Just yesterday they announced a new OS with a number of interesting new features, like custom environments, improved click-with-your-eyes-controls (Dwell Control), a bunch more: https://www.apple.com/os/visionos/
"Apple is now focused on its rival to Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2027, and a “display-equipped AR/XR smart glasses device powered by optical waveguides” in 2029, Kuo says."
seems like basically Vision Pro is going to become Vision XR. All roads lead to Rome.
I use it every day, approx ~95% of the days since it launched over 2 years ago. Many hours a day. Far and away my biggest use-case is connecting it to my laptop for gigantic (private) movie theater-sized screen.
Getting it comfortable was the most important step. The 6-months-old DualKnit band is really great for making it a lot more comfortable. An open face mod (eg $10 Macally on amazon) helps a lot with eye breathability, and restoring peripheral vision.
Also really great for being able to work well from anywhere.
Sad that so many people are sleeping on it, but what can you do? Check out r/VisionPro for tons of people that love theirs and use them constantly.
I wanted to use mine for movies, but cant. The internal reflections or lens flare or whatever ruin it.
Anytime part of the screen is dark and part is bright I get annoying reflections that I can't tolerate. Takes me right out of the film. That said the few 3d movies they have in 4k are amazing during the scenes that arent all dorked up due to the reflections.
Maybe its because I use the prescription inserts, but they're the official ones and it's blurry without them.
Also the battery stopped holding enough charge to get through a full film within a month or two and the replacement was two hundred dollars. I wouldn't resent it if I ever needed a battery, but I had to spring for it even though it stays plugged in the entire time I use. The stupid useless brick is required for it to turn on and it won't even allow pass-through when the cells go.
I see some deeply enthusiastic comments like this whenever it’s mentioned. I wonder how much lack of adoption is simply lack of awareness. Apple needs to find ways to make experimenting with it, and experiencing specific use cases, more approachable. I’m not going to go to the Apple Store to try it — I don’t care enough. Maybe one day I’ll happen to do that, but I’ve got enough social anxiety (which is a low amount!) to not want to ask someone in a busy Apple Store to let me strap the VR goggles to my face for 30 minutes of experimenting with a code editor.
Idk if there’s an easy solution to this — maybe shared setups distributed to WeWork type spaces or something… but I suspect it’s the main barrier to adoption, assuming even just 10% of developers would share the same experience as you when they try it for the first time. (Or maybe there’s also a learning curve where it sucks on first experience, and your body gets used to it only after some prolonged usage?)
The biggest barrier to adoption is of course the price. To pay $3,500+ I'd better be damn sure I will use it every day, and even though I did the 30 min demo I still have no idea if it would be tolerable for longer periods.
I've said before and I'll say it again, Apple/Meta need to have rental stands in major airports so I can rent a Vision Pro or Meta Quest for my cross-country flights. That would be a huge way to "try before you buy" !
I agree that the price is the barrier. If it was around $1k I would MAYBE think about buying one. I'm curious to see what the newer Valve headset retails at, even though that's more for play than for work.
Do you wear glasses and do you have the prescription inserts for the AVP? I have a very mild prescription, no inserts, and I find text in the AVP to be distractingly blurry. Enough so that I’ve never been able to use the virtual monitor for more than a few minutes at a time.
For context, I have no problem using external monitors without my glasses. The only downside is very tired eyes at the end of a workday, but I can read text just fine.
I have the inserts, they work great. I find using the Vision Pro as a monitor less fatiguing than using a regular monitor with glasses. I think it’s because the Vision Pro Display is optically several feet away due to lens trickery, and focusing on further away things is better for eye fatigue.
Using contacts has been better (for me) than the Zeiss inserts in terms of hand tracking and eye tracking accuracy. Often, I need to run a calibration step if changing between them, otherwise gaze typically targets the item below what I’m looking at, which is great for identifying one might have anger issues to resolve.
I have a moderate prescription so putting on Vision Pro improves my vision compared to unaided eyesight ;) It would definitely not prefer it to my Studio Display but it does the job when I don't have it.
While great for travel coding, the faff of battery + cable would have been more elegant as one cable plugged into the laptop; it can be an embarrassing rats nest.
Xcode 27’s Device Hub now allows interacting with nearby dev devices (a bit better than Android Studio’s implementation). Super convenient change that makes it practical to do more things while in the recliner / VP.
Yep. The lack of a video input killed the thing for me, and, I suspect, thousands of other people. All it needed was a USB-C jack for power and video over DisplayPort.
This could have been a great device for gamers, 3-D modelers, drone pilots, cinematographers... but Apple's fear of I/O ruined it.
