I just don't think the watch market is really there. I feel like its shrinking steadily among younger people as the need for a time teller is replaced by the modern cell phone. I believe people have convinced themselves into convincing companies that they actually want a high tech wrist watch when, in reality, the market isn't that big and it is shrinking.
To me these seem pretty stupid. Major features (to me) of ear-buds with wires and 3.5" jack are: 1) being attached with wires means I don't easily lose them when they slip out of my ear/hand/pocket. 2) the 3.5" jack actually keeps them pretty solidly attached to my phone (again, less risk of losing them). Walking around with two loose tiny objects seems less than ideal - at least to me; I'd lose them within days.
Ok, but $3,499 is a steep price tag. Granted, the pixel density and design look amazing. They are probably the absolute best VR/AR goggles on the consumer market to date, but to try something out and totally shift your computing habits at that steep of a tag is going to be a stretch for a lot of people.
Like it might be worth it if you really are able to replace your standard monitor setup and use these for long stretches with out neck or eye strain. But how will you know until you try?
I saw someone say elsewhere, these are not for consumers in general. They are for developers to work with, build software for, come up with new things… then, if and when a niche is found, they’ll probably make a much less expensive consumer model that focuses on that use case.
That being said, I would love to try these, but I’m more interested in an upgraded laptop at the moment, and that money would buy a nice one.
The original iPhone cost so much people mocked it. It costs twice as much now and people buy them for their 8 year olds. If the device provides enough utility (and I imagine down the line these will replace laptops, tablets and TV’s for a lot of people), the price won’t matter.
Exactly this. I know Apple didn't invent VR/AR. But they also didn't invent the phone. What they did do though is provide an amazing user experience for the vast majority of people.
I've been on the AR/VR hype train for a long time and have had many different headsets over the years. Apple Vision Pro seems like it puts all of them to shame. And if Apple can execute on this, no doubt, it'll become a household staple. And this is Gen 1. Price will come down. Apple has to get the experience right though. And so far it looks promising.
> The original iPhone models were $499–599 only WITH a 2-year AT&T contract, so that price was heavily subsidized.
Untrue. Sure, you bought a phone that was locked to AT&T, but you didn't need a contract, and jailbreaking was a thing quickly....
Source: ya, I bought the first one before moving to China, paid $499 for it, and unlocked it before I left the shopping mall (University Village in Seattle) I was at.
> Untrue. Sure, you bought a phone that was locked to AT&T, but you didn't need a contract, and jailbreaking...
I bought the first iPhone as well.
Not sure why you mention carrier unlocking for international travel or jailbreaking — two things that are completely orthogonal to the subsidized contract terms.
I would encourage you to check your memory. Maybe you paid a higher price to not have a subsidized contract, or maybe you broke your contract, etc etc; in any case, the contract being 2 years is very well documented:
> The iPhone was released in the United States on June 29, 2007 at the price of $499 for the 4 GB model and $599 for the 8 GB model, both requiring a 2-year contract.[17]
> The original iPhone reached the market on June 29, 2007. In the U.S. it was priced at $499 and $599, for 4GB and 8GB models, respectively, along with a two-year contract with AT&T.
> I would encourage you to check your memory. Maybe you paid a higher price to not have a subsidized contract, or maybe you broke your contract, etc etc; in any case, the contract being 2 years is very well documented:
No no, really, lots of people bought them without contracts, even from AT&T stores, at the subsidized price. I think it was the way Apple and AT&T were selling the iPhone: you paid the money, the phone was locked to AT&T's network, so you could only get a contract afterwards without jailbreaking. They "required a contract" but it wasn't done at the same time you bought the phone, so you could always skip it!
This was in the early days of the iPhone, just a few months after it was released (I bought mine in October 2007). They closed the loophole a few months later. My memory is pretty accurate on this one, since I actually bought the phone at University Village (for $499?) and was using it in China a week after I bought it.
