Ask HN: Is anyone working at least 4 hours daily on an Apple Vision Pro? I asked this in 2024 and would love to see the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41748125 |
Ask HN: Is anyone working at least 4 hours daily on an Apple Vision Pro? I asked this in 2024 and would love to see the change: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41748125 |
Having an enormous virtual screen is not the only benefit, I also feel that the immersion helps my focus. It’s easier to get into the zone than ever before. I remember someone describing the Vision Pro as the equivalent of noise-canceling headphones for the eyes, which is spot on. I suppose I am lucky that I don’t have any problems with the weight of the comfort, except on hot days.
I’ve been an Apple enthusiast since the 1980s, but I can’t even remember the last time I was as excited about an Apple product as I am about the Vision Pro. I hope it will survive, come down in price, and launch in more countries.
Looks like nobody is working on something that can replace it.
The quest being much lighter makes it nice though (but you should buy a third party headstrap that doesn't suck)
I did a special test session in Japan for "productivity" (the guys at the Apple Store were very friendly and agreed to let me install VSCode and Ghostty on the testing laptop. I cloned an open source repository and spent ~20 minutes just coding.
It was FANTASTIC. The Apple Store was full and I could still "black out" the noise and completely immersed myself in the experience.
I'm seriously considering buying a pair now, but I'm just concerned about the under-investment in the sector.
Regardless, I honestly think it's the future, maybe in 10/20 years, but it'll be the norm.
no, I love technology, but I will never bind a piece of tech directly into my brain. we failed with mobile phones and we WILL definitely fail with BCI chips, ON THE EXACT SAME SPOTS. they will be impressive, sure, but they will also hold us captive past user acquisition period
I only use it when traveling. It's not better than a high quality computer monitor for coding for me, and I'd expect the same to be true for most.
Also a bit meta but... if you ask a question that involves using the AVP in 2026, you're mostly getting answers from a minority of die hards.
Anyone else has probably left theirs sitting around gathering dust for a while now. Last I checked there are actually fewer AVP apps over time, so this isn't exactly a thriving platform.
I own a AVP and it’s super niche. Can’t blame Apple for putting their attention on the more wearable glasses form factor.
Also, in the year that I’ve owned my AVP I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been in full VR/immersive. And I use it everyday.
yeah that's why escapist hobbies , movies & video games do so poorly.
it's not even 'another world' , it's just a slightly different kind of screen, one that you wear. You get to use it for what you want -- maybe escapism is that thing -- but we'd never say that some beancounter working on an excel sheet is living in a fake world (although you should say that wrt a few of them..)
Arguably a true AR experience brings us MORE into the real world as the need to be rooted to a desk and cubicle is lessened and we're brought closer to product/client/stakeholder without sacrificing digital connectivity.
I use it a few hours a day, a few times a week exclusively as a virtual display for my macbook.
Being able to put a huge virtual monitor anywhere is the killer feature and I don't tend to use it for anything else. It's indispensable on flights where laptop lids can't even fully open.
Apple got the interactions just about perfect for AR window management, etc.
Of course the main drawbacks are the weight, size, and overall embarrassment from having a giant face computer strapped to your head.
I don't find it very comfortable for more than a couple hours at time, at least with the solo knit band + the belkin head strap. I'd like to get a dual knit band at some point.
But when this sort of hardware gets miniaturized I think many people will prefer it to hunching over a laptop screen. Just like headphones, wearing glasses while typing at a black screen could signal "Do not disturb, I'm working here"
[0] Steve Jobs on Virtual Reality (D3, 2005) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQECSInWVPY
You're right, and it's also why this device is such a non sequitur for Apple. Almost all of their successful products are trendsetting and cool (iPhone, mac, airpods), this is one causes embarrassment and I just don't think it's fixable.
>Of all the widely ridiculed tech products, Apple’s AirPods have experienced an extraordinary turnaround. Back in 2016, they were roundly mocked by the tech industry. Tiny wireless earbuds? It seemed like a recipe for disaster – streets would be littered with these lost headphones, which would clutter up city pavements like discarded gloves and babies’ socks." – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2019/feb/10...
Relevant Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/51yazy/this_is_what_...
I’m also more than happy breaking it out in my hotel room.
Couldn’t imagine wearing it on a plane or train and would rather use my much more discreet laptop directly.
On macOS, it is ultimately the app developer who is responsible for persisting and using state for windows, such as size and position. Think several terminal sessions - the terminal app needs to be the one to determine if it is representing the same 'session' as before after a restart.
If you are talking about remote display in a 3D space, the application would need to understand how to track and reopen a window in a particular location, and also there would need to be policy on how say a resize on the Vision Pro relates to the native window size once the Vision Pro is turned off.
This puts a lot of responsibility in the app developer's hands, where it is most likely not going to be accepted. So I would expect the experience to be sub-par.
There could be interesting workarounds for full-screen windows, since there are already the concepts of multiple heterogenous displays and display resolution changes on macOS. So you might have a screen, but the 'full screen' button is replaced by one which breaks the window out. The challenge would be making these persistent across connections to the Mac in a way that apps work well by default without picking up odd heuristics.
A hybrid solution I would love to see would be to have the current virtual screen, but with the option of dragging individual windows out of the screen.
I’m in Ultrawide at 4k via a MBP or a Mac Mini. Wireless keyboard and wireless mouse. Typically multiple Ghostty windows open, an IDE, and a web browser with a bunch of tabs.
If I have a podcast, YouTube or music playing in the background I do so via the AVP directly via the native app.
