ThrillSeeker is a must follow if you’re into VR, and his most popular video of all time was on his experience using the Varjo XR-3. At the time, that was a $5,500 device plus a required $1,500/year subscription. Oh, and it needed to be connected | Continue reading
Listen, you don’t want 2,000 words on a travel case and I don’t particularly want to write that much about a case. Agreed? Excellent, let’s go quick!The visual design is awesomeI love the look of the case. It looks like it& | Continue reading
Does the Vision Pro look like it's going to replace the Mac or the iPad? How about our phones? Maybe…possibly…in many years, but it's more likely to be yet another computer in our lives. It *can* happen, it's just rare. | Continue reading
Zachary Small writing for The New York Times, citing this study:Less than 2 percent of console video games include L.G.B.T.Q. characters or story lines even though 17 percent of gamers are queerTo be clear, this isn’t 2% of console games having a | Continue reading
Sarah Nassauer for The Wall Street Journal: Walmart in Talks to Buy TV Maker VizioThe retail giant is in talks to buy smart television-manufacturer Vizio for more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the situation. The move would give Walmart more places where it ca … | Continue reading
Sarah Perez for TechCrunch: Over Half of Vision Pro-Only Apps Are Paid Downloads, Far More Than Wider iOS App StoreAccording to a recently released report from app intelligence firm Appfigures, over half of Vision Pro-only apps (52%) are paid downloads — a surprising perce … | Continue reading
We're very much in the early days of visionOS. As I told Chris Lawley on Mastodon, "this is definitely the closest I've ever felt to using what feels like an internal version of an Apple product." Which means I don't isn' | Continue reading
2 short months ago Google announced Gemini (apparently Gemini 1.0). It came in 3 variants:Gemini Nano, which runs locally on devices as small as your phoneGemini Pro, which runs on a server and was the back end for BardGemini Ultra, which didn’t run anywhere | Continue reading
How does one afford a Vision Pro? Sacrifices had to be made. | Continue reading
Jen Glennon for Kotaku: Bummer: PS5 Entering 'The Latter Stage of Its Life Cycle,' Sony SaysSony execs also said that its current-gen hardware, the PlayStation 5, is nearing the end of its life cycle.I think the PS5 and Xbox Series console generation will go down as | Continue reading
I brought the Vision Pro to the office today to show a work friend since he's into tech, although he's definitely more cautious when it comes to jumping on new things. He's done a little VR before, as well.He was immediately struck by | Continue reading
Alex Heath for The Verge: Zuckerberg says Quest 3 is “the better product” vs. Apple’s Vision ProHe says the Quest has a better “immersive” content library than Apple, which is technically true for now, though he admits that the Vision Pro is a | Continue reading
If you handed me the iPhone 16 Pro today and told me that I needed to have a written review of it done by tomorrow that helped people understand if it was a phone worth upgrading to, I could do it no problem. I’d have to leave out | Continue reading
Emilia David for The Verge: I Love My GPT, but I Can’t Find a Use for Anybody Else’sThough I’ve come to depend on my GPT, it’s the only one I use.I’ve had the exact same experience. I fully | Continue reading
Once a year or so I seem to write something that gets a good chunk of pushback. In 2023 that article was my immediate reaction to the Vision Pro’s announcement at WWDC, which wasn’t as over-the-moon excited as many other people were. My favorite reaction was | Continue reading
The Vision Pro isn't a developer kit, but it's definitely got some UI oddities that will get sorted out before it's really ready for the mainstream. | Continue reading
My wife wasn’t super interested in the Vision Pro, but after having it in the house for a few days, she finally said, “fine, let’s see what this is all about.”So I get her into the headset and she had tow immediate things | Continue reading
Tim Urban: All My Thoughts After 40 Hours in the Vision ProIt’s not just me. VR blows everyone away when they try it, but it seems to have a hard time hooking people for the long run. After a major wave of hype in the mid-2010s, VR | Continue reading
Back when I was a kid, there was a “computer room” in our house. There was one PC and we all shared it. Want to look something up online? Go to the computer room. Want to play a game? Go to the computer room. Want to listen to | Continue reading
Jordan Pearson: How Tech Firms Made a Crypto-Boosting Book an NYT Best Seller by Gaming the SystemCafiero linked two examples of firms that publicly said they placed orders for Dixon’s book to give to employees. One was Syndicate, a company in the crypto industry that a16z … | Continue reading
What a difference a week makes, huh? Last week I was feeling FOMO, but had come to terms with not being on the Vision Pro train with other people I knew. I dealt with that by buying a Meta Quest 3 and seeing what the best of the rest of | Continue reading
Casey Newton: Scenes From a Dying WebOpening the Arc Search app for the first time last week, though, I experienced a rare emotion: a kind of revulsion at the app’s mere existence, and at what it portends.If I’m known for loving and advocating for | Continue reading
Anil Dash: “Wherever You Get Your Podcasts” Is a Radical StatementBut here's the thing: being able to say, "wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that's | Continue reading
Keenan: RSS Readers Make Me Want to Jump Into a Vat of Acid!Opening an RSS reader is about the quickest way I know how to trigger a panic attack in myself next to Googling "colon cancer symptoms reddit." Even when I do my best to only subscribe | Continue reading
