Interesting that it actually calls out game developers right at the start despite everything else announced about the headset indicating that they couldn’t care less about gaming on VisionOS…
They didn't talk about VR gaming in their promotional material, but they partnered closely with Unity, and had a whole WWDC session about it. They care. They're probably just not quite ready to make a big deal about it.
Apple has multiple problems here, ones that it can't exactly outpace which is that when they do start making a big deal of gaming they back themselves into a corner. They have to face the problem that VR gaming devices are much cheaper and have similar effect/more studios dedicated to making VR games. They have the other problem that the leading game engine or 3D content in general (Unreal) belongs to a company they would rather see evaporate.
Even with the Epic situation, I'm surprised to see Apple buddying up with Unity after they've merged with a company that used to make Mac-targeted fake "Update Flash Player" adware installers.
Game consoles are a lot cheaper than gaming PCs, but both seem to do ok in the market. General purpose devices always cost more than single-purpose.
And I don’t think they’re losing sleep over Unreal. Plenty of games are done in Unity, and developers who want to ship on multiple platforms are leaning towards Unity in part of because of Epic’s alienation of Apple and other platform owners.
Definitely interesting times, but I don’t think either of those considerations will have an impact on Vision’s success (which is far from assured)
A Meta Quest 2 is just as "general purpose" as Vision Pro. It's basically the Android equivalent to Apple's iOS based Vision Pro. Apple has a bigger problem with the fact that they don't have any sort of VR controllers similar to the Quest's or PSVR2.
That's the point. Vision has to dictate itself as a general purpose device in the market, and so far they haven't done a great job at that. Their reluctance to lean into gaming is a huge part of this desire to present Vision as not some media consumption device but as something you should use daily for creation.
Which is why they are backed into a corner, they have to paint this picture while avoiding the largest 3d engine, ignore stiff competition with other (largely gaming which is important to note since your point about general purpose vs specific is kind of nullified when other VR headsets can handle non-gaming well too) headsets, and get developers on board to start making apps for the new platform before any sweeping changes to the app marketplace take hold.
It would have been nice to see Apple shift their weight behind O3DE instead, as Unity really has been struggling to capture an audience. Would have demonstrated a real commitment to creating 3D content. Those who ship on multiple platforms are really struggling to stick with Unity as it's made their lives harder the past ~5 years, when the same is easily achievable on Unreal or even Godot now.
My bigger question isn't the game studios or even the price, it's the controllers. Remains to be seen what sort of games people come up with that don't require the type of hand controllers with a thumbstick, grip/trigger, and a couple of buttons.
You'll really need to design from the ground up with its very specific input capabilities in mind. Porting titles over that were made for Quest, PSVR, or PC will be difficult.
We've been designing our VR fitness game [1] around hand tracking since Meta first came out with it 3 1/2 years ago. So far I can say that we did not regret it, but it definitely requires some workarounds around the accuracy and speed you get from controllers.
My hand tracking experience on my Quest 1 was unimpressive (though I haven't bothered to try again recently), maybe the Quest 2 is better. Even for just navigating the UI, the pointing part works fine but pinching to click was entirely unreliable.
With its eye tracking and much stronger hand tracking hardware I expect Apple's will work nearly perfectly, just a matter of how people support it in games.
Teleport movement is a big question for me, convention for that on controllers is to push the thumbstick forward, aim the targeting arc, and release. Will everyone be making up their own teleport movement gesture, and eventually the market will settle on an expected way to handle it?
Will games where you pretend to be holding something (mini golf for instance) feel weird with just hand tracking, and nothing to actually hold?
Apple has gone back and forth on if they care about games but I don't think I'd call it contempt. A bad strategy where they burn bridges with game developers due to talking a big game then not following through? Absolutely but "contempt" is a step too far I think.
When they released an Apple TV with an app store, casual gaming seemed an obvious use.
But they came with a controller that seemed to be designed with the goal of ensuring that it was as useless as possible for gaming (also as useless as possible for entering passwords!)
