[thiago_fm]

"It’s a V1 Apple product. It’s a new category, for them, and by far the most ambitious headset on the consumer market."

Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors.

Meta Quest 3 is better on everything, despite eye tracking(for a reason, it sucks for many things, I'm sure Meta can have just as good, if they wanted to, but they likely think it isn't a good idea) and the image quality(because it's expensive as hell).

I had much higher expectations. Apple made it clear to me that they've released this device mostly out of fears of phones becoming irrelevant and not having a device to replace it.

Also, to show that Tim isn't resting & vesting his stocks, and both are terrible ways to approach innovation, the kind of innovation Apple used to have with that fruitarian CEO that gave us the iPad, iPhone, iEverything...

Apple needs a new CEO ASAP, Tim is John Sculley, at first sales go up, profits are up, but then after a few years you are stuck and other companies are eating your lunch.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors.

That is an extremely strange view of history. While I don't think other Apple v1 products were "half-assed", they were clearly unfinished, but showed a ton of potential. I think the exact same thing applies to the Vision Pro.

The original iPhone received a lot of complaints about not supporting 3G, not supporting custom native apps, not supporting copy-paste, etc. But the original iPhone was still revolutionary, and I loved my original phone.

Nearly all of the in-depth reviews I've seen of the Vision Pro say essentially the exact same thing: it is a technological marvel, but has a bunch of rough edges, most of which were simply necessary because you can't just, for example, pray super-light batteries into existence.

To emphasize, I think the Vision Pro (and, honestly, many other VR headsets) is largely a solution looking for a problem, and I don't intend to get one, but I think calling it "half assed" compared to other v1 Apple products is a strong misremembering of history.

[frizlab]

> I think the Vision Pro (and, honestly, many other VR headsets) is largely a solution looking for a problem

For me that’s the biggest issue with the Vision Pro: its lack of usefulness.

[KMnO4]

I genuinely think Apple wanted this to be relatively unpalatable to the typical consumer. They want to build something to prove their tech is the future, but don’t actually want anyone to buy this iteration.

Why? Because they need developers to make worthwhile apps. Yes, the original iPhone shipped without an App Store, but it could also do regular phone stuff (calls, sms, etc). What’s the “regular” stuff you’d expect to do on a VR headset? Other than watch movies on a big screen, there’s currently very little reason to own one, and encouraging everyone’s mom to buy one is setting them up for failure.

Give it a couple years for there to be some really groundbreaking apps, and Apple will open the floodgates with a cheaper/more ergonomic version.

[tw04]

>Give it a couple years for there to be some really groundbreaking apps, and Apple will open the floodgates with a cheaper/more ergonomic version.

But what are the "ground breaking apps"? The "we just haven't thought of it yet" seems absolutely silly given how long we've had sci-fi novels that have similar ideas and nothing I've ever read in any novel sounded "groundbreaking".

This just screams "3D TV" to me - a solution nobody wants to a problem nobody has. If you could fit all of this into a pair of sunglasses MAYBE there would be a market - but that tech is probably 50 years away if it's possible at all.

[JALTU]

Mind-blowing apps? Future kids in East of West, of course! https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/east-of-west

[HumblyTossed]

> I genuinely think Apple wanted this to be relatively unpalatable to the typical consumer.

Based on what? Apple cultivates this myth that they wait to enter a market until they can produce the best device in the market. So, I disagree, I think Apple thinks this is the best device they could have built right now and it's for everyone with $3500 to drop on it.

[sircastor]

There's a point where you can't further your product without getting it into the hands of actual consumers. We saw it with the Apple Watch after the first version it became less a communication device, and more a health and fitness device.

I do think Apple thought this was the best device they could make that did this thing, but estimates are that they can make about 800k of these things. I think the price point intentionally pushes it away from the typical consumer. They want early adopters. Mostly they want developers.

[HumblyTossed]

> They want early adopters. Mostly they want developers.

Of course.

> I think the price point intentionally pushes it away from the typical consumer.

I disagree. I think they truly believed this thing is worth this much in it's current state and if they built it people would buy it.

[symlinkk]

We’ve had consumer VR headsets on the market for 8 years now (Oculus Rift CV1). Why would apps suddenly start appearing now, what makes Apple so different?

[password54321]

People actually spend money on the App Store.

[PaulHoule]

People spend money on apps (mostly games) from the Quest store.

[password54321]

The vision pro is being built on top of an already large and successful ecosystem. The Quest store is literally just for the Quest that has nowhere near as many customers.

[thefreeman]

But OP just said apple doesn't want anyone to buy them. Why would developers invest a bunch of time making apps for a device nobody has?

[symlinkk]

Not everything is going to be a repeat of the iPhone, lol.

[password54321]

App store = entire Apple ecosystem.

