Apple Announced

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Watched, learned, and I’m impressed by all of it, while the total is pretty overwhelming, everything looks good to me. Not that I can justify $3500 (X2) for us to dive into Vision Pro headsets I can see that many can and will do so… Some awesome tech in so many areas… But we have to wait, see, maybe investors get a discounted price?? :slight_smile:

Introducing Apple Vision Pro and the era of spatial computing.

The new 15‑inch MacBook Air with M2, Mac Studio with M2 Max and M2 Ultra, and Mac Pro with M2 Ultra. And previews of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma, and watchOS 10.

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I’ve never been a fan of VR headsets. I’ve tried out Oculus and even got the Oculus Go for my kids. I was not impressed, and neither were they. One might argue that they’d have been more impressed by the higher-end Oculus models, but I think the more expensive units would just have been set aside, unused, like the Go.

All that said, I was pretty blown away by the presentation. I’ve been following (casually) all the rumors in the run-up to WWDC, and I was aware of the rumors that it would be mixed reality rather than VR. I was also aware of the rumors that many at Apple didn’t think Apple Vision Pro was ready. If the presentation is truly reflective of the device, they may have worried a bit too much.

IMO, the features and capabilities presented for AVP – huh, just like Aliens vs. Predators – are at least 10 times beyond what other existing headsets are capable of. More than 10 times, but it’s hard to quantify. Even if only half of the features are available at launch, it’s still far, far beyond what’s currently available. Whereas other headsets are glorified computer displays worn on the face in order to play games, AVP really is a new computing experience, including normal productivity applications but also connecting to your Mac to do your heavy lifting, with an interface like an Apple version of Minority Report, but better. Arguably, given how far advanced it is compared to current offerings, it’s a new category of device.

The hefty price doesn’t concern me as much as the next-year availability. AAPL was in decline before the price was announced today. In fact, it was in decline before “One more thing” was announced. I think that now that the expected features have been announced, how much will competitors be able to catch up? Also, how many of the expected features will actually be available at launch? Compared to actually developing and producing AVP, putting together the presentation was probably orders of magnitude easier. I don’t for a moment believe that competitors will be able to match Apple’s features and overall quality by next year, or even come very close, but can one or two come “close enough” and at a low enough price point to steal some of Apple’s thunder?

-awlabrador

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The Disney hopping aboard early is an interesting prod, a couple we know in Boston are huge Disney fans, I bet they’ll jump at the chance to play with the AVP… I was glad to see the tech description of how it was built, all the cameras, sensors, a lot of that tech had some prior use in facial recognition, but even then, they added 5,000 patents to their list…

It will be interesting to see how the workplace use could fit together, virtual offices, but no need for floor space, maybe where we’re already heading, so far 3 or more of my grandkids, no longer kids, are working via phone calls, or tech support, via the web, so how this tech could fit into this worlds will be interesting to watch… It’s to be an interesting new world, once again, wish I was 20 years younger!!

iOS, MacOS, I like they picked Sonoma, my home County since 1941!! This should be a kick… Patience! Must have patience!

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The tech on this thing really does look amazing, but it don’t understand one big thing: how can this headset not have at least “all day” battery life when using the external, hip-mounted battery pack? Instead, it’s advertised as having only 2 hours! I’m no electrical engineer, but a Mac Pro with a 16” display can get 18+ hours of battery life, with a built-in battery that could easily be worn externally on a belt instead. If this new tiny headset, with tiny micro led displays, can only manage a tenth of that, doesn’t that imply it has ten times the power draw? I can’t possibly believe that!

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I see yet another 3rd party opportunity, more capacity, maybe a simple adapter to my collection of DeWalt batteries! All are pretty light, gobs of power… Just a bit lumpy, tho… Many options, even spares, multiple Apple packs… We just don’t know a lot yet…

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They might be able to catch up a little, but I don’t think Apple will be standing still while they attempt to catch up. Instead, Apple will have developers developing all sorts of cool stuff for the device.

The device looks quite impressive, but I’m still not convinced that regular people will want to wear a visor around their face for hours at a time. Even if it fakes out their eyes for people to see on a front facing screen of some sort (or fakes out their whole head on a facetime/zoom/etc call). Now, the faking out of ones head on a call might be a great standalone feature in itself. It might eliminate all those “lack of wardrobe” malfunctions while on video calls! :joy:

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If your macbook pro is processing two 4k displays, and 12 cameras, and 5 other sensors, and 6 microphones, all in real-time, with no longer than a 12ms delay at any time, it wouldn’t get 18 hours of battery life. It would get about 2 hours or less.