Apple is the third largest game platform. They don't have contempt for games. They just have no idea what exactly the vision pro will turn into so they aren't backing it down a path they can't return from. Selling it as a gaming device means that if they don't have the gaming market quickly enough, they might not be able to pivot to other markets. It's an open (ish, for apple) platform that the market will decide what it is to become.
You're gatekeeping gaming. Most mainstream games have some type of slot machine mechanic for virtual skins that are cash cows or are even pay to win. Apple also created a apple arcade to specifically curate games that aren't pay to win cesspools.
It might be a better take that apple generally treats games on an equal level to every other category of software. They just don't get much special treatment, historically at least ... ios may have changed that drastically (apple arcade is certainly a step in a direction). Meanwhile MS (even pre xbox) carved out work for them with things such as directx directinput etc.
But Apple used to be pretty great for gaming. I remember playing tons of games like pong or snake clones, dark castle, shufflepuck cafe or airborne on our Mac SE when I was a child.
They showed hints of what this could do outside of the floating windows in their announcement.
Like the Dinosaur coming out of your wall and then also talking about Unity.
We have to remember that when they talked about this it was around a year (or more if it isn't delayed) away from shipping and they talked about it at a developer conference. It was clear that they were focused on the technology it has and the mostly Apple developed experience of it.
I still don't fully understand where the idea that this could not be used for gaming came from, except maybe the lack of (VR) controllers but I can't imagine not being addressed by the Mifi program later down the line.
> I still don't fully understand where the idea that this could not be used for gaming came from
In the keynote they showed exactly one scene with a game: someone picks up a console controller and starts playing a basketball game... on a flat, virtual TV. That communicated pretty clearly to me that they didn't have any interest in VR gaming for this device.
EDIT: Not the keynote, but this video [0] at 3:22 pitches gaming in exactly the same way: you get a big screen!
I remember that, but just because they showed that doesn't mean that there are not other fully immersive capabilities.
Like I said, we are talking about a product that is at least a year away when they first showed it off and they did tease other 3D setups.
To me all that ever said was, hey you can pair a controller to this if you want. A natural extension of being able to watch a movie or whatever.
I feel like saying no games based on that presentation was very premature. Really saying almost anything about what this can and can't do except for exactly what we were shown is premature given the large chunk of time between announcement and release and needing to see what developers can actually do with it once all of the pieces are ready.
Yeah, I agree that saying "no games" is inaccurate, but I do think that Apple does not intend to prioritize "serious" games on this device.
The way I read the keynote is that they intentionally left out any spectacular gaming content because they very much do not want people to treat the Vision Pro as a gaming device like the Oculus. It's intended to for a very different set of use cases, and they tried very hard to communicate that with the emphasis on passthrough and productivity.
So while that doesn't suggest that there will be no games, it does suggest to me that the hardware and software will lend themselves much more to the casual games that are already prevalent on Apple's devices, rather than appealing to the PC or console gaming audience.
Not saying it can’t or won’t be used for gaming, but the lack of precisely tracked 6dof controllers does severely limit it from being usable with a lot of popular genres of VR games: thinking Beat Saber & Pistol Whip specifically but anything with swords/guns/bows & arrow or generally precise twitch-based mechanics will likely not work well with just hand tracking.
MiFi support down the road will be unlikely to solve the issue since without bundled controllers, the market size for games that require them won’t be big enough to justify making them & vice versa… unless each studio does something like Guitar Hero & releases their own peripheral & bundles it together with their game…
I can imagine lots of game genres that could work fine but they’ll only be economically viable if the market for VisionOS games itself is big enough to support such a business model or if Apple jump-starts things by investing heavily in individual titles. Their messaging to date hasn’t really suggested that they’re interested in playing that game though.
> MiFi support down the road will be unlikely to solve the issue since without bundled controllers, the market size for games that require them won’t be big enough to justify making them & vice versa… unless each studio does something like Guitar Hero & releases their own peripheral & bundles it together with their game
Yeah, you're already talking about the most expensive headset, nevermind that added cost for controllers. With this price tag you're going to be talking about a tiny installed base.
