i wouldn’t normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail… but it’s apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with “tech reviewers” and rich folk who can afford it.
what’s really concerning is that it’s not marketed as a new VR headset, it’s marketed by apple and these “tech reviewers” as the new iphone, something you take with you everywhere and do your daily tasks in, consume content in etc…
and it’s dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
this is why i think all these tech giants (google meta apple etc) were/are interested in the “metaverse”. it holds both your vision and your hearing hostage, you cannot do anything else when using it but to just use the thing. a 100% efficiency attention machine, completely blocking you from the outside world.
i’m not concerned about this iteration as much as people are not hyped about this iteration. just like how people are hyped about the next apple vision, i’m more worried about the next iterations with somewhat lower price tag and better software availability. i hope it flops and i know it probably won’t achieve any sort of mainstream adoption even if it’s deemed a success because it probably can’t get less bulky and look less dorky, but the possibility is still worrying. what are your thoughts?
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People will rip off the headsets if the ads are too intrusive and annoying. Which is why they’ll either be dead subtle, or they’ll offer you paid ways to avoid them.
I don’t think there’ll be mass adoption of this either way, mainly because it’s an expensive gadget coming at a time when folks on median incomes are feeling the pinch.
Have you visited a website without an ad blocker recently? Because typical web advertising has become as intrusive and annoying as technically possible, and millions of people willingly accept that.
VR/AR/Spatial Whatever has the potential to be just as bad, if not far worse.
Have you visited a website with an ad blocker recently?
Do you mean without an ad-blocker?
i mean it’s easily circumventable, “and now you don’t have to worry about losing progress on your favorite game or losing battery, because when you are not using the headset it goes to sleep mode” or whatever, but you are right if the ads are too annoying people are probably not going to use it, or will they? this is the thing i already think the way ads currently are is very intrusive but there’s a large segment of people who are fine with it. and subtle ads are way worse imagine if they constantly put ads in your peripheral vision. it’s cartoonishly evil which is why it probably won’t happen but even giving that power to them is dangerous.
I love spaceship games (think Elite: Dangerous and the like), and motorsport games. Anything where you’re set in a cockpit is a perfect candidate for VR. All I wanted was a headset that would act analagous to a dumb monitor - simply provide vision and audio and head tracking (with “simply” being a relative term - the challenges overcome and technology produced to date is, admittedly, amazing).
But no. What we have are a bunch of privacy-invading face huggers. I shouldn’t need to sign in to anything to use a piece of hardware that should require zero internet access (which is why anything Razer is also on my do not buy list).
So am I concerned about the Apple Vision Pro? Couldn’t give a shit to be honest. I’m not their customer.
Please let me know if you ever find one. Best I have seen are the ones without head tracking or laggy tracking.
I have some sympathy for the slippery slope argument. Used to be you didn’t need a smart phone, but both my current and last job wanted you to use a two factor authentication app, which required either apple or android. Probably some way around that requirement, but then now you’re the difficult weirdo in the office.
No.
Yesterday or a few days ago I’ve read that people already jailbreaked the vision. So if you must have one, you will still be able to tinker with it.
Someone found a way to crash the kernel, which may or may not lead to an exploit, which would be just the first step in a long process of developing a jailbreak. I wouldn’t get too excited yet. Even if one does get released, Apple can just patch the exploit, and it could easily be years before a new jailbreakable exploit is found.
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I’m hoping to get an open source headset in the future with the opposite feature; augmented reality ad blocking for real life ads.
I could go around the streets of any city and not see a single ad. Pair that with smart adaptive noise cancelling that would allow me to hear the outside world, but remove annoying ads or other unpleasant noises like construction tools or leafblowers.
I’d love to be able to set up a laptop and have much more screen real estate by putting on a headset. The ability to watch something like game of thrones on an airplane without the 6 year old behind me seeing shit would also be nice.
The biggest downside of the apple headset is that it’s apple and their stupid ecosystem.
That would be awesome. This would also be interesting for airplane construction in the future, not having windows means the airplane will be lighter, thus saving fuel and reducing carbon emissions.
I mean, you can just take it off?
