Apple fans are starting to return their Vision Pros::The return window for the very first Apple Vision Pro buyers is fast approaching — and some have taken to social media to explain why they won’t be keeping their headsets.

  • @[email protected]
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    51 year ago

    Apple pitched the Vision Pro as if VR hadn’t wasn’t already a thing that’s been around for a while. While the VP has some higher specs particularly in its display it lacks in areas like field of view, comfort, game selection and portability. The first group of people that would be interested are those who already own or have used other VR systems. They those people won’t see the VP as such a jump. Especially considering it’s locked to the Apples app store with not many VR options. The second group is composed of people who have been out of the loop and think this is the begining of VR. I think thats the camp more likely to return the unit once they realize it’s just a novelty in its current state.

  • @[email protected]
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    1241 year ago

    These are the same complaints most report for most vr headsets, headaches, nausea and dry eyes… Disappointing article.

    • swayevenly
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      121 year ago

      Given the odd weight distribution, it’s also unfortunate that this may have been their first headset.

      • JohnEdwa
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        321 year ago

        Making a VR headset from aluminium and glass with nothing to balance it in the back is yet again another perfect example of Apple going hard with form over function.

        • @[email protected]
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          121 year ago

          One reason for not balancing it in the back is probably because putting stuff in the back makes it uncomfortable if you want to lean back in a chair or a couch which is probably very important for the device since it’s primarily for sitting down compared to most other VR headsets.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      The other thing I keep hearing is that it’s a super expensive purchase that people don’t know what to do with once they’ve got it. I’m old enough to remember when they said the same thing about early home computers ($3000-$5000 in equivalent cost) from the late 70s and early 80s.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 year ago

        Silicon and engineering has come down in price and vr is hardly revolutionary at this point so yea price point is stupid high but what do people expect from apple

    • @[email protected]
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      631 year ago

      Some are, sure. But others have to do with the weight. The most interesting rationals for returning it are because it’s shit as a productivity tool. So if you can’t really use it for work, there aren’t many games on it, then why are you keeping it? At that point it’s just a TV that only you can watch (since it doesn’t support multiple user profiles).

    • BargsimBoyz
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      121 year ago

      Your comment suggests you read the first paragraph and didn’t read the rest which is disappointing.

      The article talks about the most common complaint being comfort, then goes on to other complaints like the fact it offers no productivity savings and is expensive.

      It’s a bit of a no brainer though at end of day. Anyone surprised this is just a gimmick like any other is new to the VR space.

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

        Yea looking at the site I mistook the large gaps between paragraphs to be the end of the article. Going over it and I can see I missed a large deal. But I am still unsurprised with the reasons why people are returning the headsets. Its expensive, sold for productivity yet is restricting and uncomfortable. Vr has a place in the world and that is mostly media consumption.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    81 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Parker Ortolani, The Verge’s product manager, told me that he thought using the device led to a burst blood vessel in his eye.

    “Despite being as magical to use as I’d hoped, it was simply way too uncomfortable to wear even for short periods of time both due to the weight and the strap designs.

    For smart glasses and headsets, having a low nose bridge can mean the device just slips off your face or fails to adequately block out light.

    Another engineer wrote on the social media platform X that the “coding experience failed to convince [him]” and focusing issues caused headaches.

    “If I’m not using this for productivity, and if I don’t love it for entertainment, and if there aren’t enough games to play on it - I just can’t justify keeping it,” one Reddit user wrote.

    While these users are speaking out on social media, we have no idea of the actual return rate — or what Apple’s internal expectations for the Vision Pro are.


    The original article contains 621 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • @[email protected]
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      251 year ago

      We’ll never know. This is all based on people’s complaints online. Apple will never actually release how many were returned and for what reasons.

      • @[email protected]
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        111 year ago

        They’re a public company, we’ll get sales figures and enough proxy numbers to have a good guess. Shareholders are going to want to know.

