If I can use photoshop in this and it will also enable me to create life size representations of the artworks I’m making and let me see them hanging in the relevant gallery spaces ahead of shows, this is so very useful
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Gurman: Apple Headset Could Feature 'In-Air' Typing for Text Input, No iPhone Pairing Required
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back in I believe 2001 or so we evaluated a Xybernaut, the first wearable computer and you had a VGA display in front of your eye, it was very usable given the technology at the time, saw a lot of use cases for like remote troubleshooting, learning etc. But the price point ($10k)was not to justify it for any kind of larger rollout.
There are lots more use cases that I can think of but they are all mainly business ones. I am just struggling for consumer use case that make me want to buy one and use it as part of my daily life, and no, gaming and (porn) movies don't entice me, so I will remain on the "skeptical" side until Apple proves me different.
if that convinces you to get one, by all means and I will not argue against that, just for me that is not compelling.
So I will look forward as to what Apple has up their sleeves but it will take a lot to convince me.
This. 100%. Right now this is only being rumored to be a new way to consume the same content you consume on all your other devices. Apple is not averse to that setup: it's the whole reason "universal control" was released. Have multiple devices all running the same things and switch between them. This device, however, is too expensive and niche to be "just another way to consume content". Gaming, however, would be something different.
To address those who are saying "this is just like when everyone said the iPod would fail":
When the iPod was released, people were already listening to music with other players. The iPod was better and became more popular, as we know, but the "naysaying" for it was largely driven by people who thought Apple shouldn't get into the portable music player business as this would take away from their "power user" focus. It was more of a tech nerd/elitist reaction, then it was a "no one needs music" reaction.
The iPhone was not the first smartphone, but it was the one that got the general public interested in them. The naysayers were again, "pro" users who had Blackberries and other "productivity"-oriented phones and relied on a physical keyboard. There was not an idea that no one would need smartphones; it was a specific decision Apple was making about their upcoming smartphone (no physical keyboard) that was being criticized.
The iPad comparison is a bit closer. This was essentially a new category that many were skeptical of, but to be fair, the original iPad was essentially a big iPhone and was very restricted in what it could do. The iPad has become more compelling over time as it has added features and functionality, especially with the introduction of a keyboard folio and pencil. But with the exception of the Pencil (and that was not included in the initial release), the iPad used the same input as the iPhone (touch, with a few physical buttons). It was not an entirely new way of using a device.
The original HomePod's flop and discontinuation is an example of Apple trying and failing to re-invent the wheel. Not every new Apple category is a huge success. It remains to be seen whether Apple can make a wildly successful mainstream AR/VR headset where other companies have failed to do so.
So yeah, I guess there's a chance that all the naysaysers will be eating their words and begging forgiveness from the yaysayers all walking around with goggles on wondering how they ever used something as ridiculous as a smartphone or a laptop, but my prediction is no, that's not going to happen.
There is nothing "wrong" with not being excited for this. I'm a huge fan of audio and I am always excited for new pairs of headphones. For those who are not into that hobby, it probably seems absurd how I could get so excited about yet another pair of headphones that all kind of look the same and have the same cables and cost the same amount. Yet to those of us into this stuff, it is exciting. And there's also nothing wrong with being excited for it. But my main interest in Apple is phones and Macs and I'm less interested in the other stuff (Watch, iPad, subscription services). Additionally, the rumors that this thing may REPLACE other products that I love and am excited about makes me feel a little bit more negatively towards this product than other products I'm not interested in.
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I can't wait to trade my real life for a virtual one. It's going to be great. All my struggles, jobs, family, and friends will be a thing of the past.
I honestly struggle to understand who this product may be made for. Gaming? Doubt it, since Oculus promised a lot for oro gamers ended up as a gimmick side-show. Designers? Maybe. But locking them to iOS/OSX only. Casual users? Then the question is "for what"? There's just so many practical uses for it. I think those are the same questions Apple asked themselves and the very same reasons why it's perpetually "just around the corner" like Apple's car.
100% agree. Though, existing content has use cases, think of a complicated tool/machine that is down and you need experts help to troubleshoot, or remote training and so on. But all of these are business use cases and Apple is a consumer oriented company and that's where you hit the nail on the head.
