Posted by mfiguiere 10/23/2024
1. Too much startup friction. I share the Apple Vision Pro with someone else who like me also loves it and uses it all the time. But since we both wear glasses, there's a 2x ~10 minute process for recalibrating the eyesight each time we switch. It's an expensive device at $3500 which I'm happy to pay for quality, but to pay that twice, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Apple goes too far with the greed here not letting us set up separate profiles. Netflix wouldn't get away with that. You not only have to repeat the setup process when switching, you have to share access to your apple user account too.
2. My main interest in a vision headset is I want a new virtual workstation where I can watch movies on a gigantic screen beneath a gigantic translucent terminal where I can do my daily work. There's a nice app called La Terminal that does just that. Sadly it has some serious keyboard latency issues since I don't think they've put as much focus into their support for this platform. I won't tolerate anything less than optimal latency in my work tools. So until I get around to building a terminal app for Vision Pro on my own, there's not a whole lot I'm interested in doing with it aside from watching the occasional movie on the moon. I would also really like for Vision Pro to have an ethernet port because I don't know how to run a wifi network without jitter.
If you haven't tried one of these things, then you really should. I didn't realize when I first put one on that it was a fully synthetic display until I tried reading the 10pt text on my computer monitor. It's really a stunning thing to witness. This Vision Pro is probably the best glimpse we can get today of what the singularity is going to be like in the future. So definitely give it a try at least once.
Like how much should watching stuff be worth to people!? Am I crazy? I don't even dislike movies, but $3500 usd might be what I already spend on all forms of entertainment + 2 years worth of food, and maybe all of my transportation for half a year or more, combined. I'd just kind of hope for something more substantial y'know?
> $3500 usd might be what I already spend on all forms of entertainment + 2 years worth of food
Where do you live? I live in Romania and even my mom who makes around 1000e a month spends like 400e on food, so she spends around 5k euros a year on food
Nevertheless, not only in Romania, but probably in most countries of the European Union, a human can spend for food only between EUR 100 and EUR 150 per month, while still eating very healthy food, with the condition of cooking at home and buying only raw ingredients. Even the industrially-made bread is at least 3 to 4 times more expensive than the bread made at home. For other kinds of food, the price ratio between buying and making at home is even greater.
2 eggs = .8 euro
250ml milk = .8 euro
300g chicken breast = 2 euro
1 large tomato = .8 euro
150g cheap cold cuts = 1 euro
I'm already at 5.4 euro and that's not even 2000 calories, add butter, olive oil, other vegetables, bread and you easily reach 8-9 euro per day and I bet Romania is at least 20% cheaper than most EU countries
So please englighten us, give me a menu that's 2k calories, has some animal protein in it and costs less than 5 euros
I don't eat out, never eat processed food, cook all myself and have a hard time (germany) hitting 150€ a month, so 5€ a day is totally doable. Don't get me wrong, it's hard to know what you can buy, but Stiftung Warentest is your friend and a book about medical nutrition at university level will make sure you don't buy from advertisement.
Try that in Croatia, you'll soon be dead or at least severely malnourished.
- 2 years worth of food
- 6 months worth of transportation
For 3.5k? Either you're Amish (with an HN handle), or you're dril and you need advice from someone who is good at the economy [0].
Apple really has one of the worst workflows around user accounts, I have to think it is because of some legacy reasons that means it would be a big project to fix (based on other companies I've worked at that lousy user accounts and couldn't fix)
Here's our experience for what it's worth and why I say misnomer.
I setup an Apple TV in a parent's apartment. It turns out that when they re-arrange the icons, even if they're in their profile, they rearrange the icons on the "default" profile - which is mine.
So I came home to an Apple TV with the apps all moved around.
Digging into it, it seems that while there is the cover of "user profiles" on Apple TV, they simple aren't useful. Logged in apps stay logged in across all profiles. So it's not like a browser profile where you can have two different logins to say Jellyfin or Plex or Youtube or Disney+.
As such, the profiles are indeed a misnomer when compared to what any reasonable user would expect of changing "profiles."
In other words, a sham!
Ref from reddit confirming as much: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/qeatju/the_way_that_...
Ref from Apple that buries the lede: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/tv/atvb0753b37d/tvos
Here's the salient bit from that apple page:
When each member in a household has an Apple Account, you can create unique user profiles for each person, with Up Next lists, system language preferences, paired AirPods settings, music, Game Center data, and content recommendations personalized for the currently active user.
Note how little profiles actually do. You can't use your own logins to any services, or have a home screen that is yours with your apps. It's still just a one-user device sadly.
for $3500 I don't expect any primary shortcoming, especially for something I'd use professionally. There's a lot of substitute hardware I could buy to get the same experience at that point, so I see no need to compromsise just becasue it's a shiny new toy.
