151–160 of 191 posts
It’s just ludicrous money for a shit product. Even the first full VR headsets came nowhere close to that price.
In which way will they make it different from the Meta headsets? The Apple branding won't be enough to turn an average headset into a successful product. My guess would be that their headset is just a set of goggles that requires an iPhone for computation. Then, they can sell them for $300 or even $150. The article suggests that VR is a tool for long-distance relationships. For $300, that could become possible.
For me the Apple Branding is enough. One of the biggest barriers for me picking up the Oculus Quest is that it’s attached to Facebook.
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?
It’s an unfixable problem. Instead of fucking around, why don’t they just make siri be like cortana in halo. Give me a cute hologram in the real world with a GPT model behind it.
Every house in the world could have a siri pod. Your phone could connect to their siri pod and let your siri come out and talk to you while you’re at their house. That would be some real science fiction. Imagine siri popping up in your car and directing you or warning you about pedestrians it can see that are about to step into the road.
Jobs referred to early Apple TV as a "hobby". For years. Time enough for a nascent market to mature, for the technology to catch up with the ambitions. That's how Apple/Cook should refer to Apple VR/AR. Under promise, over deliver. Projecting 1m unit sales the first year is nutty. Sure, they might sell that many. And then what? Also, the initial models should be over priced, specifically targeting sexy use cases. Rid…
> Under promise, over deliver. But Apple TV still hasn't delivered, and its first version was released 16 years ago . It's still unusable for anything but the most basic tasks, and is a mess as a product: it fails as amedia hub, it fails as a smart device hub, it fails as a compute hub...
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I was super-skeptical about the Apple Watch. Particularly as it didn't show the time. (Initial versions didn't have enough power to keep the display on all the time). Apple finally got me by fixing that and by making their phones too large to carry around while running. Grrr. But glad they did. It's been eye-opening. The fitness and sleep tracking are fantastic, and if you are having issues in that area, potentially…
If it had a camera I think I would leave my phone at home.
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FWIW, this is exactly the sort of 400 IQ chess play Mark Zuckerberg has been playing for the past half-decade, and the one this website has kicked the piss out of him for time immemorial. So which is it? Is VR a dehumanizing medium with no redeeming qualities, or is it a horizon of content and potential yet to be unlocked? It feels like HN's opinion on it changes every 15 minutes. Personally, I think VR is a bust. Th…
I think VR is a bust as well. I assumed however that Zuck would need to see a return on his investment — which hitherto has been in the form of advertising. If we entertain the idea that VR has legs and Apple's is ad-free then I already see a clear winner.
> which hitherto has been in the form of advertising.
Where are you getting that from? Their main revenue outlet is the same as Apple's, payment processing for their store: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/10/oculus-sold-5-million-wort...
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FWIW, this is exactly the sort of 400 IQ chess play Mark Zuckerberg has been playing for the past half-decade, and the one this website has kicked the piss out of him for time immemorial. So which is it? Is VR a dehumanizing medium with no redeeming qualities, or is it a horizon of content and potential yet to be unlocked? It feels like HN's opinion on it changes every 15 minutes. Personally, I think VR is a bust. Th…
> All Zuckerberg needs to 'win' is a cross-platform killer app. If Apple's hardest spin on this is "FaceTime with 3D characters" As opposed to Zuckerberg literally pouring billions into exactly poorly executed Facetime with 3D characters that even his own employees are unwilling to use?
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But there was a significant and fast growing market for watches, smartphones and MP3 players. Where is that for VR headsets? It's neither a huge installed market (watches) nor is it fast growing (smartphones late 2000s).
I'm no fan of Apple, but my impression is that Apple's involvement significantly grew the market of smartwatches, smartphones, and mp3 players. There's a reason people think Apple invented them. I'm a grump, and don't see how you could make VR headsets into a mass market product at this time, but Apple has been good at doing that in the past; MP3 players were probably going to boom otherwise, smartwatches were a bit…
Airport Express isn't necessary any more either - they've been replace with HomePods and HomePod Minis.
It would be nice to have a dedicated Apple Timemachine box, but plenty of other devices exist in that segment.
I think if they wanted they could come up with a mesh solution, or build it into HomePods. But, it's not really necessary, and not an area they'll sell in quantities that make a difference to them.
AppleTV is actually a pretty fantastic product, and I love mine, putting them onto TVs, especially the modern ad-filled smart TVs. Dumb TVs are hard to find, so I just don't both connecting the TV to a network, and purely use an AppleTV. The interface beats anything I've seen natively on a TV, and I trust it more than Samsung, LG, etc.
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> All Zuckerberg needs to 'win' is a cross-platform killer app. If Apple's hardest spin on this is "FaceTime with 3D characters" As opposed to Zuckerberg literally pouring billions into exactly poorly executed Facetime with 3D characters that even his own employees are unwilling to use?
Touché. I don't have a lick of faith for their Metaverse future, but it's clear now that they were ahead of the game. If everyone is deciding to hop in this melee, my money's on the guy who got there first and built a small fort even when he was ridiculed for it.
Its clear... how?
They did have a moat, and they were ahead of the game with Oculus. And then they squandered that on whatever the seven hells Meta is.
And John Carmack ended up quitting Meta. "we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort": https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPixEvPJ...
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Watches, phones, and music players also all existed for a long time, and weren't a huge leap. Sure, smart watches were called revolutionary, but the first Apple Watch told the time and was fun but mostly unusable for much else. The notifications popped up, but actual interaction was so slow. But that's fine. It was great to have a watch (a >100 year old device), that shows texts. Same for phones - it was just iterati…
> first Apple Watch told the time and was fun but mostly unusable for much else. I had 1st gen watch till 2019 and my usage pattern hardly changed with the newer versions: - clock and weather information - notifications - Apple Pay - exercise tracking What else are you using it now?
I use it for things like timers, eg. cooking, quite a lot. I have high blood pressure, so like the other health features, which have improved a lot.
Pretty nice for directions, and it can store music now to use, which is handy.
I think a lot of features, even the basic ones have improved a lot too, to the point it's hard to remember that the first was pretty basic. Maybe I'm mis-remembering and the rest of the world has also caught up to the wonders of tap to pay, and wallet/etickets. Somewhere in the last couple of years realistically not carrying a phone became more of a reality.