if they can make the floating elephant magic leap failed to deliver, that would be great
Apple’s new headset meets reality
21–30 of 527 posts
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#22I 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.
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Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#23Other 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.
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#24I 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…
> 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.
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#25I'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 interestin…
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…
> 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).
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#26[deleted]
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#27Curious 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.
Tim Cook, unlike Jobs, is incapable of making major policy changes, according to the Bloomberg article.
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#28I 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…
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.)
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#29I'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 interestin…
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.
Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality
#30I'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 interestin…
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…
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.