HN user
Mac: "The Power to Be Your Best" (ed. Apple's slogan at the time)
Anti-Mac: “You won't always have to work that hard”
AI (Apple Intelligence) is the Anti-Mac:
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/11/12/misguided-apple-intellige...
“It’s really quite a different message than a bicycle for the mind.”
I had a Surface Book 2 WITHOUT the base i.e. just the screen. Best tablet I've ever had. 15" and yet thinner (then) and lighter than an iPad Pro which still doesn't come bigger than 13".
Two useful accessories I had were 'surface connector to USBC' adapter (to mitigat the small battery) and a ring mouse. Scrolling on touchscreen for Windows has been as good as MacBook haptic trackpads, certainly better than most Windows oem trackpads.
There was brief moment in time where Panay was poised with the Surface Book and Surface Studio (just wish they made a monitor version of the studio) to give Apple a run for their money. But they replaced the Surface Book with Surface Laptop studio, devolved the OS with ads and AI and now I'm mainly only on the Mac...
Which bone conduction headset do you have?
What brands still make bone conduction headphones?
It’s catchy in the same way “Mexicans will pay for the wall”, “China will eat the tariffs”, “Lock her up” is catchy; all catchy slogans but also nonsense. And, to bring it back to Krugman, Trump’s enablers let it slide because they are not serious people.
> He's a lot of things but he's not bad at getting what he values; he is in fact perhaps the most successful American ever in those terms.
Nonsense. He’s bankrupted casinos. He lost his first reelection bid. He started on third base and ended up back at first.
> If you care about America it is incredibly short sighted to think he's dumb.
He IS that dumb. He really doesn’t understand how tariffs/trade balance works. But his enablers have let him run riot. Biden was old. Reagan had mental issues. But their teams had firm hands on the steering wheel. That’s a serious country with some checks and balances. Trump admin is trying to revoke all that
> Complaining about the name of the bill "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is just dumb. Senators and Reps name bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy or what have you, it's part of our process.
Senators and reps and bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy by creating a succinct acronym. [1]. This cultural practice is sometimes called ‘backronym’. Trying to tie ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ as an example of that practice is ‘sane-washing’; ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ is a dumb person’s idea of a backronym [2]. Dissecting the bill name is not just complaining for complaining’s sake; it’s just another in the long list of examples of Trump doesn’t understand what he’s doing and his enablers are not serious people by going along with
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/news/8710-lawmakers-turn-to-cat...
[2] Trump is a poor man's idea of a rich man, a weak man's idea of a strong man, and a stupid man's idea of a smart man etc
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/apple-lied-breaks-...
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/05/07/fortnite-coming-back-to-t...
> Remember when Apple tried to tell the judge that they would be happy to welcome Epic back to the App Store once the court case was over and the issue adjudicated? I do, because I read the transcripts and listened to the hearings.
> I guess technically it’s not over yet because Apple has appealed. On the other hand, Apple made the offer, without the condition of the court case being over, after the legal battle had already begun. So it seems like it was never a serious offer and only meant to sway public opinion.
Apple themselves said during that the initial trial that they would reinstate Fortnite. Turns out Apple lied
Apple’s malicious compliance then pretending to ask for permission. Apple was trying to get the EU to rubber stamp the scare tactics. Instead the EU said let’s see that works out for you.
And fwiw we have hard evidence of Apple acting in bad faith. Gruber keeps giving Apple PR the benefit of the doubt but they absolutely do not deserve it.
Red Flags!
> "Tim cares about nothing else," an insider with knowledge of the matter told Gurman. "It’s the only thing he’s really spending his time on from a product development standpoint."
> he's looking to beat Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who shares an obsession with AR and VR headsets — to market.
Is Tim Cook a product person now?
Does Apple care about being first now (instead of being best)?
Before the Vision Pro release we heard similar reporting from Gurman (1) (and recall the skepticism about Gurman's reporting: 2)
Yet here we are. After a decade of promoting AR (3) Tim Apple released a headset of which "the weirder things about visionOS (and the Vision Pro itself, really) is that there’s not a lot of true AR in the mix" (4)
Red Flags!
1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-05-18/apple-s-m...
2. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/05/18/gurman-headset-...
3. https://www.theverge.com/21077484/apple-tim-cook-ar-augmente...
4. https://www.theverge.com/24054862/apple-vision-pro-review-vr...
Watergate
Iran-Contragate
Iraq yellow cake
So many examples.
Bigscreen made their name as VR video viewing solution before pivoting to PCVR hardware. I’m surprised they haven’t shown off any simple video solution with Beyond 2 especially considering that’s the main use case for the Apple Vision Pro.
That said, eye tracking and IPD adjustment is a huge upgrade to Beyond 2 for their niche
Flyover states versus costal states is too simplistic and inaccurate. A more accurate reduction is rural+suburban (isolated insular) communities versus urban (integrated diverse) communities.
