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What is it then? Underwear?
It is a Mixed Reality headset. Not the same thing as a Virtual Reality headset.

I'd say "username checks out" but that is too easy, plus I am not looking to get in any trouble today.
 
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Imagine wearing a headset and having facetime calls with people and they appear in a little window at the corner of your vision.


Can already do these things with your computer and phone which are not going away and will always be the important devices.

Or if you are lost and need directions your mini map would extend and provide overlays of directions onto the streets around you.


Can already do this on your phone, or for free by asking people.

Or if you are walking past a shop you can see how it's reviewed as stars pop up beside the door or on the windows.

Can already do this on a phone, but you shouldn't trust reviews and star ratings anyway. You should look around, browse stores and talk to people you know. It works. It's free. It's reliable.

You could also see real time stats like weather, heart beat, steps, etc.

Can already do this on the phone.

Wearing a headset in public is not only ugly, stupid and anti-social it can also be dangerous. Drivers will definitely not be allowed to wear one because of the potential distractions and limited peripheral vision.
 
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I'm amazed how many people jump on to assume the product is half-baked and that it will fail without even seeing it. Regardless of what some people think, Apple is not stupid.

If people inside the company are divided and protesting they know the problems better than you.

So your internet rando opinion is worthless.
 
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I'm amazed how many people jump on to assume the product is half-baked and that it will fail without even seeing it. Regardless of what some people think, Apple is not stupid. They definitely did their homework and consider it worth it if they invested billions and so many resources in R&D for so long.

As for the price, this is clearly aimed for the developers and not for the end-users. Most serious studios can easily afford it. This is a first gen product with barely any content at launch aimed to embark the developers to produce content for the platform. Of course some enthusiast will stil buy it, but this is not what it's aimed at; it's more like a dev-kit. End-user hardware will come in the future at more reasonable prices, once the technology advances.
No doubt it will be an amazing product. But not for 3k. That's out of touch.
 
think you is all forgetting the only other game in town is the Oculus Quest which is Widoze only, Adobe has a beta module for 3D VR but currently Mac users are out of the market and high and dry, not convinced by the need to work this way as a 3D artist but to have the opportunity Mac based would be nice, once again I see a whole lot of people reviewing and pontificating on a potential product that isn't aimed at them and will never ever use.
 
Apple making tools for engineers? Better not rely your business on it. It will most probably become abandonware as soon as it is released..
 
If people inside the company are divided and protesting they know the problems better than you.

So your internet rando opinion is worthless.
Out of thousands of Apple amployyes, 8 current and ex. have spoken to NYT. Are they the most relevant ones?
Of course those who are excited about the product did not speak ...

I don't need to argue with you, it's just my educated opinion. But time will tell.
 
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I seriously cannot see what mac users would see in wanting one of these headsets. Oculus and Hive headsets have been out there now for a number of years for windows machines and there are way way more windows machines than there are mac machines and given that both headsets are geared up for gaming which macs are not, neither headsets have dominated in high numbers considering neither is overly priced. Even the headset for Playstation which has also been out for a number of years has not sold in the high numbers when you consider how many consoles have been sold.

Windows machines have a very strong gaming pedigree, Playstation is a dedicated gaming machine and yet neither have been able to dominate in AR/VR so it get's me wondering, without a strong gaming pedigree, what does Apple actually think it's users are going to want to use AR/VR for? especially considering the alleged starting price.
 
If people inside the company are divided and protesting they know the problems better than you.

So your internet rando opinion is worthless.
It is likely a handful of people, some or all of which could be disgruntled. Their opinion doesn't mean more, because we know nothing about them. You just celebrate and validate their opinion because it backs your thinking up. Likewise, you demean others who don't agree with you.

BTW, you and I are both "internet randos" also so if the person you were replying to has a worthless opinion in your book, guess the value of yours (and mine) as well.
 
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It’s will be a success and is going to change the world. Almost nobody will leave home without it. People enjoy being sceptical now because it gives them a nice buzzy shoulder feeling with majority and makes them feel they are on spot of something. They are not.
 
