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$3499
For just an additional $699 (849 CAD), you can get a set of four wheels to move your headset around with you! /s
And if i get the $999 stand i have something to hang it on.
Remember when the Oculus first came out, and people said in a few years that VR would get cheaper? Those people didn’t anticipate Apple.
Has VR got substantially better since the first Oculus? I’m asking genuinely, as I’ve never used any VR headset.
From what I saw last night, this thing pushes the boundaries of what VR is in a way that no Oculus has really done since its launch. That in itself has a value to it, in spurring on other manufacturers to make their offerings even better.
@DJDarren @Lobstronomosity Oculus has proven that hardware is one thing, but apps is another. And developing and prototyping VR apps is hard, long and expensive. Market is too small for many devs to get super interested in.
@DJDarren @Lobstronomosity tech capabilities has never been an issue - there is HTC 4k set which I would love to buy one day, and 90% of GPUs can’t fully utilize it anyway.
I guess this is why I’m cautiously optimistic about Vision Pro. Essentially, it looks like an iPad Pro but the screen is in a headset. The end result is that current iPad apps could well work right out of the box, meaning devs don’t need to be convinced to get on board.
Thank god I work in VR and my company will almost c we thinly buy this one for me!
Not comfortable with the iris scanner, no matter how many assurances they make that it’s secure.
So many companies are proving that their “promises” mean nothing lately…
Of course it will be “secure”. Don’t worry, apple will make damn sure no one can access the camera to watch you.
The data they generate from watching you themselves they fully intend to sell, so they’ll make sure that isn’t open as well.
Just seeing where you look so they can inject ads into the content you watch while you’re not looking, report back where you pay attention to serve more ads, and of course there’s the realistic as-us avatar’s made by scanning our faces that hackers can now spoof for fun.
Edit:
Ipad already has a patent to do exactly this, btw. Eye tracking for ad revenue.
The data they generate from watching you themselves they fully intend to sell
A healthy dose of skepticism is always warranted, but I wouldn’t state this as fact when we don’t even have evidence of Apple presently doing these kinds of things (i.e. selling the other biometric data their devices collect). They aren’t an ad company like Facebook or Google, and it’s against their own privacy policy. If Apple were caught doing this, it would be a huge scandal, not business as usual.
business as usual
Is THAT what the Apple Advertising settings menu, Personalized Ads settings, and lengthy ToS is for?
And here i thought it was to sell ads using my personal data. Silly me.
The Apple advertising & privacy policy in that menu is pretty short.
I don’t see any mention of biometrics in it.
It includes device information like type, OS version, and keyboard language.
It also includes rough geolocation specifically when in the App Store, News, and TV apps, if location services are turned on and these apps are granted permission to use it. They claim this data is not stored.
After that it’s account information (things like iTunes download history, other Apple devices owned).
They claim none of this data is shared with third parties.
Like I said, there is always room for skepticism. But I think it would be a pretty big deal if it turned out Apple was flat out lying in their own legalese. It also just doesn’t make sense in their business model. Unlike Facebook, for whom 90% of their revenue is derived from data collection and ads, Apple makes all their money selling hardware on huge margins. I don’t think they would risk alienating someone who is happy shelling out $1500-$3500 for a new laptop over a few measly dollars. It’s probably why the data collection they do engage in is opt-in, rather than opt-out hidden behind dark patterns.
You’re confusing “being the worst” with “being bad”.
Yes, facebook is way more toxic in its violation of its users’ privacy, that doesn’t make the methods Apple uses “good” by comparison.
I still had to get go 5 menu’s deep to see those settings, and i’m fairly certain most of the tracking (like geolocation) is on by default.
Also, their “do not track” equivalent is still entirely trust based as far as anything we can prove, and we saw how that went with the browser flag (it was added to the list of data to track, because people who enabled it were an ad target bucket)
I’m not confusing these two things. I’m firmly of the belief that when it comes to privacy, Apple is a C student doing the bare minimum. They are only notable because they are surrounded almost exclusively by dropouts.
That’s still a passing grade.
From my perspective, their “commitment” to privacy is entirely marketing, and i have no reason on the code side to believe the things they say it does.
Apple security has for decades been considered a joke, as well, coming from someone in the field. Safari in particular is considered the beginner browser to target for hacking contests.
I’m really into a bunch of the non-XR updates. The new MacBook Air looks really nice; and the fitness and health updates all seem useful as well. The headset is so far out still I kind of don’t care yet. Maybe as we get closer to release there’ll be more info about it; but “coming next year” just really dampens my enthusiasm.
I’m most excited about the “barely worth mentioning” updates to Safari, Maps, Airpods, and autocorrect lol.
Folks on Mastodon were bashing the “Web Apps” conversation but… I would really prefer to install less glorified-site-wrappers on my stuff, thanks. Like they basically knocked out 2 of the 3 reasons I opted for Edge over Safari:
- Install sites like Slack, Discord, YoutubeMusic as apps rather than using an electron wrapper
- Work vs Personal profiles w/ history and extensions
- Optimized memory usage & Automatic tab “sleeping”
As for Maps: I like Siri’s voice, and the “turn left but stay in the second from left lane to do it” has saved me from road rage a number of times. It’s nicely integrated to Contacts, so I just say “Navigate to Mom/Sister/SO” early in the drive. But I don’t use it because of the absurd amount of data usage the app uses (I’m on a limited prepaid plan). So this is basically all I’ve been waiting for to drop my GMaps usage down to just “what’s good around here?” type usage.
Airpods’ adaptive usage seems perfect for the way I think airpods are best used — while walking around. If I’m camping out at a cafe or something, I pull out the full sized headphones. But if I’m walking or running, I bring out the airpods. Usually in transparency mode, toggling it off if things get too loud to hear. Looking forward to trying the new feature.
And autocorrect has been getting worse — significantly so. Whatever it is they do, I hope it works :)
I have a child whose name sounds close enough to “Siri” that my wife and I both have accidentally activated Siri many, many times. Removing the need for “Hey” first will make this only worse. 😅
That said, I’m with you. Most of the more “minor” updates are the ones I’m most excited about!
I’m super excited about this space and what it will mean for computing paradigms going forward. I know there is a lot of saltiness at the price, but it’s not a shocker. I’m a tech early adopter and will likely want to jump on this when it comes out next year, more so out of curiosity than anything else.
The digital avatar they previewed in the keynote gave me slightly uncanny vibes but I imagine it will improve with time/before release.
How is the price not a shocker? Like we all expect an Apple Tax but this literally 2x the cost of the highest priced headsets released so far.
It’s not a shocker for me because I’ve been hearing rumors for months that it’ll be $3000+; but other than that, yeah, it’s… a very bold statement on their part.
For Mixed Reality devices, it is the same magnitude as Hololens 2 or Magic Leap 2, the biggest difference being Passthrough AR vs. Optical AR. A more comparable device is the Quest Pro, but the AR experience is probably much higher resolution and with binocular color cameras and depth sensors it hopefully doesn’t have distortion.
Yes, it is a lot for a VR device, but for a standalone MR device it is comparable with higher fidelity, so it isn’t significantly more expensive than other devices in the same category… arguably it is the best value for the category if the cameras and screens have a wide FOV with high resolution and can accurately reproduce the HDR of an environment.
Their AR headset looks way bulkier than I expected. Thought it’d be closer to the google glasses, but they wanted it to do AR and VR. Wonder if they will come out with an AR only one that is closer to regular glasses.
The magic ski goggles
