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Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#821

Post by technol0gic »

tinus_hn wrote: post #37
fsociety wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that higher resolution alone makes it worth talking about. Meta can churn out high quality screens as well as Apple, for a price. The more compelling angle is how they have nailed the interface with eye and hand tracking and if this works as well in real-world environments as it did in their demo setup. Apple has a tech advantage lately with their software and hardware stack. But historically their product…

> as hamstrung as an iPad. iPad is selling great because it is not ‘hamstrung’, it’s focused. People choose a device that does a few things only and does them greatly, instead of one that does everything, poorly. There’s plenty of tablets with similar hardware specifications to an iPad that allow sideloading and hacking. That’s just not what a lot of people are looking for. They want a device where you can trust that…

agreed. like or hate apple, it does seem they're the only company that consistently seems to test their products with 'regular' people (parents, school principals, construction workers, etc), not people who know what 'sideload' even means

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#822

Post by pr0zac »

brookst wrote: post #770
ethbr0 wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all things you can already do! And big, nice screens are already very cheap. The Vision Pro's problem is that it lets you do something you can already do "some percent better." But "some percent better" isn't what any of the companies pushing this need, because that doesn't translate into the volumes they need to sell. "Fundamentally different" does, but no one has described any use case like that. Examples…

I strongly disagree that only 100% novel uses are meaningful, and I disagree even more that “phone calls anywhere” or “web anywhere” are meaningful — nobody care about phone calls or the web. They care about what those enable : talking to people or doing research or shopping or whatever. But, sure, fundamentally different: being able to surround yourself with any environment you want. Being able to navigate that envi…

> But, sure, fundamentally different: being able to surround yourself with any environment you want. Being able to navigate that environment with physical movement. Seeing a movie that exists in a sphere around you.

I agree there are some people that want it (I am one of those people, Beatsaber changed my life). The issue is the number of those people isn’t that large yet. I know this because pretty much all of my friends and family that tried my Index have said “wow that’s really cool!” and later none of them go buy a headset. It’s just not compelling enough to buy for most normal people yet.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#823

Post by pier25 »

nologic01 wrote: post #393

There is something quite remarkable and puzzling about the VR/AR and now SC (spatial computing) space. All major (ad)tech companies are convinced that this is a major market that will materialize and be profitable if the right combination of hardware and software is developed. Their VR "visions" differ but only at the margin. No matter how you execute it, we are talking about people (homo sapiens) putting a major som…

I think a virtual space has plenty of obvious benefits for productivity and immersion.

The main problem seems to be the execution. Nobody wants to have a huge thing attached to their head for hours. Maybe this will change if headset become as lightweight as regular glasses but we're still very far away from that.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#824

Post by michaelt »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #434
NBJack wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure Mark was actually counting on it. It doesn't make it a good idea, but Apple tends to set the bar for status symbols. Smartphones existed before the iPhone. PC laptops existed before MacBooks. Portable digital music players existed before iPods. While not always successful, they actually add legitimacy to many of the markets they get into. Time will tell if it happens here; I'm not holding my breath.

I don’t think smartphone adoption was held back by the lack of a sufficient status symbol. Apple didn’t bring a revolutionary status symbol to market to make smartphone adoption explode. It brought a really good product that was valued because of how useful it was. Apple’s headset will take off if it proves to be actually useful, otherwise it won’t.

It will certainly have to be a strong product to succeed in the market, irrespective of whether it's a status symbol, I agree.

And if this is a product to be used on your couch at home alone, who cares how it looks?

But some people imagine this being used by world travellers to translate signs in foreign languages, by laptop users in coffee shops to have a huge screen, by parents to take hands-free video of their kid's first steps, by mass transit passengers to watch movies, and so on.

If the product's success relies on being worn in public - people will have to want to be seen wearing it.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#825

Post by [deleted] »

cloudking wrote: post #775
hedora wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a large market of people that will never trust meta, but ignoring that, they have AR goggles now? If not, their comments about overlapping features sound like the “but nokia candy bar phones already have a WEP browser!” objections from back in the iPhone 1 days. (I’m personally not all that impressed by the apple vision announcement, but I also wasn’t impressed by the iPhone announcement, and for sim…

The Quest 3 has passthrough mode for "mixed reality" similar to Apple Vision Pro, albeit Apple's hardware has way higher resolution.

