Louie Mantia has been on a roll lately in his prolific advocacy for making things on the Internet. He wrote a post a couple months ago titled Make a Damn Website and he followed it up today with the very practical How to Make a Damn Website.
We overcomplicate what a website needs to be, and it gets in the way of actually making it. So take his (and now my) advice, and make a damn website.
This is MKBHD’s third video about the Vision Pro, and I agree with pretty much every point he makes. I think he does a good job of pointing out how most of the decisions that went into this device come with real tradeoffs, but in practice it’s still a really cool start for Apple’s foray into AR/VR/“spatial” and the tech on it’s own is still impressive.
Personally, I am very interested to see what visionOS 2.0 brings, as the timeline of this device’s announcement and subsequent release lines up with what happened with iOS v1 → v2. My [educated] guess is that most of what is on visionOS right now is quite close to what was running on the media demo devices at WWDC last June, and that most of the core visionOS development time has been spent on 2.0, not on polishing 1.0.
I’m sure there’s been a ton of polish work, and I’m sure some of the various app teams at Apple have been spending time porting their apps to visionOS, but new feature work on the core OS has likely been slated for v2 for quite some time.
WWDC ‘24 could bring a lot of cool quality of life things that make this version of the hardware even better.
This post from “Matrix Agent” came across my Mastodon feed, and I couldn’t agree more:
there is NO reason any of us should have to “thrive in a fast paced environment” or “work well under pressure.” most of our daily work is not an emergency and our culture of fake urgency and immediacy just to make more profit for people in the c-suite is burning people out.
stop sending people into fight or flight and expecting them to bend over backward because you dont know how plan or manage resources properly
I often need to remind myself that most things at work are not worth stressing over. It doesn’t really matter if something is a little late and it’s definitely not worth your health. Work can wait.
David Pierce, writing for The Verge:
At first, the open web is Apple’s best chance to make its headset a winner. Because at least so far, it seems developers are not exactly jumping to build new apps for Apple’s new platform.
There are many strong points made in this article, but as much as I’m bummed that Netflix, YouTube, and others are opting out of having their apps available at launch, I don’t think this is a harbinger of general support for the platform.
I don’t know how many Vision Pro developer kits were sent out, but by all accounts it was a small number, and based on what I know I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix didn’t get one. One of the requirements (among a long list of somewhat onerous restrictions) of getting a dev kit for the Vision Pro was a commitment to launch an app on day one. It wasn’t enough to want to explore how your app would feel or to test out various ideas and get a head start on supporting the platform, you needed to be a launch partner.
Disney and Microsoft are clearly launch partners for the device, and Netflix and Google are not. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Mark Gurman shared some cool details about Vision Pro launch day procedures:
In-store pickup customers who order online can either take the device and leave, go through the in-store demo or do a 1:1 set up with an employee to verify size/fit. If needed, customers can swap sizes of individual parts.
If a customer sets up their device at home and there’s a sizing issue, they can come back to the store for a swap.
Employees are piecing together the boxes with the right component sizes to order.
I’ve run through the sizing on two devices multiple times and have been told the same headband size all but once (with the same light seal every time).
Even with the consistency of the scan, it’s comforting to know that the preorders are mainly securing your Vision Pro model (by storage size), not the unique combination SKU representing the headband size, light seal, and storage tier.
Seems like they learned from the original Apple Watch launch.
The packaging is giant - like about the size of two Mac Studio boxes or a large shoe box. The headset comes pre attached to the Solo Knit Band. There are also commemorative shopping bags - like with the original iPhone.
The hype is real for this thing. Commemorative shopping bags don’t matter to me, but Apple is trying to make this launch special.