Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#11

Post by threetonesun » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:51 PM UTC

hnra wrote: post #6

torben-friis wrote: post #4

Apple's adventures in XR are weird. I started my career as a dev working in VR apss. At the time there was consensus in the industry that apple was about to release something huge that would push the whole industry to the mainstream - and indeed you couldn't rely on any new VR/AR product or software without it being silently acquired in months and their website redirecting to apple. Fast forward one decade, nothing's…

Didn’t they release a pair of VR glasses last year?

The "something huge that would push the whole industry to the mainstream" seems to be the missing piece here.

I'm sure the Vision Pro will get some follow up, but as someone who wears glasses I don't see the glasses/headset version of AR/XR ever catching on in the mainstream.

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#12

Post by m_ke » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:52 PM UTC

This is only semi related but I wonder what will happen to these huge hierarchical orgs when the pace of software development improves by 10-20x thanks to LLMs.

How will these risk averse slow moving teams with a ton of process keep up with 100x more tiny teams of engineers who can ship whole features in days instead of months.

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#13

Post by api » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:53 PM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #10

api wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a niche technology that people keep trying to make go mainstream, but most people just don't want it. For most people (including myself) trying VR a little is a novelty, but it's not something I want every day, and AR seems like it'd be useless or annoying unless I were using it in e.g. some industrial context like a heads up display. It's like NFTs in gaming, NFTs in general, AI shoehorned into place…

It's still just a bit too clunky, like PDAs. Still waiting for an iPhone moment.

I don't think it's even that. I don't think most people want it.

VR is for gaming. I can see it finding a solid niche there. Make a VR headset that connects to a PC/Mac with extremely low latency and focus all the engineering on the quality of the display and making it lightweight. Gamers will buy it.

AR is IMHO for industrial uses. I could see it being incredibly valuable doing inspections of industrial systems, working in a high-risk environment (for safety awareness), etc. I think the most practical depiction of AR in sci-fi is probably the heads up displays in The Expanse, which make perfect sense to augment human sensory in both military and industrial/maintenance operations in an environment like space.

I actively do not want AR for civilian uses. Yeah, I want to wear glasses and contacts to superimpose ads and slop and Internet drama in front of my life. Get that the hell away from me. When I want to touch grass, I want to touch grass.

A lot of that kind of stuff shows up in cyberpunk, and people forget that most cyberpunk is dystopian. The cyberpunk aesthetic is also kind of 1980s-1990s and is not contemporary. People are stuck in it. We're well past that and even on the tail end of "millennial minimalism" (the Apple aesthetic).

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#14

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

api wrote: post #8

hnra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t they release a pair of VR glasses last year?

The Vision Pro, and despite being pretty good they were kind of a flop. Like I said elsewhere I think VR and AR are niche products tech companies and investors keep trying to make go mainstream because they showed up in a lot of sci-fi. I don't think many people want them.

Meta is having some success with the Meta Quest, but it is in the gaming sector where they have cultural problems. [1] The notable thing is that the Meta Quest consumer is price sensitive: when the MQ3 came out and they dropped the price of the MQ2, MQ2 sales surged. Next year they came out with the MQ3S which has the brains of an MQ3 in the body of an MQ2, so it is a cost-reduced device that can run MQ3 software.

The AVP, on the other other hand, was just too expensive. At that price it could go with a seat of [2] (been a high end enterprise play) but no way was it going to compete with buying a big ass TV and a home theater system, which you can enjoy with other people. Worse than that, Apple rejected the immersive world experiences that are big fun on the MQ3 -- if a device is that expensive it has to do it all.

[1] https://components.one/posts/gamer-and-nihilist-product-hunt [2] https://www.3ds.com/3dexperience/

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#15

Post by jsheard » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:55 PM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #10

api wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a niche technology that people keep trying to make go mainstream, but most people just don't want it. For most people (including myself) trying VR a little is a novelty, but it's not something I want every day, and AR seems like it'd be useless or annoying unless I were using it in e.g. some industrial context like a heads up display. It's like NFTs in gaming, NFTs in general, AI shoehorned into place…

It's still just a bit too clunky, like PDAs. Still waiting for an iPhone moment.

