Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s new headset meets reality

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 527 posts

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#371

Post by oblio »

015a wrote: post #360
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…

Really important to remember: - Apple Watch: $447 at release (inflation adj); $250 today. - iPad: $695 at release (inflation adj); $450 today. - iPhone: $877 at release (inflation adj, carrier subsidized); $800 today. Similar story with all of their products. Apple has a history of releasing new product lines with the "top end" expensive models (remember in 2017 when they released both the iPhone X and iPhone 8). Ear…

> Historically: It has practically never been a good bet to bet against Apple, even if all the logic says to [1]. This time could be different. I would not bet on it.

Historically? What?! Apple had about 15 years of lukewarm products. Even during their initial phase many products were commercial flops.

Their post iPhone era is an outlier.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#372

Post by sbuk »

simonh wrote: post #301
scarface74 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A “monopoly” in what product category?

Monopoly (noun): Thing I hate that is incredibly popular, and I’ve got all bitter and twisted about it.

Ha! The “orange site” dictionary. There’s a parody site in that…

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#373

Post by dwaite »

SXX wrote: post #165
yayr wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think with respect to compute/GPU capability the Apple headset will be vastly superior. One of the major issues with the Quest is the lack of graphics quality that can be brought to the virtual environments. Unless you run it via Link to a PC with a top end GPU it is just a toy. Having VR experiences like the recent Unreal Engine provides is simply orders of magnitude away for Quest in the current state... Thats on…

Problem is: Apple mostly ruined their relationship with Epic, Meta and even Valve. Whatever excellent VR tech they come up with will be mostly ignored by the game industry. Good part of iPhone / iPad success was due to the excellent apps ecosystem. Who gonna make VR experiences for Apple new VR ecosystem? F2P game companies? I guess they won't be interested either because Apple will try to bite off a lot of profits f…

There was never a big chance that Valve would port Alyx, or Meta would allow Beat Saber to be on another platform.

It would take an epically _good_ relationship to convince hardware platforms to port their platform exclusive titles over - just count all the Mario and Zelda games that have shipped for Xbox and Playstation.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#374

Post by bredren »

dwaite wrote: post #357
kmonsen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple watch? Airpods maybe? Apple silicon for sure. Other than that not much, but to be clear there has not really been any other inventions in this time span like those you mention. The market is more mature.

When the device has a user experience, it gradually turns into a convergence platform. This is what makes coming out with new products harder - Apple doesn't have a market for a mid-range camera, or a GPS, or a music player, or a PDA - because those are all things the iPhone does. They add capabilities to the phone to usurp other device markets (most recently, emergency satellite communicators and OnStar-style crash…

> Apple releases new devices most often by releasing them inside the iPhone.

Another example is Lidar 3d scanning in iPhone.

>Which is why now, with a saturated cellphone market which is slowing down the upgrade frequency, they are so interested in wearables (separate hardware that augments your phone) and services (software that augments your phone).

I suspect that annual upgrades to Watch, the maturation of Fitness and Music services and the mix of HW "devices" released in iPhone have strategic goal of supporting the new headset device.

RE: HomeKit, even if it couldn't deliver the revenue opportunity of other businesses of the company, I think it had potential to be far more than it is now.

The head of home services, Sam Jadallah left before his third year during a critical push into the home with Homepod and Homepod Mini.

It could be his efforts were blocked--perhaps to starve advancement of Smarthome while Amazon was bleeding cash on Alexa. But regardless his team failed to push the category forward and Home languished.

HomeKit and Siri are perhaps the most high profile weak products from Apple that, had they been handled differently, people would have greatly benefited from for several years now.

That said, neither seemed to have that much revenue opportunity and it is clear looking backward that their weakness has not (yet) obviously held the company back in any way.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#375

Post by oblio »

danpalmer wrote: post #356
prng2021 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think 2x M2 chips could play a AAA game at 6k res (3k per eye) and 90+ fps?