There are plenty of consumer applications and uses of AR. Collaborating with Stanford University's AR/VR lab for the last seven years will no doubt result in Apple having a suite of very useful AR apps for both consumer and commercial use to go along with their device and available on launch date.
There were already portable devices that did those things well: Laptops and the iPod. The iPhone just offered the same content in a more enticing format.
AR Glasses will run that same content in different ways. The killer app for AR hasn’t been invented yet in the same way that Uber or citizen reporting (with a camera phone and Twitter/Facebook) hadn’t yet changed the world. Those things weren’t possible until the App Store and a fully fledged internet device that you carried everywhere and was always connected made it possible.
Maybe what’s coming first is less compelling in the same way that novel applications for the iPhone came years after it first launched. The concept of Extended Reality glasses will only really come into its own once these are fashionable glasses that you can wear outside and are capable of overlaying the Internet onto the real world.
The iPhone untethered the Internet from homes and offices and brought it to the real world where life happens. It changed everything. Taking that further, Extended Reality will blend the Internet directly into the real world so that the internet fits seamlessly into your life in the same way that you wear technology with the Watch and AirPods. And that again will change everything.
Easy to romanticize the early days and assume that the iPhone was always this compelling, but outside of the tech nerds, the general public didn’t see the need for an iPhone until they saw others using it and found ways to apply it to their lives. The iPhone 3GS was probably the first more widely popular iPhone. The grandma factor (when your grandma starts using a technology) didn’t come until around the iPhone 6 or 6s. Maybe later. Eventually everyone will want the descendent of what Apple is about to start on this Summer.
You‘ve actually made my point here. 1st person games, movies made from scratch with immersive placement in mind … we already have this sort of content in VR. What would be compelling about experiencing this content in an Apple VR HMD vs. some other HMD?
Completely agree that there are viable business/industry use cases for this tech. I cited things like design visualization and task training in a comment on an earlier Apple VR headset article. I just don’t see viable large scale commercial (consumer) success without some truly revolutionary “must experience” content to drive it.
This is actually the first use case/app idea that actually sounds innovative!
No one should be willing to pay prices that are based on nothing but speculation.
Disagree. Siri has gotten about 50% better just with the release of hardware like AirPods Pro. I used to not be able to ride my bike and dictate texts to Siri because of wind noise. Now Siri gets most of that. And the improvements in iOS 16 made it even better for someone like my wife that talk texts about 90% of the time. She used to always complain about dictation and now she never does.
Of course there will be little hiccups and mistakes (just like with typing and autocorrect) but when you build the microphones right into the headset at a fixed close range and compensate for noise cancelling, it will be even better then the iPhone's speech to text.
I'm with you, and air typing has negative interest for me! talk about a train wreck...
There's a loud pro-VR faction online but the public, in general, remains largely indifferent. Most people aren't even interested in VR, much less infatuated. I don't think most people want to strap goggles to their faces, whether for gaming or to watch a movie or anything else. It's not appealing.
There are a lot of companies in the "work-related" VR field who already offer AR/VR-assisted solutions for a variety of industries including medical. Apple is a consumer electronics company. They don't push anything towards business. They're happy to have business customers, but their focus has always been the consumer market. The notion that this product is going to be different and that they're going to target enterprise customers is wrong in my opinion. They want to show this off at Apple Stores and get consumers to buy it. They aren't going to target business customers.
I keep waiting for someone to come up with a brilliant use case that I hadn't considered that would make me want a VR headset. Every headset thread is full of the same predictable, boring use cases, all of which apply to every existing VR headset out there, yet none of them is flying off the shelves. I have no doubt that Apple will produce a beautiful product and improve the VR experience, but I don't think that will be enough to move the needle much when it comes to consumer interest and certainly not at a $3K+ price point (assuming that rumor proves true).
Something that I don’t see others mention often is Microsoft HoloLens. HoloLens, if you watched the demonstrations, was an AR solution stood apart from all the VR solutions available. It really did seem like the type of product that could have some use cases in design, gaming, etc. AR, not VR. That’s been out for years and, as far as I know, has not been a runaway success. There’s no reason to believe Apple could do it differently.