mergeconflict393-1 === [00:00:00] James: Frank Krueger, don't call it mixed reality, don't call it augmented reality, don't call it reality because, or maybe we should, it's spatial reality. [00:00:11] Frank: Is it meta reality? Is it profitable [00:00:15] James: reality? Probably not. Most likely not. [00:00:22] Frank: Oh darn, you're spoiling it for me. I just spent all day working on an app that I don't know if I'll ever finish. But uh, I'm sure, I'm sure it'll make me millions. [00:00:33] James: Well, we got new guidelines about your said app. Um, you're not allowed to call it mixed reality. You're not allowed to call it virtual reality. You're not able to call it augmented reality. You can call it spatial computing, Frank, spatial computing app plus plus. How's that feeling? [00:00:50] Frank: Um, I, I, I'm not sold yet. I'm not sold. I, I, My computer so far is this little box that's taking up way too much space on the desk. And I have wires everywhere. So I'm down for the spatial computing life, but so far my computing life involves a lot of little boxes and wires and dongles. [00:01:11] James: Oh, that is not ideal. Well, let's talk about the ideal Apple Vision Pro developer setup, Frank Kruger. It's go time because starting on the 19th at 5 AM Pacific. Hold your pants on, uh, you can pre order this puppy VisionPro, uh, for 34. 99, uh, and maybe you have taxes as well. So chuck on another 400 buckaroonies in the state of Washington and you get this thing. Can you believe this? You get this in under a month. It's here in under one month. [00:01:44] Frank: Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, you can also, I think, add on about 150 if you need, uh, corrective lenses as I may or may not get. I either have to go to my optometrist to get an updated eyeglasses prescription so I can get it for the Vision Pro, or I have to get some new contacts. What a life. Gotta do one or the other. Um, but yeah, you could add 150 to that. And I do not have an ideal. Uh, development set up for this device way to hit me right in the heart there. You had to mention that I have been juggling computers around all day trying to develop because yeah, as of what, uh, there'll be two or three weeks, two, two weeks left after this, uh, episode comes out and got to have your apps in the app store. If you want to be a day one app at that point. [00:02:35] James: And if I remember correct, you have to be developing on an M series Mac, correct? [00:02:41] Frank: Yes, that is the entire trouble that I just had to go through, um, because in the very early betas, you could develop on an Intel Mac, which is my dev machine, a beautiful dev machine. It goes very fast. It runs things very fast. Lovely machine. Not good enough. Not good enough. Um, thankfully, um, I got an M1 Air little laptop and 16 gigab Uh, bytes of RAM, at least. Thank goodness. And I've been able to do development on that pretty well. Um, man, I miss my iMac though. I don't, uh, monitors and cables and HDMI stuff and multiple keyboards and mice. I don't know. It's for the birds. Do I have to upgrade, James? Don't tell me. It's too [00:03:28] James: much money. I think, you know, when we think about this is, you know, you. I feel like, yes, you can launch this application, although it's really fascinating to launch an application without ever having hardware to test it on. Now, my question to you would be, have you ever done that before? Cause if I remember correct for like iPad, they flew in folks to develop iPad apps, put them on there for Apple watch. And they're the same. Did they do, did they do that for the, uh, Vision Pro? Did they, I think they did do, they did do, uh, Cupertino visits, or you could schedule it to do is I guess you had the opportunity if you would fly your pants down to Cupertino, um, nice, short, cheap trip down there to test out your app, but had you done that ever before? I forget if you had. Yeah, [00:04:25] Frank: I apologize because I probably even said it on this podcast. Um, I got to do it for the watch, not for the iPad. For the iPad, I just bought one and developed apps on it the moment I got it, kind of thing. Um, but for the watch, I got lucky and got to expensively fly down to Cupertino and practice with the watch. And so to answer your question, no, I've never released an app without being able to test it on the real device, because, um. Yeah, I got to play with the watch immediately in, um, Cupertino. And I'm pretty sure I missed day one. Anyway, I didn't release on day one of the watch. I was a little slow to get my order in [00:05:04] James: and I didn't want to test it out. Yeah. It's a very fascinating one. Uh, because if you were on an iPhone and going to the iPad, yeah, you kind of already knew the development experience, like going into the simulator. It's a bigger experience. We know that the iPhone simulator is. Pretty, pretty good for being a simulator. Obviously it's not an emulator, but you know, for being what you might be creating at that time when the iPad came out pretty solid, the real difference with the watch is that you almost kind of want to live with your app. You know what I mean? Like you want to. It's something that's on you physically. You want to test it and see how it interacts with your fingers and on your wrist. So I think it does make a lot of sense. I think with the Vision Pro, boom, I think you're also in that other stage, but I think to an extreme level, I would say, uh, because this is something not only that we've. I mean, we've seen reality, we've seen headsets, but we've never seen anything in the Apple realm that would come out, you know, fashionably close that we