He's bitter because he's 6-7 years behind. He lost the moment Apple decided to make their own SoC.
Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#702Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should they be in panic? They already iterated on 3 headsets, they definitely have the advantage (weren't people complaining that they spent too much $$ in VR? Now they should be terrified?)
Thats what I am saying. They had 3 iterations, yet, are technologically behind Apple. I mean, just pure technology wise, the screens, number of sensors, processing power itself is mind boggling. I am sure that all their hadware decisions regarding oculus were constrained by the compute hardware. Apple has the moat of world class custom silicon that means, the constraints on its designers are far less. And we are seei…
While I think Apple throwing their hat in the ring with a super-high end device is great for the market and should light a fire under Meta (and everyone else's butt), I think that the idea that Apple has a super-advanced technology lead isn't totally true for those that have been paying close attention to the XR space.
I mean yes, Apple is the best hardware company in the world, and they've assembled/polished best in class hardware and most importantly, have been willing to commit to the volumes for production for bleeding edge parts (eg, companies like eMagin have been demoing 4K micro OLED display for years [1] but no one's ever committed for an $X billion order - already we're seeing the "Apple" effect though as suppliers now have customers to chase [2]).
Meta's FRL has been working on pinch-and-release click for years with a haptic EMG controller that while bulkier, I think would actually be a more satisfying experience: https://tech.facebook.com/reality-labs/2021/3/inside-faceboo... Meta has also been working on next-gen displays (focused on varifocal displays/fixing vergence acommodation conflict) for years. I still think that Doug Lanman's 2020 EIS Plenary presentation is one of the best technical talks of recent memory, and highly recommend watching it to anyone interested in displays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQwMAl9bGNY - Tested had a good demo video of what they have in the labs last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc and you can read about their DeepFocus work from back in 2018: https://tech.facebook.com/reality-labs/2018/12/introducing-d... or see their Half Dome prototypes going back the same time period: https://tech.facebook.com/reality-labs/2018/12/introducing-d...
You can go down anywhere down the stack, from spatial audio and custom HRTFs [3], haptics [4], avatars [5], FRL (or whatever it's called now) has done it all [6] but most of the cool stuff has only trickled into the market while Meta has focused on selling $300 consumer headsets and despite obstensibly being a "software" company has never figured out how to build a platform beyond a barely passable VR game launcher. Reading the visionOS docs [7] has been a breath of fresh air and is much more impressive to me than the hardware (which is great, but the biggest accomplishment on that end IMO was committing to launching such a high price-point to reach a baseline experience they were happy with; also their passthrough appears SoTA).
Still, I'm most excited that this will give the "courage" to others to launch high-end consumer experiences. Let's see true retina-resolution (60PPD+) varifocal HDR displays and actually seamless passthrough.
(Funny note, looking through old notes, back in 2015, I expected 4K/eye displays to be in an HMD by 2020, which was far too optimistic. [8])
[1] https://www.uploadvr.com/emagin-4k-oled-microdisplay-steambo...
[2] https://www.oled-info.com/tags/oled-microdisplays
[3] https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/facebook-reality-labs-rese...
[4] https://www.xrtoday.com/mixed-reality/what-is-meta-doing-wit...
[5] https://theinnerdetail.com/meta-will-soon-let-you-to-make-ph...
[6] https://research.facebook.com/research-area/augmented-realit...
[7] https://developer.apple.com/visionos/learn/
[8] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/k08jnu4t4qwerd0ln10w8/Virtual...
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
What brands are you buying from that change models every year??
Pretty much every clothing brand out there, and usually more often than once a year. Also at this point they don't give a damn about quality controls. E.g. there was a time when you could order shoes online rather reliably. Today? What you get in the mail is barely correlated with the size you specified on the order. From the last 10 days: we order two pairs for our kids, size X and Y - which we selected by actually…
Again, what brands?
I have never experienced this buying shoes from both big and small brands. Adidas, Nike, Allbirds, Converse, John Elliott, Beckett Simonon, etc. Maybe kids shoes are a different ballgame?
