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...and get none of the benefits of it.

This is like saying "for the price of car, you could buy 20,000 bicycles". While that's true, I'm not going to ride my bike from Texas to Disneyland.


The point is not to get the “benefits” of a VR headset, but rather to maximise one’s chances of doing something interesting without a VR headset.

I would not suggest getting all of them anyway. It’s just to observe that the opportunity cost of disappearing inside an expensive virtual device is matched by the financial cost.

One gadget is the equivalent of the outlay of an entire well-funded hobby that might broaden your horizons.


What's to say (and who are you to say) that a VR headset may not broaden someone's horizons, though?


I had the unfortunate experience of trying the metaverse. It was vile to the point I logged out and returned the headset. Maybe Apple will offer a better alternative. The experience is nothing like real life, where a few bad people are usually limited in their verbal assaults. Also you wouldn’t generally have exposure to such indecent behavior generally in real life.


There are plenty of ways someone could expand their horizons and develop a hobby in VR that doesn’t involve or require them to do any of that.


Isn't that a little naive and idealistic, though? I love FOSS software as much as the next HN user but, for the vast majority of it, it only does the most basic tasks possible and, with few, rare exceptions, gets abandoned or obsoleted when the developers decide that it's not worth their time to work on it anymore. The market can't and won't solve every issue/need/deficiency that people have and, even with your example, the number of issues that every single one of those desktop replacements had dwarfed most of the benefits that using them had. For the vast majority of people that aren't tech nerds like us, the "locked down system" is preferable because it gives an incredibly consistent, polished experience for 99% of the use cases people need it for at the expense of the ability to customize it to your heart's content.

It's the same situation as the loss of headphone jacks and removable batteries. Some of us care deeply about those things but, antithetically to the point you've made, the market has decided that those things are no longer important to the vast majority of people.


> I love FOSS software ... the vast majority of it, it only does the most basic tasks possible and, with few, rare exceptions, gets abandoned or obsoleted when the developers decide that it's not worth their time to work on it anymore

This is just as true of paid, closed source software. And when it gets abandoned, you can't fix it if it's important to you.

> For the vast majority of people that aren't tech nerds like us, the "locked down system" is preferable because it gives an incredibly consistent, polished experience for 99% of the use cases people need it for at the expense of the ability to customize it to your heart's content.

I think that macOS is a great example of a system that is closed enough that a non-technical user will get the polished experience they're looking for, but allows technical users to get under the hood and customize it to their needs. Of course, it isn't open enough for some people, but it is open enough for a great many very technical people.


>This is just as true of paid, closed source software. And when it gets abandoned, you can't fix it if it's important to you.

It's not true of most paid, closed source software, though, while it is true for most open source software. At least in the former, the money people pay for the software directly contributes to its longevity and sustainability.


To be clear, not advocating for FOSS here, in fact almost the opposite, I want the full force of capitalism to be free to solve these problems without arbitrary barriers erected by big tech gatekeepers.


Capitalism can't even solve normal problems in the way you're suggesting. How in the world would it solve any of these problems?


This is factually inaccurate. It doesn't stop working in a moving car or train. The reviewers/users that were using it in those instances simply didn't turn on the Travel mode of the device. In order for the 3D windows to persist, they need tracking data. Travel mode disables the external tracking and leaves it as internal. It's less accurate but it's completely usable in a moving vehicle.


Your VR enthusiast is wrong. The issue he's describing was because of the two video players that launched in the App Store. There are video players for the AVP that can play stereoscopic video without issue.


See https://www.404media.co/a-3-500-chastity-belt-early-apple-vi... though I know you can put pano videos in WebXR and that might bypass it. (In fact, if you have WebXR, the only people who need the app store are those who never "think different")


Yeah. They're wrong. I've been playing 3D SBS videos from my collection since I got the AVP.


See https://www.404media.co/a-3-500-chastity-belt-early-apple-vi... though I know you can put pano videos in WebXR and that might bypass it.


Apple has the prescription lenses in the stores. If you bring your glasses, they have a device that will shine some lights through your glasses to determine your prescription and pop out the correct lenses needed for the Vision demo.


I wonder how do they manage that with all the corrections needed like for astigmatism? That's a huge range of combinations.


The intake form asks for certain things (like prism vision) and it also asks if you know your prescription ahead of time. I can't imagine that they'll have all of those specific fixes but, for the majority of people, you can simply go in and get the right prescriptions lenses. They even email you a link to get your specific prescription of lenses after the demo.


Thanks for that. That was a great read. It's really interesting to see a perspective from someone that understands that the current state of systems came from years and years of intentionally working within a paradigm and that changing regulations rarely, if ever, consider that paradigm. It really does fundamentally break the "brand promise" as he calls it.


My only hesitation with these rules is that I feel like Apple, as a business, has a right to do whatever they want with their business so long as there are alternatives and I do consider Android to be a viable alternative. I wouldn't want the government forcing my business to do anything that I felt devalued my brand or my product so I do understand the "maliciousness of their compliance".

Let's say that I created some kind of device, not as complex as a phone, but something that was like a little portable video game system or something. If the government can tell Apple that they have to allow third-parties to be able to do whatever they want to these devices, then it may hurt my business if third-parties don't have the same standards of quality as I do. Apple's standard is really, really high (insanely high by some accounts) and I feel like mine is too.

That's the only reason that I would oppose this type of legislation. The people complaining about Apple's behavior are the people that have become successful off of Apple's ecosystem and customer base. They want the benefits of having access to Apple's highly curated customer base without the downsides of having to develop and foster is themselves. It feels entitled in a way that I only begrudgingly support because of Apple's size and resources. If it was any other large corporation, I'd feel the same way. I wouldn't feel this way about any regular company, though. I would be rallying against the governance.


This isn't a summary. You basically removed all the positive things he had to say and just left the negatives. That's not what a summary is.


They're not in a position where they could have standing, though, since they were in that position and violated the terms of their agreement. The judge has not ordered Apple to reinstate Epic's account and the termination was found to be legal.


>How are they even going to attempt to enforce compliance.

Per the judge's own words, Apple is allowed access to the company's financials and other information that would allow them to audit developers' use of third-party payment systems.


The relevant quote is below. She's not explicitly granting them that permission, she's saying that it would already be within their rights to make that the rule for participating in the App Store:

> As discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.

> In such a hypothetical world, developers could potentially avoid the commission while benefitting from Apple's innovation and intellectual property free of charge. The Court presumes that in such circumstances that Apple may rely on imposing and utilizing a contractual right to audit developers annual accounting to ensure compliance with its commissions, among other methods. Of course, any alternatives to IAP (including the foregoing) would seemingly impose both increased monetary and time costs to both Apple and the developers.

https://casetext.com/case/epic-games-inc-v-apple-inc-2


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