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vunderba 3 days ago [-]
Although this is only tangential, the untapped potential for AR (once the price comes down) in education is absolutely fantastic.
Everything from:
- overlaying explanations, diagrams, realtime simulated current flows onto circuit boards as you are looking at them
- appliance / home repair
- juggling/sleight of hand - its significantly easier to learn these kinds of skills from a human (or in this case a virtual human) so that your angle is the same instead of a video where its reversed
- artistry - place a model of something in the center of your living room, and sketch on a canvas from it as you walk around it
And these are just a few things I came up with based on my own personal hobbies. Everyone who worships at the proverbial alter of Apollo will likely have their own wishlist.
hn_throwaway_99 3 days ago [-]
> Although this is only tangential, the untapped potential for AR (once the price comes down) in education is absolutely fantastic.
I'm highly, highly skeptical. There is a lot of evidence that people (especially children) learn much better through low tech approaches than higher tech ones (I'm pretty sure there was an article on HN recently comparing how kids learned when reading paper books compared to screens).
topkai22 3 days ago [-]
It’s far more situational than that. Yes, ebooks by themselves aren’t as good as physical books, but there are plenty of studies showing positive effects of multimedia tools in various subjects.
I don’t think AR is going to teach kids to read, but augmenting instruction in things like the trades, sciences, and sports all seem likely to have strong benefits. Experiential educational opportunities like museums and historical sites also seem like likely targets.
A good analogue is video. Video can be a great tool in certain subjects- I still swear everything I know about protein synthesis is from a video in college- but it is generally used as an secondary rather than a primary tool.
Would be great to see some citations. I'm particularly interested to know the kind of tech we are talking about here. If it's PPT and the likes then I tend to agree. If we are talking about tools like geogebra [1] where students can manipulate and play around then I'll be extremely surprised.
My school got a lot of computers from the "make poor areas great again" social programme. The teachers had no idea how to use them, and the computers went unused until we got a batch of new ones and the old ones were just recycled.
One teacher put the extra effort to actually use the equipment. The plan failed miserably. The core of the issue was that getting a bunch of teenagers to learn things they don't want to learn requires divine intervention, not a single underqualified teacher on a mission because all the qualified ones have better career options than working themselves to death for what amounts to one and a half minimum wages in a trenchcoat but no government will put serious investment into education because such projects span multiple elections.
djtango 3 days ago [-]
As usual the answer is probably "it depends"
Old school pen and paper and physical books tap into tactile learning. Even writing on my tablet isn't as good as just scribbling on some scratch so I'm definitely team analogue.
But its hard to not get excited for the prospect of being able to bring stuff like the dinosaurs and space to life for kids.
dyauspitr 3 days ago [-]
At that point if you can understand context and overlay relevant information, it’s not education, it’s augmentation.
askvictor 3 days ago [-]
On top of that, someone needs to create the content. That's very expensive, and there's not a lot of return for it (in the school sector at least; there are undoubtedly specific higher education use cases that are warranted).
UltraSane 3 days ago [-]
AR wouldn't completely replace regular forms of learning but it does AUGMENT them very well. There are VR chemistry and anatomy programs that are amazing. Being able to scale a 3D model up and down in size is amazing.
14 3 days ago [-]
Ya I would love to see the studies and know exactly how they are gauging such things. I can say that my children have learned all sorts of things they would have never learned without technology. I honestly think it more has to do with what they are pushed to do on said technology. Yes your kid watching 8 hours of prank videos is stupid. But I make mine watch things like how to draw and they draw along with it, they have improved so much as artists. I have loaded up videos on how to do certain math that I had forgotten over the years and they are able to see someone explain how to go through the steps. With out that they would be stuck waiting on the teacher and the limited time between all students.
Even something like obd2 readers is tech honestly. The other day I took my 8 year old out to my car as it was not running right. I showed him how to use the reader. Then showed that my car had a p0304 code. I told him that is a misfire cylinder 4. Then showed him how to open hood and where my coils are and how the car had 4 cylinders. Then explained why cars misfire and that often it can just be the coils so test those first. Explained how we could swap coil 3 and 4 and check the code again. We did that and when I plugged reader back in the code was now p0303. My kid immediately yelled the coil is bad! Because he knew that since the code moved when we moved the coil that is the problem.
All that said I do think yes tech can absolutely be used to improve learning in some situations. The obd2 reader is a bit basic yes but if we had AR I can think of dozens or hundreds of applications we could make from it. If I could afford it I would use it with my kids.
14 3 days ago [-]
I saw the unreal 5 engine demo the other day and it was showing the BMW digital twin and how they could select individual parts and remove them from the car. I thought how unreal would that be to be able to see exactly how you do mechanical work on your car before going out and doing it. This could be a huge learning advancement being able to visualize every singe component and digital tutorials on how to do it. Anyways check out the video I linked the time it shows the BMW
https://youtu.be/WpnYqJsh-Dc?si=wHXz5A-pkOtGDDFV&t=392
dagmx 3 days ago [-]
You’d probably like to see JigSpace on the Vision Pro
> I thought how unreal would that be to be able to see exactly how you do mechanical work on your car before going out and doing it.
You don’t need augmented reality for that, Haynes manuals still exist, or you can just google it, there’s also stuff like Alldata…
mrtksn 2 days ago [-]
IMHO simulations in VR&AR are overrated since they are extremely shallow, a simple video is good enough. I don't think that there's much value in deep diving into simulation graphics.
On the other hand, enhancing reality for enhanced awareness and data is something I think is very promising. We already do it all the time, putting light indicators or feeling the heat are things people are used to do to monitor and understand systems. Imagine how useful would be to integrate proper sensors and device connections? They are doing it for fighter pilots but why don't do it when we deal with any kind of machinery?
lmpdev 3 days ago [-]
Certain sports also lend themselves incredibly well to it
Motorsport simulations and golf come to mind
Not just for leisure but a serious aspect of professional practice
Visually reinforcing the difference between a 0.1 second window for motorsport, or thumb sized threshold for a golf chip or putt, for example.
Exoristos 3 days ago [-]
Who's going to do all this highly-detailed work and who's going to pay for it? I can imagine low-quality feints in this direction, but not the revolution you're describing.
PeterStuer 3 days ago [-]
I've not had a qualified technicoan pull out a manual ot diagram to fix an appliance even tough this scenario of AR for this usecase was one of the OGs in the 80s.
I once had to learn to juggle for a stage play. I could have sat though a hundred fancy presentations on how to do it, and fail abysmally as it is all about feeling and timing, things that are even sabotaged by AR latency.
Artistry? Now there's the real AR market. Not the Metropolitan paint stroker kind, but the one that usually ends in Hub.
vunderba 2 days ago [-]
You're not wrong, but that's a rather bleak outlook.
