Is anyone else worried about the apple vision pro?
i wouldn't normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail... but it's apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with "tech reviewers" and rich folk who can afford it.
what's really concerning is that it's not marketed as a new VR headset, it's marketed by apple and these "tech reviewers" as the new iphone, something you take with you everywhere and do your daily tasks in, consume content in etc...
and it's dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can't look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can't mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
this is why i think all these tech giants (google meta apple etc) were/are interested in the "metaverse". it holds both your vision and your hearing hostage, you cannot do anything else when using it but to just use the thing. a 100% efficiency attention machine, completely blocking you from the outside world.
i'm not concerned about this iteration as much as people are not hyped about this iteration. just like how people are hyped about the next apple vision, i'm more worried about the next iterations with somewhat lower price tag and better software availability. i hope it flops and i know it probably won't achieve any sort of mainstream adoption even if it's deemed a success because it probably can't get less bulky and look less dorky, but the possibility is still worrying. what are your thoughts?
Some people call VR dystopian, but it's got great potential too.
During COVID while I was living alone and we were under lockdown...
I used a Quest to watch movies in a virtual theater with a bunch of people from around the world. I remember being in a theater watching an absolutely ridiculous Nicolas Cage movie laughing my ass off with a bunch of dudes from Australia. Another time I watched a cricket game with some people who explained the rules to me and kinda gave me some play by play on what was happening.
I've also attended a few support group meetings in VR for coping with loss that had quite a lot of attendants. The meeting was run by a licensed group therapist and we took turns sharing and then reflecting on each others stories. It was frankly amazing.
I also played mini golf with friends of mine as well as had a couple meetings over a round of mini golf with the other guy on my design team during lockdown. Honestly the best virtual meetings I ever had.
All of the above were very social and very positive experience. I didn't feel far away from people, I felt connected to them.
Same way a smartphone can be a useful tool that enhances your life or a screen you stare at for hours consuming bullshit TikTok videos. You're in control of what you make of it. You can also stick to a dumb phone and not participate at all.
Not to take away from your experience because I'm sure it was genuinely wonderful, but all I can picture for that support group is a bunch of absurd VRchat avatars sitting in a circle for a therapy session.
There were no insane avatars, everyone looked pretty normal. Sorry to burst your bubble.
I’ve never used those. How does it work, you see a picture of the people or is it real video of them?
This was in Altspace VR which unfortunately got axed by Microsoft IIRC, but on there you kinda looked like a less shitty version of one of those Nintendo avatars customized however you wanted.
The craziest anybody looked on there would be to have like rainbow or blue hair or something along those lines. It was pretty tame compared to like the furry anime cat sex doll looking things some people run around in VR Chat with. It also wasn't overrun with screaming children which I think is VR Chat's biggest overall problem.
Anyway, that support group thing I think has since moved to another platform, I forget which.
There is nothing wrong with 10 Ugandan Knuckles who just need to find closure
How many of them have fursonas?
People will rip off the headsets if the ads are too intrusive and annoying. Which is why they’ll either be dead subtle, or they’ll offer you paid ways to avoid them.
I don’t think there’ll be mass adoption of this either way, mainly because it’s an expensive gadget coming at a time when folks on median incomes are feeling the pinch.
Apple are masters of subtle corporate propaganda. They've indoctrinated a generation of people to believe Android is their enemy by making their messages show up in a less readable colour in the messaging app.
I think that's mainly in the US, though. For the rest of the world the price tag is too high and the iPhone is the mark of the pretentious or the hipster. Or the iOS developer 😄
The rest of us are happy with our Android phones.
The blue message shit is just peak Apple bullshit. Signal's messages are blue to, hopefully they continue to be more popular. Its so much better in every dimension and it actually preserves one's privacy much better
No one cares about the color the care about the fact that if the color is green that means sending videos will be garbage quality and they can’t reduce texts over data and can’t FaceTime or get replies in line. Which is fair because androids somehow still use sms and they finally started getting rcs with encryption and now google already started using the data for their ai
Have you visited a website without an ad blocker recently? Because typical web advertising has become as intrusive and annoying as technically possible, and millions of people willingly accept that.
VR/AR/Spatial Whatever has the potential to be just as bad, if not far worse.
Do you mean without an ad-blocker?
i mean it's easily circumventable, "and now you don't have to worry about losing progress on your favorite game or losing battery, because when you are not using the headset it goes to sleep mode" or whatever, but you are right if the ads are too annoying people are probably not going to use it, or will they? this is the thing i already think the way ads currently are is very intrusive but there's a large segment of people who are fine with it. and subtle ads are way worse imagine if they constantly put ads in your peripheral vision. it's cartoonishly evil which is why it probably won't happen but even giving that power to them is dangerous.
It's really easy to avoid if you don't use them.
I'm not american and i can't imagine a world where someone with these weird ass ski goggles don't get laughed at.
Not everyone cares if strangers are laughing at them. Especially the rich.
They do if it gets them assaulted and their $3,500 toy stolen.
Exactly the same with smart phones back in the day. And in fact still one of the most stolen items.
Precisely. Like Apple’s headset isn’t going to have lockdown and Find My features. It’s worthless stealing an iPhone now because it can easily be locked down and rendered useless.
People used to think someone who used a cell phone in public was a weirdo too. I remember at my high school grocery store job coworkers judging someone walking down the aisle on their phone.
Wow your country sounds horrible and toxic, I hope things get better and it evolves to the point where people can live their own lives without needless bullying and abuse for trivial things.
Could you imagine not having the social freedom to wear whatever the fuck you want without having someone else loudly judge you and tell you how to act?
/u/BruceTwarzen I hope you move to a better country from that shit hole you currently reside in and heal.
Maybe that user is still in secondary/high school and deals with that. I’m being charitable by this guess.
The last time I thought about what I might be perceived as when in public was when I was in school… I’m old now and free to go out in public with my partner in bad dragon hoodies.
