- cross-posted to:
- apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world
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I’m not sure why they tried this.
‘We made a VR games headset, but replaced the games with office related programs, like calenders and notepads’
Did any of them ever use an Oculus Quest? Like, why did they try this? Is this Apple’s Google Glass moment? Did they really think that if you pay enough youtubers to wear it in public, normal people would magically go into car-level debt to emulate them?
In fact, I’ll go as far as to say this campaign and price point was a bigger mistake, and a louder failure than Google Glasses.
I don’t know how far things have come since the aptly named Acer AH101-D8EY, but that was the last time I tried to be “productive” in VR and it was absolutely not working.
My guess was that they knew gaming was niche and were willing to invest less in this headset and more in spreading the widespread idea that “Spatial Computing” is the next paradigm for work.
I VR a decent amount, and I really do like it a lot for watching TV and YouTube, and am toying with using it a bit for work-from-home where the shift in environment is surprisingly helpful.
It’s just limited. Streaming apps aren’t very good, there’s no great source for 3D movies (which are great, when Bigscreen had them anyways), they’re still a bit too hot and heavy for long-term use, the game library isn’t very broad and there haven’t been many killer app games/products that distinct it from other modalities, and it’s going to need a critical amount of adoption to get used in remote meetings.
I really do think it’s huge for given a sense of remote presence, and I’d love to research how VR presence affects remote collaboration, but there are so many factors keeping it tough to buy into.
They did try, though, and I think they’re on the right track. Facial capture for remote presence and hybrid meetings, extending the monitors to give more privacy and flexibility to laptops, strong AR to reduce the need to take the headset off - but they’re first selling the idea, and then maybe there will be a break. I’ll admit the industry is moving much slower than I’d anticipated back in 2012 when I was starting VR research.
Is this the virtual boy of Apple? A product that never really made no sense to anybody and was never really supported?
I was hoping they’d get the price down to something sane. It looks like it could be a cool tool for CAD. Of course there won’t be any input available from a non-Apple computer so I still wouldn’t want one.
I desperately want a virtual desktop environment for plain ass computing. Give me infinite windows for my spreadsheet and IDE and that’s all I need!
Yeah, I would genuinely use one for the virtual screen capabilities to do my normal Salesforce-and-Slack job, if not for the price.
you can do this with the quest 3 i think
Without a Meta account tho? I’ve got hard blockers on price or shenanigans (or both) for every headset I know of.
Not sure what having an account has to do with anything. I get the objection on the grounds of Meta being a shit company and it’s perfectly reasonable, but having to make an account specifically for the device (and possibly nothing else - you don’t have to link it to facebook or anything) doesn’t magically give them any more power over you.
I’ve heard the quest 3 is awesome and does almost everything the Vision does. Not sure I can justify the price to myself yet.
i am using a quest 2 for productivity and ebooks but the resolution is so low that my desktops need to be 1280x720 or I can’t read them. it will be nice to upgrade when i get the chance.
I’ve heard the resolution is good enough to watch movies on too. Not sure if that is true, but that would be a selling point for me.
oh yea, watching movies is incredible. that’s the other thing im using it for
In the article it says they’re cancelling the “pro” version to focus on producing a cheaper version. So it sounds like you might get what you want, although “cheaper” will still likely be very expensive, and your point about compatibility with non-Apple devices still holds.
The virtual boy was awesome. I literally thought it was a childhood hallucination for almost 2 decades…
Imagine if they had more games for it, and kept improving the tech. Up through the Wii, Nintendo actually made some of the most amazing tech - the Wii accelerometers are what made quadcopters possible (outside of DARPA projects). The Nintendo back then could’ve made worthwhile VR before the iPad took the “I want to be on the Internet on the couch” niche
I played it at a blockbuster I think. I desperately wanted one as a kid. The only games I remember were tennis and a wario side scroller where he can jump into the background. I think I would have been bored within a week.
A neighborhood kid showed me a fighting game on it, and I think there was a star fox esque game that should’ve been the launch app (assuming it was any good)
At least the VirtualBoy sold enough to not make it a waste of time?
It did?
No.
At 770,000 sold, it is Nintendo’s lowest-selling standalone console and the only one to have less than one million units sold, seconded by the Wii U’s 13.6 million units.
The Wii U was seen as a complete and utter sales flop. The Wii U outsold the VirtualBoy 18:1.
it was cool though
The front screen is what no one wants in a cheaper version. Don’t cut back on sound and cameras ffs
BUT THE SHAREHOLDERS!!!
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Speak for yourself.
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It would take a miracle.
That’s what they were SO close to getting. Solutions like Xreal Air and Viture are just much more comfortable and less isolating.
