visionOS 26 adds a plethora of features that were already on other headsets

Local multi-user experiences and widgets headline Apple's annual software update.

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[Spiderman10]

I feel like having shared experiences does fundamentally transform the Vision Pro tbh.

Time will tell I guess.

 

[mrsw]

I doubt the external eyeball monitors cost very much. But either way, I get why they included them. It's a first-gen product where some ideas will be great, some will need tweaks, and some are superfluous.

They were obviously thinking of scenarios where eye contact is important, and they were trying to make things less weird for people talking to someone who has the goggles on.

I've never even seen Vision Pro in person, so I can't say if the external eyeball monitors are a waste, but I can certainly see where they "might" be important.

It’s one screen. Curved glass, overengineered, and likely very expensive. It should be the first casualty in any refresh.

 

[mrsw]

15 years on: More money than God, phenomenal profits, shareholders adore Tim’s stewardship. No new markets at all.

I mean, there’s so much wrong in this post, but let’s just concentrate for now on: I wasn’t aware Steve was behind the consumer juggernaut that is AirPods; and I’m pretty sure Apple wasn’t the world’s biggest watchmaker during his time.

 

[NaraVara]

The narrative arc of this device so far reminds me a lot of the first Newton, and I wouldn't be shocked if it was a similar path where several years from now Apple finally hits a point where the technology exists for them to offer their vision of AR/VR in a fully realized consumer product at more reasonable price points.

Hopefully it won’t take a near bankruptcy and complete reinvention of the company from the top down to do it!

But generally I agree. So far I get the sense that Vision Pro doesn’t hit the sweet spot for broad adoption and still feels like a bit of a tinker-toy. Even the gaming market, where there is consumer demand for Meta stuff, seems to be a small niche. People keep suggesting it needs to get smaller and have better battery to see its potential, but I don’t see the hardware as the limiting factor. I think the technology spatial computing will actually need is for AI/ML to develop to the point where the user spends much less of their time interacting with their computer looking at a display. I should be able to draft a document by writing in a normal paper notebook with a normal ink pen and my devise should know what I wrote and save it as a document if I ask. I should be able to do a host of research and scripting tasks by talking at it.

A lot of the problems with VR/AR is that it can never really get to a point where people don’t feel a little sick, things feel a little uncanny, and the experience doesn’t feel super isolating. But if interfaces evolve to the point where we never need to look at the display unless we need to actively do something with visual inputs (e.g. reading or watching multimedia content) that’s when I think spatial computing will really take off.

(I think coding and professional writing will always be best on a proper computer though, so I’m not sure if Vision Pro will ever kill that).

 

[Kanator]

I don't think Apple will ever release another Vision headset as we know it today. I think the gameplan was to get a really expensive devkit out to developers and early adopters with the specs that they believe they will be able to fit in a par of glasses within 5-6 years of the original launch date. If for some reason the thing took off and was selling a lot of units, I think they would have pursued a more iterative approach to the hardware, but with it clearly not being something consumers are interested in with the current hardware, I think they have fully shifted this to a very public r&d project. I highly doubt the actual hardware specs would have ever changed regardless of form factor and weight improvements, until the Apple Spectacle release somewhere around 2030.

They won't be able to launch something with the specs of the Vision Pro in a glasses form factor by 2030. Smaller and lighter than it is, definitely, but a glasses form factor is just not possible. The best smart glasses (that actually resemble glasses) of today have a ~150mah battery, a processor so slow it needs over a second to take a picture, and a tiny teleprompter screen, if any. There's no way all of that is being improved to Vision Pro levels by 2030.

 

[GotToCreateAUsername]

How long can you wear it until it becomes uncomfortable?

I actually can wear it for 4-5 hours. The Belkin additional headstrap plus the knit band ends up being very comfy

 

[benwaggoner]

So Watching movies?

I'm serious, because that's what I have seen form users months after the novelty wears thin. It mostly becomes a solo movie watching device.

And you can get an equivalent quality OLED TV and pair of Atmos headphones for less than half the price.

 

[ghostofchristmas]

If by “fun,” you mean “Popcorn all round!” then, yes, I suppose.

Steve wouldn’t think it fun. He’d be sickened. How quickly kids unlearn.

Understand:

Steve Jobs 2.0 didn’t make fabulous Technologies.

He didn’t make fabulous Products.

He made fabulous Markets. Out of vision: “This is the Market I want.”


View: https://youtu.be/48j493tfO-o


1:53–2:15, but the whole thing is boss. Greatest how-to-business masterclass you will ever watch; 5 minutes flat.

Steve Jobs 2.0 designed his market first. That dictated the product the market would buy. Lastly, wrote a shopping list of the tech and people needed to build his market, built it, and dropped it full-born upon the whole world.


View: https://youtu.be/VQKMoT-6XSg


Greatest salesman/performance artist in his generation. Maybe ever.

…

Tim Cook? Finest production pipeline artisan in the world. Nothing but undying respect for that man. Zero imagination; no risk tolerance at all. Rightly so for a logistics man. But slowly, unintentionally, poisoning the greatest consumer company the world has ever know.

Steve Jobs 2.0 made a machine for making markets. Tim Cook turned it machine for making money.

15 years on: More money than God, phenomenal profits, shareholders adore Tim’s stewardship. No new markets at all.

Rent-seeking. Apple is already dying.

Not Tim’s fault: Steve’s. Jobs was Apple’s critical point of failure—didn’t build his machine robust enough before he snuffed it.

[Folks, I know this vision won’t be welcome. Downvote away if you wish. But, like Jobs 1.0, I have now lived it, bought that shirt, learned my lumps. If you’ve done it too, you have your right to tell me I’m full of it. If you haven’t, you’re only posing.]

…

By the time you tech geeks realize Apple is utterly buggered, it will already be a decade too late for anyone to do anything about it. Shareholders can bail, dump a small loss on big suckers. Apple C-suite gets golden lifeboats all round! Apple, is boned.

