I think Apple played it well to test the market on a larger scale with few hardware compromises based on cost, rather than testing the market with something cheaper, less capable, and with the promise of being better in the future. There isn’t a huge amount the Vision Pro can’t do now or could do better in the future.
Correct, they gave it everything they could in terms of tech and the fashion of that tech's packaging and it bombed. Even the best possible experience, produced by the most powerful tech company in the world, after a decade and billions of dollars invested, flopped when it confronted the consumer market. And there's not much it can do to improve now or in the future as they've already done pretty much everything you can do to build an HMD with today's technologies.
There is no technology path between these goggles and a spectacles form factor. This tech, the "immersive" goggles, is a dead end and money spent on it would have been better spent on inventing the technologies we need for actually acceptable form factors, or pretty much anything else you can think of, actually.
For summaries my preference-where I have the option to set it-is for a bullet pointed list over a condensed paragraph. Easier to scan and typically does better at conveying the flow of the source too.
This stuff is so divisive. You can find seemingly a roughly equal number of people who passionately think the opposite on many of these very-different-from-windows UX choices.
I’m one. The dock tells me what apps are running and available. There are other ways to find the windows, and running apps don’t need windows.
Every single running UI app needs a window. The ones that run in the background and do not need a full fledged window go in the menubar next to the clock.
Apologies, I was not clear. Obviously in MacOS an app can be open without a window. My question is why?
What is the point of having for example Word or Safari running without a window? If they want to run a background task that requires some user interaction (eg outlook checking email and calendar), the menubar is the perfect place for it.
In the past the argument was that people want their apps warm started so that they open faster. But this is a moot point in 2025 with SSDs of pulling 5gb/s and tons of ram that allow for ample intelligent caching.
One reason is to be able to close the last window of an app without quitting it. Always bugged me how on windows, if I closed, say, the only word doc I had open, I had to relaunch word again (with all the loading time that that entailed) just to open a new doc. On a Mac you can close windows without worrying that you're also going to quit the app (except for apps that only support one window, although I do think it’s silly that every app doesn't just support multiple windows).
Why the app has to be scrubbed from memory immediately after you close the last window? We are not in the times with 512kb of RAM memory. This is not something that the user should have to worry about today.
This is the simplest caching scenario I can think of.
It’s not like it’s hard to quit an app. You push Apple-Q for the app, Apple-W for a window.
What’s the point in having a window if it doesn’t need it. Do I need to check if this is the last window so I don’t lose my download, stop my render, etc. These things bite me on Windows. There is not the one way.
Precisely. It’s not really about system performance anymore, which just leaves the workflow benefits once you get used to it. As you point out, when using keyboard shortcuts thoroughly, the WM behaviours just make sense.
Command-Tab, Tab to select the app for foreground, Command-N for a new window. Combined with Command-Space for Spotlight (or Alfred/Raycast) it’s all very quick and seamless.
> Since some people perceive discussion quality to be (relatively) high on HN
It’s really not at the moment on so many discussion worthy topics. I get it, there will be the same old tropes and opinions but HN does a great job of cutting through the noise and unveiling interesting perspectives.
I’m surprised and a little disappointed. And left wondering where to find the discussions on such topics that are worth reading.
There's a limit on how much of that load HN can bear before collapsing. I wrote about this earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42949237. If you read that and have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Yeah it’s pretty simple. Just teach your kids to walk and the importance of no sleep interruptions, then they can get themselves to kindergarten and make their own food. /s
