It really pushes the envelope on many fronts - thermals, displays, materials, sensor integration, specialised hardware… I would never expect any rollout like that to go as planned.

All of them are basically iterations on current customer devices, with main advantages coming mostly from: 1. Apple willing to attach mind boggling price tag to it. You can engineer much more things if price tag is 10x of industry leader (oculus 2). 2. Apple is taking a big shortcuts with external battery, that gives you a lot of extra power, space and thermal leeway.

I’m not saying that they didn’t make something great - it does seem great. And given it’s Apple, they’ll likely have great polish and attention to detail, that make a HUGE difference.

But it’s not a best thing since sliced bread. It’s not a technological breakthrough. It’s “just” a new generation of customer electronic device, that’s better than previous one.

If you replace "display" with "image sensor", the Sony A1 pushes the envelope on all those fronts as well.

And of course Apple is buying the displays for their headset from Sony, so who is doing the envelope pushing there?

I don’t know that I agree with the wording of the parent post, but I understand the sentiment. It does include a lot of hardware that is relatively cutting edge, and the insanely low latency on the system is reflected in that.

While calling it “the most advanced” might be a bit of a stretch, the sophistication of the hardware was something that I wouldn’t have previously thought possible. Some of your counter examples fall short of that complexity. The actual mRNA vaccines are pretty technologically simple, the complexity in differential gps is in its algorithms rather than hardware, and is that camera really groundbreaking (genuine question).

> The actual mRNA vaccines are pretty technologically simple,

Apple vision is even more technologically simple. You get the screen, attach some sensors to it, sprinkle cameras, add CPU, battery, lenses and you’re done.

> the complexity in differential gps is in its algorithms rather than hardware,

I could somehow understand your ignorance when it comes to mRNA - it’s outside of typical software engineer field of expertise. But GPS?

Yeah, complexity is just in algorithms. Building a satellite that can survive decades in space, building and attaching extremely precise clock to, some solar panels and antennas, thrusters and few other minor details, then getting that onto the rocket and injecting into very precise orbit - that’s an easy part! And especially doing that in 1970s!

All those things are easy compared to leet code! /s

That said, the Vision Pro will also push the envelope when it comes to software, or so it seems.

The Apple Vision Pro is much more advanced than a random 2023 Intel laptop or any Android device.

You mentioned some cool tech stuff, but it's all too categorically random and distantly unrelated for a fair and meaningful comparison.