The Apple that Jobs 2.0 built is a 2.5 trillion tonne supertanker. Incredible kinetic energy, massive inertia. When iceberg finally slides into view—and it will—it has no turning circle left.

The only thing keeping Apple alive any more is iPhone. Not AppleTV, not iPad, not this VisionPro problem-in-search-of-a-market nonsense, and definitely NOT Macintosh (iPhone content feedpump only).

One good sharp disruption to iPhone, someone else builds a better one, Apple’s done. When Apple did this to Microsoft, one day in 2007, simply by rewriting what “Personal Computing” means, Microsoft’s ownership of its world ended. Microsoft’s just the new IBM now, settling into its industry niche role next to fellow has-been IBM, to whom Microsoft did exactly the same thing 40 years ago.

IBM, Microsoft, will never own the global market again, never mind shape it. Just service now.

Apple doesn’t have their deep corporate-customer pockets to keep its senescent body somewhat inflated. Once its bubble bursts, bang, zoom, straight to the bottom.

It took me 3 decades, not to learn this stuff but to learn why I needed to learn it. (My first startup, utterly deaded it in 18 months. Ouch.) And I’d like to say I’m shocked, but I’m not, that almost nobody here knows this stuff either; can’t even begin to think like a world builder. Just hyperfixating on the one detail they do understand—technology—until they think that part is important. Technology thinking. (Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. It says “Plato’s Cave” on it.)

Tech is nothing. People is everything. Learn that, master it. And you can vision Reality.

--

“I like this ship! You know, it's exciting!”—Simon Pegg (Scotty) Star Trek 2009

(I need to go Market-craft, so setting this thread to Ignore. If anyone wants to DM, figure out for yourself first what Jobs 2.0 is teaching and I’m happy to chew the fat.)

Steve Jobs last great market he invented was Ping. He's just a luckier salesman than Elon.

 

[benwaggoner]

It's fun watching Apple iterate on this product. They've got the luxury of time to learn what the market needs (or is made to want). We get the chance to watch it all play out.

Yeah, I think they had to launch it and see which features and usage models stuck with customers.

I've been doing VR stuff on and off for more than half my life. I first encoded a VR video panorama in 1996, for the then cutting-edge 640x480 LCD glasses. We've had working VR for a long time, and three big hype waves of it being the next big thing. But no one has yet found what it is uniquely for. It's really hard to find anyone who spends 5+ hours a week in a VR headset doing anything other than non-immersive media consumption or gaming.

 

[zogus]

Yeah, I think they had to launch it and see which features and usage models stuck with customers.

I've been doing VR stuff on and off for more than half my life. I first encoded a VR video panorama in 1996, for the then cutting-edge 640x480 LCD glasses. We've had working VR for a long time, and three big hype waves of it being the next big thing. But no one has yet found what it is uniquely for. It's really hard to find anyone who spends 5+ hours a week in a VR headset doing anything other than non-immersive media consumption or gaming.

Which is probably why Apple has been pushing for AR over VR for years. I've seen some perfectly honest line-of-work AR solutions being proposed with Vision Pro, although the customer responses have generally been "Yeah, it's nice, definitely useful...but not $3500 + software cost per head useful, so we pass."

 

[TimeWinder]

It’s one screen. Curved glass, overengineered, and likely very expensive. It should be the first casualty in any refresh.

It (the exterior vision pro screen) is also incredibly dim, very slow refresh, and very low resolution. In real life it looks nothing like those bright, reactive demos videos from before it shipped. My wife needs to be within about a foot of me to even tell if it's showing my eyes.
It's weird -- useful or not, the rest of the device is very high quality, and then there's this crappy external display added on. I bet there's a story there, somewhere.

 

[hubick]

I know porn saved many other media formats in the past, but at $3499? Nah.

The first time I saw high quality VR porn I couldn't believe it. It's like OMG next level. It's VR's most "killer app" (so far), yet nobody wants to talk about it. If you value watching porn, and have the means to drop $3499 on it, I'd do it, except for the fact there's gonna be several competitors with comparable screens soon, for quite a bit less money.

 

[kre]

Hey folks, I’d love to hear from anyone who owns the Vision Pro. What the use case and what’s the experience like?

 

[Blaspheme]

And you can get an equivalent quality OLED TV and pair of Atmos headphones for less than half the price.

For some years I've used a high-quality OLED TV and AirPods Max and/or Pro. But Vision Pro as virtual cinema (using TV.app as the best implementation, but Disney does their own less expansive version) effectively supplants that for watching films (Vision Pro also makes a better monitor for a Mac).

Sitting in the same room as the TV the Vision Pro virtual screen dwarfs it entirely and basically spans the 5-metre front wall. After nearly a year of watching films that way, it's still a bit astonishing. The surround soundstage is detailed and entirely convincing too. So no, I almost never watch the TV. And certainly looking forward to shared viewing courtesy of visionOS 26.

 

[Blaspheme]

A lot of the problems with VR/AR is that it can never really get to a point where people don’t feel a little sick, things feel a little uncanny, and the experience doesn’t feel super isolating.

Isolating to a degree, perhaps with other people around, but if I’m working or watching by myself then not consequentially. Except watching horror films maybe! But I find Vision Pro is more uncanny in a good way (see virtual cinema above) and personally I’ve never felt even a little sick, either sitting still or moving about. You are talking about this device or generally?

 

[Earthmapper]

What they are doing is cool, but I want more.

I provide GIS systems and applications for subterranean utilities. A tool like this is by far the most promising advancement I've seen so far that could improve the life of the planners and workers in civil engineering. If they could incorporate RTK (real-time kinematic) positioning into the device, the economy of scale would make the correction service very affordable for everyone and open up a whole new class of augmented reality applications that do much more than provide a unique or broader screen space.

 

[serac]

I mean, there’s so much wrong in this post, but let’s just concentrate for now on: I wasn’t aware Steve was behind the consumer juggernaut that is AirPods; and I’m pretty sure Apple wasn’t the world’s biggest watchmaker during his time.

AirPods and iWatch are upsells to iPhone.