George RR Martin on his blog: Dark DaysIt used to be fun talking about our favorite books and films, and having spirited debates with fans who saw things different… but somehow in this age of social media, it is no longer enough to say “I did not | Continue reading
I reviewed the PlayStation Portal late last year and my main criticism of it was that it had more input lag and general wireless reliability issues than I would have liked to see in a streaming-only device.I’ve used it a bit since that review, but it’ | Continue reading
This article is making the rounds on Mastodon, where generative AI hate runs strong, and I get it, it’s everything you want to hear in a headline if you think ChatGPT is the most evil thing ever created on computers. It kicks off with the headline, “AI | Continue reading
Bluck Apps writing on the Castro blog, which went over 3 years without a new post, if you wanted an idea for how much communication from the company has broken down: A Fresh Start for CastroWe are excited to announce Castro has been purchased by Bluck Apps. Castro is | Continue reading
John Siracusa: Spatial ComputingThe fact that I’m able to write the phrase “grab it and drag it to a new location” and most people will understand what I mean is a testament to the decades-long success of this kind of interface. In the context of | Continue reading
I just read two “reviews” of the upcoming Apple Vision Pro, one from John Gruber and another from Nilay Patel. I put “reviews” in quotes because I think these two write ups are very different in how they approached their respective pieces. Nilay’ … | Continue reading
Project Tapestry is a new Kickstarter from The Iconfactory. Here’s how they describe it:What if you had one app that gave an overview of nearly everything that was happening across all the different services you follow? A single chronological timeline of your most importan … | Continue reading
A week ago I launched More Birchtree, a way to subscribe to this site to get more of it (shocker!). I've written two exclusive posts so far and they've gone over quite well it seems. I'm proud of the posts and think they' | Continue reading
Ian Bogost: We’ve Forgotten How to Use ComputersRemember (if you can) the classic drag-and-drop: You’d mouse over to a file or a folder, click to slide the icon to the trash, then release to drop it in. In the age of finger-scrolls and trackpads, that | Continue reading
Rebecca Sun argues the Barbie Oscar snubs aren’t as bad as some people think in BarbieGate: Why All Oscars Snubs Are Not Created Equala good question to ask is why a man playing a blond avatar of perfection felt like a braver feat than a woman doing | Continue reading
Yesterday Apple announced some pretty big changes that they’ll be making in iOS 17.4 coming in March. This page has more details, and they separately announced that game streaming services like Xbox Game Pass and NVIDIA GeForce Now can release Apps on the App Store.Phew, b … | Continue reading
Bastian Allgeier: My Grandpa Was a NaziI wondered for many years, how all of this could have happened. How people like my grandpa turned into monsters and people around him watched or turned into monsters with him. The last years made this very clear.Sometimes you see a blog | Continue reading
Dan Moren: After 40 Years, the Mac Is ImmortalForty years. In the world of technology, where many devices seem to evaporate after only a matter of months, lasting for a decade is an accomplishment—but four of them? It’s nearly unheard of.The Mac really is | Continue reading
So you know how sometimes you can't figure something out so you ask a question on social media to see if anyone can help? And then do you know how you get the answer you need, but people keep replying to you with suggestions even after you got | Continue reading
This isn't going to be a full tutorial, but yesterday I started a paid tier for Birchtree (sign up here) and in the interest of transparency as well as setting expectations for people who are thinking about doing something similar, here's the broads strokes of what& | Continue reading
Andy Nicolaides: If VR Is the Future, I’m ScrewedUsing a Quest 3, for me, is liking shipping in a Face Hugger from Alien and treating it to a candlelit meal before inviting it home to latch onto your face for some intrusive chest impregnatation.This was too | Continue reading
This inaugural More Birchtree post delves into what we want to get out of video game representation, a shout out to my favorite current writer, one of my all-time favorite apps, and a few cool goodies like the Wii Shop music on Amazon. | Continue reading
More details below, but brass tax, More Birchtree is a way to get more Birchtree writing, ad-free browsing, and the fuzzy feeling of supporting indie writing. Member posts will be more personal pieces, as well as more raw feelings about the tech news of the day before I’m | Continue reading
At the end of 2023 I wrote this about what I expected to see from Apple before they announced the Vision Pro's release date:I also hope we get some videos deep diving into some of the interactions and common tasks you’ll be able to do | Continue reading
Above is a deranged version of the innovation curve that is often brought out when thinking about products (often tech products specifically).Here’s a better one:A very few people are “innovators” who are there on day one for new stuff and are willing to look | Continue reading
Robin Rendle: Be Loud About the Things You LoveA writing tip for myself in the future, if I may (and I do): delete every use of “…for me…,” “in my opinion,” “some might disagree,” “I think,” etc. etc. These | Continue reading
You should read Chance Miller’s whole article on 9to5Mac, but I wanted to share my immediate thoughts after seeing this.Apple is updating its App Store guidelines to allow developers to link to alternative payment methods, provided that the app also offer purchases through … | Continue reading