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Apple’s new headset meets reality

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Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#141

Post by thefourthchime »

tguedes wrote: post #110
bredren wrote: post #80

>underscoring the narrative that the company’s biggest victories were initiated under his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs What does the author consider to be a victory? Tim Cook was elevated because he had the operational capability to grow Apple. Jobs did not consider Cook to be a product design person. But Jobs trusted Cook to find and keep people who could design products. By any stretch of the imaginatio…

Absolutely. Between Apple Silicon, Apple Watch, AirPods, and scaling operations to be able to sell the amount of products they do in a year, that is hard to argue against being an overwhelming success for Tim Cook as CEO. Is it equal to the legacy of Apple under Jobs? Definitely not. But how many other companies/people released 3 revolutionary products?

Don't forget air tags.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#142

Post by anonymouse008 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #132
pdabbadabba wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "phone functionality on wrist" counts as a "different in kind" product, why on earth wouldn't "smartphone functionality without looking down at a smartphone, watch, or other device" qualify? For that matter, if "smartphone with cellular data" counts, why not "smart glasses with cellular data and apps"? As you can tell, I'm a skeptic of this difference in kind v. difference in quantity construct.

wrist : insideOfPocket is more different than wrist : eyes Or, to put it another way, how many people do you know who complain about the difficulty in looking at their wrist or cell phone? That's the count of people for whom AR glasses would be different in kind.

> Or, to put it another way, how many people do you know who complain about the difficulty in looking at their wrist or cell phone?

Everyone who tries to speak a text message with Siri. Apple should have been brave and not reshaped messages - that screen is not meant to consume text messages at any length - they should have changed the communication to match the context.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#143

Post by MobiusHorizons »

treis wrote: post #87
wintermutestwin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR anymore - if there ever really was. All it takes is a killer app to come along. AR music instrument instruction is my bet. If Apple released this one app along with the glasses it would become a massive hit.

Driving, I think. Google maps overlayed onto the real world is pretty killer. Maybe night vision delivered as an IR image overlay.

I really hope it's not legal to drive while wearing a consumer AR headset. You would need to guarantee the device can't fail in ways that block important parts of your vision, and also prove that it is not a distraction hazard (which seems impossible)

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#144

Post by bink »

adt wrote: post #123

This thread is amazing, and has shades of the original iPod and iPhone launch [1,2] commentary. I can't believe that people would go on permanent written record with this stuff, but humans gotta human! 1. iPod launch thread on macrumors: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5... 2. iPhone launch thread on macrumors: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-announces-the-iph...

Mac Rumors forums seems to be dominated by people who hate Apple. I have no idea what possesses people to join a forum where they hate everything the company does, but it's very prevalent on all types of content there.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#145

Post by themagician »

zmmmmm wrote: post #140
themagician wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the pancake lenses in the Quest Pro? Those are still what I'd consider garbage tier old tech. Probably the best we are going to get down the path of fixed focal point acrylic lenses, but definitely not what I'd call sharp edge to edge. The edges might qualify as "very soft" instead of "totally out of focus" but that's about the best you can say.

Quest Pro is probably the leading example yes. If you're calling that garbage, then I think you're (a) setting impossibly high standards and (b) out of sync with most people's perception, as most people perceive these has having "edge to edge clarity".

Oddly enough, the reason I have so many VR headsets is because I mostly give demos to non-tech people. Quest Pro still gets the, "Pretty cool, but why is it so blurry," comments. Not as much as other headsets, but still enough that it will never fly for general use. Meta, to their credit, does a good job of masking the poor optics by keeping texture detail to a minimum in their own software and encouraging developers to do the same.

I think people really into VR get so used to looking around with their head and having low expectations that they don't notice just how poor it is. By comparison it's good. In isolation, not so much.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#146

Post by screye »

pb7 wrote: post #89
screye wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't think society currently has an appetite for a $3000 product Apple currently sells a pair of 500$ headphones and a 5000$ monitor. High margin products that are sold as fashion to their top fans is Apple's thing. They will need one killer app and a sleek enough package, and those are the main bottle necks. The money is hardly an issue. Technologically, Apple has the distinct advantage of having the best power e…

Do you think the monitor is $5,000 because of high margins? It’s not. It’s arguably a bargain for its target demographic.

