The few use cases that would interest me would be if you could have a conversation with shared FPV. That sounds fun. Imagine one person traveling and sharing their view with someone in real time. “ I know who wants walk around with goggles on their head?!” But it could become normal or at least the product could morph more into sunglasses as we know them today.
A shared point of view would be a neat gimmick, but I don't think anyone is going to spend several grand for that feature. No headset is going to become the sunglasses of the future either. Maybe AR sunglasses one day, but not a big VR ski goggle-style headset.
Another use case is television. I see the future as having no television sets at all. They’re getting bigger and bigger and why have them if you can accomplish an even more immersive experience with something that covers your view and peripheral vision?
Paired with apples or Sonos theatre speakers or personal AirPod pros. You can see how the other ideas are going to make more sense. “Spatial audio” Apple TV shared viewing etc. eventually Apple TV can just be a hub for all your Apple devices and I really see by 20 years from now there will be no tvs in a home.
Whenever people bring up television, they seem to forget a few things...
A family of 4 will need to buy four headsets instead of 1 TV. If the headset really does cost $3K, that's $12K for headsets instead of $1K, give or take, for a good TV.
And what happens when you want to invite friends over for movie night or to watch the big game? Is everyone supposed to bring his or her own headset? And what about the people who don't have a headset? Maybe you plan to buy a few extra headsets for when you have guests?
No. This is will most definitely NOT replace TV for most people. If you live alone and only watch TV by yourself, sure, but that's not the norm.
Gaming will be a feature but until Apple partners up with Nintendo, Microsoft,Sony, steam. It’ll just be iOS Apple game store feature cuz why not.
I have zero faith that Apple will deliver a good gaming experience. They've never done gaming right. iOS gaming is like going back in time to the 80s arcade with modestly better graphics. Such games are not going to sell a $3K headset.
Unfortunately, when it comes to gaming, Apple has a terrible reputation and it will truly take an act of God, so to speak, to change that. The only hope, as you note, is for Apple to partner with someone else (or acquire them). Not going to happen with Microsoft or Sony. Many of us have hoped for years (decades!) that Apple would acquire Nintendo. An Apple headset with Nintendo exclusive titles would definitely shake things up.
The last use case and the most useful for me is education/business. Imagine a camera deep faking your own face onto your face without goggles then wearing the goggles and appearing to everyone as your are in a room physically separated but virtually together. That’s what “zoom” of the future could be like.
The educational market isn't going to buy a $3K headset. I don't see that happening. To be useful as a classroom tool, each student would need one, plus whatever additional hardware is required to support it. It's highly doubtful that the headset will be a standalone product. More than likely, it will need an iOS device or Mac for setup, etc.
I also don't see business as a viable market for several reasons. First, Apple doesn't really target enterprise customers. They are a consumer electronics company and they will focus on that market. Second, there are many purpose-built VR/AR solutions already targeting various business customers.
People mention AR-assisted surgery all the time as a possible use case. There are already a lot of companies in that field. When it comes to medical products, the standards are also much much higher. There can be no latency. Things have to work 100%, 100% of the time. Much like Apple hasn't turned the Watch into a true medical device, I don't see the headset being one either.
Of course there are plenty of other potential enterprise customers beyond the medical industry, but I don't see Apple targeting those markets. They don't go after enterprise customers for any of their products. They are happy to have those customers, but consumers are their bread and butter.
Your zoom of the future idea is neat, but we're right back to the TV use case. For what you describe, each person on that "zoom" call will need a $3K headset. Is seeing a virtual person in a "zoom" call really worth $3K per participant when everything works pretty well right now with the computer on your desk or phone in your pocket? I don't see businesses investing that kind of money (especially these days) for a device that marginally improves the video conferencing experience.
Pretty much every potential use case is something that existing VR products can accomplish today, yet the category remains largely unpopular. Even if Apple delivers an astounding product, they still have to overcome general consumer indifference towards the whole VR category and I don't see a $3K device accomplishing that.
I don’t know why Facebook is pushing this meta verse thing but it’ll be an interesting example of how someone can force something To work by throwing enough money at it. But I heard someone say once that the worse thing you can do to solve a problem is throw more money at it. I’ve never tried meta but it doesn’t look like something I want to ever try either. Time will tell.
Well, the metaverse has been a complete disaster for Meta/Facebook, so I think that's very telling. Plenty of people will blame Meta's implementation, not the concept itself. To me, however, it's very obvious that, outside of a small gaming niche, the public just isn't interested in VR.
