The core idea is solid. At this point it just needs to be lighter, have better battery, and a much lower price. With further refinement and increased economies of scale these issues could potentially be fixed.
Nearly all of the reviews I’ve read say that it’s a good user experience overall, but it’s not worth the price.
It doesn't need a battery at all. Just have it connect directly to a Mac to use as a virtual Mac display. It's what I use my Vision Pro for as its primary use case, to have an ultra-wide monitor in front of me without taking up any physical space. I use it for hours every day as my primary programming platform.
I really have no other use case, and don't need the VR/AR features. The virtual ultra-wide display of the latest VisonOS updates, which has the area of 2 4k monitors, is just amazing for coding. It's an incredible user experience and worth every penny for the Vision Pro for that alone.
Throwing away some of the AR/VR features and using it as a virtual display only would make it lighter and smaller. I could use something that doesn't block me from taking a drink while I code, for example. I couldn't care less about video games as well.
Apple (and Meta) didn't want a great PC accessory, they wanted new platforms they could own and monetize. They spent 10 years, both of them, integrating the whole PC inside the goggles because the display only approach had little value to them. Apple may try a PCVR headset, probably similar to the Beyond 2 but with glass and aluminum instead of plastic, as "big Mac display" is the only value any decent number of Vision Pro users get from their devices and Apple's got plenty of unused component supply and supply chain lined up already, but goggles are likely a dead form factor.
Man, I don't even bother using the ultra-wide monitor on my desk. The screen on my laptop can already display orders of magnitude far more information than I can easily process at one time. Even with contexts where I'm comfortable managing windows/buffers manually (e.g. emacs) there's simply too much space to easily manage. What do you do with all that space? Is it just pulling up every possible resources at once so you don't need to bother doing anything more than moving your eyes to switch contexts? How often are you switching contexts?
I find the extra space useful over just a laptop screen for coding - I can have a simulator to one side, and a coding window open with a good amount of space for metadata sidebars, along with a window or two for code documentation.
Where it really shines though is for photo review and editing. There it is spectacular to have so much space for image review even with a good number of adjustment controls up.
The other thing the screen is great is for use on a plane. No-one can see what you are working on, but it's also a kindness to others since your laptop screen is totally dark. It was really nice working on an international flight with the AVP and a laptop.
I appreciate the insight. I definitely understand why you might prefer this, especially with the in flight example and the photo editing. The one example I came up with internally was video editing/viewing, which seems to align quite well.
And yet I have people constantly telling me how they have four monitors set ups and still not enough screen real estate… and this is why they don’t like the Vision Pro, which can only give you one big ultra wide max.
I've yet to meet someone with strong preference for screen real estate that could back it up with productivity. Sometimes people just want stimulation.
Edit: i have no gripe with these people, I just simply don't buy that they're more productive. We all need our comforts. Mine is music.
There's nothing really to "throw away" that would make it slighter and smaller whilst still keeping your desired feature set.
The reality is that you're using the VR/AR features in one specific way - not that you're not using VR/AR
It's possible a slightly weaker CPU or GPU could be used but I don't think so and in any case the effects of that would be on cost not on weight. And I don't think the difference would be significant.
The external display being the EyeSight thing? I agree there. That's an expensive boondoggle that will probably be missing in the next iteration in any case.
I don't think you can get rid of cameras without reducing the gesture tracking fidelity. That's the reason the Vision Pro has so many cameras.
> M2 CPU subsystem
Not clear on what this means without looking up the spec sheet. Do you mean "use a slower CPU" or something else? If the former - it won't help that much with size or weight.
Sounds like you're really looking for something like the Bigscreen Beyond?
Congratulations, you just reinvented a decade old discontinued Microsoft products, Windows MR and HoloLens, which ended up being subsidization program for SteamVR and a pure tech demo.
Did not know HoloLens had 23megapixel displays to show high resolution text for coding. It must have been really useful back then with such a high resolution display that you could use for coding all day.
People really need to understand that its the details that make a product viable, not the concept.
HoloLens 2 had higher pixel density than AVP at 2K horizontal resolution at 43deg HFOV. So yeah, you just didn't know HoloLens had 23megapixel displays to show high resolution text for coding, nearly a decade ago.
The problem was the same as today. Dead numb market response to non-SteamVR VR/MR/AR/XR headsets.
Sure, but that PPD number is what prevents me from using these headsets as a primary display replacement. I personally don't need a virtual display that fills 100 degrees of my vision and would happily sacrifice FOV for something usable.
This is from someone who has spent hundreds of hours coding in VR, which currently requires big font sizes and screens that take up massive FOV, which I find very uncomfortable for extended periods.
Also two decades of headset display products that have existed the entire time VR has been a thing of pop culture interest, and yet has never been a product the masses give a fuck about.
The masses don't consume everything on their phones because they care about screen size or fidelity. Sure, they will buy phones with bigger and better screens than other phones, but if they want to do something on a big screen they will use their 60 inch 4k TV
In fact, the masses basically don't do computer stuff at all anymore.
No, it's not. The form factor cannot possibly shrink enough in size and weight or gain enough input ergonomics to make the gorgeous outputs worth it. Not gonna happen for goggles, ever. People won't smash a PC into their faces for no use cases beyond what their laptops and smartphones amply provide for. You think women who spend half a trillion dollars a year and an average of an hour a day on their hair and makeup are going to smash any kind of PC, no matter how small and light, into their faces requiring they redo their hair and makeup after every use? Really?