Ask yourself: Take iPhone out of the picture, what happens to everything else Apple produces today?

1. Mac. Dies. Already functionally dead as a standalone product. Apple maintains macOS solely as a feedpump for iOS App Store. Because Apple isn’t completely stupid and understands to control its own destiny it must retain control of the building foundation. 1960s technology invented by Doug Engelbart, and when Engelbart died his obituary read “Inventor of the Mouse.”

2. iPad. Dies. Good first step to ubiquitous digital all-Apple home. Solid step to ubiquitous digital all-Apple K12 education. Apple started well…and just stopped. Something died. Family iPad is fobbed off to the kids, to divert from greater toys and tools. Edu iPad, nuked to bedrock by ChromeBook.

3. Apple TV [Hardware]. Give me a break! Did I mention somebody died? A dongle hung on the back of your 80" Sony Bravia is not a product, it’s a flesh wound.

Spoiler: [Would you like to know more?]

I genuinely wonder what Jobs was thinking here, not taking the plunge on the second iteration. (Though with cancer returning and iPhone exploding, may just be he hit the max. number of balls he could juggle at one time. Should have delegated tho’.)

Television sets? Yes, world’s most saturated market. But, fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son, and one industry’s big bloated senescent body is one fast smart disruptor’s next all-you-can-eat buffet. All Steve had to do was hang a 40" solid black glass slab on every Apple employee’s home wall for a year. The true Apple TV would have invented itself! Opening already lost. Move along.

4. Apple TV [Service]. See Apple TV the box. Apple’s original and re-programming was already late to the game when it launched. Streamers today are dime to a dozen. Currently learning that customers are prepared to pay for one or two at most; one or zero in a recession.

Spoiler: [...]

Q. “How much is your product worth?” A. “As much as the market is willing to bear.” (Old business saw.) All streaming service vendors currently run on expectations that customers will purchase their product to get its original programming. Which they will, if you are Disney, or maybe second-tier Netflix. The rest? Pfft. Where have we seen a pattern like this before? iOS, Android, everybody else (Windows Phone/Symbian/Blackberry). Or Macintosh, Windows, everyone else (various). Or IBM, everybody else (BUNCH).

In practice, customers will fit themselves into one or other of the top two market leaders, whichever takes less squeezing. All the other vendors from #3 downwards, sooner or later squeezed out.

Spoiler: [...]

(It may be that second-tier vendors wise up, realize syndicating their exclusive shows to each other after first run actually strengthens their collective earnings, keeping them in the game longer. Had e.g. Amazon done this for The Expanse, we’d all be ruled by Martians by now.)

5. Apple Car.

Spoiler: [...]

Apple: “LOL, gotcha!” You: “Oh, Tim. You wag!”

Look, as Apple’s COO, Cook was best logistics fabricator in existence. But as CEO couldn’t even decide what ports to put on MacBook, directed New Product development engineers build both. (Can’t find the original anecdote so here’s a video reenactment.) If he knew this wasn’t his forte, he should’ve promoted a 2nd-tier underling who could to his CPO, delegated all that. Steve centralized everything, ’cos Steve could do everything. Incredibly efficient, zero fault-tolerant redundancy. Cook was great at one job. He could’ve, should’ve delegated all the others safely, but Forstall’s little “let’s blow up a skiff” move taught him not to. Mistakes all round.

6. Mac Pro (aka Trashcan, Cheesegrater). Not even a consumer product. Tiny, irrelevant tree sucker. No tree! Next!

Spoiler: [...]

I don’t know, do these still exist? Either way, top-end AV workstations are the least Apple-the-consumer-company product ever. (Over-wealthy fanboy boxen don’t count.) Handful of incredibly niche vertical market that couldn’t even support powerhouses SGI/Sun eventually. Huge margin, no volume at all. Only reason desktop workstation isn’t extinct today is that massively parallel server farms still have latency, so local data crunching still has a place. Realistically: buy a Windows workstation; you get an SLA with that. Post-blowout IBM and MS can burn nearly forever like a white dwarf on minimal fuel. Apple’s supernova won’t leave that much. Industry will dump Apple workstations the second its center starts to fall out out. No matter how good a premium technology, the Premium Product they purchase is absolute business continuity.

7. Earrings and bangles. Already done these. Customers buy luxury products for their luxury associations. One Osborne/Ratner/Elop boner, no more luxury, no more store.

8. iCloud. If you need this one explained, I can’t help you.

9. Any other things? Honestly, I pay very little attention to Apple any more. Their output’s not significant, and hasn’t been for years. The Cook board has already made Apple the next Microsoft, 20 years after Apple made Microsoft the next IBM.

Spoiler: Business 101 stuff

This stuff is incredibly basic Business 101. I offered you Steve’s 5-minute masterclass to how the whole damn machine actually works, so here’s a first-hand testimonial if you’d prefer to try that:

Until and unless you understand Market > Product ≫ Technology, you know exactly two things: 1. how to earn top Slashdot karma, and 2. how to utterly bone yourself.

In the last quarter-century, I have conceived, developed, tested, used, documented, shared, and production-proved two technologies unrivaled on the planet (this is not a joke). Built in a cave, out of scraps (this is very slightly).

I know exactly where you are standing now. You’re an expert in Technology. You think this qualifies you to pronounce on Technology’s industry. You are wrong. Been there, done that. Twice too:

• First cost me 10–100K users and my foot permanently in Apple’s door, a phenomenal vantage point from which I could try shape a billion users’ future just a tiny bit.

• Second cost me my tech, $150K investment, and 3 years of my life.

Will I make the same mistake a third time? Nope. I’m a very slow learner but do eventually learn. Tech is least important. Know your market first.

If you watched Jobs’ lecture, the bit I connect to: scars. It’s a learning process.

When you have your own, look me up! Touch-wood there’s a $20Bn corporation and a $2Bn corporation with knifes drawn at dawn, and, in between, this Man With No Name yukking it up.

