There was an ARSTechnica article today that said it looked pretty easy to switch out. The author had contacts so that was one of his first questions.
Maybe easy in terms of physical removal and insertion but seems like keeping them clean in the process or cleaning them once they get finger oil on them is the other part. Dropping these little lenses under the couch as you fumble around, etc. I’m getting to a Certain Age where this kind of thing is more daunting than it used to be 
Also some potential sharing partners might have issues putting on a sweaty headband someone else has just lived in for 2 hours.
IOW I see these as more highly personal devices than PCs or phones already are. Which means the cost has GOT to come down enough for this not to be some kind of scarce / precious shared commodity, that is just not going to work out in the Real World.
They’re held in magnetically so should be easy to swap
just like glasses I’m sure
I bet the overall lenses & cameras on the Vision Pro will need such are as well
At the very least the glass on the outside will
Tend to agree
Not that Im rushing out to buy one 
If the pair are in a common frame an snap in/out and particularly if removing them closes a protective shutter or something that would be cool (and also not cheap).
IDK; I’m getting cranky in my old age around things that need a lot of fiddling but admittedly for all its faults, Apple does generally do a pretty good job with the UX of their devices.
After my experiences with the HTV Vive from a few years I am very excited to see what Apple goes. Some of the ‘here’s my take after 30 minutes of Apple closely supervising me’ articles are promising and that’s essentially with alpha software.
- To see around the room and stand/walk/sit while you have the headset on is huge.
- No noticeable lag is huge.
- Changeable lenses for folks that have glasses is huge (but as we saw earlier in the week others are doing this too)
- Not seeing the pixels is huge (sometimes called the screen door effect)
- Not being tethered to a computer is huge
- Not needing a powerful (external) desktop computer to drive it is huge
- Others being able to see your facial expression is huge
- Not needing an external controller for basic (i.e. eye tracking and simple gestures for control) is huge
I’m sure I’m missing some others things but I think Apple looked at the major shortcomings of other VR systems and asked how do we solve it? Looks like they did and though at first glance it’s very expensive I probably spent $2500 on the HTC Vive and a computer powerful enough to drive it and the experience was interesting but it was heavy, hot, couldn’t see around the room, no one could see your expression, couldn’t hear anyone in the room if they were talking to you, and the tether to the computer often tripped you up.
I’ll be curious what others with VR systems thinks about the demo. It’s really hard to look at the Apple demo and be objective if you’ve never used anything like it before.
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Anytime soon…
No experience with AR or VR myself, but I have to admit that rather in spite of myself I’m interested because from what I’ve read they’ve put an army of engineers on this project for years while the world opined that they weren’t innovating anymore and it looks like they are on the right track and have addressed the biggest shortcomings of their competitors in ways their competitors will find it hard to catch up to.
That still leaves the expensive sticker price, but I imagine it won’t be ALL that long before lower cost and even greater power will intersect enough for it to take off (for some given value of “take off”). Some of the additional power has been suggested already, e.g., being able to share an AR experience between 2 (or more) AppleVision users. any further reductions in weight, one or more “killer apps”, etc.
Some people will have concerns about wrapping all these magnetic fields and lidar and so on around your skull for any significant portion of the day. I would imagine it is an extension of the concerns about cell phones which are just intermittently held to one side of your head, now amplified by being totally surrounded all the time it’s in use. I wonder if Apple has considered that everyone with a weird brain or bone or even blood cancer who used this device isn’t going to find it a throat to choke. More prosaically, I could foresee some skin conditions becoming more common around it. I guess a company with Apple’s resources will not be overly concerned, though
Computer technology like this is one of the few things making these days great times to be alive, so I wish Apple well.
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I’m genuinely curious to see what “side effects” will emerge. This includes the mentioned skin allergies, as well as effects on the eyes (such as infections). I’m confident that Apple has conducted extensive testing and research over the years, but only “mass production and use” will provide a wealth of data. This is likely a reason for initially limiting the product to the USA. Same for the consequence of wearing such a device in our daily lives (insurance topics, traffic, privacy, injury issues etc.)
As with any new product, it’s probably wise for end users to wait for subsequent optimizations. Looking back, it was no different with the iPhone and the Apple Watch.
