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Comment by daft_pink | Hacker News Reader

Having owned a Quest 2, I think Apple has as shot at this, because I think most of these devices are essentially PC Monitors. Apple is the first company that has put a full on laptop chip into the device and unlike Facebook, they control a major desktop operating system, so it will likely be able to run full applications like Word, Excel, and a full Browser and more apps are going to easily be able to port.

Instead of building a wall full of monitors, I think running on the entirely on device makes a lot more sense. Facebook just can’t pull it off, because they don’t have a full operating system like OSX to pull from, but they were right to but the processor in the headset.

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I got the Vision Pro, and I'm quite sure that replacing desktop monitors at home or in an office is not something people will want to do. The technology isn't there yet. It's heavy, the external battery and its cable are obtrusive, the field of view is small, and you would still need to use a keyboard and a mouse. There's also a bit of lag with the passthrough video and it jitters when walking around. Maybe in a few years, despite many people having suboptimal monitor setups.

I've read that the reduced FOV makes the experience akin to looking through binoculars. Was that your experience too?

It's not quite as bad, but for this price in 2024, you'd expect better than having no peripheral vision. Having tried many headsets, I'd rate the Vision Pro's FOV as mid-tier at best.

I still think the headset must be merely a display. Feom your phone or desktop you stream to your vr display. The only way people are going to use vr is when the devices are small. Ideally just like a pair of glasses. Before this happens it's not becoming mainstream

> Apple is the first company that has put a full on laptop chip into the device

That's not entirely true. SimulaVR has been working on a full-PC-power, standalone, Linux-based heart for quite a while now. They're just small and don't have Apple's "move the world" money.

https://simulavr.com/

Sorry to hijack your comment. You responded to me about a year ago when I was asking about 3D websites when nobody else did and I really appreciate that, so I wanted to thank you even though it's been so long later. Looks like Apple built something similar to what I was thinking with their headset, which I am not too familiar with and haven't gotten to use. To explain some of what I was thinking: when you look at a piece of physical paper you could click on a sentence or word and it would bring up the say definition, or wikipedia page, or on a financial report if you clicked on a line it would bring up the details of the report. Like a website in 3D. I had some other ideas too for desktop integration, but that's not important. Thanks again.

> they control a major desktop operating system

Globally they’re at 6 — 10%. The rest is practically all Windows.

I think the comment was more about their ability to execute from a base competency. It’s REALLy hard to suddenly ship complex software like an OS.

These companies have hundreds of engineers just on release processes and tooling.

said OS underpinned iOS/iPadOS/VisionOS/tvOS etc., has more users than linux, and is the only other major OS that consumers think of besides windows.

it's also hugely relevant for sw dev. i don't quite get what this point is. macOS has always had small marketshare, but large profits from hw

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