@bruces They invested all that engineering and developer effort into producing a very intriguing 1.0 product. The 1.0 wasn't ever supposed to be the end of the line. You're not supposed to care that 1.0 fails. It isn't meant to be profitable in and of itself. They had to know that they were going to need to keep pouring money down the drain for a good half decade and go through multiple product iterations and drive down the price before this thing would ever reach a broader audience.
@Infoseepage@bruces it doesn't seem most people find it intriguing at all. VR headsets are an old idea and no one has ever made a convincing case they're anything more than a luxury toy except for very niche use cases. And the key Apple social/fashion demographic is naturally averse to using products that make you look foolish, which is how many people perceive headsets regardless of what enthusiasts think. IMO AR in a regular glasses form factor is the only version of this that might succeed.
@mrcompletely@bruces To me, and as Apple has talked about, VR is the wrong way to think about this, Spatial Computing/AR is the context. It's computing/information overlayed over your field of view of the world, not replacing it. It's having your social feed floating in space off to the side of you as you walk down the street, a map as you navigate an unfamiliar environment, live translation in a language you don't speak.
@Infoseepage@bruces yes, I agree that's the endpoint they need to get to. AR in a light, good looking glasses form (perhaps with additional hardware kept in a pocket or something) with the functions you describe will be a meaningful offering with a real market. This just isn't that.
@mrcompletely@bruces There are all these amazing things you could do that are clunky and always will be clunky when you try to shove them into a cell phone.
Right now Vision Pro is too big, has limited field of view, is too expensive, etc. and is missing features, but what it does have is hugely intriguing to me.
I don't care if I look like a dork. I've gone 4 years wearing a P100 respirator in public. I'm absolutely willing to be that guy running around with bug eyed goggles on his face.
@Infoseepage@bruces I think what we're seeing is that there aren't enough people with your interests who also have the income for this very expensive early version of the product. Apple made a fairly large blunder imo pitching this as a mass consumer market product when it just isn't that - as I said, it suits niche users well. The concern now is they'll crater dev and poison the concept with this failing launch & never get to the interesting/viable AR version. That would be very disappointing
@Infoseepage@mrcompletely@bruces I suspect there is a substantial market for people like you, and that might be sustainable. There's also a whole lot of people like me who want less of all that stuff in our moment to moment lives. Like, I really really don't want texts to be in my field of view. If anything, I'm looking for ways to not be reachable in my life. That's why I'm not getting a "smart" watch. So VR/AR might be a very market-splitting product. We'll see!
I'm very high intensity on/off with this stuff. There are times when I want to disconnect completely and times when I want to be fully immersed.
I don't think the market for this is as big as smart phones, but there is absolutely a market for high resolution visual display environments you can set up at a whim anywhere.
@OrionKidder@mrcompletely@bruces Want to work on a 3 monitor research/coding project? Kinda awkward to do that at Starbucks. With this, completely feasible.
Walking through a wetlands on your daily walk and an important client calls you and offers you a few grand to look at a pressing issue right now? Good luck with your single screen laptop. With something like this, I could carry it in my backpack and strap it on and have an effective work environment anywhere. That's the promise, anyways.
@Infoseepage@mrcompletely@bruces I can see the appeal. I really can. I would fear that just like cell phones create the illusion just your boss can talk to you 24/7, the like if instant office you describe would create the illusion that you can be tasked with jobs 24/7.
@OrionKidder@mrcompletely@bruces There are many reasons I've been self employed for decades. Not answering to anyone when I don't want to is a big part of it.
I make myself highly available to my clients, but that is my choice.
@Infoseepage@mrcompletely@bruces Yes, well said. As long as it's by choice, I'm totally behind you. As a once-and-future union guy, I know that a lot of workers are not in that position, so that's who I'm concerned about. Doesn't mean I want to ban the tech or even discourage others from buying and using it. Just musing about large-scale consequences.
@OrionKidder@Infoseepage@bruces final thought for me on this conversation: I love the civil/respectful/informed discourse starting from a position of disagreement, I've been on mastodon for awhile but I don't take for granted
@mrcompletely@OrionKidder@bruces To me, this technology is FAR from being at the state where it might be forced on users. Its a tool and probably not the optimal one in many situations and for many people. I don't really see millions of cubicle workers sitting behind desks with nothing but a pair a spatial computing goggles anytime soon.
A lot of users have nausea or vision problems related to these sort of things.
@mrcompletely@OrionKidder@bruces I see the potential in this as a "tool of choice" for certain types of people who are highly mobile and have need for a virtual workspace environment.
I barely make do with 2x27" super high quality displays.
@mrcompletely@OrionKidder@bruces To me, this is like giving someone the ability to sit down anywhere and pull up a multi-monitor setup for working with large amounts of data, stuff which is most effectively worked/interacted with when splayed out before them.
@mrcompletely I've got triple monitor users, ultra-widescreen users and six monitor users. They all have reasons why THAT in particular is their preferred setup. Sometimes it takes them a while to articulate why they like it that way, but it is there. I'm pretty sure Vision Pro 3.0 would be a "preferred way" for some segment of computer users ~5 years down the line.
@mrcompletely Right now there are a lot of complaints about not being able to save window positions (have a default workspace setup) and only being able to mirror/emulate a single monitor from someone's actual computer.
What users want is to be able to easily trigger to life a set of windows programs without having to spend minutes every time. Just that would be a huge improvement in utility.
@mrcompletely Being able to call into existence a broad set of commonly referenced apps in a memorized 3d space around me and dismiss it just as easily? That is cyberspace. That's the metaverse. We're not there yet.
@OrionKidder@Infoseepage@bruces I'm halfway in between. I'd like to be totally, 100% offline much of the time, and phone-connected some of the time, and I absolutely never want to be fully immersed in a visual field replacement way - literally never for me personally - but I could see AR glasses being very useful in some circumstances. It could even be intermittent enough that a rental model might be best.
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