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Every company knows this, the problem is that you can’t fit the compute you need for AR/VR + AI into a form factor like this, at least not right now.
Why can't the glasses be dumb displays streamed to by my phone?
As Carmack (the game guy, head of Oculus, etc.) says, until the headgear gets down to swim goggle size, it's not going to get any traction, and until it gets down to eyeglass size, it's not going mainstream. The Apple Vision Pro was an unexpected dud. Something more eyeglass sized, with phone-like functionality and good design, would have been more in line with Apple's aesthetic. Instead, it was another half brick on…
I think the problem is that VR/AR are such dislocating experiences, so unlike anything else that consumers can’t relate to the technology.
These devices do not follow a technological linage such as TV. First came radio, then cinema and then TVs - each technology gave the consumer a relationship to understand the new technology: TV is like having cinema at home, cinema is like radio with pictures etc
There isn’t this same graduation in technology with VR/AR hence consumers are overwhelmed with this technology and don’t grasp the use cases yet.
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What % of those sales are companies buying them for their employees? It's almost a B2B market. Whereas the Vision Pro is overwhelmingly B2C, at least it will be with the current state of the technology. Hence very different pricing dynamics.
I didn’t say it will sell as much as MacBook Pros as soon as it hits $2000. I’m saying there will be a market. They need to get the weight and price down substantially.
Perhaps, but how is the price or popularity of MacBook pros particularly related to that?
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We can’t even get people to routinely turn a webcam on at most companies existing meetings. Even internally at Meta and Apple, staff aren’t exactly falling over themselves to take meetings in headsets right now. The idea people will be strapping computers to their faces for meetings will “take off in a huge way” any time soon is extremely far fetched for me.
It depends on what you mean by "soon". For sure, it's not happening next year. But within 5 years I think the hardware will get to a point where it's possible, and then within 10 it will be compelling. The "strapping computers to their faces" meme is just stupid hyperbole. It's no more insightful than declaring that nobody wants to stuff a computer into their pocket - when 99% of people now carry smart phones (and mo…
I don't turn my camera on in meetings and it's often "broken", some idiotic headset that my manager forces on me is going to be similarly buggy and "broken"...
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> It doesn’t really solve enough of a “real” problem to justify the current cost Exactly this, for now the minimal use cases for these kinds of high-end VR headsets leave them firmly in the "gimmick" category. I'm pretty sure some mass-market use case will be found for them, maybe even outside of gaming, but the fact that some pretty smart people haven't found this one already is a teensey-tiny bit worrying too.
By what the OP describes, these devices could become a limited but perhaps “profound” replacement for flying thousands of kms to have a holiday. Or to have “power holidays” similar to a Power Nap, where you use an VR/AR device to relive a holiday for 5/10 mins. Or to have “preview holidays” to experience a destination before booking a flight there. If travel agents still existed, then they would be a perfect market f…
A counter point on premium VR headsets. They are teleportation devices. I've used every popular VR device, but one Vision Pro experience stood out - 'The Haleakala environment'[1] It was literally like being transported there. I know because I had been in that exact spot a few years before. I have a rich visual memory which served as reference, and no exaggeration, it felt like was there. I was immediately in tears.…
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Yeah, that’s another good comparison. The Palm equivalent in that comparison would be Fitbit and possibly Pebble. Apple waited until there was a proven market in wearables, then figured out how to combine that market with the strengths of their existing ecosystem to improve upon value. Then they propped up the model line with $$$ until they actually became good enough for people to buy. I’m relatively optimistic they…
They have a long history of ridding the cost curve down, but it’s not that fast. The 2010 iPad was 720$ adjusted for inflation, the current iPad better in basically every way starts at 350$. Original 2007 iPhone would be 908$ inflation adjusted while the iPhone SE is 429$. My guess is it’s either discontinued or the 2040 Vision (non pro) is going to be strictly better in basically every way but still more than 1000$…
> There’s definitely a point where headsets are going to be comfortable enough you can forget they’re there
I would really like to think so, but I am not at all confident that this is will happen.
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its incredible how different the West is to Japan the lack of judeo-christian moral nannyism hardly means a dangerous society but a peaceful one just look at all the accusations on X and calling Japan weird and worse
Are you saying Japan has a more relaxed stance on porn? Don’t they have government mandated censorship of nude images? I would call that more strict, not less.
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There was a time when you didn't "need" a PC, either, and they were seen as just nerd toys and things yuppies used to balance their checkbooks, back when "balancing your checkbook" was a thing you had to do. This changed with the advent of the Web, and held until desktops gave way to smartphones. If you could time-travel back to the 80s and 90s, plenty of folks would have scoffed that anyone would ever "need" a compu…
> If you could time-travel back to the 80s and 90s, plenty of folks would have scoffed that anyone would ever "need" a computer, let alone a computer in their pocket. Is that true? I feel like people have imagined portable communication / computing devices forever[1]. People maybe couldn't imagine that they could ever be small enough to be practical, but the utility of such a device was pretty obvious. Similarly, I t…
Yeah, the visionaries. 90% of the population didn’t, and now they all have smartphones.
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> Or maybe these are just products we don't need? That's exactly it, they're products we don't -need-. If you already have a smartphone, that's good enough. This is the same problem that plagues the AI assistant devices - it doesn't matter what they can do, they won't replace your smartphone. Which means you're asking someone to carry (and pay for) a smartphone + an extra device. That's a big ask. It's also the reaso…
> If you already have a smartphone, that's good enough. Sure, but I don't think nearly enough people are sufficiently critical of their need for a smartphone either; I tend to think of it like cars, we've just allowed ourselves to let these devices service so much our day-to-day tasks that they seem like necessary appendages. If it goes away, we panic and buy another one, never stopping to sit with that absence. If m…
I can’t imagine having to open my wallet every time I want to pay for something. Apple Pay is my favorite feature out of all. Instant communication comes close second. The way we used to live… not being able to ask your partner if we have enough milk in the fridge.