I can only speak anecdotally, but there have been dozens of times where I've had to fix something and I had to constantly go back-and-forth to a corresponding tech manual PDF scrolling up and down through hundreds of pages, makes AR very worthwhile to me.
For juggling I was referring to people who essentially can already juggle and want to learn new patterns. It's always going to be more difficult if you lack the requisite fundamental basic hand eye coordination and timing to be able to juggle at all.
The latency aspect is interesting, but if you've ever played or had any experience with video games, particularly rhythm games, such as DDR, you'll know that the human brain is highly adaptable and able to recognize and compensate for latency. Additionally, latency isn't really a thing in juggling where it's not necessarily about the split second reflexes, it's about pattern recognition, your hands are usually already in the approximate right place for the ball to fall into the hands.
I also think there's a great space for progressive desensitization to help treat phobias with AR since you can effectively conjure anything at any level of sensitivity.
I guess, as is almost always the case - those with inherent curiosity will be able to take full advantage of these types of tools. But I'd like to think that it might inspire people to try new things.
And honestly if pornography drives mass adoption which results in corresponding advancements and lowering the price, then I'm OK with that deal.
Metameh 3 days ago [-]
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autoexec 3 days ago [-]
> Ghazi says that as these headsets are increasingly brought into operating rooms, it’s crucial for doctors to take precautions, especially around patient privacy. “Any device that is connected to a network or WiFi signal, has the potential to be exposed or hacked,
Never mind being hacked, what data is being sent to and collected by Apple? Why should I trust them? I'd be furious if I found out my doctor was using a product like this without my knowledge and consent. Even if you, for whatever reason, actually believe that Apple and every Apple employee or third party contractor who might ever have access to your data is 100% infallibly honest and incapable of error once VR headsets become common in the surgery other companies pushing that kind of tech will want in on the action including facebook and microsoft.
BrawnyBadger53 3 days ago [-]
In the article it states that the patients were informed of the use of vision pros and had the choice to opt out
autoexec 3 days ago [-]
If it catches on, I wouldn't want to have to assume that would always be the case.
jazzyjackson 3 days ago [-]
"allow a surgeon anywhere in the world to view an operating surgeon’s viewpoint and give them advice."
Have they shipped telepresence where the camera feed of one headset is live streamed to another? For getting expert advice remotely this does sound like a killer app (or should I say lifesaving?) , like having a voice in your head who is situated in the same viewpoint as you
iwaztomack 3 days ago [-]
If there's one thing surgeons like, it is advice from other surgeons.
kashunstva 3 days ago [-]
> If there's one thing surgeons like, it is advice from other surgeons
I’m guessing that /s applies here; but since I’m married to a surgeon and through her, understand that the truth around that, and around advice-taking and -giving behaviour in and out of the OR is far more nuanced than you might imagine.
iwaztomack 2 days ago [-]
That's cool. I actually am a surgeon.
9dev 3 days ago [-]
Ideally make it a group session. If there’s one thing surgeons like even more, it’s advice from a bunch of other surgeons dialed in from lunch, all giving advice at once.
threeseed 3 days ago [-]
It's available now but you have to request permission from Apple.
But once you do you can access the camera feed, compress and stream across the world.
randmeerkat 3 days ago [-]
The Microsoft HoloLens also supposedly had “business” applications, but was ultimately discontinued. The Apple Vision Pro was DOA, Apple just refuses to come to terms with that.
dagmx 3 days ago [-]
The HoloLens was discontinued because there was no team left.
Everyone important left years ago for Meta and Apple, or startups like Magic leap. There have been several exoduses, whether it was due to bad leadership (see below), military contracts or just a program that was never treated more than an R&D outlet like the Kinect DX was too.
Then the remaining head of program was fired for watching porn during team reviews in headset. Among other allegations of impropriety. Before that, he was considered an awful boss to work for by many.
With nobody left, Microsoft had a ghost project that was eventually killed off. Anyone in this space knew it was coming just by talking to any one on the team.
Its death means nothing more than Microsoft has once again shown it can’t stick with things outside its core competencies.
The HoloLens was also a significantly more limited device because of the nature of waveguides. There are definitely advantages to additive displays but if anyone’s used a HoloLens 1/2, it’s a far inferior experience to the Vision Pro or even other waveguide based products like Magic Leap.
sureIy 3 days ago [-]
> The HoloLens was discontinued because there was no team left.
Chicken or the egg?
I don't believe that they couldn't find more people to work for it. Pay double, no one would leave. If they let a whole project die, they just weren't interested enough.
dagmx 3 days ago [-]
You don’t just suddenly pay double for an entire team when you have endemic problems in the organization. Especially when Meta and Magic Leap were also throwing money at these people, and Apple was throwing their entire ecosystem might at it.
For some of these roles, it’s highly specialized people and you can’t find just any engineer to replace them. When your vision leaders leave, you can’t just find someone to replace them. When they’re leaving because the head of program is an abusive pervert, money isn’t enough to keep them.
And this is a recurring theme with anything outside of Microsoft’s core competencies. They cannot long term execute.
Windows and servers has been their competency since the 90s and has been firmly stuck there.
Mobile computing? Failed twice.
Music players? Failed.
Xbox? Currently in the process of failing for the second generation in a row.
Microsoft do not have the necessary culture to do this. They leave things on the vine and see if it dies or blooms. They don’t weave a story or make strong ecosystem plays.
That’s the biggest difference between them and Apple. An Apple product comes with a vision story. It comes with the ecosystem.
kingkongjaffa 3 days ago [-]
Seems like you have thought about this a lot. What do you think about xbox? It seems like with cross play and gamepass they should be doing well but maybe they are failing with console price/quality and poor exclusives.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
I think Xbox squandered their lead from the 360 to the Xbox One/Series One.
The gamepass and cross play is nice, but they don’t have compelling exclusives to drive hardware sales. Combine that with absolutely terrible product strategy like their naming strategy and rewriting feature parity between the S and X, it’s no wonder they’re third place now.
Gamepass has only further eroded their console market because it reduces the need to buy it when you can play on your computer or stream.
They’ve also barely capitalized on many of their extravagant purchases yet. Especially with Activision Blizzard, it remains to be seen how they’ll do exclusives without falling afoul of antitrust.
SSLy 2 days ago [-]
Current Xbox head is former director of their internal studios org. He doesn't know how to foster 1st party AAA(A) titles.
catgary 3 days ago [-]
Yeah my wife briefly worked with a team on Bing, she said her team was basically operating like horror stories she’d been told about outsourcing sweatshops, complete with verbal abuse from managers and general disrespect from developers for a woman in a management/leadership role.
