Metaverse? Apple thinks $3,500 AR ski goggles are the betterverse For its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple today teased an augmented-reality headset called Vision Pro, its second-major product line expansion after the Apple Watch since CEO Tim Cook took charge in 2011. "This is a day that's been years in the making, one that I've really been looking forward to," Cook told his …
They don't have the horsepower in their wafer thin (and prone to overheating at idle) MacBooks. VR requires a solid 90 frames per second or you'll be spewing your guts. Cupertino has no graphics cards that can support VR at that rate. Nor are any forecast.
AR is the best they can do and for $3,500 the experience will be disappointing. Elegant people sitting on a couch wearing something expensive will be all over TikTok, but it will be shyte to use. Not that anyone will admit it.
Soon to come, the iBucket for $399.00, to be kept nearby for the nauseous fanboi who do fall for the marketing hype train.
> Apple CAN'T Do VR They don't have the horsepower
They do. Read up on Foveated Rendering.
Your eyes can only perceive fine detail in a small area of your view at once. This is the only area that breeds to be rendered at high detail.
Apple's Metal graphics API, used for years in iOS, lends itself well to Foveated Rendering, as it uses a technique called Tile Based Deferred Rendering - basically an efficient way of knowing what doesn't need rendering.
>> They don't have the horsepower in their wafer thin (and prone to overheating at idle) MacBooks.
Utter nonsense. While it was true that some intel-based MacBooks and iMacs were prone to overheating, there hasn't been a new intel MacBook since 2020. Since then Apple Silicon has been literally wiping the floor with almost anything AMD and intel have brought out, and still neither is able to produce anything which can provide the same insane amount of performance while literally just sipping power. And in x64 land, only the high end server processors (XEON/EPYC) are able to offer anywhere near the same memory BW Apple Silicon offers, and for the larger AS models that would require a dual processor setup on the x64 side.
>> VR requires a solid 90 frames per second or you'll be spewing your guts. Cupertino has no graphics cards that can support VR at that rate. Nor are any forecast.
The larger variants of Apple Silicon GPUs are competitive with RTX 3080 level cards, which isn't exactly slow and vastly exceeds what is considered necessary for fluid VR. And all while not being limited by the comparably small localized video memories of discrete GPUs.
Looks like you have been in a coma the last few years.
A lot of people seem to have missed that you don't need to plug the Apple glasses into anything.
Unlike all other VR/AR headsets, the Apple Vision is a stand-alone computer unlimited, private 'displays' built in.
If you don't want to use gestures and voice to control it, you can use a wireless keyboard and mouse/trackpad for productivity apps...
Mark, how is the MacBook connecting to the headset going to increase it temperature? The only example shown was for the headset to takeover the display of the MacBook and place it in the 3D environment. If anything that’s likely to reduce the heat generated by the MacBook.
>The larger variants of Apple Silicon GPUs are competitive with RTX 3080 level cards, which isn't exactly slow and vastly exceeds what is considered necessary for fluid VR. And all while not being limited by the comparably small localized video memories of discrete GPUs.
The new product is AR, not VR. The best GPU Apple can muster barely touches a 3060. So powerful, it can't even be benchmarked(?) If you listen, you can hear all those PC gamers burning their rigs to buy MacBooks.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3080-vs-M1-Max-32-Core-GPU_10487_10970.247598.0.html
Can't wait for the first production reviews.
So amazing, they are losing market share monthly.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/10/apples-mac-shipments-fall-more-than-40percent-worse-than-major-rivals-idc.html#:~:text=Apple's%20worldwide%20PC%20market%20share,%25%2C%20according%20to%20IDC%20data.
Apples to oranges comparison here, you are talking about a SoC compared to an individual CPU when they are not the same thing.
M1/M2 archtecture contains chips dedicated to: translating the x86 instruction set, the memory is directly integrated which also means it is not adjustable, I might add the DDR6 buses are slightly higher (there will be controller latency but we should see roughly equivalent speeds), translations for codec reading/writing direct SSD access (the ssd doesn't have the controller on it, it is part of the SOC).
M1/M2 have also been shown to be pretty poor at high-vertices count 3d (such as you would need in houdini & maya) translations, being about 1/8th the performance of a mid-tier Ryzen 5 for CPU only results.
Take an average gaming PC with an nvidia card and they tend to beat the M1/M2 for video transcoding in codecs M1/M2 do not support on their firmware. I might add, the tests we conducted were on a computer that was approximately half the price of the higher-end M1 pro.
The ssd size is abysmal.
Apple silicon GPUs being equivalent to 3080s? Ummm, that was a marketing presentation Apple did, and no they are not. Apple silicon could get 60-70fps at 1080p in Tomb Raider running natively in metal, Tomb Raider running natively in directX with a 3080 can do ~315fps at 1080p, this is also with the RTX settings turned on on the PC of which you cannot do on the M1/M2, when you turn rtx off it goes even faster. How they got this score was buy voltage limiting both the CPU and GPU on the PC, and it was also running a very low end hard drive. (voltage is still relevant, but not for gaming). get up to 4k and the M1 Max was struggling at 34fps, whilst an AMD 6800M was getting 50FPS.
The M2 had about a 20%-30% uplift in native games due to the removal of the voltage limitor (it's basically the same chip with a few more cores) so that would put it up with the mid-range AMD 6000 cards for gaming.