Spatial computing is to interact with and manipulate 3D space—blending the physical and digital worlds. It enables users to understand, interpret, and respond to the geometry, position, and movement of real-world environments.
I fail to see that as a future mode of user/computer interaction that competes with or augments mobile/laptop computer usage in any meaningful way.
Even movie watching, the most successful application of visionOS / Vision Pro, has limited use because it forces a solitary experience. While it can be useful (eg on a plane or in bed while your SO sleeps), you also already carry your phone and earbuds with you so it isn’t a compelling enough use case. Nobody is creating games for vision either and it I think it’s unlikely to become a favored general computing device or mode.
I can probably say more succinctly: spatial computing appears to be a classic case of a solution looking for a problem.
Prior art by Microsoft (HoloLens) and Google (Glass) are interesting because they occupied very different positions on the spatial computing spectrum, but in both cases they surfaced headwinds like the fact that people are unlikely to put glasses or headsets on the face/head juts in order to “compute”.
If there was a path to direct neural input or contact lens delivery, now we might be talking, but even then, you’ve solved the physical impediments but still don’t have a compelling general purpose computing use case.
Some would argue an addictive use case like porn can tip the scales, but I’m doubtful and, besides, I think we can be sure that Apple would never position themselves to depend on porn to advance their business interests.
It seems safe to predict that within 3 — 5 years Apple gives up on this vision. They might come back to it in the future but I think they’re more alarmed by the other computer interaction paradigm that is getting a lot more traction: GenAI/LLM, which subverts the need for a rich visual display and fits and extends all our other computing models more elegantly.
I think you're looking at the command line and saying a mouse is a solution looking for a problem.
Its not just about manipulating objects spatially. You could do that on a desktop screen with a wii-mote. The other aspect of the form factor is that its an always on, omni-present display, with awareness of the user's surroundings.
This unlocks the ability for apps to be locked to specific locations and contexts, to overlay information on the world, and to, as you stated, manipulate them in a spatial way.
Once the UX itself isn't an uncomfortable hassle, the use cases are really very easy to imagine.
I think it's not actually that bad a situation, to me I think we're just at matters of degree. To explain:
It's not that people can't see that it might be super nice to have an experience kind of like the AVP for a few already-known problems:
1. As an alternative to a big, heavy, non-portable display(s) or a bulky laptop for people who can't always just work at a desk.
2. As an alternative to a TV
3. Fun gaming applications. For instance, MarioKart Home Circuit is a neat game that uses physical karts with cameras, which you play on the TV, but imagine how cool it would be if kids could run around the house and the neighborhood with friends in AR racing karts that only you can see.
1 and 2 are already perfectly there, and obviously a very small number of games that take advantage of VR exist, but they're not that ambitious.
The issue though is that nobody wants those 'problems' solved badly enough to (A) pay $3500+ plus tax for it, nor (B) wants to wear a very heavy and awkward-looking helmet with poor battery life.
The promise is there. If a device can be made that is far lighter, can fold to fit in a coat pocket, with better battery life, and costing $1000, that could go a long way to being something people would find well worth the effort of carrying around and worth the cost. If everybody has one and it's comfortable and light, watching movies on it together, either on an awesome AR screen with atmospheric effects, or in a VR movie theater could be a fun experience rather than look like an absurd antisocial nerd thing.
All this will require investment and improvement of the tech, and will require a healthy developer ecosystem, but with those pieces I'd give the idea itself a good shot. We'll see if Apple is willing or able to do either one. If not them, someone else might.
as an avp hobby dev i dont disagree with your prediction. its a product i want and think is good, but im sure most people dont want and think is bad.
i somewhat agree with your solution looking for a problem statement but i think a potential application for spatial computing is data collection and presentation. think of how many businesses depend on filling out forms to report on the state of a physical object/equipment. a spatial component where that form now has a location in space and the scene with the object can be reconstructed for review is valuable for businesses. to clarify, this is a case for spatial computing, not the avp. the avp is nowhere near rugged enough to do the job safely and one day the data collection is best handled by drones
GenAI/LLM slop subverts the need for a rich visual display. WTF. Please explain How does a statistic based lossy compression technique with high error rates does that?
It’s telling that the best use case Facebook could come up with for its AI YouTube commercial spam is “give me conversion starters” lol.
Spatial computing of iPad apps floating in the air with an even worse, low information rate input method?
Neat concept, kneecapped at birth by sandboxing requirements, App Store rules, and Apples desire to own all of the innovation that could happen on the platform.
Siri on visionOS is actually quite refreshing for its speech to text, it is almost entirely on device and very low latency, with much more accuracy than you see on iOS. The combination of a keyboard, trackpad, Siri, hand and eye tracking is incredibly high information rate input for me and it’s what I use for most of the day for the past eight months or so.
I also wished it was more Mac air than iPad but the remote wide curved desktop feature is VERY nice. It seems to me the next logical step is remote individual app display/controls.
Sadly the Adtech scumbags can’t help themselves from trying to steal all the data they can, just see how they ignore robots.Txt, download phone address/numbers lists, download the outlook data file until measures were added to stop that, paying game publishers to include libraries loaded with phone home calls, and ignoring do not track because $$$ > ethics. Heck even Nvidia video drivers phone home with collected metrics.
Sandboxed operating systems based on bsd jails(iOS), flat pack and snaps (Linux), and chromeOS are a first step at stopping this unethical behavior. The good old days of trusting software from large companies not to install data harvesting spyware are long gone.
Nearly all of the reviews I’ve read say that it’s a good user experience overall, but it’s not worth the price.