If it's easy enough to port stuff... and the controller ecosystem develops... well, sure, I guess this thing could find its niche. From an ROI perspective though it can't possibly be the primary target for game developers, which means it gets ports... and with ports to niche platforms there's always the risk of low quality / jank, which would only hurt the brand.
I think eventually we may see some tracked controllers, perhaps they shied away from them for launch because they would add to the already higher than expected price point and won't be used in most of the work-focused scenarios they seemed to present. Having to stop typing to pick up a controller to twiddle some 3d ui and then swap back to keyboard seems .. shitty.
Absolutely, controllers don’t make sense at all for most of those kinds of use cases, and would only add friction.
A device like this already has so many conflicting constraints to deal with that I’m not really surprised that they didn’t prioritise the things that would benefit gaming.
Hand controllers may well come a few years down the line (if the product line survives that long), but it’s very much in line with their behaviour historically to initially avoid requiring additional input devices: anyone remember how long it took Apple to release a stylus for the iPad?
Also seems like their efforts to protect privacy by restricting direct gaze input access may make certain kinds of gaze-related input actions tricky to implement, but the Unity video shared earlier suggested that they may be giving developers more access to that stuff (at least via Unity-based apps) than they’d previously implied.
Assuming their hand tracking is super fast (no noticable latency over controllers like on the quest), the biggest loss to not having controllers is haptic feedback. I can see haptic feedback being useful even in non-gaming situations, feeling buttons is better than not feeling buttons.
Oh that also, though I'm not sure how useful that is in productivity scenarios (I don't have enough imagination). IF gesture tracking was super accurate, there would still be the problem of haptic feedback. Someone needs to invent a VR glove that allows us to feel things.
> Several things over the years made me conclude that, at his core, Steve didn’t think very highly of games, and always wished they weren’t as important to his platforms as they turned out to be. I never took it personally.
> Part of his method, at least with me, was to deride contemporary options and dare me to tell him differently. They might be pragmatic, but couldn’t actually be good. “I have Pixar. We will make something [an API] that is actually good.”
It was often frustrating, because he could talk, with complete confidence, about things he was just plain wrong about, like the price of memory for video cards and the amount of system bandwidth exploitable by the AltiVec extensions.
Might have just been based on what they could show at demo time – they can handle some core productivity stuff, but might not have had the time/access/team to put together something compelling on gaming for that date.
I think they were trying very hard not to be pigeonholed as a games device.
If they had made a part of the presentation (outside the 3 second mention of Apple Arcade) about playing games I could see a lot of people spending even more time comparing it to an Oculus or PSVR2 and complaining it was insanely priced.
Instead they did a pretty decent job of getting people discussing non-game use cases.
I think the biggest problem is the controller and locomotion. Almost all VR games available right now use controllers to navigate around the virtual world. Meanwhile Apple has shown nothing that allows you to move around in the virtual world. All locomotion you do on Apple's headset happens in the real world via AR, the fully immersive experiences are basically limited to standing or sitting in place.
This has the advantage of dramatically increasing the comfort, since motion sickness is largely caused by artificial locomotion with the controller, but it also drastically limits what kinds of games you can do in VR.
I would expect them to expand on this area eventually, but I can understand why they wouldn't for the announcement, as for the time being they want the focus on VisionPro as a friendly computer/monitor/TV/cinema replacement.
I wonder if there is a way to stimulate the vestibular system externally to make it feel like actual locomotion and perhaps improve on the motion sickness.
I don't think so. While you can artificially stimulate the vestibular system, getting that to work precisely across all the users of the headset would be rather tricky.
But the even bigger issue is that even if you overcome that, you still have the fundamental problem that a correct vestibular response is extremely important to keep users from falling over. If you artificially give people the impression that they are accelerating or decelerating, they'll automatically compensate and lean into it and just fall over. This happens already often enough just from the visual stimulus alone, if you mess with the vestibular system those accidents would get a lot worse.
