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Apple Vision

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Re: Apple Vision

#481

Post by justin66 »

esskay wrote: post #391
justin66 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's problem is that the "pro" version is not just twice as expensive as the "consumer" version needs to be in order to be a market success, it's ten times more expensive than the consumer version needs to be. edit: the fanatics are really out with the downvotes today

To go 10x lower we're at $339. Thats not happening, this thing has essentially a full blown macbook baked into it. Apple has never been interested in cheaping out, and in VR that's Meta's job - their Quest headsets are litterally using the cheapest possible ways of getting to its price point, and it shows. The consumer one will likely settle somewhere closer to $999 - matching the price of the cheapest macbook air. A…

> To go 10x lower we're at $339. Thats not happening, this thing has essentially a full blown macbook baked into it.

The hardware could be a loss-leader if they intend to maintain their 30% commission on software purchases. Do we know if that's how it will work?

(edit: but boy howdy, somebody would have to sell an awful lot of apps...)

I guess we could debate what the exact multiple is by which this item is overpriced, but on a message board where people will leap to the defense of the $1000 Apple monitor stand (true story) I think I'll take a pass. The main point, I think, is that when the price right out of the gate is this exorbitant, a major tension exists between increasing user adoption and lowering prices via economies of scale.

Re: Apple Vision

#482

Post by aaroninsf »

Hottake having read the whole thing,

I think too much is made about the "personal vs social" binning of Meta vs Apple.

It's true off the bat, but, is more useful as a hook to hang philosophy about our isolated selves on, than a concrete projection of how this is going to develop.

To put a sharp edge on that, I will go so far as to say I think this is quite the wrong take, and I have receipts. Maybe.

The FaceTime bit about scanning your face, and presenting you sans mask in teleconferencing? Great, I look fine in FaceTime!

...the exercise left to the student to infer is that if you can appear in FaceTime, next you can appear in the space with me outside that frame. Or your AI-backed agent, which also you know, can replicate your manner of speaking and voice, because Apple has infinite hours new and old of your speech, written and verbal, on tap, right?

You and proxy-you are going to be in shared space with other wearers... soon.

And then well we have something world-altering to deal with,

because our monkey-minds fully accept such figures as "real" and our memories filter out the virtuality of our interactions, where our analytic mind does not.

The world of "Her" and Joe's "girl friend" in Blade Runner etc are all getting really close. See the clickbait about someone "marrying" their AI boyfriend yesterday?

Anyway I digress, but, yeah, I think Apple is quietly collecting cards for shared virtual presence, and as per usual will take their time to make it wow on disclosure.

Re: Apple Vision

#483

Post by whatarethembits »

killerstorm wrote: post #444
jedberg wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power in the headset makes it sound like it replaces your laptop. So for $3,500 I get a new laptop plus a 100 inch screen. To buy those separately would be far more than $3,500. In my case I plan to buy it on day one because I want it for working. I'm tired of having to choose enjoying the nice weather outside while using a tiny 15 inch laptop screen or being inside at my desk with my 3 32" screens. With Apple Vi…

I kinda doubt it would be comfortable to wear it for 8+ hours... I can't use Quest 2 for more than 30 minutes at a time: sweating, eye strain, etc.

This is v1, I think it’d be a safe bet that those things won’t be an issue in v10. Have to start somewhere, and this is one heck of a start.

Re: Apple Vision

#484

Post by lolinder »

shen wrote: post #477
lolinder wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it replace the laptop, or supplement it? From what I've seen it can project one monitor from your existing MacBook into the space. Which means you'll also have to lug your MacBook around in order to use it on the go, and you won't be able to have your 3 monitors, just the one.

It has the M2. Apple says it works with select iPad apps in addition to its own App Store down the line. Apple just recently made FCP & Logic available on the iPad. I think the direction is clear.

iPad apps are intentionally useless for dev work, so a Vision platform that is similarly locked down can never replace a MacBook for my use case.

Re: Apple Vision

#485

Post by tootie »

scarface_74 wrote: post #335
tootie wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quest 2 is the best-selling headset to date. This Apple device will have an even smaller addressable market at the $3500 price. Meta can add more pixels faster than Apple can drop their price by 2/3. Really, Apple does a lot of things well, but their market supremacy is primarily due to marketing. They are incredibly well-positioned as a necessary luxury brand. They are "cool" while Android and Microsoft are not.

Yes it’s all marketing. People have been saying that for 20 years. It couldn’t possible have anything to do with having hardware that is literally years ahead of the competition, tight integration between products, a better user interface, etc.

It's not _all_ marketing. They make good products. They have managed to convince consumers that it's both necessary and worthwhile to pay extra for spit and polish. Like buying a Rolex instead of a Timex.

