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

Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

hugo.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 863 posts

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#591

Post by cruffle_duffle »

ramesh31 wrote: post #533
zmmmmm wrote: post #481

Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100% talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing here. In short: Apple has made a fully…

This was my immediate takeway from using Quest 3 as well. Zuck has stated forever that he wants a platform, yet when it comes time to do the hard work, we just end up with an Android distro running a React app.

And how many billions did they spend on it?

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#592

Post by cruffle_duffle »

makeitdouble wrote: post #512
zmmmmm wrote: post #481

Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100% talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing here. In short: Apple has made a fully…

> Apple has made a fully realized spatial operating system I'm not sure what you mean precisely. Apple doesn't seem to have done more than windows with persistent positions. This isn't nothing, but it's also not something that has tremendous value for a headset that you only wear 30 or 45 minutes at a time. And they have little to no management of these floating windows. I'm really not holding my breath for Apple to…

Other people will come up with the right way to do spacial windowing… but they’ll fuck up somehow and Apple will take it, refine it, polish it, and “win”

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#593

Post by giantrobot »

ryandrake wrote: post #121
joenot443 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a lot of tablets before the iPad but it wasn’t until the iPad that tablets really took off as a serious market segment. Ditto with AirPods and Bluetooth earbuds. In the past, once Apple started pouring R&D money into a specific product type, the entire industry around it tends to advance very quickly. I’m optimistic about the Vision Pro, and I actually think the n+2 Meta release will be much better off for…

My question is why does it seem like only Apple can do this, over and over? Why are they the only ones who seem to be able to knock a product category out of the park and legitimize it? Is it just the vast amount of money? Are they the only ones who can create products? Is everyone else that bad? Competitors work for ages and ages fighting each other, refining v1, v2, v2.1, v2.2, v2.25, and then suddenly Apple comes…

> Why does this keep happening?

Apple has invested in developing the full stack for their products. Not only do they have the full stack of components for the products but the entire toolchain to develop those products. This gives them a very strong foundation for pretty much any product they want to pursue.

The AppleTV and HomePod both use older A-series SoCs and run iOS with a custom shell on top. They get all of the iOS media and peripheral handling capability "for free". Both projects can focus on TV or speaker features since the base OS is largely a solved problem for them. If they need some special consideration from somewhere in SWE they just file a Radar. They don't just get binary blob dumps of firmware from outside vendors and have to beg for bug fixes and hope their contract is big enough to get some consideration.

The Vision Pro leverages their ARM SoCs, base OS, and all the motion coprocessors that have been in their phones and watches for a decade. Novel improvements from the Vision Pro's development will just feed back to those components and make it into the next phone, watch, or whatever.

Most other companies don't actually own their whole product stack. Even Microsoft is at the mercy of their suppliers with the Surface line. They get what Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD have to offer. Smartphone manufacturers are grabbing Qualcomm and Samsung SoCs which are collections of Cortex cores then slap Android on top hoping that Google's latest version is better than the previous version.

It's hard to really make leapfrog products when you're shipping the same shit as your competitors and trying to compete on price.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#594

Post by loeg »

WWLink wrote: post #584
didip wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you said were true then this is a fatal strategic error on Meta's side. This entire time, they could have built a real OS, solidifying their first mover advantage.

They started to, and then they gave up on it. https://www.engadget.com/meta-dissolves-ar-vr-os-team-204708...

That operating system (a hard fork of Google Fuschia) was really designed for low-power AR wearables and made almost no considerations to supporting VR (or like, any existing software, which was one of the major drawbacks). Too many systems designed from scratch with no compatibility with traditional OS APIs. I don't think it would have been viable even with 5+ more years.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#595

Post by loeg »

bushbaba wrote: post #541
didip wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you said were true then this is a fatal strategic error on Meta's side. This entire time, they could have built a real OS, solidifying their first mover advantage.

Apple leveraged their existing OSX OS stack, for Meta this would mean either heavily forking android OR starting their own OS. Both would take 5+ years to get meaningful traction. Remember google fuchsia, the code-repo was public in 2016, intial release was 2021, and it's still not anywhere near where it'd need to be for a VR headset.