  • @[email protected]
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    291 year ago

    The problem with this article is that it’s all circumstantial. Sure these are people complaining of problems and critiques, but we’ll never get the full report of how many returns there actually are and why they were returned. That’s just not data Apple will ever give out.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      it’s probably not even circumstantial. I think it’s just a cool trend to write articles about how bad the next new experimental tech product for rich people is.

  • Blaster M
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    81 year ago

    It needs controllers and PCVR support. Then it might be worth it.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        I’m thinking on buying a Quest to dip into PCVR. I’ve heard horror stories about the Index’s poor QC (which is weird given the Steam Deck’s done me well so far) and PSVR2 isn’t compatible with PC. Yes, iVRy exists but that driver is in development and the developer basically said “just buy a Quest if you want a cheap PC VR headset”.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            Yeah I’m looking at that as well. Friend of mine does say if you want to do full-body tracking the Quest is a pain to do it with, but I’m not deep in PCVR right now haha.

      • @[email protected]
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        241 year ago

        Honestly, no one should buy a Quest 3, or any other Quest for that matter… Meta doesn’t need any more money or tracking data. PS VR2, Vive Pro 2 or even the Valve Index would be better.

    • BargsimBoyz
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      21 year ago

      It needs to be maybe 75% cheaper as well as what you’ve said and it becomes worth it.

      At this price point it will never be successful.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 year ago

      SOME WOULD SAY you don’t need the controllers. Then you’re just a regular VR headset. Would Apple say that? No. I think this boils down to a dumb product with lackluster payoff at $3.5k.

  • Rin
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    1 year ago

    As someone who is unironically into a lot of VR stuff and even owns a pricey headset myself, I did not understand the appeal from the features I’ve seen past looking “”“cool”“”. Even the stuff that looks at least somewhat fun or useful doesnt seem worth it considering the price, especially now that reviews are reporting there are basic features that cheaper headsets perform much better at and are way more comfortable.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      It has some neat features and ideas, but nothing I haven’t seen in other products before. Definitely more polished, and it brings all of those big features together in one package. But for me, it’s the price that kills it. Maybe Apple had a hunch that all of this might happen and they just wanted it out as a setup for the next version?

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      Fr, I love VR, but this headset is just Apple trying to cash in on the VR market without understanding what people actually like about VR.

      • Ghostalmedia
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        71 year ago

        I think they totally understand that there is a legitimate mixed reality / AR use case that people have wanted addressed for decades, but the hardware has never been able to pull it off well.

        If I could pop on a light weight headset, and have a desktop with infinite 4K monitors, with a high refresh rate, without breaking my wallet, I would 1000% buy that product.

        The hardware isn’t there yet, but I’m glad to see people are investing in platforms that could get us there in a decade or two.

  • @[email protected]
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    841 year ago

    Some people are returning it because they had expectations that using VR would be immediately comfortable. The headset is heavier and more poorly strapped/distributed than ‘alternatives’ but it’s also graphically far more stunning. I honestly hope they stay in the game and push the competitors to up their game. maybe we can get pancake lenses, foveated rendering and eye tracking in a $1500 package.

    • @[email protected]
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      151 year ago

      So the quest pro? Foveated rendering only matters if you don’t have the graphics throughput to render it all, so I don’t totally buy that it’s key to a good vr headset so much as helps you get away with cheaper silicon. Maybe enough-lower tdp that it enables slimmer design.

      • @[email protected]
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        71 year ago

        I think foveated rendering also helps with immersion. Being able to blur things you are not specifically looking at and are farther away is a closer match to reality.

          • @[email protected]
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            51 year ago

            As far as I understand (and do correct me if I’ve got it wrong), your eyes still know they are looking at very small and very rapidly blinking lights in close proximity and in a flat array, which is why it mostly feels like uncanny valley in regards to that exact experience, and why software enhancement/approximation of the effect could be beneficial.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              Delayed response but if you’re talking about the general experience of VR being an uncanny valley experience then no, I don’t agree. It’s very common for people who use VR to say that they forgot for a moment that it wasn’t real.