She was later told that this is a pretty typical experience if you end up in a lower priority team that’s primarily made up on contractors.
sureIy 3 days ago [-]
You can't honestly call Xbox a failure. This is a $20B market and about 10% of Microsoft's revenue.
dagmx 2 days ago [-]
As a physical product (which my list was about) , you absolutely can.
They went from dominating in the 360 era (when Sony fumbled the PS3, and Nintendo switched directions to the Wii) to two generations of poorly received releases and being in third place. That’s even if you filter by the specific markets they dominated in with the 360.
And what are they focused on now? Windows gaming and cloud services. Their two core competencies.
And why? The people behind the original Xbox and 360 vision left. When you have no vision leaders in the company you fall back to what you know. In their case: windows and cloud services.
pjmlp 3 days ago [-]
Yes, and as usual tends to be forgotten in these "Apple did it first" kind of discussions.
Nobody is saying Apple did it first though? Even the article says they used to use HoloLens before this.
They’re just saying it does what they need better. A significantly higher resolution, image clarity and field of view than what the HoloLens could provide.
From the article:
> In previous years, Horgan tried other headsets, like Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens, and found they weren’t high-resolution enough.
There’s another mention of HoloLens as well in the article.
pjmlp 2 days ago [-]
I saw that, however the way it was expressed feels like a personal point of view, given the already existing experience of HoloLens, including some scientific papers.
chaostheory 3 days ago [-]
The first iPhone also had a lot of criticism for major missing features. I am confident that Apple will address a lot of it in the 2nd version. Then I predict that the 3rd iteration will start to make inroads to the masses.
consteval 1 days ago [-]
I don't think so, because IMO VR/AR have fundamental problems with the technology itself.
The elephant in the room is that we're already really good at human-computer interfaces. VR not only isn't an upgrade, it's a downgrade.
The precision of tapping in 3D space is much lower than on a screen or a keyboard. Typing in VR becomes 10x harder. Voice isn't a solution either, because talking is always slower than typing. And for gestures, swiping on a phone is already really fast. Swiping in 3D isn't any faster.
The most precise and fastest is, of course, keyboard and mouse. Touchscreens are a step-down, but one we took for the advantage of super tiny devices you always have on you.
VR is certainly not tiny. And, even if it can be and you can just wear it whenever - what's the benefit? Going from a laptop to a phone is obvious, but a phone is already very small and already always on you. What do you gain then from a VR device? I think probably next to nothing.
hn_throwaway_99 3 days ago [-]
I've heard this many times, and as someone who owned an original iPhone, I don't buy this argument at all.
First, when I got my first iPhone, I was amazed by it. I used it all the time. Yes, there were missing features and shortcomings, but many/most of those missing features were obvious, and it was actually pretty delightful that with every new software update I'd cross some of those missing features off the list.
None of that dynamic exists with the Apple Vision Pro. Even big Apple fanboys end up leaving it unused after the novelty wears off because it's fundamentally a solution looking for a problem. People aren't leaving it untouched in a drawer because there are just a couple missing features they want.
Now, all that said, as much as I would dread having this computer strapped to my face as a "normal" person, I think the use case given in this article makes perfect sense. The surgeon is doing a specific task, and the Vision Pro helps with that specific task. While I believe the Vision Pro will fail as a general consumer product, I hope it can live on for these niche use cases, although I don't know if the economics will make sense for such a relatively small market.
shadowmanifold 2 days ago [-]
Exactly. I remember the first time someone had an iphone. It was with a whole group of people and everyone was simply amazed by it. The use cases couldn't be more obvious.
If you gave me an Apple Vision Pro, I literally have no idea what I would do with it. I would really love to get into something new like this but I literally can't think of what I would do with it. It is a technology that seems unreasonably useless. It seems like there should be many more use cases than there is.
makeitdouble 3 days ago [-]
That's exactly how it went with the first Homepod...right ?
TBH the dynamic you're describing would have been Meta's glasses if they also release a viable version of Orion as the second product. But at this point nobody's in a place to make it a reality, the fact that Apple actually released the Vision Pro is the most telling sign that they don't see themselves reaching that level anytime soon.
paul7986 2 days ago [-]
Not AR glasses but AI glasses... Ray Ban Metas are out now. They are very handy for taking pics, videos and asking the time when my phone isnt on me. When its with me it's cool to ask it what does this thing in french translate to on a recent trip up in canada and or looking down at a town in West virginia (harpers ferry) from an overlook asking what's the name of the church im looking at in town. It's not visual information seen yet (what both Meta and Apple are working towards) just audio at the moment yet useful, fun and handy. A glimpse of what's to come.
Meta hasn't sold tons but 700k for a device that needs to get past people's privacy concerns is decent and then Meta showing off Orion .. where Ray Bans are headed in a few years i think is pretty cool.
askafriend 3 days ago [-]
This is exactly how it'll happen. This is also exactly how Apple Watch happened.
zombiwoof 3 days ago [-]
Completely different margins
askafriend 3 days ago [-]
I think the Watch is certainly more straightforward of a product cycle and happened on a faster time scale.
I think iterations of Vision Pro will take years and the final cost will not be what it is today. What everyone sees today is a developer toolkit that also serves as a public demo. It is not a consumer product that can be scaled (yet).
apsec112 3 days ago [-]
I'd very happily buy one of them if the price were less insane
kevin_nisbet 3 days ago [-]
Agreed. Also if they get the ultra wide streaming of a macbook support shipped might change the equation for me as well. If it works as a productivity tool I can stomach the price.
random3 3 days ago [-]
I highly doubt it, given that the optics/resolution are pretty bad for the current mirrored screen size.
tomohelix 3 days ago [-]
The Kinect was revolutionary and had interesting applications beyond consumer uses. Same with Hololens. Same with Google Glass. Same with 3D TVs. Same with others tech ahead of its time.
IMO, Apple's most successful approach is perfecting an already marketed product and turn it into a global phenomenon. As this article pointed out, the AVP (not aliens vs predator) has some advantages and definitely an improvement. But this first version is still not improved enough to reach mass appeal. Perhaps the next one?
rldjbpin 2 days ago [-]
i failed to understand from the article how avp is better than any other ar device for this purpose.
personally it is hard to tell what made the surgeons found groundbreaking about this device, as the ability to see another video feed would have been equally as easy on other platforms, if not easier.
bushbaba 3 days ago [-]
VR is tech in search of a problem. The iPod and iPhone had clear applications and user frustration being solved. I’m still unconvinced VR will have mass market appeal.
zmmmmm 3 days ago [-]
Like a fish in water, you just don't know the problems you have, because you never considered it could be otherwise.
