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First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

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Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#211

I don't understand why there is no AR or VR killer app for this thing. Their sales pitch was "it makes it amazing to read articles in safari"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYkq9Rgoj8E&t=5410s $3500 to... look at a floating web browser? Surely they can come up with something. Give me UV/IR vision, let me see the pipes under the ground, show me how to assemble the furniture I'm looking at, give me a template to pain…

The first iPhone was pretty crappy. No apps. 2G only. Poor battery life. Limited global distribution - not even Canada could get it. But it captivated people who didn’t own it yet, and it proved out some essential ideas like multitouch. And when the iPhone 3G came out, improving on some of the original device’s shortcomings, it was wildly popular. The rest is history.

There is no doubt that AR will eventually get good enough that the devices are paper thin, weigh nothing, and have no external battery (of course). Everyone wants _that_ device, but you have to start somewhere. Apple can afford to be patient in this space and their considerable moat of intellectual property will allow them to carve out the high end of the AR market and then work down as they did with iPhone.

It would not surprise me if they are earning 90% of the gross margins in the AR device space within three years.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#212
Target market : young people (so not the majority of commentators)

Target market : rich people (again...)

Enterprise market : military / financial services & trading / cyber defence

I think that they will hit the intersection of rich and young; and they will also get traction from their enterprise niches. This will create a beach head for developers and an onramp that doens't rely on someone just pouring money into it all endlessly.

If the market doesn't grow and evolve then it'll be clear that consumers don't want this, there will be no excuses like "wait for better kit, better designs, a functioning market"...

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But people still do shoot movies There are at least 1,000 books written for every movie shot, even including material shot by amateurs with their phones. Figures range from 500,000 to one million books published annually. However, if you include self-published authors you’re looking at close to 4 million new book titles published each year.

Yes but what's your point? The movie market is comparable to the book market , probably larger. The video game market is much larger than both combined. Therefore the effort people put into making the complicated products (movies, games) pay off despite the initial expense.

> The movie market is comparable to the book market, probably larger

Only for a handful of titles though.

Most movies lose money, they sell very little if not nothing at all.

Most books don't sell as well, but it costed a very tiny fraction of the cost of a movie production to publish them.

It's mostly a single person in their homes in their spare time.

> Therefore the effort people put into making the complicated products pay off despite the initial expense

The initial point was that most can't afford the more complicated products, but can still produce useful low tech manuals. It's doubtful that the high tech version of the manual would drive more sales, because the product in this case is not the manual, but the furniture (or whatever else).

The AR/VR manual could cost more than the actual product to make.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#214
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will buy it for my entire team just for the video conferencing - assuming it is actually as good as promised, of course. Anything beyond that is gravy.

Having to wear this for Zoom calls would be some kind of wagie humiliation ritual

If it doesn’t blow me away, I won’t do it. But I think it will blow me away. Apple rarely disappoints on the experience by the time they launch something, in my experience anyhow.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#215
post #208

I don't understand why there is no AR or VR killer app for this thing. Their sales pitch was "it makes it amazing to read articles in safari"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYkq9Rgoj8E&t=5410s $3500 to... look at a floating web browser? Surely they can come up with something. Give me UV/IR vision, let me see the pipes under the ground, show me how to assemble the furniture I'm looking at, give me a template to pain…

Two large screens in a hotel room - so sold (plus on a plane, if that's not socially annoying) Being able to stand side by side with people to work on something rather than broadcast my face into their face. It's just... so much more natural. All of the social cues like concentration, wandering away to think, nodding your head along with a group conversation you stumble upon and are now actively engaged in. If I can…

It's 4k per eye. That's great compared to current headsets, but please remember that the screen of your normal screen likely already has 4k, and that's just a rectangle a few cm of everything you see. The 4k per eye means that it's likely going to be It could be great, but productivity will likely need over 4k per eye to be anything beyond a novelty.

Depending on how the hardware develops, it could become something great for sure. most people calling it a novelty are taking about the device as it's been announced, not the theoretical future it could potentially have if it was different.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#216

I don't understand why there is no AR or VR killer app for this thing. Their sales pitch was "it makes it amazing to read articles in safari"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYkq9Rgoj8E&t=5410s $3500 to... look at a floating web browser? Surely they can come up with something. Give me UV/IR vision, let me see the pipes under the ground, show me how to assemble the furniture I'm looking at, give me a template to pain…

Safari was the killer app for the iPhone and iPad & it’s where people spend an awful lot of their time.

This is a general purpose computing device, so seeing it have a great browser setup is a big deal.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#217
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a reported rumour prior to the reveal yesterday: no significant use case. This is a significant departure from Apple's usual MO: find a USP and NAIL the implementation. They're using a scattergun approach here and it's risky. They better be sending these headsets free of charge to thousands of studios in the hopes that some of them develop THE killer app, because this is the only way I see this succeeding. E…

I will buy it for my entire team just for the video conferencing - assuming it is actually as good as promised, of course. Anything beyond that is gravy.

I can't imagine how it could possibly be any good for video conferencing.

Why don't they just have an iPad and digital avatars? Then you don't need to strap goggles to your head for an identical experience.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#218
I think I’m noticing what people do all the time with Apple launches, not listen to the marketing. They told you exactly where they’re positioning this. Spatial computing. Not quite tvOS not quite iPadOS. If they’re lucky this is the watch all over again. If they’re truly lucky, this the new iPlatform. I’m just excited they’ve now confirmed this will be a market for at least another decade. I am bummed to see though that it is a queued release and not a global preorder.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>. am i REALLY that old? am i taking crazy pills? What you are, is snarky. The only times Apple ever did this in the past, the product flopped because it was too expensive. Maybe other companies have been leading with expensive tech waiting for the market to catch up, but Apple hasn't - not since the Lisa anyway. And yes I am on old fogey - ol enough to remember that the industry has been waiting for consumers to "c…

> Ordinary people don't want to put a VR headset on - they just don't. Why not? Because it's heavy, sweaty, smelly, expensive, uncomfortable for the eyes, or some other reason? I doubt people have real ideological aversion towards headsets. If people don't want them it's probably because of one of the practical reasons above. And honestly most of those are likely to be alleviated in the near future.

Why are you so hopeful any of these will be fixed in anything like the near future? Phones have been working to reduce weight per FLOPS for more than a decade, and you can only do so much - and you need many more FLOPS for VR. Similarly, the need to keep these screens glued in place relative to your eyes, and to use complex electro-mechanical optics in addition to the screens, put quite a strict limit on how comfortable or small they can physically be. Batteries only add to this, and weight-to-power ratio for batteries is progressing at a snail's pace.

I'd bet that if Apple thought in any way that they might have a sunscreen form-factor device in anything close to 5 years from now they would have held off on releasing anything to the public.

All signs 100% point to bulky headsets being the state-of-the-art for the foreseeable future, and this is going to keep dooming this technology.

Not to mention, the fact that no one has really found a good way to allow you to move around in the VR "space" that they're creating with anything other than a controller (to an extremely disorienting effect even then) also puts a serious damper on our ability to suspend disbelief while enjoying such a device.

Re: First impressions: Yes, Apple Vision Pro works and yes, it’s good

#220
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to wear this for Zoom calls would be some kind of wagie humiliation ritual

If it doesn’t blow me away, I won’t do it. But I think it will blow me away. Apple rarely disappoints on the experience by the time they launch something, in my experience anyhow.

If my company forced me to attend meetings in a glorified metaverse I'd probably resign.
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