My view is the opposite. Apple Intelligence pretty much has the feature set shown, like object identification and AR image overlay; they’re actually arguably the leader in quality of the latter. The worrying part is that no one at Apple looked at the plan to release a VR headset—heavy, costly, stationary-use only, complete with a dangling power cable—and said “hold on, this is not our style.” It’s as if they had put out the AirPods Max as their first wireless headphones and then sat idly back for years while every one of their competitors began to demo tiny “truly wireless” earbuds, and it suggests something has gone dreadfully wrong in the decision-making levels of the company.
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Google Shows Off Android XR Smart Glasses With In-Lens Display
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You realize that people will also use these glasses when they are not in public? Like at home.
(Public use is legal; non-public likely is not)
It'll boil down to price; if they can price this around the same as what meta raybans cost (~$299 before any insurance rebates), then i can definitely see it selling like hotcakes.
Can google make and sell a pair of XR smart glasses for $299? probably not at first. But unlike apple; google have in the past taken losses on their hardware sales to meet a market price and capture a market. (Undoubtly subsidising their losses with your data). E.g. the original line of nexus phones at $199.
Can google make and sell a pair of XR smart glasses for $299? probably not at first. But unlike apple; google have in the past taken losses on their hardware sales to meet a market price and capture a market. (Undoubtly subsidising their losses with your data). E.g. the original line of nexus phones at $199.
You seem to have a thinly veiled disdain for the headset form factor and act as though Apple cannot offer both mixed reality headset and glasses.
They elected to offer a prosumer standalone headset first, which is well within their right. Even with Apple’s supply chain prowess, such tech to come close to the Vision Pro’s XR capabilities when it released and now isn’t available.
Unsurprisingly no one has yet shown market ready glasses even close to the Vision Pro and most modern headsets; even Meta’s $10,000 Project Orion even with blatant visual drawbacks wasn’t that either.
Similarly no one yet has reached several baselines of the Vision Pro in what it enables for prosumers as a standalone headset without its existing trade-offs (including its price).
Even OLED prosumer monitors such as this year’a 5K2K OLED monitors haven’t evolved to lessen the asking price of the Vision Pro (Non-prosumer ones are $2000 minimum; non-prosumer and non-XR glasses free monitors are also $2000 minimum. True XR monitors are well over that)
If you trip and fall while wearing these, and your face smashes against the pavement, will they be able to tell you the composition of the concrete mix you're looking at?
Just kidding. I think smart glasses will be an interesting addition to the list of product categories. If they're done right.
Just kidding. I think smart glasses will be an interesting addition to the list of product categories. If they're done right.
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I suspect that, as with many other features, settings, options, etc. on OSs and hardware from Apple, Google, etc., the implementations will be similar enough so that eventually, when AI, smart glasses, etc. shake out, no company's OS or hardware will be definitively better than the other, at least if viewed objectively.
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Good points, but I think Apple won't be making a true Vision Pro equivalent in a glasses form factor, since as you point out that might cost a lot more than the Vision Pro itself (not to mention that for "full immersion" you need the face gasket to block outside light). My hunch is that Apple's smart glasses will have a subset of the Vision Pro's features, pared down enough to bring its price significantly below that of the Vision Pro. The $10,000 price for Meta’s Project Orion glasses is the prototype development cost per pair for the approximately 1,000 of them that they've made, but Meta's projected price for the production model is closer to $700-$1200.
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…As much times to get my point across. Prosumers is a very distinct segment of the market that have hardware made specifically for them or as the core early adopters.
The Vision Pro and several high-end smart glasses will be for them.
Majority of spatial computing hardware at first will be for them; low-end glasses attempted to chase the masses will likely be loss leaders that will be few and far between in this economy.
In terms of capability - I agree. In terms privacy, I believe differently. Or at least, I hope differently.
This is honestly all I've wanted. Finally someone is doing it. Meta focused too much on the recording bit making it creepy, Google as well back in the day with ill-fated Google Glass, Apple doesn't know what they're doing. Finally... I simply want augmented reality glasses with mobile network for traditional service integrations as well as AI and that's it.
I make no attempt to veil my disdain for fully-enclosed VR/XR headsets: my opinion is that they looks stupid, and that in the vast majority of usage scenarios they make their users look stupid. And while I opposed Tim Cook's attempted tack towards the fashion world, which brought us the age of Angela Ahrendts and the $17,000 gold Apple Watch Edition, Apple's long-running emphasis on design—and common sense, and history!—advise against their releasing products that make their buyers look stupid.
Nowhere do I say that the headset form factor doesn't have productive applications, or capabilities that the glasses form factor will not match for possibly a decade, or a non-zero number of customers who would eagerly accept its tradeoffs. But after their near-bankruptcy and the Second Coming of Jobs, Apple had exercised a fairly high bar in releasing products, carefully nurturing a reputation for making only well-designed and socially-acceptable things. Would a pizza carton-sized 24" PowerBook, or an Apple Watch with a calculator keypad, or a cellular iPod Classic sporting a rotary-dial phone app, have been feasible to build and found adherents in some species of "prosumer"? Yes, but all would have have significant pain points in use, been widely mocked for their gawky appearance, and poisoned public perception against any improved follow-ups. Vision Pro is technically impressive, capable of productive uses, ahead of its headset competition—and should not have been released to market.
Your examples are not helpful; they completely and conveniently navigate around actual prosumer Apple products that are also not at all for mass market nor “mass market darlings” like the Pro Display XDR, Mac Studio, Mac Pro.
You fortunately don’t speak for the market nor Apple stakeholders, and the actions and side effects by actual prosumer hardware companies releasing prosumer hardware without mass market backing in public perception yet successful for them (i.e. Pro Display setting up XDR tech across mainstream) don’t align with your thoughts.
Apple’s success criteria for a prosumer product correctly weights very little the concerns of mainstream public perception; they and other prosumer hardware manufacturers continually operate successfully without being needy nor dependent on such—as a global tech company should to appropriately accommodate a broad demographic to maximize profits well into their existence
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I agree, my tastes do not speak for or obligate Apple. And judging by the frequency of Mac Pro updates, neither do yours. 😁