HTH

 

[Zeppos]

“For example, the headset will soon support native playback of 3D video recorded by people other than Apple and downloaded from anywhere on the Internet”

So……. porn. Excellent.

Maybe apple should serve porn. Of course, they'd have to reinvent the concept. Think different! Suggestions anyone?

 

[serac]

What they are doing is cool, but I want more.

I provide GIS systems and applications for subterranean utilities. A tool like this is by far the most promising advancement I've seen so far that could improve the life of the planners and workers in civil engineering. If they could incorporate RTK (real-time kinematic) positioning into the device, the economy of scale would make the correction service very affordable for everyone and open up a whole new class of augmented reality applications that do much more than provide a unique or broader screen space.

+1. And if Apple were a $10M company today servicing high-end technical markets, it would have heard every word you just said and say “Terrific! Tell us exactly what you need.”

BUT… this Apple today is a $400Bn company, servicing one global consumer market 2Bn strong. Can’t even hear you over the sound of its own money streams.

Apple has no use for your market, its unique needs and wants. Apple earns by selling 200M iPhones/year to the world, not 10,000 artisanal GIS systems to a niche vertical market.

Apple’s capacity for such niche-market adaptability and low-volume profitability died around Xserve. Right choice for its spectacular growth. But it does restrict the types of markets it can effectively target. Global, homogenous, consumer markets are Apple now.

…

This doesn’t mean Apple couldn’t vacuum up the entire GIS market if it wanted it.

I can see one great reason this would be worth it: Your specialist market already knows exactly what it needs and wants; and its needs exactly the right company to meet it.

Not Apple itself—wrong shape and size of business. However, Apple is easily big enough to manufacture new companies if it wants and has a market for them. (It has done this before, e.g. Claris).

Spoiler: What if…

Here is what Apple could have done 5-10 years ago, had it had started with Market and worked back (as Jobs taught), not made a neat tech and then try to work out how/who/why to sell it:

Identify a vertical highly-specialized market, e.g. yours with a crystal-clear need that needs serviced. Rigorous performance demands, absolute bleeding-edge; needs and wants a specialist product tailored to fit, and has the specialist budget for it. The moment Apple even thought of doing a headset, it should have identified that market and spun up VPGIS as a wholly-owned, wholly-independent company. Hand all VisionPro work to it, with its own board, goals, and startup budget, and leave it to run itself for 5 years.

This company develops and hones the high-cost professional-market new product, like an ATG or Xerox Parc except it sells its own product so it is self-funding and self-improving too. Write its charter so all employees from CEO to cleaner take 100% of the profit home, biasing the split in favor of so lower ranks receive a bigger percentage. This creates a lot of very smart, engaged, motivated people to excel. Experts who know their expert audience inside-out, and vice-versa.

Sell their product to its target market. All customers are two-way NDA’d, and they will respect the NDA or they will lose access to your product. Now watch closely how the product fares in production use, and revise and refine its design and implementation constantly. Not just the device, the whole support ecosystem growing around it. The market will be happy to pay a high premium in exchange for their seat at the design table, shaping the product. A product designed by them, for them.

All t daily learning-by-doing, and tight fast feedback loop with expert customers, generates a ton of information. That information is used daily by the company, so it’s production-proven knowledge. And that production-proven knowledge is sent back to the parent company (Apple), so that when/if parent decides it’s time to build a consumer version it already has all the technical unknowns, implementation bugs, fabrication processes knocked out, plus all the post-sale stats on how the device holds together out in the field.

And while “VisionPro (GIS) Inc” is trekking its 5-year mission, the mothership determines if there is a market for its own mass-produced, mass-marketed consumer-market iVision:

1. Who is iVision’s intended market?

2. What problem(s) do these customers have which [only] iVision will solve?

3. Etc, etc, etc. Until,

4. Sell iVision.

5. Profit.

…

This seems a more complex solution than Apple building a device and selling it itself. It is! More moving parts. BUT…

All of these parts are highly cohesive and loosely coupled. i.e. Each company, is designed to do one job optimally, completely uninfluenced and unimpeded by direction, inertia, needs, or bureacracy of the other, e.g.:

1. A behemoth like Apple can crush the world. Incredible mass. Massive inertia. No turning circle.

OR:

VPGIS can turn on a penny.

2. Apple customers adore novelties, surprises, one-more-thing, “Shiny!” Jobs 2.0’s Apple was THE market leader in creating, destroying, disrupting markets. Astonishing work.

OR:

VPGIS customers will murder a vendor that does that, out to parking lot and beaten to death with TPS covers. Niche vertical market customers require the exact opposite of mass-market consumers.

3. And so on.

There’s no way to reconcile these diametrically opposed world-views and business objectives within one body. Something will get compromised. (McDonnell-Douglas’s post-takeover of Boeing was an especially nasty example of conflict resolution, but typically the small upstart department is wrecked by the entrenched—just ask any MS department that wasn’t Windows or Office.) The only viable answer is to separate them cleanly so each is free to find its own way, what works best for the point in its evolution it’s now at.

One more thing: VPGIS’s GIS/AR headset isn’t the product VPGIS sells. The product is VPGIS itself: device, support, and seat at its design table. Very, very powerful product, done right.

…

TL;DR: A company must optimally adapt itself to its target market, not the other way about.

That’s my best current working hypothesis on How To Business, which anyone who has more applied experience than I do is welcome to call “horseshit” and show me how Businessing is really done. Fingers-crossed I’m in the right ballpark tho’.

------

@Aurich: I know this is outside the “Dear readers” thread but if you want to punt it to editorial team, please do!

Spoiler: “How to build a tech business” interviews

Have you considered trying business-dev war story interviews, similar to the game-dev war stories you’ve run? I loved those Dead Space interviews! (How things are made fascinates me more than things themselves.) Find a few tech industry veterans who understand their tech and how to business it, and how to weave great companies and stories from the union.

Tales of both successes and failures please! I lost my first $100K tech startup ’cos I didn’t have a beginner’s HowTo checklist of all the things NOT to do. (If I had a TARDIS I’d gladly go back 10 years to pay you $50K for one, and I’d have a $5M company now.)