But here's the thing, we already have 8k gaming headsets with a wide FoV, Apple's device will probably only work on Apple computers, which means the walled garden approach, and given their recent behaviour in trying to stop anyone replacing hall sensors, and their history of poor lifespan devices (they only expect their devices to last a max of 4 years), I will not be going with any Apple products.
The glasses may be ok, but until they get their vertex transformation up, make sure it actually works with professional applications, and make the system actually play games well instead of at the barely playable level, architects and other pre-vis depts will keep using other devices. Then I see it as marketing wank.
Don't worry, the "highly recommended"[0] iWheels will drive the price above the $1,500 mark, and the mandatory rounded corners will take it to just about $2,000.
[0] "I'm sorry, we don't have any of the wheel-less model in stock. Nobody buys those anyway, they are so last century."
Errrrrrr..... This site is famous for being a stronghold of apple unbelievers and is famous for
'We'll update the article if they ever get back to us'"
El Reg is also well known for not being invited to Apple launches or even in recent years, anything. Sure, there are Apple users here. I'm one of them but we are generally first to admit that they aren't perfect but for me personally, they are a whole lot better than the alternatives. At least I don't see ads on the start menu with MacOS. If that is being in a cult then may I suggest that you become acquainted with the collective works of 'Q' and MAGA (unless you are an attorney in which case you already have an attorney of your own)
Apple, other than weeks like this hardly gets any column inches here unlike the good folks (sarcastic) over at the likes of Microsoft, Oracle and the rest of the usual suspects that seem to dominate the news here.
Re "They don't have the horsepower in their wafer thin (and prone to overheating at idle) MacBooks"
I have two Macbooks. One 2015 Intel one, which does get a little hot, but no worse than any Windows laptop I've used. I also have a 2021 M1 based one. Performance wise, this wipes the floor with the Intel Macbook, and pretty much beats my Ryzen 5 based gaming PC. OK, the PC is better for gaming, but I don't game on the Macbook anyway, and it does equal a decent gaming laptop. It does not even get warm, even when I am doing some heavy duty work using multiple VMs..
Since warehouses are usually quite ordered affairs, with isles, numbered shelves etc., the same effect can be achieved with a simple smartphone app.
> Where is item [Fluffy Blue Teddybears]
>>> Building 2, Walkway 7, Section B, Shelf 4
Doesn't require 3500 dollars, the battery life is measured in days, and we don't have to force people to wear bulky ski-masks while handling heavy equipment.
The point I am trying to make here isn't nitpicking on a specific example. My point is, there is a reason why V/AR never took off outside of gaming: There simply is no "killer app", a feature that is so desirable that it would justify the elevated price point and technical problems (limited battery life or being bound to a stationary computer, having to wear a bulky piece of headgear). Pretty much all examples outside the gaming realm are solved problems with "conventional" hardware.
If anyone disagrees, I'm all ears: What kind of task outside of gaming can only be done adequately with a V/AR device?
Hazardous environments, particularly unlit where a personal HUD with AR could greatly assist. Having helped my neighbors get off our smoke filled corridor in my apartment building, I can honestly say it'd have been nice to know which way was up let alone feeling for door handles to find the exits.
True it's once in 50+ years as I'm not a firefighter and the sprinkler systems would have likely been a tad unkind to the glam mask. But there undeniably are some "killer" use cases, just not sure how lucrative or abundant they may be.
That situation requires either highly advanced sensors (which don't yet exist), or extremely accurate as-built drawings of every major building (which don't exist and never will).
Fun fact - Disguise now own the only accurate 3D model of the front of Buckingham Palace, because they did a full laser scan of it for the Jubilee last year.
There's no plausible mass-market application for headset-based AR. There are specialist applications that could in theory use it as a HUD, but they also require a lot of additional sensors to make it useful and cannot tolerate the drift that inevitably occurs.
"or extremely accurate as-built drawings of every major building (which don't exist and never will)"
Don't be so sure. Apple got a patent years ago for using a conventional phone camera to take images of its surroundings and combined with the motion sensors, build up a 3d map of its environment. The patent described doing it silently and patiently while you were using or carrying the phone normally. This was before they incorporated the lidar into the iPhone.
It might be connected with this patent, I don't think this is the exact one I was looking for:
https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2016/12/apple-granted-a-patent-for-3d-mapping-and-photography.html
> What kind of task outside of gaming can only be done adequately with a V/AR device?
If you mean, what kind of task can be done *better* with a V/AR device, then
CAD in many sectors, design review, surveying, drone piloting, photography.
If we may take these alone, and pause to consider what eyeball-tracking and hand-tracking might do for the user interface of a device that can sense the wider environment. I wouldn't consider all the implications of this combination of capabilities to come to me immediately.
And also, sitting down is bad for you. The medical literature on this is robust. If using computers is a necessary evil, then we can least use them whilst on our feet or moving about.
And also, sitting down is bad for you.
And falling down can be even worse for you.
The last time I used a VR headset, I was so disoriented that I fell off the chair I was sitting on, I had to sit down because I nearly fell over trying to use them while standing.
Wearing 3d glasses makes me nauseous, so I suspect that had I not fallen I would have needed the iBucket
> There simply is no "killer app"
There wasn't a single killer for the iPhone, either. Nor for the iPad, or Apple Watch. Instead, most users have several tasks they use their general purpose device for.
There may be several applications that, whilst each below the 'killer' threshold, all add up for an individual user. An iPad might within a house as a cookbook, a weather station and as a TV remote and not much more. Some iPads are only ever used as Point of Sale terminals in cafes, or as interfaces for Leica surveying equipment.
