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> I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR anymore - if there ever really was

I suspect there's a market there, but only if the device can be made to look like a pair of fashionable sunglasses, and was driven by the phone in your pocket, adding a customizable HUD to the real world, doing all sorts of things, from translating foreign-language text to overlaying directions or providing real-time info about the bus or train you're trying to catch.

But for now, that's science fiction. Even if we could make the screens/optics work, the glasses still need power, and batteries are still relatively bulky. It wouldn't be much use if it had a short battery life, or drained your phone battery too fast.

Google Translate in Lens mode is pretty much the killer app for this type of device. Having the in-place translation working feels like damn magic, and if you could do that while in a foreign country then it would be amazing.

I'm surprised more people don't use the Lens feature, it's one of the main reasons I still use Android. I use it to find where to buy clothes and shoes I see in photos, I can just hold my phone up to it and it returns shockingly similar looking products (usually the exact item).

> I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR anymore

anymore, or yet? I think the biggest barriers are form factor and price. History suggests that price of such devices will increase over time. Whether the tech can be squeezed into a form factor that will be desirable to the masses is another problem altogether. The fact that apple (according to this article) have not managed to do it suggests to me that it might be some time off.

Right. $3,000 is obviously a luxury/niche product, but $450 Nreal Air (which is a product you can buy today off Amazon) much less so. It's like 3D TVs, the idea will never die. Even if it's doesn't work out time around (which I doubt, having spent a tiny bit of time with an Nreal Air), expect to see it again in 10 years or so.

Once there are true smart glasses, things will change. I love the Hololens 2 experience, it just needs better hardware and smaller form factor.

Really curious about Nreal Air but would love to try before buying. Have you experienced them? If so, what's your take?

I've used nreal air.

The good: - Great form factor - Image quality for screen mirroring is great - Display has good brightness - Decent speakers

The bad: - Nebula (AR software that allows projecting multiple screens) has a worse image quality (I see some flickering). It's also buggy (e.g. it doesn't work on latest MacOS) - Slightly heavy. You would start feeling the weight on your ears after wearing it for an hour or so. - When screen mirroring an M1 Mac, the display settings on Mac doesn't allow you to resize the screen. It works on an Intel Mac though.

Eventually I decided to return it as I want to wait for the device to mature and I don't really have a strong need for AR glasses at this time. I'd be looking forward to their next version.

I think the current AR glasses (Nreal, Rokid, etc) are probably at the same level of maturity as smart watches when they first came out in the early to mid 2010s.

Really helpful, thank you! Can't tell you how many times I've had this in my amazon cart.

Don't own them myself, but there is a huge number of people using them with the Steam Deck.

You can get a huge screen in a portable form factor anywhere.

Typo fix: should have said "History suggests that price of such devices will *decrease* over time."

iPhone price proves that it wasn't a typo.

Hah. Fair point!

I think there is a much more important question, which is: what can you do with the tech that makes it valuable at any price point? Like cool, I can augment my vision. Now what? Now much... at least from what I've seen.

> I just don't think society currently has an appetite for a $3000 product that gives the wearer visual superpowers (that is the promise after all) and is an impossible to ignore distinction between classes.

Entire industries are built upon impossible to ignore distinction between classes - 100 thousand dollar watches, 10 million dollar cars, designer clothing, and a thousand other examples that come under the category of "bling".

While I have similar doubts about the short to medium term AR/XR future, I don't think it's based on people not wanting to be seen as better than everyone else. As a society we basically encourage that behaviour.

>I just don't think society currently has an appetite for a $3000 product that ... is an impossible to ignore distinction between classes

What do you mean by that?

Just curious because I feel the same about EVs, when I see one I think that's a richer than average person.

So I don't see how an AR headset would be a problem. It really depends how does it look like though.

I assume that it means you'll have people walking around wearing glasses that basically plug them transparently into all sorts of information. However, we've had an uneven rollout of mobile technology for the last 25+ years and that factor hasn't slowed anything down. If (and I agree it's a significant if over the next x years) AR is a genuinely useful mainstream technology people will adopt it even if others don't like it.

People aren't in their EV while sitting in a restaurant, talking to you at a party or standing in a checkout line. It's literally in their face while talking to you.

That said, usually people tend to seek out status symbols. People obviously wear Gucci sunglasses in their faces because they are Gucci and expensive. However, I also wonder if this case would be different because of the growing anti-tech resentment and the wearer now being associated with issues liked gentrification, disliked mega corps etc.

I agree that getting to a genuinely useful/comfortable/fashionable AR device is a pretty heavy lift. (And that it's arguably unrelated to VR except maybe to some degree at the tech level.)

But, if you get there, I'm pretty convinced that you will have a population of adopters whether it creates a class divide or not. Certainly cell phone adoption wasn't held back by this factor.

There is a market for AR glasses, it's just not wireless or tethered to a smartphone, on your face, walking around and using them like that, at least right now.

I think the SpaceTop laptop[0] shows an excellent use case for a realistic AR device.

