Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2023
Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2023
A 15-inch MacBook Air, then major iOS updates, then the grand finale: the long-awaited Vision Pro augmented reality headset.
$3499
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.
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.
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..
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 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.
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
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.