[HN Gopher] Apple's new headset meets reality ___________________________________________________________________ Apple's new headset meets reality Author : sudheer_paturi Score : 78 points Date : 2023-05-18 13:25 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com) | jmull wrote: | It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and if there | really is a viable Apple-scale device here. | | The overarching XR vision makes sense to me -- that you could | instantly drop into any kind of environment you might want to, | whether for work or entertainment or socializing. | | But who creates these environments, and for what purpose? They | seem like they'd be quite expensive if done well, and if not done | well, you wouldn't want to go there unless you had to. If there | aren't great places to go, what justifies a $3K headset? | | Meanwhile, with the reality of technical limitations, how good is | the experience really going to be? | | I suspect you're going to be able to pay $3K to buy into some | games and productivity software that, once the novelty wears off, | are going to feel pretty mediocre and may never really get past | the tech demo stage. And your hardware is going to be dreadfully | obsolete in about 2-3 years too. | | IDK, maybe I just have a lack of vision and I'm too down on this | stuff. | | I would like to try it and see! | themagician wrote: | For me it comes down to optics. I've tried damn near every VR | headset ever made, including many that never made it to | production, and they all suffer from the same core issue: poor | optics. Even industrial headsets that costs thousands are still | using flat screen and lenses with fixed focal points (with few | exceptions, but even then nothing truly extraordinary). | | Current optical designs mean that there is a large out of focus | area when you look anywhere that isn't forward. That's just | never going to fly for the general consumer. For VR to truly go | mainstream you needs an optical system that is truly sharp, | edge to edge. That probably means some kind of active optical | system (like reverse OIS) or some kind of magic lens that | currently only exists in theory. Instead what manufactures keep | doing is trading off FOV for sharpness. | | If Apple has implemented a new optics system here I think they | have winner and the industry will change overnight. If it's the | same as current designs just a little better it feels DOA to | me. | | I'm optimistic because I can't imagine Apple, of all companies, | putting out a headset that's blurry at the edges. | anonymouse008 wrote: | This is true - but let me say this, you couldn't pay me to | wear an Apple Watch all day and you won't be able to pay me | to wear a headset. | | There's just no dang reason to use these things like their | creators want. Someone needs to be brave in these | organizations and say "hey look, we tried pushing Siri for | years and never gained the loved adoption that chatGPT has, | why are we trying the same strategy here?" | | If the compute offering is not excellent, it does not deserve | to be in a new context. Period. | themagician wrote: | I can _imagine_ a headset that allows me to have the | equivalent desktop space of quad HiDPI displays for the | price of one display, and the ability to bring that | anywhere. The ability to edit video on a display that is | absolutely massive would be a win for me. | anonymouse008 wrote: | Yes, this can definitely be true, but is the context | really so that you can be social with someone else - or | is it for you to have the creative space to work on an | idea? | | I feel there's no idea of what the context is anymore - | and that's what's killing all of these devices. No one | can say 'this is the emphasis we gave these products for | this reason' - because they all want the success of the | iPhone, everyday use and wear. | | We have to allow the pendulum to swing back to | specialized devices - that's why Teenage Engineering is | so captivating. | ska wrote: | > you couldn't pay me to wear an Apple Watch all day | | That's your preference, but it's clear that lots of people | not just willingly, but enthusiastically do this; makes | this an odd example. Likewise Siri/Alexa I guess - I would | never use them but some people do dozens of times a day and | love it. | zmmmmm wrote: | > Current optical designs mean that there is a large out of | focus area when you look anywhere that isn't forward | | You sound like you are a year or two out of date with your | "current" understanding. The industry has moved to pancake | lenses which make the view clear edge to edge. There's no | more out of focus peripheral view, in recent headsets you | read and look around using your eyeballs and not your head | just like you would naturally. | | It is already known that the Apple headset uses this updated | optical system, along with micro OLED displays at super high | resolution (approx double current industry standards). The | clarity and focus are going to be absolutely amazing. | themagician wrote: | You mean like the pancake lenses in the Quest Pro? Those | are still what I'd consider garbage tier old tech. Probably | the best we are going to get down the path of fixed focal | point acrylic lenses, but definitely not what I'd call | sharp edge to edge. The edges might qualify as "very soft" | instead of "totally out of focus" but that's about the best | you can say. | zmmmmm wrote: | Quest Pro is probably the leading example yes. If you're | calling that garbage, then I think you're (a) setting | impossibly high standards and (b) out of sync with most | people's perception, as most people perceive these has | having "edge to edge clarity". | themagician wrote: | Oddly enough, the reason I have so many VR headsets is | because I mostly give demos to non-tech people. Quest Pro | still gets the, "Pretty cool, but why is it so blurry," | comments. Not as much as other headsets, but still enough | that it will never fly for general use. Meta, to their | credit, does a good job of masking the poor optics by | keeping texture detail to a minimum in their own software | and encouraging developers to do the same. | | I think people really into VR get so used to looking | around with their head and having low expectations that | they don't notice just how poor it is. By comparison it's | good. In isolation, not so much. | zmmmmm wrote: | One of the perplexing things about Quest Pro is that Meta | keeps the default UI rendering at the same scale for the | Pro as for the Quest 2. The result is that all the home | environments look blurry and poorly antialiased. It's | hard to judge the lenses themselves properly actually | without connecting it to PCVR mode and looking at some | ultra high resolution content there. It really is very | impressive when you do that. | nvarsj wrote: | * * * | surprisetalk wrote: | I recently wrote a long piece about why I think Apple will win | the AR/VR wars. | | They might have a rocky start, but they still have a lot of | advantages. | | 1. AR will devour smartphones. | | 2. Apple is the only company that can quickly overcome consumer | AR/VR design challenges. | | 3. Apple has positioned itself to distribute the best AR/VR | content. | | 4. Apple will cement its early lead with a new blue-bubble | effect. | | --- | | [1] https://taylor.town/apple-will-win-vr | taeric wrote: | Why do we think AR will devour smartphones? I just don't see | it. I say this as someone that loves Gran Turismo on PS5. | | I could see an argument for it growing along side smartphones. | But even then, this feels like fantasy. VR only "works" for | driving simulation because... you are sitting there. Any dreams | of it making Zelda more immersive will have to grasp with the | fact that, you know, you can't actually win a fight with most | wild animals. Or climb a mountain. Or hike across the entire | continent... | | (I say "works" for driving, because even that is glossing all | of the physicality of driving that fast. Which is intense and | would also be beyond most of us.) | surprisetalk wrote: | I totally agree. | | "Growing" is probably a better word than "devour". | | In a companion essay, I try to make the argument that AR | peripherals are likely. | | My best guess is that a smartphone-like peripherals will be | shipped