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Still not clear to me. The displays in the headset are TINY and shouldn’t draw much power. A 13" Macbook Pro M2 has a 58.2 watt-hour lithium-polymer battery. For this Vision Pro headset to only be able to last 2 hours using this battery (for example), it would have be drawing roughly 30 watts of power continuously for 2 hours straight. Is that reasonable? Maybe. I wonder how hot this headset gets. (And it would also mean that for that 13" Macbook Pro to get 20 hours on that same battery power, it would only be drawing 3 watts average during that time!)

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APPLE OPERATING SYSTEM NAMES OVER THE YEARS

Apple began branding versions of its operating system for its line of laptop and desktop computers with names of iconic California locales in October 2013. Here’s the full list:

■ ■ OS X Mavericks (10.9), Oct. 22, 2013

■ ■ OS X Yosemite (10.10), Oct. 16, 2014

■ ■ OS X El Capitan (10.11), Sept. 30, 2015

■ ■ macOS Sierra (10.12), Sept. 20, 2016

■ ■ macOS High Sierra (10.13), Sept. 25, 2017

■ ■ macOS Mojave (10.14), Sept. 24, 2018

■ ■ macOS Catalina (10.15), Oct. 7, 2019

■ ■ macOS Big Sur (11), Nov. 19, 2020

■ ■ macOS Monterey (12), Oct. 25, 2021

■ ■ macOS Ventura (13), Oct. 24, 2022

■ ■ macOS Sonoma (14), coming fall 2023

(Neighboring Napa County is a bit miffed, but…)

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Driving the LEDs that provide brightness to the display isn’t the bulk of the power. The bulk of the power is the graphics processing that is going on constantly to produce those images. That’s why those image processing chips/boards from Nvidia run so hot that they need cooling fans on them.

The Macbook pro draws very little power during most normal tasks. Web browsing is just updating the display periodically and isn’t usually doing much video processing. Even watching an encoded movie doesn’t use all that much power to decode anymore. It’s when you synthesize video (frame after frame after frame after frame at 30Hz or 60Hz or 120Hz) from various inputs that you use a LOT of power.

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I know this is behind a paywall, but maybe some have access, my DW is signed in, but I’m resisting, so far… Anyway a good review of the AVP, considering how recently Joanna Stern had the Demo…

Another link, seems open, but…

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I much preferred the big cats. Jaguar was just shipping when I joined Apple. Of course, big cat names are not endless.

-IGU-

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Until I moved along to a new Mini Pro, I was locked down in Mojave, while I like the desert at times, it was time to move along…

Sonoma will be interesting, we’ve always had a struggle, Sonoma Napa, Mendocino, a lot of grapes planted, more of the old are being ripped out, replanted, not a game for the small business… Niece has a few acres, we’ve helped them with the crush, bottling, they do about 70-90 cases a year, give it away, a pretty decent Merlot, and now they’re playing with some whites… Leftover from the crush gets pressed again, they make a nice rainy Grappa to keep us warm by the campfire…

Onward!

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Thanks. Yes, I suppose the graphics in the headset gets much less of a chance to rest than a more static laptop display. But Apple did mention that the display will fully render only what you are directly looking at, and reduce the graphics processing done on peripheral “objects”.

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I was under the impression the pocket-sized battery pack was much smaller than the batteries that go into laptops. With the Apple Silicon SOCs and so much additional miniaturization in the MacBooks Pros, the MBP battery packs take up almost the entire space below the palm rest – see MacBook Pro 13" 2022 (M2) Battery Replacement - iFixit Repair Guide. The AVP battery pack seems much smaller, maybe the equivalent of just one of the battery packs in the MBP.

I assume that larger capacity battery packs will be available in the future from Apple or from third party manufacturers. If the use of the battery pack is to make the AVP mobile, I can’t imagine one would want to wear it for more than a few minutes while, say, walking from one location to another. In that case, maybe I’d wear one while walking from my office to a conference room across the hall and then back, switching from battery pack to AC power at my desk.

In that case, I wonder if the AVP has enough onboard battery to handle the switch from the external battery pack to plug-in power. I think it’s as likely that the battery pack can be plugged in and then deliver feed-through power. It’s unclear from the few photos I’ve seen.

-awlabrador

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Yes, it looks like the external battery pack is smaller than a laptop battery, so that makes the 2 hour limit more reasonable. I anticipate 3rd parties selling battery “belts” that can hold 4 or more such battery packs to provide true all day use for true nerds. :slight_smile:

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I think the way you switch to plug-in power is by plugging the external power into the battery USB-C connector.

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Meaning that the external battery pack needs to always be attached?

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Apparently that is the case.

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