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Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

macrumors.com

381–390 of 543 posts

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#381
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can you vacation for $1000?

From Europe, a 1 week package holiday in Thailand with flight+resort hotel included is $1000.

Link?

I really doubt this is true, I'm European and check this kind of stuff often.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe you but until the price range becomes below $1000 or so there’s virtually no market. It’s a toy. People don’t need a teleportation device. It’s fun to play with, like a toy. It doesn’t really solve enough of a “real” problem to justify the current cost. It’s also too expensive to be given as a holiday or birthday gift by most family members. I believe the “just give it a few years thing” but only if…

I think it will have a market at $2000. MacBook Pros are 50% of Mac sales and they start at $2000.

MBPs are overwhelmingly bought by businesses for their employees.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that I don’t really see the Vision Pro as Palm OS. Palm OS was out for years and years and was really successful, all things considered. Sure, it wasn’t as ubiquitous as iOS or Android now, but it obviously filled a niche for a large enough number of people that it stuck around and pioneered that market. I had a Kyocera 6035 Palm “smartphone” over half a decade before the iPhone came out, and the Handspr…

My hope is that the Vision Pro is like the Apple Watch. It launched without a clear idea of why people would buy it--originally Apple tried to sell their bland aluminum box as a fashion accessory--and it was only after multiple iterations that they found out health and fitness was the main appeal and focused on it. If they pay attention to how people do use VR headsets, maybe they can do that again.

> originally Apple tried to sell their bland aluminum box as a fashion accessory--and it was only after multiple iterations that they found out health and fitness was the main appeal and focused on it.

Wristwatch fitness trackers had already established this as baseline market fit long before Apple. The benefit of the Apple Watch for me is to not have to carry a phone in my pocket and still be able to do smartphone things like message, pay for things, or even make calls if I need to. Then the pandemic needed you to scan QR codes to do contract calls, and then normalized QR codes for restaurant orders, so I'm back to the phone and my watch gathers dust.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#385
post #40

Honestly, this is a shame, because I think a lot of the vision pro's flaws are Apple problems. That said, meta seems to have found a sweet spot in price/performance, so maybe in a few generations we will have something with the quality of vision pro that is not locked down

It's not a sweet spot. It's less then 10 million MAU over 5 years for about $40 billion dollars. How is that a sweet spot. If you can't get 10 million MAUs in 5 years for $40 billion dollars, you're a failure. Quest is a failure. AVP being an even bigger failure doesn't make Quest a success.

What is the goal of quest? Is it to get mau? Is it sales and marketing for eng (come work at _, where we have fun projects like these Glasses - sounds familiar), is it to develop and flex hardware muscles? Is it to make sure Meta is competitive if/when there is a paradigm shift away from mobile?

I think Mark is thrilled to have a hardware product that they can deploy their ML models to. Was that intentional? Obviously no, but at some point they're paying for optionality.

They want the option to build a million hardware units in a year, they want the option to build a competitor to Apple's next hardware device (frankly, in the counterfactual that AVP took off, Meta was extremely well-positioned)

Meta is a money-printing machine, and so they have choices: invest in moonshot hardware (or ai) projects, stock buybacks/dividends

They have a huge dividend. What do you want them to do? More stock buybacks? Make less money?

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#386
I have been bearish on VR, but could never overcome motion sickness. This obviously puts a limit on viable content types for me.

Can anyone speak to any differences in motion sickness between VR and Apple’s implementation of AR/MR?

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#387
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how didnt porn run this over? honestly porn did advances the internet because it, and gaming, was THE usecase for most people. youtube etc wasnt there at the time it was porn and games. And porn and games should be the reason why VR shall sell

I think porn prefers open tooling so that it is less likely to be banned. Going inside Apple's walled garden is probably more risky in that regard and also there's only a small consumer base. There are plenty of VR apps in this category available for PC-connected headsets. You can find tons of them on Steam or Patreon.

Small consumer base for porn or for the current $3000 apple headset?

The immersion is really good.

Apple would never allow it in their ecosystem, but OnlyFans + immersive VR could sell very well.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#388
post #53

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.…

When I look at the commonality between all the successful consumer electronics, it's really about how easily they fit into people's lives. The AirPods and Apple Watch were two of the most recent smash hits because they are an improvement on what existed before

For me to watch a video on a phone, tablet, laptop, or TV is easy. Turn on screen. Play video. With wedding photos, you can make them your phone screen background, you can printout photos and put them on your wall, they fit into your life.

With VR, I have to blind myself to my surroundings, I have to either not move around sitting perfectly still or clear out a bunch of space. What has become more popular in recent years is Podcasting and a huge reason why is because how nonintrusive it is, you can listen to a podcast doing the dishes or on your way to work. VR is the opposite of nonintrusive.

I feel the immersion of VR is what's holding it back, not why it will be successful. It's only when mixed reality takes off that I think we're going to see a big change.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#389

It has been clear from fairly early on the AVP should never have launched - it just has no reason to exist. I cannot escape thinking there must have been some internal argument where the choices ended up as kill the project or release what we have, and the latter was chosen because it was seen to be easier. Let’s face it, without Zuck’s personal interest reality labs would have gone years ago. It is one thing for com…

> the choices ended up as kill the project or release what we have Yeah, kill the project would have made the shareholders very displeased. I don't think what Apple has is incomplete, VR is just not all that. Immersion for most people is like a roller coaster — fun for a bit but who wants to ride all day?

It would be great to have a personal rollercoaster at home.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#390
post #53

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.…

" This is PalmOS, a solution that is too early to the market."

But Apple has the resources to keep supporting and evolving it in response to user feedback until it can be cheap enough for mass use, at which point, if they don't blow it, their lead will be hard for competitors to overcome. They know exactly what they're doing.

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