"There wasn't a single killer for the iPhone, either. Nor for the iPad, or Apple Watch."
I don't see the usefulness of an expensive watch with a tiny little screen, but I have a long life full of destroyed watches so I might be a tad biased. A smartphone isn't based on just one killer app, but a few pretty useful ones. I don't have that much on my phone, but I do keep my shopping lists and some calculators on it. I also have a periodic table and electronics apps with pinouts for HDMI, Serial, USB, Ethernet, etc that can be very useful to have on tap. A tablet is something that I see mainly as a laptop replacement for people that don't create anything and just consume content. There are some applications such as a remote control/display for a drone and cameras which I use mine for.
Apple tops out what enough people will splash out on for a phone they might drop in the toilet some time within the next year. The same goes for the iPad. Even as a long time Mac user, I don't go for the iOS stuff. It does work well, but I'm happy to accept a bit less of a user experience for the lower cost of Android since I'll have to get another one each year as they are all flimsy as a really flimsy thing and get pushed out of the usefulsphere in a couple of years or less with no way to upgrade.
I think the phrase that "you will own nothing and be thankful" can often be "you'll own stuff that will be expensive and obsolete even before the batteries won't hold a charge anymore". The Apple Airpods are crazy expensive. When you take the price and consider that they'll only work for maybe 2 years if they are looked after, the monthly rent on them is very high. $3,500 divided by 24 months is $160/month (tax of 9.25% added). If the goggles are financed, add 18% or more to that.
I know where you're coming from, I have decided to never spend more than twenty quid on ear buds or earphones again because I'll likely lose them regularly. I find phones to be different though, perhaps to my clumsiness and proximity to puddles and kitchens. Spending more on a more durable phone saves me money.
I've never had an iPhone, but for last few phones I've gone for higher-end Samsung Galaxy S phones (either at discount year after released, or reconditioned) because of their durability over cheaper phones. Waterproofing, wireless charging and good Corning glass all have the potential to extend the lifespan of the phone, and are features shared with iPhones. I might one day consider buying an iPhone, but I'm definitely not buy a cheap Android again. It's too expensive. (A glass screen protector is a must, it's a consumable item though, like brake pads or screwdriver bits. )
The killer app of an Apple Watch is that it lets find leave your phone (its bulk, its weight, its antisocial media and nagging lists) at home yet still map your jogging route whilst listening to music, pay for a coffee and doughnut, and then summon help in case you break your ankle or have a heart attack. My bicycle is great because it not my car, my car is great because it is not my bicycle.
"Since warehouses are usually quite ordered affairs, with isles, numbered shelves etc., the same effect can be achieved with a simple smartphone app."
I'd say a rugged tablet would be better than a smartphone. The bigger screen and larger 'buttons' can make a tablet easier to use with gloves. I agree about the organization of warehouses. Even in fulfillment centers where items are stacked on a space available basis, there's an inventory computer that knows where everything is. The Kiva bots that Amazon bought out are based on that sort of thing.
I don't see a "killer app" that's worthwhile enough for business to find value in buying up this sort of tech by the pallet. We've already seen that the average punter gets bored with this sort of thing do to lack of media that takes advantage of it and it's obsolete in months and nothing more than a maker's parts source shortly thereafter. The media that does get produced early on is often very kitsch and feels like it was mandated by some overseer rather than being creatively used by a designer.
I like the application that Michael Crichton came up with in his book "Airframe". A mechanic/technician working on a complex device such as a passenger jet could use AR to access schematics, specs and other technical information while they worked on the device. I already have an old laptop on an arm next to my workbench to display schematics and parts lists while I work on something. I also use it to back-document projects I'm working on as I find it preferable sometimes to design something as I build it or just document wire colors and numbering rather than specify them in advance. $3,500 is way out of budget and I'm not certain I'd want googles on my face for long periods of time. Fine for skiing, but not that great on a hot day.
I like the application that Michael Crichton came up with in his book "Airframe". A mechanic/technician working on a complex device such as a passenger jet could use AR to access schematics, specs and other technical information while they worked on the device. I already have an old laptop on an arm next to my workbench to display schematics and parts lists while I work on something.
That was first reasonable work application that I thought of. Hands-free access to documentation without needing to move or look elsewhere could be handy in many maintenance situations be it aircraft or some kit on an oil rig. Add the ability to magnify part of field of vision and take pictures.
Laptop is fine for most of us, but if you're on a ladder/hoist working on something it might be bit less practical.
This Vision Pro does not seem to be made for walking around. It does let you see what's around you, by displaying on the internal screen what external cameras see, but the promotional videos mostly show people sitting still and not moving their head much, and it's probably not a coincidence. I assume that the lag between reality and display is perceptible enough to induce motion sickness.
A bit over 20 years ago I started using Minolta SLR cameras, followed by DSLRs. My current camera from Sony (which has a compatible lens system) replaced the optical viewfinder with an electronic one. While being able to overlay graphics into the eyepiece is useful, it did take a bit of getting used to its electronic version of reality, and I still like the purity of my earlier cameras’ optical systems.
The virtual workspace is the killer app for me. The ability to use any room as my work from home office with the equivalent of multiple displays is very exciting. My home office currently looks like, well, a home office. I would love to be able to just have a small desk to hold a keyboard and track pad with a comfortable chair and nothing else. I could even replace the walls of the ‘cupboard’ with a suitably relaxing or inspiring vista. Virtual 3D meetings and virtual whiteboards with my remote colleagues would be the icing on the cake.
