Kuo: Apple 'Well Prepared' for Headset Announcement Next Month

[MacWiz_007]

Everything you said is totally right, but at the same time there can be applications for VR that rival real world experiences. Don't have the thousands of dollars for a European vacation to see the Eiffel Tower? Don't have the thousands of dollars to buy a front row ticket to the World Series? Want to watch a pride of lions hunt in Africa close up? Want to experience a true Star Wars experience complete with spacecraft fighting all around you as you take out your light saber and duel with Vader? etc. etc. VR can be a ticket to many things that many can't feasibly experience in real life. Especially when other things begin to catch up like smells, tactile experiences, mobility, etc. AR is another story, having overlayed information at your fingertips sounds really good on one hand, but on the other hand is just another information overload that we keep accepting without thinking about our mental health.

I get it about social media, I have 2 kids and my life revolves around keeping them away from social media and ensuring they have tons and tons of real world, face to face interactions. But I gotta tell you, it's a losing battle as kids nowadays put a lot of value into social interaction over the internet and it's only going to get worse as technology improves. The world changes, and just as parents were afraid of smartphones changing their kids social patterns, and before that they were afraid of the internet changing their kids social patterns, and before even that they worried about television and radio changing their kids social patterns, here we are now doing the same thing with VR. How antiquated does it look when we think about parents railing against having a television or radio in the house, but it's how our kids will think of us in 20 years for better or worse.

I'm not saying AR/VR are all bad by any means. The internet and social media have actually been shown to have a very negative impact on many people's lives, especially for kids/teens. It's not the same as radio and TV, but I get what you are saying. AR/VR will make this one thousand times worse, I'm afraid. We will be seeing six month old kids with these headsets strapped to their heads. A bit of an exaggeration because they might not make them that small out of the gate but it could very well happen one day. The old digital babysitter routine that is so prevalent these days. It's a scary and honestly sickening thought, but you will see this playing out in person sooner than later. You sound like a good parent by the way, unlike the ones I am referring to.

 

[DarthBuzzard]

I have a stereoscopic video camera I took with me when we visited Hawaii. My wife and I scoped out an incredible spot and enjoyed the sun and waves for half the day. I mounted that camera and recorded some footage. Every now and then I can put on the Quest and play that video... and look around. Of course, it doesn't compare to actually being there but it's an incredible and powerful way to relive that moment. The tech is only going to get better.

I'm very excited for when volumetric video becomes a normal part of VR. I've experienced a few examples today in its infancy, and it lets you naturally walk around inside a 180/360 video like you would with other VR experiences, instead of feeling like you are strapped into a straightjacket.

The level of fidelity we can get is also going to reach levels of true photorealism when we can handle the best NeRF techniques in real-time:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1646900147534839809

 

[dogstar]

I suppose there is a fan base wealthy enough to buy anything that Apple does. There are also hundreds of influencers and YouTubers that are going to praise it just because no one talks agains Apple. Beyond that, I have my serious doubts to say the least.

I have heard Apple is working on a hyperbolic sleeping chamber, very slim and optimized (one of Ivy’s last designs).

It has built in AR/VR and advanced haptics so you will feel like you are sleeping in a golden field of barley with the wind lightly blowing on you.

It pumps in the perfect oxygen mix for a healthy sleep.

And the best part is it follows Apple’s new philosophy of being good to the environment. When you die it is also the coffin you will be buried in. Apple is so dang smart.

But this thing will cost more than the Apple Car or the Apple Homeless Tent unfortunately.

 

[MacWiz_007]

If you take your thinking to their logical conclusion, we need to get rid of always-connected iDevices too. They- not rumored goggles- are the cause of ALL of the negatives you are offering now.

So kill iPhone and iPad (and all similar products) to take a good shot at addressing this problem? About no one will support that argument. We're simply trying to assign blame for all of it on this product which hasn't even been launched yet.

AR/VR could very well provide more escape- or regression- but I don't know that Apple NOT rolling out this cut at it will make any difference in all of what you are sharing against it. Those "lost teens" are already lost in that iPhone (and iPad) which have 0% chance of going away if we all got strongly behind the ideas you are offering.

I fully agree that people need as much reality as possible... as much actual social interaction as possible, etc. You are right about that. But Apple goggles are not hindering any of that at all today. And what is will likely never be able to be put back into the bottle.

