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Apple’s new headset meets reality

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Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#151

Post by deet »

bredren wrote: post #118
tguedes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is hard to not compare the breakthrough product release count between Jobs and Cook. If that is the measure, then we have to bring in Jobs' tenure as not only CEO but company founder that stretched 25 years as CEO, 1976 to 1985 and 1997 to 2011. Cook only took the reins in 2011, and at that time arguably the company should not have focused on releasing yet more revolutionary products. iPhone is the most successful…

I strongly doubt that the campus is any more of a force multiplier than a collection of far cheaper class A office buildings of similar capacity, with similarly serene grass and vegetation connecting them.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#152

Post by zmmmmm »

themagician wrote: post #145
zmmmmm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the perplexing things about Quest Pro is that Meta keeps the default UI rendering at the same scale for the Pro as for the Quest 2. The result is that all the home environments look blurry and poorly antialiased. It's hard to judge the lenses themselves properly actually without connecting it to PCVR mode and looking at some ultra high resolution content there. It really is very impressive when you do that.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#153

Post by ska »

ethbr0 wrote: post #113
nerdjon wrote: post #37

I continue to believe that IF (and that is a big if) anyone can make AR/VR a mainstream market it would be Apple. Just for the simple fact that Apple has in multiple occasions done 2 things: 1. Come out with something that shapes the rest of the industry. I mean how many times has Apple done something and within a year or 2 basically the entire industry follows. 2. Not captured a large (or majority) percent but conti…

A study of futurism I read made the insightful observation that things which explode in popularity don't just do things differently -- they let you do new things. Apple II - graphical OS iPod - music in your pocket iPhone - smartphone with cellular data iPad - large screen low cost iWatch - phone functionality on wrist These are all different in kind, not different in amount products. What does AR allow you to do, th…

I think that is shortsighted. If you could realize a futurists dream of AR, i.e. smooth overly interacting properly with anything in your view, with context aware detail etc, it would pretty clearly be a game changer (I think).

On the other hand, existing AR, like existing VR, just doesn't deliver on that promise, not even approximately.

With current tech, it's more an issue that the juice isn't worth the squeeze. That can change when either (or both) side of the equation changes.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#154

Post by nvarsj »

themagician wrote: post #145
zmmmmm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you mean by blurry? Like screen door effect? If it's actually blurry, likely the IPD is wrong or you haven't positioned the headset correctly. Although, I suppose it would be great for the lenses to auto position themselves based on pupil location.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#155

Post by HDThoreaun »

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.

and the $800 wheels?

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#156

Post by cma »

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.

What about the stand?

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#157

Post by nvarsj »

yayr wrote: post #148
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 on…

I don't think casual users care at all about graphic quality. Just look at how the Switch or Wii exploded over every other game console. Same thing for games like Roblox. Graphic quality is purely an enthusiast niche target. If you want mass adoption you need to fix comfort and nausea.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#158

Post by HDThoreaun »

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…

I guess I'm weird, but I came out of ready player one thinking I'd enjoy it.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#159

Post by themagician »

zmmmmm wrote: post #152
themagician wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the perplexing things about Quest Pro is that Meta keeps the default UI rendering at the same scale for the Pro as for the Quest 2. The result is that all the home environments look blurry and poorly antialiased. It's hard to judge the lenses themselves properly actually without connecting it to PCVR mode and looking at some ultra high resolution content there. It really is very impressive when you do that.

It’s not. That’s the fanboy “Maybe you got a bad sample,” or “You’re just using it wrong,” angle. Every VR headset has one. Apple will no doubt adopt this strategy if their headset is garbage. I mean, they’ve done it before.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#160

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

ethbr0 wrote: post #113
nerdjon wrote: post #37

I continue to believe that IF (and that is a big if) anyone can make AR/VR a mainstream market it would be Apple. Just for the simple fact that Apple has in multiple occasions done 2 things: 1. Come out with something that shapes the rest of the industry. I mean how many times has Apple done something and within a year or 2 basically the entire industry follows. 2. Not captured a large (or majority) percent but conti…

A study of futurism I read made the insightful observation that things which explode in popularity don't just do things differently -- they let you do new things. Apple II - graphical OS iPod - music in your pocket iPhone - smartphone with cellular data iPad - large screen low cost iWatch - phone functionality on wrist These are all different in kind, not different in amount products. What does AR allow you to do, th…

I don't think any of those are true.

The Apple II OS wasn't graphical. The hardware had very simple colour, which made it stand out.

Mac was graphical, but it was a productised/commodified version of someone else's R&D.

Nokia's Communicator range had cellular data long before the iPhone was a thing. What iPhone did differently was - again - productise and commodify existing technologies to create something that was more than the sum of its components. Touch was the biggest part of that, but the App Store really killed the competition.

iPads were never particularly low cost. There were numerous tablets before the iPad. The iPad difference was - again - touch. And the App Store.

iWatch wrist phone may be true, but I suspect it's not the main use case. (I've yet to see anyone talking into an iWatch. I'm sure it happens, but not nearly as often as phone conversations do.)

The common factor - apart from iWatch - is taking/blending existing tech and packaging it into an accessible non-nerdy form with obvious and instant mass market appeal. And creating a vibrant developer ecosystem around it. And adding design stylings that make the product cool.

That's exactly what this display project doesn't have. Even if it does its job well it has no obvious instant applications.

And clamping a rubber facehugger to your head is the opposite of cool.

It may have mass appeal after version 4 or 5 when it's closer to the ideal of stylish glasses with a supporting ecosystem. But I suspect version 1 is going to have a very limited market.

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