Some did criticize the launch price, $499(8GB)/$599(8GB), even though it was right in line with the other smartphones of the day (e.g., Treo). But Apple discontinued the 4GB, and lowered the 8GB price by $200 to $399 just two months after launch. At that point it was not mocked, and that price really helped drive it into the mainstream. I'd say Vision needs that level of price slash to even be niche successful.
There was no actual unlocked price for the first iphone because there was no official unlocked phone, and only way to buy one was through AT&T. A $1200 on ebay is paying for the phone + hype + an unlock hack. The first unsubsidized, direct sale iPhone from Apple was the 3g, and the 8GB version was only $499.
I’m not mocking it, I’m pointing out that the price tag is high-enough that there might be a very slow uptick in adoption. Slow enough, that they don’t have enough people trying it and creating a newish market segment.
I'm no Apple hater or VR hater, but am I the only one who thinks that the design of this thing looks utterly ridiculous? It's a scuba mask.
At best, it's looks marginally less ridiculous than its competitors (which might be all that it needs to be), but I don't see anything about it that looks amazing.
Sure, $3,500 is too steep for this to be a mass market hit with v1. But I think it's a fairly reasonable price to get the ball rolling, and they will see a fair number of early adopter consumers (much more than Google Glass or Magic Leap, less than Oculus).
And yet it is possible that in the alternate history where apple had not done those things, tech might be better. Note that they all came out during the booming times of the 2010s with cheap money for consumption.
For example, the Samsung S10 had a headphone jack, an SpO2 meter (who knew we wwould need this in the pandemic!), an FM radio, great screen, lightweight. Their newer models have no jack (to sell more wireless earphnes), no spo2 (to sell more watches), no fm radio (unknown reason), and its heavier. The perceptible difference in performance is miniscule despite all these years. So , some changes do need to be ridiculed
That said, i dont see this headset in a similar league, this seems an experimental prototype because none of the use cases mentioned have been proved.
Nitpick: the lack of the FM radio stems directly from the lack of headphone jack - the radio relied on wired earphones to work as they were used as an antenna.
So losing the FM radio is more a consequence of the decision to remove the headphone jack, rather than an active decision to remove it.
Still sucks, though. The FM radio was one of the most useful features of my previous phone. By the time I upgraded to a newer phone, its battery lasted for an hour at most during normal tasks, but I could get 12+ hours from the FM radio.
There are now very few phones that have my personal "wishlist" of removable battery + headphone jack + FM radio. And these are all budget phones so if you value a decent camera, you may be out of luck. Add 5G and I'm not sure there are any options.
> it is possible that in the alternate history where apple had not done those things, tech might be better
This. I think Apple has actively made the cellphone space worse in a number of ways, from removing the headphone jack through eliminating user-replaceable batteries. When Apple does a thing, everyone else takes it as permission to do the same thing.
Probably earlier: I remember people mocking the colorful iMacs. I’m sure you could dig up some pc magazine articles from the 90s dunking on the iMacs and iBooks :).
You might want to make it clearer that these are quotes by prepending '>'s. At least to me, this wasn't clear at first.
That being said, I think it is interesting context to remind people of the immediate reactions to the other Apple launches of the recent past. Especially the headphone jack hits home for me, because I'm still a huge fan of the 3,5mn connector, but it fairly quickly became clear that the early widespread stance of 'I'll never buy a phone without a headphone jack!' soon turned into a somewhat lonely fight.
I've still never owned a phone without a headphone jack, and I never will. I do also use bluetooth in some situations, but wired earphones work much better, with greater reliability.
So you are suggesting that Apple can do no wrong and therefore we shouldn't criticize any of their products? And you believe you are positively contributing to this thread?
It's a perfectly valid counter to all the people who posted today, on day zero and months from getting any hands-on time with the Vision Pro, that it must surely be destined to failure, and even worthy of ridicule.
I feel like the people at Apple (and similar companies) are pushing their imaginations and very obviously taking a huge risk, whereas all the nay-sayers are just sitting comfortably in the boundaries of the world as they understand it, and passing judgement accordingly.