That said, maybe there is some middle ground that could work where you don't create a real virtual vestibular input, but just a little jolt to notify the brain that something is going in, even if that something isn't matching the visuals. Many people report having less issue with motion sickness when they walk in place or bob their head. PlaystationVR2 has a small rumble motor build into the headsets with is supposed to help a little bit here as well.
There's the How Much Will the Vison Pro Cost game, there's the When Will the SE 3 Come Out game, there the Will they Fix the Macbook Keyboard game,
there's the How Many Ports Will It Have game, there's the Will They Give It HDMI and USB-A ports game, the Will They Switch Away From Intel game. You think I'm being facetious, but if you look at a game simply as a thing you spend time doing, and then consider the amount of digital ink spilled discussing those topics online and in-person discussions being had about them, the meta Apple is endlessly entertaining.
Uses of VR/AR outside of gaming are going to be niche. Gaming use cases could also be considered niche within the realm of gaming. For entertainment outside of gaming, observe any young person consume a long piece of content like a show/movie and they probably have another device nearby they are texting on. The goal for VR/AR should be distracted entertainment not immersive entertainment like most examples show.
Mainstream use cases like office workers (I don't think Apple depicted this) are less likely in my opinion. Typical office workers (not developers/engineers like on here) are given a bare bones budget PC to do their job, like total spend of $500. Even if form factors for VR/AR get to "comfortable for 8 hours" levels I still don't see the ROI on the hardware for commercial purposes like office workers - most VR/AR headsets require some other compute device as well.
> Typical office workers (not developers/engineers like on here) are given a bare bones budget PC to do their job, like total spend of $500.
The market here isn't typical office workers, it's execs and high-value workers like software devs. They won't even have the production at a scale large enough that it could be available to typical office workers en masse for years at a minimum.
Execs are typically spending their day mostly doing face to face things. Developers can have a lot of pixels in front of them very cheaply these days. I fail to see ROI in these use cases either. Being "more productive" usually doesn't quantify very well if it is all just a feeling.
How do you propose measuring developer productivity though? Lines of code written? Unfortunately we've yet to figure out a metric for developer productivity other than "a feeling" and as a developer, sometimes I work better when other people are in the room. Unfortunately, the cheap pixels with a high ROI that are available to me don't travel well, so I either have to go somewhere and be confined my laptop, or someone else has to come to me and be confined to their laptop. (Having an office where that happens is so passé these days.) I have no idea if Apple Vision will let that be different, and $3,500 is too much for me to shell out, but I want to be in my home office but also have my home office colocated with everyone else's home office. Maybe I can setup my office in a self-driving car and it can shuttle me and my desk around to meetings.
They couldn't care less about being the ones developing games, but they DO care very much about being the ones driving productivity apps which opens a whole corporate world for them to control.
In an interview John Carmack did with Lex Friedman recently, one of the things that Carmack pointed out is that VR games such as Beat Saber were a perfect fit for requiring a controller since it was natural to move and slice through something without significant physical feedback (at least as represented in the game).
However, most VR games that require a controller for VR interactivity with "real world objects" tend to fare less well as they create a cognitive dissonance between the actions the player is taking and their perceived results. Anecdotally, for the few VR demos I've tried I agree.
The Novint Falcon is a force-feedback controller that gives that feedback. Imagine holding a pencil for writing, and using it to scratch the surface of a sugar cube and feeling the indentations, and then also touching the sides of it to literally feel out how big it is.
You might as well write “Not having a keyboard or mouse will be pretty limiting for gaming” fifteen years ago before mobile gaming took off.
Yeah, it will be limiting for the preexisting games built for preexisting VR systems. It will also be perfect for the types of games people envision and build for this generation of device. Not recognizing that seems more like a lack of imagination on your part than a failure of design on Apple’s.
Oh no, I thought of that. As a matter of fact I'm currently developing a VR game that would work just fine without controllers.
Still, sometimes you need buttons. While mobile gaming is obviously huge there are certain types of games that just don't work all that well on it. In the gaming space Apple will be directly competing against other VR headsets designed for gaming. Mobile games don't really directly compete with consoles or PCs.