I’m guessing this won’t immediately appeal to a lot of Ars readers; kids nowadays want to hear about spaceships with pew-pew lasers and fantasize of building their own; not so much Actual Reality of passion, ambition, endless hours, copious shitwork, getting kicked in the teeth; and still grinding it thru’ all till success or shirt. (Sounds suspiciously like work…)

e.g. I’ve devoured Ray Kroc’s Grinding It Out book plus The Founder movie adaption. Dick and Mac’s ”Speedee Service System” is exactly the sort of brilliant tech innovation folks here love to create, yet don’t realize the $Bn company built around it is brilliant creative work too.

But I know I can use all the pointers I can get; there will be some techies who realize they need to develop these skills to bring their own amazing ideas to market success; and this sort of “cross-pollination” article could draw in new readers from the other side: people already skilled in building businesses and always searching for hot new tech products and tech brains to build them. Hey, best way to change our world is to own the means to do it!

 

[Aurich]

@Aurich: I know this is outside the “Dear readers” thread but if you want to punt it to editorial team, please do!

I don't think we have the resources at the moment to do more video series like that unfortunately.

 

[Blaspheme]

Honestly, I pay very little attention to Apple any more.

Ha! We can only hope.

 

[serac]

[re. Newton] Hopefully it won’t take a near bankruptcy and complete reinvention of the company from the top down to do it!

Hmm, I remember Newton was Scully’s pet, and that it didn’t find its self-sustaining growth market. But my impression was Newton had a pretty clear picture of its target market: mobile business users. A decade before Blackberry did.

If my memory is correct (it might not be), what cratered Newton was Scully’s team understanding of that market: they did not understand it well enough:

• Mobile business users? Right market.

•Newton PDA? Right product for that market.

• Apple Computers? Wrong brand for that market. Fatally so. Except for Print-Publishing the “Apple” brand was instant death, no industry used Macs—the company was an industry joke, half-dead already.

Had Apple spun up a new independent B2B company called Business International Machines, untainted by smelly rotting fruit, installed an ebullient Steve Ballmer clone as its CEO and ordered him to sell the hell out of “Ford-N” PIM for his job, I think Blackberry would never have existed: BIM would’ve taken its market already.

…

(Scully shouldn’t feel too bad. When MS’s new product folks showed their bleeding-edge Courier prototype to Steve and Bill, Steve said “I don’t get it” and Bill said “Does it run Outlook?” and the Courier team said “No.” Bad answer. Courier got immediately canned, and the road to iPhone was laid. Missteps all round, and MS lost “Personal Computing” not long after.)

…

Newton isn’t to blame for Apple’s 90s plunge towards bankruptcy though. Apple 1.0 was already steering sideways by time Steve got kicked out, and it just kept on getting worse. Everyone’s kids playing with themselves for fun, no serious grownups asking “Who, Why, and Where the hell is our paying market for all this whizzy stuff?” Vast monies poured into new product development, lots of brilliant ideas. None of which ever created the new markets to buy all those products. Group insanity, really.

Apple’s last card: its tightly-coupled graphics market that would pay the earth for what Apple was selling: the best prepress productivity platform in the world. Top-end Macs and their exclusive 3rd-party app and tool ecosystem. That locked-in lifeline kept Apple alive just long enough for the right conditions for Steve’s return to emerge. Otherwise Apple would have extinct out by late-90s, just another also-ran flatted by Microsoft’s juggernaut.

(Michael Dell wasn’t wrong when he said: return money to shareholders and close the company down. Just didn’t notice something quietly evolving in the shadows, over where the workstations lived.

The Steve 1.0, who invented Apple 1.0 in the garage, was a snot-nosed kid. A amazing flash-in-the-pan first work; lacked staying power. Scully kicking Jobs out for his decade in the wilderness was best thing that ever happened to the man. Made him grow up. The Jobs that founded NeXT already knew how to make greatest hardware and software in the work. And he’d just been taught the lesson of his life in how NOT to sell stuff. So, he fixed this. Taught himself How To Business right, forged Jobs 2.0, and rest of his life is History!

…

Last ever product Jobs should have made? A super-NDA’d, private, internal training school: “How to Business Like Steve Jobs 3.0.” That Apple would likely own the world by now—there’s worse ways to live!

 

[Ms. L---------]

Hey folks, I’d love to hear from anyone who owns the Vision Pro. What the use case and what’s the experience like?

I’ll bite. I own one, and I use it regularly. But many people would find my use cases narrow.

1. Vision Pro + MacBook + mouse is the best hotel-room computing experience I know. I spend a surprisingly large amount of time editing LaTeX files in hotel rooms. And my myopic, astigmatic, presbyopic eyes aren’t great for laptop screens even with glasses. Having a giant screen that’s all in focus is a great advantage. Hanging web pages and pdfs in the air for reference is really nice, too.

(The MacBook isn’t required; the Vision Pro can run the LaTeX environment. But I’d still need a keyboard, and I’m traveling with the MacBook anyway. Weirdly, an iPad with a keyboard won’t do.)

2. Vision Pro + AirPods Pro provides the best entertainment for a long flight. It’s not worth the trouble during the part where the flight attendants are fussing with you; an iPad is better then. But once things calm down, it’s excellent. The video experience isn’t as good as my home theater, but the Vision Pro was cheaper, and it’s not that much worse. The Airpods Pro provide good audio, but can’t eliminate all the plane noise. (In a private, quiet environment, the built-in speakers are strikingly good.)

People ask about the weight. The weight is real, and will wear on me if I sit upright or stand. It’s not a problem if I recline my seat.

3. For certain Mac games, Vision Pro + MacBook in a recliner is excellent. I’ve played day-long sessions of Factorio that way. It’s probably like having one of those scorpion gaming chairs, except I can use the chair for other things when I’m not gaming.

(If I take the headset off, I’ll have to take a minute to adjust everything when you put it back on. I can get up and get a drink or something while wearing it, but carrying the battery is awkward. And it complains when I walk through a doorway: “You’re too close to an object!”)