Also, regarding the adoption of the headset, I think it’s absolutely crazy to say that it probably won’t get less bulky. Tech is constantly getting smaller and that will be the number one priority with the headset.
If they can make the price and comfort level right, then I do think it becomes a mainstream product. Not saying people wear it 24/7, but that most households would have one, and it would become somewhat important for WFH and remote meetings.
I’m not a fanboy for Apple, but personally I just think it is the tech of the (relatively) near future.
it won’t get less bulky compared to phones. the headset will still need lenses, a display which itself needs to be a certain distance away from your eyes, a board for processing, a separate battery pack, audio, wifi, straps, space for some airflow so it doesn’t overheat and damage the display etc etc. small form factors have come a long way and it can probably get thinner, but i don’t think apple vision pro is that far off from the physical limit of how much smaller it can get.
Hmm, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. They can 100% decrease the size of the processing bits and reduce weight.
I just think it’s very shortsighted to look at such an early version of the product and say “it won’t change much”. Especially when however many years ago you could have said that what we’ve got right now isn’t possible.
Never seen pancake lenses, huh?
Oh, tech will just stop evolving after this point? Okay, I guess now is the time it stops. Right now.
I mean you’re worried about something you don’t even use yet showing you ads… Your android/iPhone has a front facing camera and doesn’t force you to watch the advert via eye tracking. No ones does, because you would just buy something else
I think about the Vision like I think about a new Gucci bag or a new set of Air Jordans. There’s a small, but very visible, community that is super into that product, probably for reasons not related to its actual functionality. The difference is that there’s a lot of overlap between Apple fans and broader technology enthusiast groups, where we’re more isolated from the Gucci and Jordan communities. There are lots of brand-based fan groups who will happily accept branded merch or content, but not interpret that as ‘advertising.’
The rest of the world tolerates spyware and especially ads if they feel like the product is worth the intrusion. There’s a reason Meta doesn’t have a logo watermark foating in the corner of Quest view field. There’s a reason VR is still very niche, almost entirely limited to gaming.
Maybe Vision’s AR experience will change that. Maybe viewing your entire life through a video camera with overlaid graphics has real-world value beyond privacy in co-working spaces. I doubt that value is $3000 and think Vision is more like Apple’s Newton than Apple’s iPhone.
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Apple will never do the ad eye tracking thing. And if they do? there’s this cool thing called taking the headset off. It’s not glued to your fucking face
If they are pushing ads that much, they will probably pause the ad until you put the device back on or close the application.
The person accepting the return can finish watching it, then. I am already not buying this thing at those prices.
So don’t put it back on. It’s not magnetized to your face. How is this hard to understand?
Calm down gummy worm, I was just discussing a potential process that ad servers will probably take.
I’m going to do your take but actually properly: Don’t buy apple products.
I think what the tech implies these big tech giants want for the world is more worrisome than the specific tech itself.
They may fail with this iteration or the next, but why do you think they’re trying so hard insisting this is the next big thing? To survive, capitalism needs to create new problems to be solved. The smart phone didn’t solve any problems we had, it created a desire, which then became a fear (FOMO), then it became a need, which then finally became a problem if you didn’t have one.
If you’re homeless today and want to get out of it, one of the first things you need is an address, then an internet connection, and a smart phone. Why? Because most jobs require it to get a hold of you and in many cases to facilitate the software used on the job.
They don’t need to convince consumers to adopt the new tech per se. They just need to convince businesses that without the new technological progress, their competitors will leave them behind. Then it won’t matter if you like the tech or not, you’ll NEED it to have a job and survive. Just like the smart phone is today.
They’re directing us, telling us how the future will look like based off of THEIR vision, not OURS.
That’s what worries me. Not this AR headset, but rather the reasons they have for insisting this is the future we are all heading towards.
The reality of the situation is going to be far more boring than anything you can make up in your mind. They said that AI was going to completely change the world and make normal work obsolete causing a bunch of people to lose their jobs. Turns out it was a total grift and only that last bit was true because the owning class are a bunch of useless fucks who genuinely thought they could get away with it.
someone should make a de-facebooked custom rom for the meta quest