It's not about killing these products, it's about not giving smartphones to two year olds for 6 hours a day, as an example. That sort of thing. Parents need to be parents. Once their kids are grown, it's up to them to decide. This of course goes for adults as well. If you are using your smartphone for 6-8 hours a day, you are straight up missing out on reality. That is sad to me. But if someone wants to use their phone 8 hours a day every day, so be it. But I don't think it is normal or any way to live, and that's not going to change.

 

[Graphikos]

I'm not saying AR/VR are all bad by any means. The internet and social media have actually been shown to have a very negative impact on many people's lives, especially for kids/teens. It's not the same as radio and TV, but I get what you are saying. AR/VR will make this one thousand times worse, I'm afraid. We will be seeing six month old kids with these headsets strapped to their heads. A bit of an exaggeration because they might not make them that small out of the gate but it could very well happen one day. The old digital babysitter routine that is so prevalent these days. It's a scary and honestly sickening thought, but you will see this playing out in person sooner than later. You sound like a good parent by the way, unlike the ones I am referring to.

Worth a watch...

 

[hack.opus0y]

So ready for this. Quest Pro has been great but looking forward to an Apple powerhouse!

The quest pro is cool, I’ll give you that. It was definitely a taste of what’s possible but it’s finicky and unpolished. I expect polish from apple. I hope they don’t disappoint!

 

[california_kid]

It's like "Ready Player One". Just a headset, meh. Headset and full touch body suit? Just take my money!

 

[7149041]

Apple expects to sell just one headset per day per retail store, and it has told suppliers that it expects sales of seven to 10 million units during the first year of availability.

So... Apple has from 19 to 27 thousand stores?

Online sales probably don't count as "retail stores".

 

[7149041]

Exactly. Sony couldn't even sell 300,000 units of the PSVR 2 in the first quarter and it's 1/5th the price. I say Apple sells 1 million units tops.

They sold 10+ million Apple Watches in the first year, pulling off half of that number with a VR set doesn't sound like a stretch, unless the $3k rumors are true.

That being said they expected to sell 40 million Watches, so the reality matched 25% of the estimate. It might end up being 2-3 million units, all depends on the price and feature set.

PSVR is a pretty bad example, it's a single-use device with a poor content library. Hell, I have Lego sets that cost more than PSVR2 and they were a better investment. The Apple headset will likely work out of the box with anything Apple, so the opportunities are much wider here.

I'm definitely excited to see what they come up with, as they have a habit of flipping entire markets upside down. Might not become an early adopter, but time will show, and soon.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

It's not about killing these products, it's about not giving smartphones to two year olds for 6 hours a day, as an example. That sort of thing. Parents need to be parents. Once their kids are grown, it's up to them to decide. This of course goes for adults as well. If you are using your smartphone for 6-8 hours a day, you are straight up missing out on reality. That is sad to me. But if someone wants to use their phone 8 hours a day every day, so be it. But I don't think it is normal or any way to live, and that's not going to change.

OK, then in Apple's great genius, the rumor is that they've built a 2-hour limit into how long these can be steadily used. Parents can lock the spare battery(s) and the proprietary charger up in the safe.

However, again, I agree with your general comments about the negative aspects of social networks, always-connected devices and their sometimes terrible effects, especially on the young.

Goggles could make that worse or not. But great news: apparently even the fan-iest fans have no interest in buying goggles at all, so the children of Apple fans are safe from the devastation of being lost in the virtual realm 24/7 because just about no Apple fan wants to even consider buying Goggles.

The issues and problems you share are real and I don't know that Goggles makes them worse or better. But again, I would assign most of it to mobile smart devices offering continuous access and social media being accessed by them (which is- in a manner of speaking- blaming the gun instead of the gun owner). Parents should do their job (better) much as gun owners should be more responsible with the guns they own. In my own experience, many parents are as deeply into social media on their phones as their children.

Perhaps we need Ensign Wesley Crusher to beam aboard and save us all from The Game? Only "the boy" can save us all... again!

 

[Alasdair_Scott]

My immediate thought is that this is going to be a phenomenal content consumption device - 3d movies, sports and casual gaming - plus the ability to carry a virtual Studio Display around with you….

