apple vision pro? more like apple piss-on broke
plus, the signs as political ideologies
somehow i completely forgot about the fact that apple was coming out with a VR headset until the other day when they became available and all the reviews started coming out. i’m not usually this out of the loop on new tech, especially something as stupid as this, so i’m a little embarrassed that i wasn’t ahead of the curve with some criticism of it. anyway, i think the thing is stupid, and here are some of my thoughts.
first of all, VR headsets are a little ridiculous in the first place. i like real reality, why would i want virtual reality? this sentiment is a mix of my luddism and the fact that i think i would feel very dizzy and disoriented if i tried a VR headset, plus i’m not a huge gamer. there’s nothing in VR for me, so i just don’t really get the appeal. even though i know this is a purely individual opinion of mine, that doesn’t stop me from judging people who make such a big deal out of a VR headset.
secondly, prices for the damn thing start at $3500 USD! for reference, other popular ones go for much much cheaper, for instance the meta quest 3 goes for about $500, and the HTC vive pro 2 goes for around $800. both prices i would never pay for such a device, but significantly cheaper than the dumbass apple goggles.
third, they look stupid. i will concede that they look better than other VR headsets, but that’s not saying much because the other headsets look stupid as fuck! these just look like fucked up ski goggles, and the strap that goes around the back of your head, while it looks better than the other headsets with an additional over-the-head strap, is wildly impractical because of the weight of the front part. you can attach an over-the-head strap, which just renders the thing as dumb looking as the other cheaper ones.
there are people trying to make them look cool, like this guy getting out of a cybertruck or this person dressed a little less dorky, but both run into a major issue: the apple vision pro doesn’t work when you’re walking. you’re walking straight through your open windows. so these jerks are just gesturing in these videos for the aesthetic, and knowing that makes them look even more pathetic. they’re trying to look cyberpunk, but they miss the mark and end up looking like you can just tell that they pay $8 a month for twitter and have an NFT profile pic.
one feature that made me laugh extremely hard was the persona feature. the headset scans your face and creates a digital representation of it, which ends up looking blurry and uncanny because it’s a recreation of your face, not your actual face. in MKBHD’s review video of the apple vision pro, he shows the personas feature, and the facetime feature as well, where you can video call people who are also using this creepy uncanny feature. it’s genuinely so terrifying to look at that i didn’t even want to include it in this newsletter.
the fact that the VR market is so inundated with stupid looking, overpriced products has made me almost nostalgic for google glass. when google glass was first announced i took a silent vow to beat up anyone i see wearing them, but now i think i’d let it slide because what we have now is way worse. even the microsoft holo lens is better looking than the other shit on the market, but it’s only for industry professionals, so we don’t have nerds walking around looking like welders in their VR headsets, unfortunately.
i predict that this is going to be one of the apple products that flops hard, because i don’t really expect that many people to want them, or be able to afford them. the economy still sucks, people can hardly pay for groceries and even the upper class is noticing it enough to complain. there is always the prospect of the darker timeline in which apple finds a way to really make this thing take off, which is almost too depressing to type. i’m praying on the vision pro’s downfall.
the reason these exist in the first place is that handheld tech has kind of plateaued. phones and watches are kind of at the peak of what they can be, you can’t just keep adding more cameras. so these companies need to get into new markets or create new ones, so VR is an obvious pick because gaming is a massive industry, though in the case of apple, the vision pro is marketed as productivity tech, because currently no games even work on it. this is a piece of office tech made by professional managerial class office guys for other people who work in offices. capitalism constantly needs “infinite growth” and “innovation” when it’s not at all needed, so they give us useless garbage to spend our money on instead of having any respect for us.
i wonder what the intersection is between people who want to drive their cybertrucks in their 2lb brain weight and people who stopped wearing a surgical mask after 2 weeks because they “feel suffocated.”
track of the week
liberals are always being hypocrites, but i think during this current moment, it’s extremely apparent how chickenshit they are. they claim to be anti-war and against genocide while being complicit in israel’s war and genocide against palestinians. it’s “no kids in cages” when trump does it but looking the other way when biden does it. it’s “vote blue no matter who” in america and “if you don’t vote liberal you’re letting the conservatives win” in canada, and when the elected liberals do nothing and screw over entire countries and make people feel alienated and disillusioned, liberals yell at them that they’re going to make everything worse if they don’t vote for liberals.
obviously, this song is about liberal hypocrisy. he never misses. “Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” RIP Phil Ochs, you would’ve hated where we’re at now.
the signs as political ideologies
(please don’t get mad at me this is a joke)
aries - dark enlightenment
taurus - anarcho-capitalism
gemini - third position
cancer - democratic socialism
leo - absolute monarchism
virgo - ba’athism
libra - radical centrism
scorpio - hoxhaism
sagittarius - anarcho-primitivism
capricorn - neoliberalism
aquarius - marxism-leninism-maoism
pisces - juche