I love spaceship games (think Elite: Dangerous and the like), and motorsport games. Anything where you're set in a cockpit is a perfect candidate for VR. All I wanted was a headset that would act analagous to a dumb monitor - simply provide vision and audio and head tracking (with "simply" being a relative term - the challenges overcome and technology produced to date is, admittedly, amazing).
But no. What we have are a bunch of privacy-invading face huggers. I shouldn't need to sign in to anything to use a piece of hardware that should require zero internet access (which is why anything Razer is also on my do not buy list).
So am I concerned about the Apple Vision Pro? Couldn't give a shit to be honest. I'm not their customer.
Doesn’t valve provide login-free setup and use of SteamVR for the index and the like? Granted, you’ll need a beefy PC for it, and probably some kind of storefront for most games. But at least no Facebook login strapped to your head.
It does! It can be played fully offline, doesn’t require an account, and works great with my pirated copy of elite dangerous. The index is the shit! Apple vision pro can’t do shit for me that the index has done for years now.
OK @max, @thorbot, I didn't know about this. I'd written off all VR in protest against corporate overreach. Time to do some more investigation...
The index is the GOAT, I highly recommend it if you have a powerful gaming PC to run it and are concerned about privacy
Please let me know if you ever find one. Best I have seen are the ones without head tracking or laggy tracking.
Yesterday or a few days ago I've read that people already jailbreaked the vision. So if you must have one, you will still be able to tinker with it.
Someone found a way to crash the kernel, which may or may not lead to an exploit, which would be just the first step in a long process of developing a jailbreak. I wouldn't get too excited yet. Even if one does get released, Apple can just patch the exploit, and it could easily be years before a new jailbreakable exploit is found.
Airpods are probably one of the ugliest pieces of tech ove seen in the last decade and yet somehow it doesn't seem to matter. Never overestimate apple's customer base.
I don’t think they’re any uglier than other wireless earbuds. I think it’s kinda cute that they stuck with the iPod earbud look without the wires.
Not that I have AirPods. I’m a Jabra man myself.
They're pretty much the only company on the planet that can push the "because your friends have one" aspect in their marketing and succeed. Apple users think they're all part of this exclusive club and really don't care that they're straight up being robbed by the cost.
At the risk of facts getting in the way:
I remember this being discussed when Apple first announced it because developers have to hand off graphics to the os so the os can do the divested rendering specifically because Apple didn’t want individual apps to be able to gather data about where users are looking.
I mean, you can just take it off?
Also, regarding the adoption of the headset, I think it’s absolutely crazy to say that it probably won’t get less bulky. Tech is constantly getting smaller and that will be the number one priority with the headset.
If they can make the price and comfort level right, then I do think it becomes a mainstream product. Not saying people wear it 24/7, but that most households would have one, and it would become somewhat important for WFH and remote meetings.
I’m not a fanboy for Apple, but personally I just think it is the tech of the (relatively) near future.
it won't get less bulky compared to phones. the headset will still need lenses, a display which itself needs to be a certain distance away from your eyes, a board for processing, a separate battery pack, audio, wifi, straps, space for some airflow so it doesn't overheat and damage the display etc etc. small form factors have come a long way and it can probably get thinner, but i don't think apple vision pro is that far off from the physical limit of how much smaller it can get.
Hmm, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. They can 100% decrease the size of the processing bits and reduce weight.
I just think it’s very shortsighted to look at such an early version of the product and say “it won’t change much”. Especially when however many years ago you could have said that what we’ve got right now isn’t possible.
Disagree strongly. If there’s one sure thing in the tech world, it is the fact that electronics get smaller and smaller with each generation.
Never seen pancake lenses, huh?
Oh, tech will just stop evolving after this point? Okay, I guess now is the time it stops. Right now.
I think tech reviewers are really naive for thinking that Apple Vision Pro is the future of computing just because it was made by Apple. Nobody wants to use their computer or watch movies in VR, except for in niche situations. My prediction is that users will quickly realize that they don't actually have any use for the Apple Vision Pro, and the product line will be discontinued.
I think VRChat is a pretty good counterargument to "nobody wants to watch movies in VR". I myself don't use VR or VRChat, but according to friends that do worlds with films are extremely popular. Maybe you think that's a niche situation, but nobody I've known that's tried it (more than a few people) has disliked it and all of them could just as easily watched it on a monitor. There are already thousands of people who sleep in VRChat, talk in VRChat, and play in VRChat. I actually know a really surprising amount of people that will sleep in virtual spaces, whether that be VRChat or just being in a Discord call.
But why though
Let’s bookmark your prediction and come back in 5 years when Apple has used the data they gathered from this headset to make a proper pair of AR glasses. Absolute shit take right along side all the people who said iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch would fail.
I heard simular things about the Apple Watch.
I think augmented reality will be the future. Once someone gets it, they will dominate the market.
I'm hoping to get an open source headset in the future with the opposite feature; augmented reality ad blocking for real life ads.
I could go around the streets of any city and not see a single ad. Pair that with smart adaptive noise cancelling that would allow me to hear the outside world, but remove annoying ads or other unpleasant noises like construction tools or leafblowers.
I'd love to be able to set up a laptop and have much more screen real estate by putting on a headset. The ability to watch something like game of thrones on an airplane without the 6 year old behind me seeing shit would also be nice.
The biggest downside of the apple headset is that it's apple and their stupid ecosystem.
Oh, man, I would love if I could walk around my town and every billboard and annoying flashy sign were replaced with a bit of smart auto-fill or a color-matched segment of a wallpaper image from my wallpapers folder.
Exactly, it can even give you functionality, like your calendar/reminders/transit schedule/ETC... There is so much potential for customisation.
That would be awesome. This would also be interesting for airplane construction in the future, not having windows means the airplane will be lighter, thus saving fuel and reducing carbon emissions.
I mentioned this in another Apple Vision thread, but that was one of the proposed use cases for Steve Mann's original EyeTap device.