[symlinkk]

Oh why haven’t Apple Watch apps taken off then? Or what about the macOS App Store, why is that dead?

[ecf]

> I genuinely think Apple wanted this to be relatively unpalatable to the typical consumer.

You’re starting to hit on Apple’s strategy. Build something expensive and impressive, get all the media hype out of it with influencers making content and consumers watching it cause it’s the expensive thing.

Then it comes down in price over 10 years and soon everybody has one, because everyone wants to try to Apple thing they saw so much about years ago.

iPad went exactly the same way, as everyone wrote it off when first introduced as just “a large iPod touch”, and now it’s the defacto leader in the category without anything coming close.

[ProfessorLayton]

The iPad was far from expensive at launch, considering it was a brand new category, and it was rumored to launch at ~1k. It was a huge surprise when the price was revealed at $500. Apple even acknowledges it in the keynote!

[gigel82]

We've had the Hololens for 8 years (and VR for even longer) and no groundbreaking apps or features showed up. I suspect there simply aren't any.

And there probably won't be any until we get the tech down to just look like regular glasses.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I suspect that may be the case (Apple Luggable comes to mind).

The Microsoft HoloLens was $5000, when it first came out. I think that MS pointed it at a commercial target audience.

[itsoktocry]

>Apple made it clear to me that they've released this device mostly out of fears of phones becoming irrelevant and not having a device to replace it.

Wait, people think this thing is going to replace a phone? I can't imagine...

[zie]

I think they have 2 big paths to go down, the current path which is a device mostly for in one spot, mostly solitary use cases. This is certainly the current version of the product. You don't have to take it off for quick conversations or to go potty or get a glass of water, but you absolutely want to take it off to have dinner with someone, spend quality time with people, etc.

The second big path is the it's just a pair of glasses you wear use case, where you just always have it on, since it's literally just a pair of glasses, that can also send information to you, much like what the MIT wearables project has been playing with for decades now.

Will Apple move towards this second future? I don't know, certainly the tech is nowhere near that ability and still be "spatial computing" or AR or whatever you want to call it, but if they can figure out how to shove high-quality digital projections onto a pair of glasses, I can't imagine them ignoring that market, because that is what will replace the phone and probably watch.

[timeon]

This is far from 'just a pair of glasses'. Problem is that this is not real AR while acts as one. Seems like dead end.

[zie]

Of course it is, but you understood my point when I used that term, which means the goal was achieved.

It's 100% not real AR at this point in time. 10 or 20 years from now? shrugs. I'm not going to make that prediction. Can we make it a contact lens in 50 years? I have no idea, certainly Sci-Fi authors want to believe it's possible.

If engineers can figure out how to make that format work well, like in our sci-fi dreams, they will probably sell very, very well. Certainly that's not the near-term future.

[criddell]

Zuckerberg said yesterday on Instagram that eye tracking is coming back in a future headset.

[thiago_fm]

I don't doubt it will, but I bet Meta knows the limitations and that the controller it has is the best there is, and eye tracking will be used for some purposes.

I was expecting Apple would reinvent that with a concept nobody had imagined before. They didn't. Zero innovation.

Doesn't look like an Apple product to me.

Earpods from Apple was more innovative and had a better factor form than likely this Apple Vision Pro will have in 10 years!

[tw04]

>I was expecting Apple would reinvent that with a concept nobody had imagined before. They didn't. Zero innovation.

Probably why the engineers didn't want to release it. I seem to recall a bunch of folks at Apple were pretty up in arms that this was coming out, and that upper management basically forced their hand because they were worried Facebook would run away with the market.

[jayd16]

Eye tracking is useful so they'll likely add it back, but he also said it's limiting as the only form of input.

[criddell]

I'm not sure what to think about him saying that a neural link is the solution.

[jayd16]

They showed off some EMG wristband prototype before. Probably more of an aspirational concept than a real product though.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-teases-meta-wrist...

[phh]

> Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed, or at least when they were, they offered something more than the competitors.

The first iPhone/iOS didn't? It had no apps, no MMS, no 3G

> Meta Quest 3 is better on everything, despite eye tracking

Apple is using eye tracking as an UX, so that "despite" is very big. That being said, I don't understand eye tracking UX, it seems to go against human nature to me. (I'm not continuously looking at my HN windows rn while typing this message)

> and the image quality(because it's expensive as hell).

There are many things for which even just 15% improvement changed them from interesting to a revolution. LLMs, capacitive touchscreens just to name a few. I could accept that the sames goes for VR

I'm clearly on the side "I see nothing the Apple Vision Pro is good for". The examples I've heard are pretty much "watching youtube while cooking": Well, buy a XREAL Air AR at a tenth of the price, and it'll follow you rather than keeping at a fixed position.

But I can see how the differences between Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro can actually lead to completely different outcomes.

