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Okay so they’ll move 20 million, maybe.

That’s not a large market by anyone but startup metrics.

VR headsets, today, are NOT a mass market device.

There’s two in this house, my roommate used his every day for about two weeks, hasn’t touched it since.
Um, don't sell your horse, these newfangled automobiles are never going to take.
 
Um, don't sell your horse, these newfangled automobiles are never going to take.
Except until AR/Vr are basically seamless technologies that can be put into a normal looking headgear there is nothing compelling or “better” for the things people actually do day to day.

A horse to a car was a clear and obvious upgrade to people.

Sticking a ridiculous bubble on your head and looking like a fool might be a bit too much friction for consumers to jump at this “better” tech.

I fully expect AR to be the next *major* change in how the population computes (the previous one being the shift to the smartphone). But until AR and VR hardware makes dramatic leaps in the “this looks absolutely absurd” category it’s a joke to think it will be anywhere near mainstream.

We’re *close*, but the consumer options as they stand today, offer little more than the Christmas “gee wiz” you get from grandma who strapped it to her head for 5 minutes.
 
??? Not speculation, The iPhone (any model) throttles now, and heavily at times, and it's not doing the processing for the headset too. Just play a simple puzzle game for awhile, or try looking at the screen outside on a sunny day.


I think it's going to need more processing power than an iPhone can do without a total redesign with cooling being one of the primary factors.

We'll see though, who knows for sure -- probably not even Apple. (until enough people get it to see real world usage)

"We'll see though, who knows for sure -- probably not even Apple. (until enough people get it to see real world usage)"

As Apple has been collaborating with Stanford University's AR/VR Laboratory for more than seven years on this, and a device will soon be released (my bet is glasses with a UWB datalink for bidirectional video streams to an iPhone), I have a feeling they know.
 
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Except until AR/Vr are basically seamless technologies that can be put into a normal looking headgear there is nothing compelling or “better” for the things people actually do day to day.

A horse to a car was a clear and obvious upgrade to people.

Sticking a ridiculous bubble on your head and looking like a fool might be a bit too much friction for consumers to jump at this “better” tech.

I fully expect AR to be the next *major* change in how the population computes (the previous one being the shift to the smartphone). But until AR and VR hardware makes dramatic leaps in the “this looks absolutely absurd” category it’s a joke to think it will be anywhere near mainstream.

We’re *close*, but the consumer options as they stand today, offer little more than the Christmas “gee wiz” you get from grandma who strapped it to her head for 5 minutes.
Right now you can work on 3 man sized, great looking monitors, using your apple keyboard and mouse (or your hands only if you prefer). Workouts in Supernatural are incredible, watch full screen movies, browse the web on multiple monitors, have on demand passthrough, etc, etc. For under $400 on two year old phone processors and supporting hardware. Apple will be using M1 and all of their imaging know how.

Most of us are not school girl self conscious anymore. After all, we are posting on a Tech rumor site, hardly the place for the cool kids :)
 
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"We'll see though, who knows for sure -- probably not even Apple. (until enough people get it to see real world usage)"

As Apple has been collaborating with Stanford University's AR/VR Laboratory for more than seven years on this, and a device will soon be released (my bet is glasses with a UWB datalink for bidirectional video streams to an iPhone), I have a feeling they know.
They can't "know", not unless they can really see the future. :)

It's all hype to me, it solves nothing consumer-wise, except gaming. Professionally, yes, I can see some great uses, but none of those uses are anything I do. (I'm an IT Manager with a Systems Programmer history.)
 
Right now you can work on 3 man sized, great looking monitors, using your apple keyboard and mouse (or your hands only if you prefer). Workouts in Supernatural are incredible, watch full screen movies, browse the web on multiple monitors, have on demand passthrough, etc, etc. For under $400 on two year old phone processors and supporting hardware. Apple will be using M1 and all of their imaging know how.

Most of us are not school girl self conscious anymore. After all, we are posting on a Tech rumor site, hardly the place for the cool kids :)
It has nothing do do with “cool” or not. It falls firmly under “weird” right now.

Ask a non techie to strap one of those things to their face for the work day and you will be met with resistance, period. Until this segment can “get over” with normal people (by way of packaging it right) it’s just not going to get past the enthusiast part of tech adoption where it’s been stuck for 20+ years.