I have no idea if Vision Pro will succeed, but as a technologist, I'll spend today thinking of ways it might surprise me for the better, rather than the ways in which it may fall short.
> whereas all the nay-sayers are just sitting comfortably in the boundaries of the world as they understand it, and passing judgement accordingly.
How would you expect progress to occur? Company releases a product users criticize it and make fun of it company/competitors either drop the idea or come up with an improved version. What's wrong about that? Why would anyone care about hurting a massive corporation's feelings? Let's not anthropomorphize them...
> just sitting comfortably in the boundaries of the world as they understand it,
Well it's pretty clear that Vision Pro is very expensive and has no clear use cases. And most criticism is almost entirely focused on these two aspects.
> I'll spend today thinking of ways it might surprise me for the better, rather than the ways in which it may fall short.
So instead of thinking of ways how something could be improved you'll just try to figure out how to make the best of what you have? Best approaches are perfectly viable and reasonable depending on the situation.
The critiques that I find unhelpful (and, disappointing for anyone who would claim to love technology) are the simple "This is just a useless device for watching Netflix and that's stupid."
This is obviously a very challenging value-proposition. No one is confused about how risky this is. It was undoubtedly on the Apple chopping block many many times.
But I find it infinitely more useful when people see a challenging problem and push themselves to think how it might possibly be useful, over what seems to be just quick and obvious dismissals.
Doesn’t seem like they are suggesting that apple can do no wrong. Just pointing out that this is similar to other major Apple announcements. I found their contribution interesting, I’m not sure why you feel the need to be hostile about it.
Because I see the same comment on every single criticism of Apple product announcements, basically implying that Apple isn't capable of doing wrong and that any criticism will just be in vain.
The passive aggression is ugly, it's not a healthy environment for discussion and (as the kids say) simping for a massive company is just plain disgusting.
So why are people still writing “Apple’s entry into this new product category is doomed because it does not meet my personal expectations for the category” articles without discussing the outcomes of previous doomsayings?
Perhaps the headset deserves ridicule and will fail. Given Apple’s track record, perhaps it would make sense to acknowledge their many successes with products people dismissed, and explain why this one is more similar to their failures that people dismissed (Ping, anyone?)
tbh the real question is not the output (whether this succeeds or fails), it's whether Apple followed the same inputs that made prior products category-defining like Apple II, Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Airpods. All of those took niche computing ideas and made them mainstream, creating a new market and new way of life, and did so by following a playbook of timing the tech right, scoping narrowly, and understanding which use cases were worth targeting.
Personally, I feel Vision is a bit too broadly scoped for a v1. 3d photos really didn't need to be in there. The consumer use cases that Apple loves really aren't where Vision is providing next level value add, whereas the remote workplace ones are. But I understand those alone are not enough to drive adoption so I can see why they wanted to make it more consumer oriented.
My hunch is they pivot slightly toward workplace in subsequent versions, much like they did with Apple Watch pivoting toward health and away from luxury.
Don’t seem entirely comparable in that both watches and iem were legitimate markets to which Apple brought an innovative products while AR and VR headsets are a notoriously difficult market where plenty of products have already tried and failed to make money.
If this succeed, to me it will be more akin to what the iPad did than to what the watch did.
It’s also extremely expensive. I’m curious to see how Apple will market it. We will see.
I think this will be quite successfully marketed as a status symbol.
Obviously, it was intentional to create a scenario that there are viral videos of people gasping at the price reveal.
I do think this is a revolutionary day but in a totally dystopian way. I suspect this is the start of where the tech innovations are more and more not going to be targeted at the mass market. The mass market is financially tapped out. The future is what Bernard Arnault and his 200 billion dollars figured out a long time ago. As AI starts to make society more and more unequal the money will be more and more in the high end luxury products. Everyone else can eat cake.
I assume it's more of a prototype targeted mainly at developers and enthusiasts at this point. They're probably betting that by the time they can decrease the price significantly somebody would've figured out what can you actually do with this thing.
