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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

#981

Post by fennecfoxy »

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…

Well, keep in mind that every yokel with a PS4/5 or Xbox plays Fifa and CoD etc now. Tonnes of people have a switch/had a DS etc.

I remember gaming even like early-mid 2000s was a "geeky/nerdy" thing to do. Now everyone(ish) plays games. Browsing the web was a geeky thing to do & tbh I kind of miss how the Internet was without the masses of the general population; the Internet has changed.

But the same thing will happen to VR, Valve/HTC and Facebook created a burgeoning market that Apple is now trying to capitalise on and "bring to the masses hurr durr".

But VR/AR will be very big eventually, imo. Once prices get down to a mid-flagship phone level, once hardware is lightweight and small like a pair of glasses, easy & convenient to set up and more non-gaming applications that make sense for AR/VR are available it will take off. Maybe not with older gens but that's been true for all of history.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#982

Post by bhouston »

baby wrote: post #928
bhouston wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Thanks to its high average selling price and its healthy profit margins, Apple captured 50 percent of global smartphone revenues and more than 80 percent of the industry's profits in the first three months of 2023” https://www.statista.com/chart/29925/apples-share-of-the-glo... Apple is amazing at business. Hands down they are a phenomenal business. Destroying all other smartphone makers hands down.

Isn't this kind of the same as saying that LVMH is such a better company than Uniqlo? LVMH makes so much more money, but is it something I'm personally interested in or want to buy? That's a different question.

> Isn't this kind of the same as saying that LVMH is such a better company than Uniqlo?

Objectively from the perspective of capitalism, LVHM is a better business if it makes more money.

That doesn't mean you have to like LVHM products more than Uniqlo. That is personal preference and different from a business perspective.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#983

Post by m_mueller »

mrguyorama wrote: post #874
tsimionescu wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think it's possible, especially in just a couple of years, to have a laptop powerful enough to drive two 4k+ screens + cameras at the same time reduced to the weight and form factor of a pair of glasses? Phones, laptops, and tablets have all been fighting on weight vs compute power for years, and improvements are incremental year to year. I don't see any reason to imagine it's possible to reduce the si…

Everyone saying "just wait until this has been miniturized and made cheaper" as if Moores law wasn't already dead and buried and we've been burning billions chasing 1-2% per generation for several generations. There's one more doubling of computing power per square centimeter of die, MAXIMUM. Otherwise GPU prices wouldn't still be climbing.

as it turns out there is a lot of optimizations to be had besides feature size shrink. for a long while, both software and hardware were sustaining of the "free lunch" of Moore's law (as coined by Herb Sutter). With that fading away, there has been a lot of progress on the architecture side in the last couple of years, with AMD & Apple entering a previously stale desktop CPU market and mixing it up quite a bit, forcing Intel to also be competitive again. I think it will be quite a while until the train of improvement runs dry even when feature size will be stuck. Think about how inefficient today's software still is when compared to what e.g. the original Mac could do with its limited hardware.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#984

Post by marcus_holmes »

moonchrome wrote: post #937
mrguyorama wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I could replace my monitor with a portable device that would grant me huge virtual desktop space I would pay 3500$ People keep parroting this line, but have you ever actually tried this? There's way more to discomfort in VR than just pixel density.

Last time I tried was early oculus days and it wasn't even close. But it's been like 7 years at this point ? If Apple has decided to launch it I would assume they worked out the kinks. I'm not buying it until I see enough evidence it's usable (doubt I'll get to try it for 8 hours without buying one).

I loved the idea of Oculus Vim

But the practicality of not being able to see the people around me gave me the screaming heeby-jeebies. I just wasn't comfortable not knowing who was near me.

I will happily have 3 monitors in realspace just so I can turn my head to see who's near me.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#985

Post by marcus_holmes »

nwienert wrote: post #886
siva7 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1B is a reasonable number as it is imaginable that 1 in 7 people on earth tried to use GPT (through ChatGPT or Bing) at some time over the past 6 months. It is undoubtly the fastest growing commercial product in history.

Not a chance, these numbers are so heavily quadruple counted and biased, and even if they try it once it’s not an active user. Again if you think it’s that common you live in a bubble. Half the population is above 45, and it’s not above 2% for that cohort they barely hear about it on the news and have no idea how to even sign up for it.