Apple doesn't make money by selling to their target demographic. They make money by convincing buyers that they need a $5,000 monitor to do work that certainly does not require it.

I can bet that most people and companies buying the pro-display XDR don't need that level of color calibration to do their job well. But as long as Apple is the most fashionable brand, they can convince people into thinking that's exactly what they need.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#147

Post by zmmmmm »

cubefox wrote: post #138

From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware: Portable and with external cameras to allow for orientation and "mixed reality". Maybe Apple is on the right track here, since the Oculus Quest has sold more units than all the other VR headsets combined. But there is one big difference: Apple's headset will be a very expensive premium product (a…

it's all a question of what you use it for.

If you use it for a high value application then a high price isn't a barrier. The fundamentals that are shifting here are: (a) Apple is going to push a massive increase in quality (b) Apple is accessing a different market - cashed up professionals

So the real question here is, does the increase in quality get it into a space where new high value applications become viable.

For me, it would only have to be equal or better than using a physical monitor and that would probably justify its value. The fact I could just go anywhere and a full multi-monitor setup with me would be enough.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#148

Post by yayr »

cubefox wrote: post #138

From the information available so far, the Apple headset will be fairly close to Meta's Oculus Quest in terms of hardware: Portable and with external cameras to allow for orientation and "mixed reality". Maybe Apple is on the right track here, since the Oculus Quest has sold more units than all the other VR headsets combined. But there is one big difference: Apple's headset will be a very expensive premium product (a…

I think with respect to compute/GPU capability the Apple headset will be vastly superior. One of the major issues with the Quest is the lack of graphics quality that can be brought to the virtual environments. Unless you run it via Link to a PC with a top end GPU it is just a toy. Having VR experiences like the recent Unreal Engine provides is simply orders of magnitude away for Quest in the current state... Thats one major reason that this thing does not take off for FB

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#149

Post by ska »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #117
themagician wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it comes down to optics. I've tried damn near every VR headset ever made, including many that never made it to production, and they all suffer from the same core issue: poor optics. Even industrial headsets that costs thousands are still using flat screen and lenses with fixed focal points (with few exceptions, but even then nothing truly extraordinary). Current optical designs mean that there is a large out o…

This is true - but let me say this, you couldn’t pay me to wear an Apple Watch all day and you won’t be able to pay me to wear a headset. There’s just no dang reason to use these things like their creators want. Someone needs to be brave in these organizations and say “hey look, we tried pushing Siri for years and never gained the loved adoption that chatGPT has, why are we trying the same strategy here?” If the comp…

> you couldn’t pay me to wear an Apple Watch all day

That's your preference, but it's clear that lots of people not just willingly, but enthusiastically do this; makes this an odd example. Likewise Siri/Alexa I guess - I would never use them but some people do dozens of times a day and love it.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#150

Post by Animats »

crooked-v wrote: post #98
Animats wrote: post #81

"Apple’s ambition is that customers will eventually wear the device continuously all day, replacing daily tasks done on an iPhone or a Mac such as playing games, browsing the web, emailing, doing FaceTime video calls while collaborating in apps, working out and even meditating. It will feature hand and eye control and run many of the kinds of apps found on Apple’s other devices." This concept has been well-explored i…

The hypothetical dystopia you've invented here doesn't follow at all from even the worst behavior of the actual Apple company. Why do you assume that "having an app floating around in your field of vision" is automatically the same thing as "80% of your visual field filled with ads"?

> The hypothetical dystopia you've invented here doesn't follow at all from even the worst behavior of the actual Apple company.

It takes a while to get there. Google started out ad-free. Google Search has now achieved "80% of your visual field filled with ads". Apple used to be ad-free. No longer.[1]

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/apple-reportedly-plans-to-pu...

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