VisionOS 26 keeps pushing Apple's newest platform toward the future
sixcolors.com
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On a smaller scale of course but these tech companies love unifying everything around a paradigm that hadn’t even proved itself in the market yet.
like I would hope the users love it, to justify the work of a new design?
It’s going to be an uphill climb for users to adjust to a new UI. Broadly speaking, that’s fine. If the payoff is worth it. What’s the payoff?
Redesigns are often self-indulgent. Designers like that they get to do something new, employees who stare at the same software every day get to change things up, and managers get a highly visible change they can point to as evidence of their "impact". What's best for the users is often not a top concern.
Most people who don't really care about tech that much don't like UI changes like you said because it means relearning what they know
The ones who love flashy new UIs are the tech enthusiast, the ones who love tech but use them on a surface level only, they are also the ones who will buy new, unproven tech and care little about privacy issues or open source. My guess is it makes a lot of sense for big tech groups to target them instead of the grey beards who won't be convinced anyway, right as they may be.
I have rarely seen UI changes where users were genuinely excited to have a new UI with the understanding that they'd have to learn new paradigms. Most web apps should still be Bootstrap apps, but of course then you can't put that on a giant dashboard wall at a conference ;)
I see the Vision-inspired bits coming through as mostly visual design with a bit of fluidity in menu styling. All of the core menus are still basically the same and tailored to their platform.
That said, a lot of that visual design made more sense in VisionOS where transparency helps you see and understand the real world around you.
I haven't used them and I’m not sure I like them—especially transparency on a desktop—but I do think there’s a difference in strategy.
The UI still works the same way, it just looks different.
1) being just as good as multi-monitor setup for real work
2) cost not being insanely high
I would dearly love to try one but the cost to me means investment, not toy.
I am hoping they keep investing in VisionOS and when it meets one of those criteria the software will be _really good_.
as long as this is a giant piece of kit that you need to wear on top of your head, it's not going to be adopted by the masses.
But what about attention? Your attention is going to be split between two tasks, your work and walking. Your eyes are going to be split too. You’re going to end up walking into walls.
Why not just stand up from your desk and take a walk to clear you head? I find that enormously beneficial. I don’t need to have an omnipresent screen strapped to my face for that.
The key point here is "while working". That is the distraction, not the mere presence of things in your eyeline. If I strapped a laptop to my chest and walked down the street while reading through a codebase I'd be distracted. Having that in helmet form instead doesn't seem like it would make a dramatic difference?
But really, it's going to depend on how the user configures their workspace and what work they're doing more than what device they're using.
Or tripping and falling while wearing your expensive headset.
I actually cancelled my order of the BSB2 because I decided that I like having a camera to temporarily see around me when I'm moving out of the safe area. They responded to that by basically saying 'yeah a camera would add some amount of extra weight and we're trying to cut as much as we can'.
But it seems like a super awesome device if you're not moving around or you know you have tons of space.
Apple instead has you strap an entire Macintosh to your face and then refuses to even give you a shell on it. It's a complete failure of imagination in my opinion.
Not quite there yet but I'm intrigued - I'm enjoying reading about it and appreciate the people taking the hit to help Apple figure out exactly what the real product is.
This thing just needs to be lighter and cheaper.
The screens are top tier, the one handed navigation is intuitive, the windows that stay in place are useful, the Mac OS mirroring is easy and convenient.
For all the memes and naysaying, it’s a solid glimpse at what taking apps into every day spaces will look like in five years.
I recommend reflecting on this sooner rather than later.
We have an AVP in the office but it's just collecting dust. Just not enough reason to strap it on.
AR has a lot of potential but Apple is still very far away from that. They introduced 3d widgets but then showed....a clock.
The thing is that VR headsets don't offer very much new in exchange for what they lose, which is a lot. When smartphones came around there were a few tradeoffs. You couldn't type as fast and applications had to be severely dumbed down to work on a such a small device. But the upside is you could carry a mostly capable computer with you everywhere you go.
VR headsets, like the smartphone, have a really bad human communication problem. Using voice command or little pinching isn't a very good method to communicate with computers. It's cumbersome, takes 10x as much time as typing and clicking, and makes 10x as many errors. But on top of this, VR doesn't offer a new way to engage with applications. At least, not in a way that matters.
Sure, we can now watch a movie on the vision pro instead of a monitor or TV. But does that matter? Is the experience better? Same thing with facetime. How is this an improvement over using your phone or computer?
When I think back to the whole Metaverse idea, I can't help but feel it's all novelty and no substance. Yes, we can have a meeting in VR in a fake conference room. Now what? Why isn't this over Zoom? Because Zoom does the same thing, but better. I can share my screen, I can see real faces (not avatars), and I don't really care about seeing people's fake bodies. So what am I actually gaining here? It's a strictly worse experience.
Or Walmart's VR shopping experience thing. Why would I push around a fake cart and look at fake shelves? I can already go online and scroll, see products, and put them in my cart. That's faster, that's easier, I get a much better look at the product. I can see reviews, I can read the nutrition label, and I can hop back over to Google to cross-reference. So what does the VR add? Nothing. It only takes away, and that's all it can ever do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6SbkEC1Xb8
In addition, they have previously posted their one year review of the Apple Vision Pro.
I do not want to wear this on my face. I do not want to talk to uncanny personas. This is not something I want to be between me an interacting with another person. I do not want widgets on my walls.
At best for the next 10 years these will be the size of ski goggles (and we're not even there yet).
This isn't the next iPhone, it's not the next iPad, it's not even the next Apple Watch. It's an expensive toy for rich people who are desperately trying to look at anything except what's actually in front of them.