alongside the flagship AR/VR headsets. I guess the AR | headsets might be viewed as the "peripheral" in the | beginning, but I think eventually the AR headset will be the | main focus, and the thing you hold in your hand will feel | more like a keyboard/mouse. | | [1] https://taylor.town/ar-peripherals | dangus wrote: | 1. What problem with smartphones will AR device solve? So far | it seems more bulky and requires you wear shit on your head. It | automatically excludes everyone who already wears glasses or | doesn't want to wear glasses. Anyone can put a smartphone in | their bag or pocket. | | 2. Not Meta? They're the #1 VR company with 75% marketshare and | a years-long head start in the industry. The Reality headset | from Apple has no rumored/leaked feature that goes beyond what | the Quest Pro already has on the market today. | | 3. Is distribution difficult? Meta distributes content. Valve | distributes content. What's so hard about distributing content? | | 4. What early lead? Meta has the early lead. | bni wrote: | AR is impossible to do well enough with todays technology. This | is also the reality for Apple sadly. | | VR works very well today. But it's a niche business sort of like | racing wheels and joysticks. So not very interesting to go VR | only for the big players. | | AR and VR are separate things, and it's sort of a delusion that | has been pushed by Meta and others that one leads to the other. | Or that they can be combined even. | zmmmmm wrote: | Biggest red flag is the part about Tim Cook being disengaged. | | But I'm much more bullish than most of the commenters here. Many | seem to not have shifted their understanding of progress in VR/AR | in the last 5 years, when there have been fundamental tech | advances. Then, others don't seem to understand how much Apple is | planning to push the state of the art here. Their headset will | have roughly double the resolution of existing devices, and | contain not one but two, laptop level mobile chips. The lenses / | optics are going to solve a lot of issues people have had, the | pass through quality is going to be near photo-realistic - you | won't feel you need to take these off at all. Some of the apps we | know about include photo-realistic video conferencing with | quality that is unheard of outside of laboratory conditions | before. | cubefox wrote: | From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be | fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware: | Portable and with external cameras to allow for orientation and | "mixed reality". | | Maybe Apple is on the right track here, since the Oculus Quest | has sold more units than all the other VR headsets combined. But | there is one big difference: Apple's product will be a very | expensive premium product (apparently around 3000 USD), while the | Oculus Quest costs just 400 USD. | | I think consumers just don't want to spend a lot of money on VR. | Except for the Quest, they are all far too expensive, and that's | why they didn't sell. Apple just makes the problem worse by | increasing the price even more. | | John Carmack has made the same point repeatedly: VR is not a high | price product category. If he is right, the Apple headset will | fail. It may be more feasible to sell $3000 smartphones than to | sell VR headsets at this price. | zmmmmm wrote: | it's all a question of what you use it for. | | If you use it for a high value application then a high price | isn't a barrier. The fundamentals that are shifting here are: | (a) Apple is going to push a _massive_ increase in quality (b) | Apple is accessing a different market - cashed up professionals | | So the real question here is, does the increase in quality get | it into a space where new high value applications become | viable. | | For me, it would only have to be equal or better than using a | physical monitor and that would probably justify its value. The | fact I could just go anywhere and a full multi-monitor setup | with me would be enough. | yayr wrote: | I think with respect to compute/GPU capability the Apple | headset will be vastly superior. One of the major issues with | the Quest is the lack of graphics quality that can be brought | to the virtual environments. Unless you run it via Link to a PC | with a top end GPU it is just a toy. Having VR experiences like | the recent Unreal Engine provides is simply orders of magnitude | away for Quest in the current state... Thats one major reason | that this thing does not take off for FB | barbariangrunge wrote: | What a clickbait title | xrguy wrote: | if they can make the floating elephant magic leap failed to | deliver, that would be great | blairbeckwith wrote: | Better (and source for this article) link: | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-05-18/apple-s-m... | ericmay wrote: | Yea but paywall too | bentcorner wrote: | https://archive.is/EqNVo | whitemary wrote: | this archive.org link is so buried in ads on Firefox iOS that | it's completely unusable. I can't even zoom to get the text | into frame. | bentcorner wrote: | There's this one too: https://archive.is/6auZH | | I don't use archive.is that often so I don't know if that | link is any different from the one up there ^ | [deleted] | surprisetalk wrote: | I recently wrote a long piece about why I think Apple will win | the AR/VR wars. | | They might have a rocky start, but they still have a lot of | advantages. | | 1. AR will devour smartphones. | | 2. Apple is the only company that can quickly overcome consumer | AR/VR design challenges. | | 3. Apple has positioned itself to distribute the best AR/VR | content. | | 4. Apple will cement its early lead with a new blue-bubble | effect. | | --- | | [1] https://taylor.town/apple-will-win-vr | eq88 wrote: | Apple notoriously hinders it's own potential so it doesn't | cannibalize it's own market share. They have no incentive to | turn off the iPhone faucet, so why would they make a product | that devours smartphones? | tough wrote: | "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will," Jobs | famously said. It's not just a good quote--it might be the | smartest realization he ever had, and the reason the company | he founded is now more valuable than any other. It's not | often that a company is willing to cannibalize its own | product to make a new one. | filoleg wrote: | > why would they make a product that devours smartphones? | | Likely because they expect AR to eventually devour | smartphones, and they would rather devour it themselves than | let others do so. | | Plus, it will be a painful growth with rough edges anyway, so | the iPhone faucet isn't turning off anytime soon. In fact, it | would be quite a helpful source of revenue, until AR adoption | reaches the masses and gets to the stage of actually being | polished and commonplace enough to devour smartphones. | | See: Apple slowly winding down iPod over the course of many | years, as iPhone cannibalized it almost entirely. | tcmart14 wrote: | I think number 2 is a really good point. But I think the | biggest reason why they could be immensely successful there is, | Apple dog foods their own stuff. Apple will generate enough | apps for it to be useful. This is where I feel like | Oculus/Facebook(Meta)+Oculus kind of messed up where the Google | really messed up with Daydream. The expectation for most of the | product life cycles was for developers to just jump on board | and start developing, turning out the apps. I love DayDream, | but there were hardly any decent apps. Google relied too much | on indie devs and 3rd party. Most of the daydream apps by | google were essentially just demos. Apple will provide at least | enough apps to make it useful while also using that knowledge | to feed back in to the development cycle. | philip1209 wrote: | "Execs distance themselves" - Good, that means the company can | still push through risky projects without getting caught up in | bureaucracy. | | "Selling at-cost" - Also good, because they need to get the | device into the hands of developers to seed the ecosystem before | it becomes more mainstream. | ydnaclementine wrote: | Other than games, I'm not convinced. I do think there's an | interesting use case for sports and music. Imagine being able to | walk around on the field during the superbowl or on stage at a | concert. But then it becomes a how do you capture it so you can | walk around a real, live event problem. | Closi wrote: | I do think there is a use case in work - I can imagine sitting | down and doing CAD in a 'real 3D' environment once the | resolution and responsiveness are high enough (probably still | with a keyboard and mouse). | FormFollowsFunc wrote: | One thing that VR gives you that a monitor doesn't is 1:1 | scale. It's so easy to get that wrong when working on a | scaled down version of the model. Though you can just place | people in your scene for reference. | cmpalmer52 wrote: | At this point, with the boom in AI, I would settle for very | simple AR glasses. Not trying to make 3D objects meld with the | the real world view, but just superimposed graphics, kinda like | Google Glass, but better. Imagine if it could automatically | subtitle foreign languages, or translate Japanese street signs | and advertising in real-time. Join that with a conversational AI | so you could point your eyes at something and just say "What is | that?" and then get whatever level of detail response you want, | from a subtitle, to a voice description, to a full dive into the | historical details. This is the market space for a fashionable | device, but it needs to be a real view of reality, not video | pass-through. Imagine renting one (if they're expensive) when | traveling to a foreign country, or at a museum. The cool think | about AI integration is that you wouldn't have to create the | content like an audio-guide does. In a museum, you could learn | about the artist, the time period, critical analysis, the school | of art, etc. dynamically and organically. As a tourist, you could | look at an attraction across the street, read (or hear) reviews, | check hours and prices, book tickets, etc. Would also be great | for directions. | HellDunkel wrote: | I don't like that you took the augmentation out of AR but | "Translator glasses" are a great idea. Also a huge quality of | life improvement for deaf people. | [deleted] | tikkun wrote: | Here's one view for the device - FaceTime++ | | If it's a gamechanger for remote working, then I'll buy them for | my company and have my remote employees use them | | If it's a gamechanger for communicating with family overseas, | then I might see if I can convince one of my relatives to get one | (though the price will be harder to justify for personal use - | but not impossible if it's a gamechanger) | | Both of those are contingent on how good it is. If it's something | where I do a shared presence FaceTime call using it, and I feel | like I can't go back to not having it, then I'll buy them and I | expect it'll be a huge success. If I/people try it and it's not | much of an improvement over regular FaceTime, then it won't be a | big success. | bullfightonmars wrote: | The will have to make presence _really_ good for this to be | worthwhile. The closest thing I have seen to next level is | Google's Project Starline [1]. I would spend so much money to | get one of these for my home and one for my parent's home | halfway across the country. | | 1. https://blog.google/technology/research/project-starline/ | smoldesu wrote: | The original iPhone was an iPod, a phone and an internet | communicator. It was a hard sell at $599, and didn't take off | until the price was lowered and the App Store started | proliferating. If it had an external battery pack or cost | $3,000, nobody would have bought it. | | If the big killer app for this headset is "calling people", | then Mark Zuckerberg is probably doubled-over in hysterics | right now. | Invictus0 wrote: | Videocalling barely works at 1080p because of network issues. I | don't know how much bandwidth FaceTime++ would need but I am | not optimistic on this usecase at all. | ajmurmann wrote: | I like the idea of the shared presence, but don't see how that | doesn't come at the cost of losing the actual video off the | person you are talking to. I want to see my family in higher | fidelity, not their Mii version or have them look like | Zuckerberg in the Meta demos. | zmmmmm wrote: | The rumors that have come out say that Apple has achieved 1:1 | 3d video chat where there avatars are almost completely photo | realistic. I'm very interested to see this especially. | Apparently this is a big reason why the device has to bundle 2 | X M2 processors and also limits it to one on one calls. I think | it's going to be amazing and significantly shift people's | perceptions here with how good it is. They should be able to | demonstrate hyper realistic pass through as well so essentially | you are looking at an almost completely realistic image of the | other person teleported into your own surroundings. | ben_w wrote: | At this point, while I would be interested if Apple do actually | announce a headset, I've heard this hype cycle so many times | already I don't really believe it. | | Also, so many previous pre-announcement visualisations of Apple | products were so way off-base that even if a headset does get | announced, it's got an equal chance of being a $400 Siri version | of the Amazon Echo Frames as it does of being what's in this | article. | sf4lifer wrote: | Does anyone on HN actually use VR to workout? That seems to be | the killer use case, but I don't know anyone that's getting fit | because of VR workouts. | divan wrote: | I used FitXR througout this winter. Fantastic experience, I | just wish I had a dedicated room for sweat-inducing activities. | I especially liked HIIT training, where you hit glowing spheres | and glass that appear in the air. Level and quality of | multisensory stimulation (visual/audio/haptic) during those | hits are just mindblowing. Reality can't offer that. | | One particular thing that I believe is underexplored is using | visual/haptic cues for movement learning (motor skills | acquision). For example in FitXR there is a glowing semi- | transparent path showing how your hand is supposed to move. If | you deviate from it, it gives a light haptic feedback. There is | no substitute for that in reality - we learn hand movements | (like in dance or martial arts) either by proprioreception, | visual feedback through mirrors or verbal feedback from | teacher. All three ways are inferior to what VR can offer. | | I think some progressive sports researchers are experimenting | with VR (especially in Constraint-Led Approach community), but | these are just first steps. | | PS. I personally want to invest in learning VR programming for | years, but waiting until software ecosystem will stabilize and | settle on something. So waiting for the Apple announcements in | that field. | nickthegreek wrote: | I use to with Supernatural on Quest2. It was cool and at the | same time a huge pain in the ass. But there is something there | for sure, the headset just needs to be like a pair of those | lightweight wraparound sunglasses that baseball players wear | and I would be shedding pounds. | JimtheCoder wrote: | If I am going to spend $3000 on a VR headset, I don't really | want to sweat all over it... | | Also, the sort of people who are going to work out consistently | don't need a headset to work out. Or any other tech. They just | do it. | | I know you're not implying this in your comment, but if anyone | thinks you are going to take someone who is sedate, strap on a | cool headset and give them some sort of virtual experience that | will finally motivate them to work out consistently...I'll take | the other side of that bet every day... | crooked-v wrote: | The key to losing weight with VR for the average person isn't | in exercise-specific apps, it's in replacing sitting video | game time with something just as engaging but that has you | standing, walking in circles, crouching, and waving your arms | around for a few hours instead. You're obviously not going to | get buff from it, but it can add up fast for an otherwise | sedentary person. | samwillis wrote: | I'm utterly unconvinced that AR/VR is a large market or is going | to be game changing in every day life. I can see why Apple feel | that they need to have a product in the market, but I wouldn't be | surprised if its presented as "Just a Hobby" the same way that | Steve Jobs presented Apple TV back when it launched (and for a | good few years later). | | I really do think that Apple are much more likely to present some | interesting AI products that run locally on Apple Silicone, thats | where they truly can do something different and new that will | impact all their customers. It will help them sell the next | generation of iPhone and Macs. | | I want my AI to be _local and privet_. | | In some ways I think Humain have a better idea where this market | is going to go. I'm not convinced by their product, I think it | should be built into a phone, and I would be suppressed to see | Apple do some stuff similar. | | To copy what I put in a comment the other day, a next gen Siri | with chatGPT like functionality, trained on all your docs, email, | calendar, movements, browser history, video calls. All local and | not in the cloud: | | _" Hey Siri, I had a meeting last summer in New York about | project X, could you bring up all relevant documents and give me | a brief summary of what we discussed and decisions we made. Oh | and while you're at it, we ate at an awesome restaurant that | evening, can you book a table for me for our meeting next week."