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Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

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Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#71

Post by anonymouse008 »

cjdoc29 wrote: post #62
anonymouse008 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The digital watch market is like the meme where we see a guy spraying champagne all over himself, kissing his girlfriend, but when we zoom out it's at the bottom tier of tech experience. Apple won it not because their watch is 'great' - but because they have such brand cache that they could sell 100m of anything once the market learns about them. Airport could absolutely come back and sell that amount, taken into con…

> but because they have such brand cache that they could sell 100m of anything once the market learns about them I partially disagree with this argument. They sold some 10 million units in 2016 - it might be that because of the success and ubiquity of iPods and iPhones in the decade leading up to this, that people thought that the first Apple Watch was a great product (it wasn't, really IMO). Brand cache, or whatever…

Let's put it in these terms:

The number of Apple customers from iPod that transitioned to iPhone was x%,

The number of iPhone to AirPods was y%

The number of iPhone to Watch was z%

z z in a cumulative measure from a time frame of 3 years from launch. Defining the proportion of current customers to converted sales is where one can play words with defining luck vs. skill vs. rent-seeking. If you have billions units and only convert 20% vs. other products that convert 75%, then maybe one is considered inferior to the other - and to which I confer the title of luck.

Now the fun question would be if x < y or the other way around.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#72

Post by cptskippy »

voisin wrote: post #28

Initial product will be weak, just like the original iPhone (no App Store, slow, poor battery life, etc) and Apple Watch (no development, no health tracking, small screen, poor battery life). The thing about Apple is not to judge based on v.1 but to watch the iteration. They are the most persistent company in the world. Compare to Google which seems to have ADHD. Apple will iterate and iterate and in 5 years we’ll al…

> The thing about Apple is not to judge based on v.1 but to watch the iteration. They are the most persistent company in the world.

Yes, and the fact that they don't abandon a product once it ships. Other consumer electronic companies still see products as one and done, sort of like videogame consoles before Xbox. When the product went gold it became forever frozen in time, warts and all.

Apple not only iterates the design every year but tries to bring forward the software in the previous years. The iPhone you bought gets arguably better every year.

Other companies try to emulate this behavior by pushing new versions of operating systems but their hardware bares to lineage so it's often a Herculean effort that undertake half-assed.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#73

Post by Closi »

paxys wrote: post #34
voisin wrote: post #28

Initial product will be weak, just like the original iPhone (no App Store, slow, poor battery life, etc) and Apple Watch (no development, no health tracking, small screen, poor battery life). The thing about Apple is not to judge based on v.1 but to watch the iteration. They are the most persistent company in the world. Compare to Google which seems to have ADHD. Apple will iterate and iterate and in 5 years we’ll al…

Where was this persistent iteration and overnight success with Homepod, Airpower, butterfly keyboards, touchbar, force touch, MobileMe, Ping? Apple has had its share of failures like any other company, and kills products like any other company. There is plenty of precedence for their AR headset to just fizzle out.

Butterfly keyboards, touch bar and force-touch were features rather than products - most of these were actually iterated out of the product, although the touchbar is still in the latest MacBook Pro's. As a side point, 3D touch was brilliant IMO!

These were all part of the persistent iteration of the iPhone and Macbook, hardly failed products.

Also Homepod has just had a second version (released 2023), and a third version is in the works, and it's homepod mini has been very successful, so still under iteration. Considering the state of LLM's and everyone's assumption that this will turbocharge smart-speaker capability, they are probably quite glad that they at least have an established and mildly successful product in the space (they own c10% of the market for smart speakers).

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#74

Post by ulfw »

hnbear wrote: post #59
etempleton wrote: post #41

If it is as described I think it is insane for Apple to launch this product. Comparing it to the state of the Apple Watch is pretty strange because if nothing else the Apple Watch was functional, self contained, worked, and was under $1,000. Even if it didn’t work you could put it on and ignore it. A VR/AR headset is nothing like that and at $3,000 is a significant investment for most everyone. But who knows. I haven…

Watches, phones, and music players also all existed for a long time, and weren't a huge leap. Sure, smart watches were called revolutionary, but the first Apple Watch told the time and was fun but mostly unusable for much else. The notifications popped up, but actual interaction was so slow. But that's fine. It was great to have a watch (a >100 year old device), that shows texts. Same for phones - it was just iterati…

But there was a significant and fast growing market for watches, smartphones and MP3 players. Where is that for VR headsets? It's neither a huge installed market (watches) nor is it fast growing (smartphones late 2000s).