I'm amazed how many people jump on to assume the product is half-baked and that it will fail without even seeing it. Regardless of what some people think, Apple is not stupid. They definitely did their homework and consider it worth it if they invested billions and so many resources in R&D for so long.

Equally, the amount of people who blindly assume something will be a success without having seen the product just because it's Apple is equally staggering.

How do you know they definitely did their homework and haven't succumbed to doubling down in the face of sunk costs? Companies have been spending millions and billions on R&D for ideas that never take off is not necessarily unheard of -- not even for Apple.

once again I see a whole lot of people reviewing and pontificating on a potential product that isn't aimed at them and will never ever use.

The issue isn't people talking about a product that isn't aimed at them, the problem is people seriously struggling to figure out who it might actually be aimed at in the consumer space beyond vaguely saying "developers."

As for the price, this is clearly aimed for the developers and not for the end-users. Most serious studios can easily afford it. This is a first gen product with barely any content at launch aimed to embark the developers to produce content for the platform. Of course some enthusiast will stil buy it, but this is not what it's aimed at; it's more like a dev-kit. End-user hardware will come in the future at more reasonable prices, once the technology advances.

Releasing a 'dev kit' for a product that doesn't exist and that may or may not bear any resemblance to the dev kit sounds like a pretty stupid idea, so it will depend on whether Apple can provide a credible road map and preview of where we're headed.

This thing will need to have some kind of immediate practical application or otherwise it will be dead in the water. That might very well be highly specialised professional applications that cost an arm and a leg and are used by people who have the kind of deep pockets that buy a 3k piece of tech.

But why should anyone bother to write the sort of applications that made the iPhone great when there's nothing to suggest that people might actually be able to afford one of these glasses anytime soon or actually want to use them?

Throwing out hardware prematurely might actually be more harmful because it proves all the sceptics right. But we shall see, I'm very much saying let's wait for the actual announcement to pass judgement in either direction. Let's just not be giddy teenagers about it.


Can already do these things with your computer and phone which are not going away and will always be the important devices.

Can already do this on your phone, or for free by asking people.

Can already do this on a phone, but you shouldn't trust reviews and star ratings anyway. You should look around, browse stores and talk to people you know. It works. It's free. It's reliable.

Can already do this on the phone.

Wearing a headset in public is not only ugly, stupid and anti-social it can also be dangerous. Drivers will definitely not be allowed to wear one because of the potential distractions and limited peripheral vision.

I'm quite sceptical even about the AR use case at the moment because I can't see how anyone would want to use these kinds of goggles for extended periods of times while being out and about.

I will say that "I can already do this on my phone" is not enough of a reason for AR not to be successful. There's plenty of things I could do before mobile phones came around. Then there were plenty of things I could do before the smartphone came around. In both cases there definitely was room to do the same thing better, more comfortably, more reliably and open up new use cases in the process.

I do think both AR and VR definitely have potential, but that doesn't mean that this particular implementation will be successful. People like to think in singular moments, but it might just be too early for this. It definitely would have been possible to build a 'modern' smartphone in 2003, as in build a phone with a big touch screen, remove most hardware buttons and let people install their own applications. In fact such devices existed, but people just didn't want them.

AR/VR feels a bit like this at the moment. A solution that isn't quite ready, in search of a problem people are not yet convinced they have using technology that isn't mature enough.
 
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Equally, the amount of people who blindly assume something will be a success without having seen the product just because it's Apple is equally staggering.
Please point to those posts. I've seen maybe 1 or 2 saying this will be a hit but you imply it is a lot of people. I've certainly seen a lot of posts with negativity.

Personally I'll wait til the product actually exists before saying if I think it is going to be a hit or not.
 