The Bigscreen Beyond is getting there in terms of form factor, but it achieves that in part by being a dumb headset which relies on a PC and external tracking beacons to work. There's no free lunch unfortunately, putting the brains in the headset itself is always going to add bulk.

https://www.bigscreenvr.com/

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#16

Post by sitkack » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:56 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #9

torben-friis wrote: post #4

Apple's adventures in XR are weird. I started my career as a dev working in VR apss. At the time there was consensus in the industry that apple was about to release something huge that would push the whole industry to the mainstream - and indeed you couldn't rely on any new VR/AR product or software without it being silently acquired in months and their website redirecting to apple. Fast forward one decade, nothing's…

Apple is centered around the iPhone, it's hard for them to make anything that isn't a peripheral of it. The best idea they've had in the last ten years is the Apple Watch, but I'm using Garmin because I don't have an iPhone. The Mac benefited from all the work Apple has done on the iPhone CPU, but the software scene on the Mac has been deteriorating because developers are using the same tools and the same toolkits to…

I got one, a shell you can put your phone in, so you can slide your phone around your desk AS your mouse. It can provide vibration feedback, alerts, sounds, etc. It can use the macro lens and the IMU for tracking its location across the desk. Would also serve as biometric auth for websites.

Prior Art for

    G06F 3/0338 - Computer mice, trackballs or similar devices for computer control
    G06F 3/041 - Digitisers using touch-sensing
    G06F 21/32 - Biometric authentication

See, you can have peripherals tha

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#17

Post by gwervc » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:57 PM UTC

api wrote: post #7

torben-friis wrote: post #4

Apple's adventures in XR are weird. I started my career as a dev working in VR apss. At the time there was consensus in the industry that apple was about to release something huge that would push the whole industry to the mainstream - and indeed you couldn't rely on any new VR/AR product or software without it being silently acquired in months and their website redirecting to apple. Fast forward one decade, nothing's…

I think this is a niche technology that people keep trying to make go mainstream, but most people just don't want it. For most people (including myself) trying VR a little is a novelty, but it's not something I want every day, and AR seems like it'd be useless or annoying unless I were using it in e.g. some industrial context like a heads up display. It's like NFTs in gaming, NFTs in general, AI shoehorned into place…

I think it's a tech advancement issue, just like touch screens wasn't a thing for a very long time while it they were resistive. Then the iPhone came with capacitive touch screen and now they're everywhere. When (if ever) XR won't suck, which could take a decade or two, it will be adopted massively.

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#18

Post by api » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 1:59 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #15

HPsquared wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still just a bit too clunky, like PDAs. Still waiting for an iPhone moment.

The Bigscreen Beyond is getting there in terms of form factor, but it achieves that in part by being a dumb headset which relies on a PC and external tracking beacons to work. There's no free lunch unfortunately, putting the brains in the headset itself is always going to add bulk. https://www.bigscreenvr.com/

A dumb headset is exactly what I'd want. I don't want yet another device with an OS that locks you into someone's f'ing ecosystem or alternately requires me to find apps specifically for it, etc.

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#19

Post by skybrian » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 2:00 PM UTC

m_ke wrote: post #12

This is only semi related but I wonder what will happen to these huge hierarchical orgs when the pace of software development improves by 10-20x thanks to LLMs. How will these risk averse slow moving teams with a ton of process keep up with 100x more tiny teams of engineers who can ship whole features in days instead of months.

When one bottleneck is removed, that usually means the rate of change is bottlenecked somewhere else. Maybe in the release process, or testing?

Or maybe the bottleneck is the willingness of customers to try new things? Risk-adverse customers will often avoid startups. Showing yourself to be trustworthy isn’t purely about the rate of feature development.

If the other bottlenecks can’t be removed easily, instead of 10x features you could end up with fewer software developers.

Re: Apple Scraps Work on Mac-Connected Augmented Reality Glasses

#20

Post by jmyeet » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 2:00 PM UTC

The lesson here is that simply wanting something to be true doesn't make it possible or practical. We also tend to get carried away with sci-fi becoming reality.

You see this constantly where people desperately hope for some form of FTL. They want it to be true and cling to fringe theories because of that.

Companies have been trying to make VR happen for decades. It's not going to happen. Not only do people not want to strap something to their head, there are fundamental technical limitations around latency, true blacks, depth-of-field and what input feels "natural".

People just take Snow Crash and Ready Player One too seriously.

AR is kind of the between of that but it has fundamentaly technical problems and constraints like processing power, energy, true blacks and lag. A true AR experience would have to constantly repaint the overlay as you move your head at incredibly low response time to feel "natural".

Lag will be a major factor with AI chatbots for probably some time to come. The processing loop is basically text to language to embedding into AI model and then converting that token stream to spoken language. That takes time. We're such a long way from something that feels "natural" like talking to another person.