4. If I have back trouble, lying flat on the floor with Safari or a video app on the ceiling is excellent. It makes me wonder why so many screens in my life are vertical or tilted upward.

5. The environments are relaxing, to the point of being soporific. At least until I start feeling like I should be wearing protective equipment suitable for the desert/snowy field/mountain peak/lunar plain. The beach on Bali is comfortable.

Things I’ve learned:

Avoiding eye strain is all about getting the fit right. Plan to spend five to ten seconds adjusting it carefully every time you put it on. (After it’s done authenticating and complaining about the fit, that is; the software is annoyingly chatty when you’ve just put it on.)

Apple’s carrying case is ridiculous. But the device comes with a front cover and some curved heavy cardboard. With a little trimming, the cardboard will fit under the eye cushion, protecting the lenses. That’s enough for me to feel ok about putting it in a carry-on bag. It’s still much more awkwardly shaped than an iPad.

When traveling, the eye and hand adjustments will get out of whack. Go to the control panel to readjust them. Don’t forget the interpupilary distance adjustment. (Typing your password before you can adjust things is very frustrating. I hope they fix that soon.)

Software specifically for the Vision Pro is in its infancy. It reminds me of the early days of the iPhone. Lots of demo-ware, but few well-designed, useful apps. The design language isn’t well developed either. Habits from devices with limited screens don’t carry over well. (Why do panels open inward from the sides of a document, covering up my content? They could just as easily open outward into empty space.) Safari and the video players work well.

Likewise the immersive video. It’s very, very impressive, but there’s not much of it yet.

Finally, I’ve come to realize that the principal problems of the iPad come from it having limited size and no ability to levitate. The Vision Pro essentially gives you unlimited giant levitating iPads, plus one Mac screen. That may not sound like much, but it is very nice.

 

[serac]

Ha! We can only hope.

LOL. Take your +1.

Spoiler: You are likely to be eaten by a grue

Mind, I got my first Mac before half of you existed. Classic II, ’92. Just two colors, postage-stamp screen—I was instantly hooked. My kind of computing!

ZX81 (’82!), BBC B, Classic II (Word 5, MacDraw, StyleWriter!), Performa 630 (Marathon!), 7500 (shitbox!), G3 (workhorse), iBook (Tangerine Terror/Ship of Theseus—under desk RN!), PowerBook G4 (Titanium, shit hinges), another Powerbook G4 (17" Alu, solid hinges, beast), MacBook Pro (15" Alu), MBP Retina (15"; first-gen 2012 and it 100% didn’t suck; flawless [except MagSafe needs manual cleaning], best machine I ever owned, love of my life; its corpse sleeps under my gardening stuff—one glass of water, fuck), MBP Retina (15" 2016—fucking banana that couldn’t even do lemon right!); current beastie is MBP Retina (14" 2021; loaded, primary production box to date). Also somewhat responsible for variety of iPads, and iPhones for me and fam over the decades; couple Windows mini PCs, various handme-up/down/overs which typical got Linux loaded; one HP microserver waiting in cupboard to be used one of these days. And, new addition, a shiny XPS 13 to learn VS on. Pretty. Much prettier than MBP21. Michael Dell honor satisfied.

Nominally cromulent techie, even for a Machead.

Spoiler: He’s fallen in the water

Oh, and there was that one time Apple asked if they could put my software in Mac OS X. How often has Apple asked you, a no-name OSS dev, if they can put your software in Mac OS X? No? Weird. Second-best tech I ever made, best in world in what it could do by 12 parsecs, 1000 devoted delighted users already in the bag, starting to generate a real network effect, super looking forward to seeing what its next 99,000 users might create.

Someone in Apple silently nixed it, I suspect ’cos it made theirs look bad. (It was.) I had no idea. But they just stopped talking.

Protip: If a company of size and importantance of Apple ever asks you “Can we use your stuff?”, the correct answer is “YES” AND, instantly, “What can I do to help sell it?” ’Cos if that opportunity slides off deck (’cos you did not do enough to secure it OR for any other reason), do not expect another.

Just one of several priceless fuckups/valuable teaching moments, from back when I didn’t know there’s a critical difference between Technology and Product and Market. Which I now do. Just had to learn the hard way, ’cos I’m dumb.

…

In answer to your zinger: I don’t pay attention to Apple’s output.

I pay attention to How To Business Good. This includes observing How NOT To Business. Everyone else’s fuck ups are much cheaper than your own!

Tim Cook’s C-suite has been helpfully offering a very helpful, free, training course in the second for the last decade. Oh how far the exceptional have slidden to merely mediocre.

Genuinely, I really do hope Apple products will one day be enlightening again. Till then, XPS 13. Sensible insurance policy (after indemnity). Business Continuity FTW!

…

Look, if you hadn’t wanted me to expound, you’d all have boosted my Jobs video intead. He explained it way better, in 5mins too!

 

[serac]

p.s. Downvoters, cool! I love smart people explaining exactly how I am wrong! (No rush.)

 

[serac]

I don't think we have the resources at the moment to do more video series like that unfortunately.

NP, appreciate the vids are something special. Text can work too, pictures help.

 

[Blaspheme]

LOL. Take your +1.

Glad you enjoyed it. Impressed by your nested spoilers btw. In the old Battlefront days I'd take up the arguments, but I was here for rare Vision Pro discussions, and that stuff is tangential.

 

[Blaspheme]

I’ll bite. I own one, and I use it regularly. But many people would find my use cases narrow.

1. Vision Pro + MacBook + mouse is the best hotel-room computing experience I know. I spend a surprisingly large amount of time editing LaTeX files in hotel rooms. And my myopic, astigmatic, presbyopic eyes aren’t great for laptop screens even with glasses. Having a giant screen that’s all in focus is a great advantage. Hanging web pages and pdfs in the air for reference is really nice, too.

(The MacBook isn’t required; the Vision Pro can run the LaTeX environment. But I’d still need a keyboard, and I’m traveling with the MacBook anyway. Weirdly, an iPad with a keyboard won’t do.)