This isn't going to improve until Apple gets a leadership overhaul. Look at the current executive team, it's all a bunch of boomers who think "gaming" is candy crush and farmville.
Their Mac announcement was basically a catch-up release to get DirectX working on Metal roughly as-well-as the Open Source Vulkan translator. If that's not an apology release, I don't know what is - it feels pretty clear that Apple's obsession over platform control has hamstrung game developers. They could have been a Steam Deck, but they chose to be a Steam Machine.
The unfortunate reality is it is also not 100% up to Apple to fix the issue.
Windows has a very strong grip on gaming and you have to convince consumers and developers that it's worth it.
The Steam Deck kinda got around that with Proton but it also means that if that becomes the norm for anything other than Windows, it is only fixing one of those problems while developers still continue to target and optimize for the main platform (Windows)
Apple had a shot at dethroning DirectX when they helped Khronos write the Vulkan spec. They eventually abandoned it in favor of Metal, but things would look very different if Mac, Linux and Windows all shared the same GPU APIs today. Even without Macs, both Windows and Linux have functional DirectX translators that MacOS could have also enjoyed for the past half-decade.
Part of the problem is dethroning Windows. The other part of the problem is not being so greedy that you make Microsoft look reasonable by comparison.
There's one app I'd love to develop and use for this and it's for home renovations. I want to put this on, then walk around my house, have it create a real-time digital version of my place, and quickly remodel and renovate. Move existing furniture around, try new wall colours, shop for art, change the flooring, browse new furniture, etc.
I don't want to spend my few free hours driving around flooring warehouses, looking at low-res pictures of furniture on websites like wayfair, etc, I just want to sit/stand comfortably at home and see how things will be at the end and customize it easily.
This could theoretically be a business. If you're gonna be spending tens of thousands of dollars on a renovation, it'd make sense to rent a headset for a few weeks while you decide on everything. And since there's a strong purchase intent, you can sell real stuff (floors, tiles, furniture) through the app as well.
If a person moves more than about a meter, the system automatically makes all displayed content translucent to help them navigate their surroundings.
When a fully immersive experience starts, the system defines an invisible zone that extends 1.5 meters from the initial position of the wearer’s head. If their head moves outside of that zone, the experience automatically stops and passthrough returns to help people avoid colliding with objects in their physical surroundings.
The system can stop an immersive experience when people get too close to a physical object or when they move too quickly.
That's a fine limitation. You can stand in one spot of your room and browse and look, move to another spot, see how it looks from that angle etc. Obviously you still want to account for all the stuff that's currently in the space you're in.
If I'm understanding Apple's documentation correctly it seems like the app would automatically shutdown every single time you move to a new location. If this is the case then it would make for terrible UX having to reboot constantly just to get a full scan of the house as you envision.
"The system can stop an immersive experience when people get too close to a physical object or when they move too quickly."
"System can stop" seems to indicate that the whole Vision Pro shuts down or goes into suspended mode. Otherwise it would say "App can stop" to indicate that only the app in use would be closed.
Perhaps this only affects fully immersive apps and not passthrough apps, but glancing through Apple's best practices it seems they aren't too keen on users moving around while using the vision pro:
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
"Let people use your app with minimal or no physical movement. Unless some physical movement is essential to your experience, help everyone enjoy it while remaining stationary."
I am assuming this is temporary but I believe there is a limitation for how far you can walk with the device on, which seems to limit this type of app (I can’t see this limitation persisting though )
I think that limitation is in VR mode where you are limited to a couple of meters. I don’t think AR has that limitation and this idea sounds like an AR experience.
Sounds like a neat application of the technology. This use case isn't a tipping point for someone to spend $3500 on a device to imagine their space. If someone has that level of disposable money they are probably hiring an interior designer to redecorate.
Similar idea is for an interior design company to own the device and bring it out to your home after they've planned out your rooms. Same idea works for landscaping companies, custom home builders, etc. Clients can 'experience' the new design before committing to the designer's vision.