I witnessed a middle-aged mum walking a pram talking to her son or husband about GPT. Haven't had that kind of moment since 1995 and the rapid uptake of email.

Having seen this before, I don't think the numbers are incredible. Everyone I know has signed up for an OpenAI account, and probably 25% are paying for one. Granted I'm in the HN bubble, but this is so 1995.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#986

Post by marcus_holmes »

rajman187 wrote: post #550
marcus_holmes wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest contrast is ChatGPT vs VR right now. OpenAI is up to over a billion of users and hundreds of millions of subscribers in There is no demand for VR outside gaming. Efforts to try and create that demand are failing.

You’re comparing a service accessible through any device with a physical product, not very apt I’d say

hmmm, not quite. To get an email address you need a computer. We went from 1% of the population having email addresses in 1994 to a decent 25%+ of the population in 1998 (or around then). All of them had to buy a computer to access that email.

If VR was so compelling, people would buy the headset to get the experience. It's not so they don't.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#987

Post by lanza »

ctvo wrote: post #902
lanza wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've seen this story before and it hasn't ended well for the folks in Mark's position. Meta doesn't need to dominate the market. Being the Android to Apple's iOS or the Windows to Apple's macOS is way more than fine for Meta's business. iPhone's did $250b in revenue in 2022. Meta as a whole did $117b. They aren't looking to replace Apple, they are just trying to find a way to get their revenue growing again. It's…

> They aren't looking to replace Apple, they are just trying to find a way to get their revenue growing again This is such an odd sentiment. Meta was first in this segment, they've spent billions and billions, harmed their reputation as a company on Wall Street, etc. etc.. Apple comes in after them, with, from what we can tell, a superior product. This rationalization that this was all part of Meta's master plan all…

You're looking at this too abstractly. Meta's revenue grew by 0.6% last year. And that's up from shrinking by 1.3% the year before. Their social media platforms have reached the peak and don't really have any more users to gain. They aren't looking for 300% revenue growth. They'd be blissfully happy to get back to 5% by establishing themselves as a serious hardware/software company.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#988

Post by darkwizard42 »

nwienert wrote: post #574
darkwizard42 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any new sources on the billion users of OpenAI? I know they hit 100 million users pretty quickly, but has any new data come out on subscribers and MAU of free users?

It’s completely made up and untrue. Think about it, a billion users is 1/7 of all people on earth. If you assume that number has to be at least 3x in the US (extremely conservative, given we’re incredibly rich and at least 100x more exposed to it in media than most of the world), you’d have to expect that basically 40% of people you know are actively using it. Impossible. My extended circle which leans tech overall i…

I also have my doubts. Meta, with three near ubiquitous products (FB, Instagram, Whatsapp) had trouble reaching 1B MAU so I have questions on this figure.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#989

Post by drewbeck »

albert_e wrote: post #160
Laremere wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anything about controllers that work with the Vision Pro. Lacking those is a nonstarter for a lot of VR gaming.

MKBHD reveiw of the AVP says Apple WILL NOT make controllers for the AVP. That struck me as odd. (Obviously anyone can connect a bluetooth controller and give users some extra control, assuming this device supports open bluetooth for audio etc.) It is one thing for Apple to claim that their latest gadget does not NEED any controllers for basic navigation and selection. Because they invested so much in perfecting a ge…

There's a reference in this developer video [0] to "using VR controllers" – I don't think they're going to disallow them, just not make their own.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10088/?time...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg on Apple’s Vision Pro headset

#990

Post by drewbeck »

veidr wrote: post #182
albert_e wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MKBHD reveiw of the AVP says Apple WILL NOT make controllers for the AVP. That struck me as odd. (Obviously anyone can connect a bluetooth controller and give users some extra control, assuming this device supports open bluetooth for audio etc.) It is one thing for Apple to claim that their latest gadget does not NEED any controllers for basic navigation and selection. Because they invested so much in perfecting a ge…

I haven't heard that they won't allow them. Just that they won't make them. I suspect it would support Xbox and Playstation and Nintendo controllers at launch, even, since their other platforms do. However, VR controllers are different in that they need to be tracked as they move through space much more precisely than those console controllers support. But maybe third-party VR controllers can also be supported. I thi…

There's a reference in this developer video [0] to using VR controllers

[0] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10088/?time...

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