There's no way know until many thousands of people are using this device how those percentages will pan out.
That struck me as odd. (Obviously anyone can connect a bluetooth controller and give users some extra control, assuming this device supports open bluetooth for audio etc.)
It is one thing for Apple to claim that their latest gadget does not NEED any controllers for basic navigation and selection. Because they invested so much in perfecting a gensture based system. So far so good.
It is far more presumptious if they say they will NOT allow controllers.
When claiming credit for launching a new space called "spatial computing" -- it is very short-sighted / arrogant to state that a one click finger gesture is all you will ever need for all your comupting needs.
There are games obviously where multiple simultaneous actions need to be triggered. There are 3D modelling applications -- actually a great use case for a AR/VR HMD. And I am sure there are tons of other applications that can benefit from innovative and ergonomic approaches to interactions. Why would Apple go out of their way to say there will be no controllers.
Apple should ideally have an open SDK to allow third party wireless controllers. Knowing apple though ... they will probably sell $499 bluetooth earbuds and call them Apple Ear Pro or something.
Not really seeing that this time around.
It’s pretty bananas they’ve crammed an M2 into a headset with all the cameras, sensors, ML engines, and high res displays. The M2 chip alone (I have an M1 Pro) is still blowing my mind with the low wattage performance.
But much like the first iPhone, it is yet to be seen if it will stick. I do think it’s far more capable than existing VR headsets.
Maybe in a decade small thumb-drives will have an M2 chip equivalent built into them. To encrypt/decrypt data on the fly with zero latency on multiple GB/s data. Or whatever other application can gobble up that much compute power.
However, VR controllers are different in that they need to be tracked as they move through space much more precisely than those console controllers support. But maybe third-party VR controllers can also be supported. I think nobody knows that yet.
But no word that I’ve seen on VR controllers.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10088/?time...
Good news!
Apple should have made a standard gaming control that all games could use.
(IIRC though Xbox and Nintendo controllers can also be used.)
[0] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10088/?time...
You might. Flight sims are one of the most immediately compelling things to do in VR, and a controller is a huge step up from nothing.
I have yet to find a reason to buy and keep a VR headset as most things just feel so gimmicky to me. At this point unless you’re either tethered to a more powerful device to be able to do the heavy lifting for the headset or you have a standalone headset that can play some basic arcade like games. A single device that can be taken on the go and play new releases not made specifically for the headset would be amazing to me. Obviously until it’s released who can say what it will actually be capable of but if it has the equivalent power of a MacBook, when my mid 2015 MacBook Pro finally dies I’d honestly consider replacing it with the vision pro but wouldn’t run out to buy one to have in addition to the MacBook.
Remember it has full hand tracking. If you want to hold something e.g. a lightsaber or whatever, there is no reason not to. An inert plastic prop should work just fine.
And there is just no way that a lightsaber game could be good without haptic feedback, in a world where haptic feedback exists. And I think many other kinds of game.
YouTube guy MKBHD even called out the lack of haptics in his initial impressions video, not even for a game: the butterfly flew over to him in the Apple demo, and he held out his finger, and when the butterfly landed on it... nothing. And that was kind of jarring, he said. (And it would be.)
Haptic feedback is a big deal.
But again - there is no reason gamers can’t have a control, but it’s silly to use a game controller to interact with a computing environment when you can use your hands.
I don't think you need the haptic vibration function for interacting with floating menus and the OS, although again it helps for button presses, which is why all smartphones now feature haptic feedback.
But the other reason to use a controller in general-purpose OS use scenarios is precision. If you can directly touch something, then by all means that is the best. But if the menu to be interacted with is too far away, say 8 meters away, all current systems I have seen make you shout a beam out of your hand to the button or object, then do some gesture to click.
A controller is way more accurate for this, kind of how a mouse is more precise for most people than a trackpad. But even more so.
So on all of Meta's systems so far, the controller can more precisely highlight and click things at distance. And I think this holds true for all other currently-available systems as well.
What Apple Vision Pro is bringing that is new, though, is the eye-tracking. Supposedly, it is as good as, or perhaps even better, at selecting an object at distance. If so, then yeah, controllers wouldn't really provide a significant advantage for most non-game activity.