Looking forward to WWDC and finding out how Apple are going to pitch this.

Meanwhile my Oculus and PSVR2 are kinda collecting dust …

 

[Graphikos]

My immediate thought is that this is going to be a phenomenal content consumption device - 3d movies, sports and casual gaming - plus the ability to carry a virtual Studio Display around with you….

Looking forward to WWDC and finding out how Apple are going to pitch this.

Meanwhile my Oculus and PSVR2 are kinda collecting dust …

I'm curious... why isn't your Oculus already used for content consumption and how do you feel an Apple headset would be better? I think it will come down to the UI and the ease of use. However, I do feel Oculus/Meta has done a fine job with the Quest line and getting them more widely accepted and adopted. That said, ours only gets used maybe once or twice a week unless there is travel involved.

So for me, the "killer app" for an Apple headset would be a mobile workstation. That might mean on a plane, hotel room, in a car, RV, or maybe just on the couch upstairs (but less likely). In other words, I see it more widely used when traveling. And if I can have an effective workstation while traveling... there is less keeping me from getting out more.

 

[Alfredo_Delgado]

Apple expects to sell just one headset per day per retail store, and it has told suppliers that it expects sales of seven to 10 million units during the first year of availability.

So... Apple has from 19 to 27 thousand stores?

Edit: So not exclusive to Apple stores... 🤔

Online sales probably don't count as "retail stores".

So they're only expecting 0.3% of sales to come from retail stores?

 

[7149041]

So they're only expecting 0.3% of sales to come from retail stores?

Not sure, maybe? Sounds a bit extreme, but after all Apple Stores exist only in 25 countries, and there's like 500 of them in total. In some countries, they have authorized resellers, but it's still easier to buy online - for example when I lived in Malaysia the delivery times of the Online Apple Store were better than the resellers, especially when it came to build-to-order Macs.

I don't know how their ratio of online sales to physical is, but - based on my anecdata - in my entire life, I actually bought something Apple in a physical store once, when I was on a trip to the US, really wanted AW Ultra and couldn't risk a delivery slipping as I had a flight to catch.

 

[fakestrawberryflavor]

I think this will be like an iPhone where all of us will have one in a few years. When I had my Flip Phone in 2005 and stuff, I never thought Id be holding a candy bar phone all day, every day, during every event I do, work, driving, toilet, etc, but here I am.

But much like the iPhone, its not going to get mainstream until like the 4th version.

 

[spinedoc77]

I'm not saying AR/VR are all bad by any means. The internet and social media have actually been shown to have a very negative impact on many people's lives, especially for kids/teens. It's not the same as radio and TV, but I get what you are saying. AR/VR will make this one thousand times worse, I'm afraid. We will be seeing six month old kids with these headsets strapped to their heads. A bit of an exaggeration because they might not make them that small out of the gate but it could very well happen one day. The old digital babysitter routine that is so prevalent these days. It's a scary and honestly sickening thought, but you will see this playing out in person sooner than later. You sound like a good parent by the way, unlike the ones I am referring to.

I don't know that the internet is so much different than having a television in how it's short-circuited social interaction. Certainly television is one-way and is more watching than communicating, but the lines blur when you consider let's say someone using a television as their news source instead of maybe a social gathering of people. To someone around when television began to take a foothold, they may have bemoaned the negativity of taking that social aspect out of society. Maybe a more palatable viewpoint is of a parent born and raised without television watching their kids watching a lot of television while socially isolated, instead of outside playing with other kids like they did when they were kids.

With that said I completely agree that social media, which can be used for a lot of good, can also be VERY damaging to kids mental health. It seems that with each technological hurdle we leap over; newspaper...radio...telephones...television...internet...smartphones...etc, most likely are orders of magnitude less healthy than the ones before it.

One last thing, consider that kids ARE communicating socially in today's paradigm, maybe more than you or I did when kids. I grew up in the 80s as a latchkey kid, spending a lot of time in front of the TV alone. Once I said goodbye to my friends at school, or after football practice, or whatever I couldn't communicate with them other than the telephone, which at that time was the center piece of the house and not something you could sit on and chat for a long time on. Today's kids are on Xbox chatting it up with their friends, or on social media exchanging tweets, likes, news, etc. Healthy? I don't know, but it's the reality. But in some ways I see it as much healthier than say a childhood spent alone in front of a TV and nothing else.

