Apple Vision Pro

[wco81]

So Apple Vision Pro is going to bring more media attention to the category.

Hands-on articles seems to be positive but it's not clear that Apple's talk of spatial computing is any more compelling that Meta's meta verse vision, which so far has failed to convince a mass market to buy in.

Obviously at $3500 and looking very bulky, AVP isn't a mass-market device but they emphasized that this is a platform, implying not continued HW iteration but continual refinement of the software UX.

Wired had a good summary of the huge obstacle that AVP and HMDs in general have to overcome:

But the Vision Pro is also unlike almost every other modern Apple product in one crucial way: It doesn’t disappear. In fact, it does the opposite. It rests on your face and shields your eyes, sensory organs that are a crucial part of the lived human experience. The same is true of every other heads-up display in the world, whether it’s a pair of AR glasses, an industrial-focused headset, or fully immersive VR goggles. The experience can be remarkable and surreal, for sure; but it requires a suspension of disbelief and a sacrifice of autonomy. Even Apple can’t out-design its way out of what is fundamentally an obtrusive technology.

But every successful Apple product of the past two decades has disappeared into our lives in some way—the iPhone into our pockets, the iPad into our purses, the Apple Watch living on our wrists, and the AirPods resting in our ears. Wearing the Vision Pro for hours on end will call into question what it means to compute, but also, what it means to live in the real world. My forehead felt cool when I took the Vision Pro off after around 30 minutes, a testament to Apple’s considerate design. But my face also breathed with relief, the way it has after using other heads-up displays. The air feels more real out here.

Hands on With Apple’s Vision Pro: The Opposite of Disappearing​

The mixed-reality headset is the company’s most surprising product in years. Is that a good thing?

www.wired.com

Are people willing to have their eyes and their faces blocked for hours at a time, even if these things become lighter and smaller?

What kind of experiences can they deliver for tens of millions of people to want to put on what are currently clumsy devices on their faces for hours?

I question for instance whether "spatial computing" lets you be as productive or accomplish even mundane tasks more efficiently than the good old mouse and keyboard.

They may be able to someday but more likely people will be telling AI agents to do such and such for them, rather than putting on obstrusive HMDs to gesture to use a spreadsheet for instance or select specific text.

HMDs offer immersion but it relegates them to entertainment and media consumption, which are just small subsets of what people do with computing devices today. Remains to be seen if spatial computing is really an alternate or forward platform.

 

[Pressure]

Marques Brownlee talks about his hands on experience here. He really digs the eye tracking calling it "magic".

 

[Karamazov]

this time the resolution seems high enough to really enjoy a virtual giant screen to watch movies or play 2D games.
But yeah it's really expensive.
Still a lot of great tech in there.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's the display tech? Anything innovative?

 

[xz321zx]

What's the display tech? Anything innovative?

Custom "OLEDoS" oled on silicon backplane eg. true microdisplay not shrunk TFT on glass. Front display said to be curved and gives appearance of depth. I'd think TFT on glass is more economical but idk. Maybe they make masks only after justified by demand. They must count on lot of excess CMOS capacity and that's kinda good news anyhow.

 

[Pressure]

What's the display tech? Anything innovative?

MicroLED, so better than OLED.

 

[xz321zx]

MicroLED, so better than OLED.

It's OLED with 3 digit nits at most also on the low side, but that's in isolation so...

 

[orangpelupa]

Once epic integrated it with unreal engine livelink for full body + face motion capture, it'll be a boon for indie animators and game devs

Currently you need multiple devices to do that, and then sync the mocap.

* iPhone with faceid camera for facial capture (natively on unreal via livelink)
* full body tracking via multiple VR sensors like vive trackers, or use balls captured with normal camera, or use kinect. There's also mocopi from Sony but not sure whether you can funnel it to unreal

 

[SmooTh]

 

[milk]

View attachment 9008
View attachment 9007

I like "Mike" and "Speckers"

 

[wco81]

More than the price, which we assume will come down — but if Apple sees this platform as a computer replacement or alternative, it probably would remain well over $1000 — have they shown or will they show some killer app or UX which makes people want to spend say $1500-2000 and put on what appears to be unwieldy kit on their face?

Is it spatial computing which is going to draw a mass audience to MR? Will people pay to read web pages on a floating Safari window while maybe an Apple Music window plays music in spatial audio, maybe displaying lyrics or music video?

That seems to be their lofty goal, a new computIng UX to displace what we have with desktops.

Tim Cook supposedly told an interviewer that the goal is to have an HMD like his glasses, which might imply that they ultimately see it as a mobile device replacement as well, which would be a big deal since iPhone is Apple‘s core business.

 

[wco81]

HoloLens seems more positioned for vertical markets, for employee training.

Someone said maybe there would be something like Youtube videos of people learning to fix stuff by putting on HoloLens which will show which screw to turn or which wiring to re-route, etc.

Just easier to make regular videos, not to mention cheaper, and post them on YouTube, see if you can get some traffic.

I doubt Apple would bother if they thought they'd be limited to vertical markets. Presumably they have a road map for reducing the size as well as cost of the devices or again they wouldn't have dipped into this market at all.

