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  • PCs and XR are both computing platforms.
  • XR is following a similar growth trajectory to early PCs within the same time period.
  • Both are foundational technologies where the tech has to be mostly invented from scratch.
  • Many breakthrough advances needed to push the early tech into more refined models.
  • Both have substantial skepticism early on and uninterest from the masses early on.
Definitely a lot of similarity. Certainly more similarities than smartphones can attest to.

Not even remotely similar. The story of Macintosh happened at the development cusp of miniaturized computing generally. This AR/VR system is just an evolution of that. The idea that it’s somehow revolutionary is wrong. Computers and displays are already in and on everything.

So again, it boils down to the same problem: massive barriers to entry. As far as we know it doesn’t solve a major problem (no one is busting down doors to get a VR set like they were for easily useful computers, music players and functional smart phones.) AR/VR has been collapsing as a market segment, not growing. People generally will be resistant to putting Apple (or any) hardware on their faces. Unless Apple intends people to only use these in their homes they’ll face issues with regulation coming into play. Where is it appropriate to wear something that obscures part of or all of your vision? When driving? When flying an aircraft? Operating a boat?

These are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the challenges a product like this faces. Nothing we’ve heard so far suggests that Apple has solved any of these issues and therefore a truck load of skepticism around it is not only justified and warranted, it would be a fools game NOT to be skeptical about it top to bottom.
 
Not even remotely similar. The story of Macintosh happened at the development cusp of miniaturized computing generally. This AR/VR system is just an evolution of that. The idea that it’s somehow revolutionary is wrong. Computers and displays are already in and on everything.

So again, it boils down to the same problem: massive barriers to entry. As far as we know it doesn’t solve a major problem (no one is busting down doors to get a VR set like they were for easily useful computers, music players and functional smart phones.) AR/VR has been collapsing as a market segment, not growing. People generally will be resistant to putting Apple (or any) hardware on their faces. Unless Apple intends people to only use these in their homes they’ll face issues with regulation coming into play. Where is it appropriate to wear something that obscures part of or all of your vision? When driving? When flying an aircraft? Operating a boat?

These are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the challenges a product like this faces. Nothing we’ve heard so far suggests that Apple has solved any of these issues and therefore a truck load of skepticism around it is not only justified and warranted, it would be a fools game NOT to be skeptical about it top to bottom.
This is "Computers are not revolutionary because electricity is powering it, and that was the true revolution" levels of logic.

XR is a computing platform, but it's also two new mediums (one for AR, one for VR) - the first two mediums to deeply interface with the human perceptual system. Being able to deeply interface with our perceptions is nothing short of revolutionary since human life has never experienced this since conception short of unreliable and unscalable methods like psychedelics. We get to have controllable and convincing perceptual experiences that go beyond the limits of being human or the laws of known science, for both entertainment and practical use.

People were not busting down doors for early PCs in the home which were seen in search of a use the way people can't yet see the use of VR; the potential was seen first in businesses and education, and even there it remained a small niche for many years.

AR/VR has not been collapsing other than the 2022 decline that many other areas of the tech industry experienced due to the worldwide economic situation.
 
Instead of this AR/VR headset. I wish Apple had worked on bringing back the iPod.

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I'm guessing AR/VR will be the end of Apple's dominance.
AI is where it's going to be at from now on.
Even Facebook's dropping Metaverse.
Did Apple get the memo?

AR will integrate and be a driver for AI more than ever!

Facebook is not a barometer of success for anything!

AR is not the Metaverse. AR integrates with the Real World!

Apple does not get memos, they write the Memo the right way!
 
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Remember before the ipad came out analysts said it was gonna be $1k+? Then It came out at half that. I too, I wouldn’t latch onto rumors about prices. My guess would be it might even be a third of what people are thinking.799-1,000 would be an interesting and shocking price point. At that point, even people dismissing this product might actually give it thought

I remember.

People just love to come up with ridiculous prices so they can justify taking a whack at Apple and then feel better for the rest of the day.

"My guess would be it might even be a third of what people are thinking.799-1,000 would be an interesting and shocking price point."