Call me a fanboy but I’ll be in the lineup on launch day.
> I would love to be able to just have a small desk to hold a keyboard and track pad with a comfortable chair and nothing else
Given your sentence here, why do you need goggles for this arrangement ?
> Virtual 3D meetings and virtual whiteboards with my remote colleagues would be the icing on the cake.
Most people hate meetings, anything that makes people do more of them is going to be a sure way to kill said product.
Many studies have shown that meetings are a big time waster and less the better.
> Many studies have shown that meetings [as commonly practised] are a big time waster and less the better.
[The studies could only study extant forms of meetings, so please forgive my clarification]
That doesn't mean that what meetings there are shouldn't be better.
Amazon's cofounder attributed their early competive advantage to one thing: reading a paper by Edward Tuft which outlined how poor a tool PowerPoint is for disseminating useful ideas. Instead, the presenter should write up their idea over a few pages, and each meeting would start with silent reading and thinking time. Amazon quietly adopted Tuft's recommendations, leaving Tuft feeling his paper had been largely ignored for over a decade.
"reading a paper by Edward Tuft which outlined how poor a tool PowerPoint is for disseminating useful ideas."
I'm a big fan of distributing materials a day before a meeting so people have time to review them and generate some useful contributions. Springing everything on people during the meeting is a waste as not everybody is going to understand everything at the same rate. I find it handy to make some notes beforehand as the material sinks in and I find things that are missing that prevent me from understanding what the presenter is trying to convey. AR/VR goggles that make my face break out aren't going to fix any of that.
It's important to note that you won't be directly seeing the keyboard on which you type. You'll be seeing the internal screen on which is displayed what the device's external camera sees, with a tiny lag which is probably going to make typing on a keyboard a jarring experience. Just trying typing on your keyboard without looking directly at it, but looking at your phone with the photo app displaying the keyboard. You'd think the display is responsive, but good luck writing anything.
"What kind of task outside of gaming can only be done adequately with a V/AR device?"
For me, the main selling feature of this sort of device is the head-up display means that the user doesn't need to switch attention between physical environment and whatever screen they need to look at. (Note that this advantage automatically is only valid for AR and would specifically exclude VR). It also means that you can add some context/status information that HAS to be minimalist, otherwise it also interferes with the attention on the physical environment.
For example a surgeon doing an operation having HUD glasses displaying heart rate and blood pressure - minimal essential information ONLY, as additional non-essential info is just going to clutter the vision and reduce utility. AR companies seem to be missing this minimalistic vision, they just seem to want to add more more more.
From a VR POV, the advantage is to be able to simulate a screen size that is essentially a complete sphere around the user stretching as far as the user can comfortably turn, in a 'portable' environment (so in a way that cannot be done by a bank of screens sitting on a desk). Any operation that requires the user to move around could be (a) hazardous (tripping / falling risk) and (b) potentially nauseating / disorienting when real & simulated movement aren't in sync. With respect to manipulation, combining manipulation of virtual objects in a virtual world without tactile feedback is likely to be more confusing than manipulating a real-world keyboard / controller. So while I can see that there are some differences and therefore potential use-cases, I can't really think of any.
But maybe I'm just an unimaginative bit-pusher
I remember being interested in the genre's earliest experiment: glasses that simply embedded the usual display. Since then they have been going in the wrong direction, trying to somehow "immerse" the wearer in the "experience". I don't want an experience, I want to get shit done! Their over-designed displays are way past what is needed. Make a pair of glasses that can display an 80x25 terminal, full stop. Design a bluetooth gadget that switches between mouse mode and one-handed keyboard mode (obviously not querty). One- and two-character commands will be back in style! The controller for this already exists, it's called an iPhone. Imagine being able to ssh into a server while you are standing in front of it. Other "always on" scenarios easily spring to mind.
These consumer devices will never fly, too ugly. But there is an opportunity for business devices. Ironically, the simpler business class device would be unobtrusive enough that consumers would also buy them (and misuse them).
My laptop does too, and it has a much better (if still kind of rubbish) keyboard. And it'll do 80x70 text. In fact it'll do two of them side-by-side, with some real estate left over.
I can see use cases where "virtual ssh device" could be handy, but they're mostly "someone did a shit layout of the machine room" – compensating for a fundamental error. I prefer to solve that problem by never being in the machine room in the first place.
So far, most work meetings, even remote, require a keyboard to be useful.
"A floating 4K Mac display will appear when users glance at their MacBook display while in the Vision Pro. From there, users can interact with a virtual keyboard or their voice to type or make use of a physical Magic Trackpad and/or Magic Keyboard." (from here).
If it's any cop or not is another matter entirely, but they do seem to have given it some thought. :) (And of course... being Apple... you need one of their laptops for it... Tims golden Rollers don't pay for themselves...)
So far, most work meetings, even remote, require a keyboard to be useful
Actually, that problem was solved in 1995, and now we have the tech to actually do this.
I'm betting that that will be next for Apple.
I think that comes down to the sort of instant usability expectation inflicted on people.
Anyone can operate a standard keyboard (albeit possibly with 3½ fingers instead of 10), chorded takes a while to learn and is not portable between systems unless you take your keyboard/input device along. There's also the challenge of meta keys such as shift/alt/ctrl/option/command (to be inclusive) which was originally never required for chorded devices. I'm not sure how you'd address that other than by 'hold' functions which become cumbersome by themselves.