Interesting, I never heard of the EyeTap, just searched it right now. I didn't expect someone to make something like this is 1984.
someone should make a de-facebooked custom rom for the meta quest
Yes please, I use my quest 2 sparingly but would love a to hit it with custom firmware
I think what the tech implies these big tech giants want for the world is more worrisome than the specific tech itself.
They may fail with this iteration or the next, but why do you think they're trying so hard insisting this is the next big thing? To survive, capitalism needs to create new problems to be solved. The smart phone didn't solve any problems we had, it created a desire, which then became a fear (FOMO), then it became a need, which then finally became a problem if you didn't have one.
If you're homeless today and want to get out of it, one of the first things you need is an address, then an internet connection, and a smart phone. Why? Because most jobs require it to get a hold of you and in many cases to facilitate the software used on the job.
They don't need to convince consumers to adopt the new tech per se. They just need to convince businesses that without the new technological progress, their competitors will leave them behind. Then it won't matter if you like the tech or not, you'll NEED it to have a job and survive. Just like the smart phone is today.
They're directing us, telling us how the future will look like based off of THEIR vision, not OURS.
That's what worries me. Not this AR headset, but rather the reasons they have for insisting this is the future we are all heading towards.
It's not like they can force you to wear the headset.
Unless of course it's used for torture by IDF or smthn.
They sort of can! Likely, the ads will pause until you put the device back on or direct your attention back to it. Unskippable ads are rolling out on day 1, I’m betting.
I think that, in practice, putting a headset on is a big ask for most people. Phones caught on because they're extremely convenient, almost everyone had a use case that was improved by a smartphone, and once they had it in their pocket it was a short hop to using the phone for other things as well. A headset though? Maybe if it was as unobtrusive as regular glasses, people would put up with it - but even then, regular glasses are so annoying that many people use contact lenses instead. So if you want to put any kind of technology on people's head and keep it there all day, that's where your benchmark has to be set, not way up in the same size category as a motorcycle helmet.
Bingo. At the end of the day it's still something massive that sits on their head. It's going to sell well as a gimmick. But people will get tired, their necks will hurt, some will get motion sickness, and over time they'll collect dust like all of the others.
The fact is that vr technology is stunted until hardware can catch up, and by that I mean literally as easy as putting on sunglasses.
AFAIK there's some strides being made here, like I think there are see-through LCD screens that work in the lab but aren't mass production ready, so I can see the "final form" of this being a pair of glasses with the ability to put stuff in front of your eyes and all of the actual processing is done remotely by your phone.
...but even then, I think that lands the tech somewhere in the neighborhood of headphones, not the smartphone itself.
My biggest concern is that everyone will eventually be forced by societal and institutional expectations; for now people can easily choose not to wear them, but if/when your employer requires it for work or if/when the only way to talk to your friends is by using it, then you won't have much of a choice.
For example, Zoom has very shady ties with the Chinese government (and several reports say that they've used it to surveil and censor people), yet many schools and workplaces required it (and many still do now). You could refuse to install/use it, but then you'd lose your job or fail your classes. It's a similar story for TikTok, Discord, and Facebook before that.
I'm much more concerned about the very real and confirmed ties (see:
) Zoom, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, my ISP, my cell phone service provider, etc have to the security apparatus of the country I actually live in who have actual power and authority over me and a long history of murdering left wing activists.
If you're in America, I wouldn't worry about the Chinese Government spying on you, and be much more worried about the American government doing it, since they can actually use what they find to prosecute you for crimes real or imagined.
But while it is true that you could get forced into using it by social pressure, my post is about how I really don't think that the tech has the potential for the kind of mass adoption that would create those conditions. You could be forced to use it by your job, but then when you're not working you can take it off - compare that to the cell phone in your pocket, which they can already use to call you back into work at all hours of the day, the emails they use to get you to give them free labor outside of working hours, and the other ways in which corporations have gotten their fingers into our off time I just don't see this as a breakthrough or a new threshold being crossed in any way.
I think about the Vision like I think about a new Gucci bag or a new set of Air Jordans. There's a small, but very visible, community that is super into that product, probably for reasons not related to its actual functionality. The difference is that there's a lot of overlap between Apple fans and broader technology enthusiast groups, where we're more isolated from the Gucci and Jordan communities. There are lots of brand-based fan groups who will happily accept branded merch or content, but not interpret that as 'advertising.'
The rest of the world tolerates spyware and especially ads if they feel like the product is worth the intrusion. There's a reason Meta doesn't have a logo watermark foating in the corner of Quest view field. There's a reason VR is still very niche, almost entirely limited to gaming.
Maybe Vision's AR experience will change that. Maybe viewing your entire life through a video camera with overlaid graphics has real-world value beyond privacy in co-working spaces. I doubt that value is $3000 and think Vision is more like Apple's Newton than Apple's iPhone.
It's probably more like the Apple II than the Newton or iPhone. It cost $1300 at the time, which is about $6300 today. For early adopters, it was a revolutionary glimpse of the future. It took another 10 years for it to become widespread.
I have some sympathy for the slippery slope argument. Used to be you didn't need a smart phone, but both my current and last job wanted you to use a two factor authentication app, which required either apple or android. Probably some way around that requirement, but then now you're the difficult weirdo in the office.
Many password managers like 1Password and Last Pass and KeePass and all the big ones can store MFA details nowadays.
Sure, but if it's generating a code in real time, and you're trying to sign into your work laptop, you essentially need to have another computer on hand, right? Or I know back in the day they would give you a little physical device that generates the codes.
Must watch ads.
No.
Im not afraid of this or the next few iterations of ADglasses the tech bros put out, im more worried about the encroaching optessive surveillance technology these proof-of-concept devices might represent.