VROS is already an Android fork.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#596

Post by gamblor956 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #481

Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100% talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing here. In short: Apple has made a fully…

Apple has made a fully realized spatial operating system

Said that out loud to a group of techies and they laughed so hard one of them fell out of their seat.

Apple put the iPad on your face. And that's pretty much it.

The few VP users that haven't returned the device don't use any of the "spatial" features like controlling the UI by pointing in space, since it's so inaccurate that it gives Swype a run for its money.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#597

Post by TylerE »

devit wrote: post #548
zmmmmm wrote: post #481

Coming from a senior Oculus lead, the most interesting thing about this write up for me, is what it lacks: it says almost nothing about the software stack / operating system. Still 100% talking about hardware at the bottom and end user applications at the other end. But there is no discussion of the platform which to me is actually the highest value proposition Apple is bringing here. In short: Apple has made a fully…

To support copy&paste all you need is a common format for 3D objects, like HTML is for 2D documents; glTF might be a reasonable candidate. The problem with the Apple approach is that there are no apps and games, and there probably won't be many given it's a 3500$ device with few users that Apple exerts its tyrannical grip over (or if there will be, they will be ports of Unity/Unreal, PC or Android VR apps, not using…

People have been trying to solve this problem since the VRML days in the '90s. I suspect you are underestimating the complexity of 3D data by a pretty huge extent.

3D is much, much, much more complicated than 2D, especially if you're trying to interchange between arbitrary applications that may have divergent needs.

Start with this little thought experiment.

What do you mean by 3d object?

Do you mean a set of polygons, like in a traditional triangle mesh? A volume, like voxels? A set of 3d surfaces?

Do you need to model interior details, or only the exterior envelope? Do you need to be able to split or explode it at some arbitrary level of detail? Do we need to encode sharp edges or creases in some way?

etc, etc, etc

This is before you have touched materials, texturing, lighting, any of that.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#598

Post by jethro_tell »

bushbaba wrote: post #541
didip wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you said were true then this is a fatal strategic error on Meta's side. This entire time, they could have built a real OS, solidifying their first mover advantage.

Apple leveraged their existing OSX OS stack, for Meta this would mean either heavily forking android OR starting their own OS. Both would take 5+ years to get meaningful traction. Remember google fuchsia, the code-repo was public in 2016, intial release was 2021, and it's still not anywhere near where it'd need to be for a VR headset.

To be fair, you probably don't have to build your own kernel like fuchsia. You can almost certainly start with a bare bones freebsd or Linux kernel or what ever. You're still making a custom gfx layer and lots of user land but you're get a lot for free too.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#599

Post by diego_sandoval »

bushbaba wrote: post #541
didip wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you said were true then this is a fatal strategic error on Meta's side. This entire time, they could have built a real OS, solidifying their first mover advantage.

Apple leveraged their existing OSX OS stack, for Meta this would mean either heavily forking android OR starting their own OS. Both would take 5+ years to get meaningful traction. Remember google fuchsia, the code-repo was public in 2016, intial release was 2021, and it's still not anywhere near where it'd need to be for a VR headset.

Every game console comes with its own operating system, even though Sony and Nintendo are not in the OS business.

Just take FreeBSD and add your own UI on top.

Re: Vision Pro: What we got wrong at Oculus that Apple got right

#600

Post by timcederman »

nerdjon wrote: post #297
noneeeed wrote: post #30

I think the description of the VisionPro as a dev kit is spot on. It's also a beta product in many way. Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product, they have made no attempt to make it even remotely affordable to most people. But they also know that every aspect of the hardware will improve over the next decade, and as it does they will have ironed out many of the problems with how we use AR/VR and w…

> Apple know full well that this is not a mass market product. I really feel like too many people are ignoring this. If anyone understands how to play the long game with a new product it is Apple. I mean the Apple TV was a "Hobby" for many years. Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before the "normal" version? I think it also helps the clear sharing of technology between this and other products. From…

> Has Apple ever put out a "Pro" version of a product before the "normal" version?

HomePod is another one.

Post reply on HN