Though I like virtual environments I don’t use them much. The amazing pass through (I have a Quest 3 and it’s not even remotely comparable) allows me to feel like I’m still IRL and be aware of my surroundings. And to see and interact with my wife who’s also remote if she happens to pass by. This need to touch grass is the same reason I typically don’t wear AirPods while in them. You can really get sucked in with virtual environments and AirPods on.
No eye strain issues. Have had 20/20 my entire life and a year in still 20/20. We’ll see. It does get a little sweaty/heavy. I have the Apple double knit and the CM Global or whatever it’s called.
I do have a decent office monitor setup with a 43” OLED and LG Dual-ups. I don’t use it much since getting the AVP as I like moving around the house.
They are great for watching video, make for a fantastic travel accessory, and one can use them for coding in a pinch, but I honestly couldn't find a good reason to, when I have a perfectly good MacBook Pro screen right in front of me.
I would definitely pay more for glasses that would allow me to have a better virtual computer display. Perhaps not $3500, but $2000? The main reason why I didn't even consider Apple Vision Pro is because of its humongous size, weight and complexity — I don't want another computer with another (locked down) OS requiring updates and maintenance. I want things that do not require anything of me. This is why XReal glasses are so nice: they are just a display. No battery, no OS, no maintenance.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I am very happy with the Xreal One Pro purchase. They provide excellent value. They are light, they are small, I can toss them in a bag to have a private display whenever I need. They are fantastic for travel and overall provide a great value. I would highly recommend them. Just don't expect them to be a better screen than your laptop screen for coding.
I would not pay all that money to have something on that is that bulky and get annoying after a couple of hours
I do enjoy it when I’m in a work type that is well supported.
I would love deeper integration with macOS beyond just screen sharing too. Or alternatively a broader selection of native equivalent apps.
There also seems to be an odd standoff between Apple and the streaming apps, eg no native YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, etc. Not that it impacts work, but it impacts consumer adoption.
I’m very curious how this new era of Apple will respond…
Edit: Being serious…the big players have all began taking AR seriously verrry recently.
Now they need to release hardware.
If it wasn’t hampered by iOS and could run more than just the app store then maybe.
Unless you life fully alone, there is definitely a different level of vulnerability and isolation in effectively blindfolding yourself that is very hard to ignore. Even after months working daily using these devices, it still felt awkward to sink into one in an open plan office. I can't imagine doing it in a living room while your family is around, or near roommates, or a plane.
Tonnes of people live alone. A huge normal of people now work from home. If you're using it as a monitor to work like suggested in the post you're not going to be doing that around family/roommates anyway even on a laptop. You're going to be in a room by yourself.
The only place I’ve ever seen anyone say positive things about VR is online.
I may be proven wrong but I’m convinced it’s a small minority who care about VR headsets, and a good portion of them seem to be the terminally online.
I guess the main problem here is the price point, which will improve over time and with scale.
Products such as the ipod and then the iphone, were as the parent poster describes. Both ipod like devices, and the iphone were successors to other devices already on the market. It was how they were presented, packaged, and tailored that made them special and unique. Yet the launch of these devices are also in the range of two decades ago.
In the tech world, a few years is a long time let alone 20 or 30 years.
I'd say Apple is barely innovative now, and further, their 'early ideas' are long, long, long gone.
For me, the ergonomic benefits are the selling point, not the display quality. Not having to sit hunched over a laptop screen for several hours means I can work almost anywhere. Sometimes I'll use it in a cafe. Other times I just lie down in bed. I also make use of speech to text, so I just need to be able to press a hotkey and reach the track pad.
On the topic of display quality, it's important to use Better display to upscale the output to the XReals to high DPI - that gives noticeably better quality when it's downscaled to the (lower) native resolution of the XReals.
As I said, I had my glasses replaced because I thought I got a faulty unit, but the next one just had the blurry spots in different places. Then on a trip to Japan I visited several stores that had them on display and checked the display units — they all have the same problem.
I am not sure why, but not everyone is bothered by this. Perhaps some people don't care, or have had poor eyesight all along so they never saw the screen clearly. But for me there is a huge difference between seeing everything that's in front of me clearly and seeing blurry patches on my screen.
Apple made the bed when they openly were hostile to the developers. There's a reason why every platform courts the developers (Remember MS's "developers developers developers").
Apple could get away from being a jerk because the devices were attractive, and the distribution it offered was stellar. But it isnt the device that makes the platform successful, but the developers. And YouTube, Netflix, Spotify and the likes know this.
So when AVP came along, for the first time, the power dynamics shifted. They didnt have to rush to the platform. Why should all these companies bend over backwards to make Apple's device a successful. And if they do the work, they'll be even more beholden to Apple's whims.
So they decided to sit out. And cue the fall out.
AVP hardwar is brilliant, but Apple overplayed its hand.
> Apple made the bed when they openly were hostile to the developers. There's a reason why every platform courts the developers (Remember MS's "developers developers developers").
This is about relationships between different big corporations who are all platform owners and competitors. Apple was never hostile to regular developers. Apple got from the beginning that app ecosystem and therefore devs is a must.
And in any case, AVP can't compete with iPhone, no one expected it at that price, and so developing apps for AVP would be a waste of time.
What's the play ? They may get new customers by making an app for the apple pro, they get nothing if they don't.
I don't the economic interest in waiting.
Without a large audience, spending money on porting to AVP is either money down the drain or a bet on a large audience coming along soon.
https://www.istockphoto.com/nl/foto/indian-little-girls-carr...