Yeah. Apple enters categories that already have product-market fit. It outsources market research to first movers.
VR has only significant traction for a handful of games. iPad is indeed an exception while watches and fitness trackers were popular and a growing market before Apple entered.
At first when I read this I didn't understand that they were examples of people predicting the failure of newly launched apple products. I was nodding along agreeing with each point. I have used "smart watches" and "ear buds" (admittedly not apple) and got bored with the watch after I learnt nothing that suprisingly or actionable, and continually lose ear buds, or have them go through the wash.
Garden variety no-analysis hot take demonstrating a lack of understanding of how platforms launch & grow and what trajectory this is going in.
Personally I think Apple missed a bit in the marketing by positioning this so heavily on average consumer use cases (3d pics of kids!) rather than professional use cases, where yes, having immersive shared environments can be helpful while avoiding any of the legitimate 'consume your life' issues with tech in our personal lives. "Boot up an office at home when you need it" is an extremely compelling use case and is compatible with the ideals of making computing (and work!) more humane.
Unfortunately the author doesn't seem to understand product positioning or have the vision to see possibilities enough to discuss the consumer v work nuance. And the isolation critique could have been interesting but it just defaulted to 'big company bad, tech bad.' Critics are essential, we deserve better ones.
it may lack understanding the technicalities around marking and product launches...
but instead it has a mundane understanding of what most people actually consider important in life
fortunately his critique is not around the specifics of how this product was made (and 'launched') but about whether this product should be made in the first place
technologically it looks about the same as a hololens, which seems like the same 'product idea' as already launched by microsoft whenever ago; but where is that now?
Any 'should this product be launched' critique should come armed with an understanding of what the product's trajectory is and what it could be capable of, which the author failed to demonstrate. That's not particularly surprising, most people aren't very imaginative, so it read like something most people would write: a hot take with a few old talking points.
Re:HoloLens, it failed because Microsoft is not an organization that can build category-defining consumer products. Vision is worlds apart technically from the HoloLens' tech demo level quality. Whether or not it succeeds in the market, Apple was not fucking around or half-assing the tech. This was spare no expense, leave no nuance unpolished, culmination of a decade of deep technical investment and the merging of 30 different workstreams stuff. I can hardly imagine the complexity of the product roadmap that led to it.
Re:mundane understanding, I'm not so sure. Taken as-is with the gen1 hardware we saw, I think Vision should have been targeted a bit more at workplace than consumer given the form factor. But more broadly, the whole product is really just a prelude for what experience we can expect within an AR glasses form factor in the coming decade(s), and products like this need to put a stake in the ground on what they're going to be about.
To give you some sense of why HoloLens never made it: it was timed wrong for the tech (way too early), it was incubated in a company that has never defined a consumer product category and lacks the talent / organizational structure / gravitas to do so, Microsoft lacked the courage to invest in it, it failed to define valuable broad market use cases, it couldn't leverage developers, it lacked multi-year investments in like 10 different key technologies, it had entirely the wrong form factor, etc etc. There wasn't a snowballs chance in hell HoloLens was going to be a consumer product without being fundamentally different.
> technologically it looks about the same as a hololens, which seems like the same 'product idea' as already launched by microsoft whenever ago
If I recall MSFT had demos of people jumping around shooting aliens in their living room. That's a very different product idea than what Apple showed today – a "product idea" is specifically not about the technology, but what you the company thinks people will do with it.
Just felt an overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness in so many of their demos.
The ones of parents wearing the helmet while interacting with children just were straight up depressing to me as a parent.
I’m all for spatial cameras in the phone and having better ways to view them later but this “future” looks lonely.
I've been following the Tilt five AR sets, and frankly those look like a better advancement of social shared virtual reality tech. https://www.tiltfive.com/ They're targeted much more narrowly though.
It does feel like they're well into the uncanny valley. We'll see how they fare against the ineffable "ick" factor.
Google Glass cost half as much and was in a much tighter form factor, but it failed because the general public perceived it as creepy and isolating.
