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Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
51–60 of 252 posts
Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#52Holy shit that website just crippled my phone.
Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean Meta right? Otherwise it just sounds like you haven’t been following the field.
No, I mean Apple. There's such a vast number of Apple fans who will buy whatever Apple put out in this space, I reckon. If anybody can make it succeed then it's Apple. Facebook is distrusted by everybody these days so I don't think it has the wherewithal to make it as people value their privacy more than they let on.
I don't think even the loyalty of Apple customers will overcome VR. I own a VR headset and the drawbacks that cannot be fixed with engineering make them very uncool. It's not cool to have a sweaty acne-producing pair of goggles strapped to your head. It's not cool to need to use a UI to resume experiencing actual reality. The form factor of VR, even after hypothetical improvements, is still clunky and fragile. If Apple actually ships anything in this space, I'm convinced it will be a huge misstep.
Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your downside is never capped, of course. Surely your downside is capped at zero?
W2 work feels more stable and secure than startup land. If you worked for Google for 20 years you don't expect to be let go with no notice by an automated system. But that is exactly what happened to thousands of people just now. You kind of expect this kind of thing in startup land. Recent events show this downside is not unique to startups, and can affect any worker anywhere. It's chilling, and it should take some…
I don't think this is responsive to my comment.
Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#55It's funny I keep thinking about how the same people might work on the same thing but with different terms. As a W2 employee you make great money, but your upside is capped. Your downside is never capped, of course. As a founder you make okay money, you have better upside. But the same corp that fired you will invest that money with the VC that funded you. So, either way, the capital flows through the corp to you, an…
I agree. I think the next 5-10 years will see a massive wave of new companies come out of this. There's been so much talent locked up in bigtech for so long. The amount of talent in these companies that have had golden handcuffs forever due to the continual rise of their stock grants is staggering. Now suddenly bigtech stock is down 50%+, and they can't issue enough RSUs to cover the compensation gap. Moreover, there…
On the other hand, it seems most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked over the last couple decades. What is left for a random small business with software talent to do?
Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean Meta right? Otherwise it just sounds like you haven’t been following the field.
This is how Zuckerberg sees the metaverse: “We hope to basically get to around a billion people in the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars of commerce, each buying digital goods, digital content, different things to express themselves, so whether that’s clothing for their avatar or different digital goods for their virtual home or things to decorate their virtual conference room, utilities to be able to be more produ…
It sounds as useless as Second Life. Whatever happened to that!
Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. I think the next 5-10 years will see a massive wave of new companies come out of this. There's been so much talent locked up in bigtech for so long. The amount of talent in these companies that have had golden handcuffs forever due to the continual rise of their stock grants is staggering. Now suddenly bigtech stock is down 50%+, and they can't issue enough RSUs to cover the compensation gap. Moreover, there…
On the other hand, it seems most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked over the last couple decades. What is left for a random small business with software talent to do?
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Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#58How does that effect the crazy fat DND contract MS has for HoloLens?
Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's spend in this area is totally unknown, other than everybody expects them to. To contrast, Meta has been spending so much in this area that they've bet the company on it. It's anybody's game right now, but Meta already has launched products and iterated on them.
Apple is built different as a tech company. They will keep everything a secret more closely guarded than the nuclear codes, then come out of nowhere with a mind-blowing product that leaves everything else in the dust, just like they did with the iPhone. A Quest 2 with an Apple Silicon CPU would, alone, be a game changer. There's probably some advanced head and eye tracking and SLAM AI in there too that makes Meta's s…
Re: "They will keep everything a secret[...]then come out of nowhere with a mind-blowing product" - that was true (in spades) during Steve Jobs era. What mind blowing product did Apple launch since Oct 2011? Under Tim Apple iterated competently, magnificently, [insert your favorite adjective here] but no mind blowing product....