Why wouldn’t makers of light saber toys just add a buzzer? That would be far better than a game controller, and super cheap to add.
My kids indeed do have sword toys that vibrate and make sounds, so I have done this. And I'm sorry to have to report that it is... substantially less compelling than fighting Darth Vader in VR. (Perhaps not for them, though.)
When Apple’s ready they’ll release haptic gloves that smash that experience out of the park.
(Not holding my breath, though...)
And yeah, the Oculus controllers wouldn't nail the butterfly on finger demo, but if they had controllers, the demo would be a hawk landing on your forearm. (And that would work, even though it doesn't quite make sense that your palm would vibrate when a bird lands on your forearm... but haptic feedback is weird.)
There is no reason this is how it would play out.
I've been playing fps/rts/rpg games through GeForce Now on a MacBook M1 and so far there's few obvious drawbacks - good internet required, slight input lag which can be annoying for some FPS games sure, and not all games are available yet - but for those who only play a few games regularly, it's also much better than running the game on an i3/i5 Windows laptop.
Every attempt so far has failed, spectacularly. What is promising about that?
After thirty years of desktop gaming PCs, I sold mine and just use GFN now. It's completely silent (no fan), minor lag (only matters for competitive shooters), and much cheaper than maintaining a high end gaming rig.
Compared to consoles, it has much better graphics, can be played anywhere where you have good internet, supports mouse/keyboard, ultrawide, 120Hz, etc.
Compared to the Stream Deck, it has much better graphics, much longer battery life (it's just streaming video, not rendering on device), and no heat or fan noise. I also sold my Steam Deck because GFN plus a streaming portable (Logitech gCloud) was way more ergonomic.
Did cloud streaming really fail, or is it just a niche? It's come a long way since OnLive. Stadia was a royal fuckup but not because of its technology; Google just had no idea how PC gaming culture works. Their competitors are still around and doing fine, if not making billions.
It is still a very useful tech that I use daily.
And we know who won that one. I think Apple is probably right to just double down on bare hands and voice as the input mechanism for spatial computing. I'm just also saying that controllers do have some advantage, so Meta should probably try to leverage it where they can.
(BTW, I myself do use the iPad primarily with the stylus, now that you can use handwriting everywhere just like the Newton MessagePad of yore... but I concede that probably very few people do this.)
Jobs made the stylus wisecrack in 2010. In 2023, that statement remains dead on the money. Lots of things Jobs said didn't age that well. This one did.
What I meant was that probably someday Apple will be happy to sell us super high tech controllers for spatial computing, but for launch they are taking the same stance as they did with the iPhone, and going all-in on designing the whole experience to just use your hands.
(And, yes, this is probably the correct decision here, just as it was then.)
The Apple Pencil is only available for the iPad devices:
iPad navigation relies significantly on gestures that require multiple fingers, which is frustrating when holding the pencil.
The iPads are much larger in size then phones and it's often awkward to use the pencil as a primary input.
The pencil is kinda annoying to keep with the iPad, it magnetically sticks and is prone to falling off. My previous pencil fell and hit the nib, immediately breaking the tiny sensor that sits behind it.
They onscreen keyboard is too big to use with the pencil, and although you can use (a multi-fingered) gesture to make it smaller, it still isn't great.
For reference, I loved using the stylus as my primary input device for my Samsung Note. There were a bunch of quality of life features built around the stylus and you could stick it back in the phone to keep it safe.
What made you buy it?
I did know that the Quest Pro would not live up to that task (and it doesn't), but I wanted to see how close you could get today for $1500 (now, $1000).
I also do boxing and similar fitness games almost every day, so I knew it would at least serve me well for that, despite being pretty expensive. (An yeah, for that, it's pretty great.)
The new Apple gizmo looks way better for programming and work like that, though, so I'm excited about it. After many years, we appear to be getting close to something that is actually pleasant to use. (Even the Quest Pro technically can be used for this, but the experience is far from pleasant.)
Based on Apple's track record, they're going to disallow development on the Vision like they do for all iOS/iPad devices.
(This does require a Mac to be also present, though.)
Secondly, none of these devices have anywhere close to enough computing power to make doing builds on them directly feasible — at least not for most coding work, including the work I do.
