: aka. the only semi-relevant usecase for VR. Has been explored for many years now, never really took off. My Quest2 is collecting dust already.
So, what else is there? More specifically, what else is there, that is so good, so unique to this device class, and so amazing to have, that I would not just pay 3500$ for it, but also wear a big headset that holds a charge for a few hours, and is limited to whatever the app stores of Apple have to offer?
> And my wife and me won't snuggle with giant VR headsets on our heads
... It's like none of the people making these things wear regular glasses.
Not the thing for intimacy, however blind I am without them.
Just having arms can get in the way sometimes.
The people making these aren't the ones responsible for the higherups who ever more deperately try to come up with something, anything, to present a problem for which these unwieldy gimmicks could maybe, sometimes, perhaps, in a bad light, seen as a viable solution.
But conversely Apple came right out of the gate explaining the concrete and appealing applications of the iPod, iPhone and iPad; for the Vision Pro it's a more wishy-washy "we've built this interface, and we're hoping a use case will turn up".
iPod: 5,000 songs in your pocket.
iPhone: the real web, with unlimited data.
iPad: whatever you use your iPhone for, but larger.
Vision Pro: augmented reality allows us to put graphics on top of a video feed of your world. So, ummmm, movies maybe?
Then until there is, this thing will share the same fate as the rest of the VR/AR/Metasomething hypecycle, as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, I have no doubt that there will be quite a few apple fans with disposable income who will pony up the 3.5 grand, and there will absolutely be shops touting the amazeballs VR/AR/SpacialComputing integrated-ness of their products.
But none of that changes the requirement for a killer app for V/AR to be successfull as in "successfull like the iPhone".
What am I gonna do with that 3.5k ski-mask? And if your answer is anything even touching "office work", then you can stop talking right now, because that's not gonna happen. I don't wear a ski mask to code. I don't wear a ski mask in a meeting, inOffice or online. I have multiple highdef monitors, I have precision pointer devices, I have excellent haptic keyboards, I have a bigass desk, and I can sip coffee and even eat lunch while using all of them, and pet my cat if I'm at home. And I don't have to worry about charging any of them.
And I don't know anyone whos first thought of the day is: "You know what would really make these spreasheets so enjoyable to work with? If I could have them floating right in front of me in my living room!".
As for rereational activities: No, I'm not gonna wear a 3.5k headset to my nieces birthday party, where food flies fast, and the sun burns down in the garden, just to take photos?! Why on earth would I do that, when I have an excellent camera in a device that fits in my pocket, doubles as my second brain, holds a charge for 3 days and can be put on a table with timed shutter for group photos with me in them? I am also not going to snuggle up to my wife for movie nights while both us us wear these things. Instead I'm gonna activate the bigass highdef TV screen we have a dedicated piece of furniture for in our living room.
So far, to me, this is a solution in search of a problem. A very expensive solution.
I can immediately think of multiple uses. No doubt Apple has the same perception.
Just for one - Don’t know yet about the manual (digital = fingers) but I can readily imagine any initial discomfort in wearing one of these will readily supersede the discomfort (which nobody notices any more) of sitting at a desktop all bloody day ruining my posture and eyesight.
Can’t wait.
> I can immediately think of multiple uses.
Then how about you name, let's say...5?
> but I can readily imagine any initial discomfort in wearing one of these will readily supersede the discomfort (which nobody notices any more) of sitting at a desktop all bloody day ruining my posture and eyesight.
Let me ask you something, how am I typing while wearing these? If the answer is "something-finger-gesture-something", let me stop you right there, because that's not going to happen. I tested a good dozen different VR/AR typing concepts already, including ones using hand tracking, gloves, controllers, eye movements and speech recognition. And they all suck. Keyboard isn't going away. Neither is a mouse/trackpad/trackball. So we can safely assume that there still needs to be a very real, hard surface upon which these devices rest, aka. a desk.
So no, the future of office work is not people healthily hiking through nature wearing an overpriced skimask. The future includes desks. And given that's the case, I rather invest 500$ in an overpriced, comfy gaming chair, than 3500$ in a floating somewhat-replacement for my screens that I have to hook up to Apples ecosystem, and changes exactly zero about the fact that I still have to sit at my desk.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
