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Comment by semireg | Hacker News Reader

I’m not a AR/VR bull but I think Apple’s position is extremely underestimated.

It’s almost like every Apple product has been developed and refined for the future AR/VR moment. Custom silicon. Fast camera HDR. LiDAR. People/scene/room/boundary detection. AirPod Max fit and finish. Spatial audio. 50 other things…

All in the service of AR/VR.

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Dedicated Neural Processors on iPhones. Constant focus on improving battery life with awesome performance. Wearables that work best when using the iPhone as the main hub.

Apple is absolutely gearing up to dominate AR by having a sleek set of glasses that use your iPhone for the graphics rendering. And they'll succeed.

the iphone rendering idea was dropped years ago

Sauce?

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/20/23133038/apple-mixed-virt... etc

It's interesting in that context that they seem to have met with a much bigger challenge than they expected in actually delivering on their AR/VR product. Current indications are that it's going to be quite mind blowing but at the same time, highly encumbered by compromises as well (encumbered by wires, external battery packs, etc).

[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/01/03/report-reveals-wave-of-...

> external battery packs

I cannot fathom apple releasing a waist mounted battery pack like the article suggested.

Absolutely refuse to accept they’d do this.

They have a mouse with its charging port at the bottom. Their first Pencil iteration plugs into the bottom of the iPad like a weird antenna for charging. I could totally see them do ugly compromises in that area for a first iteration.

Yeah, when I look at the processing stuff they're doing on passthrough on AirPods, they are 100% much deeper on AR than most people think.

I am not convinced that Apple or anyone will deliver in AR.

AR is very hard to do good enough. HoloLens, MagicLeap and others are pathetic.

I hope I am wrong.

I personally think Apple is very capable. The issue is they'll build a good enough VR then put it within their walled garden.

Having used Apple software, I'm honestly not convinced of Apple's ability to deliver anything half as sophisticated as VR.

Having used some of apples existing AR stuff… I would believe they can ship their existing AR stuff and figure out how to make 2 screens that are nearly identical display the data.

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