So I want to develop using the model popularized by tools like VS Code's remote development extensions or GitHub Codespaces. I want the headset to render all the editors and other windows locally. I want the device to connect to my mechanical keyboard and mouse, so that I can do all my normal coding stuff. But the machine where the code actually is, where the build is actually done, and where the local dev server or similar runs -- all remote.
This is actually the workflow I now prefer even on desktops and laptops, now that the tooling is so good. But for a spatial computing headset device, this will have to be the main model.
And while I also am not at all a fan of Apple's limiting what we can do on our devices the way they do, putting that aside you can already do this workflow in iPad. You can use CodeSpaces in the browser, but there is a cool native app called Blink[1] that lets you use your own hardware as the build machine.
I use a large and high-spec Linux workstation with 4 large monitors in my day-to-day work. But with VS Code remote, when I have to travel with my laptop, I just connect to the Linux workstation (via Tailscale in my case, but there are various options) and use the code editor locally on the laptop, but the CLI, build, etc is happening on the remote machine.
On a laptop, this works great. It is better than the regular workflow of doing it all on the laptop, because the tooling (if you use VS Code, anyway, but others are also working on this) is so good and the remote build machine is so much more powerful than a laptop. It also lets you just switch to a new device whenever you want without worrying about having to commit your changes first. So I can go to the office or just a different room of my house and just sit down at whatever computer is available and pick up where I left off.
But I've also done this using both the Quest Pro and iPad, just to check in with the state of the art on those devices. Both of them can do it. The Quest sucks in lots of ways (clunky OS, low-quality passthrough of the real environment, glitches). The iPad actually works fine, except teven the largest iPad Pro is a laughably tiny monitor to work on. (YMMV tho... if you are one of those "I love small screen!" people then this workflow works fine, and an iPad works as well as a laptop.)
For me, Quest Pro and iPad aren't good enough. But I want to do this workflow on a headset device, and Vision Pro looks promising.
Anyway, my point here is that even if Apple does make weird restrictions about being able to use dev tools locally on the device, that won't prevent it from doing the workflow I am interested in.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-build-code/id15948...
The resolution isn't the problem with Quest Pro (although I always want more) but the passthrough of the real environment around you is terrible. It's very distorted, as if the cameras are far lower resolution than the screen is.
I've heard that this aspect of the experience is better on the Apple Vision Pro, although I don't know for sure since I haven't yet tried it myself.
This actually doesn't matter that much, because the resolution is still good enough to walk to the fridge and grab a drink (or whatever) without taking it off.
The other super interesting thing to me is the external display of your eyes on the surface of the headset.
This sounded so stupid to me when it leaked before they announcement, that now I am embarrassed, because the problem is one we have all the time in my own house. I've realized it is a fundamental problem with these devices, and one I even had all the time, and yet I couldn't see how that would solve it. But it really does seem to.
The problem we always have is, our kids put on one of the headsets we have, but then we (their mom and I, and their siblings/friends) can't tell whether they can see us or not. This actually really matters a lot -- if the wearer cannot see, then we need to make sure no other kids get near them, otherwise there is a risk of collision and injury. This is partially solved by casting the view from the headset to the TV or whatever, but this is glitchy and sometimes even disabled.
The other scenario where this is really useful is at the office, or even a coffee shop. When a coworker walks up to you, they have a visual indicator of whether you can see them or not. Actually a very important social cue.
Or when the waitress comes up to bring you your coffee. You can look at her and accept the coffee, and it is obvious to her that you can see the cup she's handing you. Sure, she'll still probably be a little weirded out the first time, but she'll get used to it. :-D
(heavy, considering there's no included battery)
> Today, of course, Apple ships an excellent stylus that they are happy to sell you for $129.
Apple Pencil does not work with iPhone, only with iPads, which... makes sense. Artists use them as drawing tablets. But nobody uses a Apple Pencil with an iPhone.
Which I imagine is intentional by Apple for aesthetic reasons since iPad should only be navigated by touch.
The stylus support on Samsung flagships is very convenient to have cross device capability on, and everyone I know who has those devices feels similarly.