I guess that's more of a "me" problem.
Can you elaborate on this? I've not looked at it since it came out. Does this mean that you can look at your computer monitors while using it, or that it's replacing your computer monitors because it has a high enough resolution?
Every other display I've tried has far too low pixel density to be used for serious work, which is rather unfortunate.
> someone else who like me also loves it and uses it all the time
Wait, do you almost never use it or do you use it all the time?
(pronouns chosen to make it easy to distinguish two people, with no knowledge of anybody's sex or gender, but since sex and gender shouldn't matter, it shouldn't matter)
> People are going to only read the headline and interpret it as “discontinue”. Like the article says, it just means they have enough inventory until they replace it with something cheaper. [https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/report-apple-may-stop-p...]
I wonder how Apple would go through with this, hopefully with a better form.
Apple is free to continue selling what they have in inventory.
There is a huge difference. My interpretation is that the GP is making the point that with just the headline people will think the product as a whole was discontinued, not just this first version.
Apple has been pushing for AR for years and years. I remember seeing demos when presentations were still live in person.
The whole concept of Vision Pro is “spatial computing”. Backtracking to VR would be a huge shift in focus.
Hence why they have the crown to seamless switch between AR and VR.
That said, Apple marketing has been mostly dead silent since the product announcement 1.5 years ago.
A 2015 MacBook Air was discontinued, but 2024 (or 2023, whatever the last update was) MacBook Airs are not.
It would be crazy to have different product names for fungible products that are at least as good as the previous one.
As to selling the rest of the inventory: of course they are free to sell whatever they want. But this is a device whose only real use is to be a sort of preview/testing ground for developers who want to get ahead on writing VR code. The pricing is ridiculous for a consumer device, and it is too goofy for Apple users to wear to coffee shops. Continuing to sell it without any note that it was pointless would be a massive betrayal to third party Apple devs if they aren’t planning on making a serious product.
Remember the Apple Lisa. Get yours while their prices are low.
>Apple will still be able to resume Vision Pro production if sales pick up since the production lines are not yet due to be dismantled.
If the item is still on Apple's website it's not discontinued.
It's typical of Apple's hubris, to throw in all these features they think people will want, meanwhile if the headset had no cameras and was just a display strapped to your head for $1000, it likely would have sold a lot better. But they didn't want a VR device for whatever reason.
At the same time you could blame discretionary spending being at some of the lowest levels in a decade.
> meanwhile if the headset had no cameras
I remember when apple got universally panned for putting cameras in laptops. Most people surely wanted the cost savings, while the small number of power users who needed video chat should have no trouble picking up a USB camera for $100 (more like $200 in present-day USD). Of course, what actually happened was that people (and apps!) in the mac world could suddenly assume that everyone else already had a camera set up, even if they weren't technical, and that was the real killer feature. The rest of the industry quietly memory-holed the snide commentary and followed suit.
Volume will drive price down once VR gets Good Enough. Right now it isn't, so I'm glad that Apple is playing to their strengths by taking swings at substantive challenges -- like the fact that VR makes the wearer look like a complete dope -- rather than becoming discount VR vendor #312.
Apple has a history of doing products that seem expensive and weirdly overspecced at the beginning, and then stick with it if they truly believe in it. OTOH, there are also clearly products that Apple killed because they didn't work out. But I believe it's still to early to tell where the Vision line is going.
Damn you just reminded me there was time laptops didn't have cameras. Like phones!
For a real attempt, the UI needs to be augmented reality you can wear walking around, and the form factor needs to be a pair of normal glasses. It is certainly possible the tech doesn’t exist yet. But that won’t convince people to buy a silly version.
Now that we are all more social again, the point of a device that shuts you out of the world is a bit... less useful.
Personal computing did not reach mainstream until smartphones. Even notebooks were too much of commitment for most people. Maybe AR [0] glasses could go in path of smartphones but VR headsets are polar opposites to smartphones.
[0]: Actual augmented reality that is projected on top of real vision - not recorder reality with camera like in case of this product.
I can see AVP as being half luxury and half tech-demo/devkit for a more budget friendly device.
I have never seen anyone look at those two examples and think “luxury”. Even the most ardent proponents of Apple products laugh at those prices and think they are absurd. With good reason. Who ever is going to look at computer wheels and think they’re a sign of luxury¹?
¹ Yes yes, someone surely will, just like there’s someone for everything. I’m making a general point.
Time will tell if a "killer app" is found.