could compare it to, you know, with, with, uh, with app kit and, and, uh, UI kit and, and, and all these different kits that they have, uh, putting together these apps. So. I feel as though that this is something pretty different. Now, you are a VR, AR, MR, personally. You have a Quest, correct? You have, uh, at least that at a minimum, I assume, correct? So you've experienced some, some form of virtual reality. [00:06:35] Frank: Oh yeah, I, I've ever since the Rift dev kit, I've been using these things. I wanted in on the early days and I have a quest, something or another at this point. I've actually lost track of all the versions of it and everything, but an older quest, but works fine. Works good. Uh, yeah, I've, I've written things in C low level VR stuff. Uh, at the, straight at the graphics API level. I've done it in WebXR. Are we allowed to call it XR? Um, that's a set of APIs. There was like a WebVR and then it became a WebXR. I've written stuff in that. I've written stuff in Unity, and I've done ARKit and all that stuff on iOS, so yeah. I've been living the Vision life. Doesn't mean I know how to write the best app for it or anything like that. But I at least know how to put something on the screen. Vaguely, um There's still some mysteries with devices like this, because, you know, um, when I was first running iOS apps, the simulator was pretty much good enough, like it showed the screen, the mouse worked with it, and the mouse worked roughly how your finger works, it wasn't that complicated, and you could develop an app pretty much 100 percent on the simulator, and it worked pretty well on the device. The simulator for the Vision is very different, because the impart Input modality is just so different. Um, it's, it's really hard to test an app and guess what it's going to be like on the actual device. Like I was implementing drag, like there's an object on the screen and you want to drag it. And I'm like, what does drag even do in the not virtual reality world? In the not augmented reality world? Like, is that a finger? Like, how do I, it's really hard to test these things in just the simulator without the [00:08:30] James: real device. Yeah, it's sort of the mysteries of the vision pro development. And I believe that the thing that is the most mysterious, probably for most developers going to the vision pro is that interactive touch points with the finger print, you know, finger touching here. Now, actually the hollow lens had a very similar mechanism for interacting and pinching and doing so. So I've, I've worn a hollow lens. Uh, the wrong one, you had one and I was at a conference and he let me. Drop it out of my head. It was pretty cool. Uh, and you were doing that and again, I'm not really a big, uh, VR, MR, AR, what, anything, a person in general. So the vision for it doesn't have me too excited. Uh, maybe I'll buy one, maybe expense, expense, expense, expense it off. Business expense. Um, it's free. It's, it's basically, yes. Why not? It's tax write off. Um, so. You know, I think in that regard, that's the part that is hard maybe to even envision that interactive space. Because when you think of the phone to tablet, to watch, to desktop, we really understand that interaction model and the interaction model is really important in app development. I mean, to me. Especially on the phone where I do most of my app development. It's a very different interactive interaction than on the desktop. Although I understand the desktop and the web, when it comes to mobile, the touch aspect is different and you have to kind of understand that and craft for it. Which is. Well, when a lot of people are like, Oh, I'm forever done WinForms development, or I've done WPF development. And I just want to take that. I want to take that exact same WinForms app. I want to shove it on an iPhone. And I go, no, that doesn't make any sense. Cause it doesn't, and here you'd have to like manipulate the. You can't do a one to one. I've seen it done, you know what I mean? On an iPad. Like, but it's, it's not a comfortable experience, uh, for what users are like. So have having come from an iPhone to an iPad, like, okay, I understand that interactive model, just a bigger landscape and probably there's some things that are unique that I can't grasp right now without holding it. And you have the watch, you can basically understand, you can just tap around on the watch. That's a little touch screen. Okay. I understand how touch screens work, but here there is no screen. There's no things like how, how far in do I have to do this? Am I doing it? Am I motioning? Am I, am I walking? You are physically moving in a space. If I am holding my iPhone or my Android phone or my Apple watch. or my old iPhone. I could just walk around with these and I'm just like, I understand how these things work. And it kind of, you know, gels well because I can go between all of these devices, you know, like I even got, we have these, these heated floor panel, uh, in one of the bathrooms and it's got a touchscreen. Right. And it's like so intuitive, but only because like I've used touchscreens for like the last, you know, 15 years of my life. That's like, so interesting. Like, Oh, I understand the back against there. Even. And whatever that you would have been like pre iPhone, like it's basically, it looks like an iPhone app at this point. You're like, okay, I understand how this model works. So coming to the vision pro to me, that is the hardest thing to grasp because when I was doing the, uh, HTC vive, I want to say the five. Um, I did have that one. This, um, was pretty cool and, you know, playing games on it, but I was a gamer, right? So