There's not really many details here, and because I don't have a paid developer account I wasn't able to see what's on the other side of the Apply button, but are there any details on the terms? I'm curious about costs and other restrictions.
Wow, this is pretty strict. If you are working from home, don't let your children or partner even see it.
> You must ensure that unauthorized persons (including any family, friends, roommates or household employees) do not access, view, handle, or use the DK.
Pretty common for developer kits though. Its the same deal for previous developer kits, and consoles etc...
Its an extension of the NDA to everyone around you, but since you can't bind them to an NDA, you say that the person who is bound to it is on the hook for transitive breaches of the NDA
It's unlikely to be seeded to indie devs working from home. Even massive companies are only going to get 1 or 2, and those are going to be locked in a room in the office.
This is going to be nothing like the Apple Silicon dev kit bro. They're expecting to be able to manufacture about 250,000-350,000 a year. They need those for Apple Stores, their own internal development, and of course customers. This is probably going to be more like 1,000 dev kits or less that go out.
Edit: No mention of costs in the T&Cs, but i did find it amusing that you must use it in a room with "solid doors, floors, walls and ceiling, and locks that can be engaged when the DK is in use"
You don't get Sherlock'd until you've proven your idea works when your app becomes popular. That way, you take all the risk and they don't even need to think about what ideas are worth stealing!
In this case, it'd probably be wise to patent your app before even applying for the dev kit, just in case. You'll still be fighting Apple in court eventually, but you'll make more money through hostile takeovers than when you get copied, replaced, and dumped.
There’s a common fallacy that a brilliant idea is the hard part of building a business. People who consider themselves “idea people” see execution as a footnote that any pleb can do.
The reality is exactly the opposite: ideas are a dime a dozen, good execution is hard.
After twenty years of hearing the same thing over and over again I believe the actual fallacy is that ideas are a dime a dozen, good execution is hard.
Now I learned ideas and execution are minimum requirement, good execution is common, great execution is hard, good ideas are hard, great ideas aren’t worth it.
Starting with a good idea can save you plenty of opportunity cost, money and tears; but many can’t explain nor tell apart what a good idea really is.
Then you have the metaphorical sand trap of great ideas. Don’t get stuck in those.
And, finally, it doesn’t even matter if it’s good ideas nor good execution, if people don’t know your story nor are they willing to retell your story then none of this matters in the market.
> The phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants or obviates third-party software is so well known that being Sherlocked has become an accepted term used within the Mac and iOS developer community.
(Honestly, I think the fuss over Sherlock was overblown, but they definitely have a bit of a reputation for this.)
I mean... you can call some of those things Sherlocked if you want but that's a pretty bad list.
Does Apple build features into their core products that resemble other products on the market? Absolutely but often it helps raise the bar for that type of software. It gives users who were never going to go looking for another app something they didn't have before, it sets the floor for what they type of app should do/how it should look, and it gives existing apps a space to carve out a pro/prosumer space with features that Apple will never implement.
Spotlight (specifically the Command+space popup) exists and I think that's a net win for macOS, I don't use it, I use Alfred and have no plans to leave. Same with Notes vs Drafts or Weather vs Carrot Weather or Reminders vs Things, and the list goes on.
Does it clear out some of the bottom of the barrel versions? Yes, I'm fine with that. Does it sometimes integrate deeper into the system in a better way than a 3rd party can (Sidecar being a good example or Camera Continuity)? Yes, but should we all deal with a hacky/crappy experience just so that Apple doesn't Sherlock someone? My answer is no.
When people complain about Apple providing built-in operating system functionality that you previously needed a third-party app for it always comes across as bizarre to me. The user experience is much better if certain functions are available out of the box.
Or do these people really think we were better off when the App Store had a thousand flashlight apps? What's next, should they not ship Safari or Preview with the operating system either?
