i wouldn’t normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail… but it’s apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with “tech reviewers” and rich folk who can afford it.
what’s really concerning is that it’s not marketed as a new VR headset, it’s marketed by apple and these “tech reviewers” as the new iphone, something you take with you everywhere and do your daily tasks in, consume content in etc…
and it’s dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
this is why i think all these tech giants (google meta apple etc) were/are interested in the “metaverse”. it holds both your vision and your hearing hostage, you cannot do anything else when using it but to just use the thing. a 100% efficiency attention machine, completely blocking you from the outside world.
i’m not concerned about this iteration as much as people are not hyped about this iteration. just like how people are hyped about the next apple vision, i’m more worried about the next iterations with somewhat lower price tag and better software availability. i hope it flops and i know it probably won’t achieve any sort of mainstream adoption even if it’s deemed a success because it probably can’t get less bulky and look less dorky, but the possibility is still worrying. what are your thoughts?
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I love spaceship games (think Elite: Dangerous and the like), and motorsport games. Anything where you’re set in a cockpit is a perfect candidate for VR. All I wanted was a headset that would act analagous to a dumb monitor - simply provide vision and audio and head tracking (with “simply” being a relative term - the challenges overcome and technology produced to date is, admittedly, amazing).
But no. What we have are a bunch of privacy-invading face huggers. I shouldn’t need to sign in to anything to use a piece of hardware that should require zero internet access (which is why anything Razer is also on my do not buy list).
So am I concerned about the Apple Vision Pro? Couldn’t give a shit to be honest. I’m not their customer.
Doesn’t valve provide login-free setup and use of SteamVR for the index and the like? Granted, you’ll need a beefy PC for it, and probably some kind of storefront for most games. But at least no Facebook login strapped to your head.
It does! It can be played fully offline, doesn’t require an account, and works great with my pirated copy of elite dangerous. The index is the shit! Apple vision pro can’t do shit for me that the index has done for years now.
OK @max, @thorbot, I didn’t know about this. I’d written off all VR in protest against corporate overreach. Time to do some more investigation…
Please let me know if you ever find one. Best I have seen are the ones without head tracking or laggy tracking.
It’s really easy to avoid if you don’t use them.
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Not really worried about this kind of stuff at all. At the end of the day, it’s not like it’s some essential thing people need to live. People have been worrying that every new piece of technology is going to ruin society. This was said about books, raidio, tv, video games, and so on. I don’t think AR tech is going to be any different.
I imagine that at some point the tech will get miniaturized to the point where AR headsets are basically like glasses. That’s when mass adoption is likely to start happening. I’m also sure there will be open versions of such headsets that can run Linux. It’s just a new more immersive UX, I don’t think it’s anything to get worked up over.
Since when do we give a shit what literal neo nazi Notch has to say?
I agree with his take on the apple vr shit, but fuck nazi notch.
I mean, you can just take it off?
Also, regarding the adoption of the headset, I think it’s absolutely crazy to say that it probably won’t get less bulky. Tech is constantly getting smaller and that will be the number one priority with the headset.
If they can make the price and comfort level right, then I do think it becomes a mainstream product. Not saying people wear it 24/7, but that most households would have one, and it would become somewhat important for WFH and remote meetings.
I’m not a fanboy for Apple, but personally I just think it is the tech of the (relatively) near future.
it won’t get less bulky compared to phones. the headset will still need lenses, a display which itself needs to be a certain distance away from your eyes, a board for processing, a separate battery pack, audio, wifi, straps, space for some airflow so it doesn’t overheat and damage the display etc etc. small form factors have come a long way and it can probably get thinner, but i don’t think apple vision pro is that far off from the physical limit of how much smaller it can get.
Never seen pancake lenses, huh?
Disagree strongly. If there’s one sure thing in the tech world, it is the fact that electronics get smaller and smaller with each generation.
Hmm, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. They can 100% decrease the size of the processing bits and reduce weight.
I just think it’s very shortsighted to look at such an early version of the product and say “it won’t change much”. Especially when however many years ago you could have said that what we’ve got right now isn’t possible.
Oh, tech will just stop evolving after this point? Okay, I guess now is the time it stops. Right now.
People will rip off the headsets if the ads are too intrusive and annoying. Which is why they’ll either be dead subtle, or they’ll offer you paid ways to avoid them.
I don’t think there’ll be mass adoption of this either way, mainly because it’s an expensive gadget coming at a time when folks on median incomes are feeling the pinch.
Have you visited a website without an ad blocker recently? Because typical web advertising has become as intrusive and annoying as technically possible, and millions of people willingly accept that.
VR/AR/Spatial Whatever has the potential to be just as bad, if not far worse.
Have you visited a website with an ad blocker recently?
Do you mean without an ad-blocker?
Which is why they’ll either be dead subtle, or they’ll offer you paid ways to avoid them.
