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Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

ft.com

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Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#101

Post by PNewling »

cubefox wrote: post #86
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

I am very pessimistic about the future of VR beyond it being super nice for niche cases. But I think there’s something fundamentally good about: 1) Apple taking a stab at it, because it’s the kind of thing where UX really matters and Apple does UX well. 2) Apple not being trapped in the “if we can’t sell a billion of them then why even bother?” mindset that so many other companies get trapped in, often because they’r…

> 2) Apple not being trapped in the “if we can’t sell a billion of them then why even bother?” mindset that so many other companies get trapped in It seems to be the opposite with folding phones. A lot of Android manufacturers releasing them, despite low sales numbers, while Apple apparently thinks: if we can’t sell a billion of them then why even bother?

This is a good counterpoint to what was posed above.

That being said I feel like this is almost the obverse, they have a product that sells well so they don't need to follow each trend that comes out. So they can pick and choose which way they run with things.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#102

Post by cubefox »

RC_ITR wrote: post #8

From the beginning, this product was a very classically Apple strategy of 'let's just take the Next Gen technology, integrate it well, and beat everyone else to market.' Similar to the iPhone 'winning' capacitive touch (or the iPod winning with Toshiba's mini HDD's), Apple plans to 'win' on SOTA hand tracking, camera-based full-color passthrough, face tracking, etc. These are all things that Meta (and the rest) have…

The article includes a (entirely made-up speculative) growth projection, which says it will grow very differently from the iPads.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#103

Post by mcpackieh »

castlecrasher2 wrote: post #93
brookst wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man you really hate this thing! Apple has the luxury of being patient, and the benefit of a developer ecosystem and bottomless funds. This release may or may not be huge (I don’t think it will), but the one after, or the one after that, probably will be. I agree Apple doesn’t know the use cases or customers that will be big for gen 3 in a few years. So what? They didn’t know that for the Watch or iPhone either. The m…

I don't think it's hate, it's simply skepticism. I adopted VR early on with the Vive and have since stopped using it completely, and I'm similarly skeptical that even Apple can pull a VR device off and make it more than a novelty. Still, we'll see if they manage it.

[flagged]

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#104

Post by cubefox »

turnsout wrote: post #27
RC_ITR wrote: post #8

From the beginning, this product was a very classically Apple strategy of 'let's just take the Next Gen technology, integrate it well, and beat everyone else to market.' Similar to the iPhone 'winning' capacitive touch (or the iPod winning with Toshiba's mini HDD's), Apple plans to 'win' on SOTA hand tracking, camera-based full-color passthrough, face tracking, etc. These are all things that Meta (and the rest) have…

Meta is kind of the Xerox PARC of VR, in that they're doing a lot of great research but utterly failing to productize it. Think for example of their work on virtual avatars [0]. That research is FOUR years old but looks about 1000 times better than Apple's "Personas" from visionOS. But Apple will actually ship. [0]: https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-oculus-codec-avatars-vr...

They also had prototypes with a reverse passthrough screen. They didn't ship it likely because they are focused on low cost.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#105

Post by mcpackieh »

troupe wrote: post #62
LegitShady wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oculus were nobodies more or less back then and didn't have apple's supply chain expertise, and even still their devkits were only like $300 USD 10 years ago. I feel like the major cuts are because of lack of hype. I don't think anybody understands if there is a market for this, so nobody is sure how much money to put into developing for it. To me this feels like the first apple product in a long time without a compe…

Apple tends to be good at getting technology into people's hands and then iterating based on the use cases that emerge. The iPhone without being able to write apps for it seemed like a really bad idea at the time, but they were able to iterate quickly and get feedback that let them launch the app store more effectively. Their Vision Pro just needs to get into enough company's hands for people to start exploring what…

> Apple tends to be good at getting technology into people's hands and then iterating based on the use cases that emerge. The iPhone without being able to write apps for it seemed like a really bad idea at the time, but they were able to iterate quickly and get feedback that let them launch the app store more effectively.

The iPod is an even better example, the first three or so versions didn't hit the mark, but with 4G they finally had the right feature set to sell them like hotcakes.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#106

Post by cubefox »

loudmax wrote: post #26
RC_ITR wrote: post #8

From the beginning, this product was a very classically Apple strategy of 'let's just take the Next Gen technology, integrate it well, and beat everyone else to market.' Similar to the iPhone 'winning' capacitive touch (or the iPod winning with Toshiba's mini HDD's), Apple plans to 'win' on SOTA hand tracking, camera-based full-color passthrough, face tracking, etc. These are all things that Meta (and the rest) have…

The Vision Pro looks like a lot of fun but I'm not sure what the use case is. Unlike the iPhone, this is clearly an indoor device, not an AR system to navigate around town. It seems a much more immersive desktop experience, but are you really going to be more productive using AR than a 4k monitor or two? Maybe so, but I wouldn't take that for granted until people start actually using these for work. It does seem like…

It seems they are really against VR gaming. No controllers, nothing shown in the announcement video. They apparently really want to focus on their immersive AR desktop. But who wants to pay $3500+ for ... floating screens?

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#107

Post by brookst »

mcpackieh wrote: post #103
castlecrasher2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's hate, it's simply skepticism. I adopted VR early on with the Vive and have since stopped using it completely, and I'm similarly skeptical that even Apple can pull a VR device off and make it more than a novelty. Still, we'll see if they manage it.

[flagged]

Please lay off the ad hominems. And read the other posts that led me to characterize their view as hate.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#108

Post by mcpackieh »

gruez wrote: post #76
PavleMiha wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculating, but Apple wanted to make sure that the only people photographed using the headset were models and actors who are very attractive. That way whenever a news outlet runs a story about it, they have to use the picture of the attractive/cool people using it, and people make an association that the headset makes people attractive/cool.

Surely there are attractive/cool looking journalists?

Telling journalists that their young colleague is allowed to have their picture taken but they cannot because they're too old and frumpy doesn't sound like a good way to get positive coverage for your product. Easier to forbid pictures of anybody using it than to make a policy of judging journalists by their physical appearance.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#109

Post by mcpackieh »

brookst wrote: post #107
mcpackieh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please lay off the ad hominems. And read the other posts that led me to characterize their view as hate.

Please take your own advice. I've reviewed his four comments in this discussion and none of them contain emotional language strong enough to characterize as indicative of hate.

Re: Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans

#110

Post by turnsout »

l33tman wrote: post #67
turnsout wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they only beat people to market in the sense that once they release a product, everyone else realizes that's what the product should be and creates variations on it—so in hindsight it looks like Apple's take is the "first."

Which is weird because with the vision pro is not really any "first", they are incrementally doing a lot of things a bit better. My stupid guess is they probably worked for so long on this that they figured they have to ship something and see what sticks. It's cool that they do, of course. But the use-cases displayed in the demo video are just weird, not what I expected apple to come up with.. you don't buy a ski-mas…

I have a lot of the same skepticism, but then I was also skeptical about the Apple Watch, and I'm wearing one now! That original Apple Watch was RIGHT at the edge of being a usable product. It was so slow and had so many connection issues.

My guess/hope about the 3D videos is that they'll bring 3D capture to the iPhone. For conference calls, I can sort of see the value—I might actually prefer being an avatar so I can sit on the couch and have plenty of room to open multiple documents and Slack threads.

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