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Meta Horizon OS

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Re: Meta Horizon OS

#741

Post by hankchinaski »

pavlov wrote: post #145

Shades of Apple licensing the Mac OS to clone hardware vendors in 1995 - 1997. It seems like Meta will be controlling the software experience quite closely, just like Apple did back in the day. There’s an important difference though: Apple made all their money on Mac hardware margins which the nimble clone vendors could undercut. Whereas for Meta, the Quest hardware has always been sold at breakeven or even as a loss…

They are not looking to make margins on the OS or the hardware. They want adoption and distribution. The money will be made later on extracting value from the ecosystem they are trying to build. Whether that is with a higher end product later on, monetising the OS/ecosystem later on with ads or app fees is not relevant at Thai stage. What they are trying to do is to build a new ecosystem that they are entrenched and that they control firmly. They are trying to build the android of VR to put it simply

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#742

Post by pteraspidomorph »

Mindwipe wrote: post #165
modeless wrote: post #5

Official blog post: https://about.fb.com/news/2024/04/introducing-our-open-mixed... Short video from Zuckerberg: https://twitter.com/NathieVR/status/1782436898654273981 This is an interesting move and feels like a response to complaints that Meta is hypocritical when complaining about closed platforms while running one themselves. But this isn't open source. I don't know why any OEMs would want to compete with Meta's…

Yeah, if it was "we acknowledge that is bad for hardware to have one installation path" and they were allowing itch.io to have an indie VR store that might be cool but they are very much not.

Far enough down the line, it will all end up in EU regulation. Doesn't everything?

Or if Meta doesn't become strong enough to be considered a monopoly, you always have the choice to go with their competitors (as is currently the case). I can still install anything I want on my Pico 4.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#743

Post by EVyesnoyesnoyes »

jasonpeacock wrote: post #52
EVyesnoyesnoyes wrote: post #14

I would really love to see proper educational content from Meta but i bet this is not were the 'next money thing' is. Imagine a catalog of proper real life skills you can actually train reasonable good: - cooking - soldering - welding - Tons of woodworking things - ... You could also go to a lot of makers of tools and offer them to digitalize their products for them so someone can actually exercise with a cheap to su…

Virtual welding training is already a thing: https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en/education/training-progra... https://www.fronius.com/en/welding-technology/our-expertise/...

yeah but not mainstream and it needs accessories and is probably more for teaching schools.

I would love to see all of this in a free/paid marketplace and with a basic learning progress framework behind it.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#744

Post by boomlinde »

pjmlp wrote: post #719
boomlinde wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are Meta publishing standards, gratis or not, which I can implement to create a compatible operating system? I'm asking because it seems to me from this press release that they're just letting a handful of hardware partners use their software, which is not open in the sense of POSIX Open Group.

Open like this? https://www.opengroup.org/membership

Yes, open like that. I thought we'd already established the sense in which Open Group is open, but you still haven't addressed the question how Meta is open in the same sense.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#745

Post by joking »

stronglikedan wrote: post #460
distortedsignal wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low end of the market is taken - but (from an outsider perspective) the high end appears free. The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same parts. Let's say that, tomorrow, Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna (or however you spell that) want to make a VR headset (why? who knows?). They don't have the tech acumen to compete with Facebook on expe…

> The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same parts. Nit, but as an Acura driver (chooser), I can tell you that they are definitely not essentially the same parts. The irrelevant parts are the same, but everything that matters to the driver (suspension/drivetrain, interior materials, technology, etc.) all all different and better in the A…

when you say something it's better, you should add better in what angle, because Acura suspension can be better for high speed cornering in a circuit, but suck if you leave in a place with bad road surface, and the honda suspension can be both softer and cheaper to replace.

Anyway, I also get what you're trying to say.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#746

Post by taylorbuley »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #564
taylorbuley wrote: post #426

While the web trends away from open, Facebook is zigging where others are zagging and supporting the resistance technology-wise.

What are you even talking about? Facebook is THE biggest actor who works non-stop against the open web and is the biggest closed-off silo of data on the web.

What makes you say that?

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#747

Post by tempoponet »

mjburgess wrote: post #725
tstrimple wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't hate it. JS has its worts, but so does every language. I don't think there is a single language even close to JS for lowering the bar of entry to software development. All of the bad things about it that "real computer science" folks complain about are the exact same features which give it a far more broad reach than Rust or Golang. Software development experiences the exact same problem that the internet at…

Or it just happened to monopolise the browser at a time when the web was being invented, and has nothing to do with the features of the language. As a language for new developers is terrible: 100 different ways to do anything, most of them a muddle of paradigms that's inexplicable to anyone without 2 decades of experience, and so on. Imagine a new developer using ChatGPT to generate: python, C, go, etc. vs. generatin…

> Or it just happened to monopolise the browser at a time when the web was being invented, and has nothing to do with the features of the language

But applets were doing a lot more in the 90's and Flash dominated into the 2010s. However you feel about JS today, it's difficult to say it was all "first-mover advantage".

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#748

Post by GeekyBear »

Eisenstein wrote: post #730
rob74 wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Meta is aiming to be for VR what Microsoft is for PCs and Google is for smartphones (Apple being Apple for PCs, smartphones and VR)?

They want their own platform so they can do whatever they want on their apps. They are playing the long game. Read zuck's VR vision letter. He lays it all out: * https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MARK-S-...

Meta is the last company in the world that I would allow to have direct access to my gaze tracking data.

The only thing that I can imagine that would be more privacy invasive would be a device that directly reads your brain waves while you are exposed to different stimuli.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#749

Post by kypro »

drdaeman wrote: post #84
kypro wrote: post #17

Meta playing 3d chess here. Opening up the OS to other hardware providers is a great strategic move imo. Excited to see what innovations other hardware manufactures add.

Not to devalue their engineering departments, but I really don't remember any innovations in the software space from ASUS, Lenovo or alike hardware vendors. To me they're all essentially the same stuff, with different kind of junkware (or, in case of Lenovo, malware) bundled. What I read is "we reached out to a bunch of vendors who dabbled in VR/AR/XR/whateveryounameit but failed to produce anything outstanding, so w…

I kinda agree. I don't think any of them are likely to be major players in the space, but I think they might be able to build niche products that serve specific markets better than Meta's generalist VR headset. They might try a lightweight, battery free, sitting headset for gamers or media applications, for example.

And I think just generally they're more likely to try random things than Meta are to get hype around some unique feature. Take the Asus Zenbook Duo as an example, it's not necessarily a great product but it's interesting and some people will buy it for that. Plus industry learns something from experiments like this.

Either way, it's a good move for Meta and it's good for the industry that there is a fully-featured OS available for hardware manufacturers.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#750

Post by robertlagrant »

mdasen wrote: post #405
distortedsignal wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low end of the market is taken - but (from an outsider perspective) the high end appears free. The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same parts. Let's say that, tomorrow, Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna (or however you spell that) want to make a VR headset (why? who knows?). They don't have the tech acumen to compete with Facebook on expe…

I feel like this is a bit off. There have been things like Porsche phones, but those are so niche that I don't think they're really worth considering. They happened, but they haven't been a long-standing product. They were a cash grab where they licensed a brand. Now, Hondas and Acuras are different products. You can say "oh, they're essentially the same" and if you truly believe that, I'll sell you a Core i3 process…

> Apple has shown that their iPhone will outsell any luxury-branded Android phone to rich people because some things are about capability, not a logo

How have they shown this?

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