Topic 2 Posts

VR

Off-piste with Vision Pro

Played with Vision Pro off-script for ½ hr. I told the saleswoman I’d had the scripted demo already. She was like, have at it, I’ll watch and learn from you :) Like a car dealer who tosses you the keys and says come back in an hour.

This was a much better demo. Tried every app and environment. Size 21W light seal gave me clearer video and a much wider FOV. Fit is critical.

Pre-launch, Applers claimed they were using Vision Pro hours per day, which sounded like BS. Now feels plausible.

Watched “Masters of the Air” in the cinema environment, really felt like being in a theater down to the ribbed ceiling.

The dinosaur demo really does invoke synesthesia when a butterfly lands on finger—you feel a light touch or static electricity.

If you pat the big dino on the snoot, it backs away like a golden retriever. Your hands on its snout break immersion, the goggles struggle to mask them.

Pulled apps toward me and directly scrolled by touch. Same with the VR keyboard, just poked and typed.

Enjoyed Mt. Hood at night, Yosemite, the Moon, the Hawaii volcano, White Sands.

Typed in Notes, drew in the air with Freeform, played with Mail and Messages.

Friend who bought it says the hand tracking is too aggressive, lots of spurious taps. Like trackpads had to improve palm rejection back in the day.

The hand tracking and VR keyboard will likely eventually be good enough, like iPhone’s soft keyboard did vs. BlackBerry. Big simplification not to have external beacons / sensors or controllers.

Apple tends to be stingy with hardware access (no camera for you) and takes most of the dollars in the market, vs. Wintel. Nevertheless, very interesting platform for app dev.

Neargoggling

Before trying it— Vision Pro seems much improved over earlier VR like Vive, but feels like niche use cases rather than daily productivity.

Focused on productivity over gaming, with iOS apps available. I don’t buy this yet. For comparison, AirPods Max are enough friction to don / doff that I sometimes just use the crappy built-in speaker on the Mac mini—let alone something significantly heavier which covers my eyes too.

I’m skeptical people will strap this to their face for half a day. I could see using this for specific, relatively short purposes.

Eye tracking is faster than a trackpad, famously used in fighter jets.

Gesture tracking seems like it would be much less reliable than tapping a trackpad, but is more natural than controllers.

Higher res gives you much nicer video pass-through, which makes it more convenient to leave the headset on, and less likely to have people sneak up on you.

Nicer materials, Apple-style, at the cost of excess weight, again Apple-style.

3D uses:

Navigation
Piloting drones
Design
Assembly
Repair
Video

Travel: portable IMAX, nicer experience. But not more portable than a laptop and AirPods.

Warby / Zenni knocked out most of the optometrist racket, except for the eye exam cartel. Cut my cost for reasonably stylish glasses by 90%.

The Vision Pro prescription lenses cost more than my entire pair of glasses, including lenses and frame.