To me, this seems like a big misstep for Apple. Granted I’m no fanboy, but I’ve appreciated Apple’s design and products over the last few decades. This to me just seems half baked. And that’s not something I expected from Apple’s hardware. I personally don’t think I’ll ever wear a computer on my face for more than 30 minutes at a time. Even if the weight goes down dramatically, it’s just not a convenient experience. The last thing I need with my technology is more inconvenience.
Well less than 30 minutes at a time is good because the Vision Pro battery only lasts around two hours and you can’t swap batteries without turning it off.
You can do a lot of things with the Vision Pro that you can’t do with other headsets, but I don’t understand why anybody would want to manage their calendar events in VR, and it seems like there are a lot more things that you would want to do with the Vision Pro that you can’t. If it were really an AR device like a modern Google Glass it would make sense, but with that form factor and a battery life of two hours it can’t really become part of you like that.
Usually Apple’s tie-ins feel additive — I’m not given a product that feels like it’s missing a feature if I don’t own another Apple device. When I buy additional product types, I feel like I gain the missing features. Seems like that changed with Spatial Video. You get to stare at a reminder that you don’t own the headset every time you take video.
I think something with this, too (and that you sorta hinted at), is that it doesn’t seem to provide any additional benefit to what we already get with the iPhone, iPad, Mac ecosystem. That’s an ecosystem with a huge and established user base. Obviously this could change as developers step in to do the heavy lifting, but… Will they want to? Is it a good investment to spend thousands of hours on an app that a fraction of users of an already niche product will use? I think it’s very telling that some of the biggest developers (like Spotify and Netflix) opted out of Vision Pro.
It’s going to take some very talented, very risk-tolerant developers to make a $3,500+ headset go anywhere. And as of now, Apple is providing very little incentive.
I would have assumed that they had waited until they had transparent displays that were better than everyone’s, or had some unique way of combining passthrough and normal cameras that were better than others, but they really just announced basically a Quest Pro with some 3DS displays slapped to the outside. I’m pretty sure everyone at Meta’s reality Labs division sighed a pretty big sigh of relief, I suspect they were all worried that it was going to be an iPhone launch where everyone at Blackberry realized they were working on completely the wrong tech, and instead they just witnessed them launch a fancy and expensive version of what they’re already making for the mass market.
To me, this seems like a big misstep for Apple. Granted I’m no fanboy, but I’ve appreciated Apple’s design and products over the last few decades. This to me just seems half baked. And that’s not something I expected from Apple’s hardware. I personally don’t think I’ll ever wear a computer on my face for more than 30 minutes at a time. Even if the weight goes down dramatically, it’s just not a convenient experience. The last thing I need with my technology is more inconvenience.
Well less than 30 minutes at a time is good because the Vision Pro battery only lasts around two hours and you can’t swap batteries without turning it off.
You can do a lot of things with the Vision Pro that you can’t do with other headsets, but I don’t understand why anybody would want to manage their calendar events in VR, and it seems like there are a lot more things that you would want to do with the Vision Pro that you can’t. If it were really an AR device like a modern Google Glass it would make sense, but with that form factor and a battery life of two hours it can’t really become part of you like that.
How it’s getting tied into the broader ecosystem feels very forced, too.
Advertising the ability to take spatial video from an iPhone months before the Vision Pro launched definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/record-spatial-videos-for-apple-vision-pro-iph6e3a6d4fe/ios
Usually Apple’s tie-ins feel additive — I’m not given a product that feels like it’s missing a feature if I don’t own another Apple device. When I buy additional product types, I feel like I gain the missing features. Seems like that changed with Spatial Video. You get to stare at a reminder that you don’t own the headset every time you take video.
I don’t like that.
I think something with this, too (and that you sorta hinted at), is that it doesn’t seem to provide any additional benefit to what we already get with the iPhone, iPad, Mac ecosystem. That’s an ecosystem with a huge and established user base. Obviously this could change as developers step in to do the heavy lifting, but… Will they want to? Is it a good investment to spend thousands of hours on an app that a fraction of users of an already niche product will use? I think it’s very telling that some of the biggest developers (like Spotify and Netflix) opted out of Vision Pro.
It’s going to take some very talented, very risk-tolerant developers to make a $3,500+ headset go anywhere. And as of now, Apple is providing very little incentive.
It feels extremely brute forced.
I would have assumed that they had waited until they had transparent displays that were better than everyone’s, or had some unique way of combining passthrough and normal cameras that were better than others, but they really just announced basically a Quest Pro with some 3DS displays slapped to the outside. I’m pretty sure everyone at Meta’s reality Labs division sighed a pretty big sigh of relief, I suspect they were all worried that it was going to be an iPhone launch where everyone at Blackberry realized they were working on completely the wrong tech, and instead they just witnessed them launch a fancy and expensive version of what they’re already making for the mass market.