I mean you're worried about something you don't even use yet showing you ads... Your android/iPhone has a front facing camera and doesn't force you to watch the advert via eye tracking. No ones does, because you would just buy something else
Frankly I don't think most people will ever want to strap goggles to their head to check their fucking emails or even do any real creative work, and that's why this is one of the dumbest products ever to be shat out of Cupertino. No amount of iterating on the design will change this fact, and no, this will never all be contained in a contact lens or a normal pair of glasses because physics will still exist in the future lol. What we're seeing is the usual hype from fanboys, stockholders, and paid reviewers that will fizzle out within a couple of months.
People comparing it to something like the first iPhone or a smartwatch is also stupid because A) while one can spend a whole day with their face pressed up against a screen, it's not mandatory in order to use them, and B) those devices had inherent value to people right out of the gate. It's almost a no-brainer to see the perks of having a full web browser and responsive touch keyboard on a phone when you're coming from the awful hellworld of the "mobile web," static physical buttons, and the shitty touchscreens of yore. The fuck does a pair of ski goggles do to improve computing compared to my existing laptop, phone, or tablet? On top of it, the Vision Pro seems like the most isolating, lonely, and dystopian sort of device that, like all of the similar facehugging gadgets that came before it, will people off just by looking at it. Just can't see how this gains traction in any form outside of the nichest niches, and Apple doesn't build shit for niche markets for long. This isn't 2001 anymore; they're a multi-trillion dollar phone company that sells computers on the side.
Really wish Apple instead poured their dragon's hoard of cash into optimizing their existing hardware and software instead of this garbage. Hell, there's actually some cool gestures and conventions they've demoed with AVP that could be developed into a device that helps people who require alternate input methods. Imagine if they actually made the Magic Leap but it wasn't just astroturf! I fear other product lines will languish because capitalism is a fuck and they "must" go all in on "the next big thing" or else Tim Cook won't have a "revolutionary" product category under his belt to retire on and/or they'll be facing the repo men by the end of the quarter unless line go up 🙃.
In short, I wouldn't worry about it; this too will flop. The only way people are going to stop using their existing workflow and drop it for this shit is if manufacturers/developers stop supporting them entirely and go all in on goggle computing, which would be suicidal for the industry and probably be met by tremendous backlash from anyone who does anything even mildly productive on a computer or who values doing what they want with the gear they own.
it's a toy for hype-susceptible tech-impaired rich snobs. what's to be worried about?
The reality of the situation is going to be far more boring than anything you can make up in your mind. They said that AI was going to completely change the world and make normal work obsolete causing a bunch of people to lose their jobs. Turns out it was a total grift and only that last bit was true because the owning class are a bunch of useless fucks who genuinely thought they could get away with it.
Nope.
Apple will never do the ad eye tracking thing. And if they do? there’s this cool thing called taking the headset off. It’s not glued to your fucking face
If they are pushing ads that much, they will probably pause the ad until you put the device back on or close the application.
The person accepting the return can finish watching it, then. I am already not buying this thing at those prices.
So don’t put it back on. It’s not magnetized to your face. How is this hard to understand?
Calm down gummy worm, I was just discussing a potential process that ad servers will probably take.
So Apple is good because… you can stop using it?
Nobody said Apple was good, they're just noting that nobody is going to force you to use an Apple Vision product. You can go your whole life without putting one on if you like.
I'm going to do your take but actually properly: Don't buy apple products.
Check out what these stupid chuds have to say about it: https://www.youtube.com/live/gseav7sgpks?feature=shared
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were doing a bit.
I’ve never seen a less critical tech review; never seen investment advice that was less trustworthy, more of a conflict of interest; these douchebags are willingly blind to the glaring cons of this technology. They have massive portfolios of AAPL and just go on and on about how great it is. I’d say shameful but we’ve been here before with Tesla and they were able to lie their way to the top. The Henry Kissinger of tech stocks.
“I’m wondering if you are the type of person who wants to keep it on all day”
NO ONE will want the embarrassment of keeping this on their face all day. This is like the Segway.
Ahahaha i forgot about how segway revolutionized the way to get hit by a car
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/live/gseav7sgpks?feature=shared
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
looks at "hover" boards and e-unicycles The Segway is a bad example here, because it was really just ahead of its time.
I will continue not using it. I was interested in Oculus until they sold to FB and then I nope'd right out of that. I really did think VR was neat, but various things kept me from pulling the trigger. If it becomes the only way to use chunks of the internet, I just won't use them; I grew up still in the analog world (though we did have BBS and very early dial-up in the '80s), and I could go back to it. I'd honestly miss educational content more than anything else, but I can get books. In my lifetime, that strategy would probably still work fine.
This is anecdotal, but I see all of these VR rooms or stores at malls or on outlet areas where you can play with VR heat and have fun. They are almost always empty. I VERY rarely ever see people in them.
There another entertainment venue near me that has bowing and games and stuff. They also have a VR area that I have never seen open. Don’t know if it’s just constantly broken or if nobody is actually interested in it.
Went to one of these with my co-workers. We were the only ones and nobody was there before we arrived and when we left there wasn't anybody else coming in either.
They probably have to constantly update the HW to actually get customers and then it has to be expensive enough that the few that come, make them a profit.
Eh, you're talking what, $1500 for a headset and rig? Even if you have 4 setups at one of those kiosks the cost to have someone running it is going to quickly outpace the cost of the hardware.
I know a guy who used to run one of these businesses. He pivoted to something else because of the expenses, and hardware wasn't the biggest. The monthly license fees for games are outrageous when you want to provide them to the public. Which means you have to constantly bet on which game's demand will outweigh its cost on a monthly basis.
Before COVID, his place was very busy. I went many times and it was a lot of fun. His business was profitable, but because of the cost of games still not super successful.
I agree that the expense of paying someone to run the spot would quickly outpace the cost of hardware, but in his case he was running the whole thing himself. Even with nobody to pay for their time, his margins were never great.
Then COVID came along. That really killed it. No one wants to wear a VR headset that was just worn by a sweaty stranger minutes earlier during a pandemic.