You know the Apple I never had a mass consumer market to address prior to Apple building it and selling a bunch of them to hobbyists?
The hobbyists were the market for the Apple 1 - back then you bought a personal computer for the primary purpose of programming it yourself - and it was a small enough market to address with a product designed and built by two guys in a garage on a budget of a few hundred bucks. It wasn't even the first personal computer (I think its claim to fame was that it was the first to offer a single board with video output and keyboard interface - before then people had to blag an old VT100 terminal from an electronics fair) - so it was selling an improved product to an existing market. Apple II was one of the first fully-assembled personal computers - but it only beat the PET and TRS-80 by a couple of months, and still mostly sold to people who wanted to program it. It was really after that the idea of a software ecosystem and "killer apps" grew up - with Visicalc possibly being the first real killer app that made people take personal computers seriously.

Times change - These days, most people buy tech to use existing apps and services - meanwhile Apple needs to bring in millions of dollars a day (wild guess) just to pay the bills on that big circular "garage" they built. I wouldn't want to guess how many people are working on the headset, or how many thousands Apple needs to manufacture just to launch a viable developer toolkit.

There are lots of invalid analogies being thrown around here - I'd counter with the example I mentioned in an earlier post, the Newton - lots of prophetic features, except for its star turn, handwriting recognition, which wasn't ready and sank the product. But this isn't just about analogies - its about justified skepticism about whether AR/MR/VR (an idea that has been around for decades) really is the next big thing, or if its a tarpit.

Yes, it is clunky at the moment, but it WILL be the next computing paradigm to take over from the desktop metaphor and mobile/tablet UI. There’s just a long road to get there.

Except, before that road starts, you have to build a bridge across the huge chasm of producing a headset (and 3D vision system) that you can forget you're wearing. The idea of AR doesn't work if you have to keep putting a bulky, hair-mussing headset on and taking it off to see the augmentations - otherwise its easier just to grab an iPhone and point it at the thing you (e.g.) want translated.

Woz' undisputed skills aside, the key enabling technology for the Apple 1 was the microprocessor, specifically the cheap and cheerful 6502 (which has a colourful history but did need a slightly bigger garage and more funding). For VR/AR/MR its going to be a massive step forward in small, light and cheap goggles.

think you is all forgetting the only other game in town is the Oculus Quest which is Widoze only
...as are the 3D games that people buy Oculus to run - and that's not just chicken-and-egg, its old news that Windows is the preferred platform for serious gamers. Apple do have a major gaming platform - iOS - but that's more geared towards casual gaming, for which AR would be a better fit but that's back to inventing the all-day AR headset.
 
You need the right pixel density per degree and optical clarity to resolve that resolution, which means that there will be a headset in the next 5-10 years that is exactly as crisp as a 4K monitor and will be capable of producing a virtual work setup at exactly the same image quality.

It may not be this Apple headset, but it will be a future headset down the road.
Human eyes aren’t made to focus on something 2 inches away for hours.
Sometimes you just have to get into it. iPod was the precursor to iPhone, nobody was happy with the 1st gen iPod at launch. Everyone said it was too expensive and a useless product…
It was expensive. And Mac-only.
Nobody said it was useless.
Mobile (cassette and CD) music players were established products and deemed useful.
It’ll be another luxury that people will be socially manipulated into buying. The price point will be above most people’s means since it’s Apple and novel technology.

As usual, Apple will find 15 million ways to make this conveniently fit into your lifestyle and once the influencers get their hands on it (social proof), widespread adoption will begin. That’s the modern day marketing plan, and mark my words, people will eat it right up.
3D television.
Short-lived fad.
But recurring.
But the important thing is that as transformative the iPhone (and the Android counter-revolution) was in the years to come, it gradually built on existing stuff (as you say) by being better, more fun and more useful at the basics. That's why saying "people criticised the iPhone and were wrong, so you criticising the headset must also be wrong" misses the point because it doesn't understand why the iPhone was a success.
Couldn’t agree more.