_ | woah wrote: | Seems pretty simple. If you could have UI overlayed on the | world around you, it would be huge, and would change how people | use computers, like the smartphone did. | | The current stumbling block is that the tech sucks and the | headsets are enormous. If someone got it into a lightweight | pair of glasses or contact lenses, the use case is obvious, and | it would be a big of a shift as the smartphone. | | Denying this is like being the guy in 1993 saying "why would I | want a computer in my pocket? Am I going to work on | spreadsheets on a tiny screen in the bathrooom? And where would | I plug it in?" | jjoonathan wrote: | Don't forget the fingerprints! | | But yeah, so many things are obnoxious and clunky about | smartphones. Glancing down is never a good look, let alone | glancing down and then walking into a wall. The moment that | minimum viable AR tech happens, people will suddenly remember | how many compromises we have to make for smartphones. | skywhopper wrote: | I'm not sure that focusing on something no one else can see | when you appear to be looking elsewhere is a good look | either. At least other people can tell you are distracted | when you're looking down at your phone. | vehemenz wrote: | > If you could have UI overlayed on the world around you, it | would be huge, and would change how people use computers, | like the smartphone did. | | Is this really a game-changer? Technology adoption is all | about tradeoffs. We already have location-based services and | applications that are granular enough for most purposes. AR | applications add sensory awareness and localized interaction | at the cost of distraction and intrusiveness. | | History is littered with inventions that were supposed to be | the next telephone, computer, smartphone, etc., but most of | them never materialize because they don't meet people's | practical needs. And if AR/VR isn't the quintessential | solution in search of a problem, I don't know what is. | EnragedParrot wrote: | It's absolutely a game-changer. Imagine having driving or | walking directions laid out on the street in front of you. | Imagine using AI to help you identify things like engine | parts in your car, plants, birds, other people (never | forget a name again). Looking at a package and scanning the | barcode to get price comparisons. Recipe directions on the | counter in front of you, even labeling the next ingredient | and how much of it to measure. Walk into a museum and see | highlighted details of every painting or information about | a particular element in a sculpture. First aid details | right in front of you, keeping both hands free to offer | assistance in a roadside accident. Live AR-driven | instructions for changing a tire or locating an oilpan | plug. | | Currently any time you need information you have to pull | yourself away from your present moment to dive into your | phone. AR will make it so the information you need is just | integrated into the world around you. | majormajor wrote: | There's plenty of neat ideas for what AR could do - but | how often are you changing tires or having to find an | oilpan plug on an unfamiliar car? Some great | _professional_ use cases, potentially, but for a | consumer? A lot of this sounds like an open-world video | game with no design restraint, where your map gets | littered with dozens and dozens of points of interest all | at once and it just makes it that much harder to focus on | what you actually wanted to be doing in the first place. | | And with people's resistance to paying for software | services, you'll have exactly the same problem with | looking at something on your phone of half the crap being | ads intentionally trying to sidetrack you. | Qweiuu wrote: | I hear your killer features and don't care for them at | all in any way to put on glasses for them. | | I only need real navigation on holiday and I'm pretty | sure not taking some expensive glasses on travel. Neither | when hiking nor in a foreign country. | | And all the other Infos? I don't even use my smartphone | for them. Why would I wear an expensive headset to | compare a 3EUR product? | [deleted] | ghaff wrote: | Whether or not we're way off-base or not, it's certainly | possible to envision a HUD in a fairly ordinary looking | pair of glasses. It's certainly SF today but it's | possible to imagine. There are of course various creepy | aspects as well but, honestly, if the technology can be | made to work well, most people will just get over that. | _fat_santa wrote: | With Apple Silicone, I think Apple is in the perfect place to | take advantage of the AI craze to sell hardware with something | like "Neural Engine V2". If they can figure out how to run AI | workloads at fraction of the cost of what is costs on current | hardware, I can see there being a huge market for their Mac's | and they could even bring back XServe and become the | predominant player in the "Server Hardware for AI" space. | smoldesu wrote: | > If they can figure out how to run AI workloads at fraction | of the cost of what is costs on current hardware | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase | | It's discussed quite a bit on this site, but I wouldn't | expect Apple to pull ahead in the GPU department. They really | lit a fire under Intel and AMD's ass with the M1's IPC, but | Nvidia laughed their way to the bank with every M1 upgrade. | Even the 5nm M1 Ultra struggled to keep up with Nvidia's | 10nm, bog-cheap 30-series cards. In the datacenter it's even | more of a blowout, Apple would have to invest in something | competitive with CUDA to turn heads. That's no small feat, | and I don't think it's possible with an overnight API launch. | It takes time and integration into the industry, something | Apple wasn't patient enough for (see: Xserve). | pazimzadeh wrote: | What about in terms of performance per watt, rather than | pure performance? | smoldesu wrote: | It's still not favorable, even compared to last-gen (30XX | series) hardware. Here's the OpenCL scores for multiple | different GPUs, including the Ultra: | https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks | | The M1 Ultra is a 200w chip, fabricated with 5nm silicon. | It's being outclassed by the RTX 3060, a cheap 10nm card | that draws ~170w max. In Nvidia's 40-series cards (on | 4nm), the M1 Ultra's performance profile is most | comparable to a laptop-class RTX 4060 that draws less | than 115 watts. | | There's a story in the total package draw to be made | here, and it does weigh slightly in Apple's favor. | Overall though, even with last-gen cards it's clear that | there's a massive performance-per-watt lead in Nvidia's | favor right now. Which is impressive, considering how | they've been stuck with second-class silicon when the M1 | Ultra debuted. | dangus wrote: | VR and AR are a solution looking for a problem. It's admittedly | a cool tech demo. I enjoyed my time playing Half Life: Alyx and | The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners on my Valve Index before I | decided to sell it out of disuse. | | The article says that Apple has a glasses product and a VR/AR | product that sounds similar to a Quest Pro. | | So if we look at the glasses