Now, again, given the wild advances we’re seeing in display tech and cpu/gpu power in a small power budget, it WILL happen (likely this decade). But my entire point is that until someone does it “right” it’s not going to start the trajectory to mass appeal/adoption.
 
It has nothing do do with “cool” or not. It falls firmly under “weird” right now.

Ask a non techie to strap one of those things to their face for the work day and you will be met with resistance, period. Until this segment can “get over” with normal people (by way of packaging it right) it’s just not going to get past the enthusiast part of tech adoption where it’s been stuck for 20+ years.

Now, again, given the wild advances we’re seeing in display tech and cpu/gpu power in a small power budget, it WILL happen (likely this decade). But my entire point is that until someone does it “right” it’s not going to start the trajectory to mass appeal/adoption.
Nonsense. Apple sold 1 million phones in 2007, 14 million in 2008. Pales in comparison to current Quest sales. The product is already a viable mass market product and that is about to see a hockey stick curve. You are months away from all the major launches. Meta Pro in October, then Sony, then Apple.
 
They can't "know", not unless they can really see the future. :)

It's all hype to me, it solves nothing consumer-wise, except gaming. Professionally, yes, I can see some great uses, but none of those uses are anything I do. (I'm an IT Manager with a Systems Programmer history.)

Of course they can know. At this point there’s no doubt a dozen working prototypes and small production runs are in Apple’s labs.

“It's all hype to me, it solves nothing consumer-wise, except gaming.”

There’s a huge market for AR for both consumer and commercial markets. Apple will be the company bringing it to the masses with a relatively affordable and easy to use system with useful apps on launch day. It’s only limited by one’s imagination. VR/gaming will come along for the ride.

I always wanted to surgically remove my own appendix as it serves no useful purpose. With Apple’s product I’ll be in good hands with loads of AR support.
 
First generation is going to fail so hard.

We're at least 10 years away from a mass market VR headset.

Apple stock analysts who think the VR headset is going to contribute to Apple's bottom line in the next few years are dreaming.
If anyone can make a nascent technology go mainstream, it's apple. 🤞
 
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First generation is going to fail so hard.

We're at least 10 years away from a mass market VR headset.

Apple stock analysts who think the VR headset is going to contribute to Apple's bottom line in the next few years are dreaming.
First gen might fail, but 2nd and 3rd gen aren't 10 years away. I think it will take about 5 (more) years for AR/VR to take hold and move beyond just gaming.
 
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Nonsense. Apple sold 1 million phones in 2007, 14 million in 2008. Pales in comparison to current Quest sales. The product is already a viable mass market product and that is about to see a hockey stick curve. You are months away from all the major launches. Meta Pro in October, then Sony, then Apple.
I don’t know what to tell you, if you think the ski goggle form factor from Meta and Sony are going to move the needle I don’t know what to tell you. Regular people still think these things are ridiculous outside of gaming 🤷‍♂️

Let’s see how much of a paradigm shift in everyday computing these devices being about, I’ll give you a whole year from the launch of Meta and Sony’s stuff.
 
I always wanted to surgically remove my own appendix as it serves no useful purpose. With Apple’s product I’ll be in good hands with loads of AR support.
Remote surgery (health care in general) is one of those areas that I see has a use, but you (unless you're a surgeon already) aren't going to be doing any remote surgery. Gotta have a robot too, in addition to the VR/AR...
 
No, they can't, nobody can see into the future.

"I think it's going to need more processing power than an iPhone can do without a total redesign with cooling being one of the primary factors.

We'll see though, who knows for sure -- probably not even Apple. (until enough people get it to see real world usage)"


It's not a matter of seeing into the future. It's Apple knowing the performance and thermal metrics of their current A-series processors as well of those that will be released in the near and distant future. Again, they have an array of prototypes in their labs now that have been characterized. It's not rocket science.
 
"I think it's going to need more processing power than an iPhone can do without a total redesign with cooling being one of the primary factors.

We'll see though, who knows for sure -- probably not even Apple. (until enough people get it to see real world usage)"


It's not a matter of seeing into the future. It's Apple knowing the performance and thermal metrics of their current A-series processors as well of those that will be released in the near and distant future. Again, they have an array of prototypes in their labs now that have been characterized. It's not rocket science.
No, just no. You have no idea what kind of hardware is going to eventually be released, much less if it'll even work well, and if it'll make any sense at all to anyone but the guys who are designing it.