Re: Apple Vision

#486

Post by euroderf »

sanitycheck wrote: post #14
nynx wrote: post #2

> It really is one of the best product names in Apple history: Vision is a description of a product, it is an aspiration for a use case, and it is a critique on the sort of society we are building, behind Apple’s leadership more than anyone else. I agree that “Vision” is a good product name, but “Vision Pro” just feels intensely pedestrian. Why is it called “Pro?” Is there a non-Pro version?

It seems lazy to me, do a Google search for "Vision Pro", excluding results from the past couple of days, and it seems there were already a ton of products and services with the same name. Perfect time to bring back the "i", though they already have "iSight". "iBorg"?

iStrainAndNeckPain

Re: Apple Vision

#487

Post by euroderf »

soylentcola wrote: post #226
bigwheeler wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot that Apple was having an event yesterday, and when I saw “Apple Vision Pro“ in headlines everywhere, my first thought was that they were opening an eyeglass store…

Well, if you normally wear glasses, you will need to order special Zeiss lenses to use the Vision Pro.

And so what about astigmatism ?

Re: Apple Vision

#488

Post by WorldMaker »

danpalmer wrote: post #201
samwillis wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh, exactly, I was aiming for a more direct comparison to Magic Leap. Effectively how much would it have cost them to actually achieve this level of functionality and polish, based on the "all in" cost for Apple.

I'm not sure if it's possible to draw that comparison. For example, Magic Leap could have used Android (I don't know, maybe they did?) and saved almost all of that iOS R&D cost. Even they were working on incremental costs over what already exists.

The issue is double-dipping/synergy of those costs. Magic Leap could have used Android, but they had no say in Android's development of or its API road map (or its processor road map or its GPU road map or its "neural engine" road map…). Apple benefits from the synergies of all of that development effort in ways that are really hard to quantify. Magic Leap using Google as a vendor to skip some of those steps also loses a lot of double/triple-used investment costs that come from even just having a seat at the road map table.

The "neural engine" road map alone is probably one of the biggest, obvious to me examples, that relying on Google as a vendor wouldn't have worked but Apple could do it and make a large long term investment in it. Google has a lot of incentives to keep ML models in the Cloud as much as possible. Apple made an early choice to focus on privacy and decided that it would be nice to always have as much of, for example, Siri running directly and strictly on device as possible. The home assistant trend and overtly trying to be "the privacy-first option" during it gave Apple plenty of reason to invest in on-device hardware. The fact that on-device hardware is also extremely necessary for AR vision support if you were planning a headset (or for car vision needs, if those rumors are also true) is a leverageable bonus of the hardware already being deployed. Smart moves a decade ago that paid out once already and then are already in the wings ready and waiting for the next projects/products.

(Meanwhile, how uncommon are "NPUs", discrete or SoC, in the general Android ecosystem still? Google had different incentives and different priorities and what pressure could a team like Magic Leap, especially if trying to "stealth" some of their tech, have on an ecosystem like that? Android doesn't care if Magic Leap is happy. Android can't predict where Magic Leap wants to go.)

How do you quantify all the money that went into "we'd like as much of Siri as possible to run locally on devices, for at least user privacy if no other reason, wink" that naturally wound up on M2 chips and we assume influenced the R1 chip design and in turn doubles as a lot of visual processing power available for use to the Vision Pro? (How do you double/triple count it, because those existing use cases of running parts of Siri locally and dictation and other models locally also carry over from the iPhone/iPad/Mac into the Vision Pro?)

Re: Apple Vision

#489

Post by euroderf »

PaulHoule wrote: post #89
jsheard wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean projecting the outside world inside the headset so the user can see "through" it, that's a standard feature even on cheap headsets. I mean the display on the front of the Vision Pro which shows the users eyes "through" the headset so other people can see them, which is an awful lot of hardware to dedicate to a feature many users don't need.

It's an interesting question. If you look at that Simula VR page there is a video showing a person working with the device at a coffeeshop and being handed a coffee by a waitress. I don't know what that waitress would think about the interaction, particularly she might not be so clear if the person wearing the headset is paying attention or not. Visible eyes on the outside of the device could make a big difference. I…

That waitress won't be so creeped out if she can see that the customer sees her. (And implicitly acknowledges her existence.)

Re: Apple Vision

#490

Post by euroderf »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #26
andsoitis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will the non-Pro version not have, compared to the Pro?

Presumably they will wait and see how people use it in practice before deciding what is and isn't essential. It's hard to believe that the screen on the outside is really necessary, but I'm sure it did well in testing or it wouldn't have been included.

Perhaps it makes it less likely for the user to be ostracized (for using the high-rent analogue of Google Glass).
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