i wouldn’t normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail… but it’s apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with “tech reviewers” and rich folk who can afford it.
what’s really concerning is that it’s not marketed as a new VR headset, it’s marketed by apple and these “tech reviewers” as the new iphone, something you take with you everywhere and do your daily tasks in, consume content in etc…
and it’s dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
this is why i think all these tech giants (google meta apple etc) were/are interested in the “metaverse”. it holds both your vision and your hearing hostage, you cannot do anything else when using it but to just use the thing. a 100% efficiency attention machine, completely blocking you from the outside world.
i’m not concerned about this iteration as much as people are not hyped about this iteration. just like how people are hyped about the next apple vision, i’m more worried about the next iterations with somewhat lower price tag and better software availability. i hope it flops and i know it probably won’t achieve any sort of mainstream adoption even if it’s deemed a success because it probably can’t get less bulky and look less dorky, but the possibility is still worrying. what are your thoughts?
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It’s not like they can force you to wear the headset.
Unless of course it’s used for torture by IDF or smthn.
They sort of can! Likely, the ads will pause until you put the device back on or direct your attention back to it. Unskippable ads are rolling out on day 1, I’m betting.
If anything weird happens some hacker man would probably put up a tutorial on how to disable the eye tracker.
You could probably just put tape over it, but it wouldn’t be great as you control the entire OS with the eye trackers.
I’m hoping to get an open source headset in the future with the opposite feature; augmented reality ad blocking for real life ads.
I could go around the streets of any city and not see a single ad. Pair that with smart adaptive noise cancelling that would allow me to hear the outside world, but remove annoying ads or other unpleasant noises like construction tools or leafblowers.
I mentioned this in another Apple Vision thread, but that was one of the proposed use cases for Steve Mann’s original EyeTap device.
Interesting, I never heard of the EyeTap, just searched it right now. I didn’t expect someone to make something like this is 1984.
I’d love to be able to set up a laptop and have much more screen real estate by putting on a headset. The ability to watch something like game of thrones on an airplane without the 6 year old behind me seeing shit would also be nice.
The biggest downside of the apple headset is that it’s apple and their stupid ecosystem.
That would be awesome. This would also be interesting for airplane construction in the future, not having windows means the airplane will be lighter, thus saving fuel and reducing carbon emissions.
Oh, man, I would love if I could walk around my town and every billboard and annoying flashy sign were replaced with a bit of smart auto-fill or a color-matched segment of a wallpaper image from my wallpapers folder.
Exactly, it can even give you functionality, like your calendar/reminders/transit schedule/ETC… There is so much potential for customisation.
Must watch ads.
I think tech reviewers are really naive for thinking that Apple Vision Pro is the future of computing just because it was made by Apple. Nobody wants to use their computer or watch movies in VR, except for in niche situations. My prediction is that users will quickly realize that they don’t actually have any use for the Apple Vision Pro, and the product line will be discontinued.
I think VRChat is a pretty good counterargument to “nobody wants to watch movies in VR”. I myself don’t use VR or VRChat, but according to friends that do worlds with films are extremely popular. Maybe you think that’s a niche situation, but nobody I’ve known that’s tried it (more than a few people) has disliked it and all of them could just as easily watched it on a monitor. There are already thousands of people who sleep in VRChat, talk in VRChat, and play in VRChat. I actually know a really surprising amount of people that will sleep in virtual spaces, whether that be VRChat or just being in a Discord call.
I actually know a really surprising amount of people that will sleep in virtual spaces, whether that be VRChat or just being in a Discord call.
But why though
Let’s bookmark your prediction and come back in 5 years when Apple has used the data they gathered from this headset to make a proper pair of AR glasses. Absolute shit take right along side all the people who said iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch would fail.
I think augmented reality will be the future. Once someone gets it, they will dominate the market.
I heard simular things about the Apple Watch.
Notch said it wasn’t ready… Predicted a flop
Still might be. It’s a $3500 device. Just because it’s getting press doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful.
People will rip off the headsets if the ads are too intrusive and annoying. Which is why they’ll either be dead subtle, or they’ll offer you paid ways to avoid them.
I don’t think there’ll be mass adoption of this either way, mainly because it’s an expensive gadget coming at a time when folks on median incomes are feeling the pinch.