Eg when doing something on the tab with the pen and having a calculator open on the phone and seamlessly being able to use the pen for that. Support on phones, especially with the large screens these days, allows for all sorts of little synergies that make the experience much more smooth.
ehhh...
>But nobody uses a Apple Pencil with an iPhone.
I was saying that Apple tends to ignore the specialized/higher-precision option initially, focusing on the majority of the market that may not need it.
But then they introduce it later. As I suspect they will do in this case, too. But that leaves an opening (maybe, temporarily, if they can capitalize on it) for competitors that do support more specialized input devices.
If you wanted to draw diagrams or use handwriting input, Android had a huge advantage at first, ... until it didn't.
It took me 3 days just to really feel I understood what the Vision Pro video demonstrated. I was very uncomfortable watching the initial video. The first feeling was voyeuritistic as if I was spying on the user. The second feeling was the horror of actual people using them in isolated squalid environments. Eventually I rationalized that the demonstration was really about hand/finger/eye tracking in space. The "spatial" interface was the most special thing they demoed. The rest of the demo was hardware power and the ergonomics.
Although Meta will sell more units in the short-term due to Apple's pricing, I do think they will have a tough time catching Apple on the hardware. The eye-tracking, <12ms image processing and display, and the M2 are things that Meta is well behind on.
Zuck mentioned that activity and "doing things" are Meta advantages, but people don't want to exercise while gaming or consuming entertainment.
A lot of people actually do. There is a whole community built around it.
You don’t know him. You don’t know the reasons for his weight. He very well could be using the device daily to exercise for all you know and it could be an issue with his metabolism. Or another medical condition. Or a side effect of drugs. Or literally hundreds of other reasons.
"Wow. Why you cancer shaming bro?"
Blaming their continued weight increase on an assumption that the other commenter would have no way of figuring out is totally the same thing as “don’t smoke cigarettes they’ll kill you”. Totally.
Their reply to my comment just solidifies the fact that it was just a shitty opinion with no basis in reality. There is no way for them to know how healthy or unhealthy Emily is, nor what they have done to lose weight.
Transitioning, for instance, messes heavily with your metabolism and body composition. But no it was clearly because they never use that Oculus they bought. Obviously.
Nevermind the typical reddit mod looking apartment we saw in the $5k challenge. None of this some unique story. It's all the same pattern. It's just an exceptionally public one.
Oh wait, no, it's all just speculation and shitty assumptions by someone who has nothing better to do with their life.
You don't know them. You don't know their struggles. Stop pretending that you do and grow up.
Fat can come and go, but your personality is here to stay.
> You don’t know them.
If I did I would have helped them exercise and lose some weight. Get healthy. So that keyboard warriors don’t come along trying to defend their unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Could you possibly be more misguided here? Like come the fuck on.
But that’s still apparently not enough. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Using their name and linking to their video would have similarly been clear.
You chose to do neither.
There is no need to change their name. The original video of the tech upgrade contains their original name still. If you want to get upset go talk to Linus and get all references updated.
I can only assume you’re overweight as you’ve taken this whole thing very personally. Maybe you need some exercise?
I thought it was because you wanted to “let people learn” or whatever BS you had originally come with. You spent three whole paragraphs talking about how much it would confuse people.
Turns out, you just don’t respect them enough to do such a simple thing. It was plainly clear from your fat shaming, but at least you’ve spelled it out in words.
You weren’t even the one being called a transphobe, you just decided to jump in and make it clear why you explicitly didn’t choose to update their pronouns or dead name after you found out.
> I can only assume you’re overweight as you’ve taken this whole thing very personally. Maybe you need some exercise?
I can only assume you’re a bigot as you’ve taken this whole thing very personally. Maybe you need to not be a shitstain on humanity?
Do better. It’s not hard.
Just remember you’re the one who can’t understand English. Not only can you not follow the conversation you’re having. But you literally fit the definition of a bigot and then called me one. That is hilarious.
Because it would “be confusing” or whatever bullshit you came up with.
It’s pretty clear who the bigot is here and it’s not the person who is advocating for treating someone respectfully regardless of their weight. Or making an effort to change the pronouns and names used when pointed out.
Your comments are visible to the world, you realize that right? Just because they’ve been (rightly) flagged to death doesn’t mean they’re invisible.