The iPhone built upon established form factors (mobile phones, iPods), usage (music, internet, messenging) that were relatively easy to convert for these devices. Immersive audiovisual content for VR/AR glasses isn’t.
3 grand, 5 grand in au… to watch p0rn in VR ? and maybe 1 or 2 apple arcade games?
Porn would actually be an attractive use case.
But this is Apple, so they won’t allow it.

Remember, no immersive content will be sold for this without Apple‘s approval and Apple slapping at least 30% Apple tax on it.
 
I am sure that these will be cool, but as a consumer if my choice is to use my phone or wear a pair of these goofy things to do a more immersive version of what I can do on my phone, the phone is what I will choose. I mean, there is nothing really that I do on the internet that I would want to be more immersed in anyway. Just imagine, wearing a device that actually made you feel like you were in the same room with these annoying video ads or narcissist influencers or hyperbolic media types. No thank you. I can see them for gaming, but I personally probably game an hour a month at most and only some months (if the weather is bad). There is no way these will be worth it to a user like myself.
 
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There is no evidence that the new downgraded home pod is doing better than its flopped predecessor. HomePod mini sells, the big model we do not know. personally I doubt it does.
I never said the HomePod was doing better. I said the “HomePod lineup seems to be okay now” and “(I assume) everything is going okay with the HomePod lineup now”.

I very deliberately referred to the “lineup” of HomePods (and not a specific model).
 
By publicly stating a desire for a proscribed to fail, it means the product will ultimately be a success.
Well put. In general I feel products that are downplayed here are typically pretty successful in the real world somehow. But then again we have nothing of substance to discuss since the thing isn’t past a rumour status.
 
It will sell enough for it to matter, mostly to Apple fans and youtubers, and there are alot of them. That, and along with a limited amount of other sales, will be enough for Apple to stick with it. Apple need to make improvements every year, and not let it languish and be forgotten about for years at a time as they do with some other products.
 
And all of that (right now) would require wearing bulky googles on your face. Who wants to do that? Even if this tech gets to a point where it can happen with normal looking glasses it will still flop. Most people who wear glasses do so because they have to, not because they want to.

A world where everyone is walking around with googles or glasses on their face? Talk about a dystopian hellscape.
I doubt the primary intention is for the VR glasses to be worn out and about, rather at home use. The various possible use cases I highlighted are all at home use cases. It isn’t a great leap to get from people using their own iPhone/iPad for content consumption, to people putting on their VR glasses instead (if the improvement in experience justifies it). Either way, VR glasses won’t be for me, I have children, but maybe when they’ve left home in 15 years or so. Although, I image they’ll want them when they’re teenagers.

Regarding walking around AR glasses, I find certain AR overlays (on my iPhone) useful for certain work tasks. I would wear AR glasses (assuming they look like normal glasses) to have those data overlays present without having to interact with my phone, and I would pay for that convenience.
 
I'm reading a lot of negativism.
  • concerning the price: if people can pay $ 1 500 for a phone, why wouldn't they be able to/willing to pay the double for this?
    It all depends on the actual possibilities and use case, but any Apple product is expensive, so ...

  • concerning the positioning. If any company can pull this off, it's Apple. They are able to sell computers at twice the price of comparable competing products.
    If they manage to fit in the VR headset in their ecosystem, they will be able to position it well.
It will be a niche product at start, but when Apple steps into a market, things start going fast. Other companies will want a piece of the market and launch comparable/improved products, Apple will learn from this, and adapt the headset in Gen2, and so we go on until all of the sudden it is a mass market.
 
Probably some of them said that about first apple watch also
Well, actually, they had a point. The first Apple Watch "Johnny Ive Edition" turned out to be a dud. It didn't become a fashion item, it was a piece of rapidly aging electronics at a ridiculously high price. It wasn't until Tim Cook embraced it and bet on cheaper sports watches. Who knows, maybe it was the first spark of conflict, and then there were as many as 3 iterations of butterfly keyboards (although I personally loved it, if it wasn't for the poor quality and abrasion from ... yes, yes, I replaced keycaps from typing in a year)/
 
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