I didn't even think about the software costs. Makes sense. The whole "you don't really own your games."
Off topic but my bf has an Amazon tv and within seconds of turning it on it plays a prime advertisement, it sucks because the fire televisions are like the cheapest on the market, for a reason
People are going to use these things irresponsibly like when they're driving.
My gf already sent me an instagram reel of just that and I wanted to just rip their new toy off their faces so bad.
This is the one, if you're interested.
NGL I saw the title and didn't expect much from this. Good effort post, way to change my mind on this topic.
People were complaining when newspapers were new that itd take everyones attention and make people distant. I think its great that more VR stuff is happening because the tech can be used for so much and lets people experience things they might not have otherwise.
If you were hospitalized for a long period would you rather watch the ceiling/small TV or would you want to travel the world via VR?
All new tech can be used for good or bad but we shouldnt stop progressing
It's a pity because in theory a AR/VR headset without any predatory practices would be a really fun gadget to have, some of things it does is impressive and well polished considering it's the first apple product of it's kind, but no way does any feature it has right now make the steep price worth it. Unfortunately it's apple so we know how its going to pan out and people will buy it. A few iterations from now I can see the price going down with more apps and greater functionality but it will become increasingly more predatory. As you've said, unskippable ads but also the fact that they'll basically have a full scan of your face and surroundings. God knows what kind of sinister shit they can do with all that data. It's already quite fucked up that you'll see ads and autocompleted search terms on your phone which clearly indicate that your conversations are being listened to and it feels we've all just accepted that and are doing nothing about it.
For what it’s worth, Apple has had an attention API ( for checking if the user is interacting / viewing ) since the debut of their facial tracking sensors on the iPhone X. Although, Apple makes its very clear it’s not to be used for ads and the such. If it helps I don’t know of any developers / Apple abusing that API.
What is it used for then? Face recognition?
Edit: honest question before I come off as agressive :)
Thanks for the question, it actually made me look for the api. Looks like I misremembered it, and there aren’t actually any exposed APIs for developers regarding attention. Internally it’s used by iOS for checking when you’re looking at the screen for faceID and keeping the screen lit when you’re reading.
There are APIs for developers that expose the position of the users head, but apparently it excludes eye information. Looks like it’s also pretty resource intensive, and mainly for AR applications.
The faceID / touchID api essentially only returns “authenticated”, “authenticating”, and “unautheticated”. The prompts / UI are stock iOS and cannot be altered, save showing a reason.
Thanks for the answer!
Spacial Audio is another one. When watching a movie with headphones the sound always seems like is coming from the device. If you turn your head to the left, your right earbud becomes slightly louder, creating the illusion that the sound is coming from the screen. It’s pretty neat actually.
If it succeeds, apple will pave the way, and then other options will emerge much like has happened with smartphones. There will be some FOSS version perfectly capable of blocking ads.
I mean, you can already use Monado on Linux for fully FOSS VR. I don't think a standalone headset with AR running Linux would be unthinkable at all, Valve already made 2 VR headsets and a handheld gaming device running Linux. They just need to combine those 2 things. There's also already a VR Linux desktop.
I'm waiting for a better index. So damn excited for that.
Eye tracking would probably be the only thing that would get me to upgrade from my Index tho
If the Apple Vision Pro is going to replace smartphones in the way Smartphones replaced flip phones, we wouldn’t have flip phones anymore.
Spoiler alert: we still have flip phones.
Lots of them, actually, albeit not “dumb” ones anymore… they all run either Android or KaiOS, and come with all the commensurate risks of having all your usage stats beamed up to the mothership for third-party sales and monetization.
Hell, we now have a rotary cell phone - the rotary un-smartphone - which is enjoying decent popularity and mental rent-free status among lots of techy people, despite being nothing more than a 1970s rotary dialler with an ePaper display for incoming text messages. And a few buttons for hard-set quick-dial options. I would love one myself if it wasn’t so expensive compared to a smartphone.
Just like how the iPod was the invention of the mp3 player.
The truth is society is really really malleable and stupid. That's just human nature. And of course it's going to be manipulated by people for power and wealth.
It'll go the same way as cable TV, and phones. It's the same exact path. We live within systems specifically created to market unneeded "wants". Just go outside and mingle with people... Some people literally seem like they have little humanity left in them, the just live for consumption. It's like addicts. It essentially is addiction for dopamine. Any product or nation/society that allows basically lawless marketing function will be the same.
So you're thoughts imo are accurate. BUT there's also another side of life. Once you stop falling for marketed bullshit and pop culture/media you can tune out all the bullshit. They will always prey on the weak. While I said all that keep in mind technology is like our civilizations pyramids or creation of democracy. Personally I have some hope in transhumanism, but you know pop news and marketing shit is going to make it all a divisive argument. Lol I'm probably doing that now. They do this partially as publicity and a advertising.
It's not about this or that it's about allowing growth of all things?
Idk... Just some rambling.
Isn't it interesting that it's taught as supply and demand, and not demand and supply?
The attention economy already has people hostage and blocked off from the outside world. No goggles required.
To play devil's advocate: If we're gonna have a tech-centric society, I can see where being able to make eye contact with people nearby and keep your hands free could make for a more wholesome experience than staring down at your phone for 80% of your waking life. And for people who are remote, being able to feel like you're occupying the same space and breathing and laughing together could be a solution for our extreme isolation.
But on the other hand, these are all problems that capitalism and big tech created in the first place, so...
I have so much to say about this, I hardly know where to start. A few brief points:
Yes, this product direction is problematic in many many ways. There is a reason why science fiction has been speculating about these types of devices for decades and nearly always portraying the technology as an escape mechanism for a horrifying dystopian reality.
We’ve experienced several really big technology revolutions in just a few decades (pc, internet, social, mobile). All have brought wonderful improvements to life, but all have had profound, and unanticipated side effects. In all instances, we would have benefited as a society by interrogating consequences more completely at the beginning, rather than just letting market forces alone to drive them into mass adoption.