product it immediately runs into a | lot of issues. Do I want to be wearing glasses? Do I already | own glasses? Do I like how glasses look on my face? Wearable | tech is very personal especially when it's sitting on your | face. At best this is a product for industrial environments. | | Then the Quest Pro-like VR/AR product...separate battery pack | in your pocket, need I say more? Now compare that experience to | an Oculus Quest for $300. It doesn't really matter that the | Quest is a less capable product, it's at the right price point | and form factor and its strong sales show it. | zooch wrote: | I don't think it's a solution looking for a problem. I'd be | willing to put them on at work and see which pins on a piece | of hardware do what instead of looking back and forth between | a datasheet. Lots of examples exactly like that, especially | if the glasses are fed sensor data so the | temperature/pressure appears right beside the area it is | measuring. | dangus wrote: | Like I said, industrial environments. A small niche group | of people and businesses who could use some information in | front of their face as they do hands-on work. | | Estimates of the size of this market were in the single | digit billions of dollars for Google, who bailed out of | Google Glass recently: | https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/google-glass-enterprise- | mark... | | For comparison, the iPhone makes $200 billion in revenue | every year. Apple Services (Music, TV+, etc) make something | like $20 billion every quarter. | | Apple does not enter many businesses that only have the | potential to make $1-2 billion. | vehemenz wrote: | Agreed. The technologies will have their uses, like | entertainment, training, education, and therapy, but it will | never meet mass adoption for practical reasons like price, | safety, and power consumption. I'd be curious to know why so | many people think otherwise. | crooked-v wrote: | > I'm utterly unconvinced that AR/VR is a large market | | Gorilla Tag, an indie VR game where you're an ape and run | around with your hands and tag people (seriously, that's the | whole thing) has made $26 million selling virtual hats and has | peaks of 90,000 concurrent users. | the_sleaze9 wrote: | > All local and not in the cloud | | Apple execs: "why not both?" | [deleted] | adt wrote: | This thread is amazing, and has shades of the original iPod and | iPhone launch [1,2] commentary. | | I can't believe that people would go on permanent written record | with this stuff, but humans gotta human! | | 1. iPod launch thread on macrumors: | https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5... | | 2. iPhone launch thread on macrumors: | https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-announces-the-iph... | bink wrote: | Mac Rumors forums seems to be dominated by people who hate | Apple. I have no idea what possesses people to join a forum | where they hate everything the company does, but it's very | prevalent on all types of content there. | bvaldivielso wrote: | The iPhone one seems mostly positive | endisneigh wrote: | Curious how this will compare to the nreal air. I'm not sure why | apple insists on leading here. They should just wait until the | tech is ready. | AraceliHarker wrote: | Tim Cook, unlike Jobs, is incapable of making major policy | changes, according to the Bloomberg article. | zmmmmm wrote: | Yes - honestly, if a company like Nreal can do it using OTS | components, I think Apple could easily have punched out a set | of glasses like that and delivered 90% of this functionality | just by attaching to a macbook pro in a true glasses format. | They could probably have done it years ago and then built from | there. What Nreal has made is already super compelling [0] | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSBESw3a_tc | easton wrote: | I think there's a false leak here, because one of the comments on | the Bloomberg article mentions them going with a design where the | battery is external and connected via a wire to the headset (to | prevent heat issues). That seems like such a bizarre design | choice for Apple that I can't imagine they'd actually do that. | Just... make the chip weaker? | | (Like if you don't have pockets, where does the battery go? Or if | you're sitting in a chair your back pockets may not be easily | accessible, which means the battery is either in front and you're | constantly bumping the wire, or it's on the floor or something. I | know it's not a completely unsolvable problem because the Vive | had that special head strap that draped down the middle of your | head which was fine, but I still got tangled up from time to | time.) | BugsJustFindMe wrote: | > _Just... make the chip weaker?_ | | Making it not able to do as much is sometimes a winning move, | but also sometimes not. The primary utility concerns that | people have with headset products come from display resolution | and framerate. It takes a lot of pixel density for readable | text and a lot of frames per second to prevent display-lag- | induced motion sickness. Crapping out on the displays and | processing makes that worse, not better. | | > _Like if you don 't have pockets, where does the battery go?_ | | Clips. Straps. Bags. Hooks. People have been successfully | carrying things on their person without pockets for millennia. | Have you really never seen someone at the gym strap their phone | into an armband? | | You may as well be asking "Like if you don't have pockets, | where does your cellphone go?" And yet billions of people all | over the world manage to carry cellphones. | throwuwu wrote: | lol, just make the chip weaker? On an AR/VR headset that means | potato graphics and motion sickness. Guaranteed flop. | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | This device is going to have color passthrough vision. That | means it has cameras on the outside, and then an image of the | real world is shown on the inside. If you try to just directly | display the video from the camera on the screen inside the user | will throw up. You need to do a lot of processing to | reconstruct what the user's eyes need to see on the inside | display, which probably includes a stack of analytic methods | and ML inference that has to run in real-time and produce high- | resolution video signal. Trust me that the engineers working on | this are absolutely pushing the limits of what their hardware | can do. The tradeoff space would include the following factors: | | 1) low quality passthrough is unpleasant | | 2) heavy headset is unpleasant | | 3) headset with weight imbalance is unpleasant | | 4) sensors, chips, and display all use power | | 5) battery with more capacity is heavier | | 6) battery with more power draw is hotter | | 7) hot headset in your face is unpleasant | | 8) battery at the end of a cord is ugly and annoying | | So it's easy to say "use a weaker chip", but what if that means | you have to degrade some must-have functionality? Or it means | you have to wait 3 years for TSMC to come out with a smaller | node before you can release your product? Battery on the end of | a wire is a "bold" choice, probably an engineer won a cage | match against an executive to make it happen. | tristanb wrote: | Or you could just use transparent lenses you can vary the | darkness of... but hey I'm not building it. | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | Ok, you just gave yourself a different set of hard | engineering problems to solve. Turns out that field-of- | view, brightness, color reproduction, and resolution are | all difficult to achieve on that kind of display. You can | try a Magic Leap 2 if you want to experience those | constraints. | | One thing that Apple's approach has going for it is that it | could also be great at VR content like Beat Saber, Half | Life Alyx, Bigscreen movies, or as a monitor for your | MacBook. A Magic-Leap-esque device will suck for any of | those. | | However, the Magic Leap form factor may work better for a | Google Glass type use case where you wear the headset as | you go about your life and get some augmented features | (maybe it can be an iPhone replacement eventually). | Mandatum wrote: | The display on these are bleeding edge. It's an order of | magnitude more dense, and as such draws more power. | | Heat and weight from the battery directly just exacerbates the | problem. | yeeeloit wrote: | Interesting take. | | I kind of hope it's not a false leak, just to see the battery | with cord, lmao. | [deleted] | ksec wrote: | >Apple selling it at cost; considered taking a loss | | That is the same PR tactics as AirPod. Gruber taking about AirPod | was selling at a loss. Insane value coming from Apple. | | Most people who comment on these sort of things have absolutely | zero idea about supply chain or manufacturing, let alone BOMs. | | But of course, people will fall for it. ( Thinking Apple selling | it at cost or loss ) | dang wrote: | Url changed from https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/18/reality-pro- | headset/, which points to this. