Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Some Apple Employees Seriously Concerned About Mixed-Reality Headset as Announcement Draws Closer
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Apple might release a product around it but declare it a hobby to see how it evolves.
Haha 😂 and that’s this site starting to back track on their statements, next week or month they will announced it’s been delayed because staff are concerned about it as reported previously. God almighty give the VR/AR headset story a rest VR/AR is dead it’s not taken off and won’t because no wants to wear a bloody headset in order to do something. Meta has already slashed prices on theirs , PSVR 2 has flopped and more companies are shown off less AR/VR sets and focusing on audio and vision and health as the next big thing
While I'm not sure this is true or not, A/VR goggles has dug plenty of graves at other companies over the years.
Nice comment. Many people are assuming the goal is an iPhone-like hit. It doesn't have to be such a hit to be a successful, important product and category for Apple.
And while Apple leadership isn't flawless, they likely are not unaware of the consequences of a potential $3K price point. I'll gladly give Cook the benefit of the doubt here. He and others may well be badly wrong with this thing. But geeze, they deserve a little break until we see the whole picture unfold this summer.
At least watching dorks wearing these things tripping over curbs, running into walls and getting run over by busses will be entertaining. Basically Apple's 'Tesla Auto-pilot' moment.
Market research is better than a wet finger in the air. Today we have design thinking as a good supplement to understand the user mindset.
Microsoft had tablets before Apple. They also had touchscreen smartphones before Apple. They were for the most part a resounding flop.
Microsoft isn’t a trend setter and is not a hardware company. Apple is.
I won't be buying one so I am going to join in the criticism so my fomo is reduced.
I think the biggest factor is making a VR headset that is comfortable and practical to use for hours on end for mundane purposes (if they're going for "serious" uses).
Stereoscopic 3D is potentially headache-inducing because it doesn't match up with your head movements, eye movements and focus. Maybe goggles can do better on those fronts, but if they're a bit off, or a bit laggy the disorientation and stress will be back. If your goggles let you walk on the moon, battle zombie hoards or spend a few minutes walking through a building plan then you might put up with a bit of discomfort - but if you have to spend the day in meetings, do you really want to spend it getting a headache while dressing up as a member of Daft Punk, talking through your office wall to colleagues who's computer-generated faces (they're wearing goggles IRL so you'll be talking to an emoticon) are making eye-contact with an image of you, groping for your cup of meatspace coffee...?
What actual advantages does it bring over looking at a screen?
It could be really good - if it is 100% convincing, if the AR integrates seamlessly with your real surroundings, if its so good for so many things that you wear the goggles all day without noticing - but a bad dose of "uncanny valley" could result in this being a massive flop. It's also going to need some genius user interface design to make people want to use it all day, and I haven't seen much of that around in the last few years (maybe all the UI geniuses are busy working on AR?).
The danger is that if Apple have sunk a load of cash into this, there may be pressure to push it out before it is ready, which could discredit the idea.
I'm thinking particularly of the Newton which largely flopped because it got a high-profile launch before it was really ready. I don't think Plan A was "OK, this may flop, but in 10 years time, after we've nearly gone bust and effectively been taken over by NeXT, we'll release a world-beating mobile phone, and the ARM processor that we helped develop for it will rule the world and eventually run the Mac... sorry, what, we had to sell our ARM shares to pay the electric bill? Dang!".... and even though the Newton's big downfall - handwriting recognition - works pretty well these days, nobody seems to be using it much...
No one will spend that, which I why I do not believe the rumor that it will cost that much.
Because these tropes are always trotted out before every new release. It’s something for the trolls to get excited about and talk down a product that hasn’t even been announced. Where are the articles trashing competitor products before announce or acknowledged? I’ll wait.
It has, and it's also as I pointed out the sense that Apple is diverting attention away from other products in favor of this, and rumors that these goggles will replace phones/tablets/laptops.
I guess that's Luddite of me. Oh well. Not everyone is going to like a particular direction tech is going.
This is the "Pro/Ultra" model. It is a different 'roll out' order. They are starting at the lower volume, top end of the scale and then intend to start working down to high volume, 'consumer' devices much later.