If that's not for you, don't buy one. It's certainly not for me at this time -- not for a price over ~$1,799 or so, and I'd mostly use it to watch movies and as virtual displays for my Mac.
This is largely how Apple did the Apple Watch when it was first released (except it didn't cost $3,499). It didn't really have a purpose. Return rates were very high. And then they discovered a hook: fitness. Now everyone has an Apple Watch.
It seems clear that, over time, Apple will address stuff like the price and weight while developing a hook to attract more consumers.
This has been on the market for less than a year and a half. That's still very early if you're comparing to the historical trajectory of Apple's other product lines.
Personally I found my existing dual-monitor setup to be more ergonomic.
It was mentioned somewhere during WWDC that "hundreds of companies" are using Vision Pro, so that's at least 200 companies, as well.
Prototype? I do not get that impression from Apple's very prominent product placement: https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/
Apple did the same with Apple Watch when sales were low and returns were high. Because they believed in the product.
Apple believes in Apple Vision Pro, as well.
Hell, I believe in the Apple Vision Pro, too. I think it's a significant part of the future. The price is just far too high for me.
Apple will of course heavily market/sell the current iteration of the product in the short term - but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to view this as a prototype given what we know about their longer term ambitions and the limitations of the current hardware.
But then it was followed up swiftly by a secondary model and then the MacBook Air. With the MacBook Air it really started to become a nice device.
Another device that comes to mind is the iPod Touch 1, which didn't even have volume buttons.
The MacBook Air eventually took on the general unibody design of the 11” MacBook, then improved upon it in most ways.
MacBook 2008[0] into MacBook Air 2010[1].
The MacBook 2008 was the chunky unibody that would be inherited by the Pro line. This model had non-backlit keys on the cheaper model, backlit on the more expensive. Only 13", 1280x800.
The Air 2010 had no backlit keys, and 11" or 13", 1366x768. Despite having the better processor it overheated quickly. The battery life was pretty abysmal too.
There is also the MacBook Retina 2015 12" [2]. But this had all the modern amenities.
The MacBook Retina would go on to be killed, but like you said, some of the design decisions would end up being inherited by the Air line.
I guess I got my wires crossed in regards to the Air and the MacBook Retina 12".
[0]https://support.apple.com/en-lk/112512
Why is that step necessary? How does it help on the path to glasses?
Why not develop glasses that can block out peripheral light, have all the sensors, need little power etc. before selling a helmet? Those seem like intractable problems to solve in a glasses or contact lens form factor so my prediction is it stays at the helmet design OR we jump to direct neural solution.
But all of this begs the question if use case still, which even at $500 or $1000 doesn’t seem compelling (with other VR and AR as proof points).
Almost every modern device has such a history. It’s necessary for the same reason room sized punch card computers were necessary, or 3-inch thick laptops were necessary, etc. Most modern tech is built on a long history of small (sometimes large) iterations.
Aside from that, building a helmet now allows them to build, iterate and perfect the software, and to introduce people to their vision of what a spatial OS could be like. Will they ever manage to make these into glasses? Hard to say. But given the obvious hurdles to get there, not starting from somewhere is a guarantee they’ll never get there.
> Why not develop glasses that can block out peripheral light, have all the sensors, need little power etc. before selling a helmet?
There are accounts from insiders who say this is exactly what they wanted to do, and releasing the helmet was internally controversial.
The flip side of this is that they’d invested 10s of billions into R&D, and needed something to show for it.
> Those seem like intractable problems to solve in a glasses or contact lens form factor so my prediction is it stays at the helmet design
They may very well end up being intractable problems. If that turns out to be the case, that leaves Apple in the position of having arguably the most advanced AR/VR helmet on the market instead of with nothing. Such a device is also useful when determining whether or not to even continue trying.
> But all of this begs the question if use case still, which even at $500 or $1000 doesn’t seem compelling
I strongly disagree. If Apple could ship something like the current AVP for $500 or even $1,000, I think it would sell very well. I’d personally buy one instead of replacing my aging 65” OLED TV that needs to be replaced due to burn-in. Watching movies in the AVP is a spectacular experience.
It is, there's other competitors releasing glasses-like VR and they have been for a while. The Bigscreen Beyond and Beyond 2 gets there. And, they're not gimmicks - they're really good glasses, and out-compete a lot of big VR glasses on image quality.
1. The Bigscreen Beyond 2 is still a tethered device and can't do anything without a beefy computer. It wouldn't be so small if it contained a computer capable of driving the screens at 90hz.
2. The AVP displays are 3660x3200 pixels per eye at 90-100hz vs the Beyond 2's 2560x2560 per eye at 75hz (can only reach 90hz by upscaling 1920×1920 per eye).
3. The Beyond devices don't have video passthrough which is a core use case of the AVP and its OS and adds to the computing needs and resulting form factor.
Presumably Apple could have made a smaller device if they had limited themselves to the specifications of something like the BB2. The existence of the BB2 is not evidence that the tech existed to miniaturize the AVP since the BB2 is simply not able to achieve the same outcomes as the AVP. They're just fundamentally different devices.
It's also worth remembering that Sony was only projected to be able to produce enough micro-OLED displays to make ~500,000 units in the first year.
Does this versioning style work at all? It always feels extremely gimmicky and quickly abandoned as software is going to slip sometimes.
This is absolute cope. Apple hasn't innovated much in years and there is nothing special in this whole Vision whatever.
That anybody on HN doesn’t realise this blows my mind, but perhaps they’re only young and think the world has always been full of amazing devices like this since the get go.
while renting you a whimsical and delightfully DRM filtered reality (with a 30% cut)