Grow up. You’re clearly not mature enough for this site. Or the internet in general.
Your comments are visible to the world. Quite embarrassing for Microsoft to have an employee who rages at people and gets upset giving them a bad name.
Because you’re a bigot who refuses to respect a person’s wishes, yes. You’ve made that clear already. Glad we’re in agreement.
Trying to spin advocating for treating people respectfully as a bad thing is the only thing that’s embarrassing here. And that’s sure not coming from me.
I’m done here, good luck continuing to live as a shitstain on the world.
You’re not advocating for anything. You jumped in and started being angry, swearing in the first post (which you edited out when the tiny lightbulb went off and you realised that was a dumb move) and then continued to be loud and aggressive and try to paint a non existent picture.
So I’ll continue living my awesome life while you keep living in a bubble thinking the whole world is against you and being angry at nothing.
Noted.
Quite a few do. I use Beatsaber, Pistol Whip, and Superhot (more yoga-y than exercise) for this. Boredom during exercise is my primary issue with sustaining it; VR has removed that obstacle.
If you're gaming for 3-4 hours, watching a movie, or using the device for productivity you're going to be seated or standing still.
Also, Vision Pro can be a mobile device, albeit for <2 hrs. Imo, Gaming will not be the primary use case for these devices.
It really didn’t. Ring Fit Adventure, a successor to the Wii Fit titles, sold 15 million copies for the Switch. Nintendo Switch Sports sold almost 9 million. Those are solid numbers. The kind of motion control the Wii used is still used for those titles, and they’re still popular.
These companies are aiming to have installed bases in the hundreds of millions if not billions.
Active gaming will be a nice use case, but will not be the reason 40-50m people buy a headset every year.
Fidget spinners sold like hotcakes for a very brief window of time. Nintendo motion games are continuing to sell millions of titles even 15 years after they first debuted.
> less than half of what Wii Fit pulled
Hmm, what numbers are you looking at? I see 22 million for Wii Fit, and 21 million for Wii Fit Plus (a separate title).
- Oculus <=> content consumption
- Apple Vision <=> productivity
To me, the term just sounds better than "VR" or "AR" without meaning anything different (other than being less specific). There's nothing Apple-exclusive about it; it would apply to existing "VR" or "mixed reality" apps like Horizon Workrooms or Virtual Desktop just as much as to what Apple is doing.
Personally, I feel "spatial computing" sounds clearer and less silly than the previous terms. But, that's just my opinion so I guess we'll see if it catches on...
You could have said all of things about the original iPhone. It did similar things to a lot of existing smartphones at the time (send email, play music, browse web, make call).
It's not a VR headset and it's not an AR headset. It's something else. It's reasonable to give your specific vision of these technologies a more human name.
Also, it's something that's going to be released in very limited quantities in a year from now. And it was announced at a developer conference so developers can start to prepare apps. We've only really seen a preview and the technology is in the earliest stages.
There's a ton of stuff they only mentioned in passing - like their proprietary camera format and cameras that can record the world in immersive depth-mapped 3D. Those will likely be licensed out to studios and sports leagues which can prepare content for Vision Pro.
Yet. They've set it rolling and so far own a perspective separate to AR/VR. Leaves the competition brawling over headsets for a still-to-be-defined VR concept while they pitch customers on their thing. Computing. Ties in to work. Easier to justify spending $x000.
Not just that. It also makes the Vision not just an ill-defined VR product, but also a 'MacBook Air or iPad for on the go with far more screen real estate'. This pitch resonates with pro users who are not necessarily interested in VR. The initial reaction of Apple-using friends/family is: I'd probably buy this as a replacement for a MacBook + external screen. It also makes the pricing more acceptable - it's about the same prices as a non-mediocre spec'ed MacBook Air + Studio Display.
Then I believe they misunderstood the presentation, since this device is not a replacement for a MacBook, since it just can't run the same software. And even if it could, it would be much, much slower at it, since it has to spend huge compute resources on constant refresh of two 4k+ screens plus advanced vision algorithms to process the camera input and overlay the 3D graphics onto it in the expected locations.
