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Comment by melony | Hacker News Reader

What happened to their self-driving car and AR goggles?

Cars are an expensive industry to get established in with a lot of details to get right and major regulatory concerns. My guess is that they looked at that, the struggles the entire field is having (Google's been at it for ages and is nowhere near ready for a consumer product), and decided that the better outcome is to build better integrations with existing companies which are really good at building cars — I know multiple people who decided what to buy in part based on who did the best job with CarPlay.

AR is more complicated: there are some neat ideas but the form-factors are brutal in terms of hardware design and there is weak consumer demand. Apple has one of the most popular AR products now (AirPods) but that took a while to mitigate the compromises forced by the physical limits. I'm expecting some additional hardware from them soonish based on the references in recent developer builds but will not be at all surprised if that takes a while to find popular adoption. I think it's easy to underestimate just how hard it is to deliver an application which is compelling enough to get people to pay non-trivial amounts for. VR has been educational in that regard going from something which was too hard / expensive to fairly available but not yet having found mainstream demand.

Moonshots. And Apple is never first to market with anything. They take ideas that have traction and marketplace and then try to build a better one. The car wont make it because there is not a a successful industry to steal from yet. They have a chance with AR, but there is not enough adoption yet for Apple to be successful here yet (And apple is terrible with gaming).

AR isn’t only gaming. It’s to become the interface for a person’s world, instead of just the internet. It’s an extremely powerful position to influence what someone sees everywhere they look.

This is why companies are trying to break into it. Hardware is the main gap at the moment but Apple is the best hardware manufacturer in the world. The M chips are a step in this direction (high performance, low power).

> AR isn’t only gaming

100% but Apple always follows others leads and then makes a better product. Right now AR/VR leans heavily into gaming as for the audience is already built in. AR has so many applications I think eventually it will destroy the VR market usability wise. Im just saying for Apple it stands a better chance than their car efforts.

That's a common take but I think it's based more on PC/Android fans looking for an easy dismissal than any serious understanding of the history of the field. You saw this a lot when the iPod or, especially, iPhone came out which both ignored the degree to which devices were substantially different from other ones and, especially, that there were older experiments going back to the 1990s or even 1980s but that they chose not release products which were seriously compromised by the hardware.

In the case of VR/AR, we know Apple has been working on VR products since at least the early 90s but those never made it very far other than a few things like QuickTime VR. As we can see from the rest of the field it was only until the last half-decade that people were getting things like the visual quality or especially latency to acceptable levels and battery life / weight still seem to be a substantial problem.

> Right now AR/VR leans heavily into gaming as for the audience is already built in

If you look at the numbers for VRChat it shows there is a market outside gaming.

https://steamcharts.com/app/438100

> It’s to become the interface for a person’s world, instead of just the internet

I imagine you will still use the internet in AR, otherwise how will you get information? What you probably meant is a web browser on desktops and phones.

This is the correct take. True innovation (the uncanny valley stage) is left to pioneers. Apple will spot trends with potential and claim to be the innovator. It would show courage and humility to acknowledge this, but I understand it doesn't fit their PR narrative.

Wireless earbuds and ARM64 desktop computers look like new products to me.

Wireless earbuds did not originate from Apple, neither did desktop ARM. First True Wireless Earbuds are probably the Japanese Onkyo W800BT (2015) Windows Surface / Windows RT was the first major ARM based desktop/laptop consumer device (2012)

I said ARM64. Surface is not a desktop computer as it’s not fast enough.

I’ve been waiting for apple made ar goggles for a while now. I suspect the technology is not there yet. Facebooks mobile vr oculus sucks big time in terms of fidelity, so i cant see how decent wearable ar can be made. Cars tho yes. Cant wait for a new premium brand as european carmakers are a tad boring (unless of course you like revamped bling).

The self driving car project is looking like more of a software package that they're selling to vehicle manufacturers.

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/06/apple-announces-multi-d...

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