It is riskier because the target market is much smaller. So can't really shoot at the 'broad side of a barn' and hope you hit something. Folks are going to spin story about how the iPhone/Watch were much relatively focused , but not really. ( iPhone had basically no app store. Didn't even have 'copy/paste'. The outsized success largely grew on the app store and features got flushed out with public interaction. Similarly, Ive and crew spent weeks and months fussing on the watch face designs. Life saving features of Watch not even on the radar. )
The narrower , 'foothold' market to get the product category started is going to need to be in a "Goldilocks' zone of not too small and not too broad. I suspect that is why getting commentary from some folks thinking " it isn't going to work" because they have picked some specific app (or app area ) and deemed it "not good enough". If try to only use a "gaming machine" metric then it probably has problems at that price point. ( relatively small (very sub 1M ) user base).
A huge part of the problem is that Apple is going to need 3rd party developers ( not primarily game developers , but application developers ) to help find a good path for the headset. That really can't happen if the headset remains secluded in a top secret Apple lab forever. I think the internal Apple 'doom and gloom" folks are too focused on the internal Apple default apps. Those likely aren't going to 'make or break' the headset become a large scale success. It needs to not be too buggy, but finding the breadth of usages for the headset can't solely be Apple's job to do.
The problem for Apple is that the technology to do a decent low-end device doesn't really exist yet. To toss the hip battery pack they'd need a huge tick in fab technology that isn't going to arrive for years. Screen tech that isn't affordable (and doesn't scale presently) , etc. etc. etc. Starting at the top end of the pricing scale means can afford to spend more money on components that are not 'very affordable' in the immediate time frame. Will sell to much fewer people, but can also start growing the hardware/software ecosystem in 'public' ( get it out of the 'top secret' labs).
This creates a bit of a 'chicken or the egg' situation. Going to have trouble attracting a huge number of developers due to the high headset cost which is going to keep the number of end uses down. Apple has slippery slope relationship with business IT. ( is this going to turn into a Apple hobby project were new development goes into Rip van Winkle zone when Apple has other, more important, things to do? ). And internal custom apps for specific companies/use cases. ( not random apps for random users ).
Let's just wait and see. At that (rumoured) price point, this thing needs to have some kind of amazing new functionality that nobody is expecting that will knock every competitor out of the park. Maybe it will. Or maybe it won't, and it will just be some overpriced Apple hardware. Again.
I think in ten years Apple will have a product that is amazing and started out not so great. But the long run is we are going to use computers to see better and augment reality when we don’t want VR. The comments saying it’s all a waste of money don’t understand you have to spend money to develop something out to the vision. Just like the iPhone is terribly ugly now, one day it will be just a sheet of glass with no massive camera bumps or notches - but we have dealt with so many inferior iterations until the future can be had.
Apple should do what Apple does and not release anything until it’s a joy to use.
Until these glasses are cool and thin like regular glasses and have a battery that can last through the day, they won’t become a major consumer product. If tech isn’t there, dont push anything out.
Just keep working on it.
Until these glasses are cool and thin like regular glasses and have a battery that can last through the day, they won’t become a major consumer product. If tech isn’t there, dont push anything out.
Just keep working on it.
I'm interested to see what Apple does and really hope they release something that's more than merely their version of Meta's headset. But where I see this skepticism as different from that of the iPhone and Watch comes down to the price. For ~$500 I'm okay with giving some new tech a shot with the understanding that it might end up sitting on a shelf unused in 6 months (dating myself here, but I bought a Newton!). But for $3K I'm gonna sit on the sidelines and see how everything shakes out first. And for the chicken/egg situation that exists for a new category such as this, they can't afford to have too many folks like me hanging back to see what happens.
Yah lost me at "hip-mounted battery."
That can't be right.
That just can't be correct.
No way.
That can't be right.
That just can't be correct.
No way.
You know, I said the same thing when that last minute rumor about the notch on the MacBook Pro came out. "No way, why the hell would they allow a notch on a friggin' laptop? Dumbest rumor ever!"
Oops!