I like that. It makes a ton of sense to get a lot of buzz and people on-board with open wallets. And even more importantly, software developers jazzed about writing apps for the device seeing an excellent product launch with lots of sales and a large market to sell their apps to.

Also... No doubt in my mind Apple will release the device with a suite of interesting and useful apps so people can start using the device on day 1, further motivating brisk sales.
 
On the other hand, Apple charges $700 for a set of 4 casters and $1000 for a monitor desktop stand.

$3k might actually be a bargain in Timmy's RFD. Maybe $1000 for the goggles, $2000 for the proprietary battery, $3000 for the cable between the battery and headset. And $4000/month from Apple Services to allow you to connect it to an AppleID and actually use the thing.

Of course. That makes a ton of sense...on planet Mars.
 
This is "Computers are not revolutionary because electricity is powering it, and that was the true revolution" levels of logic.

XR is a computing platform, but it's also two new mediums (one for AR, one for VR) - the first two mediums to deeply interface with the human perceptual system. Being able to deeply interface with our perceptions is nothing short of revolutionary since human life has never experienced this since conception short of unreliable and unscalable methods like psychedelics. We get to have controllable and convincing perceptual experiences that go beyond the limits of being human or the laws of known science, for both entertainment and practical use.

People were not busting down doors for early PCs in the home which were seen in search of a use the way people can't yet see the use of VR; the potential was seen first in businesses and education, and even there it remained a small niche for many years.

AR/VR has not been collapsing other than the 2022 decline that many other areas of the tech industry experienced due to the worldwide economic situation.

The fact that you’re having to twist yourself inside out to justify this thing says all anyone needs to know.

 
People were not busting down doors for early PCs in the home which were seen in search of a use the way people can't yet see the use of VR; the potential was seen first in businesses and education, and even there it remained a small niche for many years.

You are telling some version of history that doesn’t exist.

Home computer scene was growing very fast in the 80s if you include Commodore and other companies.

MSX based computers were massive in Asia and the kids who bought them learned to code and became some of the best arcade and productivity software engineers. We would not have legends like Hideo Kojima without MSX.

Almost all the classic games were developed by indies developers coding in their bedrooms during this period in the 80s. Legends were made in the programming world.

In your reinvention of history the world had no computers at home until PCs in the 90s.

Actually home computers were a fast growing market until the mini recession around the 1990 period.

AR/VR has not been collapsing other than the 2022 decline that many other areas of the tech industry experienced due to the worldwide economic situation.

VR is a dud with consumers. Meta made all its money outside VR and the Reality Labs division is losing more and more money. Consumers are not interested in goggles and waving arms around in the air like a lunatic.

 
The fact that you’re having to twist yourself inside out to justify this thing says all anyone needs to know.

Your link does nothing to disprove my statement, that the decline is likely heavily attributed to the worldwide economic situation and can be seen across many areas of the tech industry that saw their own decline.

You also do not address the rest of my comment. Why not?
 
The fact that you’re having to twist yourself inside out to justify this thing says all anyone needs to know.

XR (AR/VR) isn't going anywhere, there are setbacks, mainly because of Meta's extreme overpromising and underdelivering and of others' very poor executions.
XR will be with us, in one form or another, as long as there will be humans. It may exist in a headset, glasses, some kind of holographic projector, or in a straight-up holodeck room.
The tech will have many use cases, from entertainment to productivity, at an extremely low cost - because it will all be virtual.
It will be extremely useful, immersive, productive, entertaining, personal, and social.
If Apple won't make it happen, then (eventually) somebody else will. There is no stopping it. It's a very effective human-machine interaction method, much more than the multi-touch screen.
 
You are telling some version of history that doesn’t exist.

Home computer scene was growing very fast in the 80s if you include Commodore and other companies.

MSX based computers were massive in Asia and the kids who bought them learned to code and became some of the best arcade and productivity software engineers. We would not have legends like Hideo Kojima without MSX.

Almost all the classic games were developed by indies developers coding in their bedrooms during this period in the 80s. Legends were made in the programming world.

In your reinvention of history the world had no computers at home until PCs in the 90s.

Actually home computers were a fast growing market until the mini recession around the 1990 period.



