I’m going to be honest, this just sounds like user error to me. Try typing something simple like “Can you generate some domain names related to bike sales?”. The results aren’t perfect but I thought it was pretty interesting and fairly useful. If you’re doing nothing but typing keywords with no other information such as “Can you generate domain names relating to the following keywords” of course it’s just going to spit out those keywords.
The majority of people I see complaining about apple’s walled garden ecosystem are people who are also proud to admit they don’t use apple products. It’s never made sense to me why people who don’t even use the products care so much about it. If people wanted to be able to do the things they claim they want to, they would switch to android but they don’t.
I have never understood the inverse: Apple users defending their lack of features. Being able to send iMessages to your Android user friends or install software that you wrote without paying extra would only benefit you, yet you vehemently reject having the ability to do so for no apparent reason. "Security" is the word I see thrown around which doesn't make too much sense to me given that you can do all these things and be secure already on basically any desktop environment. What makes phones the special exception? Is phone architecture exceptionally insecure by default or something?
You really think there’s no reason whatsoever? I have to believe that’s disingenuous. It’s just a phone to me and all I need is basic phone features to work. That’s also the reason I’m still using my iPhone X, it works as a phone and for basic tasks if I don’t want to get onto my computer or grab my laptop. I care more about my phone simply working than having additional features I don’t value. I don’t want to have to download multiple app stores in order to get specific apps. I already have to deal with that when it comes to epic on PC and it’s a pain in the ass. It also is going to make having to help the tech support for the technically challenged in my family so much more of a pain. There is a platform available if I want the features and capabilities you’re bringing up. I’m not telling anyone that their android is a bad choice or that it doesn’t work for them. Why do android users constantly seem to be telling me to be unhappy with the iPhone and that I need things I don’t want.
The only point that you’ve mentioned that can be annoying is sending a video to a friend with an android but it’s not a big enough of an issue that I care enough to do anything about it considering google photos and or an iCloud link is easy.
> The only point that you’ve mentioned that can be annoying is sending a video to a friend with an android but it’s not a big enough of an issue that I care enough to do anything about it
...except defend Apple at every given opportunity when it would be just as easy to ask them to fix it so it wouldn't be as annoying, or even ignore the discussion altogether. That is the mentality I don't get. If it works for you, great. Clearly it doesn't work for others. Why go out of your way to tell them that their problems are invalid?
What about it do you not get? I said it’s an inconvenience but not a huge issue. There are many ways of getting around it and iMessage only exists because of the way carriers used to charge for texting. I clearly said I wish it wasn’t the case but it’s just not impactful enough to me to really care about it. You’ll notice that most iPhone users don’t really care about the way android runs or works but a whole lot of android user seem to get really offended that iPhones aren’t androids and that iPhone users don’t care about that.
But clearly there are plenty of iPhone users who do care to install their own software. One solid way to tell is that if there weren't then there wouldn't be an iOS homebrew scene. Is your point then is that because you personally don't care that nothing should improve? I just don't see why you would even enter this discussion if you don't care. What compels you to jump to Apple's defense by downplaying real issues and falsely claiming nobody who has an iPhone has them?
> given that you can do all these things and be secure already on basically any desktop environment
My grandma had her bank account drained by a scammer who walked her through how to install a bank-looking app on her phone because android allows sideloading. I cannot fix my grandma. I can get her an iPhone.
"Oh, but computers...."
No. No scammer will walk her through apt-getting something that will mess with her bank account access in firefox on the ubuntu linux box we left her. Too many variations. Phones are easier targets as there are only two OSs.
Sorry that happened to you. I have worked with a lot of elderly people in the past and it is always a shame when that happens to them. You are right that you can't really "fix" them. Even if you lock down iMessage and prevent sideloading, scammers will still send them to phishing pages in their browsers, or get them to read out a gift card over the phone. These methods are actually way, way more common than getting them to install a malicious sideloaded app. Ultimately I think Apple's anticompetitive tactics had no bearing on your grandmother being scammed.
Sony (PlayStation store), Microsoft (Xbox store), and Valve (steam) all take 30%. No one can speak on what Nintendo takes due to NDA. Why are they never brought up?
Those stores can be abusing their monopoly position as well. Apple has the greatest sales of all of those stores though so it should rightly be targeted first. They flew under the radar for far too long. People are literally going back to using websites rather than apps because of their decision, but Apple even tried to kill progressive web apps recently - which are basically just shortcuts to websites on the Home Screen.