Viture looks neat, still missing some things I want to see but they seem to understand what this kind of device needs
Curious from your perspective what you’d like to see. From mine, Viture and Xreal are nearly perfect, with the exception of Xreal failing to be supportive of open APIs.
I like that the viture has dimming, lens adjustment, an optional android based neckband device, and miracast is neat, etc.
If all you want is a compact screen that’s pretty good, and I’m considering getting one, but I want to see some more stuff like integration with your other devices. I see they have remote desktop stuff for gaming, etc, but I’m thinking a bit deeper integration like using a phone app to relay notifications like a HUD, and I want a bit more spatial awareness (might need to rely on stuff like radio beacons for that like UWB). The navigation also seems to rely on either your phone, buttons on the neckband, or a paired 3rd party controller (no official wireless controller), you could make it a bit easier with something that’s maybe keychain sized?
Imagine if the headset could piggyback on your phone’s AR support + UWB direction finding to let your phone calculate where it is relative to the world, then relay it to the headset which calculate its offset to tell where IT is in the world, it would immediately make Google Maps Live View infinitely more immersive (and overlays don’t need to be perfect, just need to not drift by too many degrees). It would probably be annoying to have to keep scanning with your phone to keep the map accurate though 🤷
Was about to comment this. Those products are actually usable versions of apples vr. And they can be used with any device. Apples use case is so narrow that other companies overtook them out of the gate.
Apple Vision Pro is the best virtual sandbox headset.
Almost nobody needs the best virtual sandbox headset.
Bro, just one more year. Let them come up with just another pair of goggles bro, trust me bro, one more year and we will be in VR future bro.
In the year 2000…
Quest 3 adoption is super high compared to where quest 1 or 2 were at years ago, the apple vision pro wasn’t meant to create mass adoption anyway, not at that price point.
I’m still waiting for:
- good Linux support, including apps/games
- not too expensive - $500-ish
- relatively privacy-friendly, so anything Meta is out
Valve Index is close, but it’s expensive and Linux content is very limited. Bigscreen VR Headsets looks interesting since it seems more comfortable than Index, just as privacy-friendly, and should work on Linux, but it’s still a little expensive ($1k) and there aren’t many Linux VR apps AFAIK. I might get it though, still deciding.
This requires an Apple iPhone XR or newer, as the face scan utilizes the TrueDepth sensor.
I’d rather take a plaster mold of my face than have to use a specific phone to order a VR headset.
I could probably borrow my wife’s iPhone, but agree, this isn’t great and is part of why I don’t own one. I’m guessing the custom cushion is a significant part of the price (and the appeal), so hopefully they make an alternative at some point.
“borrow my wife’s iPhone” has to be the #1 way people order these. It makes no sense to assume your PC VR enthusiast market has a recent Apple phone on hand
I also happen to be a Linux enthusiast, and since it’s SteamVR compatible, it should just work. There aren’t a lot of Linux compatible headsets, so I’m guessing Linux users would disproportionately be interested, and they’d disproportionately not have iphones…
The only thing I could see myself using it for, is being in bed and watching a movie. I can do that with ar glasses for 300$.
I myself use a 9 US$ gooseneck phone holder that gives me a great tv watching experience in bed. Came across it as a lemmy recommendation and it’s improved the quality of my life much more than some high end gadgets.
you can get a giant 4K TV for $500 (1/7 the Vision price)
basically one TV for every room in your house
If they can’t get the headset to fit the size and weight of swimming goggles, I don’t think it can get mass adoption
Apple should make a virtual headset you can buy in META, then put it on when you are already in a VR setting, except now you can use Apple services with it!
That way it would have zero production cost, be absolutely as useless as it already is, and can be just as overpriced.
It seems like the perfect Apple scheme.
If you can continue with vapid schemes that ensure endless shareholder value I’ll follow you anywhere senpaisano
The price immediately put this product into the grave. They should take out all the useless features like the eye passthrough, or the bizarre face scanning, if it’ll only ever be used for calls. If this were to be used in a gaming scenario, sort of like what the PSVR2 does, that’d be a whole different conversation
Apple has suspended work on the second-generation Vision Pro headset to singularly focus on a cheaper model
That seems very reasonable and like what they probably should’ve been doing all along.
I still don’t understand who the pro was actually for. Everyone who had one said exactly the same thing about it which was they couldn’t understand how to use it productively for anything.
The kind of people who would go around driving a Cybertruck with a Vision Pro on their faces and an humane pin strapped on.
For one glorious moment of misreading there I thought there was a humane pin strap on.
IMHO, it’s a fancy dev kit.