A single M2 chip is able to play a recent-ish AAA game and decent-ish settings, on ~2k at >30fps, while also running the whole game itself and macOS. So for VR, foveated rendering could mean the difference between ~2k and 3k is a wash. And AAA games designed for VR tend to be a little more conservative on the graphics. And the chip will only theoretically have to handle half the other game work and no full macOS. Com…

> A single M2 chip is able to play a recent-ish AAA game and decent-ish settings, on ~2k at >30fps, while also running the whole game itself and macOS.

Doing the math to the OPs numbers. 6k vs 2k = 3x. 90 fps vs 30 fps = 3x.

That an extra 900% performance difference right there.

Reality, out the window.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#376

Post by sbuk »

erichocean wrote: post #321
bredren wrote: post #80

>underscoring the narrative that the company’s biggest victories were initiated under his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs What does the author consider to be a victory? Tim Cook was elevated because he had the operational capability to grow Apple. Jobs did not consider Cook to be a product design person. But Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products. By any stretch of the imaginatio…

> Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products Tim Cook's first major executive move as CEO was to fire Scott Forstall.

Forstall’s first big unguided product delivery was Maps. He royally screwed the pooch with the release. By all accounts, he was fairly toxic in the executive group, he had to go.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#377

Post by sbuk »

asdff wrote: post #210
bredren wrote: post #80

>underscoring the narrative that the company’s biggest victories were initiated under his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs What does the author consider to be a victory? Tim Cook was elevated because he had the operational capability to grow Apple. Jobs did not consider Cook to be a product design person. But Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products. By any stretch of the imaginatio…

Airpods were handed to Cook on a platter, honestly. It doesn't take a market savant to realize apple can make a killing selling the ever popular and sexy earpod in bluetooth form. Once the battery technology was available to resell the same earpod but with bluetooth it would have been made no matter who was CEO.

“When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#378

Post by oblio »

neural_thing wrote: post #314
sli wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to spend a lot on VR, but Apple would have to absolutely blow everything else out of the water at that price point. I have no doubt that a lot of Apple enthusiasts will buy them, but they've certainly chosen a specific market. You could buy a full Index kit, get the wireless upgrade for it, and then a full Vive Pro kit and its wireless upgrade, and have spent about the same amount of money.

I'm willing to spend $3,000 on a device that I would want to use every day. The reason I don't spend that much on existing VR tech is that I don't want to use it.

Most people don't have $3k of disposable income for a single non key purchase.

How big even is this market, at $3k? 50 million people worldwide?

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#379

Post by dwaite »

SXX wrote: post #190
yayr wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. Unreal Engine can build for Apple Silicon. So any game dev can make his choice himself. Unity and others are also there as good frameworks. More importantly, Apple did not ruin relationsships with Media companies. I'd love to see some more VR concerts or other events. Meta totally failed at scaling this.

Majority of game development companies don't build their own tooling. Option to build a binary for ARM Mac is not sufficient to bring high quality experience to whatever proprietary tech Apple will put out there. And it's quite certain it's gonna be incompatible with Meta's offerings, wont integrate with other platforms, etc. I not saying like Apple have no chances at all here, but building own gaming ecosystem is ex…

> Google and Meta both tried an failed miserably.

Did Google really try?

The only way they could have convinced me it actually might be around 18 months after launch is if Alphabet spun out an entirely new company for it.

Launching it as Google Stadia was basically a self-fulfilling prophecy of cancellation. Few wanted to pay good money for product that was going to dissolve in a year or two.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#380

Post by sbuk »

usernew wrote: post #331
white_dragon88 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a whole lot of salt for something that actually exists and wasn’t a load of hot air. AirPod max headphones are brilliant devices. M1 chips have made laptops fast, quiet and cool while maintaining a very impressive speed (there’s nothing gimped about the MacBook). Iphones continue to be market leaders for a reason, they unite classical consumers You can not like it, but you can’t deny it. Maybe part of the reas…

The M1 chip can't run most software w/o virtualizing x86. I can't run about 90% of my work apps on it. It can't run any games kids play. Even the major vendors that run on Apple now had to rewrite their apps. In what world is this any kind of brilliance or win? Here, I built you a car with TVs for bumpers. It's brilliant! No, you're supposed to only drive it on side streets so there's no traffic behind you. You're dr…

The 1990’s called, the want there memes back…
Post reply on HN