One problem you have, is that it costs hundreds to thousands of dollars to buy a large display and then they are so huge and heavy they are effectively geolocked to where every you put them, forcing you to buy many of them and just go without in many places you would otherwise use them.
Another problem you have is you are constantly asked to travel places to be physically present with people because apparently it makes you collaborate with them better. But because there's no other choice you just do it... it's not a problem to be solved, it's just a fact of life.
Obviously I'm making assumptions here, but these are the types of "problems" VR solves. By and large people don't acknowledge them because it takes too much imagination to think it could ever be different. I have full confidence that you'll dismiss all these problems right now in your reply - as much confidence as I have that when the tech reaches the right point that it truly solves them in a convenient and comfortable way, you'll embrace it and declare they were obvious all along.
9dev 3 days ago [-]
Im not convinced. For the price of a Vision Pro, I can drop a few large displays at the places I frequent often. Or just use smaller screens; it’s not that big of a problem in the first place. In regards to traveling—the same argument could be made for online conferencing tools, but especially high value representatives will choose to meet in person, because in addition to improved collaboration, meeting in person is about signaling, too: Being there means you took the time and effort to do so, because you value your interlocutor, and because you can. It’s a power play, one that VR by definition never can get you.
I know these were just examples, but my point is the problems you’re presenting are really contrived compared to stuff like being able to listen to a lot of music on the go, having a phone with an internet browser in your pocket, or a well-made digital watch that can monitor your health without efforts on your end. All those products had an extremely clear, immediate value proposition, and didn’t require a new viewpoint on my understanding of technology.
The Vision Pro, especially after reading comments like yours, kind of feels like a product designed by people that should have lifted their VR glasses a bit more often and just have taken a walk in the forest instead.
hiq 3 days ago [-]
> For the price of a Vision Pro, I can drop a few large displays at the places I frequent often.
What about other places, like hotels? What about trains and planes?
Even at home, I wish I could get rid of my TV and make it disappear when I don't use it. These new display glasses already take way less space to store than monitors. If they get the tech to the point that it's as comfortable to watch as a TV and just barely more expensive, I could see myself getting rid of my TV and saving the space, making my living-room nicer. I'd also get a screen size I'd never consider for my living-room because of how much space it takes.
And that's for entertainment only, for which I'm usually reluctant to spend much. If these devices become good enough to do long work sessions on them, I could have exactly the same setup everywhere which would be huge for me. I could also get rid of my monitors and reclaim my desk space. I think that's when I'd buy such a device.
So in a way it's already here. Maybe not everyone will have one, so it won't be like mobile phones. I've never had a tablet either, that doesn't mean they haven't been successful enough.
consteval 1 days ago [-]
VR doesn't solve number 1 because we already solved this. Yes, it's a real problem but then we got screen on use 24/7 - phones.
You can make an argument about the size of the screen but remember! VR is, at least, a few orders of magnitude worse to use than mouse/keyboard. Having a big screen wherever is cool - now use it. Do you want to use a floating touch keyboard or voice commands to use Excel? Probably not, so best to just carry around a laptop.
For number two, we don't actually "know" what makes in person collaboration good (if at all). And we all disagree. But if there's a human aspect to it, then VR falls flat once again. Why not just use Zoom, and then we got a ton of other tools? If we're not gonna bother to be face to face, then okay, let's lean into better technologies that already exist.
globular-toast 3 days ago [-]
There's more: you have to hold your phone/tablet or you have to sit/stand at a desk which can hold the screen, keyboard etc for you. The broader problem here is the somewhat caveman style interaction we have to do with computers/devices, ie. go right up and touch them and be near them. This is quite often bad for our health (see problems with sitting, RSI etc) and means they use up valuable space in our homes.
ddingus 3 days ago [-]
Wait a minute...
Caveman like?
That seems way over the top.
Essentially making the computing experience part of us is super compelling. I get that.
But it all remains in very early, highly speculative days.
As for valuable space, whose systems do you really trust? The ones running in my home are known and not a worry, or untrusted and managed appropriately.
For it to work like you hint at, we need either:
Massive, central systems that people essentially rent and are forced to trust
, or
Small ones so power efficient they can be implanted and perform in meaningful ways using minimal hardware, ideally communicating along internal channels somehow.
Even with those, sharing is a big deal, potentially exposing a now very dangerous and highly personal resource to others.
Meanwhile, the cavemen sent people to the moon on far less overall computing than we often carry in our pockets these days.
globular-toast 2 days ago [-]
That's a false dichotomy. You can easily run the computer in a cupboard and communicate with it over the local network. I run my own private "cloud" services today. Of course, that might not be how it turns out because data is too valuable. But the headset should just be a display for the computer in your cupboard.
Just for the record, I'm not even a little bit excited by this, nor do I expect I'll ever buy such a device. I'd want the full matrix experience before I went in, so that I could do things I can't do in real life. However, chances are I won't want to do those things any more if/when it ever becomes a possibility.
I also share your concerns about how this stuff will likely be implemented (ie. on their cloud). But tbh that's already lost at this point.
But I can't deny that getting away from keyboards, monitors, desks etc is hugely valuable.
ddingus 2 days ago [-]
Maybe.
I don't like the approach. I am not at all sure "should" is the right word to use here. It could be very compelling to operate that way.
I think it might be. And I want to try it, same as I have everything else to see what the kryptonite is and how it will matter.
The better, higher value way to move past keyboard, mouse and display is to talk up the new paradigm. People will use it because it is new. They will also use it because it nails some use case or other that is super important to them.
Leading with our existing interfaces suck sets all the wrong expectations and could actually impact the incoming tech!
There is no need to punch down on these things.
Setting the security and privacy issues, which are significant, we are left with value potential and what it will take to actualize it.
VR mostly sucks unless one is seeking immersive experiences. And there it shines bright indeed. Outside of that, the tech is jarring, high latency, low-fidelity mess when passing the real world through as is often needed.
AR eliminates that, while still being both immersive and able to augment what one is doing in various apparently considerable use value laden ways.
I think about CAD, as one example I am very familiar with. I have used pretty much everything ever made for CAD too. Buttons and dials, macro pads, light pens, foot controller, space controllers, keyboard, mouse, old school tablet, new school touch and stylus visual tablet, voice input,, and I could go on.
My favorite by far is a big, fast display 3D active shutter glasses capable. Modeling becomes more fluid and the user can actually see complex surfaces in an intuitive way. Assembly is fantastic when one can fly around the thing with a space controller while still being able to pick, trigger macros and just build.
Many would call a setup like that advanced. Truth is it is a nice Samsung 3D plasma in my living room and a laptop with a 3D controller and mouse plugged in, often on my couch for comfort.
