Fitness and gaming wasn't demoed much yesterday, but are going to be insane on the Vision Pro - so I guess it was just too obvious to demo. Or is it?
Also Meta could catch up if it was just software. But how big of a deal is the M2+R1?
Anyway the metaverse was already being retracted, else this Vision Pro could have hammered Meta.
Clearly Occulus has to evolve to match VisionPro. Controller has to be optional. It has to have better AR. Meta has to be the more "open" alternative to Apple's ecosystem barriers.
> Also Meta could catch up if it was just software.
This was Microsoft's warcry for years: who cares if Apple has better software? We have better hardware. Well guess what, software matters and it matters more than hardware. If you have both, you have literally a generationally-defining product (e.g. the iPhone), but even if you just have the software, you'll still eat your competitor's lunch. Why does everyone have MacBook Pros these days? Prior to Apple Silicon, it certainly wasn't the hardware.
Meta's about to get a rude awakening because "we can fix the software later." As if technical debt doesn't exist and as if you can so easily get engineers that eagerly want to clean up someone else's mess.
>Why does everyone have MacBook Pros these days? Prior to Apple Silicon, it certainly wasn't the hardware.
Oh, I don't know about that. Admittedly there were some awful choices made between 2015 and the emergence of M1 architecture, but Apple's reputation for making well engineered hardware goes at least as far back as to when they started milling Macs out of aluminum. I'm thinking back specifically to the PowerMac G5 in 2006. It was designed well, felt solid, and when you opened it up, it continued to look well made. I recently popped open my 2015 Macbook Pro because I'm finally having hard drive issues, and for as much as I have railed against Apple fanboyism over the decades, it looked so nice inside I wanted to take a picture. (Why?! Who cares!? What would I even do with that picture?)
I got tons of mileage out of various Dell desktops and self-built machines over the last couple of decades. It was better bang for the buck, I didn't have to fuss over proprietary connectors and a locked down operating system. When the company I worked for made a big shift away from (it's okay to chuckle) Coldfusion and MS SQL Server to Ruby on Rails and MongoDB in 2013, though they offered to let me continue running on Windows, I asked for a Macbook because that's what everyone else was using. Might as well learn. Didn't much like OSX but the hardware was better than any Windows laptop I'd used. Later I bumped up to a 2015 MBP, which I only just retired this year.
While I was Windows at home and MacOS at work, last month I snagged a Macbook Pro w/ 64gb of RAM from B&H for $2400 - the first Apple computer I've ever paid for myself - and it's replaced my Dell desktop and that 2015 Macbook that my old job let me keep.
I effectively skipped the bad Macbooks, so my perspective is tinted by that. But even during the bad years, even my friends who continued to operate in the MS domain were buying Macbooks and dual booting them into Windows.
I had access to a Surface tablet through work early on. It was really nice! Just like a Zune. The Surface Pros looked pretty great too, but anecdotally, I never saw them outside the context of visiting a business that was a strictly MS shop.
I still like Windows as an OS better. But Apple's new architecture (which importantly doesn't have me carrying dongles around, or even needing them at home) was compelling enough for me to take the plunge.
I haven't liked the usability of the entire Macbook line though, and It's very upsetting that so many laptop makers have decided to just copy it.
There's lots of little details which are well made, but bad decisions: the screen hinges tend to be a little too floppy, the trackpad is oversized, removing the physical buttons makes it hard to use, moving the power button from a separate area to the "eject" button location on the keyboard (and making it look like a regular key), everything they've done with keyboards (flat, overlay spaced keys with no surface indentation and less and less travel). The ridiculously sharp edges of the body chassis which cut into your when you rest your hands there (seen at least one video of someone just filing a bevel into the machine to fix it).
They look great, but that's all they've ever seemed to me: in usability details they've always felt terrible (even MagSafe, which seems like it should be great, feels great, and yet has seemed pretty lacklustre when I've had to use it with a work machine).
Two thoughts here. The first is that this comments is totally valid and mostly the inverse of everything I think, really shows that we all value different things so thank god for a free market.
The two things I agree on for the 2016-2022 laptops are the sharp edges and terrible keyboards. Maybe take a look at the new laptops next time you get a chance, the edges on my MBAir and 16MBPro from 2022 are waaaay more comfortable than my previous two MacBooks and the keyboard feels much nicer too.
Back to point one though, to me the trackpads are well sized, the hinges are smooth and just right and the power button being where it is is a none issue, I even quite liked the touchbar.
> This was Microsoft's warcry for years: who cares if Apple has better software? We have better hardware.