And note that in anything I said, I didn't say I know it -- huge difference. To know something is to know it, no probabilities, no questions, 100% right, and nobody can tell me what's happening tomorrow, much less next year.
 
Remote surgery (health care in general) is one of those areas that I see has a use, but you (unless you're a surgeon already) aren't going to be doing any remote surgery. Gotta have a robot too, in addition to the VR/AR...

I assumed you would have realized I was joking having myself doing surgery on myself.

With that aside, AR assisted surgery has been routinely used for years. That's just one of a large number of useful applications for AR. For both commercial and consumer uses.
 
No, just no. You have no idea what kind of hardware is going to eventually be released, much less if it'll even work well, and if it'll make any sense at all to anyone but the guys who are designing it.

And note that in anything I said, I didn't say I know it -- huge difference. To know something is to know it, no probabilities, no questions, 100% right, and nobody can tell me what's happening tomorrow, much less next year.

You're being pedantic. You might want to study up on the subject and educate yourself. There's a ton of information out there. As an engineer (hardware and systems, specializing in communications systems and signal processing, and ASIC design relating to both) I've been following the trajectory of tech for a long time.
 
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Even the fastest PCs/graphics cards available today aren't fast enough to play games that the resolutions this VR headset will display (talking about hardware that is a lot faster than anything Apple currently offer). So for this to work well, Apple are going to have to come out with hardware is a massive jump from what is currently available. Not saying it isn't possible, but I suspect it will be a lot more than $2000.
And what resolution is that? Where is resolution mentioned anywhere in this article?

This article mentions 3500ppi. A 2.5" 3500ppi display is 8K. And this article is talking about the future generations.
If the upcoming model rumored in a few months has 2000-ish ppi displays as rumored, then that's 2x 4.5K (2.5" each give or take). An M1 handles that without breaking a sweat.

So "hardware that ... Apple currently offer" is plenty fast enough for next year's model. Meanwhile today's M1 Max (albeit too hot and heavy for a device needing to be significantly smaller than an MBP) can handle the equivalent pixels as 2x 8K, so I have little doubt they'll shrink and cool some future version of that down enough for 3500ppi 8K displays.

Although they probably don't even have to. Some rumors say this device will track your eye and only display full resolution at the point you're focusing on, the rest at lower resolution. (And that's exactly the sort of stuff Apple likes to pull out of the bag). This is significant because anything more than a few degrees outside of the point you're directly looking at is out of focus to your eye, even in real life. So there's no cost to the experience to mimic that in the device, with a huge saving in processing power required to render it all. I believe it's called Dynamic Foveated Rendering and I don't believe it's unique to Apple.

I expect Apple will be building a custom chip specifically for this device, not just rehashing an iPhone or iMac chip. It will be something specifically tailored to include only what this device needs, nothing more, nothing less, to cram maximum bang in the small space and weight available. I don't think Apple is having any significant difficulty getting the performance needed out of their chips for this device.
 
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I assumed you would have realized I was joking having myself doing surgery on myself.
Yeah, but it's not something that has never been done before, though it gets strange with the anesthesia or pain. :)
With that aside, AR assisted surgery has been routinely used for years. That's just one of a large number of useful applications for AR. For both commercial and consumer uses.
I wouldn't say routinely, only a few times, but like I said, I think that is a great use of AR. I just don't see any uses for consumers other than games, and only gamers that don't mind the headset. But whatever. You go ahead and pay a couple grand to be a first, I'll just save that 2 grand for a better TV instead.
 
Yeah, but it's not something that has never been done before, though it gets strange with the anesthesia or pain. :)

I wouldn't say routinely, only a few times, but like I said, I think that is a great use of AR. I just don't see any uses for consumers other than games, and only gamers that don't mind the headset. But whatever. You go ahead and pay a couple grand to be a first, I'll just save that 2 grand for a better TV instead.

1. Educate yourself about AR and how it's used today and in the past. AR is not for playing games (though it can be - you're likely thinking of some VR applications). It's a tool for helping people solve problems.

2. Flex your imagination a little. Let it run wild thinking about potential applications. It's not that difficult.

There's a reason Apple is getting into this market. And why Apple released ARKit to Apple developers way back in 2017, and why Apple has been collaborating with Stanford University's AR/VR lab for the last seven years.
 
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