Despite how compelling that is, few people do it.
Now, take away keyboard. How do we input specifics? Voice input? Waggle flanges at virtual keyboards and other devices?
We could develop more precise language, and borrow from the sciences and describe things letting the system create them.
Maybe. But there remains a ton of details to contend with.
Let's say I remain skeptical.
But does any of this make keyboard and mouse out dated, caveman like, or just bad?
Nope.
The way I have always done it is to just use the new stuff and see what comes. Weave that into my process and gain value without also increasing costs and risks.
Heck, I have even used a system with a full haptic interface! The software was called "Freeform" the company was sensable or something close to that.
Basically, it was all about clay and one could carve and paint on it using the haptic! One fun thing was to carve a hole, then set the tool into it, get up for a drink, with the haptic floating jn mid air just as if it were placed into a real block of clay!
I loved that thing and when I put little kids on it, they made surprising stuff.
But it was no real answer for much outside it's killer value proposition.
Few things are.
Maybe I will put this another way:
Every UX device has both a super power and one or more kryptonites to deal with.
Which explains why VR is not going to boom. And it explains how AR might too.
And should that happen, it won't be how shitty one may feel keyboard mouse is.
Nope.
It will be the superpower, and with AR that is the ability to overlay information onto our already keen senses
mppm 3 days ago [-]
VR, if done right, has many fairly obvious use cases. In my opinion it only seems so useless because of botched market targeting. It would have been better to follow the natural technical learning curve from high-paying early adopters to premium entertainment and office gear to mass market -- once the tech has matured and prices have come way down. But Meta &co have thought "wow, this is going to be big" and "let's try to grab as much market share as possible" and decided to go straight to mass market. And yeah, now we have cheap headsets with terrible resolution that are only useful for consuming cheap VR entertainment and this Metaverse thing that nobody actually wants.
kergonath 3 days ago [-]
Substitute Tablet for VR and iPad for Vision Pro and this exact argument was made back then (and is still believed by many who expect the iPad to fail anytime now). Or the Apple TV. Or the iPod. Or the Watch. And yet, here we are.
Nobody can say for sure how long the Vision Pro will exist, or whether it will be eventually turned into something completely different. Saying with any certainty that it is useless is just as short sighted as predicting a runaway success.
crooked-v 3 days ago [-]
The Apple Vision target isn't VR, it's AR (but can also coincidentally do VR, because the necessary hardware for AR enables that).
That may sound pedantic, but actually it's a pretty huge difference. They don't want to sell a device primarily for closed-off experiences; they want to sell an iPad on your face that you can also, if you want, use for movies and whatever.
ddingus 3 days ago [-]
Huge difference!
I give VR essentially zero chance outside of a few niches, like adult entertainment, virtual tours and the like.
The harsh divide between the world the body inhabits and what is presented comes with endless problems.
It is cool though. No joke.
AR, has a chance. It does not impose that hard divide and it can augment the world without adding latency to it.
hn_throwaway_99 3 days ago [-]
> they want to sell an iPad on your face that you can also, if you want, use for movies and whatever.
Why would anyone think your average person wants an iPad on your face?
threeseed 3 days ago [-]
Because it offers experiences you can't get otherwise e.g.
Why would the average person want to hold a heavy iPad in their hands if they don't have to?
consteval 1 days ago [-]
Because interacting with an ipad is significantly easier than interacting in VR. And then interacting with a PC is even easier than that.
Imagine a typical use case for a computer. Writing an essay, coding, doing CAD work, using Excel, replying to emails, ordering products.
Here's how much I'd want to do those per device:
1. TV - fuck no
2. Phone - prefer not to, but replying to an email isn't the worse thing ever
3. iPad - pretty good, sure
3. Desktop PC - by far fastest, most dense, and most convenient experience
4. VR - If it even can be done, I know it will be infuriating.
threeseed 3 days ago [-]
Not sure if you've experienced the Vision Pro demo.
But everyone that I know who has came away fully understanding what Apple is trying to do. Virtual experiences e.g. being front row at a sports game or concert, watching movies with friends in a theatre, climbing Mount Everest etc. And working with multiple screens.
If it can just do those two things it will be another iPad sized business which is still worth tens of billions to Apple.
crooked-v 3 days ago [-]
To me, it seems obvious that they're trying to line things up now for when the hardware is developed enough in the future to actually be comfortable. In other words, they're targeting the tablet/phone-as-sunglasses market that doesn't exist yet, so that when it does arrive they're already the best offering by miles.
Almondsetat 3 days ago [-]
So if something doesn't have mass market application it's a solution in search of a problem? Because this is what your post implies
hn72774 3 days ago [-]
Racing games seem to be a niche that makes sense.
The tech will keep shrinking and the cost will come down. We are still in the early adopter phase.
sureIy 3 days ago [-]
Size, battery and price are huge problems. No one wants to be seen in public with that thing, only use it for 2 hours and pay 3 months worth of salary for it.
Show me something on my eye glasses, let me charge them overnight, charge me $700 and you bet I'll be using them daily.
Just look at the unlikely success of the Apple Watch. Nobody really needs it but it's practical, it replaces a piece of wear that people already used, and it does not cost a fortune.
Tech just is not there yet for glasses.
ListeningPie 3 days ago [-]
Does Apple consider the Vision Pro a commercial flop?
crooked-v 3 days ago [-]
By all indications, they never expected it to be a wild success in the first place (just look at how limited their own orders for screens/lenses were). Of course, Apple is notoriously tight-lipped, but from the outside it looks to me an awful lot like a continuing R&D program that's also coincidentally made some money by selling alpha hardware.
9dev 3 days ago [-]
I think at Apple scale, there come other dynamics into play too; like having to maintain a certain reputation to drive sales in other areas, or foster goodwill with technology enthusiasts by catering to a niche not too typical for Apple. The Vision Pro feels like basic research; something that probably won’t be useful on its own, but is part of a larger manoeuvre and will yield benefits later on. If you read up on all the experts and knowledge involved in the product development, there’s a high chance something new entirely might come out of this.
jazzyjackson 3 days ago [-]
They just shipped vision os 2 and have been delivering a bit more immersive content to apple TV. Certainly they're still searching for a killer app (IMO the focus on the landing page for reliving memories is a bit uninspired, not exactly forward-looking) but I can't see them packing up and abandoning the AR space entirely
Everything from:
- overlaying explanations, diagrams, realtime simulated current flows onto circuit boards as you are looking at them
- appliance / home repair
- juggling/sleight of hand - its significantly easier to learn these kinds of skills from a human (or in this case a virtual human) so that your angle is the same instead of a video where its reversed
- artistry - place a model of something in the center of your living room, and sketch on a canvas from it as you walk around it
And these are just a few things I came up with based on my own personal hobbies. Everyone who worships at the proverbial alter of Apollo will likely have their own wishlist.