I think most people just like how simple the products are overall. I prefer that my family, who tends to need a lot of basic tech support, have iPhones because they’re able to figure most things out and there’s no real risk of them messing anything important up. I’ve also noticed this strange phenomenon that the majority of people who complain about iPhones and the apple ecosystem don’t even use them. If someone doesn’t like what the company offers, they’re not forced to buy any of their products. I hate the idea of needing to deal with multiple app stores in the future because people who don’t even use the products have some sort of issue with it.
Nope, 100M consoles in an internet of several billion where Apple has literal billions of devices in market are not at all the same thing and bringing that up suggests you don't think very hard before you post or you're trying to derail those who do.
I’m sorry that me asking a question is so emotionally upsetting to you that it leads to you attempting to insult me. I’ll try not to ask anymore question about Microsoft the 3.19 trillion dollar company, Sony the 113 billion dollar company, and Nintendo the 10 billion dollar company. I hope my question didn’t hurt these mom and pop businesses. You also made me completely aware of the fact that these aren’t the big three players in the console market which is a pretty fair comparison to this situation. Thanks again for your wonderful contribution.
You could have initially responded with that instead of reasoning that apple is being focused due to being a large player while dismissing other large companies being brought up.
sorry i can sideload my xbox and playstation. Just because they've been dinged for antitrust in other areas (i don't think sony has .. but certainly microsoft in my lifetime)..
I will never understand why people who don’t like the apple ecosystem just simply don’t buy apple products. It’s just really strange to me that it’s considered to be a monopoly when no one is forced to use the platform, there are other options out there.
I would strongly recommend looking at the results people are achieving with Apple’s game porting toolkit just days after it was released. With the hardware that the vision pro is supposed to have, I seriously think it will be the best gaming headset on the market if the final product ends up living up to what was announced.
The best gaming headset on the market would have to be able to connect to a Windows PC. The M2 chip in the headset doesn't have the power to run an intensive game at 4K resolution for each eye. Even if the headset could be tethered to a Mac for additional power, the GPUs in Macs don't come close to the capabilities of the 4090, which itself struggles to support 2K per eye for demanding games. One potential solution could be foveated rendering, which has shown some performance improvements on the Quest Pro and PSVR2, albeit not significantly. However, it's possible that Apple's implementation of this might yield better results.
I still believe that for the masses (think console gamers and pc gamers without the gaming rig) cloud gaming will be the future.
I've been playing fps/rts/rpg games through GeForce Now on a MacBook M1 and so far there's few obvious drawbacks - good internet required, slight input lag which can be annoying for some FPS games sure, and not all games are available yet - but for those who only play a few games regularly, it's also much better than running the game on an i3/i5 Windows laptop.
I agree, the prospects for cloud gaming do seem promising. However, we can't forget that in VR, latency is a much more important factor. One solution could be for companies to establish datacenters near high-population areas to guarantee low latency. But, I believe a more effective approach might involve advanced foveated rendering coupled with technologies like DLSS. At present, it seems like a viable strategy for both Apple and Meta would be to sell "boxes" equipped with console-grade hardware that can wirelessly connect to their headsets, providing additional compute.
GeForce Now, Luna, Xbox Cloud Streaming, PS Cloud, Shadow, and a few others are still around. GeForce Now is especially awesome, being Nvidia's own offering with access to their latest GPUs at a very reasonable price point.
After thirty years of desktop gaming PCs, I sold mine and just use GFN now. It's completely silent (no fan), minor lag (only matters for competitive shooters), and much cheaper than maintaining a high end gaming rig.
Compared to consoles, it has much better graphics, can be played anywhere where you have good internet, supports mouse/keyboard, ultrawide, 120Hz, etc.
Compared to the Stream Deck, it has much better graphics, much longer battery life (it's just streaming video, not rendering on device), and no heat or fan noise. I also sold my Steam Deck because GFN plus a streaming portable (Logitech gCloud) was way more ergonomic.
Did cloud streaming really fail, or is it just a niche? It's come a long way since OnLive. Stadia was a royal fuckup but not because of its technology; Google just had no idea how PC gaming culture works. Their competitors are still around and doing fine, if not making billions.
MKBHD reveiw of the AVP says Apple WILL NOT make controllers for the AVP.
That struck me as odd. (Obviously anyone can connect a bluetooth controller and give users some extra control, assuming this device supports open bluetooth for audio etc.)
It is one thing for Apple to claim that their latest gadget does not NEED any controllers for basic navigation and selection. Because they invested so much in perfecting a gensture based system. So far so good.
It is far more presumptious if they say they will NOT allow controllers.
When claiming credit for launching a new space called "spatial computing" -- it is very short-sighted / arrogant to state that a one click finger gesture is all you will ever need for all your comupting needs.