Exactly. Not promoting it as a dev kit was a major failure. This is the kind of product where you CAN’T do without external feedback, not everybody will use one in a clean office (or even one that stands still), not everybody has the same spatial awareness or motor skills, not supporting controllers locks out numerous people with limited hand movements, etc… As a dev kit it could’ve worked much better at getting the kind of feedback they need from devs working on useful AR stuff
The problem with it being a dev kit is that I don’t know what features are and are not going to be on the more consumer model, so I can’t really develop anything for it.
Will the consumer version have the truly excellent depth tracking or will it use the cheaper but more traditional point tracking system, because that will inform my UI decisions. Will it have iris recognition for logins or will I need to build that functionality in, will they please include controllers, will they please fix it so that you can pin things to a location, and not have them close just because you leave that location? I don’t know, as they haven’t communicated anything about it.
The point of such an early dev kit isn’t to commit in advance but get people to try out what works, then select what will be in the final product (and maybe releasing updated dev kits on the way). They’re would be a general plan, but this isn’t like a game console dev kit where almost all specs and major features are set in advance, so you’d expect devs to implement multiple variants of each software feature and see what they require of the hardware, how people use it, how popular they are, etc.
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You mean they’re doing what everyone said they should have done to begin with - release an affordable consumer product that will in turn attract more developers?
Everyone knew that they would release a cheaper model, and it was always their plan. That’s why it has ‘pro’ in its name.
And my point is that maybe they should have established a market by releasing a cheaper model first.
Why does this feel like another “voice assistant” that we’re supposed to talk to all day?
If we worked from home, maaaayyybe voice control could be a thing once it’s 100%? But Boss Man wants us back at work. Are we really going to be a open-office with everyone talking to their computer like some sort of crypto bro boiler room?
It’s sorta like the “video phone” that everyone was dying to have for decades. We finally got it and everyone went “meh”. A few grandparents use it to talk to their grandkids. Hell, most of the current generations don’t even use phones anymore.
It’s one more technology that’s being pushed out before it’s baked and will likely be only really useful in niche applications. Really fucking good for those niche applications, but just too expensive and awkward for anyone else.
The video phone is now facetime, skype, zoom, google meet etc…
Yeah, FaceTime. But how often do people use it in practice?
Good point about Zoom. Business clearly like Zoom for meetings, but big business is still hammering BTO hard. Will Zoom be marginalized when they finally force in-person meetings?
Also, the last few companies I worked for that did Zoom meetings, everyone kept their cameras off.
It’s not every day for everyone, but I used video calling every day to talk to my foreign spouse, and to talk to my little brothers when I was overseas. It’s pretty amazing overall.
My kid and his friends use FaceTime instead of calling and will often be on it for hours while gaming. It’s much easier than a call for 3+ people. We are in the US but I imagine they use whatsapp or whatever the same way other places.
I work for a smaller org (less than 50 ppl) and we are generally required to have cameras on in meetings.
There are some demographics where its usage is extremely common. I’ve come across multiple people who are on FaceTime calls while in public. Just walking around on video and speaker, talking to someone else. I can’t conceive of using it this way, but in some social circles it’s totally normalized.
This page has some interesting quotes. Reading through, it sounds like it’s hovering at or below the top 5 most common video chat tools. There’s a lot of bias towards quotes about 2020 usage so that’s obviously skewed, but that year at least 9-25% of various demographics were cited using FaceTime daily.
I use FaceTime 2-3 times a year to talk to my nephew, and maybe 3-5 times a year to screen share or show my mum things. But I do use Teams video calls literally 5 days a week (I try to avoid the video part when I can, but there are a few in leadership who really push for it. My company is never doing RTO, so I’ll accept a bit of video calling for the sake of permanent WFH!).
I made the right choice back in 2019 when they were recruiting optimechanics experts. It’s a dumb idea.
Good for sticking to something you believe in. Highly underrated quality in engineers. “Take the money and run like a thief” is such a bullshit attitude
Im not an engineer but I am in development. I will do the best I can to make as good a product as I can based on the requirements but when it comes to what I will work on I am a total whore. Show me the money and tell me what you want honey. Ill do anything for the right price. No weapon stuff though.
Yeah the best jobs are all about doing something you like. The moment you stop caring much about being employed there, quality drops and your own reputation is on the line. It’s much better to do what you love. Getting paid 🤪 for it, that’s my wife’s job. She pushed me in the negotiation phase to the point where I was so uncomfortable. But now I feel like that was ok based on the change I brought to others in the company. My pay bump raised the pay for several others. But anyway, do what you love and get paid doing it, like Chris Rock said once…or twice while getting paid to say it.
Yeah right. Surely it would have been a good idea to take the money for the last 5 years.
Why? I got a way better job that I like and it has no end in sight. I could retire on this one. Maybe.
Weird flex, but ok.
Rip