          • @[email protected]
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            71 year ago

            reality doesn’t downsample when you’re not looking

            As far as you know. Maybe that’s the reasoning behind weird stuff in quantum mechanics. The cat is both alive and dead until you open the box and look at it.

            • @[email protected]
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              51 year ago

              The whole point of the cat thing was to point out the absurdity of the claim that reality isn’t real until you know about it. The cat is already in whatever state you observe when you open the box. It’s not both alive and dead, it’s either alive or dead. The thought experiment isn’t serious, and it’s not supporting the idea that the cat is somehow magically in both states just because you haven’t yet manipulated the lid of a wooden cube.

              • @[email protected]
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                1 year ago

                When we talk about the cat being both alive and dead, it’s a simplification to help visualize a quantum phenomenon where particles exist in multiple states simultaneously until measured or observed.

                Schrodinger came up with the cat to represent the absurdity of quantum mechanics because he thought it was absurd - but that doesn’t mean his metaphor isn’t a useful one. Particles like electrons or photons can exist in a state of superposition, where they hold multiple potential states (e.g., spin up and spin down) at the same time. This isn’t just a theoretical curiosity; it’s been experimentally verified in numerous quantum experiments, such as the double-slit experiment.

                The act of measurement in quantum mechanics forces a system to ‘choose’ a definite state from among its superposed states, a process known as wave function collapse. Before measurement, the system genuinely exists in all its possible states simultaneously, not in one state or the other. This is a fundamental aspect of the quantum world

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        I don’t really look at it as a symptom of lack of graphics throughput, but more as a benefit of eye tracking, which is also potentially something that benefits, say, the immersion of others through portraying your facial expressions more realistically, or something to that effect. You could also use it as a kind of peripheral for games or software, and apple currently uses it as a mouse, so it’s not totally useless. But I also can’t imagine that most developers are going to be imaginative enough to make good use of it, if we can’t even think of good uses for basic shit, like haptic feedback.

        Perhaps it breaks even in terms of allowing them to save money they otherwise would’ve spent on rendering, but I dunno if that’s the case, since the camera has to be pretty low latency, and you have to still dedicate hardware resources to the eye tracking and foveated rendering in order to get it to look good. Weight savings, then? I just don’t really know. I guess we’ll see, if it gets more industry adoption.

  • @[email protected]
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    31 year ago

    Here’s an application…every fridge would have a visor on the door. Stick your face in the visor and you’ll be able to see the fridge from the webcam in front of it… including your self!

    • PhilMcGraw
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      21 year ago

      Why not just have a VR fridge app that connects remotely to cameras in your fridge? Or even better some ML shit that would identify what is in your fridge.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        Because that’s not ridiculous. But what about an app where you control a little robot that you have to crawl around the fridge to investigate and discover what’s inside?

    • @[email protected]
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      71 year ago

      Some? Probably most. The others are social media “influencers” making it look like someone would actuality want to buy it.

      • iquanyin
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        11 year ago

        not the freelance ones, or not always anyway. i think you’re right about the ones that wrote for tech blogs.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        That depends on the company that is selling the product, and the reputation of the reviewer.

        IGN always give 9/10 for every game they review so they are high on the priority list to get review copies. But they won’t get any if the Developer /Producer isn’t interested in giving any out.

        I don’t think Apple is giving away 3500 devices for free to a long list of people. Most reviews I see are reviewing based on an extended store demo.

  • @[email protected]
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    61 year ago

    So…stupid people with too much money to burn jumped on something they neither wanted nor needed and then got bored.

    • @[email protected]
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      91 year ago

      Hard to call them stupid when they got to use it for free within the return window. Seems like a good deal. I agree with all the other points though.