Apple are masters of subtle corporate propaganda. They’ve indoctrinated a generation of people to believe Android is their enemy by making their messages show up in a less readable colour in the messaging app.
No one cares about the color the care about the fact that if the color is green that means sending videos will be garbage quality and they can’t reduce texts over data and can’t FaceTime or get replies in line. Which is fair because androids somehow still use sms and they finally started getting rcs with encryption and now google already started using the data for their ai
The blue message shit is just peak Apple bullshit. Signal’s messages are blue to, hopefully they continue to be more popular. Its so much better in every dimension and it actually preserves one’s privacy much better
I think that’s mainly in the US, though. For the rest of the world the price tag is too high and the iPhone is the mark of the pretentious or the hipster. Or the iOS developer 😄
The rest of us are happy with our Android phones.
i mean it’s easily circumventable, “and now you don’t have to worry about losing progress on your favorite game or losing battery, because when you are not using the headset it goes to sleep mode” or whatever, but you are right if the ads are too annoying people are probably not going to use it, or will they? this is the thing i already think the way ads currently are is very intrusive but there’s a large segment of people who are fine with it. and subtle ads are way worse imagine if they constantly put ads in your peripheral vision. it’s cartoonishly evil which is why it probably won’t happen but even giving that power to them is dangerous.
The whole point of AR is that you can look away from the ads. Plus, it’s Apple, they’re not really in the advertising business anyway.
I doubt people are going to walk around with these things in their heads. With some noise cancelling capabilities they may replace offices or at least monitors, but you’re still tethered to the wall if you want to use them for more than two hours (at purchase, batteries degrade over time…).
Facebook already sold this thing, and it’s commonly used for games like beatsaber, VR video entertainment (adult or otherwise), and maybe some Metaverse stuff but in the form of VRChat. Watching a YouTube video on Meta’s data-driven Quest doesn’t have you jump up and shout “coca cola” to skip any ads, so I doubt its competitors will either.
I think AR ads will he more subtle. Placing 3D versions of a product on the table next to you and showing someone walking over and using it, for example. Or just regular video ads now, but with more depth.
If the ad experience will become too terrible, people will go back to 2D.
“The whole point of AR is that you can look away from ads”
No, it isn’t.
“Apple isn’t in the advertising business”
Yeah they most definitely are, they are just more subtle about it.
“I doubt people will walk around with this on their heads”
They already are.
I’ll stop now.
Yesterday or a few days ago I’ve read that people already jailbreaked the vision. So if you must have one, you will still be able to tinker with it.
Someone found a way to crash the kernel, which may or may not lead to an exploit, which would be just the first step in a long process of developing a jailbreak. I wouldn’t get too excited yet. Even if one does get released, Apple can just patch the exploit, and it could easily be years before a new jailbreakable exploit is found.
If anything weird happens some hacker man would probably put up a tutorial on how to disable the eye tracker.
You could probably just put tape over it, but it wouldn’t be great as you control the entire OS with the eye trackers.
I worry about how consumerism and capitalism will kill us all but I don’t give a shit about this in particular. If I saw one in the wild the first thing I would do is give the owner and endless stream of shit for buying such a stupid waste of money.
i’m probably not gonna see one in the wild since income levels here does not allow discretionary spending of 3500 dollars, but don’t needlessly antagonize people. just tell 'em it looks cheap and move on it will do more damage than recognizing it’s an expensive gadget :)
I’ll interact with the world the way I see fit, thanks.
Exact mentality of every asshole everywhere
I don’t care what you think.
What if the person with the Vision Pro got it to help with a physical disability, and it has greatly improved their quality of life? Or what if it was gifted to them by a now passed friend or family member, and now holds a great deal of sentimental value to that individual? Do you not agree that criticizing in these (and likely many other) instances would be an asshole move on your part?
You don’t know how or why they obtained it, and their possession of it does not harm you in any way, shape, or form. Do you still not agree that being vocally and directly critical of the other person’s simple possession of this item is an asshole move?
People said exactly the same thing about smart phones when they first came out.
No they didn’t. Cell phones were magic in the 90s and every major iteration was met with rampant consumerism. No one, at any point, said holding an internet connected device in your hand was stupid. Find me ONE article.
https://mashable.com/article/iphone-2g-original-naysayers
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/saw-this-on-reddit-tonight-a-2007-iphone-will-fail-column.2240010/ (can’t seem to find the original article, so this is commentary and quotes from what the article said at the time)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7419784 (additional quotes and commentary on the same Bloomberg article, with other similar articles mentioned)
http://suckbusters2.blogspot.com/2007/06/apple-iphone-debut-to-flop-product-to.html?m=1 (good summary of the points that were made in opposition)
Android was going to be very different before the iPhone was revealed. That moment very clearly ushered in a new era for smartphones and phone technology in general. Now smartphones weren’t just for business people with an IT team for support, or wealthier and tech savvy individuals, they were for the masses. That undeniably changed the world (for better or worse), and there’s no way anyone could have predicted the outcome with any confidence at the time.
