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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

#941

Post by wellthisisgreat »

labrador wrote: post #429
wellthisisgreat wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… while sitting with those interaction-coffins on our heads? How can anyone promote a box of a VR helmet and speak about “social”

Maybe you haven't experienced the feeling of embodiment that Zuckerberg likes to go on about. You feel like your "in" the world with others, not in the solitary room of your physical world with your eyes staring at screens. I've felt embodied, but the resolution and processor speed with current tech keeps glitching me out of it. Reality doesn't have lags and glitches, so if you have them, it doesn't feel real.

Oh I know the in-VR experience having built DIY headsets some 10 years ago for fun.

I am talking about what’s happening in the real world, where Zuck’s “vision” of immersive black boxes w/o passthrough locking you into the virtual is as asocial as it gets.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#942

Post by acdha »

darawk wrote: post #918
acdha wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 that it was the future When, for a couple of months in 1992? There are always a few people who dislike new ideas but that one was popular from the beginning because it was so easy to understand: just like ordering from a…

> When, for a couple of months in 1992? There are always a few people who dislike new ideas but that one was popular from the beginning because it was so easy to understand: just like ordering from a catalog but you get your stuff a week earlier and in most cases can see more info about it before buying. I think you were in a pretty distinct milieu if you thought this was a popular idea in 1992, or any time before, s…

> I think you were in a pretty distinct milieu if you thought this was a popular idea in 1992, or any time before, say, 1998.

It wasn’t mainstream before people could afford computers and connectivity but nobody serious was laughing at the idea for the reasons I mentioned: it was an obvious extension of what businesses had been doing for over a century and there was tons of prior art (services like CompuServ had online shopping in the 80s). By the mid-90s it was obvious that it was going to happen for easily shipped items as soon as people got online - when Amazon launched in 1995 it had customers around the country almost immediately and the book operation was profitable within a couple of years.

> Yes, I imagine that the companies you interfaced with as an employee of an webdev company in the late 90s were all over this. That is not the same thing as it being generally popular.

Our customers weren’t tech companies but brick and mortar retail, banks, manufacturers, etc. They knew that this was an easy way to sell direct to customers - which cut out some hefty margins charged by major stores & catalogs - and try new products. The opportunity was obvious even to people who weren’t in the industry — absolutely nobody was laughing at that, although there were dotcoms of the “lose money on every sale, make it up in volume” persuasion who everyone knew were doomed.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#943

Post by dvngnt_ »

illegalsmile wrote: post #905
vagab0nd wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a saying, if you don't believe in VR, you haven't played Half Life: Alyx. Joking aside, I do think gaming is important to bootstrap VR. Once it's cheap enough and many people have it, it will be much easier to build other things. Personally I think interactive 3D story-telling could be a big one.

I think Alyx has a lot of potential to be great, as do a lot of other games. However, so far I haven't used a headset that's comfortable with high enough fidelity to make me want to play through the game. I agree that 3d story-telling especially with interactivity and even group participation could be huge. An escape room meets It Takes Two meets The Last Of Us seems like it could be awesome.

the index worked perfectly fine. it was an amazing experience. jeff gave me nightmares

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#944

Post by somsak2 »

Interesting just how similar his reaction is to what Ballmer's was when asked about the iPhone. "We like our strategy," comments about how it's so expensive (in fact giving almost precisely the same comparison; $99 vs. $500 back then is quite close to the $500 vs. $3500 with VR!), and mentioning that they're selling "millions of phones per year" while Apple is selling zero.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#945

Post by dhosek »

nharada wrote: post #67
ctvo wrote: post #25

This sounded weak to me. Apple is making an integrated headset: their own lenses, processor, ..., down to the operating system. The Quest uses an Android based operating system and a lot of off the shelf components. We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. A personal device like these headsets needs to be delightful . It has to be responsive. It has to have the little to…

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position Isn't this what Android did? They seem like they're doing fine enough

They may have market share, but there’s very little money being made by Android manufacturers and likely also by Google. Apple has an overwhelming percentage of the profit share from the smartphone market even if they don’t have a majority of the raw market share.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#946

Post by dontupvoteme »

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…

>we are talking about people (homo sapiens) putting a major something on their heads that dramatically takes over their visual field for the pursuit of... what exactly? That is the puzzle.

IRL adblock, please. I'd pay up to 5k if it worked decently well.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#947

Post by zmmmmm »

wraptile wrote: post #674
elefanten wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The open secret is that the units they’ve sold get very little use. The typical user plays around with it for a few weeks and then it sits on the shelf.

I love my Quest and will definitely get Quest 3 but the only reason I don't use it more because it's a thing on my head and that will never be fun long-term use until it doesn't feel like a thing on my head. Apple's take is still a thing on your head.

Definitely. It was a big surprise to me that they went for "giant thing on head with amazing performance" instead of "amazingly light weight thing you can barely feel and on par with best headsets available". I'm sure they could have done the latter with their mobile chips and blown away the Quest line entirely. I still wonder if they will.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#948

Post by zmmmmm »

hinkley wrote: post #310
zmmmmm wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine with him, he doesn't want to make profits from the hardware.

Most of the software profits are on IOS as well. I think you must know this, so I’m not sure what the angle is you’re playing.

The difference here is Zuckerberg gets to be the equivalent of both Samsung and Google in the Android analogy. That's going to unlock far more opportunities for ecosystem profit than Android did when split b/w OEMs and Google.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#949

Post by dontupvoteme »

eloisant wrote: post #777
darawk wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Internet was first available to the public in 1993. 10 years later, in 2003, it was so ingrained in everyone's life that we could no longer imagine living without it. VR is available to the public since the 90's, it's as old as the Internet. Even if you consider that "actually useable VR" started with Occulus it was already 10 years ago. I'm not saying the turning point for VR will never come, but it's certainly…

Using the internet never required becoming a quasiborg.

I like the idea in some cases but it's still absurdly komisch to the vast majority of human beings

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#950

Post by r00fus »

NBJack wrote: post #327
kumarvvr wrote: post #244

" By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself." Wait, I thought an Oculus does the same thing too. Its a blindfold on your face, and it doesnt matter if they are alone or in a crowd. Mark has got to be terrified. The power of Apple is the tight and efficient integration of hardware and software. Regarding battery power, I woukd not rule out versions that stream the video and o…

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.

Facebook isn't a hardware company, all their similar ventures are essentially duds. They will like the market legitimacy but they are more likely in the position of Palm when the iPhone was announced (ie, have been in the market with tepid success for years, then eclipsed by Apple).

Apple's core strength is the hardware/software vertical integration, but another strength is that they know how to partner with others, even competitors (Intel/MS/Google/Netflix/IBM/you name it) if it makes their product more cohesive in a way they couldn't do alone.

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