> So far, most work meetings, even remote, require a keyboard to be useful.
This allows someone to use a keyboard. And a whiteboard of any size. A whiteboard where images can be annotated. There's no reason why you couldn't use a stick on a table as a virtual pen on a notebook. That a hand-tracking 3D scanner UI will make 3D CAD more intuitive and thus widen its applications should be obvious to anyone who's ever used CAD.
Let's just look at the workstation status quo: People sat down in one position. Very bad for our bodies, including spine and bowels. Not ideal for cognitive tasks, since different cognitive tasks benefit from different environments, eg, use a low ceilinged room for concentration, use larger environment and keep eyes above horizon for divergent problem solving. The human input devices, a keyboard and a 2D mouse aren't an obvious fit for 3D work but can actually work well... but RSI doesn't sound fun. Then your workstation isn't always in your workshop, your worksite, your client's office. A laptop can stand in but its ergonomics are even poorer, and without a desk it'll occupy both hands. So: room for improvement.
(The author who coined the term Metaverse uses a treadmill below a standing (er, now walking) desk. His latest book features devices that are effectively slimmer cheaper versions of these Apple goggles, and are used by characters for the same use cases slas Apple suggest. )
If it was going to be pR0n, the pR0n industry would already be using existing platforms quite heavily.They are not. QED.
I've.. not researched this much, but the pron industry does tend to be tech innovators. Kinda curious if their absence is due to the manufacturer's stranglehold over the devices though, ie you can't get an app for THAT on their walled-off app stores. Gaming VR headsets do seem to keep display makers busy, along with ER departments judging by the number of videos of wearers breaking screens or themselves while being immersed.
Also curious when we'll get the first fatality due to someone with more money and tech savviness than instinct for self-preservation. So wearing one while driving because they're on autopilot. Pics I've seen show a rather obstructed field of view. Hopefully the eye tracking will let users look away to focus on something other than the ads being pushed to the wearers.
They are not. QED.
I have a client who owns a porn site and she makes VR porn. Google has about 502 million results if you search for it and there are many dedicated sites. I know this as she has asked me to integrate VR content into her existing site.
Anecdotally, from what I can tell and what she says, the size of the VR porn market vs. the normal porn market seems to directly correlate to the size of the VR gaming market vs. the normal gaming market. It's small in comparison, but it's getting bigger (ooh-err missus) and is worth the investment.
So porn is fully invested in VR to the point that it is worth being invested in it. The more VR headsets come down in price and the more widespread they become, the more (I expect) VR porn will grow (ooh-err missus again).
So no, not really QED.
Anon, because...
I remember when everyone was going to wear glasses to watch 3D TV...
I remember when everyone was going to wear Google Glass...
I remember at least a few other companies flogging some kind of 3D VR goggles...
And most recently I remember when Facebook was going to change the world with Meta goggles...
But surely THIS time!
they have been successful with a few gadgets, where others failed before them. I'm not arguing they've actually invented any breakthrough technology and made this world a better place, hell no. But a few times they have managed to convince the great unwashed masses that this or that gadget is a must-have, and then the stampede followed. Better world, hell no.
"Have any of those been since Steve Jobs died? He could have painted his crap white, stuck a logo on it and convinced some people to buy it."
Steve Jobs was good at picking through the Apple labs and finding the one or two things that were going to be the next big hit. Nobody is 100%, but Steve was really good. I expect that his criteria was partially based on the sorts of things that could be marketed with a really healthy markup but the tech was often very polished and not turd-like. I don't see where Apple hits were junk simply marketed in a way to get loads of people to buy. Expensive for what they are, absolutely. The thing is the cheap knockoffs are less expensive but horribly frustrating to use and loaded with obvious bugs. That Chinesium does show that the same device could be sold for far less money if they wanted to.
>” Nobody is 100%, but Steve was really good. … the tech was often very polished and not turd-like.”
This what I find so weird about the goggles; they seem to be tech looking for an application people want. You look at Apple’s successes and the hardware, especially the iPod and iPhone (and to a lesser extent he iPad) were simply pocket sized delivery points for Apple ecosystem/walled garden services that people wanted.
So can we expect Apple to announce iMeeting, FaceTime etc. for the goggles…
"You look at Apple’s successes and the hardware, especially the iPod and iPhone (and to a lesser extent he iPad) were simply pocket sized delivery points for Apple ecosystem/walled garden services that people wanted."
The iPod isn't sitting in the walled garden so much. I love my iPods and feed them with all sorts of external content that doesn't come from Apple. That's a good thing as I refuse to open an Apple account of any sort and have closed everything I've had with Google though that wasn't much. The iPhone and iPad are firmly sitting behind the wall. If the goggles are sectioned off as well and need other Apple devices as part of a complete system, that could be really bad for Apple. Not everybody can spend the money and companies aren't going to sponsor every employee's tech devices. With the goggles, companies will have to provide everybody with them or they'll wind up looking towards units built on an open standard so people can BYO. I don't think people will be pleased to share that much with something that goes on the face. That would mean a sanitizing regime will have to be in place and that can often be more wearing than the usage. I expect that it will require Apple Goo and using anything else will melt the plastic materials they use.
Not entirely sure what that is. You can get a hell of a lot of computer (yes, whatever your preference is here applies) for that kind of $£¥€. I think it "looks cool" and I'm sure I'd like one for novelty value. But not for north of $5k aussie worth of novelty. Sure looks like it would be a ripper when it comes to porn though.
