CUPERTINO, California, June 5 (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) unveiled an augmented-reality headset called the Apple Vision Pro at its annual software developer conference on Monday, its first big move into a new product category since the introduction of the Apple Watch nine years ago.
CEO Tim Cook described it as "spatial computing" with the device controlled by your eyes, hands and voice.
"It's the first Apple product you look through, not at," Cook said.
Apple's human interface chief Alan Dye said that users will select content inside the goggles with their eyes, tap their fingers together to click and gently flick to scroll.
The device also has an exterior display that shows the user's eyes to people on the outside world. The exterior screen goes dark when a user is fully immersed in a virtual world. When a person approaches a user who is in full virtual mode, the headset will show both the user and the outside person to each other. "You're never isolated from people around you," Dye said. "You can see them, and they can see you."
For work uses, Apple showed how the headset can be used with a trackpad and keyboard to work like a traditional computer with multiple displays.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rich on Tuesday June 06 2023, @01:43PM (4 children)
The presentations were abysmal. The presenters waved their hands like after the first lesson of a rhetoric course and the overall vibe was that of rural high schoolers presenting their self-written theatre piece "Dystopia".
That said, the technology is pretty amazing, but will probably suffer from Apple being in denial that this thingy was invented for consuming porn and market it as game console for the rich instead. Not that bad of a thing though, I've flown an A-10 in DCS around Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam with friend's early VR rig, and it definitely was a memorable experience. But even there, I fear they'll go all out Disney (Bob Iger even was in the show) and push their developers to publish sorry crap rather than proper fun stuff, like accurate reenactment of late '44 Third Reich Air Home Defence.
The other obvious use as "interactive repair guide" will probably not gain ground, because Apple breaks things faster than industry customers can catch up with their service guide developments. But... Apple could jump over their shadow, present a VR guide of "SMD Hot Air Rework to Replace the ICs of a Worn Out MacBook Pro SSD" and ship that together with the chips. :P
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday June 06 2023, @08:54PM (3 children)
You say it was invented for watching porn, but my first (and only, really) experience of AR was with the far more family-friendly Nintendo 3DS over a decade ago.
(Granted, that was the older style of AR that relied on cards or stickers with blocky geometric shapes to identify, but still...)
(Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday June 06 2023, @10:46PM (2 children)
Well, there's the lore of Beta losing out to VHS at least partially, because the adult industry settled on VHS. And if you look over at Civitai what drives grassroots generative AI in a way that makes it hard for corporations to keep pace, it's rather saucy, too. So I guess, porn IS a major, if not the primary driver of new media technology since cave paintings. I haven't had the chance to look at anything adult VR-wise (*), my only experience was flying that A-10, so my opinion is more of a gut feeling - but based on past developments.
(*) I fear if they made me choose between a (metric) 109 G-cup and a 109 G-10 for another single test, I'd choose the latter. Too much of a nerd. Or, maybe... the other side with the lady as nose art. Of course, given the option, I'd not only play BOTH sides, but also would afterwards check out the adult content in VR ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2023, @11:11AM (1 child)
Isn't that the wonder of (AI-) AR/VR porn? You won't have to chose. You can have both!
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday June 07 2023, @01:36PM
Yeah, but only if the (expensive) VR kit is mine. Time at my friends' who has the rig is limited. And I'm not sure he has any adult stuff, he's even more hardcore nerd - but with a full sim pit.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2023, @01:52PM (5 children)
For when you though people having their head buried in their (i)phone was not annoying enough -- now they bring you "spatial computing". Just waiting for Futurama to become prophetic again with the "eyephone" (in Attack of the killer app) , even tho it was already a jab at Apple and smartphones in general. I'll give it five-ten or so years before the phone is on a lens or injected/inserted into some orifice of the body. Wearing goggles will be the new retro.
Wow. So is there a camera taking a picture of your eyes and then displaying it on the other side or can you select whatever graphics (eyes or otherwise) you want to show to the world? So you can have the "real world" in a sort of picture-in-picture display then. You never have to leave the virtual world -- as it clearly have better resolution and interaction then reality ...
Just waiting for the first headline with some spatially challenged individual will kill themselves, by accident, while wearing these.
It's BTL -- better than life, or perhaps BTR -- better than reality.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday June 06 2023, @02:08PM (1 child)
This was the only entertaining bit for me. As if this overpriced gadget can decide if I can see the person wearing it or not.
Surely the immersed will eventually start killing themselves, but I was wondering how soon unstable ones will start killing random people with real guns instead of virtual people with toys.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday June 06 2023, @02:43PM
You need AR for that?
Damn kids, back in my day, we had to kill people with real guns without any fancy gimmicks! Now get offa my lawn!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DECbot on Tuesday June 06 2023, @02:15PM (2 children)
Did you notice the part where the parents were watching their children through the VR device? Tell me how a device strapped over the parents' face won't affect young child development.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 06 2023, @03:07PM
Seriously, how am I supposed to drop acid while watching my kids now!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2023, @05:42PM
Probably the same harm all the children get from their parents having their heads stuck in their phones today. I see it everyday. I even saw it today. Was sitting on the bench in the park having my coffee and you see parents walk by with their kids and the kids are craving their attention but the parent is busy checking their phone -- apparently it was more important to talk to the office and then to mommy on the phone then to talk to your own child ...
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Tuesday June 06 2023, @03:01PM
The simulation is nearly perfect [youtu.be]!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by progo on Tuesday June 06 2023, @03:51PM (10 children)
I'm not an Apple fanboy, but this looks like it COULD be another "Apple figured out how to do the new thing RIGHT" like the Iphone.