Perhaps Vision Pro will be a success and usher in a new revolution in technology, or perhaps it will only ever be a niche device, or maybe it flops altogether in a short amount of time. No one can say for sure how things will play out until it happens.
It’s true that devices like these can gather a lot more data about you than a phone can. The amount of sensors that are always on and look at you and your environment should be a concern.
Luckily Apple isn’t directly interested in ad revenue, but more into what apps you use and their biggest interest was always to provide a friction free user experience so you actually want to use their products and are happy to spend so much money on them.
I personally am not a fan of Apple, because I’m not a friend of golden cages. So I’m just waiting for the Android version of the experience. Since this first iteration will be from Google as they would need to update their OS to really accomodate AR applications, that’s where my concern lies: How do we know that they are going to handle our data responsibly? Also AR does require quite some infrastructure to provide an interesting experience. Something Apple cannot do, is provide you with a shared experience with other users and to provide location specific, persistent content. There are many examples for such content, but for this discussion, let’s say a location specific ad in a fixed location somewhere in the city adjusted to your preferences.
Of course the virtual ad sucks, but such content could also be amazingly awesome and very useful. You no longer need to set up real-life signs, you just update what the virtual sign says in AR. Doesn’t need to be an ad, could be something interesting and useful.
But to provide location-specific, persistent content you need infrastructure. Infrastructure only Google and other tech giants have (see for instance the AR mode in Google maps that gives you directions). This is where I’m worried. It’s no longer enough to just get internet via a SIM card, maybe add your personal VPN on top to be safer. You now need direct connection to Google’s localization API and they’ll always know where all their AR devices are and because you wear it, they always know where you are, how you are, where you look etc… This should leave us worried.
apple may get into the ad business after getting such a platform or something like google paying apple to enable this eye tracking “feature” for their youtube app. i think i overstated the ad part and in general the post make it seem like i’m way more concerned than i am, but the main point is ultimately it’s a much more controlled environment compared to any other medium, which is controlled solely by a corporation which cares for nothing except money, whether it is alphabet or apple it doesn’t matter. data collection is also another aspect of it that is worth thinking about.
i think the original description of the metaverse in science fiction is kinda in line with what you are describing. a one to one replica of the real world, and you can teleport to anywhere in the world and interact with it. a world controlled by google would be horrifying though.
If Google has an answer, how long will they support it? I bought a Daydream visor and controller, only for them to totally discontinue the project within 2 years.
If you look at it as an extension of Android, we’re at 15 years and counting. That assumes this is not just a fad however. Apple jumping into the market, may be an indicator that it will indeed not be a fad. That said, Google has made bad experiences with Google Glass in the past, but the acceptance of cameras in public has grown in the last decade and if enough people walk around with an AVP, head-mounted always on cameras will gain acceptance too.
“I’m not a fan of Apple, I’ll wait for android version”
There’s literally no difference. Pick the company you let harvest your data. You pick the latter. What’s your point?
My Android phone is so customizable it doesn’t run any Google services on it. That’s the difference: open source. But like I said, it’ll be quite a challenge providing an open source localization infrastructure. But there are already papers doing it with open street maps.
and it’s dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
I don’t see any difference to an iPhone there. If they wanted to, they could already track whether you’re looking at the ad (using the camera) or whether you muted it. You can turn off an iPhone, you can take off a Vision Pro. Apple hasn’t exactly been known for intrusive ads either.
I think for me this thing is a symbol of where we are and where we’re heading in terms of not being able to look away from ads
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I think about the Vision like I think about a new Gucci bag or a new set of Air Jordans. There’s a small, but very visible, community that is super into that product, probably for reasons not related to its actual functionality. The difference is that there’s a lot of overlap between Apple fans and broader technology enthusiast groups, where we’re more isolated from the Gucci and Jordan communities. There are lots of brand-based fan groups who will happily accept branded merch or content, but not interpret that as ‘advertising.’
The rest of the world tolerates spyware and especially ads if they feel like the product is worth the intrusion. There’s a reason Meta doesn’t have a logo watermark foating in the corner of Quest view field. There’s a reason VR is still very niche, almost entirely limited to gaming.
Maybe Vision’s AR experience will change that. Maybe viewing your entire life through a video camera with overlaid graphics has real-world value beyond privacy in co-working spaces. I doubt that value is $3000 and think Vision is more like Apple’s Newton than Apple’s iPhone.
It’s probably more like the Apple II than the Newton or iPhone. It cost $1300 at the time, which is about $6300 today. For early adopters, it was a revolutionary glimpse of the future. It took another 10 years for it to become widespread.
