Is anyone else worried about the apple vision pro?

Some people call VR dystopian, but it's got great potential too.

During COVID while I was living alone and we were under lockdown...

I used a Quest to watch movies in a virtual theater with a bunch of people from around the world. I remember being in a theater watching an absolutely ridiculous Nicolas Cage movie laughing my ass off with a bunch of dudes from Australia. Another time I watched a cricket game with some people who explained the rules to me and kinda gave me some play by play on what was happening.

I've also attended a few support group meetings in VR for coping with loss that had quite a lot of attendants. The meeting was run by a licensed group therapist and we took turns sharing and then reflecting on each others stories. It was frankly amazing.

I also played mini golf with friends of mine as well as had a couple meetings over a round of mini golf with the other guy on my design team during lockdown. Honestly the best virtual meetings I ever had.

All of the above were very social and very positive experience. I didn't feel far away from people, I felt connected to them.

Same way a smartphone can be a useful tool that enhances your life or a screen you stare at for hours consuming bullshit TikTok videos. You're in control of what you make of it. You can also stick to a dumb phone and not participate at all.

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.

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

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.

I'm not american and i can't imagine a world where someone with these weird ass ski goggles don't get laughed at.

because it probably can’t get less bulky and look less dorky,

Airpods are probably one of the ugliest pieces of tech ove seen in the last decade and yet somehow it doesn't seem to matter. Never overestimate apple's customer base.

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.

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.

At the risk of facts getting in the way:

1. You can install ad blockers
2. Apps are not able to do that

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.

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.

someone should make a de-facebooked custom rom for the meta quest

It's not like they can force you to wear the headset.

Unless of course it's used for torture by IDF or smthn.

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.

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.

Im not afraid of this or the next few iterations of ADglasses the tech bros put out, im more worried about the encroaching optessive surveillance technology these proof-of-concept devices might represent.

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.

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

No.

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.

it's a toy for hype-susceptible tech-impaired rich snobs. what's to be worried about?

Is anyone else worried about the apple vision pro?

Nope.

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

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.

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.

Check out what these stupid chuds have to say about it: https://www.youtube.com/live/gseav7sgpks?feature=shared

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were doing a bit.

I’ve never seen a less critical tech review; never seen investment advice that was less trustworthy, more of a conflict of interest; these douchebags are willingly blind to the glaring cons of this technology. They have massive portfolios of AAPL and just go on and on about how great it is. I’d say shameful but we’ve been here before with Tesla and they were able to lie their way to the top. The Henry Kissinger of tech stocks.

“I’m wondering if you are the type of person who wants to keep it on all day”

NO ONE will want the embarrassment of keeping this on their face all day. This is like the Segway.

This is anecdotal, but I see all of these VR rooms or stores at malls or on outlet areas where you can play with VR heat and have fun. They are almost always empty. I VERY rarely ever see people in them.

There another entertainment venue near me that has bowing and games and stuff. They also have a VR area that I have never seen open. Don’t know if it’s just constantly broken or if nobody is actually interested in it.

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

NGL I saw the title and didn't expect much from this. Good effort post, way to change my mind on this topic.

People are going to use these things irresponsibly like when they're driving.

For what it’s worth, Apple has had an attention API ( for checking if the user is interacting / viewing ) since the debut of their facial tracking sensors on the iPhone X. Although, Apple makes its very clear it’s not to be used for ads and the such. If it helps I don’t know of any developers / Apple abusing that API.

It's a pity because in theory a AR/VR headset without any predatory practices would be a really fun gadget to have, some of things it does is impressive and well polished considering it's the first apple product of it's kind, but no way does any feature it has right now make the steep price worth it. Unfortunately it's apple so we know how its going to pan out and people will buy it. A few iterations from now I can see the price going down with more apps and greater functionality but it will become increasingly more predatory. As you've said, unskippable ads but also the fact that they'll basically have a full scan of your face and surroundings. God knows what kind of sinister shit they can do with all that data. It's already quite fucked up that you'll see ads and autocompleted search terms on your phone which clearly indicate that your conversations are being listened to and it feels we've all just accepted that and are doing nothing about it.

If it succeeds, apple will pave the way, and then other options will emerge much like has happened with smartphones. There will be some FOSS version perfectly capable of blocking ads.

People were complaining when newspapers were new that itd take everyones attention and make people distant. I think its great that more VR stuff is happening because the tech can be used for so much and lets people experience things they might not have otherwise.
If you were hospitalized for a long period would you rather watch the ceiling/small TV or would you want to travel the world via VR?
All new tech can be used for good or bad but we shouldnt stop progressing

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.

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...

I think for me this thing is a symbol of where we are and where we're heading in terms of not being able to look away from ads

Looking away in a headset doesn't make sense, no. But you can always close your eyes. Why wouldn't you be able to mute though? That would be insane, even by Apple in my opinion.

I'm not too worried. Only rich fools [meant to type "folks" but I'll let it stand] can afford it, and they can let themselves be brainwashed, I'm not too bothered.

Just like how the iPod was the invention of the mp3 player.

The truth is society is really really malleable and stupid. That's just human nature. And of course it's going to be manipulated by people for power and wealth.