I understood. Kind of a controller was in my hand and how that was, was kind of mapping out. And I could, I could, you know, beat Saber is like, I'm doing this. Like if I'm in the arcade playing DDR, I'm like, I'm in the physical space. I could understand some of that, but in this world, it's like one notch beyond what I'm super comfortable with. Like, and I've done it, but I just haven't done it a lot. And I would say for most people. I'm imagining, and I could be wrong, that they're probably not putting the meta quest on their head for like three hours every single day. [00:12:34] Frank: Yeah. I think that is the million dollar question right now. Okay, the device is going to come out. We know it's going to be a half decent device. It's very expensive. They were going to put high quality parts in it. It better be a very nice device. Um, the question is, uh, kinds of apps are you going to want to use? are the interfaces like for those apps? Because you have a lot of choices to make. Um, I'm curious if I would put this thing on in the morning and bounce around from room to room in the house and have different apps, like, docked at different rooms. I think that would be like an okay use of it, but what if they don't have that feature? What if Apple decided that's not Um, how this thing's going to roll. So there's just big open questions like that. Like, what is your day to day use of it? Or is it every time you put it on, you load up an app just like it is on Quest and things like that? Or is it really this spatial reality that we enter into and we have our things docked? Okay, fine. So I have docked things. Are they, again, just. iPhone, iPad apps, uh, 2d apps, just kind of, you know, floating there in space that I can interact with. Great. You know, I, I'll, I'll, I'll use all of James's apps. I'll have them docked everywhere. [00:13:50] James: You can be cycling and see your cadence, see a big number floating on the screen. Perfect. Can [00:13:56] Frank: I just stream your data to the app? That'd be kind of nice. [00:14:00] James: Um, well, yeah. Well, I mean, it's your point and to your point is like, I don't know exactly what's going to be there. I'm on the vision pro website and they have the little. Apple's first spatial operating system. And by the way, I'm not joking about the mixed reality, virtual reality, augmented reality, that was in an email and in the specifications and they've updated all their marketing. So when I go to the Apple vision pro website, they have the whole thing. Like here's the interface for the apps and it kind of has the Apple watch interface, right? With all the icons that are kind of circly, we, we have like. Safari. Let me, let me pause it here. I'm going to pause it. There we go. We have Safari, Photos, Music, iMessage, Power, not PowerPoint, but what's the, Keynote, Mail, Mindfulness. I mean, if there was yoga in the app, that'd be kind of cool. Um, App Store, um, Freeform. Apple TV. And then there's another big notes, you know, a note taking up in spatial reality. And then there's another one that just says compatible apps. That's where they're going to shove our apps, by the way, compatible apps. I'm going to shove them over there, put them over there. That's what they're going to do with them, but that's it. That's the only thing that they show. [00:15:17] Frank: Yeah. And those are basically what's in the simulator. So actually you can use a lot of those. Not like Keynote or Mail or any of those. Yeah. Actually. But, um, you, you get a general feel. A lot of the apps just feel like iPhone apps with a different widget set. Like they're just going to look better in the virtual reality instead of being opaque, solid. Uh, Rectangles, like the rest of us will be, like all our apps will be in the supported section. Yeah, I think that's why I've been, um, I've been trying to write a few little apps just so I could be in the, the proper section, have my own proper icon and enter into the 3D world. Because Yeah, your apps can be the compatibility mode apps, where it's basically just your iOS app. Or, uh, you can actually write a Vision Pro app, and even then you have big UI decisions to make. Um, Apple's apps are mostly 2D apps that just exist in a 3D world, and so you can still write a 2D app that just happens to exist in a 3D world. API supports it just fine. Uh, or you can go a little bit crazier and create 3d objects and try to build a 3d user interface via interacting with 3d objects, or then you can go the even farther crazy and just, uh, go virtual reality, even though we're not supposed to say it, you can just take over the entire screen and do virtual [00:16:49] James: reality. Well, and I feel as though. When I look at the Vision Pro marketing site, I know they're trying to come up with a certain thing, and I know they don't really want to highlight games, and that's okay too, but I feel as though what I'm missing from like the announcement that just happened, like we're recording this on the day that they announced all this stuff, um, because CES is happening this week, really close to CES, but it's like, If I was to launch the Xbox today and say, Hey, pre orders go live next week. And, um, you can get it in a month. And by the way, the Xbox You know what I mean? I'm fine. Uh, or the PlayStation five or whatever, please release them the next thing. And you're like, here's what's in the box and give you what's in the box. And you have a photo of like the apps and like, here are the apps you get. You get a browser, you get, you know, you get, what am I buying? You know what I mean? Like what they're missing is what is the killer app? What is