It's a shame as it seems like they maxed out the tech specs, but given the state of the art it still ends up being too low resolution for true MacOS productivity replacement, while also being too heavy & tethered to a short lived battery pack.
Maybe a worse-is-better version that is cheaper/lighter will sell more for entertainment uses.
Where are the grants to devs to buy and develop something good for it? Apple just kind of expected everyone to do that work for free for them. Watching movies on an airplane is not a $3500 use case. Mirroring your desktop to a head mounted display that is too heavy and cumbersome to be a $3500 use case. Putting iPad apps into the air is not a $3500 use case.
Where's the killer app? What even IS a killer app for head mounted displays? They've been around for 30 years now. It has never been an insufficient hardware problem. The original oculus devkits were genuinely terrible, but VR IS a killer app for sim enthusiasts, so they rushed to implement it into everything they could straight away. Euro Truck Simulator was one of the earliest integrations. But that's not an Apple market and never will be.
If someone wants VR/AR to be some stupid ShadowRun heads up display for managing all the info you encounter in the world, that app should be built and iterated on first. How many average people even run an "organize and remember everything" app? What percentage of iPhone users even use the damn calendar?
But they still look kind of off when wearing them in public (slightly bigger than normal sunglasses, cable from one ear and other people can see the light from the screens from the side or back).
And the lack of integration is a pain - the phone has to be unlocked so is subject to random taps and swipes in my pocket.
However, an Apple-built Carplay-style projection into XReal type glasses could work very well - the question being how would you control it?
I think it is not totally necessary to have it be impossible to tell you are wearing the things. Like walking around with earbuds or portable headphone was unusual at some point (even the walkman is less than 50 years old, right). They just have to not look deeply goofy, like current VR-pressganged-into-AR headsets do.
My guess, Apple knows this won't become mainstream/usage for 5+ years.
And as such, they need to bring technology from the future 5-years from now, to today ... and as such, that's why it's so expensive.
They aren't expecting people to pay $3,500 for this device when the killer app exists. But it needs to cost that in order for developers to "develop to where the puck is going" in 5-years time.
People love their electric scooters nowadays, and they’re just worse Segways.
Apples headset is expensive and has no compelling software for most people. It was DOA.
Not sure about that. The scooter is a >200year old design and there is a reason it subsist to this day. Segways are huge and not as easy to store/fold. Onewheeler are more elegant design and much more compact but awkward to operate when powered off in places you aren't allowed to use it and you cannot carry loads as easily. In that sense a scooter offer the speed of the segways/onewheelers, with the convenience of being able to push them easily anywhere with minimum effort while staying foldable, easy to hide away once reaching destination yet they can carry stuff.
Scooters are a smaller form factor, but bikes should be the real personal transport winner.
The early problems were it was illegal to use them on sidewalks but also there weren't bike lanes like there are in big cities now.
It was also pretty big & heavy it didn't work for multi-modal like using it for the last mile to/from a train or bus.
So the e-mobility space got won decades later by worse, cheaper products that were smaller & lighter .. being used heavily for food delivery app drivers using them semi-legally in bike lanes. A use case that wasn't imagined in the Segway unveiling.
That doesn't bode well for VR headsets, which also make you look geeky.
The middle class won't want to join a new untested alternate reality if it's full of working class people, and the working class will always want to go where the middle class is at. The only thing to stop them is the price. That's why it costs the same as a piece of designer clothing. Apple has to lock in a critical mass of affluent adopters first, before they can mass monetize the prestige.
Headline: Apple May Stop Producing Vision Pro by the End of 2024
First paragraph: Apple has abruptly reduced production of the Vision Pro headset and could stop making the current version of the device completely by the end of 2024
That's newsworthy all by itself. No clickbait needed.
As an AVP owner the thing is an absolute flop and it's not misleading to say that for the foreseeable future the line has been discontinued.
The first Macintosh was, inflation adjusted, double the price of the Apple Vision Pro, and they shipped about the same number of units in their first years respectively.
People only see it as a flop because Apple is a gargantuan company now compared to then and they expect to see gargantuan sales of new products from Apple now. Apple is playing a different game this time around.
My experience receiving a Vision Pro demo at an Apple store also involved a poor Apple rep having to keep a straight face showing me basic iPad games when I asked about gaming. This thing has some of the most advanced VR headset hardware and their best gaming demo was some iPad games where you tap and hold to jump over mountains.
Beat Saber did pretty well but then Apple made a headset that can't even play Beat Saber.
The only way to get around that in gaming is to have 1st/2nd party developers (like Nintendo/Sony tend to do), but making games has never been in Apple’s culture. Movies/TV shows are a bit closer to their DNA, and they’ve started producing those with mixed results - games would be a much taller order.
