canuckintime

Anti-Mac: “You won't always have to work that hard”

AI (Apple Intelligence) is the Anti-Mac:

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/11/12/misguided-apple-intellige...

“It’s really quite a different message than a bicycle for the mind.”

Two useful accessories I had were 'surface connector to USBC' adapter (to mitigat the small battery) and a ring mouse. Scrolling on touchscreen for Windows has been as good as MacBook haptic trackpads, certainly better than most Windows oem trackpads.

There was brief moment in time where Panay was poised with the Surface Book and Surface Studio (just wish they made a monitor version of the studio) to give Apple a run for their money. But they replaced the Surface Book with Surface Laptop studio, devolved the OS with ads and AI and now I'm mainly only on the Mac...

>> He's a lot of things but he's not bad at getting what he values; he is in fact perhaps the most successful American ever in those terms.

Nonsense. He’s bankrupted casinos. He lost his first reelection bid. He started on third base and ended up back at first.

>> If you care about America it is incredibly short sighted to think he's dumb.

He IS that dumb. He really doesn’t understand how tariffs/trade balance works. But his enablers have let him run riot. Biden was old. Reagan had mental issues. But their teams had firm hands on the steering wheel. That’s a serious country with some checks and balances. Trump admin is trying to revoke all that

Senators and reps and bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy by creating a succinct acronym. [1]. This cultural practice is sometimes called ‘backronym’. Trying to tie ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ as an example of that practice is ‘sane-washing’; ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ is a dumb person’s idea of a backronym [2]. Dissecting the bill name is not just complaining for complaining’s sake; it’s just another in the long list of examples of Trump doesn’t understand what he’s doing and his enablers are not serious people by going along with

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/news/8710-lawmakers-turn-to-cat...

[2] Trump is a poor man's idea of a rich man, a weak man's idea of a strong man, and a stupid man's idea of a smart man etc

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/05/07/fortnite-coming-back-to-t...

>> Remember when Apple tried to tell the judge that they would be happy to welcome Epic back to the App Store once the court case was over and the issue adjudicated? I do, because I read the transcripts and listened to the hearings.

>> I guess technically it’s not over yet because Apple has appealed. On the other hand, Apple made the offer, without the condition of the court case being over, after the legal battle had already begun. So it seems like it was never a serious offer and only meant to sway public opinion.

And fwiw we have hard evidence of Apple acting in bad faith. Gruber keeps giving Apple PR the benefit of the doubt but they absolutely do not deserve it.

Red Flags!

>> "Tim cares about nothing else," an insider with knowledge of the matter told Gurman. "It’s the only thing he’s really spending his time on from a product development standpoint."

>> he's looking to beat Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who shares an obsession with AR and VR headsets — to market.

Is Tim Cook a product person now?

Does Apple care about being first now (instead of being best)?

Before the Vision Pro release we heard similar reporting from Gurman (1) (and recall the skepticism about Gurman's reporting: 2)

Yet here we are. After a decade of promoting AR (3) Tim Apple released a headset of which "the weirder things about visionOS (and the Vision Pro itself, really) is that there’s not a lot of true AR in the mix" (4)

Red Flags!

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-05-18/apple-s-m...

2. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/05/18/gurman-headset-...

3. https://www.theverge.com/21077484/apple-tim-cook-ar-augmente...

4. https://www.theverge.com/24054862/apple-vision-pro-review-vr...

Iran-Contragate

Iraq yellow cake

So many examples.

That said, eye tracking and IPD adjustment is a huge upgrade to Beyond 2 for their niche

HOWEVER my timeline suggests that you wait until the end of the year. The 4K per eye panel is now a commodity [1] and I expect a lot of VR glasses to show up in the next few months. Don't be tempted by the first few unless you have the budget for the cutting edge. Immersed is pushing their subscription software and requires a companion app on the host device. PFD is offering an Android Vision Pro clone. There are a couple PCVR (gaming) headsets coming. For coding though, the ideal is probably a simple headset with plug-and-play video input (i.e. like a high-res Slamglass [2] or GOOVIS art [3]). It's worth waiting in my opinion to see if anyone uses the panel for that.

[1] https://youtu.be/OpVI6JeH2uA?si=UsScC1yPTRptcFAM&t=795

[2] https://en.slamglass.com/list_22/

[3] https://goovis.net/products/a1black

Long answer: Vision Pro (if you are comfortable with the weight/price). Immersed Visor and Play for Dream Mr headsets are likely the first available coding VR headsets at reasonable prices but this will all be commodities very soon.

Your best bet is to resist being at the cutting edge for this year and pick up the winner after the next 11 months

If voting registration was automatic, and election day was a holiday, I’d expect the participation across age brackets to be much closer.

> Imagine having a jittery cursor in the center of your vision at all times? If I had a mouse/trackpad working like that it would immediately be replaced but that's Apple's eye control. Imagine scrolling a page and every where you glance there's a spotlighted/popup control or ad? That's Apple eye control utilizing dwell and snap to item.

Nobody has responded to those but instead keep saying I'm attacking accessibility.

> Eye tracking is very impressive technology, and foveated rendering is an excellent application...

> useful as an accessibility feature

That doesn't rescue it from being a poor control scheme.

I did not suggest otherwise

> For the above reasons, that's exactly how they're marketing it

That's not how it's being received (see other HN users in this very topic) nor how Apple is marketing it for Vision Pro

Imagine having a jittery cursor in the center of your vision at all times? If I had a mouse/trackpad working like that it would immediately be replaced but that's Apple's eye control. Imagine scrolling a page and every where you glance there's a spotlighted/popup control or ad? That's Apple eye control utilizing dwell and snap to item.

It's telling that the 'best window' apps/use cases for Vision Pro are video watching and Mac virtual display which has low reliance on eye control during usage. Trying to browse the web with Apple's eye control is a clear regression compared to touch/keyboard/mouse/trackpad only useful as an accessibility feature