The problem with standalone VR and "spatial computing"
The problem with standalone VR and "spatial computing"
The Apple Vision Pro and Meta's Quest headsets are too locked down to be the future of computing.
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As someone who's been using apple devices for a long time, this pretty much summarizes one of my biggest concerns with the APV. The other being expensive, proprietary, and software-locked lens inserts. (Basically creating a proprietary tax for people with poor vision who want to be involved with spacial computing, antithetical to Apple's accessibility efforts.)
I haven’t seen anything about the lenses being software locked. Who has reported that?
That said - they are $100 to $150, which isn’t terrible as far as glasses go. There are a lot of weird things with the Vision Pro, but as a glasses wearer, that price range actually feels reasonable to me. That’s Warby Parker pricing.
I was hoping for free :( BUT $150 for Zeiss lenses is pretty ok price wise. (especially when we are complaining about $150 on top of a $3500 device)
I could wear contacts if I wanted to, but glasses look good on me and hide a scar that I have on my nose and eye. I keep thinking that I should probably just do a Drew Carey. Get contacts and put non prescription lenses in my frames.
Glasses can be an inconvenience with vr glasses, ski goggle, helmets, face masks, night driving, etc.
Honestly, I think contacts are the best option. The Zeiss lenses move the headset slightly heavier and worse move it further away from your face creating a lever action amplifying the weight issue.
You can still wear glasses. Just don't put a prescription in them.
Personally I love my glasses and have never tried contacts, but I think I'll switch to contacts when this product category is more mature.
Can you do laser correction? If so, that seems even better than the contacts situation.
LASIK is a great option, especially if you're younger. A lifetime of contacts and glasses adds up.
There's a calibration process that takes place after a set of Zeiss lenses are inserted and the code scanned. My concern is that this calibration process will likely not be triggered for any insert not made by Zeiss. It may not be a hard software lock, but it would suck if your AVP just didn't work as well just because you didn't buy from the people Apple wants you to buy from, even though it probably could anyway.
Ahh. That makes sense. I just watched the pairing video about them. I’m curious about how this works.
https://youtu.be/Xs5a9G6NynQ?si=KgY3Z54Di51aaQ2G
Here’s my guess. The circular QR code contains the prescription, and the lenses contain NFC. When a set of lenses attach, NFC tells the device to pair the prescription, lenses and device together.
Doing that would allow a future OS update to support multiple users accounts with multiple lenses. The Vision Pro would auto-switch to a different calibration when different household user’s lenses were dropped in.
If that’s the case, yeah, this might not be super friendly to other lens manufacturers. That said, given the price of lenses and frames I doubt anyone would be willing to sell these things for under $50. And if I’m going to blow 4 grand on a thing, I’ll probably just eat the extra 50-100 bucks. Heck, the cash back from my credit card would cover the lenses for a purchase this big.
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