2. Vision Pro + AirPods Pro provides the best entertainment for a long flight. It’s not worth the trouble during the part where the flight attendants are fussing with you; an iPad is better then. But once things calm down, it’s excellent. The video experience isn’t as good as my home theater, but the Vision Pro was cheaper, and it’s not that much worse. The Airpods Pro provide good audio, but can’t eliminate all the plane noise. (In a private, quiet environment, the built-in speakers are strikingly good.)

People ask about the weight. The weight is real, and will wear on me if I sit upright or stand. It’s not a problem if I recline my seat.

3. For certain Mac games, Vision Pro + MacBook in a recliner is excellent. I’ve played day-long sessions of Factorio that way. It’s probably like having one of those scorpion gaming chairs, except I can use the chair for other things when I’m not gaming.

(If I take the headset off, I’ll have to take a minute to adjust everything when you put it back on. I can get up and get a drink or something while wearing it, but carrying the battery is awkward. And it complains when I walk through a doorway: “You’re too close to an object!”)

4. If I have back trouble, lying flat on the floor with Safari or a video app on the ceiling is excellent. It makes me wonder why so many screens in my life are vertical or tilted upward.

5. The environments are relaxing, to the point of being soporific. At least until I start feeling like I should be wearing protective equipment suitable for the desert/snowy field/mountain peak/lunar plain. The beach on Bali is comfortable.

Things I’ve learned:

Avoiding eye strain is all about getting the fit right. Plan to spend five to ten seconds adjusting it carefully every time you put it on. (After it’s done authenticating and complaining about the fit, that is; the software is annoyingly chatty when you’ve just put it on.)

Apple’s carrying case is ridiculous. But the device comes with a front cover and some curved heavy cardboard. With a little trimming, the cardboard will fit under the eye cushion, protecting the lenses. That’s enough for me to feel ok about putting it in a carry-on bag. It’s still much more awkwardly shaped than an iPad.

When traveling, the eye and hand adjustments will get out of whack. Go to the control panel to readjust them. Don’t forget the interpupilary distance adjustment. (Typing your password before you can adjust things is very frustrating. I hope they fix that soon.)

Software specifically for the Vision Pro is in its infancy. It reminds me of the early days of the iPhone. Lots of demo-ware, but few well-designed, useful apps. The design language isn’t well developed either. Habits from devices with limited screens don’t carry over well. (Why do panels open inward from the sides of a document, covering up my content? They could just as easily open outward into empty space.) Safari and the video players work well.

Likewise the immersive video. It’s very, very impressive, but there’s not much of it yet.

Finally, I’ve come to realize that the principal problems of the iPad come from it having limited size and no ability to levitate. The Vision Pro essentially gives you unlimited giant levitating iPads, plus one Mac screen. That may not sound like much, but it is very nice.

Great post (and conclusion) quite similar to my experience.

 

[Earthmapper]

+1. And if Apple were a $10M company today servicing high-end technical markets, it would have heard every word you just said and say “Terrific! Tell us exactly what you need.”

BUT… this Apple today is a $400Bn company, servicing one global consumer market 2Bn strong. Can’t even hear you over the sound of its own money streams.

My niche case aside, I'm really just saying making RTK accuracy ubiquitous would fix a lot of the issues that affect user comfort and limit current development.

 

[TimeWinder]

People ask about the weight. The weight is real, and will wear on me if I sit upright or stand. It’s not a problem if I recline my seat.

4. If I have back trouble, lying flat on the floor with Safari or a video app on the ceiling is excellent. It makes me wonder why so many screens in my life are vertical or tilted upward.

I agree, especially with the reclining for comfort part. It goes from "uncomfortable in minutes, or after a long day, instantly" to "can watch it for hours", even with a third-party support rig on it. I can easily watch a few movies in a row in bed if I want.

But...for things other than just TV/Movie-like video watching, the software seriously fights with you when reclining, and in many cases (3D video on the web, for example), is entirely unusable when not basically straight upright, since it insists on aligning the virtual and real horizons, and positions necessary content (like the move bars for windows, and any "observed from above" content) in real-world "down." I have frequently (multiple times an hour) had to "unrecline" or stand up entirely in able to perform simple tasks, because I simply cannot incline my chin INSIDE my chest. This doesn't affect the TV/Movie scenario, but any kind of real work or WebXR content is nearly impossible when reclined more than maybe fifteen degrees.

For all the folks in the thread whose killer app is 3D web porn:

1. Hopefully you consume it sitting upright or standing, since the current implementation of WebXR fixes the horizon in place.
2. The built-in sound system is leaky, so it's not a private experience unless you're using Airpods.

Less tongue-in-cheek for audio in general, I'm one of those people for whom earbuds simply don't stay in my ears. You can use any bluetooth compatible headset with it (I use bone conduction ones that fit easily under the headset), but it took me a while to find it -- the settings for a BT headset aren't in Sound, they're in Accessibility.

 

[benwaggoner]

For some years I've used a high-quality OLED TV and AirPods Max and/or Pro. But Vision Pro as virtual cinema (using TV.app as the best implementation, but Disney does their own less expansive version) effectively supplants that for watching films (Vision Pro also makes a better monitor for a Mac).

Sitting in the same room as the TV the Vision Pro virtual screen dwarfs it entirely and basically spans the 5-metre front wall. After nearly a year of watching films that way, it's still a bit astonishing. The surround soundstage is detailed and entirely convincing too. So no, I almost never watch the TV. And certainly looking forward to shared viewing courtesy of visionOS 26.

It's interesting to hear a variety of perspectives on such subjective things. I am, to put it mildly, a display/digital video nerd, and can be very good at not being able to see the forest for the leaves.

The AVP certainly gives a good image, but its peak brightness is a lot less than a good OLED in a dark room, so it can't deliver the same kind of highlights and saturation with HDR content. For SDR content they'll be pretty equivalent. And I find the optics with my Zeiss lenses in the AVP less sharp than with my TV and glasses.

