Many average consumers probably don’t specifically know what ‘spatial’ means, or what defines a computer vs a phone or whatever. People with too much money do spend 3500 carelessly, I have known a few of the types, and for the latest Apple technology I could see plenty of people buying it without even knowing what it really is.
They know what spatial computer means because they watched Apple’s short video that explains the product and how it augments your environment. If people with too much money buy one, why do you care? You care about all the other dumb shit they waste their money on too?
They can buy whatever they want haha I didn’t say I care, I was just saying the article title could be accurate, people spend money without knowing much about the purchase all the time.
The people who buy something like this (hopefully) have enough money where $3,500 doesn’t matter or are developers who want to get in early on something that might be big in a few versions.
These are the early adopters phase. This always happens with high-end tech. I’m not sure how advanced this set is compared to the competition in order to justify that price.
I still have my old dev version of the Oculus. It came with fancy changeable lenses lol. I don’t regret that one at all and now it kinda feels like a little piece of history
The current model has it’s problems, but I really think this is the start of a new major product line for Apple. This isn’t going to be relegated to only the rich forever. There are a few problems to over come. It needs to be lighter, it needs to be cheaper, and it needs better battery life. All of those should be somewhat resolved in the next 10 years. When it does, I think the market will explode.
The big selling point? TV. I know over the last few years I have kind of fought with my mom because she is hurting her viewing experience for the sake of aesthetics. The TV is mounted, but has a cabinet in front of it. It is loaded with tons of seasonal decorations. The reason? She can’t stand the site of a cord. So instead, she has figures tall enough to cover part of the screen blocking the view of the TV, all so the cords can be hidden behind the figures. So yes, she loses part of the viewing area, and the remote doesn’t work unless you get up and go to the side of the TV so the IR sensor isn’t blocked, but it LOOKS better!!
The thing is, she isn’t alone. I bought a TV last year. During the time researching it, I would see similar opinions to my mom’s. Peopel would post pictures of their TV setup, asking if the size was OK, or if it should be higher, and the responses would be similar, telling the person to run cables through the wall, or get smaller stands or other complaints. It made me realize that many people care about those kind of things, and it will drive their purchase decisions.
All the Apple Vision Pro has to do is show them that you can have a TV, with no bezel, make it any size and position you want, you get rid of glare from the sun, and it has no visible cables. That alone is enough for people to want to buy it. It isn’t there today, but it will get there in the somewhat near future.
I really don’t see these $3500 VR goggles (or any other goggles) being widely—or hell, even narrowly—adopted as a TV replacement. There are frankly an exhausting number of reasons why not. For one, it would only make sense for those who exclusively use their TV alone. That rules out the vast majority of television owners right off the bat.
Given that most non-enthusiasts I know would consider 500 € to be way too expensive for a TV, prices will have to come down a lot for that use case. Especially for families where everyone would need one.
Apple is definitely no contender in that market; their prices would have to go down by 90-95 % to interest the mass market and they’re not interested in that kind of thin margin market segment.
Once there is enough demand, some Chinese or Thai OEM - maybe the same one that manufactures these for Apple or Samsung - will sell them for a couple hundred Euro.
The problem is that demand will have to be generated first – something HTC, Google, Microsoft, and Meta have failed at so far.
So far it seems that VR/AR is behaving somewhat similarly to 3DTV: Some enthusiasts are really into it and a market exists but most people aren’t excited enough to spend any extra money on it. They’ll have to find a way around that if they really want mass-market adoption.
The Quest is already pretty cheap. iPhones are not. The standard Vision will be half the price and people will buy it in droves with the right software.
I dunno. People said the same about 3DTV and that never took off even when more affordable models became available.
I don’t think VR/AR has a killer app so far. There are some neat things it can do but nothing that makes people chomp at the bit to get their hands hands on it.
VR gaming is nice but most gamers don’t consider it sufficiently better to a regular monitor to buy a VR rig. For screen replacement it gets worse because the constraints are even harder - smaller budgets, weaker host hardware, lower expectations that are already exceeded by traditional screens.