the thing? Like when Nintendo launched a Nintendo switch, they launched it with Breath of the Wild. And it was, you bought it for this thing. You know what I mean? Like this was the reason to. You know, and you knew that there would be so much more. So now I know that we've seen demos and we've seen a lot of stuff, but like when I'm browsing the announcements, I'm browsing the marketing material. I'm like, I'm, I know it's beautiful hardware. I get it, Apple. I get it. And I get it, there's like movies. And like, all you show is like, here's photos and there's like, I'm not sold, I'm like, and Apple's really good at selling. That's the thing, you know what I mean? Like, I want to see. What am I doing in this thing? You know, every single day am I, I mean, I get, I'm, I'm watching videos, but I also have a television, but it's like when I'm working. Okay. So those are two things. Like what else am I doing? What on, if I'm working, what are the things that I'm doing while I'm working? You know what I mean? Why is it so much better for me to watch Star Trek the next generation? Is that, is that, is that correct? Is that, is that a. [00:18:55] Frank: That's a very good thing to watch. Picard. I recommend it. [00:18:58] James: Picard. If I'm watching Picard, how is this so much better than me just, you know, turning on the tube with my Apple TV? You know what I mean? I think that's my problem with it. I'm like, I want to see the things. And right now it makes me feel like I'm a little bit worried about what's going to be in the app store on 2. 2. 2. 0. No, am I wrong? Am I crazy? [00:19:27] Frank: Sorry, you cut out there a tiny bit, but I'll just assume that your rant continued in the direction I was thinking it was going. Hey, James, can I recommend to you an app that I'm probably going to publish called HoloVids? It'll take your Star Trek, The Next Generation Picard and turn them into 3D and put Picard right in your living room for you. Highly recommended app. If I ever get around to releasing it, everyone go buy it. Please buy a 3, 500 device and then buy my app. It'll be great. There you go. No, you know, um, I, I was just thinking, um, during your rant that Apple should have, and they've never done this before, but they should have opened up the app store early and showed off some developer released, uh, Vision Pro apps, because although I didn't get to go to Cupertino and, uh, work on the real hardware. Others did. Other people won that lottery and I'm sure they had some app they worked on and probably some of them are going to release their apps. It'd be nice to see what the developer community is releasing. And that would give me a lot of direction in like, uh, Kinds of apps, even, like, fundamentally, like, should they be 3D object interactive, or should they just be 2D apps that work well in a layered windowing system that is spatial, and that kind of stuff. So, I think it would have been really cool if they had just opened the App Store early so we could see things aside from Keynote, unless Keynote is the killer app. [00:20:55] James: Maybe it is. I hope so. Oh, and I think you're right. I think a developer showcase, you know, for it, like, Oh, Hey, we've like, here are the developers, here are the things that we're launching. And I feel like they've done this a bit like onstage at WWDC in the past and other things, but not to this extent, like I would love to see that. Like, Hey, here are pick the top 10, the top 20, you know, apps. That you know, are going to be launching day one that you could highlight. You've worked with these, these folks on showing these unique scenarios, because this is sort of a device that if it's not a virtual reality device for playing video games, which is not, you need to sell me on the other things. I'm at spatial, spatial. Spatial something. It's a spatial awareness device. It's got lots of space. It's got spatial audio. It's got spatial iPhones. Uh, its eyesight. Spatial eyesight. It's got spatial in it. [00:21:49] Frank: One of the reasons I wrote Ice Circuit for the iPad was iPad came out and it was one of the most magical devices ever. I still love the iPad. It's good to ask. And what I realized though right away was it was mostly a video consumption device. Like what is iPad great at? Scrolling through the web. And watching videos. iPad excels at those tasks. And I was, I kind of like challenged myself, like, can I actually make something on the iPad as something actually productive? Something, um, that adds value to the world of sorts of something like that. And so that's why I wanted to make Productivity apps. And at the time there were just very few productivity apps. And I even got featured on the Apple business website as a productivity app because they were like, wow, someone took this awesome web browser and video playback thing and made a productivity app. Yeah. So I don't know if you can make a productivity app for the Vision Pro. I'm not sure if I'm even going to try. Uh, but it'd be nice to see if people are trying. Um, so the keynote. The keynote is vaguely interesting to me. Like, what if I'm not constrained by a monitor? Maybe I can make the most killer presentation you've ever seen. Who knows? Maybe? [00:23:05] James: Maybe, maybe this is how all presenters at like conferences will start to give because they'll be able to get all their speaker notes right in front of them and look. Forward. No, I think that's a good point. And like, I think those scenarios of like, yeah, talk about like, you know, productivity or wellness or, you know, games or entertainment, like whatever those things are would be pretty great because I could imagine, I'm