I'm highly, highly skeptical. There is a lot of evidence that people (especially children) learn much better through low tech approaches than higher tech ones (I'm pretty sure there was an article on HN recently comparing how kids learned when reading paper books compared to screens).
I don’t think AR is going to teach kids to read, but augmenting instruction in things like the trades, sciences, and sports all seem likely to have strong benefits. Experiential educational opportunities like museums and historical sites also seem like likely targets.
A good analogue is video. Video can be a great tool in certain subjects- I still swear everything I know about protein synthesis is from a video in college- but it is generally used as an secondary rather than a primary tool.
The video is from the 1970s and protein synthesis is explained through interpretative dance and and poetry. Its truly amazing https://youtu.be/u9dhO0iCLww?si=lTO95vbysVTB6DLa
[1] https://www.geogebra.org
One teacher put the extra effort to actually use the equipment. The plan failed miserably. The core of the issue was that getting a bunch of teenagers to learn things they don't want to learn requires divine intervention, not a single underqualified teacher on a mission because all the qualified ones have better career options than working themselves to death for what amounts to one and a half minimum wages in a trenchcoat but no government will put serious investment into education because such projects span multiple elections.
Old school pen and paper and physical books tap into tactile learning. Even writing on my tablet isn't as good as just scribbling on some scratch so I'm definitely team analogue.
But its hard to not get excited for the prospect of being able to bring stuff like the dinosaurs and space to life for kids.
Even something like obd2 readers is tech honestly. The other day I took my 8 year old out to my car as it was not running right. I showed him how to use the reader. Then showed that my car had a p0304 code. I told him that is a misfire cylinder 4. Then showed him how to open hood and where my coils are and how the car had 4 cylinders. Then explained why cars misfire and that often it can just be the coils so test those first. Explained how we could swap coil 3 and 4 and check the code again. We did that and when I plugged reader back in the code was now p0303. My kid immediately yelled the coil is bad! Because he knew that since the code moved when we moved the coil that is the problem. All that said I do think yes tech can absolutely be used to improve learning in some situations. The obd2 reader is a bit basic yes but if we had AR I can think of dozens or hundreds of applications we could make from it. If I could afford it I would use it with my kids.
https://youtu.be/Cw9_Ywnsdcw?si=pLT2uttXCDJEA3MX
You don’t need augmented reality for that, Haynes manuals still exist, or you can just google it, there’s also stuff like Alldata…
On the other hand, enhancing reality for enhanced awareness and data is something I think is very promising. We already do it all the time, putting light indicators or feeling the heat are things people are used to do to monitor and understand systems. Imagine how useful would be to integrate proper sensors and device connections? They are doing it for fighter pilots but why don't do it when we deal with any kind of machinery?
Motorsport simulations and golf come to mind
Not just for leisure but a serious aspect of professional practice
Visually reinforcing the difference between a 0.1 second window for motorsport, or thumb sized threshold for a golf chip or putt, for example.
I once had to learn to juggle for a stage play. I could have sat though a hundred fancy presentations on how to do it, and fail abysmally as it is all about feeling and timing, things that are even sabotaged by AR latency.
Artistry? Now there's the real AR market. Not the Metropolitan paint stroker kind, but the one that usually ends in Hub.
I can only speak anecdotally, but there have been dozens of times where I've had to fix something and I had to constantly go back-and-forth to a corresponding tech manual PDF scrolling up and down through hundreds of pages, makes AR very worthwhile to me.
For juggling I was referring to people who essentially can already juggle and want to learn new patterns. It's always going to be more difficult if you lack the requisite fundamental basic hand eye coordination and timing to be able to juggle at all.
The latency aspect is interesting, but if you've ever played or had any experience with video games, particularly rhythm games, such as DDR, you'll know that the human brain is highly adaptable and able to recognize and compensate for latency. Additionally, latency isn't really a thing in juggling where it's not necessarily about the split second reflexes, it's about pattern recognition, your hands are usually already in the approximate right place for the ball to fall into the hands.
I also think there's a great space for progressive desensitization to help treat phobias with AR since you can effectively conjure anything at any level of sensitivity.
I guess, as is almost always the case - those with inherent curiosity will be able to take full advantage of these types of tools. But I'd like to think that it might inspire people to try new things.
And honestly if pornography drives mass adoption which results in corresponding advancements and lowering the price, then I'm OK with that deal.
Never mind being hacked, what data is being sent to and collected by Apple? Why should I trust them? I'd be furious if I found out my doctor was using a product like this without my knowledge and consent. Even if you, for whatever reason, actually believe that Apple and every Apple employee or third party contractor who might ever have access to your data is 100% infallibly honest and incapable of error once VR headsets become common in the surgery other companies pushing that kind of tech will want in on the action including facebook and microsoft.
Have they shipped telepresence where the camera feed of one headset is live streamed to another? For getting expert advice remotely this does sound like a killer app (or should I say lifesaving?) , like having a voice in your head who is situated in the same viewpoint as you
I’m guessing that /s applies here; but since I’m married to a surgeon and through her, understand that the truth around that, and around advice-taking and -giving behaviour in and out of the OR is far more nuanced than you might imagine.
But once you do you can access the camera feed, compress and stream across the world.
Everyone important left years ago for Meta and Apple, or startups like Magic leap. There have been several exoduses, whether it was due to bad leadership (see below), military contracts or just a program that was never treated more than an R&D outlet like the Kinect DX was too.
Then the remaining head of program was fired for watching porn during team reviews in headset. Among other allegations of impropriety. Before that, he was considered an awful boss to work for by many.
With nobody left, Microsoft had a ghost project that was eventually killed off. Anyone in this space knew it was coming just by talking to any one on the team.
Its death means nothing more than Microsoft has once again shown it can’t stick with things outside its core competencies.
The HoloLens was also a significantly more limited device because of the nature of waveguides. There are definitely advantages to additive displays but if anyone’s used a HoloLens 1/2, it’s a far inferior experience to the Vision Pro or even other waveguide based products like Magic Leap.
Chicken or the egg?
I don't believe that they couldn't find more people to work for it. Pay double, no one would leave. If they let a whole project die, they just weren't interested enough.
For some of these roles, it’s highly specialized people and you can’t find just any engineer to replace them. When your vision leaders leave, you can’t just find someone to replace them. When they’re leaving because the head of program is an abusive pervert, money isn’t enough to keep them.
And this is a recurring theme with anything outside of Microsoft’s core competencies. They cannot long term execute.
Windows and servers has been their competency since the 90s and has been firmly stuck there.