I was just thinking along those lines... and not really from the pov of dropping $3.5K x 4 to watch a movie with others, just the slight awkwardness of nodding to my other half, so we simultaneously don our headgear, so I can press 'play' and start the movie which we can enjoy not together.
I'm not sure it would work for us, I often need to pause the movie so I can go get the Mrs a fresh spritzer, or to go see what the dog is getting up to (because I left the lid on the kitchen bin open). Being immersed I'd miss all of these clues that something needs my attention.
"dropping $3.5K x 4 to watch a movie with others"
If anything, a good use case might be live sporting events. Imagine, instead of being forced into the view that the TV camera feeds you, potentially with occasional cuts from different angles, you can focus on whichever part of the field you choose simply by looking there, including zooming in wherever you want and moving around to get a different angle. (Of course it would require far more cameras and processing grunt to catch the real action from enough angles to extrapolate / generate the rest. But even having 180 degree coverage from a single POV, as if you were an in-person spectator, could be a good start.
Extrapolating from that... documentary series
Barcelona FC already have this - they sell virtual tickets and you can choose where you want to 'sit', including the coach's box, in the goals etc and swap around as you like.
Never tried it and don't know what gear you need, but it sounds like a useful use of the tech. Think concerts would be another good one...
As with all of the AR stuff I've seen so far, this looks like a solution looking for a problem. I'm happy to be proved wrong, but I would think that it'll be relegated to a few niche markets in the work arena and a toy for the rich. I can't see this stuff ever becoming mainstream until you don't have to wear goggles (holographic projectors maybe?) and the price comes down a lot.
Just sunglasses means the nudist beach, right?
Protip: Remember your sunscreen. Especially for those parts that rarely see the sun. It's not a fun experience, no matter how funny your partner may find it. Also when sunburn turns to peeling.. not a good look.
In other sun-related hazards, I guess these will add novelty to people who wear them outdoors and get panda eyes.
Apple is betting on the wrong horse IMHO since VR is perfectly suited to games, but not general productivity apps. I believe the Vision Pro could be a nice peripheral for an iPhone (if they can get the price down to realistic levels) but not as a standalone device.
Meta is taking the right direction by focusing on gaming in VR. It has already sold 10 million Meta Quest goggles and is bound to sell more as demand picks up.
If demand picks up, you mean.
There's a fair chance that those 10 million sold are all they'll ever sell.
In any case, I'm not buying anything that is even remotely tied to Zuckerturd, and I'll be damned if I'm strapping a diving bell to my face.
Sorry Apple, count me out of this.
It's not Apple's role to tell you what to do with a general-purpose device, and what people actually do with new gadgets changes over time.
The first iPhone is announced and we can all imagine navigating by Maps. Fewer people envisaged a service like Uber, built upon the same phone features (data, screen, GPS,).
First gen iPod was an easy sell, though many forget just how expensive it was. iPhone sold itself since the problems with existing phones were evident to everyone, but it is used differently today.
No need to rush to judgment yet, let some developers get their hands on some first.
"No need to rush to judgment yet"
With the iPod, the precursor was easy to see, the Walkman. I had a Chinesium portable MP3 CD player that let me listen to audiobooks at work. It was a big unit to have on my belt and even a real Sony Walkman could be rather bulky. The iPod's size and functionality was great and the use case was plain to see. I really like that all of my currently working iPods have Bluetooth, as dodgy as it is, so I'm not snagging headphone wires on every doorknob I pass by. There is no established use for the goggles at this point that isn't super niche. Gamers? Sure, but $3,500 is a lot of money as an accessory to a toy. I like games, but I have far too much life to be getting on with to be a 'gamer'. If there were CAD programs that were immersive so human sized things could be designed with a feel for how they will be once produced would be a great combination. Perhaps some interesting visual metaphors for working with the very small might offer some insight to people working on semiconductors and MEMS devices. For goggles to be mainstream, they are going to need a complete environment to work with. They'll also need to be based on open standards so we aren't back to the old days where applications had built in print drivers and you needed to make sure you had a compatible printer plugged in to get any hardcopy output. I think I've really dated myself with that observation. Today we don't even think about print drivers. We just buy a printer, plug in a USB or network cable and it works. Do we want to go back to having to see which goggles will work with a particular program and having to write drivers within the main body of the application?
Outside of the existing commercial use cases these goggles will be used by and for people participating in pr0n.
I do like the concept and they’ve thought about ui but it’s a lot of money and enables just 1 person to use it, typically in the comfort of their own home.
Certain websites will be throwing millions at providing content for this.
"something people can do while sitting in an office where the entire furniture plus equipment probably cost less than 3500$."
The office furniture can cost twice that, but it will be suitable for 8-10 people at a time and adding a few more people is just a matter of dragging in a few more chairs from somewhere.
《these goggles will be used by and for people participating in pr0n.》
Unless the voyeuristic "cinematography" used in this industry were altered to take advantage of the technology I cannot see any real selling point. If the "activity" were filmed from the point of view of one of the participants it might have a hook but the perversity of human nature is such that it might well be that the voyeurism is the real attraction. If not there could be a market for very industry specific tactile feedback add-ons/ins - iSock/iCo... well you get the idea.
I would have thought even in our inflationary times USD3500 will still buy you a whole lot of fairly pleasant reality - even a quantum of Terry Pratchett's Anhk-Morpork's seamstress guild's "negotiable affection."