I really don't see an antitrust violation in "we added the ability to more easily search your Mac, in a similar fashion to an existing app". Even the original Watson seems based largely off Google's "what if the search UI was just a single text field?" approach.
that's not the antitrust violation and that's not what Apple is doing, the violation would be
"come into our walled garden where you pay to agree to these onerous and arbitrarily applied terms, we analyze every possible app to see every app and idea per version, and then copy the ones that take off allowing it to function outside the constraints of our walled garden while continuing to apply these arbitrarily enforced terms to you debilitating your business in unnecessary ways"
the regulator and existing antitrust statutes can override the clauses that someone agreed to that perpetuates this, and they should. with the alternate route for Apple being to pay the developer beginning at an independent third party's valuation.
The Microsoft decision was based on dominance of a particular portion of the computing industry, x86 CPU-based PCs, not "computers, mobile devices, or VR". The equivalent here is passthrough-capable spatial computing devices running on ARM chips. That's a market that's in its infancy. It's hard to say what it looks like in 5-10 years. Because the AVP is currently singular in its capabilities (and priced as such), it can be argued that it's the only product available in the space it occupies. If they Sherlock any of the applying apps or platforms in that environment, it would seem to be an antitrust violation, as they'd be the only game in town for substantially similar hardware platforms.
I used F.lux for many years but Night Shift is better IMHO. Should Apple instead refuse to build in feature if a version exists in the world? Also F.lux was free, so I'm not sure exactly what was lost, it seems like it's still around if you prefer that over Night Shift.
I doubt someone who’s such a small developer that they recently let their dev account expire would be considered for this. They’ll be targeting big and established developers not people who decide to spend $99 on a dev account so they can access cool toys early.
Of course there are plenty of large German companies with the means to pay for a full developer kit and who are part of the Apple ecosystem in some way.
Isn't this exactly what Apple did with the M1 chips when they were first being released? Plus, Apple announced they would do developer kit applications for the Vision Pro at the same time they announced the Vision Pro, so they couldn't have based this decision on the traction with third party developers.
It is exactly what Apple did with the M1 chips. I had a developer kit Mac Mini with an M1 chip in it that I sent back to Apple when the developer period was over.
This is Apple, they have billions in cash on hand. There's very little pressure to make money on the first gen Vision Pro, not if they're committed to the product line long term.
Anyway, it's been reported that manufacturing these has been a slow process, hence the slow rollout. They don't expect to sell a ton, not at $3500.
The largest question that they are not talking about is: will porn apps be allowed? Two very different futures depending on how that question is answered.
Sadly most likely not given the App Store right now.
This (well not porn specifically but related) is my biggest concern about the Vision Pro. They are trying to bill it as a computer (like the iPad) and while I am sure for a lot of people they will be able to do most of their work and play on this device, I am worried about how closed it will be.
I love my Apple devices, but I find it very frustrating that even with how powerful the latest iPad's are that as long as it remains a closed platform I will never be able to do my job (writing code) on it and I worry the same will be true for this device.
I am excited about the vision pro personally, but it slightly annoys me that the people that they need to court to make this a success (developers) can't do their job on the device itself.
But I also find myself on the flip side and the closed platform is part of why I choose Apple also.
Well, this platform is uniquely well suited for porn. It would be a massive system seller for them if it were allowed. It goes beyond just videos, interactive experiences are a new thing for porn and you need to actually be able to install an app to make them work.
There is historical precedent for platform winners being the one that had the support of the porn industry. See: Blu-ray vs HD-DVD and others.
The AR experience of a virtual door in your living room, a knock, then opening the door and in steps a pornstar who then sits down on your couch would be revolutionary.
That is not why Betamax failed. There was porn on beta. Betamax failed because the cassettes didn’t hold as much tape as VHS and JVC’s licensing model for recorders was cheaper and more straightforward than Sony’s. In the rental market, the format with slightly less friction was a bit more popular each year, which sealed the deal by the mid-80s.
Plus, when Beta made alterations to fit more on a tape (extended play modes to use the VHS term), the quality dropped to close to VHS levels, so the advantage was gone.
Even then, VHS could do the same thing, drop quality more, and fit EVEN MORE on a tape.