Mobile computing? Failed twice.
Music players? Failed.
Xbox? Currently in the process of failing for the second generation in a row.
Microsoft do not have the necessary culture to do this. They leave things on the vine and see if it dies or blooms. They don’t weave a story or make strong ecosystem plays.
That’s the biggest difference between them and Apple. An Apple product comes with a vision story. It comes with the ecosystem.
The gamepass and cross play is nice, but they don’t have compelling exclusives to drive hardware sales. Combine that with absolutely terrible product strategy like their naming strategy and rewriting feature parity between the S and X, it’s no wonder they’re third place now.
Gamepass has only further eroded their console market because it reduces the need to buy it when you can play on your computer or stream.
They’ve also barely capitalized on many of their extravagant purchases yet. Especially with Activision Blizzard, it remains to be seen how they’ll do exclusives without falling afoul of antitrust.
She was later told that this is a pretty typical experience if you end up in a lower priority team that’s primarily made up on contractors.
They went from dominating in the 360 era (when Sony fumbled the PS3, and Nintendo switched directions to the Wii) to two generations of poorly received releases and being in third place. That’s even if you filter by the specific markets they dominated in with the 360.
And what are they focused on now? Windows gaming and cloud services. Their two core competencies.
And why? The people behind the original Xbox and 360 vision left. When you have no vision leaders in the company you fall back to what you know. In their case: windows and cloud services.
"Augmented for surgical success—a reality now"
https://www.accenture.com/in-en/case-studies/technology/micr...
"Microsoft HoloLens 2 in Medical and Healthcare Context: State of the Art and Future Prospects"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9611914/
"AR in medicine: Spinal surgery via Hololens 2 shows the future of medicine"
https://mixed-news.com/en/ar-surgery-hololens-future-of-medi... "Providence Swedish advances brain surgery and presurgical planning with Microsoft HoloLens 2"
"Providence Swedish advances brain surgery and presurgical planning with Microsoft HoloLens 2"
https://blog.swedish.org/swedish-news/providence-swedish-is-...
"World Premiere Shoulder Surgery with Microsoft HoloLens"
https://www.evolutis-group.com/en/world-premiere-shoulder-su...
They’re just saying it does what they need better. A significantly higher resolution, image clarity and field of view than what the HoloLens could provide.
From the article:
> In previous years, Horgan tried other headsets, like Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens, and found they weren’t high-resolution enough.
There’s another mention of HoloLens as well in the article.
The elephant in the room is that we're already really good at human-computer interfaces. VR not only isn't an upgrade, it's a downgrade.
The precision of tapping in 3D space is much lower than on a screen or a keyboard. Typing in VR becomes 10x harder. Voice isn't a solution either, because talking is always slower than typing. And for gestures, swiping on a phone is already really fast. Swiping in 3D isn't any faster.
The most precise and fastest is, of course, keyboard and mouse. Touchscreens are a step-down, but one we took for the advantage of super tiny devices you always have on you.
VR is certainly not tiny. And, even if it can be and you can just wear it whenever - what's the benefit? Going from a laptop to a phone is obvious, but a phone is already very small and already always on you. What do you gain then from a VR device? I think probably next to nothing.
First, when I got my first iPhone, I was amazed by it. I used it all the time. Yes, there were missing features and shortcomings, but many/most of those missing features were obvious, and it was actually pretty delightful that with every new software update I'd cross some of those missing features off the list.
None of that dynamic exists with the Apple Vision Pro. Even big Apple fanboys end up leaving it unused after the novelty wears off because it's fundamentally a solution looking for a problem. People aren't leaving it untouched in a drawer because there are just a couple missing features they want.
Now, all that said, as much as I would dread having this computer strapped to my face as a "normal" person, I think the use case given in this article makes perfect sense. The surgeon is doing a specific task, and the Vision Pro helps with that specific task. While I believe the Vision Pro will fail as a general consumer product, I hope it can live on for these niche use cases, although I don't know if the economics will make sense for such a relatively small market.
If you gave me an Apple Vision Pro, I literally have no idea what I would do with it. I would really love to get into something new like this but I literally can't think of what I would do with it. It is a technology that seems unreasonably useless. It seems like there should be many more use cases than there is.
TBH the dynamic you're describing would have been Meta's glasses if they also release a viable version of Orion as the second product. But at this point nobody's in a place to make it a reality, the fact that Apple actually released the Vision Pro is the most telling sign that they don't see themselves reaching that level anytime soon.
Meta hasn't sold tons but 700k for a device that needs to get past people's privacy concerns is decent and then Meta showing off Orion .. where Ray Bans are headed in a few years i think is pretty cool.
I think iterations of Vision Pro will take years and the final cost will not be what it is today. What everyone sees today is a developer toolkit that also serves as a public demo. It is not a consumer product that can be scaled (yet).
IMO, Apple's most successful approach is perfecting an already marketed product and turn it into a global phenomenon. As this article pointed out, the AVP (not aliens vs predator) has some advantages and definitely an improvement. But this first version is still not improved enough to reach mass appeal. Perhaps the next one?
personally it is hard to tell what made the surgeons found groundbreaking about this device, as the ability to see another video feed would have been equally as easy on other platforms, if not easier.
Another problem you have is you are constantly asked to travel places to be physically present with people because apparently it makes you collaborate with them better. But because there's no other choice you just do it... it's not a problem to be solved, it's just a fact of life.
Obviously I'm making assumptions here, but these are the types of "problems" VR solves. By and large people don't acknowledge them because it takes too much imagination to think it could ever be different. I have full confidence that you'll dismiss all these problems right now in your reply - as much confidence as I have that when the tech reaches the right point that it truly solves them in a convenient and comfortable way, you'll embrace it and declare they were obvious all along.
I know these were just examples, but my point is the problems you’re presenting are really contrived compared to stuff like being able to listen to a lot of music on the go, having a phone with an internet browser in your pocket, or a well-made digital watch that can monitor your health without efforts on your end. All those products had an extremely clear, immediate value proposition, and didn’t require a new viewpoint on my understanding of technology.
The Vision Pro, especially after reading comments like yours, kind of feels like a product designed by people that should have lifted their VR glasses a bit more often and just have taken a walk in the forest instead.
What about other places, like hotels? What about trains and planes?
Even at home, I wish I could get rid of my TV and make it disappear when I don't use it. These new display glasses already take way less space to store than monitors. If they get the tech to the point that it's as comfortable to watch as a TV and just barely more expensive, I could see myself getting rid of my TV and saving the space, making my living-room nicer. I'd also get a screen size I'd never consider for my living-room because of how much space it takes.