Immersed and PFD are smaller companies releasing their first hardware; yes they've missed their initial estimated ship dates but they have actual working prototypes that have been tried by users (e.g. PFD had a booth at CES). The only question is if they can ramp up manufacturing. I expect them to have shipped their preorders by March and then we'll find out if they can scale.
HOWEVER my timeline suggests that you wait until the end of the year. The 4K per eye panel is now a commodity [1] and I expect a lot of VR glasses to show up in the next few months. Don't be tempted by the first few unless you have the budget for the cutting edge. Immersed is pushing their subscription software and requires a companion app on the host device. PFD is offering an Android Vision Pro clone. There are a couple PCVR (gaming) headsets coming. For coding though, the ideal is probably a simple headset with plug-and-play video input (i.e. like a high-res Slamglass [2] or GOOVIS art [3]). It's worth waiting in my opinion to see if anyone uses the panel for that.
[1] https://youtu.be/OpVI6JeH2uA?si=UsScC1yPTRptcFAM&t=795
Short answer: no
Long answer: Vision Pro (if you are comfortable with the weight/price). Immersed Visor and Play for Dream Mr headsets are likely the first available coding VR headsets at reasonable prices but this will all be commodities very soon.
Your best bet is to resist being at the cutting edge for this year and pick up the winner after the next 11 months
It’s also true that age 18-29 bracket is less likely to have historically been registered to vote and that they are typically working in precarious positions with less ability to take time off to vote.
If voting registration was automatic, and election day was a holiday, I’d expect the participation across age brackets to be much closer.
It’s bigger; that might be the fix in and of itself
I gave reasons why it's poor UI:
Imagine having a jittery cursor in the center of your vision at all times? If I had a mouse/trackpad working like that it would immediately be replaced but that's Apple's eye control. Imagine scrolling a page and every where you glance there's a spotlighted/popup control or ad? That's Apple eye control utilizing dwell and snap to item.
Nobody has responded to those but instead keep saying I'm attacking accessibility.
I literally started and ended with caveats:
Eye tracking is very impressive technology, and foveated rendering is an excellent application...
useful as an accessibility feature
It’s not the quality of the the tracking I’m referring to. The eye tracking on Vision Pro is great for foveated rending for example. But as UI control it really doesn’t matter how good the tracking is; eye tracking is just a poor UX
Vision Pro is different. It has a finger gesture to "tap".
That doesn't rescue it from being a poor control scheme.
Again, I understand the accessibility benefits of the feature and I'm not critiquing that. I responding to a hacker news audience mostly who want to hack this feature and I'm telling them not to bother
Hey I did not say otherwise. It's a good accessibility feature. It becomes frustrating when Apple makes it the main control as for the Vision Pro
For a lot of folks with tremors or other mobility issues, their eyes may be much more stable than their fingers. It might be helpful to weigh the tradeoffs you're presenting with alternatives including a jittery inaccurate finger in the center of their vision, or even just not being able to use the UI at all.
I did not suggest otherwise
For the above reasons, that's exactly how they're marketing it
That's not how it's being received (see other HN users in this very topic) nor how Apple is marketing it for Vision Pro
Eye tracking is very impressive technology, and foveated rendering is an excellent application, but eye control is poor UX. Yes, I'm saying the emperor has no clothes.
Imagine having a jittery cursor in the center of your vision at all times? If I had a mouse/trackpad working like that it would immediately be replaced but that's Apple's eye control. Imagine scrolling a page and every where you glance there's a spotlighted/popup control or ad? That's Apple eye control utilizing dwell and snap to item.
It's telling that the 'best window' apps/use cases for Vision Pro are video watching and Mac virtual display which has low reliance on eye control during usage. Trying to browse the web with Apple's eye control is a clear regression compared to touch/keyboard/mouse/trackpad only useful as an accessibility feature
Only supported through Dwell Control+AssistiveTouch feature for scroll gestures
Do you foresee any AR/VR headset/glasses replacing your monitor within the next year?
could you share the link to the portable AC battery?
> Steam Deck is the only portable computer that's versatile...
Would you clarify your categorization?
I personally consider 'portable computer' to be any computer with an internal battery (including laptops etc). I don't find the Steam Deck especially versatile in that category.
A separate/sub-category for me would be 'pocketable computers' (like this Hackberry-Pi_Zero, the GPD Win mini etc) for which the Steam Deck would be unusually versatile—albeit the Steam Deck does NOT fit in any of my pants or jacket pockets.
He's... not wrong?
tbh if you're interested in the 'bleeding edge' or 'future of computing' (which I've seen many people use to justify their Vision Pro purchase) then you should be buying both Vision Pro and Quest 3.
The gaming content is besides the point; the fitness apps are where Quest 3, with its controllers, are far and away ahead. A table tennis or boxing app in Quest is just as mindblowing imo as watching a spatial video app on Vision Pro.
Fitness and health is supposed to be a core focus for Apple yet the Vision Pro is not unsuited for that.