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Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

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Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#41

Post by etempleton »

If it is as described I think it is insane for Apple to launch this product.

Comparing it to the state of the Apple Watch is pretty strange because if nothing else the Apple Watch was functional, self contained, worked, and was under $1,000. Even if it didn’t work you could put it on and ignore it. A VR/AR headset is nothing like that and at $3,000 is a significant investment for most everyone.

But who knows. I haven’t seen it. Maybe it will be amazing and exactly what the VR space needs. I suspect it is a really fancy Meta Quest with significantly more processing power. Certainly Apple is in a unique position with their Apple Silicon. But will Apple open it up enough for gaming if that is what it is? Because that has been the problem in the past. Gamers aren’t going to want to buy this thing unless you can plug it into a PC and have it function as a regular VR headset and the Meta Quest crowd isn’t going to shell out 3 grand.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#43

Post by tomatotomato37 »

I'm interested what this will look like in 5 years. Apple's ecosystem is currently hostile to the largest market for A/VR so far, gamers. However if there is one company I would bet to pull a completely brand new market segment out of their ass it would be Apple. Should be exciting to watch.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#44

Post by dmead »

paxys wrote: post #34
voisin wrote: post #28

Initial product will be weak, just like the original iPhone (no App Store, slow, poor battery life, etc) and Apple Watch (no development, no health tracking, small screen, poor battery life). The thing about Apple is not to judge based on v.1 but to watch the iteration. They are the most persistent company in the world. Compare to Google which seems to have ADHD. Apple will iterate and iterate and in 5 years we’ll al…

Where was this persistent iteration and overnight success with Homepod, Airpower, butterfly keyboards, touchbar, force touch, MobileMe, Ping? Apple has had its share of failures like any other company, and kills products like any other company. There is plenty of precedence for their AR headset to just fizzle out.

It's likely that it will just fizzle out. It's a big ship and getting it to produce something new I'm sure is no easy task.

Good for them that meta has shown this is a dead end. I'm sure they're ready to cut bait on this.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#45

Post by JKCalhoun »

paxys wrote: post #27

Apple has come a long way from the time when not even the engineering team working on a product would know what it really was until Steve Jobs unveiled it on stage. Now everything gets leaked like at every other company. Did Apple even have a hundred executives in 2008?

The "Top 100" thing has been going on for some time.

The first I heard about it was certainly when Steve Jobs returned. In fact I remember it struck me how "Jobsian" it was: to create in-the-circle and out-of-the-circle groups. Unsurprisingly this is when you started seeing political jockeying, coattail riding and all the other rather gross human behaviors I had not experienced at Apple up until then.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#46

Post by dev_tty01 »

paxys wrote: post #34
voisin wrote: post #28

Initial product will be weak, just like the original iPhone (no App Store, slow, poor battery life, etc) and Apple Watch (no development, no health tracking, small screen, poor battery life). The thing about Apple is not to judge based on v.1 but to watch the iteration. They are the most persistent company in the world. Compare to Google which seems to have ADHD. Apple will iterate and iterate and in 5 years we’ll al…

Where was this persistent iteration and overnight success with Homepod, Airpower, butterfly keyboards, touchbar, force touch, MobileMe, Ping? Apple has had its share of failures like any other company, and kills products like any other company. There is plenty of precedence for their AR headset to just fizzle out.

I don't disagree with your examples. Yep, they've made plenty of mistakes. A key difference here is that Apple has been spent many years developing and promoting substantial AR frameworks. It has been a huge investment. It at least appears that this huge investment has all been leading up to some sort of vision based wearable. If it does turn out to be a failure, the magnitude of the failure will be much larger than the above examples.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#47

Post by JKCalhoun »

voisin wrote: post #28

Initial product will be weak, just like the original iPhone (no App Store, slow, poor battery life, etc) and Apple Watch (no development, no health tracking, small screen, poor battery life). The thing about Apple is not to judge based on v.1 but to watch the iteration. They are the most persistent company in the world. Compare to Google which seems to have ADHD. Apple will iterate and iterate and in 5 years we’ll al…

Yeah but $3K.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#48

Post by arnaudsm »

I may be anti-Apple, I am excited for this release. All the XR headsets I've owned had terrible UX and no product vision whatsoever. Just "make a bad videogame and users will find something to do with it". The Quest pro has hilariously bad software.

Apple excels at opinionated product vision on new form factors and finding new killer features. And that's what the dying AR space needs the most.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#49

Post by dmead »

paxys wrote: post #24
root_axis wrote: post #20

My prediction: it will suck. Why? All AR devices suck, the tech just isn't there.

More than that, I think the underlying problem is that people simply don't want VR/AR. Decades of science fiction writing has convinced us that it is the future, but like..why?

One decade. Just the one. Maybe one and a half. Most science fiction doesn't care about VR.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#50

Post by kitsunesoba »

adfm wrote: post #16
nunodonato wrote: post #5

I wonder if we'll now see "VR was a bad bet", when everyone is turning into LLMs and hoping Apples comes up with something on their own.

What if LLMs are the killer app? https://lukashoel.github.io/text-to-room/

Put this in an MR/VR headset and hook it up to voice recognition and you've got what's probably the closest thing to a Star Trek holodeck as is possible with current tech.
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