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.ph/dQaoh | Flatcircle wrote: | I once demoed the VR goggles at Facebook HQ on a tour, my boss | and I put on the glasses and were immersed in a world where there | was a large dragon. We really roared with excitement and kept | saying "wow, amazing" and shaking our head in astonishment as we | took the headset off. Then, later we said our goodbyes and left. | In the parking lot my boss and I turned to each other both | agreed, that VR headset wasn't that impressive at all, we just | acted impressed to be polite. | | I think these VR headsets are built for the demo. How much daily | demand they have is probably much more limited than the builders | think it is. | | Also, prolonged use causes nausea in a large percentage of | people. | Dig1t wrote: | >Also, prolonged use causes nausea in a large percentage of | people. | | There's an excellent video of John Carmack talking about this | and how to solve it. This is much less of an issue now. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHLpKzUxjGk | | I agree with you though that there aren't any killer apps for | VR/AR yet, and it remains to be seen if there will be any at | all. | jsbisviewtiful wrote: | > Also, prolonged use causes Nausea in large percentage of | people. | | Supposedly Apple has been working off a patent that fights this | specifically. Not arguing for or against whether this headset | will slap (personally, I don't care for VR and think it's | overrated) but just relaying some info. | [deleted] | inasio wrote: | Just lean into the nausea thing and make a very nice sailing | simulator, I'm sure Larry Ellison would sponsor as long as | there are F50 cats. | nickthegreek wrote: | Hope the rumor in this article that Apple will sell the device at | cost is true. Oculus understood that they needed to sell cheaply | at first. I don't expect Apple to come in at $299, but the | rumored $3k is a pretty heavy lift. | bluescrn wrote: | At PS3K, they're not going after gamers or even enthusiasts. | | They're more likely going after creative professionals who're | already all-in on the Apple ecosystem. Maybe product designers | or architects, who want to show clients their designs in VR, | and a slick Apple device will probably make a better impression | than a PC VR setup with a bulky headset, cables everywhere, | fans whirring, etc. | malwarebytess wrote: | That's similar to the hololens approach to market. Didn't go | well. | jmu1234567890 wrote: | But the HoloLens image quality was quite bad. Hopefully | this is better? | throwuwu wrote: | Bit disingenuous about PC VR. There's only 1 cable to the | headset and if you have a decent rig the fans won't be | blasting. Big Screen's new headset is going to blow Apple out | of the water on weight, size and comfort too. | crooked-v wrote: | The Beyond doesn't fit the kind of role mentioned here at | all, though, since a major part of how they've made it so | small and light is by ditching the idea of being adjustable | at all and just assembling each unit to match a specific | person's face. | nickthegreek wrote: | If $3k is the cost of making them without any markup, they | are in big trouble. | AndrewKemendo wrote: | I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR | anymore - if there ever really was. That makes me sad having been | in AR since 2010 - and knowing what we could do with it if done | right. | | I just don't think society currently has an appetite for a $3000 | product that gives the wearer visual superpowers (that is the | promise after all) and is an impossible to ignore distinction | between classes. I honestly think we're at the point where I | wouldn't be surprised if it's google glass all over again x 100, | where unhinged people are attacking and pulling these expensive | devices off of people's heads [1][2]. | | Maybe in 2017 when AR was really hot could it have gotten | adoption, but as it stands in 2023 the average consumer is | starting to reject this level of tech and fewer and fewer people | have the wallet that could support this. | | I also suggest avoiding a comparison with the VR market - the | only thing they have in common is that it's a thing you put on | your face. The infrastructure, deployment, product features, | economics, user interfaces, battery, environmental use, UX, legal | etc... are all doubly complex with HMD AR over HMD VR | | I think it's going to continue to be a long time before | persistent everywhere HMD AR is going to be a reality | | [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/i-was-assaulted-for- | wearing-... | | [2]https://mashable.com/archive/google-glass-assault | melling wrote: | " I just don't think society currently has an appetite for a | $3000" | | Yep, that's an easy one. Guess what. It's not for general use. | | I have no idea where AR/VR is going. However, I'm all for Apple | spending part of its large cash reserve in R&D. I guarantee | something useful will come out of it. | | Hopefully, someone with a little vision comes along and says | "you know what we could do with this technology..." | fnord77 wrote: | I think there's totally a market for a $200-300 version, | something very simple. | | display in-coming text messages and caller ids, a navigation | arrow and take snaps. that's it | wintermutestwin wrote: | >I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR | anymore - if there ever really was. | | All it takes is a killer app to come along. AR music instrument | instruction is my bet. If Apple released this one app along | with the glasses it would become a massive hit. | philsquared_ wrote: | I am thinking Pokemon or Yugioh. One killer app and you have | people sold. | treis wrote: | Driving, I think. Google maps overlayed onto the real world | is pretty killer. Maybe night vision delivered as an IR image | overlay. | MobiusHorizons wrote: | I really hope it's not legal to drive while wearing a | consumer AR headset. You would need to guarantee the device | can't fail in ways that block important parts of your | vision, and also prove that it is not a distraction hazard | (which seems impossible) | trafficante wrote: | This already exists (at least for piano) on Quest. One of the | few cases where I think the Quest Pro's color passthrough | really shines. | | https://youtube.com/shorts/eeMte5UbFJ4?feature=share | mutatio wrote: | > and knowing what we could do with it if done right | | The implication here is that you know a compelling case for | "what we could do with it" and how to "do it right", so what | are the answers (because I'm stumped)? | ghaff wrote: | For AR, the vision is more or less an arbitrarily "good" | (across multiple dimensions) HUD. Although we seem to be | pretty far from that. | DenisM wrote: | For military or police use I can imagine superimposing models | of hidden targets derived from aerial imagery. Granted the | derivation part is presently missing. | | Interior design is another subject that comes to mind. | screye wrote: | > don't think society currently has an appetite for a $3000 | product | | Apple currently sells a pair of 500$ headphones and a 5000$ | monitor. High margin products that are sold as fashion to their | top fans is Apple's thing. | | They will need one killer app and a sleek enough package, and | those are the main bottle necks. The money is hardly an issue. | | Technologically, Apple has the distinct advantage of having the | best power efficient mobile chips which Facebook did not. Other | than that, I don't see how they can solve all the