Right now, the kind of AR headsets that companies seem to think they can produce are all fantasy/sci-fi, not much different than the whole Dream of Self-Driving Cars. Sure, it's probably possible eventually, but not anytime soon, or at a price point most can afford in the case of self-contained AR headset that look like normal glasses

[0] https://www.bigtechwire.com/2023/05/19/spacetop-the-groundbr...

“ I just don't think society currently has an appetite for a $3000”

Yep, that’s an easy one. Guess what. It’s not for general use.

I have no idea where AR/VR is going. However, I’m all for Apple spending part of its large cash reserve in R&D. I guarantee something useful will come out of it.

Hopefully, someone with a little vision comes along and says “you know what we could do with this technology…”

Correct. Arguably an Apple employee in the future will leave and rethink it to be successful when technology or the market is right.

Even as an Apple enthusiast, I think this product is destined to be this year’s HomePod.

>I don't think there is a consumer market for head mounted AR anymore - if there ever really was.

All it takes is a killer app to come along. AR music instrument instruction is my bet. If Apple released this one app along with the glasses it would become a massive hit.

I am thinking Pokemon or Yugioh. One killer app and you have people sold.

I would think that’s the coolest thing ever. I’m also not spending $4000 on it.

Driving, I think. Google maps overlayed onto the real world is pretty killer. Maybe night vision delivered as an IR image overlay.

I really hope it's not legal to drive while wearing a consumer AR headset. You would need to guarantee the device can't fail in ways that block important parts of your vision, and also prove that it is not a distraction hazard (which seems impossible)

Depends on the type of AR, passthrough or real vision with overlay like the Hololens

Even for a HoloLens type device, if the device fails in such a way that it’s projecting white across the entire field of view, you may not be able to see through it.

sure, but you can very easily and quickly flip them up

for anything glasses like, you can simply take them off

This already exists (at least for piano) on Quest. One of the few cases where I think the Quest Pro’s color passthrough really shines.

https://youtube.com/shorts/eeMte5UbFJ4?feature=share

That sounds like a massive gimmick to me. Something that looks cool in demos, but doesn't really translate well into practical use.

Might as well just buy a keyboard with lights built into the keys.

See Meta's recent VR commercials. They have a virtual mixer that they use in a "jam session" but it looks completely impractical to use.

I think there's totally a market for a $200-300 version, something very simple.

display in-coming text messages and caller ids, a navigation arrow and take snaps. that's it

> and knowing what we could do with it if done right

The implication here is that you know a compelling case for "what we could do with it" and how to "do it right", so what are the answers (because I'm stumped)?

For AR, the vision is more or less an arbitrarily "good" (across multiple dimensions) HUD. Although we seem to be pretty far from that.

For military or police use I can imagine superimposing models of hidden targets derived from aerial imagery. Granted the derivation part is presently missing.

Interior design is another subject that comes to mind.

AR is currently impossible. Even with a 300watt power budget we just don't have the machine perception abilities to actually make it work properly.

But because this is Apple the glasses will most likely offload a good bit of processing to your iPhone - which has custom ML hardware.

1st iteration feels more geared toward developers/companies. Then release a cheaper consumer model down the road. This thing also needs software.

> don't think society currently has an appetite for a $3000 product

Apple currently sells a pair of 500$ headphones and a 5000$ monitor. High margin products that are sold as fashion to their top fans is Apple's thing.

They will need one killer app and a sleek enough package, and those are the main bottle necks. The money is hardly an issue.

Technologically, Apple has the distinct advantage of having the best power efficient mobile chips which Facebook did not. Other than that, I don't see how they can solve all the other open problems in VR/AR right now.

Do you think the monitor is $5,000 because of high margins? It’s not. It’s arguably a bargain for its target demographic.

Apple doesn't make money by selling to their target demographic. They make money by convincing buyers that they need a $5,000 monitor to do work that certainly does not require it.

I can bet that most people and companies buying the pro-display XDR don't need that level of color calibration to do their job well. But as long as Apple is the most fashionable brand, they can convince people into thinking that's exactly what they need.

and the $800 wheels?

What about the stand?

Isn’t this always the response to Apple products.

It’s might have been possible 5 years ago, but they missed the bus.

The whole concept of AR/VR rises dystopian red flags, everything Mark Zuckerberg did with their attempt looked somewhere between scary and dumb.

I think this is because these companies are preoccupied with controlling the content, they envision doing the same things we do IRL but on their platforms. This is problematic because it means people instead of improving their lives and actually doing things are expected to be pretending doing it and spent their precious lives and money away on this BS.

VR and AR becomes exciting only when you can explore yourself and the world by doing things you can't do in real life. Maybe you want to try being assassin? Maybe you you want to try being from another gender or species? Maybe you want to try being in an actual war zone? Maybe you want to try to create a society with completely different rules from we have now? But no, these are too dangerous because someone might be offended, so in VR you are supposed to go to Paris and spend real money throwing virtual darts or something. They also can't distance themselves from the moral panic because they must milk the platform by controlling the content.

It is outright dystopian and dumb. The core promise of the platforms is "do the same things you do when you don't already do on our platforms so we can monetise that too" and this doesn't converge with the core promise of the tech which is to do things you can't do in real life.