The good news is that none of this is really new. This appears to be a pretty good implementation of a UI model that consumers have been largely rejecting for over 30 years. There are absolutely very useful, very good uses for these UIs, but these are niche markets overall all.
In many ways, XR (a catch all term for both VR and AR) is a retro futuristic idea. This is a vision of the future as seen 40 years ago. Really innovative human computer interfacing doesn’t look like this anymore. Actually useful innovation involves things like agents, voice ui’s and so on (think Jarvis from the MCU).
The question is, can Apple’s marketing prowess and effectively infinite budget push a largely unpleasant, unneeded, and expensive product into mass adoption? I am hopeful that they can’t. I am hopeful that reality isn’t sci-fi dystopian enough to create a wide market for this. If they can, it may say more about how dystopian our real reality has become. That’s the really worrisome part to me.
Excuse me but 'voice UI' is a hell of a lot more retro futuristic than XR. That shit has been around in sci-fi for 60+ years easy and in real life for decades at this point and is still absolutely horrible to use for just about anything more complex than setting a timer and adding things to a list.
Let me clarify. My complaint about the retro-futuristic nature of XR is not the age of the idea. The problem is that this approach has been speculated about and productized in various ways for decades. Through all of that, it has never amounted to more than niche applications, has been rejected by wider markets repeatedly, and failed to inspire much more imagined usefulness beyond being an escape vehicle from some kind of real-world hellscape. Despite all of that, entities like apple insist on trying again, and again, and again. I am convinced that Tim Cook sees this as the future because of the residue of his childhood musing about the future. I know for a fact that Zuckerberg is motivated by exactly that.
Now let’s compare that to audio UIs. These have also been around for a long time. In that time, they have only become more pervasive, useful and inspirational (see again my reference to Jarvis). Additionally, I’m not just talking about the audio part of that interface. I’m talking about the agents that can act independently, and spontaneously to help humans do what the want to do. We are making tremendous progress on that front, but Apple is (in terms of this product line) mired in the past.
"pervasive, useful and inspirational"
Please provide some examples because I've obviously missed a lot of actually good Voice / Audio based UIs. All I've seen are incessant attempts to market something as the future that in reality at best is mildly helpful, normally annoying and forces you to resort to other interfaces, like your phone, and at worst are glaring privacy and security issues.
Every friend I have that buy into stuff like the Google "smart" speakers, Amazon Alexa etc are initially wowed and then it's relegated to playing music and some small task, nothing like they revolution they envisioned and in general just plain worse than a normal GUI.
What's even worse is that I feel it's regressing. Google Assistant in particular is worse now than 2 years ago, I blame this on too many features being added and they make it hard for the assistant to make a good guess of which tool/feature to use. I guess that is why they cleaned some out recently.
And if you think I'm just some one shitting on stuff that I personally don't enjoy then please know I've tinkered with this stuff extensively. I built my own personal voice based assistant that I integrated with Home Assistant to control lights, lock the door and check the humidity in the lizard terrarium. It's a tricky problem and in the end I came to the realization that even if I got it "perfect" for me it still wouldn't ever be all that useful. One thing I did that very few do is build a more conversational usage model. Typical interaction:
Me: Snips? Snips: Yes? Me: Can you turn the lights to 50% Snips: Absolutely, all lights or just one room? Me: Just the livingroom Snips: Done, anything else?
Thing is that it will always work poorly in a situation with multiple people around talking. It will always be a bit awkward talking to something incorporeal. And it will always be a computer there in the other end. Conversation and the medium of voice was built and designed for human interaction and a computer can't provide that. A conversation is so extremely based on context and it becomes hard and forced to always be mindful to provide the full context. And while you can add tech to help, like say presence sensors to note that you are in the living room and thus ask "just in the living room, all lights or some other room?" Or just assume, its still not going to give us a speaking partner like Jarvis for a very, very long time. And even then I wonder what the point would be? By the time we have AI at that level, being able to do proper inference to deduce context and intent, we're going to have neural interfaces and that is VASTLY more efficient and interesting. To have access to information directly in your thoughts and to control and interact with your environment in a completely seemless manner. I just don't see Voice UI as more than a stepping stone with very little intrinsic value outside academia and challenging conventions in the UI space.
Looking away in a headset doesn't make sense, no. But you can always close your eyes. Why wouldn't you be able to mute though? That would be insane, even by Apple in my opinion.
I'm not too worried. Only rich fools [meant to type "folks" but I'll let it stand] can afford it, and they can let themselves be brainwashed, I'm not too bothered.
I think for me this thing is a symbol of where we are and where we're heading in terms of not being able to look away from ads
Don’t use devices. Go outside and walk, climb a trre or something. Don’t buy one.
I just don't understand how Apple, a company known for their sleek, elegant design aesthetics above all else, put their name on something that looks so dorky
I think how the headset looks only somewhat matters...
Apple has generated an image of being "the innovator" in technology. There was "no smartphone" until the iPhone came around (even though that statement is not completely accurate). Their computers are "superior" (even though that statement isn't necessarily accurate either). Still, the point is that the masses feel that Apple is a technologically innovative company and they still want to own some Apple technology rather than dealing with anything else.
In some realms, this is arguably working. The newer generations (today's school children) see iPhones as far superior than Android (statement accuracy not relevant) and that anyone not having an iPhone as something being too poor to own the superior phone. Apple wants to keep that brand identity - of being superior technology.
Things like VR put a bit of a damper on that vision. If VR is the "latest and greatest thing" then why does "the owners of Facebook" have their own VR technology while Apple has nothing similar? There is a feeling that Apple introduces products when they are finally ready for the masses... but there is also a growing feeling that Apple is just falling behind and can no longer be innovative. The lack of innovation feelings is something that needs to be removed.