There are games obviously where multiple simultaneous actions need to be triggered. There are 3D modelling applications -- actually a great use case for a AR/VR HMD. And I am sure there are tons of other applications that can benefit from innovative and ergonomic approaches to interactions. Why would Apple go out of their way to say there will be no controllers.
Apple should ideally have an open SDK to allow third party wireless controllers. Knowing apple though ... they will probably sell $499 bluetooth earbuds and call them Apple Ear Pro or something.
I’m sceptical for a very simple reason. When Apple came up with the UI for the iPhone, the functionality of it wasn’t some vague promise, Steve Jobs gloated at length about how intuitive it all was while audiences gasped and applauded over and over. He did this by introducing several new sensors and technologies simultaneously.
I think a lot of that was just the Steve Jobs’s presence and presentation style.
It’s pretty bananas they’ve crammed an M2 into a headset with all the cameras, sensors, ML engines, and high res displays. The M2 chip alone (I have an M1 Pro) is still blowing my mind with the low wattage performance.
But much like the first iPhone, it is yet to be seen if it will stick. I do think it’s far more capable than existing VR headsets.
I really think people aren’t putting enough weight behind the fact that it’s going to have an M2 chip in it. Obviously there’s no way to tell if it’ll deliver until it’s released but the idea of having a headset with potentially the full power of a MacBook is kind of insane.
OTOH wasn't it inevitable -- that small devices of tomorrow will overtake the most powerful cutting-edge gadgets of the past in computing power, storage, performance.
Maybe in a decade small thumb-drives will have an M2 chip equivalent built into them. To encrypt/decrypt data on the fly with zero latency on multiple GB/s data. Or whatever other application can gobble up that much compute power.
I think the eye tracking is the multitouch of this generation of devices. It's not a new idea, but it's the first device to ship with it (at least in the "consumer" space). Even if they end up with some sort of controllers in the future, the eye tracking enables so many interactions. Not to mention foveated rendering, which they mentioned in a few of the slides. Basically, render a super high quality dot where the user is looking, and fade out the quality in the peripheral vision. 2x4k screens is a lot of pixels to render, even with the M2 being a decent GPU, but with eye tracking, it's possible to really push the rendering quality.
They have insanely low latency. Every VR has noticeable latency but so far everyone who have tried vision pro says it’s unnoticeable. That’s a huge leap forward. And this is in a device that doesn’t feel like a center block on your head.
I haven't heard that they won't allow them. Just that they won't make them. I suspect it would support Xbox and Playstation and Nintendo controllers at launch, even, since their other platforms do.
However, VR controllers are different in that they need to be tracked as they move through space much more precisely than those console controllers support. But maybe third-party VR controllers can also be supported. I think nobody knows that yet.
I guess that makes perfect sense, actually, now that I see they are making such a big push to make Unity games work. Presumably some of those existing Unity games can't work without such controllers.
Yep, they explicitly mentioned (and showed, IIRC) that you can connect game controllers to the Vision Pro. Presumably it will indeed be PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch controllers, as well as the various third party controllers specifically sold for Apple devices.
Both examples strike me as strange since using either without something to keep the charger in place is a joy it setup, possibly worse than trying to keep an 8 pin from falling behind your bed stand again.
Apple doesn’t choose not to make these kinds of things because they aren’t needed. It chooses not to make them to narrow their focus.
Apple had planned to be out of the display market as well.
I believe the Studio display and even the XDR are possibly the result of failing to meet original timelines for Vision.
The company continues to sit out home networking despite the success of AirPort Extreme and generally confusing and messy state of the market.
So it is no surprise to me they wouldn’t be trying to guess at controllers. They are working on a platform.
Personally I think this is what has held Pads (and iPhones) back from becoming better at gaming: sometimes a PlayStation style controller is just way better than touch controls on an iPad. Touch controls often don't register with the same reliability as physical controls and it does not have any physical feedback.
Apple should have made a standard gaming control that all games could use.
I've wanted finger guns as an input mechanism since the Kinect disappointed me with its lack of finger gun halo. But the tracking would need to be crazy precise.
As others have mentioned, I’m sure that this will support controllers such as a PlayStation controller like the other iOS devices. I also just personally view this as more of a computer worn on your head than a VR headset. I personally purchased the first Vive that released and sold it shortly after. I’ve also tried a few other headsets afterwards. I have yet to experience a time that VR headsets have seemed to be more than a gimmick for a variety of reasons. From what was showed I think the Vision Pro could be the thing that changes my opinion. I don’t even know that I would personally get one but I do think that if it delivers on the hype that they’ve built, it will the headset landscape.