This still has the same problem that all the other VR headsets do. They talk up different use cases, some more likely than others, but never address long term use. Sure, people can use it as a workstation PC, but when they need to pee they'll have to unstrap themselves, go pee, then strap themselves back in. Who's going to keep doing that 2-3 times a day every work day rather than just getting up from a computer?
With Pass-through VR you don't need to remove the headset to 'see' your surroundings; video of what is in front of you is displayed in the headset. The Apple video showed someone fetching a drink from a fridge whilst resting the headset, so successfully navigating to, and cleanly using, a bathroom may be plausible.
of this being a far cheaper and higher resolution eye-tracking system for research... until I read on. Unless the app can get the full flow of data from the eye sensors when it's running "full screen" mode, as it were, then it's going to be useless for that.
Does it also have a camera built in, so it can correlate gaze with stuff you're looking at IRL? That would be useful for all kinds of things - for example the fooking stupid new displays they've put in railway stations that put the two most useful pieces of information, when the next train departs and what time it is now, about 60 feet away from each other so you have to play hunt the data when you're potentially in a rush.
I can see a lot of labs would buy this just to see if it can do that job. Even if their subjects would then look like some kind of reboot real life film version of Bender.
Haha, it's actually in the *design* of railway stations that AR, VR and digital twinning* are clearly useful.
This is a 1st gen product largely intended, I suspect, to be sold to third party developers - whilst at the same time serving to mark Apple's intent in that area - just as the 1st gen Apple watch did.
Like the 1st gen iPad and Apple Watch, it is a more polished 1st gen product than the first iPod and iPhone were.
"Haha, it's actually in the *design* of railway stations that AR, VR and digital twinning* are clearly useful."
It would instantly deprecate all of the CCTV to have everybody not only masked but goggled as well. Add jeans positioned at mid-thigh, a hoodie and £300 black trainers and you have your suspect.
The techies want us to use LLMs for our writing and art production, "autonomous" vehicles instead of driving ourselves and VR headsets instead of looking directly at the real world (all for a fee of course). Very soon, there'll be no need for humans at all, except as a source of dosh. Unfortunately, the more humans get replaced by automata, the less dosh will be sloshing around -- because someone has to earn it first before the techies can take it.
Oh yes, the chattering, Apple obssed NIMBY middle-classes, plus all the moronic journos trying to seem "hip" and "with it", will be clamouring to get these. £3k for a something that looks like pair of ski goggles citca 1985? Good luck to you!
Give it 2 years tops and you'll be able to pick up a set for £200 quid in the sales!
The amount of money Apple spends on feeding competent analysts with high quality data has been self evident... What, in the five minutes you have spent thinking about this, makes you think you know better?
At least try to spin a plausible narrative such as... I don't know, Apple thought true AR optical technology would be easier to achieve than it has proven to be and instead have had to release a jazzed-up VR headset. After all, such misreading of the future hurt Apple with the Trashcan Mac Pro.
"I am not sure one way or the other, but for reference I suggest you dig up this esteemed publication’s review of the first iPhone."
When the first iPhone came out, a person I worked with that had more money than brains got one. I had a go with it and could see the potential, but the price was too eye-watering for me and could see that a one meter drop onto the tiles would be the end of it. It wasn't too long before that was the case with this person although they continued on with the cracked screen as it still sorta worked and they weren't keen on buying another one.
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.. the way Apple are positioning this. It's not a consumer VR headset, and it's not an AR 'platform' in the expected sense. Apple's demo shows almost no complex 3D, no monsters dancing on desks, no VR games.
Instead, the demos mainly present 2D displays positioned around the user. As such, it looks like this is intended as a display technology - to sit alongside the Mac Pro and 5K monitors. All the hardcore technology is there to present a useable virtual display, not deeply interactive 3D. In that respect, the price looks more appropriate. If you're a video producer switching between laptops and cinema screens, this begins to make sense.
Whether it will sell is another question, but Apple appear to be avoiding the Hololens problem of needing a killer app, and the Meta problem of trying to magic up an entire paradigm shift. It's not being sold as a lifestyle product, so much as a productivity tool.
Anyone expecting it to be a Meta killer, or to sell in millions, to replace your iPhone, or there to be earth shaking VR games is missing the point. The demo even had the user checking their watch for notifications...
I think this is an iPhone moment. We might be looking at the future of HCI/MMI. What? You think WIMP and keyboards are here for all eternity? I suggest the a quick gander at the Marques Brownlee vid on YouTube. It is version one. Quite frankly, if you buy this you are funding the development - it should come with a couple of complimentary Apple shares!
I do hope there's VR in the future but right now they're being built for the wrong reasons. Meta builds them because they want to sell real estate in whatever their Metaverse plan is. Apple builds them to collect software sales commissions and patent licensing fees. See why they will fail? They're not built for the buyer. At best they're built to be tolerated by the buyer. It's not much of an incentive.
> They're not built for the buyer.
And how do you design a sustainable business model that 'builds for the buyer'? Or rather, how do you design a business model that produces products in alignment with what is good for the buyer? What if the buyer doesn't know what is good for them? Or what they want?
> And how do you design a sustainable business model that 'builds for the buyer'? Or rather, how do you design a business model that produces products in alignment with what is good for the buyer? What if the buyer doesn't know what is good for them? Or what they want?