It seems pretty clear to me, ignoring licensing which was a huge issue, that beta was designed for recording TV shows while VHS also had movies in mind.
VHS didn't have manufacturer-controlled content purchasing.
The other major VR device manufacturers have a similar approach; you get the apps and content through their stores. Sony, Facebook, Google, etc. are all similarly unlikely to have official porn support; Steam is perhaps the most likely (as they permit at least some adult gaming on their store).
I suspect you'll see plenty of porn apps in jailbreak / sideload world. Quest already has 'em that way.
We still don’t know whether or not there is an official side loading story (ala Mac) or if it’s locked down (ala iOS, though I think that’s odds favorite).
God I hope not... Porn is probably one of the most malicious vices influencing how young people (esp boys) view themselves as shameful and romance as transactional. Technology wise there isn't much to build beyond full games since 360 videos have been around for ages now, just a player would suffice.
Edit: Actually with ai gfs and all that crap there are many dystopian places devs could take this.
I am wondering as to why you think it is especially boys? Do girls who are completely surrounded by basically nude females with perfect bodies 24/7 not experience the same level of influence?
If anything I would think it would be the opposite, that girls have it the hardest as boys expect all females to look exactly like they do in movies, billboards, porn, etc. Versus males which tend to be not great, but not nearly as bad.
Anyways onto Apple Vision Pro... I do think that porn is an interesting question, I doubt Apple will do it. But whoever does will probably do WAY better purely because porn has been the reason for so many media format wins over the past century.
I think the GP is talking about porn's irresistibility among adolescent boys. Their use hurts both themselves and women, by setting bad expectations. You're actually agreeing past one another.. kind of funny considering all the down votes, especially since down isn't supposed to mean "disagree"
Is the GP violating conversational rules or just voicing an opinion perceived as unpopular?
Social media is definitely worse for girls, but most consumers of porn are boys. In any case, setting clear bounds of interactivity is good and it looks like Apple isn't allowing direct porn experiences on Vision Pro because those apps will available through the app store.
Maybe we stop also teaching that sex is shameful when it isn't?
I really don't think porn is what causing people to think that sex is a shameful act when it is perfectly natural.
Sure there are some valid discussions around porn and body image but so is there with advertising, movies, etc etc etc. It isn't like porn is the only thing pushing the "perfect" body image.
>view themselves as shameful and romance as transactional
No, you can thank social media algorithms on YouTube and TikTok pushing "influencers" like Tate.
They get fed a stream of essentially shitbag instruction videos and individuals trying to be a "role model". They specifically garner audiences of young men.
porn on the other hand has been around even for us millennials and older, we turned out fine. What we didn't have was the Tiktok and Youtube algorithms.
porn has existed since humans were able to draw pictures on cave walls, and on every kind of medium invented since. That "malicious vice" won't go away any time soon
Sure, but there will be enterprising developers looking to go far beyond that not very interactive approach. Hand tracking plus a full gaming PC plus 3D rendering has some... obvious possible end results.
As in apps that have porn as one of their specific uses that will be for sale in the official App Store? You’ve got more chance of Tim Cook announcing that the full line of Apple hardware will be switching to Android as a base operating system and only releasing with pink flocked finishes from now on.
I hope Apple releases a haptic feedback type of electrode addon+API to the Vision Pro, similarly to how rumble controllers work for gaming consoles.
Imagine having an electrode that you could stick to the back of your neck to simulate onTouch/onPress events. Imagine being able to feel raindrops or gusts of wind in videogames. Immersion would be greatly increased from this feature alone!
Apple would be foolish to omit something like this!
I went to a "4D theater" at Disney World once that simulated an alien xenomorph run amok on a space station. It'd get close and there'd be a puff of breath on your neck; it'd go dark, someone'd scream and you'd hear juicy noises accompanied by a misting of water. Pretty terrifying as a 13 year old.
> Air blown through soft textile tubes caused them to slap against the back of audience members' heads which, in conjunction with hot air blowers and olfactory emitters, created the most direct physical effect by suggesting the alien was licking audience members.