not really sure how it'll work with the vision pro, but. There are a lot of like fitness apps, right? Where you're training, you're doing stuff, calmness apps. That can be kind of cool. Like a map. Here's a great scenario. And if calm or whatever head spaces and thinking about this, imagine Frank. I mean, this already exists. I'm just going to, and it's not because I'm on Mac rumors and there's an ad for calm right now because the browser is creepily listening to me, but I'm going to write this app [00:23:50] Frank: for you tonight. Keep [00:23:51] James: imagine. You could imagine you put, you slap on your Apple vision pro and you go into a meditation mode and then you're transformed into Pandora, right? Like not the war that's happening, but like, you know, all the beautiful greenery in the wilderness, you have like all these different things and it's like calm and you just have like this. This, you know, voice that's coming down, like, and now we're going to breathe in. And then there's like, you know, some stats overlaying, cause it gets like, oh, it's like reading your watch. Like, here's my, you know what I mean? But like, imagine it, it, it creates, I know that's basically virtual reality, but it's like, I'm just saying like, show me that. Show me that that's a possibility that I could do. I'd be cool. I'd be sold on that a little bit. You know what I mean? Show me that. Or show me like a workout app where. The person's in front of me where I can really see the dimensions of the person of the workout that I'm trying to do. And I can pin them to a space where I can like, you know, because half the half the problem with like doing workouts on TV. So you'd be pointed at the TV all the time, but your workouts are in different movements, right? You can have something that's tracking you and helping you out as you're working out. I don't know if you can work out in this thing. You might be a little sweaty, but, um, you know, I'm just saying those are the things. Apple Marketing Department. I know that we did a whole podcast episode on how we're the worst marketers of our own apps ever. But I'm just saying, I feel like they could take a note from the game industry on this one when launching something substantial like this. Yeah, but [00:25:23] Frank: it's not a game machine. No, I'm just kidding. Of course it's a game machine. I'm actually curious, um, like these kind of spaces, apps, like that are just, here's a room. Go sit in the room and maybe someone, like, rings a gong or something from time to time. Like, I actually kind of hope that those take off as, like, a little niche apps. I don't know if they'll survive into the future. Like, you know, it'll just wait for the day when someone releases the 20 different spaces and then someone's got 100 different spaces, apps. But, um, I do hope. I mean. I know it's not VR, but VR is great. VR is like, I can be in a whole different place. I feel like being in a whole different place. VR is good for that. Um, so I actually hope those come out and do well. I think, um, that Teleportation apps? That's probably not what they'll be called, but the ones that are like, you have a scan of a different space, like a coliseum or something like that, some famous Roman architecture or something like that, and you put that into your house, and you can go walk around in that space. And Pure Around, and that space. You are virtually teleporting yourself to Rome and looking at the archaeology. I think those will be the fun apps, and I hope that those do well. But those are like, um, those are your classic communication ones. Of course we gotta get the teleporter one working. It doesn't even have to be real time. It can be for old videos and things like that. But those are kind of the easy ones that you definitely want from the virtual reality world. Augmented reality world? I'm still not sure what the killer app is in augmented reality, or then displaying advertisements for Jaws [00:27:04] James: 19. No, totally. I hear it. All right. Let's talk about what's in the box. Um, and let's talk a little bit about this in general. So, you know, inside the box, you're going to get a few things. In general. So first and foremost for 3, 499, uh, this is not a penny less, not a penniless. You're going to get the vision pro headset. This makes sense. I read it. Thank goodness. 200, 256 gigs of onboard storage for apps and media. Is that enough? 256? Not bad. [00:27:40] Frank: I thought it was a little low, to be honest, but okay. I mean, you know, [00:27:45] James: for 35, I don't know. 512, what did you want to see? [00:27:48] Frank: Do you want your high quality textures or not? High quality textures do not come for cheap. [00:27:53] James: The, the. But it really depends, right? When you think about these games nowadays, now I know this isn't like an Xbox strapped to your head, but you know, those games are pushing 50, 60 gigs. You know that, you know, these new devices all have terabytes in them should have multiple terabytes. I also just saw like. You know, terabyte, like micro SD cards. I don't know that I can see, you know, just saying it's possible. I would have thought, I think 256 for a launch makes sense. However, my fear is recording spatial video and putting that on this device. [00:28:28] Frank: Uh, I I'm a little less worried about that. Uh, Apple's compression is half decent and, um, the, the depth channel can be very low bit. I, I'm not so worried about that one. Um, but. It's, it's, it's, it's too small, I think. So you said like, yeah, a good game is around 50 gigabytes. Yeah. So you can have five big games on it for a 3, 500 device. You can only have