What on earth are you talking about? Microsoft is a software company first. They rode the Windows advantage for more than a decade and didn't have anything to do with the hardware, because they aren't a hardware company. Windows ran (and was preinstalled) on everything, from the lowest tier of trash to the highest end machines, and Microsoft didn't care about the quality of the hardware, because they owned the platform that everyone used for computers. Office is another software product that still doesn't have any real competitors and is one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows.
On the flip side, when exactly did Apple have better software than Microsoft? Their office suite is barely usable for anything outside of the most basic use cases. Apple beat Microsoft in mobile, and Microsoft kept its head in the sand and assumed the Windows advantage would live forever and didn't wake up until Ballmer was gone, after Apple had started eating their lunch in the laptop space, but the assumption was that Windows was so good people wouldn't switch, not that Apple had bad hardware and good software, if only you could run it somewhere else.
Microsoft is named for being SOFTware for MICROcomputers, they don't have a blind spot around software. This is some Soviet revisionism or something.
> Meta's about to get a rude awakening because "we can fix the software later." As if technical debt doesn't exist and as if you can so easily get engineers that eagerly want to clean up someone else's mess.
I don't know, Meta is probably the largest employer of PHP developers in the world, I bet they can find people willing to do some other masochistic shit too.
> If you have both, you have literally a generationally-defining product (e.g. the iPhone), but even if you just have the software, you'll still eat your competitor's lunch.
The Vision Pro is really a first-product distraction for the Apple fans. This only further validates the market for XR devices and Meta's Quest's lineup will be the cheaper alternative for those who don't have iPhones or Macs (Since Android phones still outnumber iPhones) [0].
I'm only interested in the next iteration when it gets smaller and cheaper and when Apple announces a direct competitor to the cheaper Quest. Probably 'Apple Vision'. Then it will get its 'iPhone' moment, but it is not going to be the Vision Pro.
> Meta's about to get a rude awakening because "we can fix the software later." As
if technical debt doesn't exist and as if you can so easily get engineers that eagerly want to clean up someone else's mess.
Meta is fine. They will just copy Apple and make it cheaper and at worse case, become the Android of XR headsets and glasses.
> I guess it was just too obvious to demo. Or is it?
Gaming can't be good, because there's no controllers. Even if the hand and eye tracking is absolutely S-tier, you're never getting something like button input from swinging your empty hands around, twitching your fingers. Just the occlusion from the back of your hand would be enough enough for that to be impossible.
Fitness might be more doable, but even then I think you're going to be very limited with hand tracking only. I think there's a reason why Apple skipped over those segments almost entirely.
EDIT: I meant "VR" controllers, as in things that are tracked in 3d space. Of course you can use a game pad or MKB, but that kinda misses the point of being in VR in the first place.
At 1:31:50 in the Keynote video they mention “Bluetooth accessories like Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard” and show those on a table and a person typing on the keyboard. I don’t believe the cursor of the trackpad is shown (but I’m on my phone and my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be!). I bet it’ll work like on iPadOS.
Why do you say there are no controllers? I was reading about bluetooth keyboards and interacting with a laptop, so why wouldn't a bluetooth controller be feasible (say, before launch)?
I mean it's not impossible, but Apple would have to design and manufacture one. If they're planning on it it's weird that they wouldn't mention it.
VR controllers aren't simple the way a game pad is. They need a full tracking solution, which means sensors with base stations, cameras with some form of vision based tracking, or the headset needs to be able to track them based on some reference points (infrared lights or something). And that tracking needs to be fast, precise, and correctly positioned relative to the headset.
Using the Index controllers with the Lighthouse base stations is kinda plausible from a technical standpoint, but that would mean Apple would need to allow the headset to work with SteamVR, and that seems very unlikely at this point.
If camera based hand tracking works already, it seems like a Bluetooth controller wouldn't be that hard to add in after the fact. Didn't PSVR just use a single camera and a glowing orb?
I agree that keyboard and mouse is superior, but as a grown-up with a family, it's rather infeasible. The Steam Deck has been great; I actually play a game for 30 minutes maybe twice a week. I'm hesitant to even try keyboard and mouse on some games because it will spoil the experience with a controller. When I have the rare luxury of a free evening alone at my desktop, I'm more likely to play VR.
1) Console controls are not a suitable alternative to proper VR controllers
2) What makes you think the PS5 controller was connected to the headset, and not the headset being used as a TV showing the output of a PS5?
Re: 2, they showed it being used to play Apple Arcade games and since they already have support for that it’s unlikely that they have deep philosophical objections.