Have you visited a website without an ad blocker recently? Because typical web advertising has become as intrusive and annoying as technically possible, and millions of people willingly accept that.
VR/AR/Spatial Whatever has the potential to be just as bad, if not far worse.
Have you visited a website with an ad blocker recently?
Do you mean without an ad-blocker?
i mean it’s easily circumventable, “and now you don’t have to worry about losing progress on your favorite game or losing battery, because when you are not using the headset it goes to sleep mode” or whatever, but you are right if the ads are too annoying people are probably not going to use it, or will they? this is the thing i already think the way ads currently are is very intrusive but there’s a large segment of people who are fine with it. and subtle ads are way worse imagine if they constantly put ads in your peripheral vision. it’s cartoonishly evil which is why it probably won’t happen but even giving that power to them is dangerous.
Which is why they’ll either be dead subtle, or they’ll offer you paid ways to avoid them.
Apple are masters of subtle corporate propaganda. They’ve indoctrinated a generation of people to believe Android is their enemy by making their messages show up in a less readable colour in the messaging app.
The blue message shit is just peak Apple bullshit. Signal’s messages are blue to, hopefully they continue to be more popular. Its so much better in every dimension and it actually preserves one’s privacy much better
No one cares about the color the care about the fact that if the color is green that means sending videos will be garbage quality and they can’t reduce texts over data and can’t FaceTime or get replies in line. Which is fair because androids somehow still use sms and they finally started getting rcs with encryption and now google already started using the data for their ai
I think that’s mainly in the US, though. For the rest of the world the price tag is too high and the iPhone is the mark of the pretentious or the hipster. Or the iOS developer 😄
The rest of us are happy with our Android phones.
If the Apple Vision Pro is going to replace smartphones in the way Smartphones replaced flip phones, we wouldn’t have flip phones anymore.
Spoiler alert: we still have flip phones.
Lots of them, actually, albeit not “dumb” ones anymore… they all run either Android or KaiOS, and come with all the commensurate risks of having all your usage stats beamed up to the mothership for third-party sales and monetization.
Hell, we now have a rotary cell phone - the rotary un-smartphone - which is enjoying decent popularity and mental rent-free status among lots of techy people, despite being nothing more than a 1970s rotary dialler with an ePaper display for incoming text messages. And a few buttons for hard-set quick-dial options. I would love one myself if it wasn’t so expensive compared to a smartphone.
Yesterday or a few days ago I’ve read that people already jailbreaked the vision. So if you must have one, you will still be able to tinker with it.
Someone found a way to crash the kernel, which may or may not lead to an exploit, which would be just the first step in a long process of developing a jailbreak. I wouldn’t get too excited yet. Even if one does get released, Apple can just patch the exploit, and it could easily be years before a new jailbreakable exploit is found.
The whole point of AR is that you can look away from the ads. Plus, it’s Apple, they’re not really in the advertising business anyway.
I doubt people are going to walk around with these things in their heads. With some noise cancelling capabilities they may replace offices or at least monitors, but you’re still tethered to the wall if you want to use them for more than two hours (at purchase, batteries degrade over time…).
Facebook already sold this thing, and it’s commonly used for games like beatsaber, VR video entertainment (adult or otherwise), and maybe some Metaverse stuff but in the form of VRChat. Watching a YouTube video on Meta’s data-driven Quest doesn’t have you jump up and shout “coca cola” to skip any ads, so I doubt its competitors will either.
I think AR ads will he more subtle. Placing 3D versions of a product on the table next to you and showing someone walking over and using it, for example. Or just regular video ads now, but with more depth.
If the ad experience will become too terrible, people will go back to 2D.
“The whole point of AR is that you can look away from ads”
No, it isn’t.
“Apple isn’t in the advertising business”
Yeah they most definitely are, they are just more subtle about it.
“I doubt people will walk around with this on their heads”
They already are.
I’ll stop now.
I think for me this thing is a symbol of where we are and where we’re heading in terms of not being able to look away from ads
Don’t use devices. Go outside and walk, climb a trre or something. Don’t buy one.
It’s true that devices like these can gather a lot more data about you than a phone can. The amount of sensors that are always on and look at you and your environment should be a concern.
Luckily Apple isn’t directly interested in ad revenue, but more into what apps you use and their biggest interest was always to provide a friction free user experience so you actually want to use their products and are happy to spend so much money on them.