I can envision a future version that could potentially eliminate the need for lenses. Technologically, it should be possible to direct the light precisely and individually onto the retina with self-adapting lenses and measuring the distance in the eyeball and the refractive index of the human lens apparatus. This should be easier, especially for older people who can hardly accommodate themselves. For younger wearers who are still accommodating themselves, however, it becomes a more complex challenge. That would be groundbreaking because it would make wearing normal visual aids obsolete for many people. These are similar “dreams” to waiting for an accurate and non-invasive insulin measurement on the watch. It will of course come one day, but it will take time.
That’s all good news for me. It looks like Apple has come up with something more usable, and in many ways better than what we’ve seen so far. The product is finally a reality and thus fodder for the competition, which, as always, will only accelerate the whole development.
I predict that I will also make fun of the monkeys, who will soon be walking around with such diving goggles and then eventually wearing one on my head.
I also find the timing of the release interesting. The “chatGPT” trend “We don’t need any UIs at all anymore, and only ask questions and give orders” versus “We are now knocking UI elements into your entire field of vision”.
Last but not least, it remains exciting what it will mean for cross-platform. In any case, it won’t get any easier. It is foreseeable that a Windows app in a VM will probably be less controllable than native “Apple” apps etc. Speed and reactivity will be another prerequisite and yet another framework to develop and use all the nice new features.
It’s funny that, as with all wearables, the power supply is still the biggest problem. So it’s another piece of the puzzle as to why the switch to silicone is so important for Apple.
This is the best YT I’ve seen on the topic. If you have 3500 USD left than buy Apple stocks for it, now!
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maybe they need to sell it with a lifetime subscription to Pepto or Gaviscon ?
While Apple is probably still a BUY it was a MUCH better buy in Jan when it was $124
its up 50+% this year
Watch the movie (to the end) and just buy
Wow. That video is full-load ‘dystopian future’ straight out of Ready Player One. Some of it seems reasonable to worry about but I just don’t buy his arguments overall. Check back in with me in 10 years.
When I first saw the iPhone I understood the significance of it. When I first saw the Apple Watch I saw the significance of it. I’m not necessarily sold on Vision Pro - yet. There’s gotta be a killer game or something that will wants people to shell out the $$.
It’d be crazy useful once miniaturized. I read Apple bought an AR company that focuses on making lightweight AR hardware… 
getting the price down AND the size down to something like Google Glass would be super nice
guess we’ll see
I once read an article that talked about the perception that “everyone has that” and the rate of adoption was super low - around 3% (if memory serves correctly)
however, 3% is still a VERY large number of units
I forget what the number was but Apple said they’d be happy if they had some super low number of iPhone sales in the first year. Obviously that worked out for them. IIRC they had projected (publicly at least) a low number of watch sales in the first year too and that’s obviously worked out well for them.
So I would expect something similar here. If they say they only expect to sell 100k Vision Pro’s in the first year and they end up selling 250k would that be a win for them? I expect so. I expect a lot of “hey, let’s see what this thing can do,” sort of sales. I think I’ll wait until version 2 before I seriously think about it but if that killer app comes along on release I’d think about it sooner.
And like the video above said, we can expect a relentless march forward in the hardware of their Vision line. This years Vision Pro becomes next years Vision and so on. If this product is like everything else Apple does they’ve got the next 5 or 6 (or more) years planned out for hardware with more speed, resolution, and fine tuning, and other enhancements. But the real differentiator is going to be the software which, while relatively polished in the demos, is still alpha quality. Give them 6 months and then a year or two and things will be interesting.
Perhaps this was where they were going all along with Apple Silicon and they knew that Intel, Qualcomm, et al. would never get where they needed for the Vision line. This way they control their own destiny and profits.
What I miss in this thread is the fact that this Apple device is not alone on the market and not better than the other ones. But much more expensive.
Nevertheless Xojo would have to support other Devices also unter windows. Possibly one day also Linux? How knows. But at the end of the day: it is not a NEW platform like everybody says here. it is only a device connected to an existing platform. with an API like the others also. With the compatibility to Xcode. Like other devices. So feel free to use it. there is no need for direct support. You can access the API behind with declares anyhow. Cause what Xojo would provide would be also a clean use of exactly that declares. no need for that.
Same was true of the iPhone but history has been rewritten and many now repeat the narrative that Apple invented the smartphone.
They haven’t, that’s true. But they made it “simple”, so simple that they even sacrificed thkeyboard, which every expert at the time thought was nonsense.
And they try that again with the vision and of course they don’t just want to make money with the product, but with the new ecosystem. That will take overall another couple of years and a few iterations, but chances are good that by then many will have forgotten Apple’s competitors’ first attempts, pretty much like the first cars were electric cars