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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

These days Apple has a huge software problem when it comes to their new products. No matter how good they make the Vision Pro, there's ultimately very little people can actually do on it. The operating system is more limited than iOS or iPad OS. There are no games. No porn. In fact the most touted feature (using it as an external display for your Macbook) is mostly an afterthought. It doesn't have passthrough audio. You can't control the mouse with it. Can't type text. Can't break out and spatially arrange your laptop's windows. So what's even the point?

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It's not a lack of software per se. It's simply not a very useful form factor. There's a fundamental limitation to what AR can do. Things like occlusion and balancing the brightness of real and projected images is just not solvable. And if they were, what can't be achieved more easily with a pocket-sized touchscreen computer?

Remember a few years ago when Apple and Google were racing to add AR capabilities to phones? ARKit and ARCore. In the hands of millions of users and developers and we haven't seen a single killer app since Pokemon Go and that was 8 years ago. We have a Quest and the number one app is still Beat Saber. There just isn't a problem to solve.

None of what you said is right though.

There are games and porn. You can use a keyboard and mouse. You can breakout your laptop's windows. OSX integration is not an afterthought.

> No porn.

This is in fact a huge oversight in my opinion. As usual Apple's prudishness is limiting them from allowing it but unlike the quest there isn't a side load option either. You're limited to web-based offerings only (and strangely enough WebXR support is not great on the AVP). The experience will be hamstrung by not being able to offer a native app.

And let's be honest, this tech is a game changer for porn. There's a platform called sexlikereal for quest that's doing videos and the immersion makes it way more realistic. You can even couple it with synchronised toys. And this is only video, real 3D content would be even more immersive as you could even move around inside the scene.

You can ignore it or not but SexTech is an emerging market especially in Europe where we have a more open minded stance towards such things. The swinger and poly community is ever growing.

It's a shame Apple is selling themselves short by avoiding a category where AR/VR tech has a huge added value.

Umm I don’t know where this impression comes from outside of the first two weeks of release. You can’t release a porn only app but……

Moon player can play any VR content including YouTube 360 and VR porn if that is your desire

Yeah of course, Apple also doesn't block you from recording your own porn. But using those apps is more of a workaround than a real first class citizen. Some things that are probably still missing is passthrough (seeing the model cut out of the scene in your environment) and toy integration (I don't have a vision pro so I can't check)

But movies isn't really the end game. It's much nicer than 2D porn but it's still very limited because you can't influence the action or move around. Having real interactive 3D content would be another big step that isn't currently possible with apple's restrictions.

There's isn't much yet but some is already happening on the pcvr side.

I just lament that this isn't being viewed as having the huge potential I know it has.

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