If this product gets associated with people striving to wall themselves off from the world in their own personal dreamscape...well, I don't know. Maybe that sort of personality type will become a virtue in the zeitgeist. Maybe it already is.
Agreed. I get that these would probably be great for me at work, but I have a 5-year-old who has limited screen time. There’s no way I would use this at home in front of the kid. They would just want to use it and if they did use it, I could
see them getting hopelessly addicted. I see uses in industry for this (AR for fixing complex machines, VR for editing 3D data), but hope these never catch on for day-to-day use. I just can’t get over how isolating and sad these things look when demoed. I think part of Apple feels this way too. It’s interesting that all of the Apple promos for this that I’ve seen show a person by themself using this. In the past I recall seeing Meta and others showing more than one person in the same room using VR devices and it always looked horrifying to me.
I agree. I think the work they put into the eyes feature is evidence of their concern about this issue. I'm really curious to know what the "feeling" is like to be in a room with someone wearing one of these.
3d photos should have been an iPhone feature for sure, it felt really out of place on Vision. Generally using this in a physical social context doesn't make a lot of sense except in a workplace with others wearing them and working on specific tasks together.
However, this is probably the best device ever made for remote work and I think can make it far less lonely, with an immersive shared environment, 3d avatars that have real facial expressions and visibility of hands, etc. I'd so so much rather use this than sit at a monitor on Zoom.
I was neutral on it until I was told that I could “remember” a special moment by detaching from reality.
Total bullshit. We’re at total tech: a point where tech is so pervasive we think making it the point of things (rather than an enabler) is perfectly fine. Witness the scores of people grasping at likes, awkwardly binging social media in public, putting giant screens in cars, etc etc.
I find it amusing that the first headset with a very thoughtful approach to trying to maintain connection to other people is faced with even more forceful condemnation of its isolating effects.
Apple developed and invested significantly in a system to make interaction possible and (relatively) natural between users of the headset and others in their environment. I applaud that first step towards an AR future that doesn't isolate us from others.
I think that’s exactly the problem, the “relatively” natural is still pretty darn awkward and freaky. With gaming VR, you’re not expected to be interacting with people who are co-present at the same time, it makes sense to spend an hour or two in this space having some fun.
With this, the intent is clearly to have you wear it all the time and let it be your entire interface to the world. And that, Apple trying to insert itself into regular human face-to-face interaction where technology is completely unnecessary, is what’s off putting about this.
I think it's commendable they tried but at the same time I'm going to be 100% annoyed conversing with someone who has one of these things on pointed at me while I'm trying to talk to them. Call me old fashioned but if these things ever catch on mainstream it's going to take me a while to adjust.
This is true, but on the other hand the previous VR/AR headsets confine their usage themselves, especially in social situations because they are not accepted by other people. Blurring that boundary might cause less isolation compared to other headsets - but might cause more isolation in the long run as an indirect effect due to more widespread usage.
This post has big "No wireless, less space than a nomad, lame" energy. Right off the bat, the whole "don't sit too close to the TV or your eyes will fall out" concerns seem a bit ignorant. AFAIK every VR headset uses lenses so that your eye focuses as if it were looking at something much further away (Oculus headsets are 1.3-2 meters). Unless there's evidence that Apple screwed this up, seems like a moot point.
Full disclosure- based on the typos and unnecessary FUD in the first section of the article, I didn't bother to read the whole thing.
We've wanted virtual environments from moment that William T. Riker stepped onto the Holodeck. We've been dreaming of a cyberpunk reality since the first snow crash. It feels strange to blame Apple for this "vision" of computing.
Yeah, and now there is plenty of backlash for the world "we" have built for ourselves. The problems are starting to outweigh the benefits, even for enthusiasts.
The facetime video (https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/introducing-apple-vis...) shows the faces of the people she's online with, but they will not be able to see her face while she's wearing the "spacial computer", unless it generates a fake avatar for them.