other open | problems in VR/AR right now. | pb7 wrote: | Do you think the monitor is $5,000 because of high margins? | It's not. It's arguably a bargain for its target demographic. | screye wrote: | Apple doesn't make money by selling to their target | demographic. They make money by convincing buyers that they | need a $5,000 monitor to do work that certainly does not | require it. | | I can bet that most people and companies buying the pro- | display XDR don't need that level of color calibration to | do their job well. But as long as Apple is the most | fashionable brand, they can convince people into thinking | that's exactly what they need. | jnsie wrote: | > I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR | anymore | | anymore, or yet? I think the biggest barriers are form factor | and price. History suggests that price of such devices will | increase over time. Whether the tech can be squeezed into a | form factor that will be desirable to the masses is another | problem altogether. The fact that apple (according to this | article) have not managed to do it suggests to me that it might | be some time off. | zamnos wrote: | Right. $3,000 is obviously a luxury/niche product, but $450 | Nreal Air (which is a product you can buy today off Amazon) | much less so. It's like 3D TVs, the idea will never die. Even | if it's doesn't work out time around (which I doubt, having | spent a tiny bit of time with an Nreal Air), expect to see it | again in 10 years or so. | bluescrn wrote: | > I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR | anymore - if there ever really was | | I suspect there's a market there, but only if the device can be | made to look like a pair of fashionable sunglasses, and was | driven by the phone in your pocket, adding a customizable HUD | to the real world, doing all sorts of things, from translating | foreign-language text to overlaying directions or providing | real-time info about the bus or train you're trying to catch. | | But for now, that's science fiction. Even if we could make the | screens/optics work, the glasses still need power, and | batteries are still relatively bulky. It wouldn't be much use | if it had a short battery life, or drained your phone battery | too fast. | ErneX wrote: | 1st iteration feels more geared toward developers/companies. | Then release a cheaper consumer model down the road. This thing | also needs software. | [deleted] | mrtksn wrote: | The whole concept of AR/VR rises dystopian red flags, | everything Mark Zuckerberg did with their attempt looked | somewhere between scary and dumb. | | I think this is because these companies are preoccupied with | controlling the content, they envision doing the same things we | do IRL but on their platforms. This is problematic because it | means people instead of improving their lives and actually | doing things are expected to be pretending doing it and spent | their precious lives and money away on this BS. | | VR and AR becomes exciting only when you can explore yourself | and the world by doing things you can't do in real life. Maybe | you want to try being assassin? Maybe you you want to try being | from another gender or species? Maybe you want to try being in | an actual war zone? Maybe you want to try to create a society | with completely different rules from we have now? But no, these | are too dangerous because someone might be offended, so in VR | you are supposed to go to Paris and spend real money throwing | virtual darts or something. They also can't distance themselves | from the moral panic because they must milk the platform by | controlling the content. | | It is outright dystopian and dumb. The core promise of the | platforms is "do the same things you do when you don't already | do on our platforms so we can monetise that too" and this | doesn't converge with the core promise of the tech which is to | do things you can't do in real life. | ghaff wrote: | I agree that getting to a genuinely | useful/comfortable/fashionable AR device is a pretty heavy | lift. (And that it's arguably unrelated to VR except maybe to | some degree at the tech level.) | | But, if you get there, I'm pretty convinced that you will have | a population of adopters whether it creates a class divide or | not. Certainly cell phone adoption wasn't held back by this | factor. | haunter wrote: | >I just don't think society currently has an appetite for a | $3000 product that ... is an impossible to ignore distinction | between classes | | What do you mean by that? | | Just curious because I feel the same about EVs, when I see one | I think that's a richer than average person. | | So I don't see how an AR headset would be a problem. It really | depends how does it look like though. | ghaff wrote: | I assume that it means you'll have people walking around | wearing glasses that basically plug them transparently into | all sorts of information. However, we've had an uneven | rollout of mobile technology for the last 25+ years and that | factor hasn't slowed anything down. _If_ (and I agree it 's a | significant if over the next x years) AR is a genuinely | useful mainstream technology people will adopt it even if | others don't like it. | ajmurmann wrote: | People aren't in their EV while sitting in a restaurant, | talking to you at a party or standing in a checkout line. | It's literally in their face while talking to you. | | That said, usually people tend to seek out status symbols. | People obviously wear Gucci sunglasses in their faces because | they are Gucci and expensive. However, I also wonder if this | case would be different because of the growing anti-tech | resentment and the wearer now being associated with issues | liked gentrification, disliked mega corps etc. | bredren wrote: | >underscoring the narrative that the company's biggest victories | were initiated under his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs | | What does the author consider to be a victory? | | Tim Cook was elevated because he had the operational capability | to grow Apple. Jobs did not consider Cook to be a product design | person. But Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could | design products. | | By any stretch of the imagination, the company's biggest | victories have been in growing and holding together the vast | ecosystem of HW / SW and services that continuously deliver the | highest customer satisfaction ratings. The reward for that has | been becoming the biggest company in the world. (Some might | consider this a victory.) | | If introducing new hit products is the only kind of victory that | can exist, then Apple Silicon and AirPods victories also go to | Cook. | [deleted] | tguedes wrote: | Absolutely. Between Apple Silicon, Apple Watch, AirPods, and | scaling operations to be able to sell the amount of products | they do in a year, that is hard to argue against being an | overwhelming success for Tim Cook as CEO. | | Is it equal to the legacy of Apple under Jobs? Definitely not. | But how many other companies/people released 3 revolutionary | products? | bredren wrote: | It is hard to not compare the breakthrough product release | count between Jobs and Cook. | | If that is the measure, then we have to bring in Jobs' tenure | as not only CEO but company founder that stretched 25 years | as CEO, 1976 to 1985 and 1997 to 2011. | | Cook only took the reins in 2011, and at that time arguably | the company should not have focused on releasing yet more | revolutionary products. | | iPhone is the most successful consumer product in history, | focus was correctly placed in supporting that, building moats | around it and positioning the ecosystem to support the next | big thing. | | One product often left out, which may have started with Jobs, | but delivery should be attributed to Cook is the new Apple | HQ. The initial impact has crumbled due to Covid WFH. | | However, this campus may turn out to be a force multiplier | going forward. If so, it is a victory, but not in the minds | of consumers. | deet wrote: | I strongly doubt that the campus is any more of a force | multiplier than a collection of far cheaper class A office | buildings of similar capacity, with similarly serene grass | and vegetation connecting them. | thefourthchime wrote: | Don't forget air tags. | kmonsen wrote: | I