It's much too late in this stage of the industry to just look attractive for exclusives; the industry standardized (compared to a PS1 disc vs a N64 cartridge) and no one's throwing enough money to carry that plan long enough to pay off Like Microsoft kind of did. Not even FAANGs. But it's never too late to just make good games and foster series your platform is known for, like Nintendo.
But then again, Meta just shuttered that studio despite a hit game series from them, so who knows what's going on anymore?
It is always a symbiotic relationship, what is missing, is that Apple doesn't play their part of exclusives like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft do (and SEGA in the past).
that cycle came back last year when they used AAA games to showcase the power of the iPhone 15 and for devs, talk more about their porting toolkit. The last cycle was showcasing the M1 chip and Apple Arcade.
Yet these came after they actively fought against Vulkan support (and now they are using some form of MoltenVK to help with their porting tech) and hard blocked several cloud gaming platforms. Things that could have made their job a lot easier (and maybe cheaper).
so I suppose in 2-3 years we'll see Beat Saber working when they get serious with VR.
Other than that their only attempt was the failed Pippin, so yet another reason to hate games, other than those on iDevices, bringing money home.
Which is a huge downside for something that users are literally forced to stare at.
Would be nice if it was better, I don’t see it as a “huge downside” as you do though.
It's not hard to see how this product could continue to be streamlined and made more accessible in the future.
edit: typos, clarity
Even their “misses” have just been devices that were too niche or bad value propositions for the average consumer, rather than being technically immature (thinking of HomePod here). It’s rare for Apple to launch a device that’s just far too early to be useful even to its target audience.
"The iPad was mocked" is irrelevant. Many or most products are mocked by some people, even iPhone. Regardless of mocking, iPad was an immediate success. Vision Pro is not. I fully admit that the price of Vision Pro is the biggest problem. But you can't pretend that the first iteration of Vision Pro is just like the first iteration of iPad.
Now, sure, you can say the Vision Pro was not as big a success as the iPad even if you account for that difference in markets, scale, price ranges, etc. But that doesn't mean it's a total failure either, or that there is no future for the product.
Most people who have a Vision Pro, seem to like it. It's unsurprising that it's not flying off the shelves because at the moment it's little else than an expensive toy, and once the novelty wears off it's not like there is that much to do with it at the moment, it's also seemingly uncomfortable to wear for prolonged periods of time. But like I said, it's not hard to see how it could be getting better with future iterations.
So even if there is no perfect correlation between the shortcomings of the first iPad and the larger shortcomings of the first Vision Pro, there is a correlation.
These are diverse markets, but far from the general market. I think VR/AR will end up the same.
What do you mean by the general market?
iPad has more unit sales than Mac. It's a massive market. The last time Apple reported unit sales, back in 2018, iPad was selling over 43 million units per year.
I don't see it.
VR headsets are at their 6th or 7th iteration in the last decade.
not being able to see how this is different is very disingenuous. when the ipad was released, nobody had a device like that. apple's headset was not the first. even those the came before did not gain a lot of traction. so apple is not blazing new trails here that people just don't understand yet. this is an accepted as niche product line for certain personalities.
They are now, and that's exactly the point. And people don't look ridiculous now because they became adopted, but even the first versions of mobile phones made people look ridiculous.
Have some perspective, try to think beyond a lapse of more than two years back and forwards.
I cannot see this with a VR headset. It's a very geeky limited market, no matter the price point. But ESPECIALLY at Apple's price point.
They laughed at the iPad.
However they also laughed at the Newton.
Pretty much anyone who had used an iPhone or iPod touch was like, "Oh hell yeah, big iPhone."
Pointing out that the device sucks to actually use in important physical and social ways is the opposite.
> being to able to interface with it by simply gesturing with your hands
eg: Theremoose - the Theremin Controlled Computer Mouse https://www.instructables.com/Theremoose-the-Theremin-Contro...
In the disability domain voice operations have a history.
* Was it?
* Remember when the mouse was a niche invention at PARC?
Statement: "You know perfectly well that you can't use any computer without touching a controller of some kind."
Fact: touchless controls exist.
Speculation: They may become commonplace.
Crude, but it's technically possible.
"The Xbox Kinect: Your Body is the Controller"
That said, almost everything Apple does is personal computing. Maybe AR is just a bad fit until it can fit into the form factor of sunglasses. (And not be shit.)
They should've had a $2-3bn budget for content on top of production. Instead they just seemed to release it then walk away hoping everyone else would figure out the point of the product and make stuff for free. It failed.
I'm dreaming I know....