Still, no doubt the AVP experience is miles ahead any hotel TV! Or a lot of environments where you are a long distance from a smaller TV, or have bright ambient light.

 

[benwaggoner]

Which is probably why Apple has been pushing for AR over VR for years. I've seen some perfectly honest line-of-work AR solutions being proposed with Vision Pro, although the customer responses have generally been "Yeah, it's nice, definitely useful...but not $3500 + software cost per head useful, so we pass."

Yeah, so much of the AVP cost and weight is for the AR features. A "headphones for the eyes" only version would be a lot cheaper and lighter, not needing the cameras, gyroscopes, same degree of processing power, etcetera.

No one has found a compelling mass market consumer AR experience yet, though, and not for a lack of trying.

There's been literal billions of dollars spent trying to make compelling AR and VR content to date, and all together they haven't been compelling enough to get ever 1M people to wear a headset for 10 hours a week.

Pokemon Go is probably the most popular "AR" experience ever, but I expect most users deactivated the AR mode within the first month of play.

 

[Blaspheme]

It's interesting to hear a variety of perspectives on such subjective things. I am, to put it mildly, a display/digital video nerd, and can be very good at not being able to see the forest for the leaves.

The AVP certainly gives a good image, but its peak brightness is a lot less than a good OLED in a dark room, so it can't deliver the same kind of highlights and saturation with HDR content. For SDR content they'll be pretty equivalent. And I find the optics with my Zeiss lenses in the AVP less sharp than with my TV and glasses.

Still, no doubt the AVP experience is miles ahead any hotel TV! Or a lot of environments where you are a long distance from a smaller TV, or have bright ambient light.

I'm glad this thread is still active and that you replied.

I can add some specifics as you are clearly into such things. My TV is 55" (current me would tell past me to get the 66 or 77-inch model, but past me had a budget and wouldn't have bought a Vision Pro either) and I'm currently sitting 3 metres from it. At that distance a (wide format) film in Apple's virtual cinema is approx three times as wide and twice as high (I like the 'front row' setting). A film or show in 16x9 is less wide (logically two times) and the largest image in third party apps is less dramatic.

I could certainly get a bigger TV to improve the comparison and/or sit a metre closer to perceive the TV's actual sharpness etc. But with any/all of these caveats I really never prefer to watch on the TV screen (unless in company).

Fyi that screen is a Sony A1 OLED (so top of their range when I purchased it circa 2017). I'm not a huge fan of HDR peak brightness in program material so probably discount that capability when considering Vision Pro image characteristics but I think you are correct on that aspect.

Subjectively Vision Pro is like a very good projector in a darkened room I'd say, with no need to darken the room. I've tried it with either contacts or Zeiss lenses. I don't need glasses for three metres to the TV but do if it's much closer). For me (again subjectively) the Vision Pro image size makes image detail easier to perceive, so my impression (of detail, and generally) is more favourable.

 

[benwaggoner]

I can add some specifics as you are clearly into such things. My TV is 55" (current me would tell past me to get the 66 or 77-inch model, but past me had a budget and wouldn't have bought a Vision Pro either) and I'm currently sitting 3 metres from it. At that distance a (wide format) film in Apple's virtual cinema is approx three times as wide and twice as high (I like the 'front row' setting). A film or show in 16x9 is less wide (logically two times) and the largest image in third party apps is less dramatic.

Yeah, that's too long to be able to resolve 4K detail. Ideally you'd want to be maybe 1.8 m for full detail perception on a 55". You'll get more out of the VSP in that scenario. Of course, you can also get a 75" for $3500 these days.

Fyi that screen is a Sony A1 OLED (so top of their range when I purchased it circa 2017). I'm not a huge fan of HDR peak brightness in program material so probably discount that capability when considering Vision Pro image characteristics but I think you are correct on that aspect.

Huh. How do you mean you are not a fan? You find HDR material too bright?

And while that is a good 2017 model, OLEDs do lose brightness with age, so you're not getting anywhere near the peak brightness some HDR content has these days out of that display. Also, as the peak brightness tends to be in small specular highlights, the distance from the screen further reduced the visual impact.

Subjectively Vision Pro is like a very good projector in a darkened room I'd say, with no need to darken the room. I've tried it with either contacts or Zeiss lenses. I don't need glasses for three metres to the TV but do if it's much closer). For me (again subjectively) the Vision Pro image size makes image detail easier to perceive, so my impression (of detail, and generally) is more favourable.

Makes sense given your scenario and preferences. If you had a 75" Sony A95L and sat about 2m from that in a dark room, you'd get an even better experience. But the upgrade might not be worth that effort to you.

 

[tgx]

It's so dystopic that we are at a stage where we need fake windows in our darkened, air-conditioned workpods, yet I think a fake window looking over a beautiful forest would meaningfully improve my mental health at this point.

Black Mirror

 

[Blaspheme]

Yeah, that's too long to be able to resolve 4K detail. Ideally you'd want to be maybe 1.8 m for full detail perception on a 55". You'll get more out of the VSP in that scenario. Of course, you can also get a 75" for $3500 these days.


Huh. How do you mean you are not a fan? You find HDR material too bright?

And while that is a good 2017 model, OLEDs do lose brightness with age, so you're not getting anywhere near the peak brightness some HDR content has these days out of that display. Also, as the peak brightness tends to be in small specular highlights, the distance from the screen further reduced the visual impact.


Makes sense given your scenario and preferences. If you had a 75" Sony A95L and sat about 2m from that in a dark room, you'd get an even better experience. But the upgrade might not be worth that effort to you.

Yes 55” is on the small size these days. When mine was new we did sit closer. Personally I found HDR highlights in certain material a bit odd and they somewhat reduced immersion. Not a big deal though and I’m sure others like it.

To come close to Vision Pro virtual cinema apparent size would mean a very large (say 88/93”) TV I reckon. Not inexpensive and awkward for my domicile which lacks clear walls for mounting same (and I prefer screens that also work as objects in a room).