But I don't think they will be making $500 devices like the Quest. They are always going to have all those sensors so that you always use hands and eye-tracking.

For productivity and even some creative functions, they're going to have to support input peripherals -- keyboards, pointing devices, drawing tablets (or maybe linking to iPad which is being used with a Pencil -- as hand gestures alone won't be precise enough.

Their price target, if this is going to be a general-computing or even mobile device replacement is going to have to be in the $1000-2000 range, possibly under $1500 to match the MacBook Air, their best-selling desktop computer. That price range also is within range of the ASPs of iPhones as well.

Someone noted that the only proven application for HMDs is entertainment or gaming, putting you in the game. But it doesn't sound like there have been very many AAA VR games yet. I don't think Apple bothers with AR/VR/MR if they thought the main feature will be immersive gaming. For one thing, they make plenty of money from mobile gaming so why would they think VR gaming will drive tens of billions in revenues, which is the minimum financial goal of this undertaking.

They're not quite betting the company as Meta did, changing the name and restructuring that company as Zuckerberg did. But Apple doesn't bother showing their cards, signaling their intent to enter this market, unless they see the financial returns as reaching a tens of billions a year in revenues.

 

[wco81]

Vergecast was talking about how they could have NBA games shot from court side seats, which can go up into 5-figures for a game, streamed to the AVP.

Apple supposedly told them that they have developed a 3D camera but they haven't divulged the specs or anything.

That would be an interesting immersive experience, though when your head turns or your eyes go toward the periphery of the action, will the camera track?

Does Apple actually have a deal with the NBA? I know that Steve Ballmer has contracted with some company to produce VR broadcasts of Clippers games, presumably using some MS or Windows-based VR tech.

There's a rumor that Apple may be interested in bidding for a package of NBA games. NBA contract runs 1 or 2 more seasons and then it's up for bid, though NBA may give Disney and TNT (or WBD) first chance to negotiate new deals first.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

More than the price, which we assume will come down — but if Apple sees this platform as a computer replacement or alternative, it probably would remain well over $1000 — have they shown or will they show some killer app or UX which makes people want to spend say $1500-2000 and put on what appears to be unwieldy kit on their face?

No, but they have shown an Apple logo on it, and that's enough to get a sizeable number of people paying any money. They'll probably kickstart the sector by introducing something no-one wanted that they'll buy because it's Apple and then they cant live without.

 

[Pressure]

No, but they have shown an Apple logo on it, and that's enough to get a sizeable number of people paying any money. They'll probably kickstart the sector by introducing something no-one wanted that they'll buy because it's Apple and then they cant live without.

People that have tried this headset (and all other headsets from other manufacturers for that matter) says the Apple Vision Pro currently represents the very best this kind of product has to offer, both in terms of hardware and software.

Framing it the way you do is just setting the bar low or not at all for constructive discussion of the product and technology involved

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Doesn't matter how good it is if it's priced too high. But the Apple fanbase is willing to pay a significant premium for Apple products, meaning price comparisons with other similar products aren't going to be indicative of sales potential.

Or do you disagree that Apple fans are willing to pay more by and large and that their price sensitivity is instead exactly the same as those who buy Samsung or Acer or Google or MS?

(Making a serious discussion out of a tongue-on-cheek remark)

 

[WhiningKhan]

That would be an interesting immersive experience, though when your head turns or your eyes go toward the periphery of the action, will the camera track?

It needs to be a 360 degrees (or at very least 180 to get the full court from a side seat) camera anyway.

 

[wco81]

No, but they have shown an Apple logo on it, and that's enough to get a sizeable number of people paying any money. They'll probably kickstart the sector by introducing something no-one wanted that they'll buy because it's Apple and then they cant live without.

How large do you think that number is?

They sell about 200 million iPhones a year. I think Samsung is around the same or even more.

Are all 200 million buyers those zealots who will buy anything with an Apple logo?

If they position this initially as a desktop replacement, I think the annual unit volume is maybe 20-30 million in a very good year for them.

Estimates I've seen are in the area of 800k units in the first year. With a couple of price cuts or lower-priced iterations, maybe they can approach 10 million units. Maybe a good-sized fraction of that gets them a toehold but it's going to take a lot more to convert maybe the tens of millions of desktop users who would spend $2000 or more for a computer.

That's not even addressing the hundreds of millions of higher end smart phones sold each year.

 

[BRiT]

have they shown or will they show some killer app or UX which makes people want to spend say $1500-2000 and put on what appears to be unwieldy kit on their face?

I joked about this elsewhere, but their "killer app" should be putting Gold background for Texts in chats with the Vision Pro.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Estimates I've seen are in the area of 800k units in the first year. With a couple of price cuts or lower-priced iterations, maybe they can approach 10 million units.

Can I have some of what they're smoking? I don't see them getting anywhere near half of that in the first year, not even close. VR headsets are great, but extremely niche still because of their high price for entry....this VR/AR monster is gonna be worse in every way except for having an Apple logo on it, and I don't see that moving anywhere near that number of units.

They really expect to sell 800k in the first year? Damn, that blew my mind when I read it.