Apple might pull it off but they have one hell of a battle ahead of them.
I can’t argue with much of that, although I will dispute the 3DTV aspect, no one I knew gave a monkey’s about that and didn’t expect it to take off, mainly as we had experienced it in the cinema and saw little benefit. VR is a totally different kettle of fish in comparison, it reimagines interaction completely, and isn’t sitting in front of a static screen as per ‘3D’. HDTVs took off, then encouraged upgrades with 1080 and now 4K/HDR. Phones went from £30 to £1,000+.
VR makes Beat Saber a console seller (if I regard the Quest as one). Lack of controllers and games makes the Vision concept a difficult sell as it stands.
I find it to be fairly similar. Most people I know either don’t care about VR or bought/borrowed a rig and ended up not using it much. It’s typically seen as kinda nice but not nice enough to really bother with.
In terms of interactivity, most see VR as little better than the Kinect – and that didn’t exactly take the world by storm, robotics labs excluded.
I think most people are actually happy with their regular screens so it’s hard to sell them on something that does more.
Wasn’t Kinect the quickest selling item one Christmas?
It’s definitely a huge step up and sales are strong in gaming circles, wider adoption is going to need something else though, perhaps glasses-size headsets and long usability. I think those who do use it are impressed, at least those I know.
In this economy, most people don’t even have that in their account. I guess that’s part of the status bit… If you have these, who can say your not doing well?
In reality, it just makes them look like the assholes they very likely are.
So they bought Expensive Apple Thing because Expensive Apple Thing? I’ve had a decent quality HMD for a couple years. It’s a lot of fun and pretty amazing initially, especially if you have a game or two that really takes advantage of it. However, as a utility, it leaves a lot to be desired. I was really hoping to do CAD with it, there were some modestly priced design programs that looked ok along with some free ones, because that’s a big hobby of mine. It really doesn’t work very well. The toolset for decent CAD is fairly large. A tiny wrist menu isn’t going to cut it, and the ability to precisely manipulate nodes or vertices isn’t there. Same goes for even basic functions like desktops and normal computer functions. Sure, they work, but now you have to constantly be manipulating windows instead of having an extra monitor and kicking back in an office chair.
The AR aspect could be fun, but again you’re either the one creating this content via design software with the aforementioned difficulties, or you’re the one popping the HMD on to view what your home designer says would be a nice new kitchen cabinet set in your home. A useful tool, but not a substitute for a computing and design environment.
Not sure what that means. My current HMD supports mouse and keyboard… but seeing as Apples HMD is standalone, I guess you can hook up a keyboard/mouse via buetooth? Mine works through the pc it’s hooked up to. Nice feature, but I wouldn’t call it earth shattering. Both VR headsets I’ve used support hand gestures, but I’ll assume Apple has improved upon detection and depth of vocabulary.
People who paid relatively a lot to feel that they are on with progress and have good taste. These are not things you can directly buy.
Of course, you can buy knowledge and powerful tooling, but I don’t see such hype over digital libraries and good e-ink readers, or over learning programming among Apple fans.
On good taste specifically - Apple has always marketed itself as brand connected to that and has always been the opposite of good taste. I gave up trying to understand that long ago.
And besides the tech bros with the throw away money, many of the people who have bought this thing are “influencers” and now are having trouble figuring out how to make content with or about this thing, because it’s early adopter play tech and has very little actual use, so the influencers are the ones putting out videos like “what would I even do with this?”
