Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not

I very much do not want AR. There will be ads everywhere. What happened to the anger people had toward Google Glass and the feeling that people wearing them would be recording everything around them basically all the time?

The review was great, and the fact that Apple went it's way to try and do something to be seen as an innovator is awesome, for one reason only: they failed horribly.

Granted, this is the best VR handset that could be done with today's tech, and even then it's bad. There's no use outside niche applications, and too much constraints and trade offs for it to be reliable. We need a huge advance in tech for AR be feasible and socially acceptable.

And you can't even play proper games with this thing.

Pro: Video passthrough is a leap forward, hand and eye tracking are awesome.

Con: video passthrough is fuzzy, hand and eye tracking are kinda shit.

WHICH ONE IS IT!?!

"Magic until it's not" basically sums up the whole Apple user experience.

This is a first generation modern Apple product: expensive, flawed, lacking in features. I've been a long time Apple user, and if I had the money to buy something like this (I don't), I would definitely avoid it, and wait for iteration 2 or 3 of it. The review is good, and highlight all the reasons why you should avoid buying this device, unless you wan to develop something for it. Guess we'll only see YouTubers using it.

I turned the video off immediately when he said it's 34 99 spaced out rather than three thousand four hundred ninty nine dollars so it sounds as fucking terrible as it actually is price wise. Fuck apple and fuck this reviewer

One of the weirdest things about it that I'm sure Apple put a whole lot of time, effort, and money into is the EyeSight feature (the see-through eyes), and yet every image or video I've seen of it so far looks horrible in real life. I get the idea behind it, but that they prioritized that over actual content just seems assbackwards, there still doesn't seem like there's a whole lot to do in this thing. It's a feature that really should've been left on the cutting room floor in an effort to bring the cost down. And they're trying to pitch this as AR (which it's not, or "spatial computing") when really this thing would probably benefit more if they pitched/leaned into it being a VR device.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In Apple’s photos, it looks like a big, bright screen that shows a video of your eyes to people around you so they feel comfortable talking to you while you’re wearing the headset — a feature adorably called EyeSight.

On the top edge, you’ll find what feel like larger versions of some familiar Apple Watch controls: a digital crown that adjusts both the volume and the level of virtual reality immersion on the right as you look through the headset and a button on the left that lets you take 3D photos and videos.

You can also see Apple’s incredible video processing chops right in front of your eyes: I sat around scrolling on my phone while wearing the Vision Pro, with no blown-out screens or weird frame rate issues.

A lot of work has gone into making it feel like the multitouch screen on an iPhone directly controls the phone, and when it goes sideways, like when autocorrect fails or an app doesn’t register your taps, it’s not pleasant.

I asked about this, and Apple told me that it is actively contributing to WebXR and wants to “work with the community to help deliver great spatial computing experiences via the web.” So let’s give that one a minute and see how it goes.

There’s a part of me that says the Vision Pro only exists because Apple is so incredibly capable, stocked with talent, and loaded with resources that the company simply went out and engineered the hell out of the hardest problems it could think of in order to find a challenge.

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The future Apple wants us to have:
footure

There’s no such thing as magic.

This might be a bad take but it seems like a worse version of HoloLense. Just glancing at the pros/cons list seems like HoloLense already covered this ground at a similar price point

I skimmed some article in which the author said the vision pro is for work, but I would argue it's the public alpha version of what will eventually be a sleek, relatively inexpensive product for all the people who grew up with iPads and iPhones in their hands since they were in diapers.

The front display on the Vision Pro is an attempt at keeping you from being isolated from other people while you’re wearing it. In Apple’s photos, it looks like a big, bright screen that shows a video of your eyes to people around you so they feel comfortable talking to you while you’re wearing the headset — a feature adorably called EyeSight. In reality, it might as well not be there. It’s a low-res OLED with a lenticular panel in front of it to provide a mild 3D effect, and it’s so dim and the cover glass is so reflective, it’s actually hard to see in most normal to bright lighting. When people do see your eyes, it’s a low-res, ghostly image of them that feels like CGI. The effect is uncanny — the idea that you’ll be making real eye contact with anyone is a fantasy. And there are no controls or indicators in visionOS for this external display, so you never really know what other people are seeing.

I just don't understand why they included this at all and suspect it will be quietly dropped rather than improved on subsequent iterations. I can't imagine believing that the added weight, cost, and energy required ever being worth it even if it worked well.

Whoa whoa whoa ozempic it's magic

The weight is all on the front of the head, and it runs on a 2h battery that you have to put in your pocket. Why is nobody talking about any of these.