I was greatly disturbed by the product demonstration. After 72 hours I realized that since I work alone there are no real drawbacks to having a hands free computer. (I have been working in a 60'x30' studio that I have equipped with 8MP cameras, shopping for 4k and 8k projectors. The idea is to have the cameras act as an interface and use the projectors to create an image on the floor as feedback. The Vision Pro seems like it might be easier and cheaper. Although not as analog and collaborative.)
Spatial computing is actually a good Apple name for this interface as it differentiates from the lower effort products that cost $3,000 less. This draws a line between AR/VR and what Apple is doing which is Spatial Computing. Apple needed to co-ordinate the fundamentals of Human Interface design and production. When they finally had same they could actually produce that also function they shipped it.
I think Facebook should consider usign only 1 controller though (i know I do). Also, to put the battery in the controller and tether it to the headset to make it even lighter. If apple is using a tether then it's ok to do it
I wonder if passthrough can be done mechanically, by rotating the lenses to a hole
For everything else, quickly being able to grab a snack or drink, respond to a phone notification or change the place you're using the device from reduce friction.
It might be enough to push VR over that "I don't want to use the device because I don't want to commit to not doing anything else for at least 30 minutes now" hurdle that still very much exists.
That being said, I have no doubt Meta is going to be able to get there in due time too.
When you are holding controllers, you can't interact with the environment and people around you naturally, like how Apple showed it in the videos, before "reversing" the ritual.
Apple also wants users to plug it in and use it all day. You can't do that with the limit of controller battery.
Not having the controllers at all would be very nice for this. Not sure it’s worth losing the haptics though.
And given how little you actually touch the headset, you’d really have to be some kind of sloppy maniac to end up with it “smelling of popcorn and coffee.”
You can’t easily drink out of an open topped container whilst wearing a headset, so without highlighting that (minor) issue, they wanted to plant the idea of having a sealed container with a straw on your desk as a solution before you ran into the problem yourself.
Apple's approach avoids that and lets your eyes do the selection, while still using your fingers for the clicking, thus giving you the responsiveness you are used to (i.e. no weird "hover over icon for one second to active").
Also according to people that tested it, it feels extremely natural, basically like mind reading, since the moment you look at something, you can click it. There is no separate step where you have to look at something and then also have to navigate your laser pointer over it to activate it.
As for passthrough, I think that will become extremely useful and commonly used when combined with the depth sensor, as it allows you to partly fade in and out pieces of reality. You can have a virtual office on the moon, but the desk in front of you, is still your actual real desk, while all the displays on it are virtual.
I m not sure if they use the eyes as a pointer. It sounds very imprecise to me.
The thing is, it is enough for general use. The Apple Pencil (or whatever they call it) is a specialised tool for people who need the extra precision.
The difference between modern no-stylus-needed touch screens and old stylus-required touch screens is exactly that, with the old screens they aren’t functional at all without the stylus.
I'm also curious if Apple plans to use iPhones as an input mode. Speech to text is nice but I'd like to be able to discretely type something.
I will buy the Apple thing, too.
There are a lot of interesting differences between them (obviously, the biggest one being the price, and deriving from that) but the one I find interesting is Apple's decision not to have controllers.
This is just like the infamous "if you see a stylus, they blew it" approach with the iPhone. Double down on the simplest possible input mechanism and pretend it is enough. Today, of course, Apple ships an excellent stylus that they are happy to sell you for $129.
The controllers on the Quest Pro are fantastic, and although Meta also seems to be pushing as hard as they can to improve hand tracking and gesture recognition, too, there are and will always be immense benefits to having a hardware controller compared to just waving your hands and pinching your fingers. Precision, haptics, joysticks and buttons, additional positional audio, and more.
I have no doubt that if Vision OS succeeds, it will also eventually get spatially tracked controllers as well. But it is going to start without them.
That to me seems like the main competitive advantage Meta's Quest lineup has, other than the price. It's obviously superior in terms of delivering a deeper and more varied lineup of games; Apple seems to understand that and are hardly mentioning games (although, that makes sense due to the price as well).
It will be interesting to see how Meta tries to leverage this advantage. OTOH maybe some enterprising developer will just figure out how to connect Meta's controllers (or other similar ones) to the Apple Vision Pro.