[wombat-man]

iPhone had a way better web browser AND it was a music player. At the time you basically had to have a dedicated mp3 player. So those two things alone were Big at the time.

[neom]

Steve died 11 years ago and Tim said he tried the first MVP of Vision Pro 10 years ago. Don't think it was his idea, he just brought it to market. I read something recently, I wish I could remember where, but it was an account of why Tim was picked, the product roadmap for many years was basically baked, and Tim just needs to bring it to market, something he is word class at.

[aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA]

October 5th 2011 was 12 years, 4 months and 6 days ago.

The Vanity Fair article says Tim tried the prototype “years ago; maybe six, seven, or even eight.”

[neom]

I watched a TV interview where he said "I saw the first prototype of this over 10 years ago", CNBC on launch day.

[indymike]

> "It’s a V1 Apple product. It’s a new category, for them, and by far the most ambitious headset on the consumer market."

And it is priced out of the consumer market by a factor of 10. Also, the developer program is not interesting.

[sircastor]

> Also, the developer program is not interesting.

What does this mean? Most developers I know are interested because of a technology or a product. What does the program need to be doing?

[indymike]

Terms and conditions... suck.

[jwells89]

I think Apple has a significant leg up over Meta in the software space, and this shouldn’t be underestimated. visionOS has a proper AR UI framework with affordances for AR/VR usage whereas the Quest is just Android mapped to 3D space.

This will become more of an advantage for Apple as the platform matures because it’ll allow for (for example) automatic adaptations of existing apps for different device form factors, which Meta will not be as well positioned to match with their Android fork, unless they seriously ramp up platform development efforts and significantly diverge from mainline Android.

[PaulHoule]

I thought AVP was just "iOS mapped to 3D space". Apple has been proliferating form factors for many years and has done little on "automatic adaptations of existing apps for different device form factors" so far.

[jwells89]

visionOS adapts UIKit/SwiftUI to a much greater degree than Quests do Android Framework/Jetpack Compose.

visionOS windows and controls have depth, different shapes and sizes, and different interactions than their iOS counterparts and are drawn as vectors which look good no matter how close they are to your face.

By contrast the Quest just draws Android apps as textures on planes, making them floating tablets. The visionOS equivalent is iPad apps running in compatibility mode, which while functional are a notably worse experience than native.

[runjake]

> Apple needs a new CEO ASAP, Tim is John Sculley, at first sales go up, profits are up, but then after a few years you are stuck and other companies are eating your lunch.

I predicted this many years ago, but the evidence I've seen convinces me I was wrong. I really disagreed with their past emphasis on the iPad as a computer at the expense of the Mac, but I feel they've course-corrected since.

Of course, on a long enough time scale you/me are right but I think that timescale extends beyond Tim Cook's retirement, at this point.

What evidence do you have?

[hbn]

I can't imagine how anyone could think Apple needs a new CEO considering how incredibly they've performed the past few years. And I don't just mean stocks - Google has made stock prices go up for a long time but I think they've tarnished so much of their goodwill at this point that they need to get rid of Sundar.

But Apple? Even putting aside company value, in the past decade they've created the best selling watch on the planet, and arguably still make the only actually good smartwatch (thanks to Google floundering for years - even before Apple got to the market). They kickstarted the true wireless headphones industry with a product line that on its own could be considered an insanely valuable company with how many they sell -- because people love them. They moved all their laptops to custom silicon with incredible performance and battery life that for majority of peoples' computing use-cases completely destroys any reason to buy any other laptop. And young people are becoming more exclusively stuck to the iPhone by the day, almost 90% of American teens use an iPhone now.

I don't know why anyone would want to get rid of Tim Cook.

[PaulHoule]

An iPad (backed by a big Windows machine) is my "on the go" computing device now.

[PaulHoule]

MQP has eye tracking. In some sense the Oculus Touch controllers are a hassle (two more objects to manage, you have to explain to users which of the 10 buttons they should press, etc.) but the touch controllers let you pick things up, use tools, and otherwise interact with the virtual world with your hands.

[samatman]

> Well, all other V1 Apple products weren't half-assed

Can't think of an Apple product line in which the first edition wasn't half-assed in some important way. This is something the company is known for, it's a truism. Even the first iPod made significant compromises.

[ProfessorLayton]

Pretty much every product Apple launched before the Vision had a specific use case at launch:

- iPod: 1,000 songs in your pocket

- iPhone: Phone + Internet Communicator + iPod

- iPad: Media consumption device

- Vision: ???

Of course all these products had shortcomings when they first launched, but there was a specific purpose in mind for them in their very first iteration. What the initial devices could do was limited, but what they did, they did better than anything else.

The Vision is missing that initial use case, and it's what makes it feel half-assed.

[ecopoesis]

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Apple first-gen products are often half-assed. But they iterate and improve on a regular cadence. The current Apple Vision Pro is a dev kit, it will get better.