I personally am not a fan of Apple, because I’m not a friend of golden cages. So I’m just waiting for the Android version of the experience. Since this first iteration will be from Google as they would need to update their OS to really accomodate AR applications, that’s where my concern lies: How do we know that they are going to handle our data responsibly? Also AR does require quite some infrastructure to provide an interesting experience. Something Apple cannot do, is provide you with a shared experience with other users and to provide location specific, persistent content. There are many examples for such content, but for this discussion, let’s say a location specific ad in a fixed location somewhere in the city adjusted to your preferences.
Of course the virtual ad sucks, but such content could also be amazingly awesome and very useful. You no longer need to set up real-life signs, you just update what the virtual sign says in AR. Doesn’t need to be an ad, could be something interesting and useful.
But to provide location-specific, persistent content you need infrastructure. Infrastructure only Google and other tech giants have (see for instance the AR mode in Google maps that gives you directions). This is where I’m worried. It’s no longer enough to just get internet via a SIM card, maybe add your personal VPN on top to be safer. You now need direct connection to Google’s localization API and they’ll always know where all their AR devices are and because you wear it, they always know where you are, how you are, where you look etc… This should leave us worried.
“I’m not a fan of Apple, I’ll wait for android version”
There’s literally no difference. Pick the company you let harvest your data. You pick the latter. What’s your point?
My Android phone is so customizable it doesn’t run any Google services on it. That’s the difference: open source. But like I said, it’ll be quite a challenge providing an open source localization infrastructure. But there are already papers doing it with open street maps.
If Google has an answer, how long will they support it? I bought a Daydream visor and controller, only for them to totally discontinue the project within 2 years.
If you look at it as an extension of Android, we’re at 15 years and counting. That assumes this is not just a fad however. Apple jumping into the market, may be an indicator that it will indeed not be a fad. That said, Google has made bad experiences with Google Glass in the past, but the acceptance of cameras in public has grown in the last decade and if enough people walk around with an AVP, head-mounted always on cameras will gain acceptance too.
apple may get into the ad business after getting such a platform or something like google paying apple to enable this eye tracking “feature” for their youtube app. i think i overstated the ad part and in general the post make it seem like i’m way more concerned than i am, but the main point is ultimately it’s a much more controlled environment compared to any other medium, which is controlled solely by a corporation which cares for nothing except money, whether it is alphabet or apple it doesn’t matter. data collection is also another aspect of it that is worth thinking about.
i think the original description of the metaverse in science fiction is kinda in line with what you are describing. a one to one replica of the real world, and you can teleport to anywhere in the world and interact with it. a world controlled by google would be horrifying though.
I mean, you can just take it off?
Also, regarding the adoption of the headset, I think it’s absolutely crazy to say that it probably won’t get less bulky. Tech is constantly getting smaller and that will be the number one priority with the headset.
If they can make the price and comfort level right, then I do think it becomes a mainstream product. Not saying people wear it 24/7, but that most households would have one, and it would become somewhat important for WFH and remote meetings.
I’m not a fanboy for Apple, but personally I just think it is the tech of the (relatively) near future.
it won’t get less bulky compared to phones. the headset will still need lenses, a display which itself needs to be a certain distance away from your eyes, a board for processing, a separate battery pack, audio, wifi, straps, space for some airflow so it doesn’t overheat and damage the display etc etc. small form factors have come a long way and it can probably get thinner, but i don’t think apple vision pro is that far off from the physical limit of how much smaller it can get.
Disagree strongly. If there’s one sure thing in the tech world, it is the fact that electronics get smaller and smaller with each generation.
Hmm, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. They can 100% decrease the size of the processing bits and reduce weight.
I just think it’s very shortsighted to look at such an early version of the product and say “it won’t change much”. Especially when however many years ago you could have said that what we’ve got right now isn’t possible.
Oh, tech will just stop evolving after this point? Okay, I guess now is the time it stops. Right now.
Never seen pancake lenses, huh?
and it’s dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
I don’t see any difference to an iPhone there. If they wanted to, they could already track whether you’re looking at the ad (using the camera) or whether you muted it. You can turn off an iPhone, you can take off a Vision Pro. Apple hasn’t exactly been known for intrusive ads either.
NGL I saw the title and didn’t expect much from this. Good effort post, way to change my mind on this topic.