about five games on it. That's a little [00:28:57] James: rough. Yeah. Like if I was to be smaller, but yeah. Like I was to look, let's look in the app store for comparison. Let's just say a Call of Duty game. That that's a game that people play. Call of Duty. I think it's a mobile game. Yeah, it looks like a Call of Duty mobile. Yeah. Three gigs and that's like at least one of them. Okay. This is some other game. Two gigs. Now this is not a The problem game for the Vision Pro though for the iPhone. Exactly, [00:29:28] Frank: exactly. The problem with Vision Pro is you are in a first person field of view that is giant. And the resolution requirements are very high. You can't put low resolution textures in like that little college is probably a very zoomed out field of view. And so the textures do not need to be high res in that. But the moment you start putting polygons actually in front of people's faces, you need that resolution. Uh, so things [00:29:57] James: get bigger. Yeah. So if you imagine, okay, like that's going to be, you know, 10 to 15 gigs, you know, if not more, I was gonna download chunks of data. It'd be fascinating. Like, like I go into the app store on the Vision Pro and I'm like, let me download Call of Duty. And it's like, please wait. It'll be downloaded in one hour. You know, I go, thanks. Um, that'd be fascinating to be honest with you. I mean, I'm not even sure how games work in this environment in all honesty. Like there's not like a controller. So I'll be fascinated just to see how that. You know, works, uh, in general, but yeah, I would have thought 512 at a minimum, but that's just me. I think actually 512 is my new minimum on phones. Go purchasing going forward. I think so. [00:30:40] Frank: Yeah, I, I, I'm getting there. Um, I, all my data still fits under 256, but, um, I, I'm right at the edge. So I, I think I'll have to join you in 512 land pretty [00:30:51] James: soon. Yeah. Heather's on the 256 train and I think the next phone for her will be 512. She just takes so many videos and so many photos. [00:31:01] Frank: It adds up, you know, the next step I'm actually going to write, because Apple just does not have this built in. Take your iPhoto library and sort things by file size. Yeah. They do not have a UI for that. And you know what? Those memories, they're not worth it. Delete, delete, delete. I want my memory back. I was like, [00:31:19] James: there's a, there's a, there's like a special inside of Windows. You can do like a filter. It's like. Size greater than like gigantic or something. And like, there's all these different ones that you can do. It's like actually pretty cool. And they can sort it. Yeah, I agree. I need a sort of size. Okay. You also get a solo knit band and a dual loop band. These are two types of headbands that are designed for user comfort and customization. The solo knit band is a single band that wraps around the back of your head. Well, Apple says the dual loop band features a pair of adjustable upper and lower straps for a personalized fit. I thought our straps were going to be, I thought that, I thought, I thought that the Apple vision pro, we needed a custom order every single strap that went onto our head. No, wasn't that a thing? They're going to 3d print stuff for us or something. [00:32:02] Frank: No, I thought that was for the eyes, but, um, no, this headband thing really threw me off. I was like, wow, they really couldn't come to a decision on which one's better. And I wonder what the differentiating factor is. Why do some people prefer the one? It kind of blows my mind. Um. It's for a device where they didn't want to give us 256 gigabytes more. They're going to manufacture an entire, another strap. You would think you could put, squeeze it onto the chip for the same price as a strap. [00:32:32] James: And now, um, that being said, I'm scrolling through the marketing material and I believe we only ever see single strap on people's hands. In fact, the double strap doesn't look as cool. That's right. It doesn't look as cool. [00:32:49] Frank: Boy, and knowing my luck, I'm probably going to end up having to be a double strap [00:32:53] James: person. Not looking cool around my house with my cat. Everyone has different size heads, so I get it. All right. Next we have two light seal cushions. These cushions come supplied in two sizes and provide additional comfort and light blocking capability, ensuring a snug fit around the face to prevent light leakage. I don't want no light leakage in my, in my thing. It [00:33:16] Frank: completely ruins the effect. I can't believe they didn't solve the light leakage though. I was expecting this thing to be like a gelatin that molds itself to my face like venom. [00:33:28] James: I cannot, I cannot for any reason, there's no photo that I can see of them like installing this cushion or is the cushion the thing that's against your face and you can swap that part in and out? Oh, it's magnetic. Oh, okay. So that's the thing that rests up against your face. There must be two of them. It gently flexes to come for conform to individual face shapes. Fascinating. So this is the part that's like on your physical face. There's going to be two of those. I mean, you're, you know, you're getting a lot of customization. You're very fascinating. Have you ever [00:34:09] Frank: showed, uh, molded, um, shin pads, like soccer shin pads to your [00:34:15] James: leg? I know what you're talking about, but, [00:34:19] Frank: uh. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of wish they just did that, like properly mold it to my face. Like it's going to get a little warm, but just, just hold it to your face and it will just adhere to [00:34:29] James: my face. Yeah. It like inflates around it. Kind of like a, a Tempur Pedic [00:34:35] Frank: material. Yeah, just create a little vacuum and suction cup. Yeah. That'd be good. That way I could have a nice red rim [00:34:42] James: around. Yeah. I mean, you're going to get it. Okay. Okay. Just want to make sure. Uh, you're going to get a cover for the front glass. The cover protects the headset's front glass when not in use, preventing scratches and from damages. That's cool. You also get a polishing cloth, a 85 polishing cloth. It's designed for cleaning the headset and lens and front glass. Uh, that's cool. You also get a battery pack, provides two hours of general use and two and a half of 2D video playback on a single charge. According to Apple, you get a USB C adapter and also a USB C charging cable. So there you go. Well, you know, [00:35:21] Frank: at least they're putting the charging adapters and cables back in the products. Like, you know, iPhones don't come with those anymore, so that's nice for 3, 500. You get it [00:35:33] James: must be a chunky one, like a fast charge. They must, they must, you know, when you have the, the, the battery length only being two to two and a half hours, which is short by the way, but also maybe long. I don't know. [00:35:46] Frank: Oh, I, I think it's way too short. Um, it's. Kind of sad. Cause like, just as you would get into something, your battery's going to be dead. Like, I don't know about you, but it takes me at least an hour to get into something. [00:35:57] James: Listen, when I'm scrolling on Netflix, I'm not even starting to watch a show until at least 85 minutes into browse, browse, infinite scroll. [00:36:08] Frank: Especially imagine the 3D infinite scroll. It's just going to be amazing. [00:36:12] James: Things are zipping around X, Y, and Z. It's like, like, like, like the Netflix catalog. Just like, it's like the, uh, the archives and like Star Wars or whatever. [00:36:24] Frank: That's the app that I'll write for you. The, uh, ADD star, uh, video viewer browser for Netflix. [00:36:32] James: Um, now you also mentioned that there's going to be these optional, um, optical inserts, um, from Zeiss, uh, which is nice, um, starting at 99 that you can buy. I guess you would just know what your prescription is. Submit it to ZEISS and then they give you the inserts and bingo bango. You're good to go. So that's kind of nice. [00:36:51] Frank: Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, if your prescription is valid, this, this is the question like, um, because I don't know anyone who's gone through this. If you go and order eyeglasses online on the internet, You can certainly type in your prescription, but they also check that it's [00:37:09] James: valid. That's what it says. It says the inserts will attach to the Vision Pro lenses magnetically, which is kind of awesome. Of course, why wouldn't it be magnets? But I guess once they're in there, how do you get, how do you get them out? Never. Um, it says, You will need a valid prescription to get the inserts. Apple cautions that not all prescriptions will be supported and they'll be available to order on Apple's website. Now, Apple now has become a pharmaceutical distributor of glasses. [00:37:39] Frank: Well, thanks to Zeiss lenses, that's pretty big play. Yeah, great. Wonderful. As if I don't have enough trouble ordering eyeglasses already, if it's not obvious. I don't go to my optetrician every year. I'm terrible. Who does? I want to know if you're that, if you're, if you are that with it in life, I want to know. Write in and let us know. [00:38:05] James: Hold on. I do need to make a correction here, sorry, that there are two types of optical inserts, readers for 99 and prescriptions for 149. So yeah, there you go. Yep. Does it not come with a, does it not come with a carrying case? [00:38:24] Frank: No one's going to leave their house. No, I'm just, I'm, I'm curious who's going to leave their house with this thing on. Can I say though that I don't think they're doing the batteries right. They should make it. They should have made it so you can get like the Luke Skywalker belt and just keep clipping more batteries onto it. So like, yeah, the first battery packs two hours, but then you get the second battery pack. Now I got four [00:38:45] James: hours. Did they not learn anything about lightning cables and chaining monitors together from each other? You just chain those puppies. Boom, boom, boom, [00:38:51] Frank: boom. Just chain them. Like Christmas lights. I would wear Christmas lights around my belt if it meant more not VR time, if it meant more spatial computing [00:39:00] James: time. How come I can't strap just that one huge Battery out of my bed. And it's like, and it's like, uh, it's, it's got the, it's got the chest strap. You know what I mean? I go, you, you, you literally get out of bed and you harness this thing onto you. And it's an 85 pound bad. And I got all day battery life. And you just have this one little tiny USB C cable coming in and you're good to go. I just sold a panel, a solar panel on it. Why not? Did [00:39:29] Frank: they actually say whether the connection to the power thing is USB C? Because that seems like too nice of Apple. If they actually made that USB C, that would be amazing, but it [00:39:39] James: probably isn't. No, it's magnets. Of course. No, it's, it's a special magnet. It's a special magnet dock. Let me see if I can find the image here for you. Yep. Here it is. I'm going to post Zencaster. There you go. I have faith [00:39:52] Frank: in Amazon third parties. They're going to come through for me. Come through for me, please. Well. [00:39:58] James: Now, the one thing that didn't announce or what I can't maybe find is, uh, accessories because listen, they're not just going to get 34. 