Hacker News Reader

Comment by symic | Hacker News Reader

Just having a higher resolution alone has made Apple Vision worth talking about. By all accounts I’ve read it’s very impressive. The interface is much better on the Vision than with the Quest. I had a Quest but I stopped using it because my eyes no longer can stand to see non retina screens. Pixelization was fine 15 years ago but anymore. Wearing glasses in the Quest was a pain. My glasses fogged up too often.

Implementation of features and capabilities is what matters. The capabilities are useless if it’s too hard to use them or the device is defective in some way that prevents users from wanting to use them.

View on HN

I disagree that higher resolution alone makes it worth talking about. Meta can churn out high quality screens as well as Apple, for a price. The more compelling angle is how they have nailed the interface with eye and hand tracking and if this works as well in real-world environments as it did in their demo setup.

Apple has a tech advantage lately with their software and hardware stack. But historically their products have done well because of product features not because of tech advantages. There is a non-zero chance you get an almost $4K device as hamstrung as an iPad.

So the question still remains, what are they going to do with it? It has much potential. But in some ironic twist of fate it is Meta taking the product first approach here. And Apple’s closed ecosystem (not to mention high price) puts them at a huge disadvantage to target the social/gaming angle of “spatial computing”.

It’s not over yet, and in general this is exciting because competition will start to ramp up.

Meta can churn out high quality screens as well as Apple, for a price.

But they didn’t.

The more compelling angle is how they have nailed the interface with eye and hand tracking and if this works as well in real-world environments as it did in their demo setup.

This is what I was referring to when mentioned implementation. To paraphrase you I could retort: “Meta could have spent the time perfecting the interface but chose not to.”. I don’t see the relevance of such thinking though.

> as hamstrung as an iPad.

iPad is selling great because it is not ‘hamstrung’, it’s focused. People choose a device that does a few things only and does them greatly, instead of one that does everything, poorly.

There’s plenty of tablets with similar hardware specifications to an iPad that allow sideloading and hacking. That’s just not what a lot of people are looking for. They want a device where you can trust that if you press the button, the screen turns on and the apps do what they do, every time, without it being another computer to administer.

agreed. like or hate apple, it does seem they're the only company that consistently seems to test their products with 'regular' people (parents, school principals, construction workers, etc), not people who know what 'sideload' even means

I agree that only Apple can make this product, but current target audiences primary want virtual big monitors feature. For such usage, they don't need great hand tracking and passthru. Maybe passthru is useful for like drink a water.

I got prescription lenses for my Quest and it was a game changer, if you ever yours it again I'd highly recommend dropping the $80 to get a set.

What does that mean? They actually produce specific Quest glasses?

Most existing headsets have support for adding just the lenses. One example https://vroptician.com/

On the budget side, there's 3D printable inserts that accept lenses from a cheap pair of Zennioptical glasses.

I got mine from VROptician whose were a bit pricier (maybe $80?). There were some cool options for magnetic ones, but I don't change the lenses enough for it to be worth the extra cost. It'll be interesting to see what Apple charges for theirs.

Quest 3 will up the resolution and still be 1/7th the price. The question I think is whether it's enough, but recent head sets (Quest Pro) with pancake lenses are pretty close and Quest 3 will be more. It may be enough for most people.

An another important spec is FoV. Reviewers say that FoV is not the best but not annoying, but I don't know is it true or they just Apple's cool aid on WWDC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com