Spot-on. Especially interacting with clients. And that's just one of many applications.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Highlights Developer Reactions to Vision Pro Labs: 'Audible Gasp'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Spot-on. Especially interacting with clients. And that's just one of many applications.
Price is about the last issue with the device, but it’s still a big one.
Genuine question: If this was such a no-brainer use case, why hasn't it taken off with the headsets that already exist? They might not be as impressive as this, but surely they are good enough for these purposes.
There are a couple of companies making industrial application VR and AR headsets. They’re nothing like what Apple is trying to do, but they do exist.
It's very easy to imagine specialty VR use cases. The problem is coming up with VR use cases that appeal to a broad audience. The tired, clichéd architecture use case is a valid one, but it has no consumer appeal. When AutoDesk adds VR walkthroughs with Vision Pro as a feature, that will sell a few thousand, maybe even tens of thousands of headsets, but it's hardly a mass market App Store use case.
VR interior walk-throughs haven't taken off because they're a niche market feature within a niche market. Most people never require such a service/feature and only a small percentage of the relatively small number of potential customers (ie: people remodeling or building a structure) care about it.
Most of the VR features people toss around are purpose-built custom apps, not mass market consumer apps. AVP's killer features are the big virtual screens and the immersive entertainment content. Whether they're killer enough to make VR remotely mainstream remains to be seen.
That’s the problem. If the use case is “consume media” there are already superior methods to engage in this inherently social activity. Like iPad it will have to be able to be a content creation tool as well, and as with iPad, that’s far easier said than done.
Because no one yet (outside of being for commercial/medical/industrial etc markets - and being very expensive), has developed an AR-based product.
Never claimed it was. As I said earlier, AR has been used in medical and commercial applications for years.
Stanford University Medical Center uses AR for cardio-thoracic surgeries, for example.
Right.
So we circle back to the core issue: what use will it have that is SO compelling that a mass audience will want to buy one? As I’ve said many times, for this to succeed Apple needs your mom to buy one. Not this first generation one, but no more than two cycles down the road, this has to be so useful and necessary that practically everyone will want one. Tim Cook himself has been saying that he sees it as a new computing paradigm and a direct successor to the iPhone. For those things to be true there needs to be a clear, obvious, nearly universal use case. Like the phone, Messages and camera on an iPhone. Like Safari on an iPad. Like Health on an Apple Watch.
Apple should just buy the Looking Glass 3D display company. "Look Ma, no headset!"
I have no idea what Stanford's system cost. I wouldn't be shocked if it's $100K++.
As I've said before here, many times, there's a large array of applications, many of which I posted about in the past. And a more reasonable priced AR device with a great set of applications will do well.
Have confidence that Apple has vigorously studied the potential markets and how they can be reached.
But... I know, many people here believe Apple, one of the most successful companies in the world, doesn't know what they're doing, not even a clue, and has just lucked into success and continue to bumble along. Even considering Apple has been collaborating with Stanford University's AR/VR laboratory for the last seven years.
I don't think finding the use case for this as a consumer product is necessarily the problem, even though I do think that there's a reason that the competition is struggling.
But media consumption, games and as an occasional accessory to provide screen real estate* this would be pretty cool and Apple has the clout to bring partners with them.
What severely undermines mass appeal as a consumer product is the price. Bring it down a lot and I think you've got yourself a ballgame. Until then it'll remain a toy for the rich and while there's probably money in that, the question is whether that's enough to support the creation of a decent ecosystem of apps.
*I just don't believe anyone will fully replace their screens with this.
You are correct.
You just need a comfortable chair and a room with a window so the fresh air can get it. Oh, also a nearby power point so you will have unlimited juices. Don't forget to take it out once a few hours and do some eye exercises.
In short, I don't know (yet). I am curious too how long can I spend inside my virtual world. With everything now stores on cloud, I don't need to care where to save my files or which songs to keep as I would have unlimited songs to play, files to open, a whole lot of e-books to read - inside my personal space.
Neither the price nor the use case is a problem right now (keyword: right now), it all comes down to 'unknown' factor. We know the price and we can speculate/imagine the use cases and there are plenty of them, but the most urgent factor here is we don't know for sure how it actually 'is'. Not until we have one at hand and try it ourselves, everything is just speculation.
Point A. If the experience is beyond our expectations, the price point and the use case will be moot.
Point B. If it was the other way round, then the price point and the use case will become real.
Between us we can probably come up with a quite sizeable list of things that would probably blow our minds and that still neither of us will ever be able or willing to afford.
Price does matter, even if these things aren't in the wild yet.
I would argue if people willing to pay more for TV and car which doesn't offer any new experience, they will willingly pay more for something that offers new experience. Again new experience is an operative words here, it all comes back to my point A and B above.
The fact that neither you nor anyone else has been able to articulate what a broadly appealing app might be speaks volumes about the product.
“Killer app” is just one of the huge hurdles in front of it. Arguably the single highest one is that it’s goggles. But it’s disturbingly simple to build a list of over a dozen similarly high hurdles it faces.
For me, having a virtually unlimited workspace is very appealing.
Military.
Well, if possible, various militaries will make use of it. Probably first in planning of operations. The current version is not suitable for deployment in a field.
But the first adopters in the field will likely be those which need assisted exploration, so either medical or resource extraction (e.g. mining, drilling, sea-bed exploration, etc.)
If a MIL-SPEC version were made it will cost much more than $3.5k. And security for the software will be a big ticket item (e.g., a unique version of the operating system.)
Even if there is no field-worthy version, in operation centers a VR headset can find uses is planning. Ideally a field-worthy version could be deployed in a platoon for maneuvering in say a cityscape. Air traffic control is another obvious application (for civilian as well as military.)
Lots of educational uses in science and engineering.
And I do think that civil/construction/structural engineering as a field may soon make VR headsets standard in day to day business. And of course architects will love such.
Eventually I can envision real estate sales using these things, to do walkthroughs.
But we all know what you young guys (and most people on these forums are male) will use the Vision headset for: porn.
Developers are all over the world, so Apple will definitely go where the developers are. But a location on the East coast does make sense. Maybe Apple will open one eventually.
These are all still edge cases. It needs mass appeal, not little niche markets.
So turns out the audible gasp was actually the low battery notification