Re: 1, it’ll be interesting to see how well the camera system works in practice. All of the reviews are quite positive about precise movements so it might be that they’re throwing hardware at this problem but I’d also be surprised if they were not very carefully tracking performance – if the accuracy isn’t there, it’d take an unusually un-Apple like product manager to risk a billion dollar investment rather than enable that class of device.
Using controllers isn't about accuracy, it's about occlusion and haptics.
Using only gestures means no haptic feedback and it gets de-synced as soon as the camera can't see what you're doing.
Take Apples gestures for example (e.g. tap your thumb and index finger together to click). As soon as your hand is rotated in such a way that your own fingers are hidden from the camera, you actions stop being applied. This will also happen should one hand cross the other, or resting your arms down while standing, or reaching up for something, or even resting on a couch with your knee up.
I hate VR controllers. I'd prefer to play VR games without them. I'd prefer they do hand and eye tracking to determine what I'm doing, like look at a zombie and and go pew pew pew with my finger guns.
The only VR headset I've tried that can do hand tracking (Oculus Quest) sucks at it and games there didn't pick up on it as an input at all, as far as I know.
However, just because VR controllers won't exist for the Apple Vision at release it doesn't mean they never will. Perhaps Apple will release some later, or it'll be a third party release. Heck, someone might unironically release a Nintendo Power Glove style controller that works incredibly well with Apple Vision.
My family went to a Sandbox VR store and played a zombie game. In it they gave you “guns” that the cameras could track. I put guns in quotes because when you remove the headset you see that you were basically holding a stick with reflectors on it, but in VR it sure felt gunish.
That’s a unique take. Especially for guns in VR which feel incredibly natural with a controller that is basically a pistol grip with a trigger. For people really into Pavlov they even sell kits to mount the controllers together into a rifle configuration with attachments for a shoulder strap and buttstock. I’ve never heard of a successful shooter game that uses finger guns.
It supports Bluetooth input. I wonder if the visual tracking system that tracks the hands is so good that it could accurately track controllers. Then third party motion controllers could be relatively cheap and plentiful.
Assuming it could run Virtual Desktop, there’s your Half Life Alyx in ultra high res.
having a virtual screen that is way bigger than the space you are in is a huge selling point for me. I'm more interested in this than VR stuff honestly.
if it was under 1k usd I would probably pick one up for work. maybe give it a few more years.
I for one will be sticking to controllers and forgoing eye tracking. Hand input is irritating and limited, I hate using pinch gestures to click on things and the article makes a solid point that the lack of haptic feedback just makes it feel like you're flailing around (which you are). Eye tracking is nice to have in social interactions but I don't see the point otherwise.
> so I guess it was just too obvious to demo. Or is it?
I certainly don't think so? My guess going in was that fitness would be one of the main plugs — especially because high-end fitness devices already cost a fair amount, and that would have made their tail end, "How much would a computer plus a screen plus umm... it's $3,5000!" go a lot more smoothly.
I do think that's likely high on the road map, particularly given such a large investment in Fitness+, but also can see them being very wary about encouraging any high-energy movements with a $3,500 device. I think it's the pricing and dev-kit-ish nature of the v1 more than too obvious.
But Vision Pro does seem to imply a future Vision Sport.
Could be that they're leaving it (and gaming/etc) for developers. They largely showed core stuff only at this point.
The platform launch was very locked down. For incremental hardware upgrades, they put hardware in the hands of devs by either shipping out early or bringing devs to their offices to work on prototypes in a secure environment.
Sweating profusely in an electronics device... I've ruined ski goggles just sweating in them and they're meant for that. Also just stumbling with these on or slipping and there you go cracked $3500 screen.
Honestly, how often do you bang your head hard into a wall/floor? Sure, I'm a tall guy, roughly 200cm, and I sometimes bang my head in a overhead doorstock. But that is typically some old cottage or similar, where I would probably not bring a XR headset anyway.
I was taking while being tired from exercise. While skiing biking etc often. While doing vr, I've broken a monitor and gone through a wall and broken several controllers. While just waking around I forgot my shed had a low door and clipped my head last week first time in years. That's why I wear a effing helmet. You're blind on your stationary bike and pop off wrong. Done. Foot stays clipped in, faceplant.
Also Meta could catch up if it was just software. But how big of a deal is the M2+R1?
Anyway the metaverse was already being retracted, else this Vision Pro could have hammered Meta.
Clearly Occulus has to evolve to match VisionPro. Controller has to be optional. It has to have better AR. Meta has to be the more "open" alternative to Apple's ecosystem barriers.
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