> It's like calling and getting a "virtual background" - to me it says you're ashamed of where you are.
it’s not a matter of being ashamed , it’s a matter of , what right do you have to see Into my home without my consent? Not everyone I video chat is someone I want inside my house.
Exactly. There is no royal we here. Just people who will either buy this thing or won't. And then people like this who are telling other people what to do and think. Which is never a good look.
I'm not actually an Apple fan boy. I have a Pixel 6 and a Manjaro computer at home. I do use a mac book pro for work but without having bought into the I everything ecosystem. But, I can see the attraction of this device. I don't have that kind of cash rolling around in my bank account so I won't be able to get one any time soon. Also, I'm not in the US so I wouldn't be able to anyway at the launch.
But I think the price point isn't that steep and very reasonable actually. People spend much more on sports cars, plasma TVs, and other things they don't need but that are a hell of a lot of fun. And this looks like it should be fun to use. And arguably this could end up delivering a bit of a premium experience over e.g. the best plasma TV money can buy. It certainly looks like the ultimate in personal entertainment. For anyone with the cash on hand, this kind of looks like a very desirable thing to own.
People make the mistake of focusing on just the hardware. Which looks awesome. But what really caught my attention here is the fact that they lined up a lot of compelling content and applications and are effectively leveling up the content ecosystem they already have. That is the smart move because they were already leading here. So, they are technically extending their lead combining scarce and premium content with a superior premium experience that you can't currently get from anyone. It's basically premium squared.
Having the disney CEO on stage is a bit of a stake in the ground. Avatar, Star Wars, etc. all in glorious 3D. And some of the apps aren't that bad either. And they cleverly sneaked in some announcement about making it easier for game publishers to port their games over to mac. Unrelated at face value, but duh, which game publisher would not want a piece of this action?!.
And basically infinite screen real estate to project your applications in your field of view alone is quite a step up from having just a laptop screen with some shitty external screen to extend that. Looks like that should work with just about any 2D application too. You could spend many thousands on expensive monitors and still have less real estate. I could see myself using that professionally just coding.
They will sell as many as they manage to produce, which probably will be around a million or so. This could be a multi billion business in its first year. It will be some time before they have real competition so they can ask whatever they want for this. Apple has got a new money printing machine here. And it's not like their old ones were struggling.
No one is going to force him to buy one. Especially if it makes him feel isolated.
And one nitpick, a device with a 2 hour battery life (or all day if connected to the mains) is clearly not for all-day use. At least not the v1 product they presented today.
Agreed. However, I think the author fears that, just like smartphones, some will become socially pressured into getting one and it will cause them harm. So they're issuing a kind of public warning.
No one is preventing him from voicing his concerns. I do object to "ensure that every time we someone with that ugly Apple ski mask strapped to their faces we let them know how ridiculous it is" - that bit sounds like he wants to harass anyone who doesn't share HIS concerns.
Not that it’s the same, but I remember people reacting this way to smartphones in public places. We seemingly consider the same behavior people raged about in the past as perfectly normal today.
Knowing Apple I would only be slightly surprised if there was some DRM chip which would lock a specific battery pack to the headset (and the other way around).
I left a comment on the announcement thread a couple of hours ago basically saying how I wasn't sure what to think. But, the more I've thought about it since the more I've changed my mind. In fact, I think I actually quite dislike the product...
The idea that I might now decide to talk to my girlfriend while wearing my VR headset because it has my eyes on the front is absolutely absurd. I really struggle to understand the rational of Apple doing that unless they want people to walk around wearing these things 24/7.
And the way this was branded as being a great device for conversations with other human beings or taking photos of special moments with children is just kinda gross.
While Meta has said similar things about the communication applications of VR headsets, I think I prefer that they've made it more of a virtual experience than an attempt at directly replacing real experiences. In Meta VR you're a cartoon when you interact with people and this makes it feel more video game than something that is trying to replace real world interaction.
