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

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

#491
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If my mac had a built-in cellular modem, I'd leave the phone at home most days. 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.

But.. none of that does or should require a smart phone really. Even for the cellular modem bit I mentioned, I could find another way to do it; people had devices for this before these black mirrors came around. But a cellular modem built into my laptop would reduce the amount of crap I have instead of add to it, and I'd still use the smart phone for other reasons at other times, just not if I'm going to a cafe to work necessarily. Using technological conveniences with more intentionality instead of chronically is where I think we screw ourselves.

With the car comparison, my hunch is that a not insignificant contingent of car owning bi-pedal able-bodied people fit into the category of both not having any athletic pastimes/hobbies and also walk or move their body to get somewhere for less than 30 min a week. Just a hunch though. To do that without having had the influence of a car at some point would be remarkable; you'd have to be exceptionally sedentary, live immediately adjacent to a transit stop and do everything in your life right next to another.

If I took the cost of a car and put that into anything else in my life, it's the difference between hypothetically having access to the most expensive outdoor hobbies that don't directly depend on cars themselves, like rally. Not to shit on cars as hobbies either though, not requiring a car means I could afford to have a project car just for the hell of it.

Without an Apple Watch, I just.. tap my card, and retain 2 month's worth of food budget because I didn't get the damn thing.

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

#492
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Quest 2. Half Life: Alyx is one of the most amazing games I've ever played. And yet... I haven't finished it. When I have free time to play games I'd rather play my Switch. It's a lot more hassle setting up HL: Alyx, and the heavy headgear bugs my nose and causes eye strain headaches eventually if I play too much. So instead I play Tetris 99.

I have a Quest 2. After 6 months the non-replaceable battery lost 70% of its capacity and the controllers developed unfixable drift. Never making the Meta mistake again.

> developed unfixable drift

It's definitely fixable, by both Meta and yourself [1]. I've done it twice. A replacement kit is $14 on Amazon.

You would think joysticks would be a solved problem by now, but no. Meta chose garbage, with the same garbage installed in the quest pro controllers that are not really serviceable, from being glued together and jam packed with electronics (3 camera inside out tracking in each controller).

Battery can also be replaced, but with somewhat ridiculous effort [2].

[1] DIY joystick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3N_ZIGo2YM

[2] Battery: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Meta+Quest+2+Headset+Battery+Re...

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

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had such an emotional experience using the visionOS 2 beta to spatialize old photos. It was already amazing seeing it take a photo from 15 years ago and turn it 3D; but then when I "pinched" into it to make it become immersive and was suddenly in a place I hadn't been in years, with my (then young) kids looking just as they did back then, seeming to be standing there in the room with me… it was profound. I can't th…

This make somehow… uncomfortable. Perhaps humans are not meant to have perfect recall of, and dwell on, the past.

I mean, I guess! I can’t say I feel damaged by it in the least (rather, enriched!), but I’m sure not every person will have the same experience.

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

#494

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…

You say it was unexpected, I say it was entirely expected given the form factor (comfort), battery life (awful), and lack of a killer app to drive adoption (if anyone knew what that was, Meta and Microsoft would be all over it already). But Apple has tons of money, so they can learn from the devices in market now and decide how best to target Gen 2. Microsoft seems to be exiting AR other than the military contract. M…

Unexpected as in Apple was expected to offer something less clunky.

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have family with disabilities. This has an interesting history. I’m struggling to find it and hope I have it right. John Gruber or maybe Accidental Tech Podcast did a segment on an podcast ages ago in relation to accessibility settings on the iPhone. Whoever it was credited a particular Apple engineer who pushed hard with accessibility features arguing that at some point, everyone has some sort of issue (sight, h…

Accessibility as it is in modern parlance isn't only for people with disabilities. Disabling the annoying needless animations on iOS is in Accessibility for some reason.

I think that was because some people get motion sickness easily.

‘Accessibility’ is where the setting is because turning the feature off stops them being disabled... maybe?

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 backgro…

Have you tried the quest 3? A lot of your concerns, I feel, go away with pass thru. Like you say, mixed or augmented reality is going to be society altering. I was walking through my house, navigating doorways, stairs, and changes in lighting, with my son's headset while I had the equivalent of a 30in monitor playing Netflix following me around. I sat on the couch and pinned the "tv" to the wall, enlarged it to be a…

I have tried the quest 3 and it’s like looking through a distorted version of the world through a low resolution camera with Vaseline slopped on top.

It’s impressive technology but it’s far from seamless. There’s less colours, less resolution, worse depth perception, more latency, and worse nightvision than your actual eyes. The quest makes your head quite a bit larger and you’re more likely to hang your head into something. It is very far from seamless.

They have a long way to go. Audio pass through still isn’t good enough for me to trust it never mind video pass through.

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

#497
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you'll ever be able to. Maybe not for decades for AR/VR. The AI stuff is cool; you can offload that, but mostly they'll just be a glorified camera mount and headphones for the actual 'glasses.'

You already can in something the size of an old cassette walkman, run an extra flexible USB c cable to the glasses or something and problem solved

The offloading is easy, I don't think the optical aspects of breakthrough VR/AR will be overcome for quite a while.

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

#498
post #78
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you'll ever be able to. Maybe not for decades for AR/VR. The AI stuff is cool; you can offload that, but mostly they'll just be a glorified camera mount and headphones for the actual 'glasses.'

Intels next gen iGPU has has similar benchmarks to a 3080. Compute is still scaling incredibly quickly. I think the optical problem will end up taking much longer than compute.

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

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta thinks they got screwed by Apple’s (and to a lesser extent Google’s) walled gardens, so now they want their own.

I don't think this makes much sense. Meta sells ads. Apple and Google don't walled garden ads on apps do they? Meta doesn't use the Google and Apple ad APIs. They have their own ad marketplace, etc. I really do think it's as simple as them seeing a future where people use a different form factor from a phone to do what they do much of what they do with their phones. I think that will be something closer to Google Gla…

Apple’s Ad Tracking Transparency was a major reason Meta stock went through the massive dip a few years ago, until it ended up not being that detrimental and AI hype took over.

I’m sure Meta would love to track their users way more than Apple allows.

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

#500
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe these are just products we don't need? Silicon valley needs a product that will make us spend even more time online than our phones, in order to sell more ad inventory and make the line go up. This is pretty much what's driving all of this, especially the AR stuff. It's not a solution in search of a problem. The problem is they need to sell more ads. The only issue is that it's a solution to their problem,…

Or, on the other hand, AR could BLOCK all ads that you ever see. Sanitise your entire visual input, replace all ads with a grey square!

Why do you think the manufacturers would allow that? Sure, you can effectively block ads in a web browser, on a desktop. Everything on mobile is in an app which explicitly does not allow you to tailor your experience, erm, nuke the ads from orbit. And every platform that's followed smartphones, from tablets to headsets, has followed the phone model of pushing software: closed-down OS, software through app stores or gtfo. It's incredibly naive to think ads will get better and not a hell of a lot worse.
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