Asklemmy

I will continue not using it. I was interested in Oculus until they sold to FB and then I nope'd right out of that. I really did think VR was neat, but various things kept me from pulling the trigger. If it becomes the only way to use chunks of the internet, I just won't use them; I grew up still in the analog world (though we did have BBS and very early dial-up in the '80s), and I could go back to it. I'd honestly miss educational content more than anything else, but I can get books. In my lifetime, that strategy would probably still work fine.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/39427e4a-918a-4a0d-bd94-15bf5cbaf7ae.jpeg

Notch said it wasn't ready... Predicted a flop

Yeah I am pretty concerned. I think if work from home or hybrid jobs start requiring devices similar to the apple vision pro, it will only further the divide between people that work from home and those that don't, as well as increasing the barrier to entry to these jobs. Dividing the working class further.

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.

Not really worried about this kind of stuff at all. At the end of the day, it's not like it's some essential thing people need to live. People have been worrying that every new piece of technology is going to ruin society. This was said about books, raidio, tv, video games, and so on. I don't think AR tech is going to be any different.

I imagine that at some point the tech will get miniaturized to the point where AR headsets are basically like glasses. That's when mass adoption is likely to start happening. I'm also sure there will be open versions of such headsets that can run Linux. It's just a new more immersive UX, I don't think it's anything to get worked up over.

I think that, in practice, putting a headset on is a big ask for most people. Phones caught on because they're extremely convenient, almost everyone had a use case that was improved by a smartphone, and once they had it in their pocket it was a short hop to using the phone for other things as well. A headset though? Maybe if it was as unobtrusive as regular glasses, people would put up with it - but even then, regular glasses are so annoying that many people use contact lenses instead. So if you want to put any kind of technology on people's head and keep it there all day, that's where your benchmark has to be set, not way up in the same size category as a motorcycle helmet.

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.

Must watch ads.

If the Apple Vision Pro is going to replace smartphones in the way Smartphones replaced flip phones, we wouldn’t have flip phones anymore.

Spoiler alert: we still have flip phones.

Lots of them, actually, albeit not “dumb” ones anymore… they all run either Android or KaiOS, and come with all the commensurate risks of having all your usage stats beamed up to the mothership for third-party sales and monetization.

Hell, we now have a rotary cell phone - the rotary un-smartphone - which is enjoying decent popularity and mental rent-free status among lots of techy people, despite being nothing more than a 1970s rotary dialler with an ePaper display for incoming text messages. And a few buttons for hard-set quick-dial options. I would love one myself if it wasn’t so expensive compared to a smartphone.

Off topic but my bf has an Amazon tv and within seconds of turning it on it plays a prime advertisement, it sucks because the fire televisions are like the cheapest on the market, for a reason

I think tech reviewers are really naive for thinking that Apple Vision Pro is the future of computing just because it was made by Apple. Nobody wants to use their computer or watch movies in VR, except for in niche situations. My prediction is that users will quickly realize that they don't actually have any use for the Apple Vision Pro, and the product line will be discontinued.

Is anyone else worried about the apple vision pro?

Nope.

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

WUT? Apple is very focused on privacy and the idea that a user can't mute or install Adblock is… weird. Safari has good ad-blocking options as well as built-in anti-tracking features to protect users, applications can't usually prevent the system from muting content and Apple doesn't really sell ads outside of the App Store.

If you want to worry about that stuff I'd suggest focusing on the Meta VR goggles or god forbid Google starts making goggles, both of those companies survive on ad revenue and have an incentive to enshitify their experience in ways that the Apple we know today would never do. Of course companies can change over time, but the ethic at Apple is to only make products they feel comfortable with their families using.

Frankly I don't think most people will ever want to strap goggles to their head to check their fucking emails or even do any real creative work, and that's why this is one of the dumbest products ever to be shat out of Cupertino. No amount of iterating on the design will change this fact, and no, this will never all be contained in a contact lens or a normal pair of glasses because physics will still exist in the future lol. What we're seeing is the usual hype from fanboys, stockholders, and paid reviewers that will fizzle out within a couple of months.

People comparing it to something like the first iPhone or a smartwatch is also stupid because A) while one can spend a whole day with their face pressed up against a screen, it's not mandatory in order to use them, and B) those devices had inherent value to people right out of the gate. It's almost a no-brainer to see the perks of having a full web browser and responsive touch keyboard on a phone when you're coming from the awful hellworld of the "mobile web," static physical buttons, and the shitty touchscreens of yore. The fuck does a pair of ski goggles do to improve computing compared to my existing laptop, phone, or tablet? On top of it, the Vision Pro seems like the most isolating, lonely, and dystopian sort of device that, like all of the similar facehugging gadgets that came before it, will people off just by looking at it. Just can't see how this gains traction in any form outside of the nichest niches, and Apple doesn't build shit for niche markets for long. This isn't 2001 anymore; they're a multi-trillion dollar phone company that sells computers on the side.

Really wish Apple instead poured their dragon's hoard of cash into optimizing their existing hardware and software instead of this garbage. Hell, there's actually some cool gestures and conventions they've demoed with AVP that could be developed into a device that helps people who require alternate input methods. Imagine if they actually made the Magic Leap but it wasn't just astroturf! I fear other product lines will languish because capitalism is a fuck and they "must" go all in on "the next big thing" or else Tim Cook won't have a "revolutionary" product category under his belt to retire on and/or they'll be facing the repo men by the end of the quarter unless line go up 🙃.

In short, I wouldn't worry about it; this too will flop. The only way people are going to stop using their existing workflow and drop it for this shit is if manufacturers/developers stop supporting them entirely and go all in on goggle computing, which would be suicidal for the industry and probably be met by tremendous backlash from anyone who does anything even mildly productive on a computer or who values doing what they want with the gear they own.

No.

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.

The attention economy already has people hostage and blocked off from the outside world. No goggles required.

To play devil's advocate: If we're gonna have a tech-centric society, I can see where being able to make eye contact with people nearby and keep your hands free could make for a more wholesome experience than staring down at your phone for 80% of your waking life. And for people who are remote, being able to feel like you're occupying the same space and breathing and laughing together could be a solution for our extreme isolation.

But on the other hand, these are all problems that capitalism and big tech created in the first place, so...

It's really easy to avoid if you don't use them.