So we have the Apple VR headset. Does it look good? Well, it looks innovative in advertising. Is it for you? No. They would prefer that you don't use the headset but instead that you "have feelings of technology superiority" when thinking of Apple products. Actually using the headset could harm those feelings. So they make sure to actually release something VR that only people with a ton of money could actually use so that those people can brag about having the latest innovative thing (while also not mentioning any issues with the device). Those people help deliver the actual product...
The actual product is the "innovative feelings". So, to conclude the point, I feel that something that looks "so dorky" is sort of the point here.
I'll be honest I think their watch and AirPods both look kinda dumb, but they seem to be quite popular. And I distinctly remember that when both came out people were taking shots at how they looked, myself included.
Pretty simply, the perception that Apple has around design makes anything they develop fashionable by default.
Varjo is doing very well and offers probably the best VR sets. Prices start at around 3000€
And IIRC those are all PCVR sets and not standalone.
I worry about how consumerism and capitalism will kill us all but I don't give a shit about this in particular. If I saw one in the wild the first thing I would do is give the owner and endless stream of shit for buying such a stupid waste of money.
People said exactly the same thing about smart phones when they first came out.
No they didn't. Cell phones were magic in the 90s and every major iteration was met with rampant consumerism. No one, at any point, said holding an internet connected device in your hand was stupid. Find me ONE article.
https://mashable.com/article/iphone-2g-original-naysayers
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/saw-this-on-reddit-tonight-a-2007-iphone-will-fail-column.2240010/ (can't seem to find the original article, so this is commentary and quotes from what the article said at the time)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419784 (additional quotes and commentary on the same Bloomberg article, with other similar articles mentioned)
http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-to-flop-product-to.html?m=1 (good summary of the points that were made in opposition)
Android was going to be very different before the iPhone was revealed. That moment very clearly ushered in a new era for smartphones and phone technology in general. Now smartphones weren't just for business people with an IT team for support, or wealthier and tech savvy individuals, they were for the masses. That undeniably changed the world (for better or worse), and there's no way anyone could have predicted the outcome with any confidence at the time.
Perhaps Vision Pro will be a success and usher in a new revolution in technology, or perhaps it will only ever be a niche device, or maybe it flops altogether in a short amount of time. No one can say for sure how things will play out until it happens.
i'm probably not gonna see one in the wild since income levels here does not allow discretionary spending of 3500 dollars, but don't needlessly antagonize people. just tell 'em it looks cheap and move on it will do more damage than recognizing it's an expensive gadget :)
I'll interact with the world the way I see fit, thanks.
Exact mentality of every asshole everywhere
I don't care what you think.
What if the person with the Vision Pro got it to help with a physical disability, and it has greatly improved their quality of life? Or what if it was gifted to them by a now passed friend or family member, and now holds a great deal of sentimental value to that individual? Do you not agree that criticizing in these (and likely many other) instances would be an asshole move on your part?
You don't know how or why they obtained it, and their possession of it does not harm you in any way, shape, or form. Do you still not agree that being vocally and directly critical of the other person's simple possession of this item is an asshole move?
If anything weird happens some hacker man would probably put up a tutorial on how to disable the eye tracker.
You could probably just put tape over it, but it wouldn't be great as you control the entire OS with the eye trackers.
Yeah I am pretty concerned. I think if work from home or hybrid jobs start requiring devices similar to the apple vision pro, it will only further the divide between people that work from home and those that don't, as well as increasing the barrier to entry to these jobs. Dividing the working class further.
It seems like a company that would require employee-purchased headsets would already require employee-purchased laptops. Do you know of any? Honest question; I don't, but my bubble is pretty small.
giant companies try stupid marketing techniques like this all the time. when they're moronic and nobody can afford them, they fail.
I don't think I've seen a single normal tech reviewer that didn't talk about serious drawbacks to the platform. the only people who are sucking apple's dick are those frou-frou amalgamated tech click harvesters that always suck the big corporations' dicks. like the Verge
WUT? Apple is very focused on privacy and the idea that a user can't mute or install Adblock is… weird. Safari has good ad-blocking options as well as built-in anti-tracking features to protect users, applications can't usually prevent the system from muting content and Apple doesn't really sell ads outside of the App Store.
If you want to worry about that stuff I'd suggest focusing on the Meta VR goggles or god forbid Google starts making goggles, both of those companies survive on ad revenue and have an incentive to enshitify their experience in ways that the Apple we know today would never do. Of course companies can change over time, but the ethic at Apple is to only make products they feel comfortable with their families using.
Had to scroll down pretty far to find this. I don’t see any ads on my Apple devices, because it’s not their thing. And when people try and serve ads, I don’t see them anyways. Because I VPN through my home network with a dns blocker.
No, I don’t want to root my phone and load a new OS on it. And I certainly don’t want a phone with the Facebook app preinstalled. I feel like people having nightmares about VR ads are having a tough time.
With all that said, I wouldn’t pay close to $3500 for this thing.
Doesn't it have something like a two-hour battery life? Feel like that excludes it from being something you carry around with you like a phone.
I don't see any difference to an iPhone there. If they wanted to, they could already track whether you're looking at the ad (using the camera) or whether you muted it. You can turn off an iPhone, you can take off a Vision Pro. Apple hasn't exactly been known for intrusive ads either.
I’ve not really seen any overly positive reviews. Most reviews I’ve seen talk about it like it’s this neat thing that doesn’t really have much to do in it now and are saying you’d probably only use it 1/2 hr at a time because of the hefty weight, unless you’re sitting/laying on a couch. It’s kind of a confused piece of tech because Apple is desperate to call it “spatial computing” and market it like it’s AR, but really it’s a VR headset. Yet they’re really not taking advantage of the VR aspect.
The first iPad also had shitty reviews and then it still established itself. I wouldn't judge too early just based on these initial reviews.
I’m actually hopeful for it and hope it does ok enough and that they release a cheaper Vision SE or something that’s at least in the realm of possibility for commoners to own. I just think Apple itself is kind of confused about what this thing should be and I think their walled garden approach could hurt them in the long run on this.