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#75

Post by root_axis »

paxys wrote: post #24
root_axis wrote: post #20

My prediction: it will suck. Why? All AR devices suck, the tech just isn't there.

More than that, I think the underlying problem is that people simply don't want VR/AR. Decades of science fiction writing has convinced us that it is the future, but like..why?

As a sibling comment pointed out, the vision of this tech in science fiction is far beyond what is currently possible or what may ever be possible. Nobody except enthusiasts will be willing to wear a janky UI sweat box on their face that needs to be charged every 6 hours, the product is DOA.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#76

Post by jdlyga »

This sounds like Apple strong-arming their staff to try and rally around a mediocre product. The Apple Watch comparisons don't make sense. Even the Apple Watch Series 0 was totally worth it. You could get notifications on your wrist, fitness tracking (totally replacing RunKeeper and similar apps at the time), pause music, locate your phone, etc. I happily used the Series 0 for 3 years.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#77

Post by etempleton »

junofan wrote: post #58
etempleton wrote: post #41

If it is as described I think it is insane for Apple to launch this product. Comparing it to the state of the Apple Watch is pretty strange because if nothing else the Apple Watch was functional, self contained, worked, and was under $1,000. Even if it didn’t work you could put it on and ignore it. A VR/AR headset is nothing like that and at $3,000 is a significant investment for most everyone. But who knows. I haven…

Bet your manager’s manager’s manager will get one. Then your manager’s manager. Then your manager. If you sit on Zoom calls all day it sounds amazing.

What part of having something strapped to your face all day while on Zoom calls sounds amazing?

As someone who spends all day on zoom calls this is the last thing I want.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#78

Post by m348e912 »

Paul Krugman famously said in 1998 that "the growth of the growth of the Internet will slow drastically [...] the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s"

I am going to go out on a limb and say unless headsets change profoundly they will have limited impact on most people's daily lives. I'll have to remind myself to come back in a few years and check this post.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#79

Post by Closi »

etempleton wrote: post #41

If it is as described I think it is insane for Apple to launch this product. Comparing it to the state of the Apple Watch is pretty strange because if nothing else the Apple Watch was functional, self contained, worked, and was under $1,000. Even if it didn’t work you could put it on and ignore it. A VR/AR headset is nothing like that and at $3,000 is a significant investment for most everyone. But who knows. I haven…

> Gamers aren’t going to want to buy this thing unless you can plug it into a PC and have it function as a regular VR headset and the Meta Quest crowd isn’t going to shell out 3 grand.

Maybe Apple has just worked out that they can't build a good VR headset at a level of quality that they are proud of for a sales price of less than £3k with today's technology?

Apple probably isn't going to compete with the Meta Quest, but if their initial goal is just focussed on building the best VR headset on the market (never mind the cost!) rather than to make something price-competitive with Meta, they might achieve that.

Re: Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory

#80

Post by smoldesu »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #51
paxys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in fact the best thing that can happen to Meta. At the moment no one really knows or cares about VR/AR. If Apple successfully takes it mainstream then they would have done what years of Meta's marketing campaigns couldn't, and suddenly they'll have a real market to compete in. Heck they don't even have to be better at it. Playing the Google/Android role is good enough.

> and suddenly they'll have a real market to compete in With ads. Good luck, Meta.

FWIW, this is exactly the sort of 400 IQ chess play Mark Zuckerberg has been playing for the past half-decade, and the one this website has kicked the piss out of him for time immemorial.

So which is it? Is VR a dehumanizing medium with no redeeming qualities, or is it a horizon of content and potential yet to be unlocked? It feels like HN's opinion on it changes every 15 minutes.

Personally, I think VR is a bust. That being said, there is not an ice cube's chance in hell of Apple out-maneuvering Meta here. Zuck will happily pour billions into this spite machine, he already has. On top of that, he has the leverage of a more "open" platform (will Apple give you Root?) and larger install-base. All Zuckerberg needs to 'win' is a cross-platform killer app. If Apple's hardest spin on this is "FaceTime with 3D characters", their product is toast. A cross-platform protocol/experience will become the dominant player, and everyone will gravitate towards the cheapest option.

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