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Apple’s new headset meets reality

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Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#191

Post by anonymouse008 »

ska wrote: post #185
anonymouse008 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just engaging with the ‘everyone else does it’ part which felt emphasized. Proving lost potential is hard without an example of something better - which I would argue is the Oura ring, but less popular for different reasons. And for Siri and Alexa, you probably use ChatGPT, so you know the difference when you see it

I'm having trouble making sense of your point, I guess. You seem to try to draw a parallel between largely failed tech (VR) and largely successful tech (apple watches, etc), and then to massively popular consumer product (coke); then suggest there is 'bravery' in rejecting the 'way these creators want you to use their products' I sort of get the idea applied to VR as it has never really clicked for anything. But the…

Aye captain, I can see that.

My premise is that watches failed (even though they sell millions of units) as the bar for success is higher for Apple, and they left a lot on the table by just putting a mini phone on your wrist.

So I think screens on wrists is a dumb use of compute. Then I went in a roundabout way to say, a dumb use of calories / sugar is Coke. Sugar and Compute have better uses, so their lost potential is taking issue with how their creators made the goods to be consumed.

The watch is the coke of computing - completely unnecessary for 9/10ths of the use cases and leads to bad habits. Just as a beverage can be crafted to be like Athletic Greens, so could the watch be crafted to use the wrist compute context better.

To provide some example, watch should have gone screenless and used haptics to communicate with us in new ways; and explain when it was important to move to a screen context (which is technically all it does now too) - with this view, it becomes one strata closer to excellence.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#192

Post by selectodude »

philsquared_ wrote: post #73
wintermutestwin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I am thinking Pokemon or Yugioh. One killer app and you have people sold.

I would think that’s the coolest thing ever. I’m also not spending $4000 on it.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#193

Post by astrange »

zamnos wrote: post #175
deet wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that, dear reader, is how we ended up with hundreds of bland copy-cat Android phones to the iPhone. There's something to be said, mentally, for working somewhere that's inspiring. A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks, buried in office-park-landia of San Jose, is not it. Even a stroll through the secret underground parking lot at Apple is inspiring with all the exotic cars that are owned by…

Rather than "inspiring" I think the feeling is "concerned about being hit by" in such places.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#194

Post by Mistletoe »

bredren wrote: post #118
tguedes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

Brother you’ve got to get off that kool-aid, this just isn’t healthy.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#195

Post by drdaeman »

catchnear4321 wrote: post #181
cubefox wrote: post #138

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 headset will be a very expensive premium product (a…

apple is all about ecosystem. many little niceties you hardly notice but would immediately notice the loss of. with vr and ar you are placing yourself directly within the ecosystem. (the os becomes your reality, if you will, extended… xr… wasn’t that clever of them…) the iPhone long game shows apple’s willingness to creep slowly into lower cost tiers to preserve the brand value. carmack doesn’t need to be wrong for a…

That is, if they develop and produce something nearly impossible - a wearable glasses-like (in terms of size and weight) headset that can project color images non-multiplicatively overlaying the reality in user's eyes. If they had somehow figured that out (I'm no expert, but I don't think anyone did - at least I haven't heard anything) and if there's a decent SDK then 3 grands is a discount price for such a device.

But if it's yet another VR headset, it won't work. Camera passthrough is a gimmick that even with most advanced eye tracking and fanciest foveated rendering provides merely a limited approximation of AR that only leads to headaches and eye strain. Despite the article's claims such devices won't be worn all-day on a regular basis.

Apple is also all about being a closed ecosystem, and if the open VR/AR/XR community struggles with content, then Apple is not magically pulling out ton of quality apps (of any kind) out of some hat. I assume its "killer" app would be some AR assistant that would provide various additional contextual information at a literal glance. And then maybe some AR/XR game, maybe something like Ingress/Pokemon Go on steroids. But for an assistant, it has to be smart, and Siri's intelligence is a joke... so I'm skeptical it will be worth the money at launch.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#196

Post by judge2020 »

tough wrote: post #136
kmonsen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would it even be possible for apple to do so

Apple's total comprehensive income was $24B in Q2. Their total assets were $332B, and total liabilities $270B. Assuming all product sales dropped to 0, they could make the best effort to liquidate assets, after which they'd only have $62B - which would last them a little over a year at $13.6B in quarterly operating expenses.

https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2023/q2/...

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#197

Post by atleastoptimal »

criddell wrote: post #174
cubefox wrote: post #138

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 headset will be a very expensive premium product (a…

> I think consumers just don’t want to spend a lot of money on VR And I don’t think Apple wants those people as customers, at least not initially. $3000 for a headset from a company that sells $1000 monitor stands for $5000 monitors and $500 wheels for the computers doesn’t seem about right to me. In a year or two, the next generation of VR headset will be much better and still $3000 and you will be able to buy this…

Do people even buy those $1000 monitor stands, like really? Or is it just a highball so Apple can get better deals negotiating enterprise-size deals with larger companies buying in bulk?

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#198

Post by astrange »

crooked-v wrote: post #116
JimtheCoder wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

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.

You don't lose weight via exercise, you lose it via diet. Exercise is sometimes found counterproductive in empirical studies because it makes you less compliant with your diet, which is much more important.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#199

Post by givemeethekeys »

nerdjon wrote: post #37

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 conti…

Apple products:

- PCs were already growing in popularity.

- Mp3 players were already growing in popularity.

- Smart phones were already growing in popularity.

- Bluetooth headphones were already growing in popularity.

- Home automation was already growing in popularity.

Apple usually takes a look at a growing trend and decides that it can provide a far better experience.

... with the exception of: Apple Watch.

- Apple Watch defined the smartwatch category. Smart watches weren't that popular before the Apple watch. But, watches and luxury watches have been fashionable for a long time.

As awesome as AR / VR headsets are, they are practically dead on arrival. This will be the most challenging product launch in Apple's history.

From a marketing perspective, an Apple Car makes more sense.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#200

Post by cubefox »

dom96 wrote: post #184
cubefox wrote: post #138

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 headset will be a very expensive premium product (a…

> It may be more feasible to sell $3000 smartphones than to sell VR headsets at this price. Sure, now it is. But what about when the iPhone was first introduced? It didn't cost anywhere near this much money. For a new product category such as this it makes sense to start out with a cheap product so that as many people adopt it as possible, then you can begin introducing more expensive versions when you have the apps…

Yeah, but Apple is doing the exact opposite here. They introduce their headset at an exceptionally high price.
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