99 from you. They're going to get a whole bunch more from you. Trust me. So like, where's the case? Where's the extra batteries? Um, I don't know what else I'm missing from it. There's gotta be other stuff that I could buy. What else can I buy for this thing? Something. Well, [00:40:18] Frank: I am curious if they'll ever have any kind of controller. I think they've been really working hard to have no kind of control or anything, but virtual keyboards and things like that aren't great. So I got a feeling there'll be some controller, like something in the future. Or is it all just going to be Apple watch? I don't know. Uh, and then it needs to come with like safety gloves for like walking into walls and things like that. So like bumpers. [00:40:44] James: Bumpers. You know what it needs? A power glove from like NES. You strap on this glove. It's got like a keyboard on it. Be amazing. I'm just Apple. We're full of ideas. Hire us. I already have a great job. So you don't need to hire me. Hire Frank. I'll pass on the great ideas. Um, are you going to get one? Are you buying one? [00:41:05] Frank: I, I, I, I think I, I think I am. I, I've been debating on this show for what, two years now, and it's a god awful amount of money for something I probably won't make the money back on and get distracted writing a whole lot of apps for that I don't make money on, but. Sigh. Why not? One more crazy thing. I, I would just wish I had a better computer for it. Cause I, I hope I don't have to upgrade my computer as I buy a ridiculous new device. I hope I can just work on the laptop, make it, make it pay for itself first, and then maybe upgrade computers. [00:41:42] James: Well, you were already at about four grand because you got. The vision pro, you got the, uh, you got the prescriptions, you got the sales tax, you got the extra battery, you know, the extra battery is going to be about 500. So now you're at about 4, 500. Optometrist appointment, that's got to go, you know, you don't have insurance. So that's going to cost you three, three grand right there. Who's got [00:42:05] Frank: insurance except for Microsoft employees? [00:42:08] James: Uh, actually it was, it was at my last, at my company before Xamarin, we had a vision, but not dental. Yeah. [00:42:19] Frank: I mean, even vision, a lot of people don't do. [00:42:23] James: No, we had vision. We didn't have dental insurance. Yeah, I love my teeth, even though they're all oddly shaped and I'm not going to correct them, but I do like, I love a good cleaning anyways. So let's say you're already at 40, at least 4, 000 in what else comes to be an Apple vision pro developer. You need the device for grand check, check, check. What do you need? A new iMac? No, you can't even be an iMac. It's got to be what iMac pro can't be a Mac pro. They're all old and busted. What are we buying? No, [00:42:53] Frank: like your, your only option right now is the Mac studio, uh, which is another four grand through your [00:43:00] James: four grand. Buying it. Okay. Four grand. We got Mac studio coming in. Like how they, like how they put a 2, 000 one on there. Like anyone's going to get, what is the 2, 000 Mac? State, uh, MacStudio come with 512 gigs of storage, but the 34. 99 256 storage, I know it's an SSD versus whatever you have to chip it. Anyways, yeah, four grand. Okay. So you're in for another four grand. That's the M2 Ultra. Okay. We probably got to spec it out because if you're going to buy, you're only going to buy it once. Um, do you need [00:43:34] Frank: this? You got to upgrade it to the 64 gigs of RAM and you need the two to four terabyte hard drive. [00:43:41] James: Okay, cool. So it comes by default with 64 gigs of Ram, but you might as well get 128. Cause I don't know [00:43:47] Frank: that that's pushing it. 64 is enough right [00:43:50] James: over what I have. Then we get the four terabyte. Let's get the 76 core GPU. Cause why not? Um, only 7, 000. So you're only in about 13, 000. You know, 12, 000 to become an Apple Vision Pro developer, Frank, not bad. Not bad at [00:44:08] Frank: all. Not bad at all for something I'll probably make a thousand dollars on. [00:44:13] James: Those are all business expenses, basically free. Yeah. Great. That's not how it works. It's not how it works, people. We're not tax professionals. Um, do not take anything we say as tax. Advice, nor do I even really own a business at all, to be honest with you. So Frank does, but I mean, technically it is kind of a business right off, but don't listen to what I just said. Do your, talk to your tax CPA. [00:44:40] Frank: You know, I developed my first three apps on a laptop. Um, I think you just convinced me. I am not upgrading my main machine this year. Uh, we will. We will spend the money on the ridiculous device. Yes, probably. And then, uh, just do it on a laptop and try to recover some [00:45:02] James: of that money. Well, there you go. Well, let us know what you're doing this Friday. Are you going to be like me and Frank up at 4am in the queue? If so, let us know. Hit us up on Twitter at MergeConflict. FM. Hit us up at MergeConflict. FM. There's a contact button or hop into our discord or become a Patreon. You can get bonus exclusive episodes as well. That's going to do it for this week's exciting spatial episode of Merge Conflict. So until next time, I'm James Montemagno, spatially aware. [00:45:32] Frank: And I'm Frank Krueger, spatially, audioly and visually aware. Sure. Peace.