You're not going to play VR games with a vanilla console controller. And if you're thinking of emulating non-VR PC games on the headset, that seems like it would not be all that compelling. What's the draw?
I was never talking about VR games, other people keep mentioning them. I brought up the game porting toolkit because of the performance people are achieving on their laptops that have similar or the same apple chip that the headset will have. I understand not everyone will see the appeal of playing regular games on a headset but I feel that it makes sense with what the way they are marketing it. The draw is that I could play AAA titles practically anywhere I want with just a headset and a controller. Those games would appear to be displayed on a full size TV or smaller/larger depending on personal preference.
I have yet to find a reason to buy and keep a VR headset as most things just feel so gimmicky to me. At this point unless you’re either tethered to a more powerful device to be able to do the heavy lifting for the headset or you have a standalone headset that can play some basic arcade like games. A single device that can be taken on the go and play new releases not made specifically for the headset would be amazing to me. Obviously until it’s released who can say what it will actually be capable of but if it has the equivalent power of a MacBook, when my mid 2015 MacBook Pro finally dies I’d honestly consider replacing it with the vision pro but wouldn’t run out to buy one to have in addition to the MacBook.
I really don’t think that’s the case anymore after seeing WWDC and what people are doing with the new game porting toolkit. Individuals at their homes have Diablo 4 already running what seems to be flawlessly on their MacBooks using it. Also they brought Hideo Kojima out during the conference to talk about it, including announcing that DS was going to be released on max along with the sequel. I think apple is finally acknowledging gaming exists.
It’s compatible with any Bluetooth controller, but I see no reason it would be a nonstarter.
Remember it has full hand tracking. If you want to hold something e.g. a lightsaber or whatever, there is no reason not to. An inert plastic prop should work just fine.
I'm not a huge gamer, aside from fitness games like Thrill of the Fight, but I've tried a bunch of VR games just to see.
And there is just no way that a lightsaber game could be good without haptic feedback, in a world where haptic feedback exists. And I think many other kinds of game.
YouTube guy MKBHD even called out the lack of haptics in his initial impressions video, not even for a game: the butterfly flew over to him in the Apple demo, and he held out his finger, and when the butterfly landed on it... nothing. And that was kind of jarring, he said. (And it would be.)
And yeah, the Oculus controllers wouldn't nail the butterfly on finger demo, but if they had controllers, the demo would be a hawk landing on your forearm. (And that would work, even though it doesn't quite make sense that your palm would vibrate when a bird lands on your forearm... but haptic feedback is weird.)
By haptics you mean a buzzer? That doesn’t replicate any kind of real-world experience.
But again - there is no reason gamers can’t have a control, but it’s silly to use a game controller to interact with a computing environment when you can use your hands.
I am not sure how it works, but what PlayStation calls "rumble". In the light saber game, you can feel it when your light saber hits your opponent, or your light sabers clash, and it absolutely adds to the experience immensely. I think almost all players of those types of game would prefer to have that feedback, barring some kind of disability or something.
I don't think you need the haptic vibration function for interacting with floating menus and the OS, although again it helps for button presses, which is why all smartphones now feature haptic feedback.
But the other reason to use a controller in general-purpose OS use scenarios is precision. If you can directly touch something, then by all means that is the best. But if the menu to be interacted with is too far away, say 8 meters away, all current systems I have seen make you shout a beam out of your hand to the button or object, then do some gesture to click.
A controller is way more accurate for this, kind of how a mouse is more precise for most people than a trackpad. But even more so.
So on all of Meta's systems so far, the controller can more precisely highlight and click things at distance. And I think this holds true for all other currently-available systems as well.
What Apple Vision Pro is bringing that is new, though, is the eye-tracking. Supposedly, it is as good as, or perhaps even better, at selecting an object at distance. If so, then yeah, controllers wouldn't really provide a significant advantage for most non-game activity.
You mean... so we could like, battle our small children in our kitchens with lightsabers?
My kids indeed do have sword toys that vibrate and make sounds, so I have done this. And I'm sorry to have to report that it is... substantially less compelling than fighting Darth Vader in VR. (Perhaps not for them, though.)
Noone wants to use vr with a 2D game controller (a la xbox)- that completely destroys the point. You want spatially tracked controllers that fit each hand and are meant for vr. Even if there are third party controllers that get around the tracking problems, developers won’t have a controller standard to work against
They do. The Quest Pro I have has been getting better and better at bare-hand control with each release. But AFAIK they all come with controllers, and it is the default (and generally is still easier and more precise to use, despite the continually-improving hand tracking).
No, only a small selection of games do hand tracking and it's usually only good if it's been made primarily for handtracking. Even with true hand tracking games, the amount of controls you can do is limited.
