Hopefully, of the many things Apple learns from the Vision Pro Gen 1 is that building a massively over-engineered Rolls Royce MR face-computer is that they’ve finally hit a wall with both their bonkers product pricing scheme and their magical thinking about their internal product visions always seamlessly translating to widespread consumer reality. I mean, especially on the latter point, they’ve been falling flat for a few years, but mostly with smaller products and services, but now it’s happened with the launch of a major new product class— and it has failed spectacularly.
Don’t get me wrong: the Vision Pro is revolutionary wrt what it can become, but Apple released a product that was way too fucking expensive and which didn’t have the ecosystem of support functions to make it clear to everyone even what it’s for. It’s not an MR/AR/VR headset. It’s a FACE-COMPUTER which operates in MR only, and very few people can really wrap their heads around using a computer only that way, especially since even Apple hasn’t made it work that way very well or even made a case for why it should (outside of extreme edge cases)— yet.
This is future tech for a future when we’re ready for and need it. Right now, people just want an MR peripheral, not a whole ass FaceMac. And - for goddamn sure - nobody wants to pay for one.
Man, you’re spot on with that last phrase, at least, for me. All I want is a MR headset comfortable enough to wear all day, and to be able to manage virtual windows and/or monitors comfortably in front of me. The rest I genuinely don’t care about. I dream of the day I can replace my big monitor (or multi-monitor setup) with a lightweight pair of fancy goggles that would give me all the monitor real estate I would ever want.
It also has a number of core problems as a face computer.
As Casey Neistat’s review video showed: you can’t use the thing on transit or even walking down the street. Any open windows stay in the physical location you opened them.
I can see both setups being necessary… If im sitting in a chair, I don’t think I’d want my virtual monitors to be following my head while I move, I’d still want them to be roughly around my keyboard and mouse. But using it while walking, they absolutely should be floating around my head, keeping the main one at some fixed angle.
Exactly. Not only is it too expensive, but it doesn’t have a “universal” killer app or use case. What I mean by that is something a lot of people could use it for.
There are quite a few use cases for the device, but many of them are edge cases. For example I think the Keynote (Apple’s PowerPoint) virtual presentation mode is a great way to practice a presentation (you stand in a large room with the presentation behind you on a canvas and an audience in front of you), but how often are most people going to need it?
I personally loved the F1 demo one guy made with a 3D track map with the option to glimpse at onboards an whatnot. But how large of an audience would that have outside of hardcore F1 fans? Still, immersive live sports would probably be a thing, but without a large user base the broadcasters won’t bother making an elaborate (and costly) stream with added features exclusive to Vision Pro.
I’m not sure if Apple can fix this by “simply” releasing a second generation model, even if it somehow came at just half the price.
I can think of 100 use cases just for me. Maybe 500.More for other specialists in other industries. What I can’t do - even as a UX designer - is even imagine 100,000 use cases, which I can for… a phone or an iPod or and iPad. More even.
And Apple hasn’t engineered this device for those use cases. If they had, and marketed this device as such, we would be having a very different conversation.
Hopefully, of the many things Apple learns from the Vision Pro Gen 1 is that building a massively over-engineered Rolls Royce MR face-computer is that they’ve finally hit a wall with both their bonkers product pricing scheme and their magical thinking about their internal product visions always seamlessly translating to widespread consumer reality. I mean, especially on the latter point, they’ve been falling flat for a few years, but mostly with smaller products and services, but now it’s happened with the launch of a major new product class— and it has failed spectacularly.
Don’t get me wrong: the Vision Pro is revolutionary wrt what it can become, but Apple released a product that was way too fucking expensive and which didn’t have the ecosystem of support functions to make it clear to everyone even what it’s for. It’s not an MR/AR/VR headset. It’s a FACE-COMPUTER which operates in MR only, and very few people can really wrap their heads around using a computer only that way, especially since even Apple hasn’t made it work that way very well or even made a case for why it should (outside of extreme edge cases)— yet.
This is future tech for a future when we’re ready for and need it. Right now, people just want an MR peripheral, not a whole ass FaceMac. And - for goddamn sure - nobody wants to pay for one.
Meanwhile at Apple:
Man, you’re spot on with that last phrase, at least, for me. All I want is a MR headset comfortable enough to wear all day, and to be able to manage virtual windows and/or monitors comfortably in front of me. The rest I genuinely don’t care about. I dream of the day I can replace my big monitor (or multi-monitor setup) with a lightweight pair of fancy goggles that would give me all the monitor real estate I would ever want.
It also has a number of core problems as a face computer.
As Casey Neistat’s review video showed: you can’t use the thing on transit or even walking down the street. Any open windows stay in the physical location you opened them.
Man, I better not have to walk home from the train station because I forgot I left my “PRIVATE STUFF - DO NOT OPEN” folder on couch.
The one I remember is he sat down on the subway, opened up a video, and the video stayed at the station when the train pulled away.
So you put it into travel mode and then they don’t do that…
I can see both setups being necessary… If im sitting in a chair, I don’t think I’d want my virtual monitors to be following my head while I move, I’d still want them to be roughly around my keyboard and mouse. But using it while walking, they absolutely should be floating around my head, keeping the main one at some fixed angle.
Exactly. Not only is it too expensive, but it doesn’t have a “universal” killer app or use case. What I mean by that is something a lot of people could use it for.
There are quite a few use cases for the device, but many of them are edge cases. For example I think the Keynote (Apple’s PowerPoint) virtual presentation mode is a great way to practice a presentation (you stand in a large room with the presentation behind you on a canvas and an audience in front of you), but how often are most people going to need it?
I personally loved the F1 demo one guy made with a 3D track map with the option to glimpse at onboards an whatnot. But how large of an audience would that have outside of hardcore F1 fans? Still, immersive live sports would probably be a thing, but without a large user base the broadcasters won’t bother making an elaborate (and costly) stream with added features exclusive to Vision Pro.
I’m not sure if Apple can fix this by “simply” releasing a second generation model, even if it somehow came at just half the price.
I can think of 100 use cases just for me. Maybe 500.More for other specialists in other industries. What I can’t do - even as a UX designer - is even imagine 100,000 use cases, which I can for… a phone or an iPod or and iPad. More even.
And Apple hasn’t engineered this device for those use cases. If they had, and marketed this device as such, we would be having a very different conversation.
But they didn’t.
And that’s a shame
Especially when 90% of the features etc can be done on a $200 quest 2 or a $600 quest 3.