Also never experienced this with clothes. I buy everything online and it always fits as I would expect from the measurements listed on the website.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#704At the end of the day, Zuck is going to burn even more money on VR due to Apple. He’s going to try to compete and sink an enormous amount of money chasing something he cannot catch. This is actually very bad for Meta.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook is not in panic, they're relieved that they're not the only fools betting on VR anymore. None of this will be relevant soon to consumers, except maybe games, and then it will be console makers who will push it and cash in. For Facebook and Apple it's just shareholder porn.
But it doesn't look like Apple is betting on a Metaverse where you have your little virtual houses and objects, but rather putting monitors right in front of your eyes with an entire ecosystem where work and entertainment is the main focus, with the ability to include communicating with others. Apple just skipped the 3D world-thing which is what Meta is focusing on and being pathetic at it. To me this reads as if Mar…
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Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So far at least, this is a tech that is being pushed onto people rather than being pulled. I think it's very hard to tell the difference between these things ex ante. Everything that succeeds looks like it was pulled. But many things were pushed before they were pulled. Buying things on the internet, for instance. This was laughed at for quite a while, while a few people and companies were committed to the idea tha…
> The promise of VR is to unlock a world free of the constraints of physics. Where physical distance prevents certain styles of communication and interaction - where physical real estate is finite and therefore rivalrous, etc. There are many things that VR, in principle, could solve... See. You just did the exact same thing that Op is talking about. You didn't describe a single actual use case. You just talked about…
If a set of vr hardware can make it so I can work as ergonomically from my patio as from my desk I will throw money at it.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#707I'm guessing that the Vision Pro will actually help Quest sales in the short term, since many people will want the Vision Pro but will settle for the Quest 3, since it'll be 7 times cheaper.
No. Experience is very different and people can just go right into their local Apple store to see the difference. People are ignoring the fact that Apple has one of the widest and best retail networks in the world. It’s game over for Meta.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
What brands are you buying from that change models every year??
For me (not the guy you responded to) the big thing is shoes. When I find a pair I like I’ll often buy two or three extra pairs (often online) in other colorways but when those wear out they usually aren’t made anymore or I want to try something new. Boots and shoes (especially rock climbing shoes) seem to never be consistently sized, even inside the same brand, and I need to try them on to get them to fit right. Can…
I don't understand the sizing problems with shoes at all. I elaborated in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36256573.
I do find shoes sometimes have inconsistent sizing between brands, but they usually say something like "runs 1/2 size small". Worst comes to worst I can compare size charts with a pair that I already own.
It's never a crapshoot where I can't rely on their sizing at all.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#709Apple really isn't introducing any fundamentally new concepts here. It's all just 2D windows floating around in 3D space. And the new things like 3D photos seem to be universally panned by people who've tried the headset. VR is such a new powerful format, for apple to present a bunch of 2D windows running the same old apps being 'spatial computing' is kind of a joke. The hardware is really impressive, the functionali…
People said the same thing about the iPhone. Heck, they said Android will compete too. Meta doesn’t even have 1/100th of the engineering/manufacturing capabilities of Apple. It’s literally Zuck sourcing mostly off the shelf hardwares. They will never catch up to Apple until they invest in that type of infrastructure which will cost them hundreds of billions.
Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
#710Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re comparing a service accessible through any device with a physical product, not very apt I’d say
The first iPhone was released June 2007. The iPhone X was released by 2017. By then smart phones were ubiquitous. And it only took 4? Maybe 5 years? We’re still looking for a good use case for VR … and it’s not Second Life: Facebook Edition, or games (yet).
> The first iPhone was released June 2007
And the first mobile phone was sold to the public in 1949. It took time to catch on. People needed it to be convenient and accessible. VR/AR is neither convenient nor accessible today.
You can use your iPhone camera for an AR experience, but your hands are occupied holding the phone so you can't do much at all when using it.