And unlike the Quest the fact Apple's headset doesn't have a controller probably means it's going to suck for gaming. So it seems Apple doesn't think VR gaming is the killer app, but instead believes interacting with your kids is.
Not to mention the price point here is just absurd when compared to the Quest 3. I still think Apple's headset could be a good product for productivity if they've actually managed to get text to look sharp and have significantly reduced eye strain, but I think for now I'd rather just see how good the Quest 3 is to be honest. I know I might have to take my headset off when talking to my girlfriend and kids, but I'm not sure that's as much of a problem as Apple thinks it is.
Strapping one of these on your face is undeniably quite nasty, and the video eyes just kind of make it creepier. And their shiny reps going on about how everyone can participate, meanwhile it's Apple only is really the icing.
I think though that the dream is for it to get smaller and more human adapted until you get all the benefits, with normalized cues that make it more social, perhaps more social than the now-ubiqitious smartphone and headphones. But that is a long ways away.
The other thing that I think is not emphasized enough is that this headset is really a two way interface for personal AI, where it could be very compelling. Apple prefers to sell it as an entertainment/work device, but with all those sensors and upcoming multi mode AIs, it would be a whole new category. I think Apple realizes others have taken the "AI" flame, but they know it's important, so instead for now emphasize machine learning, but this will eventually become more like the interface for AI assisted imagineering and self guided entertainment.
When are people going to realize that an immersive version of World of Warcraft is really what folks want?
These are real people paying real money who want to be locked in a virtual world for hours. Give people who WANT a better experience something better.
Instead, they keep trying to shove Netflix and photo reels down our throats along with a bunch of casual fast games that people get bored of fairly quickly.
There’s nothing of substance here for why it should be ridiculed, other than the authors fear Apple has the ability to bring VR to the mainstream. But hasn’t Oculus/Meta Quest sold something like 20 million units?
> Stop this future of computing
> Tim Cook and his fellow Apple executives clearly asked themselves whether they could create a headset as their latest hardware product, but don’t seem to have spent as much time considering whether they should.
Has the author considered why people are currently buying these headsets? And why a company with a long history in mobile computing would get in on it?
> … The risk with Apple entering this market is that it does have a unique ability to legitimize products.
The article is probably not worth your time, it wasn’t worth mine.
No Second Coming: Apple’s iPad Just a Big iPod Touch
But at the end of the day, the show’s centerpiece – the iPad — is just a big iPod Touch. Lots of folks will want it, in a hypothetical sort of way. But it’s hard to imagine all that many of them will fork over the initial $499 for a crippled version, or as much as $829 (for the 64 GB/3G model you’d want).
Talk about judging a book by its cover. From the description of their podcast:
“Tech Won’t Save Us challenges the notion that tech alone can drive our world forward by showing that tech is inherently political and ignoring that has serious consequences. It encourages listeners to think beyond the confines of the capitalist tech industry, to consider how we can dismantle oppressive technologies, and how technology can be developed for the public good.”
This is one of my favorite podcasts about the tech industry. It’s thought provoking and I can’t recommend it enough.
The best effect this will have is drive VR/AR development, now that we have an upper spec/price: 4k+ resolution per eye, $3,499. Now the others can squeeze/converge towards that.
The closest thing I can see this being is delivering on some of what Magic Leap failed to do. I was also surprised by the lack of 3D content being described. Was there anything besides the photo/videos? I don't even recall mention of 3D movies (though maybe they were being shown but can't tell on a 2D demo video).
What it doesn't do is deliver in aspects I'm interested in. I wanted something in the Bigscreen Beyond form factor without being room-bound. The idea of carrying an entire MacBook Pro and using it is ridiculous, I should be able to use an iPhone but running macOS on it with a Bluetooth keyboard mouse. The lack of precision input makes it a consumer device rather than a creator one.
3D movies were mentioned as a use case and there were multiple 3D app demos. The dinosaur roaring out of an educational app. The beating heart and heart take apart viewer from multiple angles. Walking around machines in place as you examined future workflow. The breathe app doing a full room fireworks thing. And a future National Geographic videos where you are traveling within the school of fish.