Good things I noticed:
* You make gestures with your hands and fingers in a resting pose instead of up in front of your face like Minority Report and Picard. Your hands aren't wearing any gear; just passively scanned for gestures.
* You're not wearing the battery on your head. (I also noticed no one says how much the head gear weighs, though.)
* It blocks all external physical light and retransmits the external environment to your eyes with the UI widgets overlaid in the digital domain. If they do this fast enough (and with a low enough mass on your head) this could be the best approach for AR. You won't have physical light leaking through virtual display panels in your vision field.
Deal breakers for me:
* Needs to be 1/10 the price it is now.
* Must run free open source no-cloud software.
Watch out for:
* You know all those cyber-zombies you see in public, getting social media dopamine hits or addicted to gacha games? A whole new version of that might be coming, if this AR concept hits mass market.
* Unexpected physical ailments.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sgleysti on Tuesday June 06 2023, @05:09PM (9 children)
I can't even guess how long it would take to get there. This stuff is cutting edge at the moment. There are a lot of sensors and displays, not to mention the computing power and plain old power required.
Unlikely from Apple, or any company with the capitalization to pull this off presently. We might get there someday though. I'd settle for a quality set of open source software that's interoperable with the documents and so forth at work. The more I have to use Microsoft stuff, the more I dislike it... Man, I wish open formats would prevail worldwide, especially for document preparation.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Tuesday June 06 2023, @06:26PM (1 child)
I love my Valve Index, which is relatively open; anyone can make a game or other program which uses all of its functionality. I'd pay upwards of $1500 for an Index II with this level of technology.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Tuesday June 06 2023, @11:57PM
I agree that $3,500 is going to put a lot of people outside of this product, but it is offering way more than what current VR tech from Oculus etc are doing.
Once they can get the price below $2,000, I think they'll have a much bigger market to play with. Assuming that the display tech is up to the task, you could conceivably do away with your big-screen TV and just simply watch shows virtually up against your wall (or floating in the air etc).
The idea of projecting an image of your eyes on the external display is an interesting one. I wonder how long it will take for there to be an app that simulates you paying attention to someone while you are actually doing something else?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by helel on Tuesday June 06 2023, @11:07PM (6 children)
Apple's pretty good about no-cloud options but open sources is... more questionable. That's why features like their facial recognition in photos always lags behind google - Apple waits until they can deliver it without cloud services, to advertise on better privacy.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday June 07 2023, @02:42PM (5 children)
And I'm sure it's got nothing to do with wanting to rip off the competition and tell their fans that they invented it, right?
(Score: 2) by helel on Wednesday June 07 2023, @02:54PM (4 children)
No offense but that's a dumb take. You can criticize their privacy focus as a disingenuous ploy but that's why they claim to be late to the game, not because they invented it first five years later.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday June 07 2023, @03:24PM (3 children)
It's not a dumb take. Have you actually seen Apple Marketing? Have you seen the fanboy reaction? It's typical for them to claim to have revolutionized things that were at best a marginal improvement and pretty much inevitable. Or have you forgotten that Nomad mp3 players and Blackberries existed prior to Apple. Not to mention all the tech they stole from Xerox because I don't remember any of that in their marketing materials.
As far as invent versus revolutionize, they do both. And their customer base is fine with it.
(Score: 2) by helel on Wednesday June 07 2023, @06:41PM (2 children)
I don't see anything in their marketing claiming they've made the first VR/AR system. Feel free to poke around and prove me wrong.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday June 07 2023, @09:13PM (1 child)
And I never claimed they were doing that here. I'm just claiming that they can't create anything truly new. At least not since Woz, pretty much everything since it's been then taking other people's work, slightly tweeking it and claiming a revolution.
And I don't very much that this would exist if they couldn't piggyback on other people.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday June 07 2023, @11:30PM
What I (generally) like about Apple is that they wait until they can do something the right way. By definition, that means that others will try and fail beforehand, then they can come out and deliver something better.
That's not to say they can't innovate though - I think it's unfair to say that nothing's happened since Woz. A few examples of revolutionary change that come to mind are the iPod scroll wheel (it did make a huge difference when navigating large libraries), and the on-screen keyboard for the iPhone (all other phones had physical keyboards).
I feel that the buzz has gone out of VR/AR recently, so I was a bit surprised to see Apple pitch this. Presumably they think they've finally got it right, as the market is still fairly small.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by VLM on Tuesday June 06 2023, @04:32PM (4 children)
The success of the i-devices was the hardware was "always" up to the task but the software shipped sucked, so Apple shipped "meh" "blah" "me too" hardware with excellent software and the products were a great success.
They are making the same mistake classic mp3 player mfgrs made, its all about the hardware and they don't discuss the software because probably it must suck.
Previous VR did not fail because of technical specs, lack of cool cases, or the price being too low, and Apple is making all of those mistakes with their product.
Who knows, software is patchable and maybe their software and integration etc will not suck. I wouldn't be too optimistic, but it could happen.
The problem with leaderless design-by-committee corporate swill is their products always suck. When the late Jobs made a product he liked, at least one person liked it and it ended up millions of people liked it. "Design by committee" crapware is liked by no one not even the creators so its doomed to fail.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Tork on Tuesday June 06 2023, @05:48PM (3 children)
It was announced at a developer's conference, and developers need hardware to develop on....
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2023, @11:51AM
Fair enough but thats app/enduser devs not operating system and GUI devs AFAIK.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday June 07 2023, @03:26PM (1 child)
Yes, but without some sort of killer use, it might not survive long enough for developers to care. Affected reality had been around for a while, there just hasn't been a killer app and hardware to make it stick.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday June 07 2023, @10:42PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2023, @11:29PM