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Apple’s new headset meets reality

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Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#221

Post by captaincaveman »

cubefox wrote: post #202
criddell wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think consumers just don’t want to spend a lot of money on VR And I don’t think Apple wants those people as customers, at least not initially. $3000 for a headset from a company that sells $1000 monitor stands for $5000 monitors and $500 wheels for the computers doesn’t seem about right to me. In a year or two, the next generation of VR headset will be much better and still $3000 and you will be able to buy this…

All the expensive VR headsets sold terribly, except for the cheap Oculus Quest. The lesson seems clear: When it comes to VR, people strongly favor price over quality. Which in turn suggests the Apple headset will fail. VR is perhaps like the original Game Boy: Not very powerful, no color screen, but low price and long battery life. It sold a lot, unlike the competition.

Actually it was also that it was standalone and no wires.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#222

Post by smoldesu »

yayr wrote: post #183
SXX wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is: Apple mostly ruined their relationship with Epic, Meta and even Valve. Whatever excellent VR tech they come up with will be mostly ignored by the game industry. Good part of iPhone / iPad success was due to the excellent apps ecosystem. Who gonna make VR experiences for Apple new VR ecosystem? F2P game companies? I guess they won't be interested either because Apple will try to bite off a lot of profits f…

Let's see. Unreal Engine can build for Apple Silicon. So any game dev can make his choice himself. Unity and others are also there as good frameworks. More importantly, Apple did not ruin relationsships with Media companies. I'd love to see some more VR concerts or other events. Meta totally failed at scaling this.

The most important thing is frameworks. No joke, nothing is currently stopping Apple from making a headset that ships with support for Half Life: Alyx. If they support DXVK at a protocol level and ship a Wine runtime like the Steam Deck does, they could support Beat Saber, Tabletop Sim and VRChat without their developers even knowing.

But they won't. As-is, Apple's insistence on iron-fisting their ecosystem is hurting them greatly. It's the reason gaming on Mac died, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the reason inferior headsets outsell the Apple one 10:1.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#223

Post by cubefox »

ok_dad wrote: post #211
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…

PSVR2 is only $550 for an amazing headset and people still complain about the price.

Yeah. I think Carmack said even the Quest was still too expensive.

The PSVR2 has the additional problem that it requires a PS5. It's not a standalone system. That's like a Game Boy for which you need to own an NES. Or like a Wii U console, where the tablet controller wasn't a standalone system, and which flopped, in contrast to the Switch.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#224

Post by cubefox »

Dalewyn wrote: post #220
ok_dad wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSVR2 is only $550 for an amazing headset and people still complain about the price.

I'd pay $200 tops for a VR headset (not that I'd buy one even then...), given how jank the experience is, how much money I would spend to power and use the bloody thing anyway, and how quickly it will become antiquated. Anything more for something that is essentially a short-lived toy is a fool's errand. Fool in this case meaning someone with more money than they know what to do with. I'd get better value from a Loui…

I wouldn't say that. A For example, I think a 300 USD standalone gaming console could be the next Game Boy, or the next Switch, in terms of sales numbers. The benfit/price ratio just has to be good enough and it could really take off. Even with fairly primitive graphics.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#225

Post by parksoha »

zamnos wrote: post #175
deet wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that, dear reader, is how we ended up with hundreds of bland copy-cat Android phones to the iPhone. There's something to be said, mentally, for working somewhere that's inspiring. A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks, buried in office-park-landia of San Jose, is not it. Even a stroll through the secret underground parking lot at Apple is inspiring with all the exotic cars that are owned by…

I feel like engineers and all the math-y sciences, especially male, tend to dismiss very easily aesthetics over functionality.

I was once like that. Until I get over my anxiety and started to hang out more with girls. Especially from the arts and languages side.

The way they choose their environments… where they go to eat out or have a coffee, the clothing they wear, buying flowers, how they setup their home…

Even when I was down, being in their environments just made me feel more cozy. It was heartwarming.

In contrast, most of my engineer friends have either literally a mattress and a desk. Or, they just buy for their house whatever, without any thought in regards to color pallete, textures, shape, etc

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#226

Post by zamnos »

Turskarama wrote: post #205
zmmmmm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's a wild thing to go for, the demonstrated usefulness of VR/AR in business is still very niche. The vast majority of businesses will simply have no use for them, and those that do have a use for them will likely buy them in single digit volumes.

Say Walmart finds a use for a VR/AR headset. I really doubt they are going to buy fewer than 10 headsets.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#227

Post by zmmmmm »

Turskarama wrote: post #205
zmmmmm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's a wild thing to go for, the demonstrated usefulness of VR/AR in business is still very niche. The vast majority of businesses will simply have no use for them, and those that do have a use for them will likely buy them in single digit volumes.

> The vast majority of businesses will simply have no use for them

That type of ultra confident assertion is the sort of thing that usually turns out to be the faulty assumption when breakthrough technologies happen. People struggle to imagine the future reality where something's value add is far outside their experience.

How many businesses have computer monitors? I'd say that's the number that have a use for an ultra high resolution headset that does the same thing. Is it better? I don't know. It has advantages and disadvantages. Is it worth the cost? I don't know. But if you are going to tell me they have no use for it then I'm going to strongly disagree.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#228

Post by sushisource »

zamnos wrote: post #175
deet wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that, dear reader, is how we ended up with hundreds of bland copy-cat Android phones to the iPhone. There's something to be said, mentally, for working somewhere that's inspiring. A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks, buried in office-park-landia of San Jose, is not it. Even a stroll through the secret underground parking lot at Apple is inspiring with all the exotic cars that are owned by…

I hope you got paid to write that. I switched from an Android to an iPhone recently and it is precisely 0% cooler or "more inspiring" than my old phone. I did it purely because password auto-fill appears to be marginally more reliable.

Not that Apple is a bad company or place to work or anything, but it also isn't some magic zen garden that will imbue all who work there with the power to change the world.

For 90%+ of the people who go to work there, it's a job, and the scenery changing that equation meaningfully seems like wishful thinking. It might be nice, but it's not going to radically alter your output.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#229

Post by eternalban »

zamnos wrote: post #175
deet wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that, dear reader, is how we ended up with hundreds of bland copy-cat Android phones to the iPhone. There's something to be said, mentally, for working somewhere that's inspiring. A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks, buried in office-park-landia of San Jose, is not it. Even a stroll through the secret underground parking lot at Apple is inspiring with all the exotic cars that are owned by…

> A shitty office in yet a clone of all the other office parks

https://www.macworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Jons-and...

I'm pretty sure (strike that, am certain) the secret sauce is not the office.

Re: Apple’s new headset meets reality

#230

Post by Dalewyn »

cubefox wrote: post #224
Dalewyn wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd pay $200 tops for a VR headset (not that I'd buy one even then...), given how jank the experience is, how much money I would spend to power and use the bloody thing anyway, and how quickly it will become antiquated. Anything more for something that is essentially a short-lived toy is a fool's errand. Fool in this case meaning someone with more money than they know what to do with. I'd get better value from a Loui…

I wouldn't say that. A For example, I think a 300 USD standalone gaming console could be the next Game Boy, or the next Switch, in terms of sales numbers. The benfit/price ratio just has to be good enough and it could really take off. Even with fairly primitive graphics.

$300~500 bucks for a game console sounds reasonable to me, downright cheap even since a gaming desktop or laptop would easily go into the 4 digits.

But with regards to VR headsets? Even $200 sounds too expensive if I were to be brutally honest, but I surmise going even lower would mean whoever makes the bloody thing won't even be able to cover the cost of materials so I'll compromise.

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