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What to Expect From WWDC 2023: AR/VR Headset, 15-Inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio, iOS 17, xrOS, macOS 14 and More
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I guess it’s better to expect nothing at all, as the main thing they are rumoured to present doesn’t show any promise, and to develop it they are likely to have neglected everything else even more than they had already done in the past few years.
If the vr thing flops the only people making money will be those who are shorting apple.
You nailed it, I feel exactly the same about these events. The days when apple was exciting are long gone, Tim Apple is boring.
Since Tim Cook himself has in the past told us a Mac Pro was coming, my hope is that the lack of MP leaks approaching WWDC means Apple is saving a MP announcement as One More Thing.
That would surprise us. It is OK to dream, right?
Except IMHO it's not something you need discussed at the end of the show, it should be more towards the beginning to get people more excited then ever if it did show up finally.
Perhaps I have aged out of wanting exciting, but IIRC I have always wanted competence rather than exciting. And Tim Cook has been bringing competence. Personally I find it amusing with Apple a $T company that some folks find competence to be boring.
I'd announce the 2023 Mac Pro Ultra 1 die & 2 die but ship it by December.Your examples just push forward the fact that Apple has way too much hardware to catch up on. Ever since January 17th with the M2/Pro Mac Mini update and the M2 Pro/Max MBP were pushed out to stimulate lost Mac sales due to China's city wide zero covid policy that finally ceased mid Dec 2022. Then you have the fact that during the months of March, April, May could have announced hardware updates but didn't we now arrive to WWDC in 2 days.
Take for instance this article.
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Apple is widely expected to introduce a “mixed reality” headset at its annual developer event on Monday that offers both virtual reality and augmented reality, a technology that overlays virtual images on live video of the real world.
The highly-anticipated release of an AR/VR headset would be Apple’s biggest hardware product launch since the debut of the Apple Watch in 2015. It could signal a new era for the company and potentially revolutionize how millions interact with computers and the world around them.
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If you have a lot of manufacturing logistics to conquer due to manufacturing delays, TSMC yields on whats next, products not seeing timely updates as expected, the last thing I expect is Apple gambling on brand new products that are more risk then return on investment. Instead they are likely pursuing software enhancements to take AR and put it out in the real works via their millions of deployed iPhones/iPads and possibly Macs. If I had to guess what XROS might be it could be where apps work in conjunction with Safari to allow special AR enhanced content to be seen from the internet such as via web browsing/hosts. Yes bring the future to the masses resulting in even more opportunties for Apple developers which is what this show is about.
Now a lot of the lagging hardware that you listed are possibles for Apple to simply announce with pricing so not to consume so much WWDC show time.
What is not would be the two biggest rumors out there, the first being some kind of mixed media headset or glasses, the rumors might be right that this is delayed because they need to introduce us to their AR or VR goals at the show as well as allow the market to warm to Apple's approach. The second is fan driven product rumor such as 15" MBA which first was rumored January 2021, still no confirmation at all from Apple that is something they are working on.
If you're Apple with all these hardware possibilities, whats is the best thing to help the software development community is the question you should be thinking about. Thats what makes this WWDC unusually exciting.
Ship the 2023 iMac 24" M2 and 27" replacement with M2 Pro & M2 Max this month. Same with a 2023 Mac Studio.
Wrong! Immediate financial success of the AR/VR headset is not critical to AAPL success any more than financial success of the Newton was critical to AAPL success circa 1990. And today Apple is 1000x larger, richer and more resilient.
It is just about having good vision and investing (heavily) in engineering accordingly. The learning involved in developing the Newton (which helped lead to iPods, iPhones and iPads) very closely correlates to what is going on in AR/VR at Apple today.
P.S. IMO all those folks thinking of the coming headset as a "VR thing" by definition fail to grasp what is going on. Folks allowing past simplistic VR experience to define their thinking will not get it. Instead study up about AR and about mixed reality; think forward about apps not yet created.
<Just my personal $0.02>
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I bet the VR headset will flop, and flop hard.
M2 updates will be okay, but really almost not necessary. If you have an M1 I doubt it will be worth the upgrade and the M3 will be a real step up.
The rest? Honestly pretty yawn worthy.
M2 updates will be okay, but really almost not necessary. If you have an M1 I doubt it will be worth the upgrade and the M3 will be a real step up.
