My main concern with the vision pro is that all use cases I know of (other than gaming) work better with some sort of pass through HUD display like the HoloLens.

They spent a ton of company resources, weight and power making the wrong form factor emulate the right form factor, and are shipping with zero killer apps.

You can’t even let your friends play with it without getting it re-fit to their head at the Apple Store, which basically kills social/word of mouth marketing. It certainly isn’t a fashion item / status symbol to be seen in public like all their other stuff.

Maybe the “real” product is sitting in the wings and will be ready to ship in a few years, but the current form factor seems like a non-starter to me.

But their work on the software side transfers seamlessly to a pass through device later. It still serves its purpose as a beta (beta meaning data collection and improvement process, not its modern “we just don’t support this” definition.

> and are shipping with zero killer apps.

That's ok. That's exactly why they released the 'pro' first.

"Pro" is a misnomer here, though. "Pro" normally means "with extra features for professionals", where here it means "it's more of a dev kit than it is an actual product".

My opinion, and its very naive because I've only really tried the Vision Pro for this type of content, but immersive video is the current killer app for the Vision Pro. Sitting in the studio with Alicia Keys warming up for her tour was almost equal parts uncomfortable and amazing.

The main use case Apple presented, productivity, works much better with an opaque screen, not pass-through. There's a reason we don't make transparent screens, nor transparent windows on our screens: text and images are much easier to read if they are opaque.

Translucent terminals are a very commonly used feature? Just saying, I've used them on Linux and Mac for 30 years

If you want glasses the friend problem would be even more complicated, not least because of US regulations on selling prescription lenses.

There were lots of rumors that Apple was working on both AR glasses and VR goggles, but had to focus on the latter because the tech just isn't there to do glasses right.

glasses won't take over your entire fov though so it suck for VR. maybe better for AR

There's nothing that says that a pair of glasses can't have panels on the sides and top to provide full coverage [0]. The main obstacle is miniaturizing the necessary compute and display technology.

[0] A random example: https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Driving-Around-Sunglasses-Pola...

Yeah but glasses are probably fine for the display replacement market

If all you want is display replacement, you don't even need VR with head tracking.

Indeed, so I think that will likely become more popular when apple-like resolution is widely available