Exactly. I see this is being like Alto or Lisa. Apple have been around long enough to know these headsets are not going to be a huge hit, sales wise. Monied early adopters will buy them, kinks will be ironed out, improvements made to hardware and software, and a scaling up/reduction of cost over time. As it stands, the product out of the gates looks vastly better than anything Meta has managed so far. If this starts out well enough for Apple, and early adopter reaction is positive, we can expect another pivot/U-turn from The Zuck.
I'm extremely sceptical about fully immersive 3D. It's just too intrusive and the content, other than in gaming, is generally awful. If Apple manages to come up with some practical uses for it beyond gaming, it may actually have a future, but I can't quite see myself donning a ski mask to immerse myself in anything, and particularly not work related stuff.
Steve Jobs had the talent to be able to choose some great new tech coming from the Apple labs and push it towards a finished product the company could sell. Tim Cook doesn't have that. During his tenure, Apple has been mostly stagnant and concentrates mostly on the iPhone and ways to make changes to product that nobody has asked for (slimmer glued together computers that can't be upgraded). The Mac Pro was a mainstay in the creative world, but since the cheesgrater, it hasn't been kept up. The trash can was an interesting design but not as the the next Mac Pro. The large hole cheese grater is also a good product but far too expensive for what it can do. The Studio is a nice product but is along the lines of zero upgradability and what's with the price of SSD options anyway?
I'd really like to stay with a Mac for things like Photoshop and other creative software, but it's getting hard to justify the cost for something that has to be bought maxed out rather than incrementally upgraded as budget allows. I already have PC's and while I hate the Windows experience, there' no arguing the cost/performance ratio. Yes, I have linux too but Solidworks and my stuff from Infloytica doesn't run under linux. Tim Cook is dead in the water and lacks the vision needed for a leading tech company. To sign off on yet another headset at such a massive price point is silly even if Apple has cash to burn. They'd be better off spending more time and effort on EV software they can sell to automakers (forget building a car) and software subscriptions to the people that buy them.
Eh? Solidworks has only ever run on MacOS via Parallels, i.e not natively. Dassult do have an iPadOS product that uses the Solidworks engine IIRC. Porting your engine to iOS is very sensible if you have been expecting, for the last decade, Apple to release an AR headset when the tech is ready.
Autodesk have an Intel MacOS version of AutoCAD Inventor, and last I read from Autodesk's reps it ran better on Mx Macs through Rosetta than it did on Intel.
"Eh? Solidworks has only ever run on MacOS via Parallels, i.e not natively."
Yes, I know that which is why I positioned the comment below the part where I mention Windows. BTW, it also runs on a Mac using VMWare Fusion which is what I did when I worked on rockets. I've never like Autodesk products and Solidworks' big brother Catia is a mainstay of large companies so having a good grounding in Solidworks vs Inventor/Autocad is better if you want to move to a large company. I do have to admit that if you are clever, learning one 3D CAD program gets you pretty close to being functional with any other 3D CAD program. Most of those companies seem to copy from each other so it's down to learning the icons and where things are in the menus. I run Solidworks on a PC and keep that computer off the internet so it stays healthy. I might update that computer to one I got at an estate sale that belonged to the actor that played Ferris Bueller's dad. It was actually a leftover from the estate sale that I picked up from the person that ran the sale. Fortunately for the actor, I'm a nice guy and zero'd out all of the HD's. It had a bad graphics card and he may have replaced the computer due to that and never thought about what he left on the drives.
Not with the cameras built in to the headset. However, bigger sensor cameras, night vision, radar and other sensors mounted outside the vehicle could be streamed to the headset and could assist situational awareness, just as Radar assists pilots in the fog. However, I can't begin to imagine the regulatory issues involved, and perhaps people shouldn't drive at night or in fog if they are uncomfortable doing so. KISS.
Of course emergency services and military will encounter times when they do need to drive in those conditions...
People seem to forget that no-one had managed to design a compelling smart phone until Apple created the iPhone.
Of course, Jobs was in charge then and he had a vision that seems to be missing from Apple now.
But they have form for making things work when others have failed.
Do I want one? Yes. Would I pay the asking price, even if I could afford it? No. £3k is too much for a headset.
I will probably have to order at least one for work, but that won't be for me. That will be for one of our users, so assuming I get any time on it at all, it'll be a few minutes. Just enough for me to find my way around.
This is Jane, you met her at the Apple event last year, she is from Florida and likes gin and tonic and horses, from her body language she's hot to trot....
This is Fred, at the last meeting the takeaway actions were.... you haven't completed any of them... he is a bit of an arse but likes golf... talk about his balls...
Good morning Susan, don't panic you are in a safe care home and doing well, but your memory is sometimes not its best, this is your son John....
AR beats VR any day. (OK the hardware needs to get nearer to ordinary glasses and not creepy, stop trying to do any serious processing in the glasses and just upload it to the cloud).
"OK the hardware needs to get nearer to ordinary glasses and not creepy, stop trying to do any serious processing in the glasses and just upload it to the cloud)"
I can't imagine anything creepier than passing everything you see and how you interact with it to the cloud. A computer network where companies are often happy to send The Man any information they want just for the asking. The only time a warrant/subpoena is required is when there is a need to compel somebody to hand over information. A warrant isn't necessary if the holder of that information will just fork it over. In the US, if you invite the police into your home and they discover evidence of a crime, they can use that in court. A warrant is only required if they wish to enter without your permission and over your objections. How hard is Apple going to fight for you and how much money will they spend on attorneys to fend off The Man? If it doesn't make the news, nothing if they can get away with it. The same goes for Amazon, Google, every big company.
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