 

[spinedoc77]

I'm curious... why isn't your Oculus already used for content consumption and how do you feel an Apple headset would be better? I think it will come down to the UI and the ease of use. However, I do feel Oculus/Meta has done a fine job with the Quest line and getting them more widely accepted and adopted. That said, ours only gets used maybe once or twice a week unless there is travel involved.

So for me, the "killer app" for an Apple headset would be a mobile workstation. That might mean on a plane, hotel room, in a car, RV, or maybe just on the couch upstairs (but less likely). In other words, I see it more widely used when traveling. And if I can have an effective workstation while traveling... there is less keeping me from getting out more.

I can say, as someone who purchased and returned a Quest 2 twice and had a VIVE before that, the big difference will be the size, weight, and comfort if rumors are to be believed. That is the "killer app" IMO, having something that doesn't mess up your hair, that doesn't cause you to be sweaty and uncomfortable, etc. I really liked VR applications, but just realized that having that huge, heavy, and unwieldy contraption on my head (think Doc Brown in BTTF) wasn't worth the benefits. Of course this will change as the technology evolves, which is why I'm hoping the rumors of a svelte, small, and wireless (other than the battery pack I suppose) headset gets my hopes up. That's why this is going to be $3k out of the gate IMO.

 

[GlassFingers]

Enough with the speculation and the debates, I just want to see the darn thing already (even if i'll never buy it).

And yet you are posting on a website called Mac Rumors… hmmmm

 

[Don1985]

Same as the watch, just heavier.

Huh,

remind me again? What is that good for?

Huh, absolutely nothing!

 

[spinedoc77]

It's not about killing these products, it's about not giving smartphones to two year olds for 6 hours a day, as an example. That sort of thing. Parents need to be parents. Once their kids are grown, it's up to them to decide. This of course goes for adults as well. If you are using your smartphone for 6-8 hours a day, you are straight up missing out on reality. That is sad to me. But if someone wants to use their phone 8 hours a day every day, so be it. But I don't think it is normal or any way to live, and that's not going to change.

Yeah but your misgivings don't fit in with the corporate culture of squeezing out every last drop of profit by bombarding dopamine receptors and making every addiction either a paid subscription, or an opportunity to sell your data. /cynicism

 

[genovelle]

If it actually turns out to be a good product I still wouldn't buy it until we get a few hardware revisions. I'm not spending silly money on 1st gen hardware. And I wear glasses so I'm screwed anyway.

"Apple expects to sell just one headset per day per retail store"

🤣

I think one of the patents Apple has is related to adjusting the optics to the prescription for eyeglasses.

 

[ColdShadow]

$3000 headset with no specific use..good luck.maybe they are just planing a limited release for very niche tech enthusiasts market..

 

[CosmoCopus]

So can you slap this thing on and feel like your riding in the Erzbergrodeo? Now that would be worth the money.

 

[Graphikos]

I can say, as someone who purchased and returned a Quest 2 twice and had a VIVE before that, the big difference will be the size, weight, and comfort if rumors are to be believed. That is the "killer app" IMO, having something that doesn't mess up your hair, that doesn't cause you to be sweaty and uncomfortable, etc. I really liked VR applications, but just realized that having that huge, heavy, and unwieldy contraption on my head (think Doc Brown in BTTF) wasn't worth the benefits. Of course this will change as the technology evolves, which is why I'm hoping the rumors of a svelte, small, and wireless (other than the battery pack I suppose) headset gets my hopes up. That's why this is going to be $3k out of the gate IMO.

The rumored specs would suggest this might be more goggle-like than glasses but for media consumption, that are light (enough) and don't interfere much, a form factor like the Nreal or VITURE like works pretty well.

But that tech could improve still also.

 

[spinedoc77]

The rumored specs would suggest this might be more goggle-like than glasses but for media consumption, that are light (enough) and don't interfere much, a form factor like the Nreal or VITURE like works pretty well.

But that tech could improve still also.

Yeah that would be sweet. I'm still waiting on contact lenses though. https://www.roadtovr.com/mojo-vision-smart-contact-lens-ar-hands-on/