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Apple Vision

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Re: Apple Vision

#121

Post by danpalmer »

samwillis wrote: post #106
danpalmer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way this has cost $35bn. Tech companies label a lot of stuff as R&D, it's almost more likely that the €100B value includes all the macOS/iOS/etc development as well. I expect until the last year or so this has been well under $1bn per year (based on 1000 people at $300k/yr, $300m). This will have ramped up as they begin figuring out mass production, but I'd still be surprised if this is more than single-di…

I think if you start to include the cost of developing Vision OS on top of iOS, and cost of all the custom silicone Apple have in this, then you can approach that figure. They have the advantage that they had a lot of this in place for their portables. Magic did not and had to start from scratch. I suppose it's hard to judge how much of the R&D cost for Apple silicone, their cameras, LiDAR and iOS should be counted a…

If you include the development of iOS and the A/M series chips then sure I guess it gets close, but it seems obvious to me they would have been doing those things anyway.

I guess it depends whether you want an all-in cost to compare to Magic Leap, in which case you could argue that most of the history of Apple has set them up for this – if you want to make a great VR headset, just make the best phone ever first – if you want to make the best phone ever, just make a great personal computer first, just acquire NEXT first, etc. I don't know where you draw the line.

More useful I think is to say what did it cost the companies above what they were already doing. For Magic Leap it's the whole business, for Apple it's not much, for Microsoft it's somewhere in the middle, for Meta it's maybe closer to Magic Leap.

Re: Apple Vision

#122

Post by YA_Scratch »

samwillis wrote: post #51

It's interesting that Magic Leap took $3.5 billion in investment, and had a very similar vision and almost identical demos. But they failed to deliver. I wander what the R and D cost for the Vision Pro is, 10x Magic Leaps investment, $35 billion over last 5 years? Seems plausible... Their total R&D expense is about €100B in same time period.

"Almost identical demoes" I doubt it.

Re: Apple Vision

#123

Post by Jakob »

pavlov wrote: post #61
intev wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> demos that failed to deliver actual user value Does Apple have a a history of doing this? I think that's why people are excited.

Newton, Power Mac Cube, iMac G4 "Sunflower", and solid gold first-gen Apple Watch come to mind as Apple hardware products that failed to live up to the hype. On the software side there are more misses, but also the stakes are lower. It's a great track record for thirty years, of course. All the other big tech companies have graveyards full of half-assed product launches.

Except for the Apple Watch I had all these products. They were some of the best of their time and even hold up today in terms of design and usability.

Your definition of success seems extraordinarily high, if these products were failures. Maybe measured by items sold. But then each of them stands in nearly every single design museum like MoMA, history books, and were clear stepping stones to the Mac mini (cube, sunflower without display), and ipod/phone (newton). So bottom line they were a clear success to Apple’s enormous brand value.

Re: Apple Vision

#124

Post by zwily »

silvestrov wrote: post #116
aqme28 wrote: post #34

All these "relive your memory" videos are incredibly awkward, because of how downright sad it is to strap this on your head during your kid's birthday just to relive it on repeat like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. The real usecase is porn, but they're too tactful to say it.

Even the clip with recording the kids felt awkward as the kids did not ackowledge the presence of the parent at all. It felt they were Photoshopped into an empty movie. Recording using an iPhone would an upgrade as your kids can now much better see your facial expressions and you would be able to turn around to make a "selfie" recording showing both you and the kids in the movie.

There’s lots of rumors that an upcoming iPhone model will include 3D recording.

Re: Apple Vision

#125

Post by shen »

silvestrov wrote: post #104
flappyeagle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s obvious how a 10 second clip scales to 10 minutes or 10 hours or 10 days. You don’t need that much imagination or even a leap of faith. A court side seat to an NBA game is north of $1000. If this creates 20% of the experience it will easily pay for itself in 1 season.

Why would NBA allow for this as they would lose an extreme amount of money if people can get the same experience at home? That would be economic suicide for them. They need to keep the seats being a special experience.

The people who are paying for those seats will still pay for those seats. The people paying for the headset experience would’ve never paid for the seats. Different audience.

Re: Apple Vision

#126

Post by nkingsy »

silvestrov wrote: post #104
flappyeagle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s obvious how a 10 second clip scales to 10 minutes or 10 hours or 10 days. You don’t need that much imagination or even a leap of faith. A court side seat to an NBA game is north of $1000. If this creates 20% of the experience it will easily pay for itself in 1 season.

Why would NBA allow for this as they would lose an extreme amount of money if people can get the same experience at home? That would be economic suicide for them. They need to keep the seats being a special experience.

It may look and sound the same, but no one is accidentally spilling beer in merriment or telling their friends they were there.

It builds the brand. Watching the game on tv is already a far superior way to actually see what’s happening. No different from any other live event, it’s a social experience.

Re: Apple Vision

#127

Post by brookst »

gh02t wrote: post #71
mustacheemperor wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Videogaming seems like such a small market for Apple to chase individually. They make almost as much revenue on airpods every year as Sony has ever sold in PS5s. I feel like I’ve read this comment verbatim in at least one other thread in the last day or so…am I in the vr simulation already?

Isn't apple like one of if not the largest videogame retailers because of the App Store? A quick search suggests they made more money on videogames than Activision Blizzard, Sony, and Microsoft combined in 2019. It's still a big piece of money pie. And with this headset they control both the hardware and software platform so they get to double dip on profits.

Apple makes a lot of money from games on iOS, but nobody would say the iPhone is a gaming device.

I expect the headset to be the same: it will have the GPU power to support games third party devs will make games, Apple will make money from distributing games, and it will still not be considered a gaming platform.

Re: Apple Vision

#128

Post by parthdesai »

pavlov wrote: post #35

"The company was fairly mum about how it planned to make those cameras and its format more widely available, but I am completely serious when I say that I would pay the NBA thousands of dollars to get a season pass to watch games captured in this way. Yes, that’s a crazy statement to make, but courtside seats cost that much or more, and that 10-second clip was shockingly close to the real thing." The author was shown…

MKBHD mentioned the same use case in his video and how he would pay good money to NBA for it. And he used the headset for a good 30 minutes. Maybe it's a valid use case? Have you personally tried the headset to flat out dismiss it?

Re: Apple Vision

#129

Post by YA_Scratch »

thedangler wrote: post #114

I'm definitely not going to be keeping my hands in the air to type on a virtual keyboard. I can tell you right now that won't work and your arms will get too tired. Must be only for minor tasks. But I can't afford the thing anyways so doesn't matter.

It supports the Magic Keyboard and I presume other wireless boards.

Re: Apple Vision

#130

Post by seydor »

My bet would be completely the opposite. No matter how good these devices get they lack in input bandwidth. My keyboard beats all VR , and it seems to easily beat apple's VR too. The headset is clearly targeted to static environments, entertainment. The apps are like ipad apps, looking cute but when people want to do serious work fast, they use a laptop because it has a keyboard. It is overengineered. There are a lot of gimmicks in the device like the 3d avatars which imho are worse than simple zoom chats. We are humans, we like faces. And the (mandatorily positive) reviews from people who used it are not hinting to this new era of computing.

I see this as an early-era Tesla car, but without the long term prospect. A lot of people will buy it because it is expensive. It's something that happens with most apple products

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