The rest? Honestly pretty yawn worthy.
I think it's pretty much the opposite. People who keep pushing this as an "AR thing" fail to grasp what's going on. I've thought a lot about AR and I honestly can't think of a single use that appeals to me. It all seems gimmicky. Do I want to wear goggles (or, hopefully one day, glasses) that give me turn by turn directions? No. Do I want to walk down the street and have Yelp give me real-time star ratings, etc. for the businesses I pass? No. Do I want advertisers shoving location-specific ads in my face (literally) as I walk by? No. Do I want to spend thousands of dollars so that I can see how a piece of furniture looks in my living space? No.
What's the point of AR for the average user? I can't see any compelling long-term use cases. I can imagine plenty of 5 minute use cases, but nothing essential. Apple has been pushing AR on the iPhone for years and, Pokemon Go notwithstanding, no one cares. It's a gimmick. I'm sure the headset will make the gimmick feel much more immersive and sci-fi, but in the end it's still a gimmick. I keep reading comments like yours about how AR is the future and we just need to use our imaginations, etc. Yet these forums are full of silly ideas and no potential AR use case has risen above gimmick level. So, what's the killer app? (And please don't say medical. I can't help but roll my eyes at that one because Apple is not a medical devices company and will never have the headset FDA approved.)
VR and gaming will make or break this headset. The only people who buy these kinds of devices are gamers. If Apple delivers an amazing VR experience AND manages to recruit some top-tier game studios to develop for the headset, they might have a successful product on their hands. AR is a gimmick, a parlor trick that gets stale very quickly. With VR there is at least a clear use case in gaming.
Since (in my opinion) the headset is primarily about long term applied research and more about AR/mixed reality than about VR (as many folks simplistically and IMO ignorantly view it), the idea of those same ignorant folks perceiving product flop as defined by short-term sales results is irrelevant. Think Newton; look it up if you need to.
It’s very disappointing that they won’t go back to in-person events. Even if the they didn’t need to do so for every event or even if the announcements weren’t super exciting, it’s just more engaging when it’s in-person, especially for something like a VR headset. Yet it’s clear that these pre-recorded videos are less risky, there are no gaffes or gasps when a high price is revealed, no demonstrations that can go wrong, everything’s polished and dull and boring.
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Seems like this one is going to be a giant yawn outside of iOS 17. I don’t see any especially compelling hardware in the offing.
Yes, you and I have conflicting opinions; but the discussion is all good. You make solid points. Your apparent thinking revolves around what has happened in the VR/AR spaces to date, whilst my thinking portends what the newest AR/mixed reality tech will facilitate in the short-term future.
We agree that current AR (Ikea in the living room) is pretty lame. And we agree that the new headset will see some gaming success fairly quickly. Gaming is a big $$ market primed for some immediate activity. The fact that Pokemon Go ever existed suggests that demand exists that I sure never saw (but should have after watching students at Cal enthusiastically treasure hunting around campus in the 1990s).
I harp on the engineering research issue because I think that the killer apps are yet to come, and that they will likely be in the AR/mixed reality space rather than VR when they do come. IMO said killer apps will come sooner (w/in two years) rather than later. rHowever gaming is huge and I see large potential there too in VR. But it is future AR/mixed reality that has my personal entrepreneurial juices flowing.
Cook isn’t an innovator. That’s the problem many of us have with him. His tenure at Apple has been a period of stagnation for the company. This dumb headset isn’t going to rectify that situation.
Apple is not the only mega corporation out there. Being huge doesn’t mean being exciting. A lot of startups are more exciting than apple is, and apple was definitely more exciting when it was smaller. Plenty of oil and mining company are huge. That doesn’t make oil or coal exciting, not the companies extracting them.
The issue here is the idea that this device will become mainstream and a solid entry in Apple’s mass appeal portfolio. But the prospects for that happening are extremely dim given the barriers to entry and the utter lack of a realistic use-case for most consumers. Basically Apple is asking you to wear hardware on your FACE without giving you an overwhelming reason to do that.
Wow. Even if no Mac Pro is discussed, just the headset alone is very exciting to me.
It isn’t really a valid comparison to pit Apple against commodity and resource suppliers.
TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️
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If Apple does that. People will not upgrade to the new iPhone every year. Apple wants you to buy a new iPhone every single year.