And that's for entertainment only, for which I'm usually reluctant to spend much. If these devices become good enough to do long work sessions on them, I could have exactly the same setup everywhere which would be huge for me. I could also get rid of my monitors and reclaim my desk space. I think that's when I'd buy such a device.
See also the comments from 3 days ago from people already doing just that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859012
So in a way it's already here. Maybe not everyone will have one, so it won't be like mobile phones. I've never had a tablet either, that doesn't mean they haven't been successful enough.
You can make an argument about the size of the screen but remember! VR is, at least, a few orders of magnitude worse to use than mouse/keyboard. Having a big screen wherever is cool - now use it. Do you want to use a floating touch keyboard or voice commands to use Excel? Probably not, so best to just carry around a laptop.
For number two, we don't actually "know" what makes in person collaboration good (if at all). And we all disagree. But if there's a human aspect to it, then VR falls flat once again. Why not just use Zoom, and then we got a ton of other tools? If we're not gonna bother to be face to face, then okay, let's lean into better technologies that already exist.
Caveman like?
That seems way over the top.
Essentially making the computing experience part of us is super compelling. I get that.
But it all remains in very early, highly speculative days.
As for valuable space, whose systems do you really trust? The ones running in my home are known and not a worry, or untrusted and managed appropriately.
For it to work like you hint at, we need either:
Massive, central systems that people essentially rent and are forced to trust
, or
Small ones so power efficient they can be implanted and perform in meaningful ways using minimal hardware, ideally communicating along internal channels somehow.
Even with those, sharing is a big deal, potentially exposing a now very dangerous and highly personal resource to others.
Meanwhile, the cavemen sent people to the moon on far less overall computing than we often carry in our pockets these days.
Just for the record, I'm not even a little bit excited by this, nor do I expect I'll ever buy such a device. I'd want the full matrix experience before I went in, so that I could do things I can't do in real life. However, chances are I won't want to do those things any more if/when it ever becomes a possibility.
I also share your concerns about how this stuff will likely be implemented (ie. on their cloud). But tbh that's already lost at this point.
But I can't deny that getting away from keyboards, monitors, desks etc is hugely valuable.
I don't like the approach. I am not at all sure "should" is the right word to use here. It could be very compelling to operate that way.
I think it might be. And I want to try it, same as I have everything else to see what the kryptonite is and how it will matter.
The better, higher value way to move past keyboard, mouse and display is to talk up the new paradigm. People will use it because it is new. They will also use it because it nails some use case or other that is super important to them.
Leading with our existing interfaces suck sets all the wrong expectations and could actually impact the incoming tech!
There is no need to punch down on these things.
Setting the security and privacy issues, which are significant, we are left with value potential and what it will take to actualize it.
VR mostly sucks unless one is seeking immersive experiences. And there it shines bright indeed. Outside of that, the tech is jarring, high latency, low-fidelity mess when passing the real world through as is often needed.
AR eliminates that, while still being both immersive and able to augment what one is doing in various apparently considerable use value laden ways.
I think about CAD, as one example I am very familiar with. I have used pretty much everything ever made for CAD too. Buttons and dials, macro pads, light pens, foot controller, space controllers, keyboard, mouse, old school tablet, new school touch and stylus visual tablet, voice input,, and I could go on.
My favorite by far is a big, fast display 3D active shutter glasses capable. Modeling becomes more fluid and the user can actually see complex surfaces in an intuitive way. Assembly is fantastic when one can fly around the thing with a space controller while still being able to pick, trigger macros and just build.
Many would call a setup like that advanced. Truth is it is a nice Samsung 3D plasma in my living room and a laptop with a 3D controller and mouse plugged in, often on my couch for comfort.
Despite how compelling that is, few people do it.
Now, take away keyboard. How do we input specifics? Voice input? Waggle flanges at virtual keyboards and other devices?
We could develop more precise language, and borrow from the sciences and describe things letting the system create them.
Maybe. But there remains a ton of details to contend with.
Let's say I remain skeptical.
But does any of this make keyboard and mouse out dated, caveman like, or just bad?
Nope.
The way I have always done it is to just use the new stuff and see what comes. Weave that into my process and gain value without also increasing costs and risks.
Heck, I have even used a system with a full haptic interface! The software was called "Freeform" the company was sensable or something close to that.
Basically, it was all about clay and one could carve and paint on it using the haptic! One fun thing was to carve a hole, then set the tool into it, get up for a drink, with the haptic floating jn mid air just as if it were placed into a real block of clay!
I loved that thing and when I put little kids on it, they made surprising stuff.
But it was no real answer for much outside it's killer value proposition.
Few things are.
Maybe I will put this another way:
Every UX device has both a super power and one or more kryptonites to deal with.
Which explains why VR is not going to boom. And it explains how AR might too.
And should that happen, it won't be how shitty one may feel keyboard mouse is.
Nope.
It will be the superpower, and with AR that is the ability to overlay information onto our already keen senses
Nobody can say for sure how long the Vision Pro will exist, or whether it will be eventually turned into something completely different. Saying with any certainty that it is useless is just as short sighted as predicting a runaway success.
That may sound pedantic, but actually it's a pretty huge difference. They don't want to sell a device primarily for closed-off experiences; they want to sell an iPad on your face that you can also, if you want, use for movies and whatever.
I give VR essentially zero chance outside of a few niches, like adult entertainment, virtual tours and the like.
The harsh divide between the world the body inhabits and what is presented comes with endless problems.
It is cool though. No joke.
AR, has a chance. It does not impose that hard divide and it can augment the world without adding latency to it.
Why would anyone think your average person wants an iPad on your face?
https://www.lapz.io
Imagine a typical use case for a computer. Writing an essay, coding, doing CAD work, using Excel, replying to emails, ordering products.
Here's how much I'd want to do those per device:
1. TV - fuck no
2. Phone - prefer not to, but replying to an email isn't the worse thing ever
3. iPad - pretty good, sure
3. Desktop PC - by far fastest, most dense, and most convenient experience
4. VR - If it even can be done, I know it will be infuriating.
But everyone that I know who has came away fully understanding what Apple is trying to do. Virtual experiences e.g. being front row at a sports game or concert, watching movies with friends in a theatre, climbing Mount Everest etc. And working with multiple screens.
If it can just do those two things it will be another iPad sized business which is still worth tens of billions to Apple.
The tech will keep shrinking and the cost will come down. We are still in the early adopter phase.
Show me something on my eye glasses, let me charge them overnight, charge me $700 and you bet I'll be using them daily.
Just look at the unlikely success of the Apple Watch. Nobody really needs it but it's practical, it replaces a piece of wear that people already used, and it does not cost a fortune.
Tech just is not there yet for glasses.
https://www.apple.com/visionos/visionos-2/