VR is a dud with consumers. Meta made all its money outside VR and the Reality Labs division is losing more and more money. Consumers are not interested in goggles and waving arms around in the air like a lunatic.

C64 and IBM PCs at the time (1980s) certainly built up good momentum compared to what came before, but they were niche devices that average people didn't see a need for, with many owners of such devices in the home letting it collect dust. The revenue/sales generated by C64, the single best selling PC unit at the time, was no higher than Meta's Quest 2 today, and we still consider VR niche, no? Therefore, VR is no more of a dud than PCs were back then.

I have the benefit of wide statistical data on my side - you do not:

PCs being seen as in search of a use: https://www.academia.edu/320362/1980s_Home_Coding_the_art_of_amateur_programming

Many PCs collected dust: https://wayback.archive-it.org/5902.../www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf01313/patterns.htm

Overestimations of market growth: https://archive.org/stream/09-commo...agazine_Vol-08-N09_1987_Sep#page/n51/mode/2up

They were seen as having no compelling use in the home: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yS4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Another report in the low usage rates:

Sales growth had some slowing down with hardware companies dropping out in early to mid 80s:

People were unable to find value/usecases for home PCs:

Market growth looked like it was declining to some and wasn't useful in the home, therefore a fad:
Regarding Reality Labs, the same can be applied to various R&D efforts at Apple such as their custom silicon which took a good few years to build up and make profitable. That's the point of R&D - you spend money for years at a time before you are able to make it back through the products being developed by the same processes.
 
I think the mockup is beautiful, because it's not that stupid blue one.
I mean, it looks fine as an abstract object. It just doesn’t look like anything that could actually function as a VR headset, or even just be worn, period. The blue one isn’t much better, but at least has thicker padding.
 
Meta made a solid attempt at building a vr gaming market from nothing, but the titles just aren't there four years in. When people run out of games on the quest 2 (which happens fast), there isn't a usable software library to fall back on. This can be fine if you get into a social game like vrchat, but that sort of experience isn't for everyone so loads of people end up putting the thing in a closet and never putting it back on again.

That's where Apple's software/hardware stack can work some magic. They're going to have a whole suite of first-party apps as well as a decent chunk of the general ipad app library ready to go at launch. This is going to give people more of a reason to keep wearing the thing in-between the major tentpole system-selling experiences.

This headset needs the whole kitchen sink in order to succeed. Any time I'd need to take it off in order to get something done on an ipad or iphone or mac is one step closer to me never using this headset again and writing off the platform for good. It feels like a very similar strategy to the one they used with the ipad, but the headset does need to work much harder to justify itself. If the platform is fun to use, I think the pricing and everything else will eventually work itself out.
 
I'm as big of a guy who likes to waste money on things as anyone, but I can't see being interested in this space in the way it exists today at all. What Apple is doing with this thing better be completely revolutionary, otherwise, I think they're risking a total flop.
 
No, that isn’t true. The BlackBerry was wildly popular and not limited to a high end luxury market. PalmOS devices were doing pretty well at that point too.



Sure. But again, it was a PHONE with a clear use case, a reasonable price point and virtually zero physical and social barriers to adoption. AR/VR does not share those qualities and therefore is incapable of being universally adopted in the way iPhone has been. People had been clamoring for a palmtop-phone device, especially from Apple. No one is clamoring for AR/VR.
The blackberry is not even remotely comparable to an iPhone. it's a ball mouse on a tiny keyboard. And Palm was very expensive.
 
Incorrect interpretation of the word sprint. Sprint is a term used to describe blocks of work in software/product development. So, it means final block of work underway.
If you're thinking of agile software development, I'm pretty sure that's NOT what the headline is referring to. There's no reason the details of the agile sprint breakdown would be shared with an analyst/journalist; and this kind of detail would not be meaningful or event interesting to the general public. That's way too "inside".
 
Your link does nothing to disprove my statement, that the decline is likely heavily attributed to the worldwide economic situation and can be seen across many areas of the tech industry that saw their own decline.

You also do not address the rest of my comment. Why not?

Since you’ve provided no evidence to support your claim and I have provided evidence to support mine the point stands.

I didn’t address the rest of your post because it was made up hogwash.
 
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