I don't think it's a cheap criticism to say that it's a negative to have a computer strapped to your face for long periods of time (which is one of the points the article makes).

If Apple Vision was the form factor of a pair of sunglasses (more like what xreal is doing) then I wouldn't be so critical.

My interpretation is that what they really want are Apple Glasses, but decided that AR tech just isn't good enough now, if ever (with the 'how you do put black pixels on a transparent lens' problem), and so decided to instead go the route of a technically-VR device fundamentally designed to be used as an AR device.

>If Apple Vision was the form factor of a pair of sunglasses (more like what xreal is doing) then I wouldn't be so critical.

I have no idea when/if the technology will get there but a HUD in a fairly ordinary-looking pair of glasses you could wear on the street seems potentially interesting. I'll keep an open mind about the Vision Pro but the use cases I've seen don't seem super-compelling to me--at least at this point.

We literally already tried this. Google glass existed, and was super hyped up, and nobody liked it.

Google Glass really didn't work very well and didn't really have a decent software story. I'm not inclined to write off AR for all time just because Google Glass failed.

Google Glass was also only very primitive AR in that there was no scene understanding capabilities. There was no ability for the system to convincingly augment the real world (for example, using plane detection to anchor digital entities to real world geometry). It was purely a small, low resolution, monocular, semi-transparent display providing essentially smart watch level functionality in a face-worn form factor. It was a cool but unsuccessful idea that was ahead of its time.

TL;DR: I agree; don't use Glass as a reason to write off AR glasses altogether.