Indeed. Has all the VR features, but tries to sell as AR device with little to no AR use cases with the exception of a text field opening up over a real bluetooth keyboard. Having dozens of screens and apps floating around you isn't "AR", it's VR. And that you can see the real world has already been done by Occulus years ago. Sure this is a better quality and leverages the Apple ecosystem, but you can't sell it believably as an AR device yet. That said, the apps of the first iPhone weren't great either, so let's see how they iterate over this 600g ski goggles.
It’s not VR if you can see the real world. That’s literally the only distinction between the two and you messed it up.
All the new Quests have a see-through function. That's nothing new for VR devices. AVP got only 12ms delay and sacrificed FOV for image clarity, but that's the only innovation.
Do your part: sucker punch (or pick the pocket of) any tech bro chud you see wearing one in public.
If people are afraid to wear them in public, they’ll fade away much like the Google glassholes did.
This is the world you want to live in?
We should definitely be assaulting people that do things completely harmless to us, just because we don’t like it.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/39427e4a-918a-4a0d-bd94-15bf5cbaf7ae.jpeg
Since when do we give a shit what literal neo nazi Notch has to say?
I agree with his take on the apple vr shit, but fuck nazi notch.
It's true that devices like these can gather a lot more data about you than a phone can. The amount of sensors that are always on and look at you and your environment should be a concern.
Luckily Apple isn't directly interested in ad revenue, but more into what apps you use and their biggest interest was always to provide a friction free user experience so you actually want to use their products and are happy to spend so much money on them.
I personally am not a fan of Apple, because I'm not a friend of golden cages. So I'm just waiting for the Android version of the experience. Since this first iteration will be from Google as they would need to update their OS to really accomodate AR applications, that's where my concern lies: How do we know that they are going to handle our data responsibly? Also AR does require quite some infrastructure to provide an interesting experience. Something Apple cannot do, is provide you with a shared experience with other users and to provide location specific, persistent content. There are many examples for such content, but for this discussion, let's say a location specific ad in a fixed location somewhere in the city adjusted to your preferences.
Of course the virtual ad sucks, but such content could also be amazingly awesome and very useful. You no longer need to set up real-life signs, you just update what the virtual sign says in AR. Doesn't need to be an ad, could be something interesting and useful.
But to provide location-specific, persistent content you need infrastructure. Infrastructure only Google and other tech giants have (see for instance the AR mode in Google maps that gives you directions). This is where I'm worried. It's no longer enough to just get internet via a SIM card, maybe add your personal VPN on top to be safer. You now need direct connection to Google's localization API and they'll always know where all their AR devices are and because you wear it, they always know where you are, how you are, where you look etc.. This should leave us worried.
If Google has an answer, how long will they support it? I bought a Daydream visor and controller, only for them to totally discontinue the project within 2 years.
If you look at it as an extension of Android, we're at 15 years and counting. That assumes this is not just a fad however. Apple jumping into the market, may be an indicator that it will indeed not be a fad. That said, Google has made bad experiences with Google Glass in the past, but the acceptance of cameras in public has grown in the last decade and if enough people walk around with an AVP, head-mounted always on cameras will gain acceptance too.
“I’m not a fan of Apple, I’ll wait for android version”
There’s literally no difference. Pick the company you let harvest your data. You pick the latter. What’s your point?
My Android phone is so customizable it doesn't run any Google services on it. That's the difference: open source. But like I said, it'll be quite a challenge providing an open source localization infrastructure. But there are already papers doing it with open street maps.
apple may get into the ad business after getting such a platform or something like google paying apple to enable this eye tracking "feature" for their youtube app. i think i overstated the ad part and in general the post make it seem like i'm way more concerned than i am, but the main point is ultimately it's a much more controlled environment compared to any other medium, which is controlled solely by a corporation which cares for nothing except money, whether it is alphabet or apple it doesn't matter. data collection is also another aspect of it that is worth thinking about.
i think the original description of the metaverse in science fiction is kinda in line with what you are describing. a one to one replica of the real world, and you can teleport to anywhere in the world and interact with it. a world controlled by google would be horrifying though.
Not really worried about this kind of stuff at all. At the end of the day, it's not like it's some essential thing people need to live. People have been worrying that every new piece of technology is going to ruin society. This was said about books, raidio, tv, video games, and so on. I don't think AR tech is going to be any different.
I imagine that at some point the tech will get miniaturized to the point where AR headsets are basically like glasses. That's when mass adoption is likely to start happening. I'm also sure there will be open versions of such headsets that can run Linux. It's just a new more immersive UX, I don't think it's anything to get worked up over.
There are so many flaws with your take I don’t even know how to reply.
I will just say that:
$3,500 is not a price that only rich people can afford, at least in the US. Many middle class folks can afford it with ease.
It isn’t Apple’s fault that YouTube has ads. That is Google’s doing. Apple themselves are privacy focused and I never see targeted ads on any Apple app. The only places I even see ads are in the app store and in the TV app, and the TV ads are limited to promos of upcoming shows or movies.
People are constantly bashing Apple for their premium prices and walled garden while forgetting that nobody is targeting the folks who want a privacy oriented experience without ads blasting everywhere.
I switched to iOS because I got tired of Google watching my every move and I got tired of worrying if every app I download from google’s app store has malware or not.
hey no worries i'll be interested to hear what you have to say if you think about it more. my point wasn't just apple bashing i just don't think adoption of this specific product will not be good, regardless of who its custodian is.
also just a point if you can spend 3500$ on this you are either financially irresponsible or absolutely rich, both in the US context where more than 50% 60% of people are living paycheck to paycheck, and in the global context where the percentage of people that can afford this with ease is basically a rounding error.
Notch said it wasn't ready... Predicted a flop
Still might be. It's a $3500 device. Just because it's getting press doesn't mean it's going to be successful.