Mastodawn

IfMatt Jun 6, 2023

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️

I think it's interesting that Apple's approach to AR is trying to make it a computer experience, not a metaverse experience. You're not seeing fake people in a fake room. You're seeing a normal teleconferencing interaction that has been elevated because you can turn your head and see different pieces of it and because you can show a large format of your presentation as if you had many screens that could hover anywhere in the room and spatial audio gives you better sound awareness.

The experience they're selling isn't "check out this new universe we've created." It's "look at what we can do when we can put displays anywhere and let you interact with computing in a new way." It's "what if you could be on an airplane with a 70 inch TV?"

#WWDC #WWDC23 #Apple

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 5, 2023

I'm still a bit skeptical of AR, but if I were someone on a plane once a month, this seems like it would be amazing. If most of my time were giving big presentations, it seems like it could make it a nicer experience.

For myself, I can even see a future writing code in it (with a keyboard/mouse). Instead of wrangling multiple displays, I would basically have whatever displays I want of whatever size I want. Each window is its own display and I can move my head between them.

I've never found metaverse stuff compelling. I do find the idea of breaking free of display constraints to be interesting. It might not work well enough, it's expensive at the moment, etc. However, it is something different that has piqued my curiosity and I'm really interested where people will take it.

#WWDC #WWDC23 #Apple

Dan Sugalski Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon The AR focus seems like the right one to me, too. It's probably quite a few revisions before I'd want one to replace actual physical screens, but it looks like it could get there.

I suspect going AR also let them avoid the whole VR motion sickness issue some folks have.

Avi Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon yes. Then again the HomePod was / is amazing but suffered from being priced on the wrong side of the gini index curve and that cost it a lot. I really hope this will not happen here

@LilahTovMoon Absolutely agree! I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. To be able to set up a complete virtual space to work in, while still being available in meat space is a killer app for me.

Beto in Beta Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon @Andrewhinton Agree this could be an actual 9-5 work solution.

Jan Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon When I saw you could use your keyboard, I got really excited about writing code in it.

Son of a Sailor Jun 6, 2023

@LilahTovMoon I can imagine having an absolute blast writing code with this as the display. So much real estate...

And it's so smart of Apple to barely use the terms AR or VR, and go with their new term Spatial Computing. It puts the story of HOW the tech is used front and center, and makes the tech itself an implementation detail.

ɔᴚ Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon they are actually making a device for people rather than pursuing a cyberpunk future:

It’s for professionals, so here is a proper work case.

Most people won’t have these so here’s how you can use it with them.

Jer Clarke Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon Great take!

What did you think about the “video game version of you”? I was shocked when they didn’t show it in the first scene about FaceTime, then shocked again when they finally revealed it 😅

Connie 🐭🏳️‍⚧️Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon while i think the idea is very cool i think it has a long ways to go before it really exists the niche and or enthusiast area AR/VR is stuck in for most people

@LilahTovMoon this is why I think AR is so much more the future than VR. I don’t know if the tech is there yet, or if Apple has it right. But I’d so much rather a device augment me than replace my experiences.

Nate Silva Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon It’s also a great way to reduce motion sickness. You always see the surrounding environment and with the expensive low-latency sensors and display it will be in sync with your head movements.

Full Report Below Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon They are doing uncanny avatars, though

Nour 🏳️‍⚧️🍉Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon This sounds like what Microsoft was offering with HoloLens, but the problem they had was the tiny field-of-view and text readability (I've only tried 1st-gen).
I need to check what Apple announced in detail and wait for someone to compare it with HoloLens 2 *looking at MKBHD*

Grumble Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon The question I have is: did Apple team's responsible for designing, implementing, and testing this device use it themselves for their day to day work? Eating one's own dog food seems like a really good sanity check for a general purpose IT product.

Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon I just wanna play Beat Saber, though.

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 5, 2023

@gcvsa As someone who has used Apple products for so long, I feel like I'm less into video games than most. I do like playing games with people (like Smash Bros), but I never became a gamer in the same way.

I do like that there's a small clip of someone playing a basketball game with the Vision Pro and a Playstation controller. It seems like there's interesting directions one could take traditional controller gaming when combining it with the Vision Pro.

Democracy Matters

Yes! Fake people in a fake room is bullshit!

Brendan OhUiginn Jun 6, 2023

@DemocracyMattersALot @LilahTovMoon

Not sure what you mean by fake. This is real people in a mock-up room. Nothing really fake there. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Democracy Matters

@BOhUiginn @LilahTovMoon

Not referring to Apple--refering to the above remark about Meta and other past implementations of VR.