It'll go the same way as cable TV, and phones. It's the same exact path. We live within systems specifically created to market unneeded "wants". Just go outside and mingle with people... Some people literally seem like they have little humanity left in them, the just live for consumption. It's like addicts. It essentially is addiction for dopamine. Any product or nation/society that allows basically lawless marketing function will be the same.

So you're thoughts imo are accurate. BUT there's also another side of life. Once you stop falling for marketed bullshit and pop culture/media you can tune out all the bullshit. They will always prey on the weak. While I said all that keep in mind technology is like our civilizations pyramids or creation of democracy. Personally I have some hope in transhumanism, but you know pop news and marketing shit is going to make it all a divisive argument. Lol I'm probably doing that now. They do this partially as publicity and a advertising.

It's not about this or that it's about allowing growth of all things?

Idk... Just some rambling.

I have so much to say about this, I hardly know where to start. A few brief points:

Yes, this product direction is problematic in many many ways. There is a reason why science fiction has been speculating about these types of devices for decades and nearly always portraying the technology as an escape mechanism for a horrifying dystopian reality.

We’ve experienced several really big technology revolutions in just a few decades (pc, internet, social, mobile). All have brought wonderful improvements to life, but all have had profound, and unanticipated side effects. In all instances, we would have benefited as a society by interrogating consequences more completely at the beginning, rather than just letting market forces alone to drive them into mass adoption.

The good news is that none of this is really new. This appears to be a pretty good implementation of a UI model that consumers have been largely rejecting for over 30 years. There are absolutely very useful, very good uses for these UIs, but these are niche markets overall all.

In many ways, XR (a catch all term for both VR and AR) is a retro futuristic idea. This is a vision of the future as seen 40 years ago. Really innovative human computer interfacing doesn’t look like this anymore. Actually useful innovation involves things like agents, voice ui’s and so on (think Jarvis from the MCU).

The question is, can Apple’s marketing prowess and effectively infinite budget push a largely unpleasant, unneeded, and expensive product into mass adoption? I am hopeful that they can’t. I am hopeful that reality isn’t sci-fi dystopian enough to create a wide market for this. If they can, it may say more about how dystopian our real reality has become. That’s the really worrisome part to me.

I worry about how consumerism and capitalism will kill us all but I don't give a shit about this in particular. If I saw one in the wild the first thing I would do is give the owner and endless stream of shit for buying such a stupid waste of money.

If anything weird happens some hacker man would probably put up a tutorial on how to disable the eye tracker.

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.

any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail…

Varjo is doing very well and offers probably the best VR sets. Prices start at around 3000€

I just don't understand how Apple, a company known for their sleek, elegant design aesthetics above all else, put their name on something that looks so dorky

giant companies try stupid marketing techniques like this all the time. when they're moronic and nobody can afford them, they fail.

I don't think I've seen a single normal tech reviewer that didn't talk about serious drawbacks to the platform. the only people who are sucking apple's dick are those frou-frou amalgamated tech click harvesters that always suck the big corporations' dicks. like the Verge

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.

I don't see any difference to an iPhone there. If they wanted to, they could already track whether you're looking at the ad (using the camera) or whether you muted it. You can turn off an iPhone, you can take off a Vision Pro. Apple hasn't exactly been known for intrusive ads either.

Doesn't it have something like a two-hour battery life? Feel like that excludes it from being something you carry around with you like a phone.

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.

It's true that devices like these can gather a lot more data about you than a phone can. The amount of sensors that are always on and look at you and your environment should be a concern.

Luckily Apple isn't directly interested in ad revenue, but more into what apps you use and their biggest interest was always to provide a friction free user experience so you actually want to use their products and are happy to spend so much money on them.

I personally am not a fan of Apple, because I'm not a friend of golden cages. So I'm just waiting for the Android version of the experience. Since this first iteration will be from Google as they would need to update their OS to really accomodate AR applications, that's where my concern lies: How do we know that they are going to handle our data responsibly? Also AR does require quite some infrastructure to provide an interesting experience. Something Apple cannot do, is provide you with a shared experience with other users and to provide location specific, persistent content. There are many examples for such content, but for this discussion, let's say a location specific ad in a fixed location somewhere in the city adjusted to your preferences.

Of course the virtual ad sucks, but such content could also be amazingly awesome and very useful. You no longer need to set up real-life signs, you just update what the virtual sign says in AR. Doesn't need to be an ad, could be something interesting and useful.

But to provide location-specific, persistent content you need infrastructure. Infrastructure only Google and other tech giants have (see for instance the AR mode in Google maps that gives you directions). This is where I'm worried. It's no longer enough to just get internet via a SIM card, maybe add your personal VPN on top to be safer. You now need direct connection to Google's localization API and they'll always know where all their AR devices are and because you wear it, they always know where you are, how you are, where you look etc.. This should leave us worried.

I’ve not really seen any overly positive reviews. Most reviews I’ve seen talk about it like it’s this neat thing that doesn’t really have much to do in it now and are saying you’d probably only use it 1/2 hr at a time because of the hefty weight, unless you’re sitting/laying on a couch. It’s kind of a confused piece of tech because Apple is desperate to call it “spatial computing” and market it like it’s AR, but really it’s a VR headset. Yet they’re really not taking advantage of the VR aspect.

Do your part: sucker punch (or pick the pocket of) any tech bro chud you see wearing one in public.

If people are afraid to wear them in public, they’ll fade away much like the Google glassholes did.