think even if Apple went bankrupt in 5 years, what Tim Cook | has achieved is extremely good. It was not sure at all that | Apple would grow this much over 12 years. It is not clear | Steve Jobs himself could have had this success. | tough wrote: | How would it even be possible for apple to do so | crooked-v wrote: | > What does the author consider to be a victory? | | Well, there's the Apple II, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone... | | Apple has had a long history of products that redefined the | future of entire categories, and almost all of them up to this | point except the Apple Watch included deep involvement by Jobs. | kmonsen wrote: | Apple watch? Airpods maybe? Apple silicon for sure. | | Other than that not much, but to be clear there has not | really been any other inventions in this time span like those | you mention. The market is more mature. | Animats wrote: | _" Apple's ambition is that customers will eventually wear the | device continuously all day, replacing daily tasks done on an | iPhone or a Mac such as playing games, browsing the web, | emailing, doing FaceTime video calls while collaborating in apps, | working out and even meditating. It will feature hand and eye | control and run many of the kinds of apps found on Apple's other | devices."_ | | This concept has been well-explored in science fiction, and it | doesn't look good. See "Hyperreality"[1] for one of the best | visualizations. That's all too realistic. | | There's a line in Ready Player One: | | _" We call this Pure O2. This is the first of our planned | upgrades. Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad | restrictions, we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an | individual's visual field before inducing seizures."_ | | I was expecting that from Zuckerberg/Meta/Oculus. | | Remember Google Glass? People wearing those were called | "Glassholes". What to call people who wear this? "iDweebs"? | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs | | [2] | https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?mo... | charcircuit wrote: | If people aren't finding value in a product they will stop | using it. People won't want to use products which displays ads | in an obnoxious way. | | >What to call people who wear this? | | Why do you want to bully people? | whynotmaybe wrote: | > Why do you want to bully people? | | Is there a name for the mental situation where we make fun of | someone because he dares doing something that we know we | wouldn't dare to do? | | I think that's what OP is experiencing when wanting to give | name to someone wearing the device. | crooked-v wrote: | The hypothetical dystopia you've invented here doesn't follow | at all from even the worst behavior of the actual Apple | company. Why do you assume that "having an app floating around | in your field of vision" is automatically the same thing as | "80% of your visual field filled with ads"? | Animats wrote: | > The hypothetical dystopia you've invented here doesn't | follow at all from even the worst behavior of the actual | Apple company. | | It takes a while to get there. Google started out ad-free. | Google Search has now achieved "80% of your visual field | filled with ads". Apple used to be ad-free. No longer.[1] | | [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/apple-reportedly-plans- | to-pu... | golergka wrote: | Don't put too much faith in fiction. Especially cheap, pulp | fiction like Ready Player One. | nerdjon wrote: | I continue to believe that IF (and that is a big if) anyone can | make AR/VR a mainstream market it would be Apple. | | Just for the simple fact that Apple has in multiple occasions | done 2 things: | | 1. Come out with something that shapes the rest of the industry. | I mean how many times has Apple done something and within a year | or 2 basically the entire industry follows. | | 2. Not captured a large (or majority) percent but continued to | invest in a platform. I don't think anything they are in (except | maybe the smart watch) do they actually have a majority | marketshare but they continue to work on those platforms. | | So there is a part of me that hopes that Apple realizes that this | platform will be the same way. It will be a very niche product | that will take years of iterating on (like the Apple Watch) with | it in consumers hands to turn it into a mainstream product. | | We have had too many failed attempts (Google Glasses and | Microsoft HoloLens) just fail since they were not major successes | right out the gate. | | They also have the developer buy in on their other platforms that | they may be able to transition that to this if they handle that | properly. | | That isn't saying that this is anywhere near a guarantee and | obviously the hardware has to be there, the societal acceptance, | etc. But I just don't currently see another company that is in | the position to possibly pull this off. | ethbr0 wrote: | A study of futurism I read made the insightful observation that | things which explode in popularity don't just do things | differently -- they let you do _new_ things. | Apple II - graphical OS iPod - music in your pocket | iPhone - smartphone with cellular data iPad - large | screen low cost iWatch - phone functionality on wrist | | These are all different in kind, not different in amount | products. | | What does AR allow you to do, that you can't already do on a | screen? | | It's different... but different in amount. It's a better | screen. | | That might be enough to ship units, but it's not enough to | explode in popularity. | | Hell, even mystical eyeglass AR _that was actually just a pair | of eyeglasses_ would struggle. "Why don't I just do the same | thing on my screen?" or "But I'm already constantly connected | when I'm mobile." | ska wrote: | I think that is shortsighted. If you could realize a | futurists dream of AR, i.e. smooth overly interacting | properly with anything in your view, with context aware | detail etc, it would pretty clearly be a game changer (I | think). | | On the other hand, existing AR, like existing VR, just | doesn't deliver on that promise, not even approximately. | | With current tech, it's more an issue that the juice isn't | worth the squeeze. That can change when either (or both) side | of the equation changes. | pdabbadabba wrote: | If "phone functionality on wrist" counts as a "different in | kind" product, why on earth wouldn't "smartphone | functionality without looking down at a smartphone, watch, or | other device" qualify? | | For that matter, if "smartphone with cellular data" counts, | why not "smart glasses with cellular data and apps"? | | As you can tell, I'm a skeptic of this difference in kind v. | difference in quantity construct. | ethbr0 wrote: | wrist : insideOfPocket | | is more different than wrist : eyes | | Or, to put it another way, how many people do you know who | complain about the difficulty in looking at their wrist or | cell phone? | | That's the count of people for whom AR glasses would be | different in kind. | anonymouse008 wrote: | > Or, to put it another way, how many people do you know | who complain about the difficulty in looking at their | wrist or cell phone? | | Everyone who tries to speak a text message with Siri. | Apple should have been brave and not reshaped messages - | that screen is not meant to consume text messages at any | length - they should have changed the communication to | match the context. | fnord77 wrote: | this is why you start with a minimum viable product. Something | like Snapchat specs. And then iterate from there | | Instead they've been spending $1b/yr developing something that | will never be finished | | The first apple computer wasn't a fully loaded macbook pro. It | was a circuit board strapped to a piece of plywood | | some upstart will come up with something usable | ghusto wrote: | > It redesigned the battery as an iPhone-size pack that sits in a | user's pocket, attached by a power cord | | aaaand, that's all I needed to read about that. It's never coming | to market, maybe they'll revisit the idea in years to come | though. | nickthegreek wrote: | I am most excited about this part. The headset needs to be | light as possible and this will help that. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-18 23:00 UTC)