Brendan OhUiginn Jun 6, 2023

@DemocracyMattersALot @LilahTovMoon
Ah, I see now. Rereading both together makes more sense. Sorry.

GuerillaGrue Jun 5, 2023

@LilahTovMoon So it's basically "We're doing the same thing you can do with a 600 dollar pair of Rokid Max glasses, but you get to pay us almost 4k because Apple" then?

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 5, 2023

@GuerillaGrue I don't know much about Rokid, but it looks like their hardware isn't comparable - the Vision Pro has 5.5x more pixels and an M2 processor; Vision Pro has eye tracking and cameras and sensors that the Rokid doesn't.

I think the details often matter. Was the iPhone just Apple saying "we're doing the same thing you can get from BlackBerry or Windows Mobile"? No. All of them were internet connected phones with a large screen, but the iPhone succeeded because it was different - and Android succeeded by copying Apple's details, not by copying BlackBerry or Windows Mobile.

There's a lot of stuff about how good something is to use that's hard to write concisely about, but those details matter. If they didn't matter, we'd all be using Windows Mobile. It wasn't hard to say "we should have a computer-phone in our hands." Star Trek had it on TV in the 80s, and Apple was working on the Newton before that. The concept wasn't hard, but getting it right was hard.

glitch Jun 5, 2023

privacy is a human right

Brendan OhUiginn Jun 6, 2023

@_glitch_
Yes, and?

varx/social Jun 6, 2023

@LilahTovMoon The funny thing is that in that image, the woman who is doing that teleconferencing is probably going to have her computer's camera off, because she's got a thing stuck to her face and is looking around at things no one else can see.

And if the other people also wear the headset... they *also* probably turn off their camera, which makes it a less immersive experience even for the other AR users. 😆

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 6, 2023

@varx Apple has thought of that. The headset actually maps out your face (kinda like FaceID does) and the headset has sensors that track your facial expressions so that it can offer "video" of you to the other people. I think they said they didn't want it to be a camera pointed at someone wearing a headset.

I'm sure that the software is also showing the presentation to the other people. It wouldn't be as immersive, but having "video" of the person speaking overlaid with the presentation is basically what we have now.

I think that's what made Apple's presentation compelling - the fact that they seem to have thought of many of these cases.

It might not work perfectly, but Apple is addressing seeing the person, their facial expressions, and hand movements in their solution.

One can say that the video of the person looks a little soft-focus, but what makes Apple's announcement so interesting is how they've delved into the details that most companies simply ignore.

varx/social Jun 6, 2023

@LilahTovMoon Heh, yeah, a few minutes after I sent that I realized "...they're gonna do some weird avatar thingy aren't they."

People seem pretty happy with Zoom's background blurring, so I guess they'll be happy enough with that too.

Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 6, 2023

@varx Yea, but it's probably going to be better than normal avatars. The thing has around a dozen cameras in it (2 main cameras, 2 side cameras, 4 downward cameras, 2 TrueDepth cameras (or 1 if you consider it a unit), and 4 IR cameras to do eye tracking), LIDAR, IR illuminators (both for eye tracking and on the room side of things).

We'll see how it works in practice, but Apple is bringing a massive amount of hardware to Vision Pro - including the M2 chip and new R1 processor for dealing with sensor information.

Again, I'm not sold on it. I remain a bit skeptical. At the same time, when Apple introduced iPhone, everyone said it wouldn't sell because touch screens weren't accurate enough to be the main input device. Apple brought a combination of hardware and software that created a new world of smartphones. It might be a flop, but Apple is bringing something that others haven't like they did with iPhone. It still might not be great, but it is well beyond what we've seen in the space so far.

Chris (He/Him)Jun 6, 2023

@LilahTovMoon It's exactly what I always wanted from Google Glass.

Thomas Favre-Bulle 🏳‍🌈Jun 6, 2023

@LMNOChris @LilahTovMoon Still can't go to Molotov's with it tho

MattPounsett Jun 14, 2023

@LilahTovMoon I've been looking forward to something like this for a long time. There were some experiments with VR window managers (I think a couple decades ago now) that were unsatisfying, but mostly because the technology just wasn't there yet. IMHO this doesn't even need more development to be useful today to technical users. for programming and ops. I think most of the work that remains is making it user friendly to the general public.