I could see a fair use case in STEM education helping to visualize atomic structures, do dissection, or otherwise help people engage with the material. Historical videos are often pretty dry and with some machine learning they could punch up Churchill so you are in the crowd listening to his speech surrounded by a period entranced crowd.
Will it get to the point that you can go to a concert and watch from the front row with seats in the boonies it is hard to say, although hopefully this contains all the AirPod pro passthru tech blocking out other people’s chatter or nearby vacuuming may be a huge boon to concentration and enjoyment.
Most people don't like to wear glasses, even less like tight-fitted masks. One will always look like a dork wearing this, social ostracism will continue ("seen any fish yet?"...). Phones and watches, you can seamlessly integrate into a traditional-looking lifestyle. Something like this, you just can't.
What I don't get is why there is no counterweight. This headset doesn't look balanced (just a mesh in the back) and the presentation screamed "that neck is gonna hurt" in those scenes where an actors were sitting in front of a laptop or desk, hands on a keyboard and/or touchpad, head tilted slightly forward.
Nothing to ridicule the product itself really, but being immersed in a fake world on a regular basis is probably not good.
I am assuming this version 1.0 that will come out will be a "testing the waters" sort of a product which could lead the way to some useful applications like Media, AR, and Communication Services
Our perception of the world is already "fake". Our body has sensors that probe our exterior and provide input to our brain which attempts to create it's best picture of our surroundings. But it's a "fake world" because it is incomplete and often inaccurate.
These products are simply rough versions of what will some day [2050?] be coordinated digital "brain streams" - replacing the streams from our current sensors - that create whatever reality is intended for the brain to perceive... including streams coordinated with streams going to others... so we can all be in the same virtual space with coordinated live streams replacing our sense of sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing - together with other inputs our current senses don't include ... and it will be impossible for the brain to distinguish between digital input from "natural input"
But I digress... and I'm not even stoned... but I've been thinking about this exact subject since approx 1980 (although back then I insisted everything I said above would exist by the year 2000... ha!)
The headset looks like an amazing product on paper, buts it's pricing is way out of the normal apple range. Whe the iPod, iPhone, iPad, watch came out, they were expensive but affordable. Enough to build up market share and make app stores for them a viable proposition. With this headset at this price it's not going to get the same volumes, so who's going to write apps for it. It feels more like a Lisa than a Mac at this stage, and I'm sure a cheaper version is on the horizon.
One thing I found noticeable is the repeated mention of all the tech that needed to be created and is packed into this device. It seems to be trying to make up for a lack of good use-cases and justifying its price. Normally Apple's announcements tend to gloss over the internal tech-how and focus on the delivered experience.
As someone whose entire social world opened up because of the internet, I find the overall attitude of the author to be highly questionable. It’s one thing to be wary of being forced to isolate or avoid contact, but it’s another thing entirely to suggest that solitude at work definitively equals an overarching loneliness.
Hardware is impressive as expected - engineering porno.
One use-case that i can imagine having this headset is as a replacement for external displays. But that would need to be conditioned on great pass through and ability to use physical keyboard and mouse.
This snorkeling mask is how a well off hipster would escape reality. This ideal hipster needs to have thousands of spare cash and hours of free time every day, yet his day to day life must be nasty enough that he wants to escape it.
I wonder how much they could have saved removing that front-facing screen. Bet you any money it's gone next revision, replaced by some LED that signals what you're looking at.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291898
To me these seem pretty stupid. Major features (to me) of ear-buds with wires and 3.5" jack are: 1) being attached with wires means I don't easily lose them when they slip out of my ear/hand/pocket. 2) the 3.5" jack actually keeps them pretty solidly attached to my phone (again, less risk of losing them). Walking around with two loose tiny objects seems less than ideal - at least to me; I'd lose them within days.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169937
$350 and not out until "early 2015" Dead in the water. That's insanely expensive and too late in the smartwatch market in my mind.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8291889