I mean, as I pointed out, before an App Store, not much. After an App Store and some competition there are crazy cool applications. Cooking? The device can show you how much of your food to chop, where to put it, visually measure a teaspoon or tablespoon or whatever for you, automatically start a timer when you get the chicken in the pan or whatever. Look up at the stars and see constellations, flights, weather, etc overlaid by your view. On-road gps directions where there is an arrow video game style showing you where to go. Apps that could assist in things like building legos by showing you which pieces to grab and where they go. Looking down over the earth while on a flight to see exactly what landmark/town/area/state you are looking at. There are awesome applications to the tech. Whether we will see them or not is a matter of speculation. Apple is advertising a 3500 dollar headset with cool hardware and boring ass software right now
That may be a more complex device, but I’d prefer something like a light Mandalorian helmet, with normal glass before your eyes (BTW, I think I’ve read about new kinds of glass which change degree of translucency depending on ionization or something) and picture being projected on it or with some display inside. I’m fine if that’d be 16x times fewer pixels.
Looking at the outside world via a computer display is just instinctively awful.
BTW, I think I’ve read about new kinds of glass which change degree of translucency depending on ionization or something
Yes it’s called electrochromic glass, although it’s actually more kind of glass laminate. But yeah it can be engineered in such a way as to change color depending on solar output or on the presents or absence of an electrical impulse. It’s been around for about 20 years but it’s only been practical for about 10.
People have even already integrated it with transparent displays so all of the technology is already there. It just needs commercializing.
Polestar apparently have a car with electrochromic glass in its windows so you can turn those into a computer display.
If I want to look at the world through a screen I’d stay home and watch a documentary.
The camera they use will never have the acuity, color perception and dynamic range that your eyes have. It probably doesn’t work super well in dark environment and it’s definitely completely useless for stargazing.
I always thought Google Glass looked pretty sleek. Much better than having a full VR set on your face. You had a full field of vision, just a small HUD.
And the whole green / blue messages bullshit. Apple never misses an opportunity to remind it’s users they’re paying a premium and everyone else is a plebe.
I don’t think it is good that they didn’t allow that but it seems non sequitur that means it is about status. I like to know if a message is sms or encrypted. Just like some jabber clients do for private messages. There should be some indication of the message status. And unless you can point to Apple indicating the intent of the colors is for social status and not an indication of protocol, I stand by that.
And I know it is hard to cut through the “fuck Apple” narrative. But to me, they are just another one of many scumbag corporations. I just don’t see any evidence that the intent is social status. That was driven by conspicuous consumers.
Apple fully admitted a few times that it was intentional. It was 100% an artificially created mechanism to polarize users, and bully them into Apple’s “ecosystem”.
I didn’t miss that; that just isn’t what it says. Well it is what you say, but that’s not what I’m disagreeing with. I agree with you.
iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android Phones.
I’m not saying it isn’t a dirty business trick design to lock consumers in. It is. I’m saying it isn’t clear to me that it is designed as a social status issue. That was driven by a large group the users. Even still what this article is talking about is not having iMessage on android, which is not at all what I was disputing. I’m saying the colors serve a functional purpose. Not saying “only a functional purpose” but useful nevertheless.
I won’t be surprised if android likewise distinguishes between sms and messages using the new protocol.
This is truly a dizzying exchange. What I said was three things. The bubbles are designed to, at least in part, distinguish message protocol, the zealous conspicuous consumers are responsible for making it a status symbol, and not porting the system to android for vendor lock-in is a scummy process. I am really struggling to see me defend Apple in this case.
Its just a cash grab company that didnt yet collapse, because of its hype around it and its fanboiiiiis. And everybody supporting apple are just those who are deeply invested into that closed ecosystem. If apple dies out for any reason, they are screwed because their products are bricked without apple.
This is understated. They started it, and proved how incredibly successful misleading and exploiting consumers was. They (almost entirely) killed the replaceable batteries in phones, the headphone jack, and the persuit of genuine innovation.
What sucks is that at some point iPad marketing and Apple aesthetic etc felt for me a bit as if it’s going in the direction of the
hype over digital libraries and good e-ink readers, or over learning programming among Apple fans
for real, and I think that’s intentional, just like with M1 and adopting a Unix-like OS and what not, and some series on Apple TV not being that stupid, they always tease you in subtle ways, never ultimately delivering.
Its center of mass is definitely on the douchebag side, but until you clearly see their every move and retrospect over 20 years or so, you are never sure.
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