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#826

Post by JohnPrine »

ethbr0 wrote: post #739
curiousllama wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch movies, play tabletop games, exercise, play existing video games, visualize interior design, attend a virtual concert, etc etc All of those are use cases, and obvious ones. Your argument is “none of these seem compelling to me” (you’re not pulling) which is fine, but don’t ignore the comment’s point that they could soon be compelling to you (which is why they’re being pushed). This is especially true for networ…

Those are all things you can already do! And big, nice screens are already very cheap. The Vision Pro's problem is that it lets you do something you can already do "some percent better." But "some percent better" isn't what any of the companies pushing this need, because that doesn't translate into the volumes they need to sell. "Fundamentally different" does, but no one has described any use case like that. Examples…

if they can make me feel like I'm having a face to face conversation with someone who lives hours away then that would be fundamentally different

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#827

Post by callmeal »

darawk wrote: post #428
nologic01 wrote: post #393

There is something quite remarkable and puzzling about the VR/AR and now SC (spatial computing) space. All major (ad)tech companies are convinced that this is a major market that will materialize and be profitable if the right combination of hardware and software is developed. Their VR "visions" differ but only at the margin. No matter how you execute it, we are talking about people (homo sapiens) putting a major som…

> So far at least, this is a tech that is being pushed onto people rather than being pulled. I think it's very hard to tell the difference between these things ex ante. Everything that succeeds looks like it was pulled. But many things were pushed before they were pulled. Buying things on the internet, for instance. This was laughed at for quite a while, while a few people and companies were committed to the idea tha…

>Buying things on the internet, for instance. This was laughed at for quite a while, while a few people and companies were committed to the idea that it was the future.

Pretty much every developer (and reader) I know jumped on the OG amazon to buy books. All through the late '90s I (and pretty much everyone I knew) would buy books that were not immediately available in bookstores (remember those?) or libraries on the internet. Never mind that it sometimes took over a week for your books to be delivered, the point was that we could get something we wanted.

I have played around with a VR headset, and been part of demos that have fallen flat, because there really is nothing that we want in that experience.

This is not to say that it won't be successfull. Advertising and hard sells can be very effective after all.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#828

Post by adverbly »

pr0zac wrote: post #769
adverbly wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watch movies, play tabletop games, exercise, play existing video games, visualize interior design, attend a virtual concert, etc etc Literally all of those are possible with your cell phone at slightly lower fidelity. We're not talking about zero to one applications here. Cell phone fundamentally unlocked new applications via mobile connected GPS, computer, camera, screen, accelerometer, internet. Fidelity is not w…

To expand on this, it seems like the majority of people I know actually prefer consuming media on small screens, especially if I include people under 20 in that assessment. On top of that so far VR only offers a bigger screen and can’t actually produce high fidelity images. My 4K TV has more pixels and produces a clearer picture with more detail and resolution. Only offering bigger doesn’t feel like a good selling po…

> Beatsaber

That's what I'm talking about - this is a clear use case. Another example I can think of would be remote surgery.

You're exactly right though - the big problem is that it hasn't found the killer app yet. Something will probably materialize eventually, but it's not clear yet.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#829

Post by rob74 »

pavlov wrote: post #766

From a purely technology point of view, Meta is well placed. There isn't an enormous gap between what their hardware does vs. Apple. Display resolution, eye tracking and hand tracking are problems that can be solved today with a more expensive device. (The Quest Pro is a weird compromise because it's not that much of an upgrade from the base Quest. It has powerful eye tracking, yet the software doesn't use it. The wh…

I would argue that the whole "IBM PC clone" phenomenon came about more by chance than by design: IBM certainly didn't want it to happen, but since they cobbled their PC together from standard off-the-shelf parts, and outsourced the OS to a third party (Microsoft) who was more than happy to license it to others too, there wasn't much they could do to stop it either. The other platforms you mentioned were ultimately undercut by these cheap PC clones and by their own failings, not necessarily by the fact that they were proprietary. Actually, IMHO Apple only narrowly escaped joining the Atari ST and Amiga in the mid 1990s...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#830

Post by acuozzo »

paul_grisham wrote: post #513
bushbaba wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not joking. Checkout VR porn. Then it hits you. Holy shit this is the future of media and entertainment. Something about perspective in VR gives a human touch of interactivity not possible with other media forms. I have no doubt this new medium will revolutionize mainstream TV and Movies. The infinite desk. Infinite whiteboard. Improved conferencing. Are just added bonuses.

>Not joking. Checkout VR porn. Then it hits you. Holy shit this is the future of media and entertainment. Something about perspective in VR gives a human touch of interactivity not possible with other media forms. One of the most pathetic things I've ever heard. Gushing about immersive cuckoldry.

Kink-shaming on HN. Wow.

Man, I miss when the web was dominated by counter-cultural weirdos.

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