I tried on the Xreal for 3 minutes when I met someone with them at a party. They were cool but noticeably a lot less bright.
Similarly I tried the original HoloLens, many many years ago (2016?), with the similar waveguide technology. It was outside, at night, so relatively easy to see, albeit with jarringly tight field of view.
Without a doubt I'm excited about lightweight AR glasses that I can wear in public. My non-expert opinion is we're still a few years away.
In the meantime, I love my Apple goggles. For home usage only, and not when guests come over. Going open face (no lightshield) makes them feel a lot more like magic AR glasses, with the ~95% accurate passthrough.
> Without a doubt I'm excited about lightweight AR glasses that I can wear in public. My non-expert opinion is we're still a few years away.
Not the same type of AR, but the Even G2 look very promising. Can't use them as an external screen, they're more of an assistant with notes, live translate, app ecosystem, etc. I imagine they might be useful as a moving teleprompter.
I own a pair of the Even G2s (with a prescription) plus the R1 ring - they started out a bit limited, but they recently added an app store for developers to create HUD applications for which has been fun.
They get a B+ as daily glasses, but if more than one of the "killer features" (e.g. teleprompter, conversate, live translate) really gets your attention they are worth it.
> which part of it reflects their genuine opinion and intellect (which I'd be hesitant to criticize) and what is AI-fluff I can rip apart without stepping on their toes?
Are you able to ask them this directly? They might appreciate it.
1) For context, that's already trivially true for all vote-by-mail voting: bring your blank ballot into the office, and give it to me signed-but-blank. Possible for in-person voting too, using the camera in your pocket.
2) Nonetheless, we have spent the last year developing advanced tools for coercion-resistance: https://siv.org/overrides. This allows voters-under-pressure to fake a vote the demanded way, then secretly get it nullified to cast their true choices — while still not allowing election admins or malware to cheat. Was available for all voters, but no one asked to use it.
Mail voting should be limited to special situations anyway, as it's obviously a bad idea when the stakes are high.
When you vote in person, there is nothing that connects the ballot you photographed to the ballot you cast. Surveillance at the polling station might notice that you requested a new ballot, but it's an even bigger problem for your override. If you were coerced to vote in a certain way, you definitely don't want to be seen anywhere near the polling station.
This was a special situation because of a mid-term early retirement. The standard practice, responsible for 25% of the current state legislature, is a handful of party insiders deciding the appointed replacement. That process has little-to-no coercion-resistance, often not even secret voting, with a lot of egos and status games in play.
I hear you on wanting to limit mail voting. I agree there are many challenges there: not only coercion, but also voter authentication, ballot chain-of-custody, and delays. Many of the summer 2020 results were delayed by 2 weeks while all the mail-in ballots continued to be counted.
With that said, there's also considerations about accessibility. In this particular case, every last voter had the option to vote in-person, with 5 different polling locations staffed by volunteers over 3 days. Despite that, 50x as many people voted digitally as came in-person. For context, this district is also very rural, spread out over a huge area. If you limit voting to exclusively in-person, some people will take the time and effort to make it work, but certainly not all. People may start using phrases like "voter suppression". :'(
To be clear, I agree with all of the issues you bring up, and care about them too. Why we spent the last year working to develop strong coercion-resistance tools. I just want to highlight the tradeoffs in play.
Re voter coercion, in-person voting security is not exactly Fort Knox — it's almost all volunteers. If a coercer really wants to force a particular vote, they can demand a video recording, not just a photo, with the voter first marking the ballot then walking up to drop it into the ballot box. Sometimes it may be caught, but it's far from guaranteed. Becomes even easier as glasses-with-cameras become more widespread (I see some for $40 on Amazon).
Re vote-by-mail— the reality is, in the 2024 Presidential election at least, the vast majority of voters had it as an option. A quick search is showing me over 75% of Americans live in states with no-excuse mail voting. It's easy to say "oh yeah, that shouldn't be allowed". But now feels like goalpost moving, and not dealing with the situation as it is.
Just a guess— because it's easier for LibreTaxi to implement as a free open-source project, without needing to deal with IRS, banking, & other financial bureaucracy.
Actually if we're talking specifically the HoloLens, I'm going to be attending a meetup for a local developer group in a couple weeks that goes over developing for it and I'm hoping I'll be able to try it as well.
I was thinking more specifically the Oculus or the Vive, though. If those are demoed at the Microsoft stores too, then I'll happily check them out, but I don't know why they'd have them.
but the OS blocks it when it gets too low-light, disabling all AR features :'(